My last few threads on Skyrim have been predominantly negative, but I believe in giving credit where it is due, and this is one of those areas. Oblivion and Morrowind had very few patches, and they covered nowhere close to anything, but we've already had 4 major patches for Skyrim and the service is ongoing, not to mention confirmation of certain major bugs being looked into for the CK. I also read this article http://kotaku.com/5885983/bethesda-skyrim-dlc-will-feel-more-like-expansion-packs on DLC, which looks very promising, we may even see some of the things made in the jam session (or whatever you call it) that they had the other week, and unlike previous games, they are thinking of adding features in addition to just adding content.

Yes from what i read and heard in video interviews theres alot more fixes planned including balancing gameplay to fix things like exploits.

It seems like there`s a direct relation between a game`s success and the Devs willingness to create Patches to fix it.

If the game doesn`t do so well the Publisher says `forget it` or the Devs get so disenchanted they make one patch then do something else.

It shouldn`t be this way - patches should be made to fix things no matter how successful or unsuccessful financially the game is.

It`s possible that consoles have something to do with it as well as they can`t simply Mod errors out.

Agreed; I think we can thank our console brothers for the on-going support to a degree, instead of all the fixes being left to the modding community. Also, I really do appreciate the on-going patching. Beth really has been good about trying to work out the bugs.

I'm not seeing the connection between consoles and support. Morrowind and Oblivion, which were also on consoles, had atrocious support.

Honestly, I'd forgotten about that. ; Seems like this time around the game has sold much more effectively on the consoles, though. I could be wrong, but it seems like the sheer volume of sales this time coupled with the massive PS3 issues got patches rolling quickly.

i posted this in another thread, but i feel this is relevant here too..

i don't think bethesda gets anywhere near the respect they deserve. people do nothing but bash them when in reality, bethesda has been extremely active in fixing this game and admitting that there are bugs, and they have been working around the clock to bring more updates than both fallout 3 and oblivion to DATE and it's only 3 months after release..i mean for the love of all that is good people, it's been THREE MONTHS, and they've already made a bunch of patches, patches that cost 40k each of their own money mind you (that's the cost of patching a game, look it up) and they are going to release more. you people need to stop [censored] and appreciate what bethesda is doing..

I beg to differ. See - The Call of Duty franchise.

Actually, since this is an appreciation thread, this seems a bit over-the-top. I don't see anyone in here complaining that they aren't doing a good enough job. In fact, everyone's saying they've exceeded their expectations in the matter. I don't think it's unfair to say that support for the series was lackluster in the past, because it was. The UMP alone fixes thousands of bugs that were left untouched by patches. And that's all we're saying. In the past, support didn't go very far. With Skyrim, it's been awesome. If I didn't like Bethesda, I wouldn't keep buying their games. Honestly, it's my favorite game studio. I don't come here to bash them. I come here to give them feedback, positive or negative. Right now, I'm giving them positive feedback.

last time i checked i wasn't restricted to the users in this thread when making comments regarding the overall reaction to the game

Skaal hit the nail on the head. I've been critical of the direction of the series, but i'll give credit where it's due here.

My point was that in this thread, we're all giving credit. If you were just illustrating that you said that elsewhere, as opposed to aiming the quote at this thread, then it's my misunderstanding. If it was aimed at us, however, then I'd have to disagree with you.

What about KotOR 2? Tons of glitches there, and I'm not sure they ever got fixed. Invisible characters, walls you can walk through. I remember talk of a patch, but guess what? It was an April Fool's joke. My play disk is borked, and gives me runtime errors and I cant get the game to run, so I guess its a moot point for me.

pretty sure it has less to do with sales numbers and more to do with Steamworks and the fact that Bethesda can roll out beta patches and get actual intelligent feedback for changes within hours, and then issue another minor update to try and address any further problems before committing to a final patch release, all with almost no hassle on anyone's part. they never really had a way to do that in the past.

this post-release support is really really nice, though. especially the HD textures - i really doubt anybody actually expected them to DO THAT AT ALL EVER but they did it anyway just because. i'm curious to see what other new stuff they decide to give away, especially in light of the Game Jam thing; some of the smaller stuff (like the water shader or the footprints) could easily be bundled up with a patch.