I appreciate the replies, even the 'lol game works great 4 me' ones.

After posting the previous 2 posts I decided to take a deep breath, svck it up and try to play the game/enjoy it. I turned off the game's AA/Anis. filtering like some of you suggested and played on high instead of Ultra, and was able to play the game for around 36min without a CTD. That's the longest the game has run without interruption for me since 1.2. Sadly a fast travel to Whiterun (I was doing Companions radiant quests) ultimately did crash me.

Its irksome that I (and obviously others, based on what many of you are saying) have to play the game in an inferior manner in order to achieve a modicum of stability when, as I said above, my PC runs it beautifully smooth at Ultra settings.

I didn't come here to start a flame war or troll or something. I'm here because I'm frustrated. As I said at the start, I think Skyrim is incredible and I enjoy it more than either MW or Oblivion. At least I did, until the game became so unreliable that I found myself quicksaving every 30-45 seconds out of paranoia that it was going to crash (which it did). It is a game that I desperately want to love, that I wish I could lose myself in for hours. Alas, staring at my desktop 5+ times in a typical half hour of play - something that I've experienced with zero of the 50+ other games I purchased with Steam or other games like WoW - destroys not only any sense of immersion but my interest in bothering with it at all.

My main character is a level 63 warrior-type build, with all the block/1H/BSing/heavy armor perks - I love playing her because it reminds me in ways of playing a warrior tank in WoW. She has made all the 'right' choices - going so far as to avoid Daedric stuff or other quests that I don't feel fit the character. I've made an assassin (loved the Thieves/DBH quests tons) and a mage (Skyrim is the first game where I enjoyed being a caster as much as a melee) but haven't leveled them nearly as much. The idea of starting over bugs me because I've got so much time in on my 'main'. Sure I could recreate her, play her the same way. Maybe I will eventually try and see if that helps.

And, as Members said... whats the deal with Skyrim's supposedly new engine? I'm no expert on that sort of thing, but I'd bet something pretty valuable that this is running on some kind of updated variant of the same one Oblivion/Fallout 3 did. It 'feels' the same.

Betheda favour the Xbox360 and they've proved it again by giving the XBox360 30 days DLC exclusive. PC version is still much better though if you have modern hardware and mods give this game a lot more credibility.

I agree with you that Skyrim is in a category all by itself. In the evolution of such a game, then so is Morrowind, Oblivion and the Fallout series and thus makes Beth the father of 'neverending', open-world gameplay; radiant AI in all its glory, lol. That by default, makes them know the technology better than anyone to be able to make the game run right. At minimum, CTDs (without an error log) are the most common problem for PC; I doubt the game got through testing without CTD'ing on them too. I would've loved to be a fly on the wall in the meetings regarding development and testing QC to see where the line was drawn as to what was acceptable for game issues before release to the public.

With so many PCs out there with older hardware, I would really like to know how the min specs for hardware were determined and would suggest that they are a bit too generous on the bottom end. With specs that low, you start to include alot more machines that may not be able to run it but that isn't known until after the purchase of the game. No returns for refund after that.

I don't ask for a flawless game, especially when it's this complex of an open-world game but when it's ported to another platform and the myriad of problems that show up, bad UI interactions, missed optomization opportunities, bad coding issues, to name a few, have some integrity and do a proper job. The biggest game I played that gave me really no problems was Half Life 2. I know it's not very complex but it never gave me issues and was playable on almost everything. Skyrim is a very complex game, granted, but that is all the more reason to get it right and with this being as far alng in Beth's development history/experience, I guess I expect it to get better, not the same as usual or worse. In my mind the 3 platform, 3 OS/huge hardware variance is HUGE endeavour and the bar was lowered to make the project make as much money as possible, which many companies now strive to do.

btw, I like the game alot and roaming around ingame is like being there. I don't even mind being attacked by a bears,wolves or a giant every now and then; surprise attack scares the crap outta me, lol.

You mentioned problems, yes. But not what hardware you have, your settings, what you were doing in the game, if the issues happened at the same place and so on. If I wasn't clear on that, I apologize. If you did that in another thread, then I missed it. Not that I would be able to help with a lot of specific tweaks or file changes. I pretty much downloaded and installed my game and started playing. I only bothered to get the patches around Christmas. I hadn't run into any problems, so I never bothered to get the patches until then. Since I got the patches, I've had 1 ctd, and I think it was mainly due to losing track of time and playing way too long without a break. The people who can figure out what might be causing problems are usually lurking about in the pc issues forum.

I'm not going to touch ps3 problems. I do believe that many ps3 users are having major problems. I can't, however, say anything about those issues one way or another, because I don't play on ps3, and I don't know anything specific about the problems. I do wish that they fix those problems soon though.

Whatever else you may or may not believe about the open world and the number of quest / physics / graphics / CTD bugs...

...the interface (when used with a mouse and keyboard) says "we did not care" and I can't think of anything else it could say. Literally, what else could that be? Things don't act properly when you click on them, different menus react differently to inputs and may react differently to a second input than the first (especially in conversations), confirmations may be a non-configurable key (Y/N), a configurable key that doesn't display correctly (confirm/give/activate), or no key at all ("OK" prompt that's not key activated). By default some keys are restricted from keybinding.

Look, that's just [censored], there's no good explanation for that other than "we didn't do it right." Some of it looks like it's not even being fixed in the UI mods (yet) because it's in the engine and not the interface.

Apparently some people don't care when the wrong option is selected or you accidentally sell / enchant / whatever items or any other interface error lossage, but that doesn't make it a quality product, period.

Maybe some of the bugs were inevitable consequences of a vast gameworld, but at least one was not, and that kind of used up the "benefit of the doubt" for me.

The modders will fix most of it, I hope, Bethesda will eventually get the credit for it. Leaves a bad taste for me, I know some people don't care. Some people don't care about a lot of things.

This in spades. The menu system is absolutely horrible on the PC. It is painfully clear that it was designed for console controlers and is completely unsuitable for a mouse and keyboard. A lot of time and any sense of immersion in this game has been wasted with glitchy conversation selections.

To be crystal clear, the problems are *substantially less* if you use a console-style controller, largely because the problems relate mostly to a capacity the controller does not have - "pointing." Some of the flaws are still there, and the interface is slower (because you can't point) and you can only aim by moving the cursor with a joystick.

No offense to people who prefer the controller, I just don't find it to be a satisfactory method to control the game. For me it's as bad as the flaws in the interface, so switching doesn't really improve things for me (and there are other issues that it wouldn't solve).

If you're fine using a controller it will solve some of the problems (by not letting you "point").

I also understand the op's feelings about this game. I also have a rig that is leaps and bounds above the recommended specs. I have also spent countless hours tweaking this and setting that. For a AAA title I shouldn't have to do this. This http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1324092-sky-boost-by-alexander-blade/ helped me out more than any other tweak or mod. Without knowing your exact specs it's hard to recommend a fix. I am now playing the game at an almost constant 60fps (dips in cities but never under 40fps). It completely changed my opinion about the game. I hope you get it running well. When you do you won't be able to put it down!

I feel your pain OP, and agree with your statements. The game is awesome, the design is a credit to the developers... I only wish the game would last long enough in between crashes for me to actually appreciate it!

I'm 56 hours in, I crash every 10 - 30 minutes. Every once and a while it remains stable for an hour or so, which really lets me get immersed in the game which is nice, but alas those windows are rare.

Just waiting patiently for new patches. Every day wondering why I purchased this game on release day even though I knew full well Bethesda's track record for 'quality' releases. Should of waited a month or so before purchasing... by that stage patches should of fixed at least a few bugs by then, and the game would of been cheaper the later I waited also.

Bethesda is creating a 'bitter-sweet' reputation for their brand.

I also sympathize with the OP, although my own opinion about Skyrim differs somewhat. Technologically, I installed the game and it ran, no patches necessary. Purple texture? Saw that a few times; save, quit, reload and continue, all is as it should be. Crash to desktop? Yes, had that happen a few times too, but only after more than 8 hours non-stop playing. Reload and continue. My Steam client is set to start in offline mode (changed it immediately after I got the game activated), and operationally the game works. Thankfully, due to running offline all the time, I've suffered none of the debilitating 'patches' others unfortunately got saddled with. However, I'm starting to get frustrated due to the quests themselves. I've got about eight active quests in my journal, and can't continue with any of them. Not due to bugs, mind you, rather the quests themselves hold little interest for me to continue them. Some of the daedric quests are just plain revolting and should have been re-thought. The civil war quests are best left alone as they are uninteresting (how many soldiers can you kill?) and seem more a way to pad the game (can't think of more quests... hey, I know, let's add a civil war!!). That sort of thing doesn't appeal to me anyways, so there's another quest line down the drain. Not interested in joining either the Thieves' Guild or the Dark Brotherhood (I'm a moral character, remember?), leaving me practically zero quests to go on. Most of the quests under the 'Miscellaneous' section refer to the above choices/quests, leaving me scouring the countryside for those little side quests that are sometimes more satisfying. The changes to the quests and gameplay seem more inline with online console gameplaying than the truly freeform RPG style of play seen in Morrowind and Oblivion. It's too bad that Bethesda did not stick to their roots, producing a quality PC game first, console ports second. I've spent over 60 hours playing Skyrim since it came out, and haven't yet tried to finish the main quest. Unlike Morrowind and Oblivion, there's little incentive in Skyrim to do so. I'm losing interest in playing Skyrim, and that's a sad state of affairs Bethesda. It doesn't bode well for any future game purchases from you.

Why are people still complaining about the interface? Have they not figured out how to use it yet? Its a WASD style menu, it works flawlessly using the keys. People are probably using their mouse on the menus while running a [censored] PC setup that would have mouse lag on it. No wonder they think its bad. I think the interface could have more detailed, but at least it gives me what i need.

Same as the CTDs and graphical errors people are complaining about. Most, if not ALL of these problems are down to the users system being [censored]. I dont necessarily mean [censored] as in [censored] hardware, I also mean their systems are configured like [censored]. Sorry to put it bluntly. The black CTDs are obviously heating or memory issues. Any one proficient with using PCs would recognize this and would provide themselves a fix or workaround. But it sounds like most of these people complaining dont have a clue and are too busy defragging their drives once a week, lol. If your system cant run a game smoothly in this day and age, defragging your drive wont help you much.

About the purple textures and wierd artifacts, this is a common sign that the graphics drivers are playing up, due to not properly removing previous drivers. Again i see it as being the users inadequacy to maintain their PCs.

Then are the people complaining that the game lags... im sorry but how can you expect the game to run flawlessly on your [censored], years old PC! Then theres the crowd that complain that their game lags on Ultra. 99% of the time these are people are running very modest PC setups, not even having SLI/CF or a decent new gen CPU.

Then there are people that complain because you need steam installed, complaining that steam as well is bad. Again these are people that have no clue. Steam is excellent. I can buy a game from my house, then be playing it in no time. Theres no worries about patches, keys, or anything. Sure sometimes the downloads are slow, but again if you know what youre doing, you can provide yourself a workaround.


At launch my skyrim had CTDs, after a few adjustments the CTDs were gone, or at least very infrequent. I played without any patches for a while, until about level 20, and my game ran flawlessly with very few non game breaking bugs. Post patch, my game is still running flawlessly. Ive encountered one bug after the patch which made beasts fly into the air after i had killed them, but this just gave me a quick chuckle and I was on my way.


With the sheer size of things in this game you can interact with, I think the devs have done a stellar job in keeping the bugs to a minimum. It might be a port, but its an excellent port which i dare anyone to do better.

ED: I should add that most of the bugs are from people messing around with their game files installing/uninstalling mods.


/rant

Yes, you'll get less problems if you set the game up like the 360 version, i.e limited the frame-rate, use V-Sync, use a Xbox controller.

I have been very lucky, played about 100 hours, on Ultra with a Radeon HD6950. One CTD so far! ONE! So not everyone has so many problems with Skyrim.

Wrong, it does not work flawessly with the keyboard. If your mouse happens to hover over the right side of the screen you'll either select the option where your keyboard is at or the option where the game thinks your mouse hovers. It's clear you haven't really played the game for a long time. If you did you would certainly know this.
Wrong again, I play an unmodded and up-to-date game and as you progress playing it (and I mean 50+ hours) CTD's happen all the time.
I think this nicely sums up your lack of technical knowledge and understanding of computers in general. If every new and old game you play works flawlessly, yet one of them consistently crashes this is not a heating or memory issue.

Congratulations on your lack of basic reading comprehension.

I didn't say the problem was the game's performance, in fact I said from the very first post that Skyrim runs "beautifully" on my machine. My issues, for the umpteenth time, are the unacceptably high amount of errorless CTDs/degrading performance with patches that started with 1.2/poor quality of many aspects of the PC port. The game can run at a billion FPS and it doesn't mean a damned thing if its crashing constantly.

Nor did I come here for your 'sympathy'. I came here because, as a paying customer who dropped $60 for this game before it even came out, I have the right to speak in a civil manner about my dissatisfaction with it. Notice I'm not making idiotic comments like LOL BETHESDA SUX etc etc. There are multiple replies within this topic already from people who have similar issues with the game, who have experienced the things I've posted about. It isn't just me. Far from it.

Still would be nice to have a list of the actual hardware your running rather then the constant mention of being more then the recommended settings. ( This does play a factor in CTD issues.)

Yet another thread that could be easily navigated if the game had an error log. You can have the most sixual chocolate hardware on the planet and this game will still CTD.....or it could CTD because you have abysmal hardware....to say all CTD are the same or caused by "X" is A. Foolish B. Wrong and C. Just what Bethesda intended by not adding an error log. That is of course unless through all that rigorous testing (that they never did) netted zero crashes.

I'm also one who appreciates the surprise attacks. I have a recommendation for you then. You could try the mod http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=4548 - it makes you really jump out of your seat. There's no battle music played on encounters, instead the 'normal' music continues. Although Skyrims main sountrack is stellar, removing the repetetive and boring battle music is no real loss.
Even more OT but you could also have look at http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=3222 (immersive indeed), http://www.skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1269 and http://skyrimnexus.com/downloads/file.php?id=1992, if you haven't already