So, first problem I ran into was a quicksaves and autosaves on a new char overwriting the quick/autosaves on my first character. Well, thanks. Lost about 20 hours there, at least.

Second problem? Somehow, the quick/auto saves overwrote a manual save I did. Um, what? I just lost another 10 hours from that alone.

Jesus, is it really SO HARD to give different characters their own profiles in the save/load system? Not only would it organize the save/load interface, but it would prevent stupid glitches/design oversights from causing hours of gameplay to just VANISH.

Thanks for warning i will backup all my 450 saves again

I was just about to post the same thing. I switch playing my characters every so often and one of these times I'm going to forget to save a character under a regular save and end up quick saving over one of them. I would think this would be common knowledge to set up each character with its own set of saves.

You've been playing far too much on the consoles, on the PC i have NEVER seen a game have a quicksave/quickload for separate characters. Just make a proper save instead of quicksaving and exiting the game? It's really 3 mouse clicks more.

So is it safe to have a few characters on the go on PC?

I'm thinking of making a new charecter but no way i want to lose the 80 hours i have with this character.

Yes it's safe, just Save manually instead of relying on the autosave (which is reported corrupted anyway). There won't be any loss.

It's not terrible, just not incredible either.

And you should never, ever rely on autosaves and quicksaves. Bethesda improved it by having a cycle of 3 autosaves instead of just 1 in previous games. This coupled with the fact that backups are made automatically means you have 2 quicksaves and 6 autosaves at any one time.

I'm 32 hours in and I have 300 saves. It's not difficult.

... What.
You see the auto and quicksaves, and you see theres never more than 1 quicksave and 3 autosaves. But you do see an unlimited number of manual saves. What made you believe there can be 2 quicksaves all of a sudden?

The save system is the worst from both worlds.


On consoles, because it would be a hassle to name every save, they usually set up a system where every character gets its own set of saves.

On PCs, because its easy to name the save, they often leave it up to the player to name their saves and then simply select the name of the one they want to use. If you didn't notice, Skyrim does not allow you to do this.


In Skyrim, console players have to scroll through all the save games, look at the little informational picture on the right to confirm that it is indeed their save game. If they have a lot of characters, it can become cumbersome and unwieldy pretty quickly, especially if the player has, say, 10 different characters with multiple saves. Instead, they should allow you to select your character and then show the saves for that character only.

Really, PC runs into a similar problem at some point. Every other PC game in history allows you to name your save files. They have pretty much the single worst save system of any modern game on the PC specifically. The only redeeming quality is that you can actually name the saves by using a console command line. But really, this is just a workaround for the terrible save game system they use.

First I have to agree that the Save system could use work. How hard would it have been to have different folders under the user name . then on the Main menu you could pick a different Profile/Name and you would only see the saves from that folder??? Any way....

I role play, I have one Charater (ME) at any one time. When I retire myself I will then remove all those saves and start a new Game. So I have Never let a game tell me when to save. First thing I do is turn off all auto save features. They (auto save) are known to cause way to many problems to ever trust them.

I have not had the time to test any of the following commands that appear in the generated INI. (Skyrim.INI) **

**not Tested.

Having to much fun playing Skyrim to test. Remember to Save. I have about 20 hard saves now...wonder how big the save folder is ..lol

For multiple characters, I use a different Windows login for each character. Then each character has their own save directory. Character saves are organized and I can use auto/quick saves as well as manual.

I`m not sure if you knew this or not but. If you want to use different characters all autosaves will be overwritten by new ones for different chars. You can save previous chars manually and each save has your chars name, date, and time in it in the loading/save screen. So you will never lose your chars info switching between them if you remember to save them to the correct file. Just remember on new chars when you do your first manual save to save it as a NEW save and just keep overwriting that one and you should be good.

I find ~ "save " ~ to be a lot quicker than actually going to the save menu (even in Oblivion). Takes all of a couple seconds.

just manually save. I thought it was a well known fact that you can only have one quicksave and a couple of autosaves.

I always keep a separate folder for each character and rename anytime I switch characters..

ie. under the My games\ folder I have separate folders named -- Saves character X , Saves character Y , and Saves character Z then as I use say character Y before starting the game I change the Saves folder name to Saves character C and rename Saves character Y to just Saves (so it will be used by the game.) and rerename when I again switch characters.

i hope it will come a mod for this with ingame interface. did it ever come one for oblivion?

There is a savegame manager out for this already, came out second day after launch,very handy, but have to decide before you start the game though, but it simply lets you have different profiles and moves them in and out of the skyrim save folder as you desire
I know its annoying, but as i usally have a few chars on go it helps, with any elder scrolls/fallout game to be honest

THis is a common feature with all of Bethesdas games that I'm aware of.

Lets see. been the same since Oblivion, Fallout, Fallout New Vegas (despite the fact in FNV another dev actually produced the game)

Yes, I agree it is a asinine system. I agree it makes no sense.

It is the same as before. I doubt they will ever change.

The only fix is to keep an eye on the scene for working save game managers. There are a few on Nexus already for Skyrim.
What I can not say is if these are working as one would want as I've not personally tested them.

So, for PC players there are solutions and as has been the case with EVERY Bethesda game from day one it is
the PC player community that fixes it up proper via mods. They even manage do do so without the tool kits that Bethesda
eventually supplies (late).

So, what is the problem?

On another note, I've now got 3 gigs of skyrim saves.

That's overkill. Just rename the save directory and you can have as many characters as you want.

And for the opening post - never ever ever rely on autosave for a Bethesda game.

I think the save system is just fine. I've been saved by the autosaves on more than one occasion, so the inclusion of multiple, rolling autosaves is a welcome edition to TES5. If you've played any previous Gamebryo engine games (Oblivion, FO3, FNV) then you should be aware of the console command 'save ' to allow you to save with a specific name rather than a simple numerical save (Yes, I'm aware that Bethesda has stated that Skyrim doesn't use Gamebryo, but the console commands are just one of the many similarities this engine has with its predecessor). Also, it shouldn't be a surprise that autosaves and quicksaves would overwrite one another - the only game I've ever played that differentiated quick/auto-saves between characters was Dragon Age: Origins, and that was a welcome addition, but honestly not something I expected Bethesda to implement. Nor do I feel that it is a strong requirement - Skyrim has other, far more pressing issues to be addressed.

Of course, the console option only works on the PC. I have no idea how the save system works on a console, and honestly, I don't see how console players can expect robust support in this area. If you want the customization and flexibility that the console gives us PC users, then you'll have to play the game on the PC.

On the plus side, I do like that the saved games seem to record actual playtime (I don't know if the counter pauses while you're in the System menu, kind of harder with Skyrim since they combined System with Journal ), but it's definitely more accurate than Steam playtime.

The save system is a pit trap for new users. They expect you to understand how it works and know console commands or whatever. I mean, I knew from Oblivion how it works, but not everyone played Oblivion.

Mass Effect had multiple profiles. Other games have descriptive savegame naming (not through the console). Also with the console breaking achievements, this is all just not well thought out.

People learn from their mistakes, but that's no reason to set traps for them.

The best thing I can say about the savegame system is it's not a checkpoint system.

It's like they adopted the Linux philosophy of "give the user lots of options, don't worry so much about how the package arrives."

I just wish you could NAME save files, as in Morrowind. Just name it after your character, assign a few numbers to it for however many backup files you want for said character, and then it is MUCH easier to find a specific save, without having to scroll through countless saves and read the description of each one to find a specific character when you are playing as several at once. I mean, really, how hard is it to give us that option? If my wording makes ANY sense at all.

Compared to Dragon Age's save game system, it IS terrible :

1) DA keeps each character's save games seperate
2) DA lets you actually NAME your save games