I am having some hope that Skyrim's problems will be addressed in a timely manner with the news of the 1.4 patch coming later this month (I hope); but I still haven't shaken off the pain of having to stop playing Fallout New Vegas because it took sooooooooo loooooong for the problems to be addressed that most of us had either given up or moved on. I'd like to see the fixes come out before the game's "newness" wears off and people are talking about someting else. Right now I am at a complete standstill with a game that won't let me do anything (I already put up posts about it), as are quite a few others. I don't want this to be another FNV situation, where after investing hundreds of hours in a game I have to stop playing and wait until Bethesda "gets around" to making a proper fix. It took about 9 months before all of the quest bug were addressed in a fix for FNV - and then it did nothing for existing saves... I sincerely hope we aren't going to see a repeat of that.

Just as with FNV, I was having a blast with Skyrim - up until it decided it didn't want to keep running. FNV's problem was a massive amount of broken quests and bugs relating to same. I didn't want to stop playing Fallout NV - and yet here I am again, same situation, different game, same developer. I don't want to assume that Bethesda is going to keep displaying the same pattern; so I am praying that they will do this right this time and get the fixes out BEFORE they start dropping DLC. Why would anybody buy DLC if they cannot play the game?

So I am trying to shake the feeling of deja vu - only time will tell if I did enough out of the ordinary actions to break it. Please don't disappoint this time, Bethesda - the game really rocks, it would be a major letdown to have to just stop playing it altogether.

FO:NV was developed by Obsidian, not Beth. I feel your pain, though.

Eh for me it was the opposite, While Skyrim is tones more stable it suffers tons more broken crap then NV ever had.

Yeah, and Obsidian fixed so many bugs in each patch that people in Africa don't need to worry about mosquitoes anymore. Bethesda only does about 10-15 bug fixes per patch.

That is bait (not saying your doing it on purpose) for a whole nuther arguement, which has been hashed out back when BETHESDA was putting out the patches for THEIR GAME. It wouldn't be featured on the Bethesda site if it weren't theirs. Obsidian may have been a work-for-hire on the project, but it was Bethesda that "took it away" and Bethesda that provided the patches. You realize I am talking about Fallout NV, right?

Intact garden Gnome:

I wasn't referring to the end product of the patches, which turned out to be thousands. And while they may have patched a large amount of bugs with each patch, it wasn't until the last couple of patches that they even bothered to touch the quest bugs - which was the worse ones, and game breaking at that.

BTW, I NEVER received any patches from "Obsidian" - regardless who you think "developed" the game, Bethesda was the one responsible for the patches. I just hope they learned to fix the important stuff first before trying to pimp out DLC on a broken product... again. My worry is the fact that they once again released a game that isn't 100%, so we are all unpaid beta testers - again. So there is a legitimate cause for some deja vu here, because part one of the dream is already repeating itself...

I always tell myself Im going to wait a year, or until the GOTY for any game Beth touches, I always get hyped and pre order anyway, and I always cry when I lose hours upon hours of my life to bugs

Obsidian developed the game using Bethesda's engine, they followed Bethesda's outline on what the game should be about and then just went off to develop it.
Obsidian made the patches. Bethesda PUBLISHED both the game and the patches, patches through Steam, there was no website.

There is a difference between Bethesda Game Studios (A Developer owned by ZeniMax Media), Obsidian Entertainment (A Developer not owned by ZeniMax Media), and Bethesda Softworks (A Publisher owned by ZeniMax Media).

A Developer is the team that builds the game and is in charge of making patches. They do all the legwork of making the game.

A Publisher is the group with the resources to manufacture the game (things like making the discs, packaging, advertising, and shipping the titles). They do nothing to make the actual game, it is their job to make sure the game is distributed.

Bethesda Softworks published Skyrim and New Vegas. It's ONLY job is to make sure the game gets put to disc and shipped where it needs to go. They have to place in the making or testing of the game. You find the patches for all games on the Bethesda Softworks website because it is also their job to make the patches available. The individual developers are still the ones who make the patches.

In summation: BGS makes the patches for Skyrim, Obsidian made the patches for New Vegas, and Bethesda Softworks is in charge of making sure the patches are easily available through Steam, Xbox Live/PSN, and on the Bethesda Softworks website as they publish the game. So as far as you saying Bethesda made the patches for New Vegas, you are 100% wrong. Obsidian made the patches and Bethesda Softworks (The Publisher, not the Developer) hosted them because that is their job. And you are 100% wrong when you say it is a different game, same developer. The only thing the two titles have in common is the publisher, which as I said, does NOT make patches, it merely distributes them.

As a side note, there are only a few things that can be patched in games that will be fixed on an already existing save. Changing a base item's stats for example, as all items you find in a game are what is known as an "Instance" of the base item. Meaning you can edit the stats of an item in a save file (via enchanting/smithing) and it changes that item, but no other items of the same name. But if you change the Base Item, all instances will be changed.

A broken quest however, cannot be fixed on an old save without resetting the quest on all save files regardless of if it is broken on that file or not. Quests have many different stages and variables, so if your game screws up and you get stuck at a quest stage where it can't continue, the only way to change it is to force reset the quest or force change the stage to a different one. And they can't just add a script that says "If you are at quest stage X, automatically put them at quest stage Y" because that stage is needed for a different reason so that would undoubtedly break more than it would fix.

I have to disagree with you there, and further - your assertions are over-complicated and clouded. Cutting through all the horse pucky, this is not about semantics - Obsidian "developed"; Bethesda "published"... blah, blah, blah. The simple fact of PUBLISHING is that the PUBLISHER owns the material and is responsible for everything. It doesn't matter who "developed" it, the publisher is the OWNER, financier and Contractor. Just because they hire out someone to make patches doesn't mean they are suddenly not the ones to blame when things go wrong. It is 100% CORRECT to say "Bethesda" because they are the parent company and therefore ultimately responsible - directly or indirectly for all aspects, success and failures. THEY know that - fortunately for them there are so many people out there who don't get that simple, Business 101 fact.

As consumers - we place the blame on the parent company. It's Bethesda's job to manage their internal problems, such as a contractor who screws up a product or misses a milestone. I could care less about that because I am looking at the publisher, not the peons underneath it.


The solution to the problem is in your answer - despite you supposedly trying to prove it "impossible", you go on and end up saying how it CAN be done: "the only way to change it is to force reset the quest or force change the stage to a different one"... While that mayu not be "the only way" - there are all kinds of ways to do things - your arguement is invalidated by that one example because you provided "a way".

Lastly, and most importantly - it really doesn't matter which division is responsible for the patches, and that is not why I made my post - nor does any of these attempts to "correct" me help the concern I posted about. This forum is hosted by the company(ies) responsilbe and / or involved. Whether I name the "correct" division is inconsequential - my purpose is to add my voice and express what concerns me about Skyrim, and this is the area that was made for that purpose. It doesn't matter which division, as long as it's on the companies website - they get it, and that's all that matters, really.

Is arguing about whether I was right by saying Bethesda instead of Bethesda Softworks or Obsidian going to make an impact on whether or not patches come out that address my concerns? Will that make them accelerate fixes in the areas I wrote about? No - all that is just minor stuff that just takes the discussion off topic, and really isn't all that important to be hagling over in the first place.