Disappointed with 1.4 : V - Skyrim

» Wed May 23, 2012 1:36 am

The elite's are the old black ones and the slims are the new ones with the redisigned case.

Old black ones? I think we're talking about the same thing, dude. The Elites are the thinner black consoles with a different vent case, and an internal harddrive slot.

I have been playing on a 16 MB save after 1.4 with no lag issues.

Did you install to the harddrive? Did you create the character during 1.3? Do you like mustard with your french fries? These are all questions that could potentially make all the difference.

The problems are too widespread to simply be tho console's fault, the lack of installing the game, or creating a character during a certain version of the game. And if the only solutions WERE that simple, then I call [censored]. The players should not have to deal with all that crap.

» Tue May 22, 2012 7:45 pm

I read somewhere on this site that people are saying that it's ignorant to suggest that players "deserve" fixes to X problem(s).

To that I say, "Fair enough. However we deserve to be notified ahead of time that our save files will have an expiration date."

» Wed May 23, 2012 12:49 am

Not sure what you are talking about Uriel. The game doesn't save the glitches to your save file. They are an inherent part of the game coding itself. The save file is completely irrespective of that fact, while yes they can affect a save file, the problem most definitely is not that layer after layer of glitches were saved to your save file...

I understand you mean well but I don't think this is a situation to talk about something you don't know. (For lack of a better phrase, not trying to sound like an ass)

@ Omni: I'm in the exact same boat as you. This crap is lame and I shouldn't have to deal with it, period. Simply put, this "anti-patch" never should have made it through the testing, and it's doing nothing but inconveniencing the consumer.

You save file contains bits of info on what is currently goin on in your game world, where things are, etc, if something is glitched and the game is tracking that info, then it will save that data, add in another glitch on another glitch it will snowball into a worse issue that no patch could ever touch. Performance improvements wont help if info in your save data contains odd info such as 'roads that lead to the sky', 'missing walls' or even 'swimming guards' on land. The game will still see it as 'this shouldnt happen' and either lag to reprocess the data or just crash because something is doing something its shouldnt be doing.

» Tue May 22, 2012 8:09 pm

While it may remain unnecessary to say at this point, to preface my first topic, I'll say it: Skyrim is awesome.

It's the biggest game I've ever played and it's the best looking game I've ever played. Open world exploration has never been better (to my knowledge).

THAT SAID, scope and graphics should always be second to performance. And Skyrim fails to deliver this.

Among the inevitable mess of technical issues this game faces, 99% of them I can accept.

Town guards swimming indoors? Funny.
Roads taking right turns straight up into the sky? Bizarre.
Pieces of the floor and wall missing to fall through into the void? Oops.
Werewolves still equipped with swords in their hands and torches between their legs? Annoying.
Significant offline lag during basic movement, as well as freezing and crashing forcing players to hard reset their consoles? UNACCEPTABLE.

I don't think I'm out of line here to expect the brand-new game I purchased not to force me to hard-reset my console 7 TIMES in 20 minutes.

I bookmarked this forum, waiting several weeks for this new update to come out because I've been telling everyone: "Skyrim is awesome, but it's lag and crashing are infuriating! I read that the next update should fix it." only to experience the following:

*load saved game*
*take two steps*
*wait 20 seconds staring at a static image*

Come on! I literally can't sprint/horseride/werewolf run ANYWHERE on the overworld without lagging as the game tries to spawn bushes! These faster forms of travel as they are designed for COMPLETELY lose their purpose when it literally takes just as much time to WALK where I'm going! The only difference is if I walk, I only sometimes lag, but at least I'm not staring at a static image most of the time!

I just put the controller down when it happens now. Do you realize how bad a technical problem is when your game's lag is so bad it makes the game entirely unplayable, and you don't even have the excuse of a poor internet connection?

To put it succinctly, and I think I speak for everyone here: I would VASTLY prefer a smaller game that works, than a bigger game that just buckles under it's own weight. If I had the choice to lose half the dungeons, half the quests, and half the resolution for a game that rarely lags or crashes, I'd take it.

Again, it speaks a LOT for how good the game is when offline lag and crashing are outweighed by it's capacity to entertain. That's an instant death sentence for most games these days, Bethesda. But really? The Creation Kit? Side-quest fixes? Decoration fixes? Granted, I really appreciate them, but the priority should always be on basic performance. MOVING 10 FEET FALLS UNDER BASIC PERFORMANCE.

Okay I'm done ranting. I know that seems harsh, but that's the result of over two weeks of irritation and hope with no payoff.

Please... PLEASE fix the lag and crashing, Bethesda. I ask nothing more from you. I just want to play your game.

OP, would you possibly be able to humor us with screens of these glitches. Phone pictures would suffice, but I am extremely curious to see these glitches you mention.

» Tue May 22, 2012 11:23 pm

Old black ones? I think we're talking about the same thing, dude. The Elites are the thinner black consoles with a different vent case, and an internal harddrive slot.

Did you install to the harddrive? Did you create the character during 1.3? Do you like mustard with your french fries? These are all questions that could potentially make all the difference.

The problems are too widespread to simply be tho console's fault, the lack of installing the game, or creating a character during a certain version of the game. And if the only solutions WERE that simple, then I call [censored]. The players should not have to deal with all that crap.

The first xbox they called the elite was the first one to come with a HDMI port. There was the arcade(no hard drive), the premium(60gb hard drive thats what I have), and the Elite 250gb. All those versions were the exact same consoles with hdmi support(the first xboxes never had a hdmi port!!!). The difference was the size of the hard drive they came with and the xbox elite was black.

Now we have the models that come with the built in hard drives. I actually like the fact that my xbox has the detachable HDD because i can bring all my arcade games over to friends houses.

» Tue May 22, 2012 8:36 pm

Old black ones? I think we're talking about the same thing, dude. The Elites are the thinner black consoles with a different vent case, and an internal harddrive slot.

Did you install to the harddrive? Did you create the character during 1.3? Do you like mustard with your french fries? These are all questions that could potentially make all the difference.

The problems are too widespread to simply be tho console's fault, the lack of installing the game, or creating a character during a certain version of the game. And if the only solutions WERE that simple, then I call [censored]. The players should not have to deal with all that crap.

If you go here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xbox_360 you can see what I mean by the differance. The Elite's have been discontinued.

As for the three questions. I have not installed the game, I did create a new play on 1.3 with no problems, and I don't like mustard on my fries just salt.

The problems are very widespread and you can't discount any posibility. Not saying your problem is hardware, but it could contribute. Even if it is a brand new system.

» Tue May 22, 2012 2:46 pm

elite = old black xbox with 120gb drive, they didn't have 250gb drives then.

» Tue May 22, 2012 1:59 pm

I had one of the old elites now the 360s sold now are referred to as 'slims' or S Model

» Wed May 23, 2012 4:56 am

My issues were non-existent pre-1.4. It is not a hardware problem, I have a brand new Slim with a 250GB 7200RPM HDD. The issues were brought on by the patch. I never did any glitches of any type, so they haven't "snowballed" or anything else, because they have never happened, aside from quest/AI related things. The only glitch I've experienced was Brynjolf never going down to the Ragged Flagon, but I managed to get around it.

I'm sure if I start a new character it won't be as bad, but that isn't the point. I don't want to start a new character, and I shouldn't have to...

A lot of people seem to be confusing types of 360s so here let me show you:

Standard older 360 on the left (black version of that is the old Elite) ::: The new Slim model is on the right
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.engadget.com/media/2010/06/new-xbox-20100614.jpg

The Slim still has a removable hard drive, it's just more internal, but still just as accessible.

» Wed May 23, 2012 12:34 am

As I said in another topic, I am disapointed that we still can't kill the legate's at the civil war camps.

Why have them 'essential'? Are they needed for future DLC? Because I completed the civil war quests, and I was asked to wipe out the enemy camps where I find them, yet, that one 'named' character just wont die, no matter how many times I break his back with my (legendary strength) daedric warhammer, he gets back up and attacks again.

» Tue May 22, 2012 3:48 pm

"Finally! That was ridiculously hard! 3 Dragons in one day, what a trek. Alright, Delphine and Esbern appear fine. Aela? You alright? Have some healing. Okay, where's Meeko? Meekooo? Meeko? ...Meeko? Meeko NOOOO!!!"

Sorry, but I just HAD to add this vid here!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9O_kg6EqcRA

» Tue May 22, 2012 4:17 pm

You save file contains bits of info on what is currently goin on in your game world, where things are, etc, if something is glitched and the game is tracking that info, then it will save that data, add in another glitch on another glitch it will snowball into a worse issue that no patch could ever touch. Performance improvements wont help if info in your save data contains odd info such as 'roads that lead to the sky', 'missing walls' or even 'swimming guards' on land. The game will still see it as 'this shouldnt happen' and either lag to reprocess the data or just crash because something is doing something its shouldnt be doing.

No offense to you or anybody else, but please please PLEASE everybody stop handing out these 'bro-knowledge' bits about why it's lagging and what these glitches are doing. Unless you are actually a programmer and know what is likely going on in the background, I don't want to hear about "Oh your issues are tidal wave-ing and snowballing to compact into a giant crater of laggy glitchiness."

» Wed May 23, 2012 5:48 am

I studied Computer Programming in College, I have knowledge in BASIC, some COBAL (learned it for BPA in HS, havent used it since), Java (College Study), C++ (Self taught), and PHP (Self-taught). I dont claim to know exactly whats going on with the game and its coding but I can see why in most cases patches cant fix some issues people have because of snowballing bits of data thats already glitched/corrupted. No amount of duct tape will fix something like that

» Wed May 23, 2012 4:58 am

....some COBAL (learned it for BPA in HS, havent used it since)

Yeah, no-one ever does! :biggrin:

Probably one of the most useless languages I ever learned.

(P.S. Don't you mean COBOL?)

» Tue May 22, 2012 8:36 pm

Yeah, no-one ever does! :biggrin:

Probably one of the most useless languages I ever learned.

(P.S. Don't you mean COBOL?)

Yeah see how little I use it? LMAO
Competition for BPA (Business Professionals of America) was the only reason I ever learned it.

» Tue May 22, 2012 8:11 pm

Yeah see how little I use it? LMAO
Competition for BPA (Business Professionals of America) was the only reason I ever learned it.

No problem, I've seen worse. I've seen people mis-spell "C++"! I didn't even think that was possible until I saw it happen!!!

» Wed May 23, 2012 3:11 am

OP, would you possibly be able to humor us with screens of these glitches. Phone pictures would suffice, but I am extremely curious to see these glitches you mention.

I'd saved a couple games, but I'm afraid that they've since been deleted.

Some of the more mundane glitches are easier to duplicate. For example, running while your weapon is drawn and then sheathing it does not increase your running speed, you have to press sprint again (this is a pretty weak programming error). And while I'm not sure the swimming guard can be duplicated, the werewolf crotchfire is easy to recreate:

http://i801.photobucket.com/albums/yy295/HeartbreakerStudios/DSC00042.jpg

As I said in another topic, I am disapointed that we still can't kill the legate's at the civil war camps.

Why have them 'essential'? Are they needed for future DLC? Because I completed the civil war quests, and I was asked to wipe out the enemy camps where I find them, yet, that one 'named' character just wont die, no matter how many times I break his back with my (legendary strength) daedric warhammer, he gets back up and attacks again.

No problem, I've seen worse. I've seen people mis-spell "C++"! I didn't even think that was possible until I saw it happen!!!

Let's stay on topic, people, PLEASE.

» Tue May 22, 2012 4:49 pm

Though I havent had extensive time to play 1.4 overall my new character is working nicely nothing noticeable for glitching or what not. Going to try and see if Blood on Ice will continue to work for me.

And sorry if I went a little OT will try to keep to the path

» Wed May 23, 2012 4:49 am

The Blood on Ice house glitch is a perfect example of what I'm talking about when I say "two complex systems collide in a way unpredicted by the developers". One system being your freedom to complete miscellaneous quests to buy a house, and the other being to complete a specific quest involving that house.

While, once again, this seems like a pretty obvious oversight (I mean, why wouldn't you make sure this one and only house couldn't be moved into before you proffered up a serial killer quest to the player that takes place inside that house?), my real concern is the very different, though similarly ill-treated, code that governs how the game runs; loading/unloading objects, textures, and particle effects, saving/loading, progressive memory, physics, basically everything in the game that the players never see, but feel the effects of. If an error causes a certain particle effect to properly disappear visually, but does not eliminate the actual object, then continued play and creation of these effects could culminate into lag, though the player will never figure this out.

The prevalence of clashing problems in the game strongly indicates that Bethesda tends to evade the general rule of thumb of "make this system infallible before working on the next". Granted they'll make the game faster by avoiding it, but as a result we inevitably run into some embarrassingly simple logic problems like...

You can buy the Windhelm home while it's used as a serial killer hideout,
Sheathing your weapons while sprinting does not recover your normal sprinting speed,
Roggvir's scripted execution can be missed if you take a different entrance into Solitude,
Lucan and Camilla still thank you for recovering the Golden Claw for them even after you steal it back.

These are basic things the typical designer should have easily covered from the start. I can't help but think that this reckless design streak bleeds into the behind-the-scenes processes as well.

» Tue May 22, 2012 4:52 pm

Can you imagine though all the extra stuff they have to put in in order to anticipate some of the choices that players make (like stealing the golden claw back or what not)? Also i dont see the Windhelm house an oversighted issue. In most cases the Blood on Ice quest should have fired off and been completed by that point. Its just unfortuneate that the quest collided with other scripts that prevented it from starting correctly

The more lines of code a game has the more of a chance a script will collide with another. There is also a good chance that when testing no collisions were found. Even with code verification to test for errors (i dunno if the program they use to code has one but I know when I was learning Java VisualCafe had a code checker for errors) collisions can still happen.

» Tue May 22, 2012 5:22 pm

Can you imagine though all the extra stuff they have to put in in order to anticipate some of the choices that players make (like stealing the golden claw back or what not)? Also i dont see the Windhelm house an oversighted issue. In most cases the Blood on Ice quest should have fired off and been completed by that point. Its just unfortuneate that the quest collided with other scripts that prevented it from starting correctly

The more lines of code a game has the more of a chance a script will collide with another. There is also a good chance that when testing no collisions were found. Even with code verification to test for errors (i dunno if the program they use to code has one but I know when I was learning Java VisualCafe had a code checker for errors) collisions can still happen.

A code checker does not check for in-game conflicts, it just returns incorrectly placed code, like if they forget to close a bracket or add a semicolon. The game could technically work, just not in the way as intended.

And no, it's not an huge excursion to avoid holes like that. It's a simple matter of creating the system, and then covering it in all the ways the player is reasonably capable of interacting with it. My examples are really basic. You can't tell me that it's understandable to overlook players STEALING something. Approximately a third of the skill trees are dedicated to it!

And Roggvir's execution? It's scripted to start when the player enters the city and it's right next to the main entrance... but there are other entrances! And the game makes heavy use of proximity scripting so some dialog and events occur only when the player gets within earshot, so there's no excuse!

And designing a quest around the assumption that players WON'T provoke sequence breaking in a game all about freedom is just ludicrous.

» Tue May 22, 2012 11:23 pm

well if you are going to have them react to someone stealing something, then you need to have them react to any other event that happens locally or even the world. Thats more spoken lines, more scripting, more text that needs to be done. Costs aside theres only so much information DVDs can hold. Now while in your example its jsut one character but multiply that with all the npcs that need to have the same reactionary things done for any and ever interation that can be done that is alot of data to stick on 1 disc.

» Tue May 22, 2012 6:12 pm

I've started a new game, im about 20 hours in at level 21. I havent experienced any game breaking issues YET, but I have experienced some repeating bugs/glitches.
All things considered patch 1.4 has seemed to correct the majority of issues I experienced prior to its release.

-My shout has failed to work a few times until after I sheath my weapons

-The quest "Waking Nightmare" has a few issues with Erandur that could result in the quest being BROKEN

-Animals spawn in mid air and fall to their death on occasion but not often

-Characters regularly repeat sentences immediately after finishing them

-When pursuing the "Companions- Animal Extermination" quests my entering the marked home and exterminating the animal registers as a "Trespass".

I'm pretty happy with the progress from Patch 1.4 but after reading some of the posts I may likely stop playing until the next patch is released.

» Wed May 23, 2012 3:22 am

the repeating sentences thing is when they are conversing with you and you talk to them and they have the same tidbit to say. dunno if that is intentional or not

» Tue May 22, 2012 2:00 pm

well if you are going to have them react to someone stealing something, then you need to have them react to any other event that happens locally or even the world. Thats more spoken lines, more scripting, more text that needs to be done. Costs aside theres only so much information DVDs can hold. Now while in your example its jsut one character but multiply that with all the npcs that need to have the same reactionary things done for any and ever interation that can be done that is alot of data to stick on 1 disc.

Oh please, your argument is a fallacy all the way around. It is invalid in the following ways:

1.) It is not an arbitrary NPC. It is a quest-specific NPC reacting to it's one and only quest specific item. One of the very first you meet in the game!
2.) The game doesn't need to reconcile it with more lines of dialog, just take that dialog out! Should the Golden Claw no longer be in his store even after you've recovered it, simply revert back to his normal dialog option, and not "Thaaaaaank yoooooou."
3.) You want to talk about enough data on one disc? Why not pay attention to the more ridiculous issue of the several different voice actors all given the same dialog? The same amount of space Bethesda took to have multiple voice actors do different iterations of "Some call this junk, me, I call it treasure." could have been spent on more dialog variety.

So instead of 20 different guards in Skyrim all having taken an arrow to the knee we could have heard things like,

"Oh, excuse me, I've misplaced my knife."
"Looks like it will rain soon."
"I took an arrow to the elbow."

Yeah, it's inane, but it's more realistic that what the game's already giving us. Space efficiency is clearly no issue with Bethesda.

-My shout has failed to work a few times until after I sheath my weapons

-Characters regularly repeat sentences immediately after finishing them

These are two of the most irritating issues I've had. The first one I know is caused by lag, and the second is the result of a character being allotted the same dialog for when you approach them, as well as when you start speaking to them.

For some reason Vilkas at Ysgramor's Shrine is particularly fond of this, to the point that I just start attacking him after he's reminded me for the third time that he's too much of a dike to even follow me into the dungeon, despite running several miles to get there.

Similar to the first issue, Werewolf howl audio queues are often extremely delayed. The animation will occur and the effect will activate, but the roaring sound can take several seconds to come up. Lagging shouts can be a real [censored], especially on higher difficulties where pushover enemies like Mudcrabs and low-level Bandits can carve you up with a few swings.

"Oh crap, oh crap, oh crap, get away! Take this! FUS RO DAH! I said, FUS RO DAH! Dammit! Why. Won't. You. Shout!? Aura Whisper!? NOOO!!!
Great. I stuttered incoherently, blinded myself, and got killed by a Horker... That's how I want to go out."

Another issue they didn't iron out is that you can't switch Shouts if one's already in the midst of casting. This is particularly noticeable on shouts with a casting delay like Aura Whisper, where you have to wait for the screen to fade out of black before you can switch.