This was originally posted in the Software and Hardware Issues forum under the title of "Is this game going to be fixed?"

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?app=forums&module=forums§ion=findpost&pid=19995066Nolan, on 06 January 2012 - 01:29 PM, said:

To be fair you cannot compare a linear game to Skyrim, the scale of Skyrim make's it near impossible to test every single eventuality, granted some thing's should of been caught (texture issue, PS3 FPS issue etc). Other than that i do hope we get enough patches so the game cause very minimum problems."

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?app=forums&module=forums§ion=findpost&pid=19995684DrunkLastKnight, on 06 January 2012 - 02:47 PM, said:

Cant really judge how good or bad a game is solely on the amount of posts or pages on a subforum like this, there are quite a few repeated threads about the same issue floating about. That said it should be fairly stable soon, I would expect it to be as stable as Oblivion and such given time"

Look, I know making something like this isn't easy. Never really knowing if the game's gonna be a hit or a miss. Praying that it at least makes you enough to pay your bills and maybe add a little dough to the next title. I get it, it's a business. It's not just being made outta love. Someone needs to make a buck. If it's a hit, then hoorah, everyone's eating steak! I'm all for that! A nice fat little programmer gets him/herself a nice little underwear model for a spouse and life is good. But, when that same person is eating steak and that "hit game," starts making other people wish you were eating crow then maybe you should be a bit more responsive. I don't mean pumping the patches out like they were assembled on a factory line. Tell the people who trusted this game because it has your name on it, that you're listening. Maybe even a couple of times a week. How long could an abridged progress report take outta someones day? 15minutes? Half hour tops?

I mean, when you put out a game that people are frothing at the mouth to play, and it starts screwing up a whole bunch, those same foamy mouthed fanatics are gonna turn. There has got to be better communication going on than what has been done so far. Even if someone said, "there's nothing to be said," it would be better than silence. Like what happened (my pet-est of peaves,) with Fallout New Vegas, (not bethesda's fault, yeah I know. But I didn't buy it because Obsidians name was on it, BTW.) The number of pages in the issues forum doesn't mean the game's bad, you're right about that, but that doesn't mean it isn't either. You gotta play the odds. If you're walking down the street and there's a brown mound covered with flies most wouldn't kick it to verify it's poopyiness (not a real word until now.) Though I'm sure some smartalec is working out a response for it.

I'm not saying I wanted perfection or comeuppence (real word.) I just wanted functioning. Like when I plug in my toaster and I don't get shocked to death; functioning. Like how I turn on the hot water and not get covered in motor oil; functioning. Like the rest on my game library on Xbox360; functioning, (with the exception of Fallout: New Vegas, and Oblivion with it's game ending animation glitch.) I'm wary now, I wish I wasn't, but I am. I've told friends how awesome this game was in the past. My buddy's kid bought it on my recommendation. With her own money two days after it's release. She didn't want to wait for Christmas. She called me a liar last weekend. That really kinda svcked, because she was right.

If you want to critique Bethesda's communication that's fine, but I think you'd get more from the conversation if you avoid such hyperbole. Gstaff has been responding to thread on 1.4 on a daily basis since the holidays ended, and over the course of the past two months the staff has acknowledges bugs, requested save files, asked for specific information concerning problems people have encountered, and they've periodically updated the pinned threads in regards to problems and patches.

If you feel they've been insufficient there's no problem making a case about this, but accusing them of silence seems more than a little odd, particularly given the alternative you've posted.

Daily updates are likely unfeasible. Many fixes won't be confirmed ready until the patch is ready to go - and I suspect people would be even less happy than they are now if announced fixes were delayed (even with the understanding that such announcements aren't final). Along the same line of reasoning, during the certification process Bethesda probably can't report anything, and mentioning fixes that are being worked on for subsequent patches risks confusing the matter.

Bethesda has never been very forthcoming about patch information while these are in developement. However considering the problems we've had when announced features were removed or altered during the game's initial developement, or when games/DLC have been delayed, I'm not sure if a log of activity and ETAs would actually benefit the forums here much. This isn't to say that the situation is perfect, but I'm not sure if your suggestion would be as helpful as you want.

i will agree skyrim is a very opened world game with a TON of content but that doesn't just mean people should just be willing to accept bugs, freezes and glitches thats not how it works.. Heres an idea if you cant make a game without this many problems LOWER THE SCALE... nobody forced you to make it that big to begin with..

no one forced them to make any aspect of the game, but ES are memorable because of the scale of the game, Daggerfall, Oblivion, Skyrim, Morrowind, and Fallout are in the top 25 largest games

Bugs are issues people intentionally look for in gaming these days. It is a given that anything produced since around 2002 by ANY company has had its share of bugs, especially since the technology around that time was changing dramatically, and operating systems were being altered.

Since then, operating systems have been upgraded, updated, and rehashed so many times, there's no available way to know every single aspect of what the operating system changed in order to have an update ready by that time.

It's not THEIR fault there are bugs in the game for people, it's the programming and hardware differences in each machine that changes the way the program running it will handle the information.

Give it time and relax, because tomorrow your brand new phone might be antiquated.

Nobody forced you to play it either

Considering 'Thesda's past games, it should be no surprise that Skyrim has a few problems after launch. Bethesda eventually fixes the majority of complaints, but some people are never satisfied.

The problemm is that many (if not most) of these are actually pretty rare. And many are nothing to do with the game. For instance: I used to get loads of CTDs, until I turned FSAA down, whereupon they almost completely disappeared. Should I complain to Beth? Claim that it's a game fault? I'm reminded of all the complaints about stability in Ob, and most of them were down to people pushing rigs too hard . Beth have to try to work out which bugs are their fault, and which are not. And in case you hadn't noticed, there arew a LOT of complaints on these forums. And many of the things done in Skyrim are that way in response to people complaining about Ob features on these forums. Yes, they read up here, and there make a fair job of dealing with real issues. But I certainly don't expect them to reply to every last complaint.

Somehow a lot of people are used to the idea that they are not entitled to bug fixes. Especially fans of a company bring that up. Ghehe.

It is obvious that the more complex a system the more likely it is to contain bugs. But that does not mean that is a reason to not fix them at all.

Beth is also reusing code from older titles. That's a good idea, but if you don't fix the bugs then they'll show up in every title. Obviously Beth does not care about code maintenance, so we keep getting the same bugs in every title.

A discussion that devs try to avoid is that the bugs they produce are not only annoying "the" user, but many users. Bugs also require that people find workarrounds to continue the game. Multiply the time it takes a user to find those by the number of gamers. Or how about the time users spend on forums asking for fixes for years for the same bugs? Those are things that they'll never bring up. Instead they mumble something about the user not being entitled to fixes and make sure the EULA reflects that.

They've been responding?! Awesome where?! Could you link to the forum where this is taking place because I've been looking in all the wrong spots like the forums. I also like how you mention that they've been posting daily and in the same breath mentioning that posting daily isn't feasible. Not really sure what you mean by hyperbole (it means 'to exaggerate excessively' for those of you too lazy to look it up.) I really didn't think that asking for something to function is hyperbole. In the past couple of games I've grabbed recently, the ones from Bethesda are the ones doing the most screwing up. The other games I play are not perfect. I never said they were. I said they function, and they do it with much more reliability than the past 2 products I've picked up from Bethesda. I'm also not a member on any of the competitions forums, know why? Because I don't need to be, I'm too busy playing their games.

Maybe Bethesda can steal some innovative techniques from the competion though. In one or two of my other games I'm playing while I wait for Skyrim to, maybe be fixed, they have an option that helps deal with glitches on the consoles (which I use.) It's a small little option that says "click this little 'ole box right here to allow feedback so's we kin fix our game so it don't piss you right off." Pretty neat huh? The game still has glitches I'm sure, but I don't know what they are. Know why? Because it's FUNCTIONING, it was released FUNCTIONING, but now it FUNCTIONS even better apparently. I didn't have to join it's forums to get into arguments with people who think I'm nuts for wanting to play a game I paid money for and wanting to play it in it's FUNCTIONING state.

Communicating with Bethesda is like yelling at a wall. The wall being the forum they never poke in and the emails they never respond to.

There are actually a lot of businesses that treat their customers like this. The only issue is because we aren't on the inside, nor are they talking to us, we can never know if it's for a good reason or not.

Let's just hope that they aren't talking to us because they're very busy fixing our issues and NOT counting over the money we threw at them for their game.

Sorry, in the third paragraph I intended to say that frequent progress reports were unfeasible, repeating "daily updates" was just a slip of the tongue.

If you look at the posting history of http://www.gamesas.com/user/365941-gstaff/ you'll see a large number of updates he's made in the tech forums. He isn't the only Bethesda employee posting in there, but I believe he's the most frequent. A fair number of people have also been contacted via PM to collect save files. There was a thread recently in one of the tech forums (PS3 I think) asking if anyone had actually been contacted an even I was surprisd by the number who responded in the affirmative.

If you check out the "X users are online" list during Bethesda's buisness hours there are often one or more devs viewing the forums, and from my understanding several members of QA read the forums without accounts or without logging in. These people may not respond often, but they're certainly reading.

Wut?

You grabbed my attention with "but that doesn't just mean people should just be willing to accept bugs, freezes and glitches", that makes sense. But to suggest the solution is to reduce the appeal of the game is just... Incorrect.

No, TES was and shall remain huge and complex. [censored] the [censored]ing about bugs, this is an unescapable part of TES and you have to live with it!

Never seen a more apt username. Your response to a MODERATOR of this forum was rife with condescension and baseless anger. Considering that they were very respectful of you and that is the response you feel they deserve, how do you expect 'open communication' from Bethesda?

If this is your posting style, I wouldn't answer your questions in the tech forums either, even if it WAS my job. Respect is a two way street sir.

Big time gaming companies like gamesas should spend more time in beta testing then just releasing a bugged out game to the public. I am pretty certain that a group of people in the hundredths if not in the thousands would be willing to become volunteer beta testers for the company. Certainly the rewarding aspect is to get a free finial version of the game, and maybe a free booklet as a token.

And no you're wrong. It's NOT our faults if the game has bugs. As a PC gaming user I make sure to read the PC requirements, both the minimum and the recommended specs on every game that I buy for PC. If my computer fits in the description then I should have no problems playing the game. I quit blaming my PC a long time ago. It's time for the companies to take responsibilities for releasing buggy games to the public.

Thank you, instead of locking the topic and letting it die quietly, you actually did something. You actually did something that was helpful. I dunno if you mods get paid but ask for money anyway. At least you're keeping the masses calm and trying to help. Pat yerself on da back buddy, 'cuz I can't reach to do it for ya.