This is my first post on this forum so take it easy and understand me.
I am 38 years old player who has played many different games during those past 20 years.

But those last few years, games have become more and more unfinished products with lots of problems.
Skyrim ..... is one of those games that is not finished, and it is a shame because the game is pretty good.
I've started about four times and each time I lose the urge to play because of all errors and bugs.
How on earth developers have the nerve to release the kind of product on the market?

5 years in development and the end result is a joke from a technical point of view
Textures, shadows, light and other factors are poorly optimized and shadows OMG those are the ones ugliest I've seen in many years.
And in order to be able to play reasonably well you have to change ini.files, it is not the developer's job to make sure that the code is right?
First, you pay $ 60 and then you have to wait for updates in order to play, it's like buying a car and wait for the tires.
I would not even think of quests that are completely broken and to cope with the quest you have to end it with console commands .... Are you kidding me BETHESDA seriously.

I no longer dares to explore because I'm afraid to destroy the quest line.
So tell me to ignore all errors and play or should I wait 6 months or more until the game is playable?

Why did you post your computer specs lol...?

Whereas I play on the 360 and it runs fine and looks great... Maybe I'm just lucky but I also bought F3 and NV on release and both worked fine and with minimal bugs.

I do admit I get a few glitches (Water vanished at certain points in river being the most glaring one) but nothing gamebreaking.

Last time I bought a car my satnav was two years old, my tires were for summer yet it was delivered in the middle of winter. The emergency kit that should have come with it wasn't there yet and got delivered two days later and I think my floormats were different then the one's that were promised. But that was okay, cause I don't care about that.

So cars svck too...

Now as for bugs, Bethesda games have always had bugs. Yes it's annoying, yes it can destroy the game... On the other hand have you seen how big it is? There is no way, has never been a way and will never be a way to fix all bugs before release. This isn't new, nor is it limited to Bethesda. It just happens

So the first comment would not be: ''Your PC is poor''.

Agree with the topic creator. There are really just a handful of games that are actually very good. It is what it is...svcks..

all i see is a 38 yr old baby, srsly. for one the years it took was for the revamp of this engine to allow better graphics in the first place.

you have to remember that TES series are no small games, they are very large so bad graphics is almost a must until they can push that further without sacrificing gameplay.

Bugs are hard to correct in a large scale game such as this, not to mention with new tech such as new compression/graphics/gameplay/speech/dragons/radiant story implemented its hard to find the source of a single bug.
plus when a bug is fixed more appear because the code is changed and might screw up some other things.

old games like morrowind and oblivion and even fallout 3 uses less tech so its easier to spot out flaws and misshaps.

bad graphics? i hate to admit that i am a graphics [censored], and have played alot of decent games that have amazing visuals, and skyrim takes the cake. Why? because of the detail. games like mass effect, killzone, uncharted have small scale worlds and by that i mean everything is set where its suppose to be, the lighting the shrubs, the trees. they are set in a way that capture what they aim for, skyrims world is open so its harder to emulate what they want you to see through an area in which everywhere is your "amazing view" and personally i think they did a very good job. name one game that fits the smallest detail in a large open world environment while keeping a steady graphical transition from terrain to interiors.

so to end stop complaining, a real gamer takes what he gets makes the best of it and turns it into somthing more

Or or or, or, or they could have used an engine like Unigine or worst case UE3 both of which do DX11 and would have been amazing for this game. But no no, beth decides to rehash their crap engine and out poops the POS creation engine...3 new features no improvements lol. Joke engine is a joke.

Anyway OP, current times with everything connected allows for them to release an unfinished game and put out patches later. Its lame, but become the norm im afraid.

Every video game from super nintendo and earlier code would fit onto skyrims disk. Your right it's buggy as hell like allthe other tes and fo3 games. Probably will never change. The games just keep getting bigger with more and more code. So yes it will tIe months to get it right with patches. It's ok though I'm having a he'll of a time right now

well, i'm a little younger than you, but I know how you feel.
but actually there were the same problems in the past years, idk if you ever played Gothic 2, open world rpgs always had these kind of problems, so i'm not surprised much if skyrim has the same issues like broken quests, items stuck, overpowered beasts (remember gothic 2's boars before the first patch?) At least now we can have updates and fixes easier, back to gothic 2 you had to go in the company website and download the fix by yourself, now its automatic, so no big deal.
I'm more surprised when these kind of things happen on more "simplistic" games, like when your char gets stuck in red dead redemption or stuff like that.

All I see is a 12 y old really devoted fan. Pay some respect for older people ! I get so mad when someone posts a clean message about their opinion and then someone immidiatley attacks him personally because he's favorite game gets some criticism.

yes and no, bethesda is its own dev/publisher its cheaper to use their engine to create what they want. if they did use another engine they would have to pay royalties and such to publish it under there name, And for the PC crowd the creation kit allows for people to mod the game without breaking the major structure of the game. Using an engine like UE3 would confuse alot of players with its complexity.

graphics wise, bethesda is still a learning company, they are growing and its because of the support they get through these games. No skyrim may not absolutely break all graphical barriers with its tech but its getting there. i respect their choice to make everything themselves and until they learn first hand how new tech works and how to expand on graphics, im happy with what they produce


wrong not my fav game, but a good one, people these days dont respect things for what they are. and thats what gets on my nervs. its like asking a rich kid what has more innovation CoD or skyrim and they say CoD because of new guns and maps. im not saying everyone needs to have a dev like mind to understand and/or appreciate a game title, but the ones who do need to teach the ones who dont.

I respect his age and the fact that he has seen probably alot more games than I, but to complain with such negativity bums the crowd and gives no real feedback. i try to keep things positive, altough i may come off sounding like a really devoted fan, but thats how im used to arguing. I do have my quirks about the game like i do many games, but i do not flaunt them to provoke arguments that dont lead to a conclusion.

Yet another example of fans of the game being twenty times more hostile than the so-called haters

I agree with the OP

Look at it this way, a lot more efficient optimizations have to be made to squeeze more performance out of limited technology. The consoles haven't gotten better; but you still get a leap in graphical improvement, at the expense of everything else.

for example : Xbox's in particular need very specific optimizations because it can't do a whole lot of stuff normal cpu's can do. Stuff even cpus in supermarket checkout stands can do...

Console CPUs are strong, GPUs not very but good enough. The main problem with consoles is memory and it shows and why PC uses get such game port that look like 6 years ago. Graphics are not everything but Skyrim delivers poorly in the quest areas as well and for me it's the worse Elder Scrolls game in that regard. Lucky for PC owners we have texture mods and such but it's not going to fix the poor quality of the game and it's engine.

I couldn't be bothered reading the thread, so can someone just skip to the end for me? Are we blaming console players, the "casual gamer", or a combination of both?

If someone could let me know, that would be great.

Edit: OP, I'm not trying to be a dike, but a massive open world game like this IS going to have bugs... even the most ardent of its critics will acknowledge that as just a fact of gaming life. As for your complaints about the graphics... despite the claims it's a revamped old engine. Graphics aren't going to be the best, and to be blunt, Bethesda aren't known for their graphical splendour. If you bought something that you find isn't the game for you, chalk it up as a learning experience, and move on.

The bugs are frustrating as when i had textures missing on armour,they were just purple or alot of crashing to desktop which i did'nt mind as you just restarted the game,theres nothing worse than total freeze up and you have to reset the machine on some games.i had alot of mods running when i had suddenly had dragons unskinned attacking me in skeloton mode,thats when i realised oops its either go get more ram or just disable a few mods,i figured,i don't need Hd lunar moths or Hd leaves and once i chopped a few out it's back to the odd crash to desktop every now and then.

has anyone realised that the draugr and bandits and other npcs in the dungeons and caves are coded just for those areas and can't follow you out if you're running away from them?i was so use to oblivion and how that games npc's could go anywhere that i expected them to follow me out and finish me off.

you should, that prevents you for posting something that someone else already said

I know I'm a little hard but I just wanted to say my opinion.
I understand that the game is huge and I am aware that there will be bugs and errors.
But take Blizzard, for example, maybe their games are not as big as Bethesda games but Blizzard polish their games to the madness and when they believe that the game is finished so they release the games.
I just want to hear it is ok to play as it is, should I ignore all the bugs and just play, or should I wait for patch 1.4
You must admit it's frustrating not being able to complete the mission and not be able to continue ......

I had one game breaking problem with Vanilla that I managed to fix after some googling. No problems since then, so I think you're fine.

And there is unfortunately a huge difference between Blizzard and Bethesda, some of that has to do with the game type, where Bethesda's game are generally speaking more difficult to keep working, some of it has to do with money and some probably with the amount of time they want to spend on it.

Anyway, I think you'll be fine.

The Bethesda supporters are out in force in this thread.

Interesting that other companies publish much bigger games, and don't seem to have as many problems (that I'm aware of, and I played one of those for 5 years.)

And, Bethesda has a history of not publishing enough patches to take care of everything that needs correcting.

OP, I suggest going to the Hardware/Software Forum, which is broken down by platform, and list your "game-stopping" problems, and see if another player can help you. That forum is where most players list their problems. There are also some stickies that may help you out.

Good luck.

Hmmmm. Maybe some are and some aren't. I once had the "bartender" and boss of that cave with the pit wolfs come outside and chase me down the hill when I underestimated them and stepped outside to heal. I thought nobody could come outside as well and it totally took me by surprise.

I expected Skyrim to be far buggier than it plays on my PC. I've found it far less buggy than the last two Fallouts. Personally I've far less tolerance for bugs with games on rails - with games like this anticipating and testing all the possible actions a player might choose to take at any given point must be a total effing nightmare.

How many games can you really think of, that are bigger then Bethesda games without bugs? Not counting mmorpg's because they constantly have money coming in, meaning they also have more money to develop patches.

One thing I wonder, I have legal version of Skyrim and have tried illegal version of the game.
How can it be that the illegal version of the game is more stable than the original version?

It can't be, you're just in luck. Or alternatively have a computer that can barely run it and not having steam active saves you just enough to improve preformance. I have a legal version of Skyrim and have not had ANY problems in the last few weeks, where before I did have some random CTD's and such.

I'd agree. It's the demands of the industry, sadly. We expect bigger better games, but from the SAME dev cycle we expected for games 15 years ago. The result is always a product nowhere near as polished as we'd like, and results in a culture of Day One Patches and Patching to fix issues continually.

I've lost count of the number of products and publishers who struggle with this. Bethesda are by no means exclusive in this.




But I'd disagree with that...

It IS a finished product. Just not as polished and thoroughly debugged as we'd like. There is no progress issue which repeats 100%, or cannot be fixed by returning to an earlier save. There are glitches, but if it were 'not finished' it would never have passed certification at Sony or Microsoft.

Your point is valid. But your terminology is incoprrect for what you are trying to express.




Just go back to an earlier save if you have a progress issue. If by bug you mean 'aesthetical or design choice which I do not like' that's a different kettle of fish, of course.




Because by and large they are GREAT games, and because shareholders and publishers insist on releasing every game in a specific window. See how many games comanies like EA release per month? Ifyou want your product to sell you've got to pick a week of the month where a larger publisher won't minimise your sales. That, at the end of the day, is what drives modern games sales sadly.




Sadly, the optimising stage of development for most developers is the one which gets cut the most, due to deadlines. It's not like the good old days of 'release when we're happy with it'. Of course, if we did go back to that NO game would ever come out...





Specifically what do you feel you need to change, out of curiousity?




Welcome to mainstream videogame publishing! Where nobody gets what they want.




There is no quest which is completely broken. There are quests where something odd happens, or something goes wrong, but almost never a 100% repeatable issue that ALWAYS occurs. Of course if you've found something specific always post a bug up in the support forum. You never know it might get fixed in a later patch.




I'll admit that very much is how I feel about things at moment, mind. And I agree that it is frustrating.

If I find something I post it in the support forum. It's all I can do. It's the same with a dozen games I own. It's the danger of open world games really.