Digital Foundry vs. PS3 Skyrim Lag

By Thomas Morgan Published 3 December, 2011

Full analysis of the notorious 'Rimlag' issue and why the patched version still isn't good enough.

Updated: Obsidian's Joshua E Sawyer explains memory management issues affecting Fallout: New Vegas that sound very similar indeed to what is happening with PS3 Skyrim.

Original story: Given its scale, Skyrim was always going to be a game with rough edges. For some, however, its issues are cutting into the gameplay experience to an unacceptable degree. Rising above all the specific glitches and quirks on the other formats, the PS3's lag bug is currently considered the one in most dire need of addressing, with huge dips in performance being reported by those with save files of 5.5MB and above. Cue Bethesda with the release of a new patch (2.01) earlier this week which, according to the notes, "improves occasional performance issues resulting from long term play".

After updating, some players on the Bethesda forums have reported that it has helped alleviate the problem slightly, while others remain adamant that it hasn't changed a thing. So the big question is: has Skyrim update 2.01 actually improved performance on PS3 at all?

First, let's put things into perspective by seeing the bug in action on patch 2.00 - the day one update users upgraded to when the game was released. Here we have a comparison of performance between a completely fresh, brand new game, and a whopping 65 hour save, with each file taking up 3MB and 12MB respectively.

For the sake of this test, we find that a simple stroll through villages and pre-defined cobble pathways is all we need to show the extent to which the frame rate crashes down (no battling necessary - you'll see why). The issue isn't immediately evident on booting the game, but just 30 minutes of play on this 65 hour save is all we need to kick-start the stuttering, with the most effective method of reproducing the effect involving fast travel between a series of six major destinations on the map.

A fresh Skyrim game save state up against Rimlag in all its severity as it kicks in on a 65 hour game save. It's the first time our performance analysis tools have ever recorded a 0FPS reading.

As you can see on the 65 hour side, the effect is impossible to miss and given its severity, the outcry that has followed on forums is very much justified. These prolonged bouts of stuttering render the game almost completely unplayable, even during non-intensive walks down pathways, with some freezes lasting long enough to drag the frame-rate down to zero in places - the first time we've seen this in years of performance analysis here at Digital Foundry.

Expectedly, it's business as usual for the new game save, which only suffers from a few hiccups when attempting to stream geometry or passing through areas with a high density of NPCs. These are a minor nuisance, and generally don't detract from the gameplay to anywhere near the same extent.

When the 65 hour game isn't stuttering, we notice that it tends to settle on 20FPS as its baseline, with the new save holding out at around the 30FPS mark. Considering that the same environments are being rendered in each case, this strongly suggests it isn't an issue that can be solved by direct graphical tweaks. Both runthroughs are seeing the same geometry, weather effects, shadows, and presumably have the same LOD settings in play.

Interestingly, walking past NPCs seems to be a more consistent instigator of these stutters when they do happen, particularly as you pass through heavily occupied places like the Whiterun market, which coincides with the larger freezes. There's a definite sense of cause and effect here which indicates that areas where a player has an extensive history of interaction, via quests events or dialogue trees, are prone to the greater pitfalls. This isn't a hard and fast rule though, as walking through incomplete dungeons or outdoors terrain can also bear down heavily on the console and make for some choppy motion - just not as badly.

To What Extent Does The Patch Help?

So now for the real test: in the video below, we take the same 65 hour save through the same locations on patch 2.01, and compare the results to 2.00. Again, we give each playthrough a similar 30 minute "burn-in" period to make sure the bug is in full force before proceeding.

So has the new patch improved performance? Yes, it has benefited, with the aforementioned 20FPS baseline being raised to something closer to 25 on average. However, the root cause of the stuttering - whatever it may be - is still there and the potential for zero frame refreshes per second is still a possibility, leading to some very unwieldy controller response and an extremely poor gameplay experience in general. To all intents and purposes, this updated version of Skyrim on PS3 is still unplayable for those with a huge time investment in the game - unless you're only willing to play Skyrim in half-hour bursts, saving and restarting the game. Hardly ideal.

We would expect the improvements made by Bethesda to register different levels of improvement on different game save states. The 12MB save we tested showed some improvements but the overall experience was still enormously disappointing in many places.

So what might be the problem? Seeing as the 360 doesn't appear to manifest these issues under the same conditions, it raises the question as to why this glitch is proving to be such bugbear for Sony's platform alone. There are certain aspects which separate the two consoles, such as the split RAM setup of the PS3, and the mandatory 4.3GB install, but neither of these differences seem to hint at an absolute explanation for the problem.

The theory currently being proposed on the Bethesda forums is that there's a memory leak. The idea here is that the PS3's RAM is slowly being filled up with data during the course of play, which forces the game to stream more regularly from the HDD, causing these momentary freezes.

Having profiled the phenomenon, we have our theories about what's going on too. Skyrim is a game with an enormous amount of objects and characters in play. The gradually expanding size of the save game strongly suggests that it acts as a database that keeps track of how the active pool of objects, characters and other elements has altered since the game began. Perhaps after reaching a certain size, database management requires much more processing.

Another theory concerns where Bethesda store this database. The split-pool RAM architecture on PS3 is more constrictive than it is on 360, and this is clearly a RAM-intensive game. We wonder if the save game resides in the graphics RAM instead of the XDR, which Cell addresses much more quickly. Bandwidth between the PS3 CPU and VRAM is a mere 16MB/s, compared to the 22GB/s access the 360 has to its unified 512MB of GDDR3. Advanced database management on a much larger save would have clear performance implications bearing in mind this bottleneck.

An Unbounded Game Running on Space-Constricted Systems

However, the most likely explanation is that an advanced Skyrim gameplay state - like the 65 hour one we tested - proves to be too much for the garbage collector, or memory defragmention method, struggling to cope with the multitude of gameplay elements that have been altered from the default "virgin" state stored on the hard drive. To test the possibility of this, we tried loading our 65 hour save and playing with it for 30 minutes, and then directly loading our new character save from the menu - the result being that the stuttering does indeed carry straight over to our virgin save. It suggests that memory has been allocated that the garbage collector cannot reclaim, which isn't flushed when the player returns to the menu screen and starts the game anew.

The bottom line is that Skyrim is an unbounded game world running on a space-constricted system - and this applies regardless of the platform you play it on, hence reports of the PC version running out of address space and displaying solid colours instead of textures. The PlayStation 3 is unfortunate in that it's the platform with the most oppressive RAM issues (in addition to the split-pool set-up of the memory, the OS has a larger footprint than its 360 equivalent) so it makes sense that it has the most noticeable issues. But we do have to wonder how 360 owners with a 65 hour-plus save are coping, and whether the same issue manifests for them - just further along in the gameplay. If any 360 owner has a similarly mammoth save, please get in touch.

Overall it's clearly disappointing that these performance issues persist on PS3 even after patch 2.01. The way in which Bethesda addressed the 360's texture streaming issue gives us hope that the company is aggressively chasing problems but the fact that this issue hasn't been resolved with its first attempt clearly casts doubts over whether an absolute fix is possible.

It suggests that the firm knows what the problem is but fixing it completely is much more of a challenge than simply reworking some errant code. Certainly the patch note suggesting that the issue relates merely to "occasional performance issues resulting from long term play" is an extraordinary level of understatement based on the evidence on this page, not to mention community feedback on Bethesda's forums, plus the sterling work by Future's Tim Clark in highlighting the problem.

Of course, playing the PS3 version in short 30 minute bursts and rebooting is unacceptable as is expecting players to fork out for another version after investing so much time into their existing purchase. Ultimately, it appears the only way forward for now is to leave feedback for Bethesda, detailing where the problems crop up most in your game. It's a position paying customers shouldn't find themselves in and the implication that the game was released without proper testing is troubling, but the sooner the problem can be isolated, the better for everyone.

Picture of Thomas.

About Thomas Morgan

Freelance games reviewer, 32-bit era nostalgic and gadget enthusiast, Tom has been docked at Eurogamer's welcome harbours since 2011. His favourite games include Gitaroo Man, F-Zero GX and StarCraft 2.

Read more articles from Thomas by visiting the Thomas Morgan archive page.

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Comments (247) Latest comment 2 months ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • Kanselier #1 3 months ago

    All I can think about when I read the text and watch the movies I
    is Fallout 3 and New Vegas on the PS3, and why I have given up on the latter. It became unplayable (my saved game is over 10 MB) which made me aware of Bethesda games. God damn shame, I love the thought behind the game - and I know I will enjoy Skyrim - but until they fix their current engine or build a new one from scratch I am done with their software.

  • Gaol #2 3 months ago

    Great article, and well done for shouting out the Future guy who has been giving this problem coverage.

    It's about time the videogame press got on Bethesda's back about this issue - the same problems were present in Fallout 3 - Game of the Year and Fallout New Vegas and never fixed. It was just less of an issue as major problems didn't happen till 80+ hours.

    Doesn't give much hope for a cure, which raises the question, should it have been released on PS3 in this state at all?

  • tiptup #3 3 months ago

    150hrs so far on my 360 save and not a stutter in sight

  • Cjail #4 3 months ago

    Fantastic article DF: you did a great thing to help us PS3 owners.
    With this unquestionable proof at our disposal Bethesda will have no alternative: they will have to fix things once and for all.
    Edited by 2 at 03/12/11 @ 10:04

  • Badassbab #5 3 months ago

    This is another game engine not too well suited to the PS3 architecture. Should have been delayed on PS3 but not sure what Bethesda could do short of re-writing the game engine just for the one console. Maybe disabling v-sync as an option might alleviate the issue to a degree though I imagine the screen tear would be atrocious.

  • attep #6 3 months ago

    Glad I got this 360, thankfully gameplay for not having ps3 stock on that day. In all seriousness thoughhow long before ps3 owners can claim a refund for the game asit is not as advertised?

  • HermitUK #7 3 months ago

    PC player here, so I've not seen how bad this is on the PS3 before. Most Bethesda games suffer from a gradual drop in performance in extended play, though not usually to this degree. Certainly on New Vegas I had to use a mod that regularly purged unused cell buffers from memory to reduce crashing and keep performance ticking over nicely in long play sessions. Some sort of "purge memory" option in the menu might be a temporary band-aid, even if you had to do it every 30 minutes.

    Downside of regularly purging areas the player isn't in from memory, of course, is that loading times would shoot up. Not such a problem on a PC, perhaps, but I don't know what loading times are like on the PS3.

    It's odd that QA didn't pick this up at all, given how common an issue it seems to be. And if QA did pick it up then someone is most remiss for waiving the issue. Does it always manifest itself, or are there aggravating features like full HDDs or certain console models? Hopefully they'll be able to get it playable again, it's an ace game.

  • suicida #8 3 months ago

    "But we do have to wonder how 360 owners with a 65 hour-plus save are coping, and whether the same issue manifests for them - just further along in the gameplay. If any 360 owner has a similarly mammoth save, please get in touch."

    168 hours in on 360, save file is 13mb, no issues.

    I had no idea the PS3 version was that bad. Feel sorry for people that only have one system. If it was me I'd be taking the game back and demanding a refund.

  • BiscuitPowered #9 3 months ago

    Moral of the story: Perhaps, just perhaps, doing 2h16m speed runs might not be the absolute best way to utilise QA time on a game like Skyrim.

  • TheNonk #10 3 months ago

    Nail in the coffin as a PS3 owner.

    I saw Oblivion all the way through but, to be honest, went through the motions for much of it and couldn't stand the floaty 'hitting nothing but air' combat and wooden controls, which doesn't seem to be much different on Skyrim from what I can see. I might have been tempted on an impulse buy, but certainly not now I've read this article.

    I've said this before but why on earth can't someone come along and merge excellent combat with an excellent RPG? It just seems to be one or the other?! Mass Effect feels like a 3PS from last decade - you can't even switch the shoulder cam! Fallout was amazing in structure and content but I felt like I was playing a PC FPS from the early 90s!

    If it means that companies work together, bringing their own expertise, then please, for the love of god, DO IT!

    Bethesda & Valve, anyone? Fallout 4 with Half-Life 2 AI, weapons and controls?

    Fuck yeah.

  • Pinky_Floyd #11 3 months ago

    As an owner of all the consoles I just want to register my disgust at recent game breaking issues on the PS3 with high profile games.

    I had to trade in my PS3 copy of Skyrim for a 360 copy because of these issues.  It cost me an extra tenner and I lost hours of game play.

    The voice comms on the PS3 version of Battlefield 3 is utterly unusable. I'm not moving over to the 360 version as I will lose my stats and unlocks of 24 hours game time online.

    These are not just minor bugs, they are game breaking issues and kudos to Euro gamer for highlighting this so well.

    These things are DEVELOPER issues and Sony should be putting huge pressure on them to fix them pronto. The lack of quality on the PS3 versions of multi platform titles is being highlighted like never before.

    Its a total disgrace. These 2 games alone cost me £70.

    Devs, get your fucking act together, pull your fingers out of your asses and get these game breaking bugs fixed asap.

    Who gives a shit if the night vision scope on BF3 is nerfed when NONE OF US CAN EVEN TALK TO EACH OTHER.

    Wankers the lot of them, had enough :(
    Edited by 1 at 03/12/11 @ 10:22

  • Biker_Bob_1971 #12 3 months ago

    Post deleted at 16:59:10 06-02-2012

  • MattEdWithCheese #13 3 months ago

    I had Rimlag once, was pretty nasty...

  • Raznilof #14 3 months ago

    Garbage collection makes a lot of sense as benefits can be outweighed by the time it takes to do so, there's no silver bullets in game development just a long series of tweaks and fixes.

    People who get mad and with reason, that's not disputed, do often formulate their anger in a way that fails to realize how complex these products are. Even with rigorous testing. The speed run example is a bit unfair, they will have logged thousands and thousands of hours testing and playing and doing the most mundane and boring of repetitive tasks to make sure a lot of stuff does work.

    We play Skyrim in the millions, we play the same amount of hours the testing team will have logged in years in a a single day. We're finding stuff they haven't, that's not so strange. One grain of sand can grind a planet full of machines, that's how complex games have become.

    Pointing it out will help coders fix problems, let's not get mad until have they decided PS3 users aren't worth it. In the mean time I hope they can fix this. I have yet to meet a game-developer that want their product to fail, it's just very complex. I have no doubt there's people working in the trenches at Bethesda weekends and late nights to fix this, in their own time because that's how passionate game developers are. They DO care so give them at least a little bit of support and room to breath even if the situation itself is truly one to be mad about.




    I have read of people "solving" the ps3 problems by NOT letting their quest log grow to large. Finish quests, reduce the backlog and gradually the performance is supposedly coming back up. Hope that you have a fix for your favorite gaming system of choice soon, as all of this puts a dampener on one of this years most complexly detailed gaming experience.
    Edited by 1 at 03/12/11 @ 10:40

  • Hellion83 #15 3 months ago

    Post deleted at 20:12:17 01-02-2012

  • Rack #16 3 months ago

    So how soon into the game do these problems develop? I've found the game much more enjoyable playing to around the 40 hour mark then starting with a new character than playing one character who gets more and more loaded down with overpowered loot and abilities. If the game worked for 40 hours before these issues cropped up I'd still put it in as a GotY contender though the situation is obviously far from ideal.

  • Sharzam #17 3 months ago

    On the PC i suspected a memory leak pretty early on. It is also connected to why the 4gb fix makes the game so much more stable. As the game itself cannot actually use all 4gb+ as there is just not enourgh assets and so remains stable even when it is not collecting back correctly.

    This is a real problem for consoles in this day and age, if there is problem you HAVE to wait for sony/microsoft to certificate a patch for your machine. Where as on the PC if there is no luck with offcial patches the community can find ways to fix for example Bloodlines. Of course years ago before patching console games was common we would not know otherwise and i guess games were simpler to test.

  • lucky_jim #18 3 months ago

    I just wish you'd had some kind of face-off ready for launch, it would have saved me from buying the PS3 version to avoid the 360 texture problems. Won't be making that mistake again, the only PS3 games I'll be buying from now on are those that aren't available on anything else.

  • Biker_Bob_1971 #19 3 months ago

    Post deleted at 16:59:10 06-02-2012

  • freethinker101 #20 3 months ago

    For all PS3 owners, the game is faulty. Take it back and demand a refund. It is your right as a consumer. I did it with Crisis 2 and will do it with any game that dosn't work properly. Go in armed with this article s repeat sale of goods act till they do as you wish! So glad I went with Dark souls, which may have some issues, but no where near as bad as this!

  • PaulieWaulie #21 3 months ago

    Post deleted at 14:23:40 06-01-2012

  • Carbon_Altered #22 3 months ago

    Does this happen on every PS3, most of them or a few? I know it's a significant number, but is is all?

  • montyzoomer #23 3 months ago

    Is it cynical to suggest this is the reason some that some many reviewer got their PS3 copy late?

  • javvyman #24 3 months ago

    It's ridiculous really, and i'm sure other people have said the same but, Bethesda MUST have known this issue existed on the PS3, it's pretty much happening to everyone with a large save, and it couldn't have gotten through Q&A without being flagged.
    Which begs the question...why was this allowed to be released in it's current state? the answer, because they've done it before and not actually suffered for it i.e Fallout on the PS3, and New Vegas.

    This problem needs more mainstream coverage IMO (Even more than the amount it's getting now) just so Bethesda feel the implications for releasing a game with such flagrant problems.

  • Widge #25 3 months ago

    Bethesda won't fix it. This is their fix. They have a terrible "you can still finish the game, this is not broken" attitude.

    Their next concern will be with preparing DLC.

  • Jayaitch #26 3 months ago

    Post deleted at 18:50:52 11-01-2012

  • The-Jack-Burton #27 3 months ago

    Bethesda will most likely get this worked out in a month or two, yet when Fallout 4 gets released it will be guaranteed to have the exact same bug problem.

  • timberwolf #28 3 months ago

    I've got a 140 hour xbox 360 save and have never once had a problem. Apart from the regular freezing typical of every bethesda game.

  • Cjail #29 3 months ago

    @lucky_jim
    Probably DF didn't receive copies of the game in time to make a face-off for the release date.

  • FortysixterUK #30 3 months ago

    WOW, I had no idea the lag issue was this bad. Excellent comparison video EG, explains the issue very clearly. Having said that I completed it pre patch ( on 360) and apart from 5 crashes in the 90 hour save, always when zoning, I saw none of this. I also had it installed to my HD, so possibly the low rez textures that loaded with a hard drive install helped with frame rates.

  • erasr #31 3 months ago

    Arghh, just bought a new slim PS3 because my old one (fat) disk drive broke last week. Was planning on buying Skyrim for it because I much prefer the PS3 pad, it's dashboard and quietness.
    Looks like I will have to get the 360 version.

    What the hell is going on with recent PS3 ports. My F1 2011 was horrendous too and I had to sell it. Do these people know how much we are spending on their games?! Toppled with a broken PS3 disk drive I have been really annoyed lately and I'm starting to miss the old days of SNES where nothing would ever go wrong!

  • jonbwfc #32 3 months ago

    @montyzoomer : It might be cynical yes, but I'm pretty sure most of us are thinking/have thought it too.

    As to whether Bethesda will repair it or not, the problem is their incentive to do so is rather.. abstract. They have our money now, after all. So them fixing it is a question of caring about the quality of the product they sell (which, let's be honest, isn't often something the games industry is really known for) and 'good PR'.

    The only way people are actually going to force Bethesda to change is pretty simple : Don't buy their games. If 50% of the people who bought Skyrim on PS3 don't buy their next game and actually tell Bethesda they're not buying whatever-it-is because PS3 Skyrim was a car crash of bugs, there'd be real pressure for them to change. If you're willing to be their bitch, why should they treat you better?

    The press can help of course. Refuse to review a Bethesda game unless they a) have all versions present and b) have the version the public are going to get. Bethesda have worn out their lives on this now, they don't deserve to be trusted any more. Of course the press won't do this as the games press operate more in the publisher's interests than the consumers in the main.

    I skipped New Vegas simply because Fallout 3 was such a buggy mess. Foolishly, I decided to buy Skyrim because the reviews said it was pretty bug free. Since then we've had the texturing issue on installing on a 360, major lag on PS3 and this idiotic patch that makes dragons fly backwards. Seriously, can Bethesda still say with a straight face that they test things properly?

    Jon

  • Raznilof #33 3 months ago

    @Biker_Bob_1971 Fair point indeed, as stated, not saying you're not entitled to critique, how else are thing to improve?

    But it's very difficult to compare one game with another, even more so if it's a multiplatform release.

    Of course as a consumer you pay the same amount of money for both so there's a sense that they are similar. But the reasons for one game to go well and another one not is hardly ever interchangeable.

    I hope with us all that these problems resolve soon, that's all we can do. Perhaps also give them info. Chances are they are reading this.

    Can you state "anything" that helps them reproduce the problem?

    I for instance have very few quests, I tend to finish stuff before moving onwards. Perhaps there is indeed a pattern there?

  • asho #34 3 months ago

    My view is simple, if you spend £35 to £45 on a new game and its not performing as it should and deemed broke or unfinished then you should be 100% entitled to your money back. Forget patches because its making the whole gaming industry a bit of a joke and creating rushed unpolished and untested games. If people started returning these games it certainly would make the publishers think twice before releasing.

  • StuDevo #35 3 months ago

    I haven't really had much of an issue on PS3. The only slowdown I get is when I fast travel rapidly between 3 or 4 places. My save is abpout 65 hrs and 9mb.

  • coolbritannia #36 3 months ago

    For Goodfella: A clear 360 win. :0-)

  • Arsecake_Baker #37 3 months ago

    "But we do have to wonder how 360 owners with a 65 hour-plus save are coping"

    Wonder no more, for i can tell you right now! Since patch 1.2 my game has started to show (albiet not as extreme) the exact same problems, granted the textures now seem to load but the framerate on my 80+ hour gamesave had definitely taken a turn for the worse.

  • The-Jack-Burton #38 3 months ago

    @erasr I really wanted to buy this for PS3 too, mainly for the same reasons you stated. I waited for the inevitable patches to come out and see if they fixed the game, which they didn't. So I went and bought it for the 360 yesterday. Great game.

  • muddyyfunster #39 3 months ago

    Fantastic article and exactly the sort of consumer advice DF should be doing. My only (though significant) complaint is why didn't you directly contact Bethesda for comment? A major industry website will always exert more pressure than a 1000 posts by 'normal' gamers on their forum.

    I have both consoles and originally bought the PS3 version. After 30hours I saw identical serious lag issues. I would have persevered but the original DF face-off was published the same day I hit problems. Subsequently reading reports of PS3 gamers having identical problems with the Fallout games convinced me it wasn't going to be easily fixable. Frustrated at losing 30hrs I traded in my PS3 copy for the 360 version instead (first use my xbox has had since New Vegas). Glad I did, now 75hrs in and no issues - do you still want a copy of save?

    Please don't let this die, the fact that the PS3 version was released so broken and STILL reviewed so highly is symptomatic of serious issues in the industry at the moment.

  • Lamb #40 3 months ago

    Actually I believe you are legally allowed to return it in the UK for the full price as its
    not fit for purpose
    . Not playable with all the stuttering.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/ consumer_advice/consumer_law_sale_of_goods_emp.shtml

  • Mister-Wario #41 3 months ago

    Frankly, I find this utterly unacceptable. If you really are recording a ZERO FPS reading then it beggars the question how the hell this got released. How did Bethesda miss this, or think it was acceptable to release it in this condition? If I was behind the making of this game I'd be utterly ashamed. But I suppose I'm a different person to these ones.

    I actually own a 360 AND a PS3. But frankly I like the PS3 more: I like the exclusives on it like Modnation Racers and I like being able to play PS1 games on it as well. Of course, the 360 is a great console too. The point is, however, that I should be able to play a game on whatever platform I want.

    Multiplatforms aren't beyond the realm of possibility. I have Batman: Arkham Asylum, Eternal Sonata AND Portal 2 on PS3 and they all run without any issues whatsoever. Heck, Gabe Newell even reviled the PS3 not so long ago.

    I hope the gaming press continue to stir up a royal shitstorm over this. I doubt they will, though: plenty of sites have automatically assigned a 9 to the PS3 version and I fear it's sales, not reviews, that will hit Bethesda the hardest.

  • woundedbear #42 3 months ago

    I'm 80 hours in on an Xbox and have one or twice had to save and exit due to frame rates so low it looked like the game was being paused. Otherwise, a hiatus is in order given the lack of magic resistance, something which has rendered dragon encounters significantly less balanced. A shame because I'd been gearing up for Labyrinthian.

  • coolbritannia #43 3 months ago

    A couple of people here are reporting 360 issues, while others have said they've been fine. What model of 360 are you guys all using?

  • lockload #44 3 months ago

    This really has put me in a difficult position now as i was considering buying a ps3 instead of a 360 but definitely want to play skyrim, hmm i guess ill wait until january and hope theve fixed it by then!
    Edited by 1 at 03/12/11 @ 11:42

  • carlosdfn #45 3 months ago

    10/10

  • Cjail #46 3 months ago

    Well guys I know one thing: after all the trouble we are having Bethesda must not dare to ask money for the incoming DLCs!

  • Widge #47 3 months ago

    @Lamb is it really not playable? Or just irritating?

    With Fallout 3, which I played to Platinum, I got the odd freeze... but nothing that rendered the game unplayable. A nastier bug on Skyrim?

    I had this penned as a budget Steam purchase, so thankfully not bitten by this bug!!

  • The-Jack-Burton #48 3 months ago

    @Cjail lol, Bethesda believe it is a privilege that you even get to play their games. They've long taken the stance that anything wrong with their games is user error.

  • Otis_Inf #49 3 months ago

    Given its scale, Skyrim was always going to be a game with rough edges.
    Why are people keep on saying this? The scale of a game has nothing to do with the amount of bugs it has, at least not the bugs in code and quest data. Scale is only affecting the amount of bugs in the world geometry. Just because you are in a massive world doesn't mean that affects how much change your game has to be buggy. After all, there are games with far bigger worlds (e.g. Just Cause 2) and do they have as much bugs as bethesda's games? E.g. getting stuck in quests on a regular basis? no.

    The fact alone that lag is only on PS3 an issue and not on the other 2 platforms suggests this system has been written a couple of times, or at least the same code isn't shared among platforms. This is odd, as the code is very likely written in C++ and not renderer-specific, meaning it's generic code in an engine so you can share it among platforms.

    Can we simply agree on the fact that the release date 11-11-11 was nice, but it was also a problem, as it meant the game had to be finished on 3 platforms on that date, which was not really the case, so i.o.w.: the game was not really releasable on 11-11-11 and requires patches to get to the state it should have been in in the first place, simply because it wasn't finished, not because it is a big game.

    About the same game stuff... if you look at two worlds 2 on PS3, its save game doesn't really increase, in fact it sometimes shrinks. This is logical, as things you no longer will interact with in the world will no longer be needed in the save file. However for bethesda it seems they simply append items to the game state buffer when you run into them, never remove one...

    (edit) garbage collector... I'm not sure you can call it that as that would suggest they don't need to free allocated memory like in VMs like the .NET CLR or JVM. games use a fixed memory map (at least on consoles) as the memory is limited and always at a known size. So they put elements on known memory addresses and know how much memory they have left for things. I think their memory manager is simply not coping with the fact it has to work with split memory that well, and therefore has to compact / re-locate blocks more often to be able to load new assets. That is what it does, after all, it has a known fixed buffer of memory to work with, it's pre-mapped. A memory leak however is still a better explanation, or better: code which doesn't tell the memory manager it doesn't need asset ABC anymore so it's removable. This means the memory manager has to keep it in memory leaving less memory to load assets.

    What the article doesn't say is if the game did access the drive a lot more during slow downs on the 65hour save vs. on the fresh install / fresh load. If it didn't, it's not about re-loading stuff, but about compacting memory, or worse: moving the game data from gfx mem to main mem and back in a lot of cases: the 512MB in the PS3 means if the game needs 350MB of game data (non-texture stuff) it needs to store data in gfx mem and swap it in for other assets (as it has just below 200MB of main mem for non-texture data). There are tricks for that (other games from sony studio's never needed this to such an extend that it slowed down things tremendously) but if these tricks are unknown or better: the time pressure to meet a deadline is too high, things get fixed / implemented using shortcuts.
    Edited by 2 at 03/12/11 @ 12:45

  • clarence12 #50 3 months ago

    Very good job in bringing this up, EG! Media/Press needs to do this more often in the future to bring the quality standards of the 90ies back. Can't remember that of any game that was broken to that extent in these days.

  • Pwnsweet #51 3 months ago

    As a PS3 owner who doesn't have his PS3 connected to the internet, I can only feel for all the others out there who bought this garbage for PS3 and have no means of updating it.

    Too many games these days have "Day 1" patches. The fact that not all consoles are connected to the internet makes this unacceptable. A game should be polished before it's released.

  • Lamb #52 3 months ago

    I don't have the game but from what I'm reading if its that annoying on the PS3 with stuttering every half hour and no fix a month after release. I would believe its reasonable to ask for your money back.

    On PS3, Fallout 3 would freeze after about an hour for me late in the game. New Vegas was unplayable as I was getting freezes early in the game. Though I was foolish and did not return it. Now I'm playing it on Steam with all the DLC for less than £12. But you put those two games together and I paid full price for it. Did the same with Fallout 3 in the reverse PC to PS3, same full price.

    If they are not going to give refunds Sony needs to make sure they have backwards compatibility with the PS4.

    I want to get this game too but it will be on steam and only after I finish Two Worlds II and the Witcher 2 unless there is a sale! :D

  • SvennoJ #53 3 months ago

    When my save game hit 13mb it became even worse, the game kept locking up while loading a new area 50% of the time. It turned out to be the auto save that kept crashing repeatedly. Saving while loading a new area is too much.
    Disabling all auto save features makes it playable again (for an hour at a time) Saving the game manually takes up to 20 seconds.

    I wish there was a world cleanup feature. The 1500 old corpses laying around and all the items I've knocked over are clearly also responsible for the problems. Shops reset every 2 days, why keep month old corpses laying around.

  • The-Jack-Burton #54 3 months ago

    This is OT but a necromancer just attacked me with 4 undead chickens

  • Cjail #55 3 months ago

    @Otis_Inf
    Well said.
    Just Cause 2 is also a perfect example and even if it had some bugs none of theme were nearly as damaging as those of Skyrim.
    Maybe the only serious "problem" was to find that damned Vanderbildt Leisure Liner bus: it was really too rare ;)
    Edited by 4 at 03/12/11 @ 17:25

  • Lucodeath #56 3 months ago

    16MB/s, compared to the 22GB/s access
    Is that right, megabytes compared to gigabytes?

  • handsonhips101 #57 3 months ago

    Do you think Bethesda is going to fix this for ps3 owners? Their least favoured platform? No. They didn't fix their other games.

    Skyrim is unplayable for me. Especially when I go to riften for some reason. Jerks and lags like crazy. Cast a spell and watch the game temporarily pause. It's shit.

    Just a shame their games are so good in many ways. :-(

  • handsonhips101 #58 3 months ago

    Post deleted at 09:50:35 12-12-2011

  • AtlasVG #59 3 months ago

    good article and that was just walking with no combat or magic. look how bad it gets. http://youtu.be/rU7XS__El RU

    PLEASE FIX THIS

  • ubergine #60 3 months ago

    "Rimlag" is a pretty lame name for the issue. Can I suggest "The Red Rim Of Death?"

  • wtc0771 #61 3 months ago

    I'm playing on a release day Xbox 360 with a 120 GB HDD that has only got 90 mb left free, I've clocked 146 hours on my Skyrim save, and have had no stutters or drops in the frame rate that I have noticed yet.

  • BonzoBanana #62 3 months ago

    I hope bethedsa don't complain about pre-owned sales. The PS3 version of Skyrim is going to disappoint so many people and keep generating pre-owned sales from one copy as another person loses patience with the game and trades it in. It probably won't be long before this ends up a £2.99 game on PS3 and a bit of a joke.

    Oblivion was excellent on PS3 and the original Fallout 3 (non GOTY) was great too. Bethedsa seems to be getting worse and worse on PS3.

  • The-Jack-Burton #63 3 months ago

    I'm on a a 360s 250gb, and there are some slight framerate issues, though not bad enough to really compromise my experience. Also, it still doesn't seem as if the textures fully load 100% of the time. I'm about 10hrs in.

  • agent55 #64 3 months ago

    I'd love to see another dev step up (a more tech-savvy dev) and give Bethesda a run for their money in the "absurdly huge, open/fantasy-world simulator" genre. Bethesda bites off more than they can chew every single time, they just love to aim for the stars, details be damned.

  • WJF #65 3 months ago

    Wow, I haven't seen the stuttering in action before - thought it was another case of forums over-exaggerating an issue as usual - but that's horrifically bad.

    I'd be furious if I were a PS3 player, especially given the amount of time invested in the game when this crap starts kicking in.

    Bethesda really need to sort it out fast, or else sales for their next title will plummet, no matter if it's a better game or has no serious issues at launch. This is the kind of thing that makes people boycott future purchases (at least, I would)

  • demons #66 3 months ago

    develop can call sony ice team for debug game???????

    ps3 problem === call guru ps3

  • Dizzy #67 3 months ago

    Probably Bethesda should have dropped the PS3 version instead of launching an unplayable version.

  • UncleLou #68 3 months ago

    I'd love to see another dev step up (a more tech-savvy dev) and give Bethesda a run for their money in the "absurdly huge, open/fantasy-world simulator" genre. Bethesda bites off more than they can chew every single time, they just love to aim for the stars, details be damned.

    Except that every single, remotely similarly vast game in the last 10+ years was at least as buggy, and usually even more so. The Gothic series, Two Worlds 1+2, Divine Divinity, etc. That doesn't excuse the show-stopping PS3 performance, but at least the PC version of Skyrim is as polished as it gets in this genre.

    So yeah, it would be nice to get a game of this scope with the polish of Portal, but history teaches us that it is damn unlikely.
    Edited by 1 at 03/12/11 @ 13:26

  • evarofzentral #69 3 months ago

    I'm 50 hours in on PS3 and it has lagged at time and there have been perhaps three crashes but it's certainly not unplayable.

  • arty #70 3 months ago

    To Bethesda:
    <Arnie Voice> NO LOLLYGAGGING.

  • UkHardcore23 #71 3 months ago

    It's not the devs fault for all these PS3 problems it's Sony's for making a machine so hard to code for! The only time the PS3 does not have issues is when the game is exclusive as devs can put their full effort and time into the machine.

  • evarofzentral #72 3 months ago

    This game is brilliant. I have it on PS3 and as my above post shows I have no issues. Typical Bethesda haters. It seems people would rather play a dull stable game than a brilliant one with occasional problems.

  • Bilstar #73 3 months ago

    Gotta feel bad for people playing on PS3 here.
    As stated in the article, this is an unacceptable amount of gameplay infringement regarding the framerate. If I had this problem I may consider taking the game back to the shop I purchased it from as the game clearly doesn't perform as stated. Trades description act and all that.
    It's a shocking state of affairs, and on such a great game, it makes me sad to see it.

  • Hellion83 #74 3 months ago

    Post deleted at 20:12:17 01-02-2012

  • coolbritannia #75 3 months ago

    Yeah, I think it was established years ago that the PS3 was a bitch to develop for, but a release as high profile as Skyrim really has no excuses. It's not like the budget wasn't there.

  • Darth_Flibble #76 3 months ago

    and gamers still want digital distribution?!

    I hoped the companies "new engine" (creation) would be the end of the problems they had with gamebryo but this gamebryo mark 2 (wouldn't be surprised its the old engine re-written in parts)

    Such a shame as skyrim is a great game (my GOTY)

  • Zerobob #77 3 months ago

    Playing the 360 version from the disc still (not installed the latest patch) and strangely noticed a fair bit of stuttering in a dungeon last night.

    Don't know if it's because there was something special about the lighting or features of this particular dungeon that made it a little hard to process graphically, but it seemed like a normal dungeon to me.

    I'm probably around 30 hours play time in and haven't noticed any other consistent drops in frames at any other point. Maybe the stuttering issue is starting to creep in, even on the 360 version? Who knows.

  • Twin_snakes #78 3 months ago

    @evarofzentral
    Occasional? Have you seen the video? Even if Bethesda manage to fix the problem they owe PS3 players a fuckton for putting up with this shit.
    Edited by 1 at 03/12/11 @ 14:23

  • UkHardcore23 #79 3 months ago

    @Zerobob

    Yep i never noticed any stuttering at all on 360 until the patch, now i have seen quite bad stuttering 2 or 3 times in my last 4 hours of play.

  • patchbox360 #80 3 months ago

    the 360 ver of Elders Scrolls was also a mess outdoors

  • 43n1m4 #81 3 months ago

    I'll be playing it on the Xbox360 (around Christmas vacation), So I'll probably not see the issue myself. This kind of bug is really a showstopper for PS3 owners, that's easy to see. I don't know how it could pass the Q&A tests, but here we are. I guess Bethesda thought they could patch it before the issue was detected.

    I'm a long time TES gamer, and have perservered as a fan of the series despite a host of bugs on their releases (worst release in that aspect, is - by far - Daggerfall. I can't count the number of times i've fallen through the ground into the "5th" dimension or the numbers of times a quest broke. Performance wasn't all that great neither). But that was on PC, and back in 1996. People have different (and higher) expectations today. I guess Bethesda is slowly pushing the PS3 crowd away, and that is a bit sad as their games really deserves a bigger crowd.
    Bethesda really should've caught this bug before release. No doubt.
    Someone must sit quietly and ashamed in his cubicle right now.

  • ToAks #82 3 months ago

    Why ain't Bethesda looking into save split? , hell thats been done on PS3 before and really ain't that difficult from the start, it would also help the pc and xbox versions as well(structure wise anyway).

    That said, i have save games on my ps3 that's over 500mb (Afrika) and other
    saves that cross this 65mb thing too, do they make the game crawl?, no!.
    Sure enough, Skyrim stores a shedload of data in their save but it amazes me why they did'nt adapt save split (one for Settings, one for profile, one for world a,b etc) from day 1....

    Shockingly it seems bethesda has no good betatesters and Q&A still, even after all these years of broken games :-(, why did they not contact the ICE team for help and advice on how to create a savesystem `?, we all knew it was borked in the F3 GOTY among others.

    A good test (maybe not relevant though) to see what happens when a savegame is being created or updated is to switch to XMB at the same time.. it grinds to a halt almost like the DMA is not active while creating/updating a save game.


    other than the Rimbug.. this game is amazing!

  • Astro-Creature #83 3 months ago

    Basically, if this game was built for the PS3. It would look and run twice as good as it does.

  • erasr #84 3 months ago

    Well I've probably spent nearly 2 hours reading all sorts of feedback on this problem. I can honestly say guys that I think the 360 owners are having just as bad issues. It seems 60/40 (PS3/360) for issues. I've also noticed a lot of PS3 owners are NOT having any issues and are far in to their game.

    We are on a forum and obviously there's going to be more complaints than praise in a topic like this. I've held back buying the 360 version because well, I pretty much dislike my crappy, white, bulky, loud, cheap looking, kiddy 360! Sorry ;)

    So...after a lot of research, I'm now considering getting this for my PS3.

  • wattsn26 #85 3 months ago

    Theres a simple answer as to why there are so many issues with the PS3 version. Bethesda lead on the 360, EG had an article were they prided themselves by saying they were able to fit Skyrim onto one 360 disc, Todd Howard exclusively demoing the game on 360, and the obvious Microsoft branded Skyrim commercials...

    I believe games that are lead on the PS3 and then ported over to the 360 are of better quality on multiple platforms. Dead Space 2, Dark Souls, L.A. Noire, and Portal 2 all ran well on 360 and PS3. Why is it Bethesda, Infinity Ward, and Treyarch never seem to get the PS3 right

  • Monkey_Chops #86 3 months ago

    I've played the game for over 70 hours on my 360 and have no complaints about the game stuttering. I've played it both fully installed and streaming from the disc. Furthermore, I've played it in about 2-2.5 hour bursts at a time.

    PS3 owners have my genuine sympathy. Skyrim is such a beautiful game and it really is awful that they're not enjoying it on the same level as the 360-crowd. I sincerely hope Bethesda solve the issues quickly.
    Edited by 1 at 03/12/11 @ 15:46

  • berryl227 #87 3 months ago

    Such a shame really wanted this but held off to see how the bugs Played out. I don't hold my breath that this will ever see a perminant fix. I loved fallout but that became equally as unplayable and to this day remains unfixed!

    Such a shame but I will not buy until its sorted

  • Genyus #88 3 months ago

    We are the 99% and we demand change from the gaming industry!

  • stryker1121 #89 3 months ago

    @coolbritannia I have a quieter, "jasper drive" 360. 70-plus hours in on my save file and no stutter, one in-game freeze and two freezes re-loading a save file.

  • vizzini #90 3 months ago

    DF: Another theory concerns where Bethesda store this database. The split-pool RAM architecture on PS3 is more constrictive than it is on 360, and this is clearly a RAM-intensive game. We wonder if the save game resides in the graphics RAM instead of the XDR, which Cell addresses much more quickly. Bandwidth between the PS3 CPU and VRAM is a mere 16MB/s, compared to the 22GB/s access the 360 has to its unified 512MB of GDDR3. Advanced database management on a much larger save would have clear performance implications bearing in mind this bottleneck.
    The information within this section on the PS3 is completely wrong and at odds with research.scee.net hardware overview (page 39). The PS3 has lager internal FSB bandwidth than the 360 when used in a typical asynchronous game setup (big reads, small writes).

    Sceepdf

    And the uni-directional speed on the 360's unified memory is actually about half the 22GB/s according to:

    Anandtech
    On the other side of the North Bridge there's the CPU's FSB interface, which offers 10.8GB/s of bandwidth in each direction (21.6GB/s total).
    Excluding these few technical mistakes that suggest the 360 is still somehow equal hardware, the general testing methodology is reasonably well thought out in this article.
    Edited by 1 at 03/12/11 @ 16:52

  • King_of_Hyrule #91 3 months ago

    They were going to make the PS3 version work just as well as the 360 version but then they took an arrow in the knee...
    In any case, the least Bethesda could do is to offer refunds (or another version for the multiplatform holders) untill this mess is fixed (if it ever will be)

  • hiscore #92 3 months ago

    Thank you DF for holding this PS3 Skyrim lag issue under your magnifying glass. Too bad PS3 customers were'nt aware of these problems when all 9/10 and 10/10 reviews appeared shortly after its launch.

    We can only assume that:

    1. The developer has problems producing technically acceptable rpg's for PS3
    2. The developer has problems fixing its game(s) to an acceptable state on PS3
    3. The review community "as a whole" is co-responsible for this (apparently no reviewer spent more than 40 hours or 5.5MB of time with this game on PS3 - unless they all 'forgot' to mention the lag issue)

    Possible solutions dev side:

    1. If a company does not take these sort of issues serious, it will be punished by its customers. Address this with the utmost RESPECT. Do not minimize your responsability.
    2. All those within (or outside of) the company directly responsible for this technical underperformance should consider other jobs.
    3. Come clear with your audience. Admit your mistake and ask for help if necessary (which is obvious after patch 2.01). Compensate with free dlc.

    Possible solutions customer side:

    1. Check your local laws on product garantuee
    2. Be patient and compassionate (for another couple of days/weeks)
    3. Be very aware of a company's programming/performance history per platform before you commit your money

    Possible solutions reviewer's side:

    1. The PS3 lag issue clearly illustrates that reviewing of videogames has become as mainstream as some of its (target) audience. Screen tearing and framedrops -to name a few- have become acceptable issues since last gen. Include a technical performance chart alongside your gameplay reviews to inform customers.
    2. Maybe not a bad thing to include a 'Reviewer Passport' on your websites so players/customers can see how experienced the reviewer is. Additional technical background/education for some reviewers would be welcome.
    3. Use adaptable review scores: pre and postpatch. Combine a gameplay score with a technical score. It is your job to inform the public of gamebreaking issues.

  • Rodchenko #93 3 months ago

    Had the PS3 version first but traded it in for the 360 one after the face-off. Quite happy with the much crisper textures on the latter and also love that saving takes about a fourth of the time it took on the PS3.

    That said, I had some heavy stuttering in Riverwood yesterday on the Alduin quest – first I noticed so far. Before that two freezes. Other than that it plays like a charm. Only thing I don't like is that the sound is sometimes unintelligible even when you stand two feet next to the speaking character.

  • IvorB #94 3 months ago

    Why are people trading the game in? Return it as it is not fit for purpose and does not work as advertised. People complain about these companies but don't exercise their rights as consumers. Returned copies will mean pressure from retail on the publisher.

    At least we now have one journalist with the balls to address the problem. Now will Eurogamer withdraw their 10/10 or face total credibility loss? So glad I went with Dark Souls instead of this train wreck.

  • vizzini #95 3 months ago

    @lollage

    Nice way to brush over the point that the information supplied was incorrect by DF.

    I'm not defending the game; as it is clearly a technical train wreck on Playstation, and a partial technical train wreck on 360 and PC, unlike all other poor/average multiplatform games, which typically just tear and drop frames in SD hybrid resolutions for their crimes.

    But why on earth would a save file not have a fixed size? This is amateur game data design of the highest order on all 3 platforms.

    I assume the stuttering is potentially less of an issue on Windows PC/360 because of how the Microsoft OS APIs supply their own memory alloactor and garbage collector, that developers wouldn't need to bypass because of the simpler and less efficient homogeneous CPU architectures.

  • yuggy #96 3 months ago

    I think I'll hold off getting this for some time.

  • GamesConnoisseur #97 3 months ago

    Oh my word, that VERY shoddy gamedestroying unavoidable features that blighting the experiences of one section of gamers. Just because they happened to be PS3 owners playing on their preferred (only) console.

    Japan, Skyrim did very well, but unfortunately a great majority of the game sold there are for PS3 and without doubt the experience will eventually be bitter, disappointment and loss of trust for Western's games.

    Blaming on PS3's memory architecture doesn't WASH, as Bethesda are required to give a fully functioning product, even if that mean they had to drop textures, sounds quality to what PS3 can achieve, but we all know from Oblivion's a year later port. That was more successful, so if that mean PS3 had to be released later, fine.

    All PS3 owners of Skyrim at present simply got a deficit product that get worse the more hours you put in, get refund or swop to PC/X360. There nothing to gloat at here, as would be the same if X360 or PC get an unplayable version. X360's FFXIII port was very much playable with quite minor difference but this is just shocking bad.

  • Lunastra78 #98 3 months ago

    I'm not starting this game before a fix is confirmed.

  • reza666 #99 3 months ago

    I LOVE this game , i mean i play it every chance i get and i think about it constantly but the truth of the matter is no game with so much lag deserve a perfect 10 no matter how good it is.
    Luckily my save game hasnt got that big so that i see this much lag. I have passed the magical limit (6Meg) already (mine is 6.3Meg) but so far its not as bad as the video. If it would get so bad i doubt i be playing it so much.
    I seriously hope Bethesda fixes the game very soon cause this is a damn fun game and its a shame it gets abandoned for a poor poor testing and quality assurance before release.

    ps. Great article and video.

  • gourry #100 3 months ago

    Blimey, I normally find that the internet blows these sort of things out of all proportion but those videos are shocking. I feel their PS3 QA team should follow the same fate Jeremy Clarkson suggested for public sector strikers :p

    ...ahem seriously though that is a mighty ball dropped and not one it looks like they are going to sort easily.

  • myms1ps3 #101 3 months ago

    140 hours in on PS3 for me, and my framerate is that bad i WISH i had the framerate of the 65 hour playthrough on display!!!

  • erasr #102 3 months ago

    By the way, by law you can return a faulty item for up to 6 months after purchase. Your PS3 copies can go back to the shop and you are entitled to a full refund. As long as you have proof of purchase via either the receipt or even bank statement.

    If you are over the 28 day return policy then the shop legally still can refund you for up to 6 months but after 28 days they need proof it's faulty that's all.

  • myms1ps3 #103 3 months ago

    This is fantastic.

    About time there was an article dedicated to this issue so THANK YOU EUROGAMER. There hasn't been enough general coverage of this issue throughout the media.

    To see so many gamers sticking up for their rights is great. Maybe Bethesda and other developers will think twice before carelessly releasing any game like this.

    I don't think there is enough legislation to protect the gamer as a consumer.

    Publishers these days days behave like they are untouchable.

    Their excuses advocating patches post launch to fix games is totally redundant, because the product never worked in the first place and everybody doesn't have access to the internet,so to the people saying, "it's OK. The patch is in developement" GET A GRIP!

    The "huge scale" arguement is old too. I'd rather have a decent sized game that worked, as opposed to an absolutely huge game that doesn't.

    And thank you to everyone voicing their opinions and experiences here.

  • Gojiratron #104 3 months ago

    80-odd hours into the 360 version with tons of unfinished sidequests and no major issues whatsoever.

    @TheNonk

    I've said this before but why on earth can't someone come along and merge excellent combat with an excellent RPG?"

    They have. It's called Dark Souls.

  • The_Bloody_Kettle #105 3 months ago

    I think a fix and erm... a free downloadable Morrowind would suffice as a 'sorry'. Don't you Bethedsa?

  • Cjail #106 3 months ago

    @Gojiratron
    You forget Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckogning.
    That one also is going to be fantastic: is basically God of War!
    Edited by 2 at 03/12/11 @ 18:41

  • kirankara #107 3 months ago

    Had this game for week on 360, & haven't played due to flu, but decided to return it, and get refund.figure I'll buy it when price drops and they've fixed all issues.if I played now I'd get annoyed by the ridiculous bugs

  • kirankara #108 3 months ago

    Had this game for week on 360, & haven't played due to flu, but decided to return it, and get refund.figure I'll buy it when price drops and they've fixed all issues.if I played now I'd get annoyed by the ridiculous bugs

  • Mellissa #109 3 months ago

    Their testing involved 2hr 16minute speed runs:
    http://www.eurogamer.net/ar ticles/2011-10-13-bethesda-qa-beats-skyrim-in-2hrs-16-mins
    Plenty of games at this time of year to keep me busy, so I'll just wait for a propper fix before playing this.

    .

  • SeesThroughAll #110 3 months ago

    @vizzini

    Excellent, myth breaking, post. Well done.

  • blackbriar101 #111 3 months ago

    Fucking Bethesda, create the one of the best fucking games and fucking destroy it after a what is literally a fucking sampler, fucking 30 hours in and boom it has the same fucking frame rate as a 100 year old snuff movie. I should return my copy to Gamestop with an empty fucking case and say 'sorry when I went to place the blu-ray in it's holder there was a 30 second lag'.

    http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=cUoDfO1pWto

  • FuzzyDuck #112 3 months ago

    @lollage

    'Have you ever seen a 360 fanboy as dedicated as lollage? I've never seen anything like it, lol'. Fixed that one for ya mate.

    Fallout: NV went from being a day one purchase to never even been played. I put my missus off buying this by showing her some videos.

    Vote with your wallets folks, there's plenty more enjoyable, polished games to be buying than any of Bethesda's tripe.

  • Lord_Gremlin #113 3 months ago

    Sniff, sniff... Hm, I smell a fraud. Will Bethesda get away with it?

  • blackbriar101 #114 3 months ago

    Read my previous comment with this in mind.

    http://www .youtube.com/watch?v=JBZpG-Q5o2I

  • Kaminari #115 3 months ago

    What can we expect from a company which invited users to use the Unofficial Oblivion Patches to fix literally thousands of script bugs (many of them game breaking) on the PC version?

  • Bangaioh #116 3 months ago

    Good to read this, I haven't even started up my copy of Skyrim as I'm still in the depth of Dark Souls (and I think will still be there for quite a few hours) but having read above my copy is going straight back to the store.

  • Jamash #117 3 months ago

    The only other time I've seen lag and stuttering as bad as that was in Oblivion on my 360, when I used the 'scroll dupe glitch' to drop 500 watermelons over the head of a hungry beggar.

    Forgive the noobish question, but is 'Rimlag' a technical term or the name of a town in Skyrim?

  • Loghorn #118 3 months ago

    LOL! So glad that I'm planning to pick it up for the 360.

    It never fails to surprise me that most multiplats are just terrible on PS3.
    Edited by 1 at 03/12/11 @ 22:02

  • bigtechno #119 3 months ago

    I have 63 hrs on Xbox & no issues. This is the reason my PS3 has not been switched on for over 4 months.
    There are some good games on it but I hate the system & it's constant updates that take about half an hour
    When all you want to do is have a quick game of something
    I shoul just sell it but I'm a horder, I mean I have PS1&2, dreamcast & xbox
    So can't see me getting rid even though I never use it

  • FuzzyDuck #120 3 months ago

    @Loghorn

    Most multiplats are perfectly playable, with a few noted exceptions (and that swings both ways).

  • kirankara #121 3 months ago

    @FuzzyDuck
    Gotta agree, most.multiplats these days are perfectly fine on ps3. I even got arkham.city on it, just as I had original on system, and prefer pad, even though 360 had slight advantage. No doubt though, 360 is all round the most consistent performer on multi platform games.few stinkers on 360, but much rarer to find a 360 version of a game that's visually or performance wise substantially inferior. Let's be honest, its engines , and chosen lead.format, which determine the victor in most cases

  • Ikaros_O #122 3 months ago

    Damn, Bethesda get gamers to pay them to be QA testers. Fuck Bethesda.

  • super_monty #123 3 months ago

    What never ceases to amaze me is review sites giving broken games very high scores.

  • FuzzyDuck #124 3 months ago

    @kirankara

    No doubt that the 360 does perform the best overall. I did choose the PS3 years ago because it offered me what i was looking for more so than the 360; better sound (and i sure as hell will notice differences in sound before graphics), didn't sound like a passenger jet taking off (i know that's been dealt with with the 'S' revision and the ability to install games, but such options didn't exist when i was making a choice in 2008), better d-pad for fighting games (and the fact i use a generic USB Saturn pad flawlessly for them now) an online mode that functions and is free (Live is a better service, but i prefer to dip in and out of the odd title online, so i wouldn't pay otherwise) and some cracking exclusives.

    To me the 360 still is a great machine (i love games, not the console manufacturers), but the PS3 just happened to tick more of my boxes than it.

    If Bethesda want to release a title that doesn't function properly on a console that is spoilt for choice, i've no problem taking my money elsewhere.

  • gandhimaster #125 3 months ago

    I dont understand how this issue did not come up in PS3 reviews. Proves what utter bollocks they are when it comes to honest, factual reviewing.

  • kirankara #126 3 months ago

    @FuzzyDuck sounds fair to me mate, most minor aesthetic differences arent enough to sway me to buy on 360 still, as I just prefer playing on ps3. If there's major differences, or a performance difference of note, I'll be persuaded.

  • hesido #127 3 months ago

    Now I know why beta testers were doing speed runs :=)

  • evarofzentral #128 3 months ago

    Bethesda haters - I'll take my money elsewhere bla blah blah. Good - you can go and play your boring little games and have dull little lives.

  • FuzzyDuck #129 3 months ago

    @evarofzentral

    Yes, because playing a game that's broken for a lot of people automatically qualifies you as having a fascinating, interesting life?

  • AenimaPT #130 3 months ago

    Im with 100+ hours in this game, save file 10MB. Can play smooth for about 2 hours, but if i go visiting big cities and then exploring the issues come sooner.

    All the 10/10 scores to PS3 version should be reviewed and this issue should be advertised in the reviews.

    Also, videogame sites can add a new category for the game awards... Skyrim... PS3 Slide Show of the Year! >_<

    In the first hours of game play is all GOTY material even with some gliches and annoying bugs, but this is simply unaceptable for a product to be released in this state. I was unaware the same happened with New Vegas otherwise i would have waited to see users feedback. Only thing i can say is this was last Bethesda game i will buy in day 1.

    Is so frustating having a game u love and the more u play it the less the game lets u keep playing it...

  • FuzzyDuck #131 3 months ago

    @kirankara

    That's it exactly, if you prefer the PS3 for certain things the difference in a lot of the games is negligible.

    I think the only game that i was really annoyed about was Bayonetta, so i waited for it to hit a fiver preowned. It's still a total mess compared to the 360 version but it's still playable and nothing compared to the shambles that is Skyrim.

  • SEVQA #132 3 months ago

    It's about time these developers and publishers would treat QA with some respect by allowing them the time to do the required testing and paid a decent wage in response!

    I've worked for many major devs and all of them have treated qa like second rate human beings and usually without the same rights as others working within a dev team. Disgrace really is!

    When searching for jobs in QA many ask for experience in the following "Ability to perform to a high standard, especially when under pressure." WHO FUCK PERFORMS WELL UNDER PRESSURE!!!! No one does, you can only cope as best you can and pressure is a failing from producers and project mangers who fucked up!

    Delaying a game would in the long run be in the interest of the devs reputation IMO, though fat cats and producers would say otherwise and especially in this current economic climate. Though I would still argue can you afford swaths of educated and seasoned gamers boycotting your titles because Bethesda as a sole PS3 owner that's what I'm doing with you and no doubt others too.

    Good riddance.

  • FuzzyDuck #133 3 months ago

    @SEVQA

    Amen to that!

    I bet they spent too much on the whole '11/11/11' release date and just threw it out the door regardless.

  • TaniumZX #134 3 months ago

    Roll on PS4 as I dont like the sound on the next Xbox (going in a casual Kinect direction) and the PS3 is crippled in certain areas. These limitations are not likely to be overcome this late in the day.

    Powerful, easy to code for system, aimed at proper gamers please Sony.

  • mcmothercruncher #135 3 months ago

    A developer who worked on the New Vegas engine comments on the PS3 issues.
    It's a fundamental flaw in the game engine, as it tries to keep up with what is where, that's thrown into sharp relief by the split memory pool on the PS3. Or something.

  • George-Roper #136 3 months ago

    @vizzini

    I'm not defending the game; as it is clearly a technical train wreck on Playstation, and a partial technical train wreck on 360 and PC....

    Erm, it's nothing approaching a 'partial train wreck' on the PC. Please stop trying to imply there's a root coding-issue affecting all platforms, when there clearly isn't. I've sunk stupid amounts of hours into this game and have had precisely one crash, to desktop. That's it.

    It's actually one of the most gorgeous and consistently performant RPGs i've ever played, on PC. Leave the shit that's flying around where it actually originates. On consoles. Cheers.
    Edited by 1 at 03/12/11 @ 23:50

  • Oskool #137 3 months ago

    Looks like hard drive cache thrashing to me. The game seems to be trying to read data off the slow hard drive instead of from RAM.

  • Xardan #138 3 months ago

    Play on a better system and hey presto! Problem solved.

  • Collymilad #139 3 months ago

    Ok I have to say, yeah this is not acceptable.

    However, I think we need to accept the fact that Sony did their own thing, as usual, and that is PARTLY to blame. The PS3 is hard to program for, just as the PS2 was. Difference is that it the PS3 doesn't have a massive market share like the PS2 did, so devs aren't neceassarily willing to put in the effort.

    At the end of the day, who's fault is it really? I mean PS3 owners could have, you know, NOT bought the game...
    Edited by 1 at 04/12/11 @ 00:22

  • Pinky_Floyd #140 3 months ago

    <quote>Collymilad wrote:
    Ok I have to say, yeah this is not acceptable.

    However, I think we need to accept the fact that Sony did their own thing, as usual, and that is PARTLY to blame. The PS3 is hard to program for, just as the PS2 was. Difference is that it the PS3 doesn't have a massive market share like the PS2 did, so devs aren't neceassarily willing to put in the effort.

    At the end of the day, who's fault is it really? I mean PS3 owners could have, you know, NOT bought the game...</quote>

    Colly no need to be a dick. This save file issue didn't become apparent until the game had been out for a while. The only way in which Sony are to blame is that they need to exert more pressure on developers over issues like these.

    Whose fault is it really? If you are asking that then you are thicker than my dog. The fault lies squarely with the development team and I include QA in that.

    We aren't talking about a few dropped frames here and there or a lack of AA compared to the 360 version.  These are game breaking issues.

  • evarofzentral #141 3 months ago

    Just got round to watching the videos (yes I have already commented but hey I'm a busy guy, er, sort of) and it's not really all that bad. Didn't any of you play Fallout New Vegas? Oh yeah, many people did and gave up on a great experience because they have no patience. I wouldn't say it looked unplayable exactly although it might cause more problems in combat. Save regularly, don't play for hours and hours on end.
    EDIT: I've just realised I am having these lag issues. What I didn't realise was how minor they were (if the videos are anything to go by) and that the game is not unplayable in my opinion. It has crashed four times but FNV used to crash every 2 hours or so (if you were lucky) and I could put up with that.
    Edited by 1 at 04/12/11 @ 00:51

  • Pinky_Floyd #142 3 months ago

    <quote>mcmothercruncher wrote:
    A developer who worked on the New Vegas engine comments on the PS3 issues.
    It's a fundamental flaw in the game engine, as it tries to keep up with what is where, that's thrown into sharp relief by the split memory pool on the PS3. Or something.</quote>

    Good link. Shit legacy code which they couldnt be bothered to fix: confirmed.

    Probably thought it would be too expensive. Fair enough, but may cost them a bit further down the line as people keep their money in their pockets when it comes to PS3 DLC and newer Bethesda games.

  • SEVQA #143 3 months ago

    @Pink Floyd,

    If these issues present were reported the fault is with the producers and managers stifling the quality and job QA do to the determent of the consumer by releasing the game and patches in that state. If on the other hand issues were not reported a serious look into how QA is conducted needs to be reviewed.
    Edited by 1 at 04/12/11 @ 01:08

  • vizzini #144 3 months ago

    @George-roper

    Not a general coding issue; but a software design issue is my point.

    Games are supposed to process data in as deterministic a fashion as possible because it is a real-time application. Not some web browser, word processor or weather modelling system that might suit OOP design.

    The benefit of easy extensibility is not a fair tradeoff in games for unknown performance in places. And do you think most games from Nintendo, Sony, Konami, Capcom or Sega have static or dynamic save file sizes?

    The games industry used to exclusively use Assembly and C and relational design for a very good reason. It is easier to provide system wide software architecture views of how the software might be stressing the hardware at any point in time and provides maximum performance.

    How on earth can QA team reliably test performance of this type of game (on a fixed hardware console or PC) if the user data may or may not be the same size as the tester's save file?

    It a ridiculous design decision to have a dynamic sized game file.

    The risk of data corruption for the file is far greater in the event of a partial write (eg power cut), as unlike a fixed size file (just contain state machine flags and values), the file and the data would be corrupted.

    But no one has had any problems with damaged save file though, or have they?

  • flanker22 #145 3 months ago

    @Badassbab ya thats a possibility for sure, triple buffering eats up some video memory. an incredibly scarce and precious resource on the ps3.

  • gamotakon #146 3 months ago

    Anyone has an idea of why consoles always had such small amount of RAM? It's the cheapest thing you can buy for a PC to improve performance! Why do console makers keep being stingy about RAM? It was low even 5-6 years ago when both 360 and PS3 were launched.

  • Velios #147 3 months ago

    I don't understand why, from day fucking ONE the PS3 has been so gimped technically in comparison to the supposedly 'inferior' XBOX360.

    I speak as an owner of both consoles and let me tell you that XBOX titles make up about 90% of my games library, relegating the PS3 for exclusives like Metal Gear or Drakes Fortune.

    It's a real shame and a MAJOR fuck up by Sony imo. They lost themselves the console war from a the seemingly invincible lead they had gained with the PS1 / 2.

    Nintendo did much the same over the years by releasing inferior tech time after time, but at least they had the quality of gameplay in their first-party exclusives to make up for any graphical short comings. This has kept the life support switched on.

  • Jamiesan #148 3 months ago

    @Otis_Inf I think that by "scale," the author meant the amount of things it is possible to do in the game, which must be keep track of, rather than the physical size of the map. Agreed with all other points.

  • Velios #149 3 months ago

    Maybe future Bethesda titles should come bundled with extra RAM, or a PC?

  • mushroomyakuza #150 3 months ago

    @lollage Yes, we are so deeply insecure that we felt it necessary to list Eurogamer's face off results. Oh, wait...

  • Kestana #151 3 months ago

    RAM and bandwidth starved PS3 being wonky when it comes to open-world games? What's new? Then again, they couldn't have made it just like Uncharted 3, Killzone 3 or Gears of War 3, all corridor shooters, that render a small area with full, all-out detail now, can they?

    They should've made sure of this in the quality assurance with at least 100 hours of playtime. Oblivion was already problematic on the PS3 years ago.

  • kirankara #152 3 months ago

    @evarofzentral are you for real????
    Maybe, it's the fact these people have lives, that allows them to walk away from the game?
    I've nothing against Bethesda or skyrim, and this was going to be my first foray into rpg's, but i'm not playing a game this full of bugs and issues (360 version), as I know it will annoy me endlessly and I won't enjoy experience, so instead I took it back, got money back and going to play fallout 3, & pick this up when it's less messed up & no doubt cheaper too.
    However, just reading forums and never played a Bethesda game, I've encountered so many people stating their bugs, glitches and crashes, no wonder people have an issue with them.

  • King_Edward #153 3 months ago

    Bethesda are, and always will be a joke.

  • lucky_jim #154 3 months ago

    Surely it's illegal to sell a game which cannot be played? I though it wasn't permitted to sell something that cannot be used for the purpose for which it's sold. A game which slows to an unplayable crawl after 30 minutes would seem to fit that description.

  • coomber #155 3 months ago

    @mcmothercruncher Thanks for the link. That has convinced me I need to see if I can send back my PS3 copy and swap it for a 360 version.

    The confirmation that DLC will only make the problem worse on PS3 is astonishing.

  • Murton #156 3 months ago

    "Ultimately, it appears the only way forward for now is to leave feedback for Bethesda, detailing where the problems crop up most in your game."

    There was a small but vocal group of us that did this in the Fallout 3 days when we were suffering the exact same problem, except then there was no media shitstorm of bad press to hold Bethesda accountable so they ignored us at first and then found excuses to ban the leaders, myself included.

    The fact that this got through testing is worrying, but not half as worrying as the fact that the exact same problem has existed for 3 games in a row and Bethesda didn't even acknowledge it until the media started reporting not, not when the players took to their forum to report it.


    Since the Fallout 3 days we've known this engine has a major database management issue and if a bunch of guys on a forum plus a few journo types can see that the reason may be the high speed but limited 256MB of RAM in the PS3 then it begs the question of why Bethesda didn't adapt their engine on PS3 to make use of other resources to prevent just this sort of issue? This was a great article and I'm sure the guys currently fighting with Bethesda will appreciate the support but the closing paragraph shouldn't be advising users to report issues but for the gaming press to report issues. Only when google's first page is filled with "game is broken" articles will you get a company like Bethesda to admit that they dropped the ball, and for that to happen we need to end the free rides for "The Old Guard" and start measuring their output based on its own merits and not our love of their past work.

  • FmCUK #157 3 months ago

    Just want to say, thank Jebus for DigitalFoundry. Excellent work as ever.

  • JHo #158 3 months ago

    Just my two cents while playing on the 360 after the latest patch (the biggest issue being the textures when installed to the drive...)

    WOW!! What an incredible fricking game!! I'm over 75 hours in now and have had NO issues with anything since the patch. Textures are loading perfectly. There are still areas where they aren't great artistically, but that's a design choice and not a true technical issue.

    Frame rate? Flawless. Easily a solid 30fps with the only exceptions being if I have a companion and there are numerous enemies on screen during combat. Still entirely playable. As a matter of fact the frame rate is so smooth that I chose to bump my controller sensitivity DOWN two notches so my aiming while using the bow and arrows wasn't too sensitive.

    I haven't experienced any "bugs" or "glitches" as far as the actual mission structure and game progression is concerned. Not once. Again, I'm just over 75 hours into the game and have not needed to restart from a previous save state once. Impressive. The game has frozen on me ONCE. Then again, so has most every 360 game I've ever had the pleasure of playing. Oh yeah, backwards flying Dragons? Not on my watch anyway. Much ado about NOTHING.

    However, all this being said those videos of the PS3 version are inexcusable. I truly feel for those of you who only have a PS3 because if you are experiencing these issues you are missing out on one of the greatest games ever conceived. I've been playing fantasy genre videogames ever since "Trojan" on the original NES. The level of immersion and gameplay mechanics in Skyrim are exemplary. When I come blinded into the morning sun from some dungeon or grotto only to witness a Dragon streaking down from on high, the echo of it's battle-cry reverberating through my surround sound... it's enough to bring a tear to my eyes.

    Then you get to fucking kill it.

    BEST GAME EVER.


    EDIT: Second to Half-Life 2 of course, but if you even have a clue that easily goes without saying...
    Edited by 1 at 04/12/11 @ 11:31

  • Otis_Inf #159 3 months ago

    @Velios The PS3 has a split memory pool because the main mem runs on a 3Ghz bus, in sync with the CELL. This means that the data in that memory is so much faster to read/write, as there's no difference in speed between CPU and memory (on the pc for example there's a big gap in speed between memory and CPU, same as on the 360). The downside is that the GPU can't deal with this memory and has its own pool of memory. In theory this isn't a problem, as you can store the texture data in gpu memory and game data in main mem, but if you have more data for a particular part of memory than the size of it, you have a bit of a problem. There are ways around this, but it requires specific coding for the PS3, meaning more platform specific code for an engine. The more code you have for a specific platform the more maintenance it requires (things change, you have to change things in more places).

  • Azilis #160 3 months ago

    Unfortunately for PS3 owners (and to a lesser extent PC owners), the 360 version of this game was clearly the focus for Bethesda. As a result, you see major issues cropping up on the other platforms while the 360 version only had that odd textures bug, which has been fixed (and was apparently never that bad to begin with). Skyrim was pretty clearly not in a fit state for release on the PS3, and Bethesda didn't even take the time to design a mouse/keyboard friendly UI for the PC version.

    Overall, I'm pretty happy with the PC version (the most serious bug has been a specific NPC spawning 2 mirror images of himself that appear to be permanent), but it's got limitations all over the place that wouldn't exist if the PC had been the primary platform.

    I'm primarily a PC gamer, so as far as consoles go, I only own a PS3. It gets used for sports games and JRPGs (which, when they aren't PS3-exclusive, seem to be at least as polished as other versions). I wouldn't even consider putting a Bethesda product anywhere near the thing.

  • George-Roper #161 3 months ago

    @Azilis

    Unfortunately for PS3 owners (and to a lesser extent PC owners), the 360 version of this game was clearly the focus for Bethesda.

    Of course it was, LOL! And how do you come to the conclusion that even to a lesser extent, PC was secondary?

    As a result, you see major issues cropping up on the other platforms while the 360 version only had that odd textures bug, which has been fixed (and was apparently never that bad to begin with).

    List out the 'major issues' on PC, please.

    Skyrim was pretty clearly not in a fit state for release on the PS3, and Bethesda didn't even take the time to design a mouse/keyboard friendly UI for the PC version.

    No it wasn't but that doesn't detract from the quality of the PC release, one bit.

    On the controls, I see nothing drastically different to the other Bethesda releases. Sure, it's different but not that it's 'broken' or 'unusable'. I don't play games with 'broken' or 'unusable' controls for well over 100 hours.

    Overall, I'm pretty happy with the PC version (the most serious bug has been a specific NPC spawning 2 mirror images of himself that appear to be permanent), but it's got limitations all over the place that wouldn't exist if the PC had been the primary platform.

    What limitations?

    I'm primarily a PC gamer, so as far as consoles go, I only own a PS3. It gets used for sports games and JRPGs (which, when they aren't PS3-exclusive, seem to be at least as polished as other versions). I wouldn't even consider putting a Bethesda product anywhere near the thing.

    Nor would I. But that doesn't detract from the quality of the PC release, one bit.

    Edit: Negged down because I'm asking the guy to actually provide some facts to backup their outrageous and obvious attempts to deflect PS3 criticism?
    Edited by 2 at 04/12/11 @ 13:21

  • scuffpuppies #162 3 months ago

    Eurogamer and/or DF should ask SCEWW why and how Skyrim passed their notoriously strict internal QA procedures. I'm certain their answer would interest everyone.

  • coomber #163 3 months ago

    @Murton "Only when google's first page is filled with "game is broken" articles will you get a company like Bethesda to admit that they dropped the ball, and for that to happen we need to end the free rides for "The Old Guard" and start measuring their output based on its own merits and not our love of their past work."

    Exactly. Spot on.

  • Jet_Black #164 3 months ago

    Has anybody thought to Tweet Bethesda with Digital Foundry's findings?

  • bippo64 #165 3 months ago

    This is the last Bethesda game I'm ever going to purchase for the PS3! The developers are a bunch of money grabbing dicks who have lauched a half bake product just to line their pockets before xmas. I'm sure the game is fantastic.....if you can play it that is! Sometimes the game actually crashes my PS3 when I load it up and entails a cold reboot of the system. Bethesda obviously thinks that all PS3 owners are dumb and will put up with anything they release. Quality control is non existent, even when they release a patch, truly shocking!

  • tiny_Eggy #166 3 months ago

    Post deleted at 09:50:35 12-12-2011

  • SegaSen #167 3 months ago

    I have an 80 hour save on the Xbox 360. It still runs fine. I do not notice a difference to when I started.

  • Zaiz #168 3 months ago

    I'm just curious why people think that Just Cause 2 is so much more intensive than Bethesda's games. In a Bethesda game, the game tracks where you dropped your favorite sword and where the melons you knocked off a table rolled off to(I don't know why either), and in Just Cause 2 all the game (probably) tracks is how many people you've killed, and if you've blown something up. Judy Cause 2 is a lot more "yes no" than Bethesda's "oh look my incredible melon and bread arrangement is still all over Lydia's bed" save files.

    No, I'm not saying that Bethesda's PS3 version is defensible, but I am saying that comparisons to other games are really really dumb. Bethesda thinks you'll get more enjoyment out of seeing everything where you left it than seeing things disappear all the time.

    Has any PS3 player tried waiting in a very, very, very small room for 11 days straight? That makes the game reset just about everything. I don't think it'll help with the save issue much, but it might just a little bit. The reason you should pick a small room is simply because the game will not clear what is in the current cell.

  • Mattattattatt #169 3 months ago

    This problem occurred in Fallout 3 after the save game reached about 10mb. This was an issue with the original edition and when I got the GOTY, I could only play the extras by going back to an older save.

    The lag there made the game unplayable. If this is happening in Skyrim twice as soon, I'm afraid that's a lost sale from me. At least with Fallout you could play most of the game before things got really nasty.

  • myms1ps3 #170 3 months ago

    Too many people here are losing site of the issue at hand.

    Would those please stop with the infantile fanboyisms and commment on the issues at hand.
    It doesn't matter what platform Skyrim performs best on, at the end of the day we're all in this together, so get on the same side. The reviewers are not going to protect us and the developers don't care about us.

    The simple fact is Bethesda released a technically piss poor game and are fucking us all over, irrespective of the few who have no problems at all.

    Be it the PS3 framrate issues, XBOX texture issues or PC control and desk-top issues, this game was simply not finished and obviously rushed for the "GOLDEN PERIOD" that is the build up to xmas. And we're suffering for it.

    Far too many games are being released that rely on patches.

    On another note, @evarofzentral, are you Todd Howard????

    EDIT; LOL. That -1 NEG must be evarofzentral.
    Edited by 1 at 04/12/11 @ 18:38

  • myms1ps3 #171 3 months ago

    @Mattattattatt

    I can relate to you with the Fallout problems.
    Maybe you would be wise to possibly wait for the GOTY ed. of Skyrim.

    My Skyrim save fluctuates between 11 and 12MB on PS3 and the framerate is far worse than the 65 hour game example above.
    So unfortunately I find it necessary to reboot the PS3 every 2-3 hours during prolongued play. That does't include broken quests, severe glitching and freezing.

    After New Vegas i swore i'd never get another Bethesda game, really regret not sticking to principle.

    Looks like it's back to Dark Souls and Arkham City for me at xmas.

  • George-Roper #172 3 months ago

    @myms1ps3

    The simple fact is Bethesda released a technically piss poor game and are fucking us all over, irrespective of the few who have no problems at all.

    At best you speak only for console gamers.

    At worst, you speak only for yourself.

    Nowhere do you speak for PC gamers.

  • myms1ps3 #173 3 months ago

    @George-Roper

    I'm not going to to echange insults with you because;

    A) it's irrelevant to the topic

    B)It's not fair to everyone else here

    I don't claim to speak for anyone if you read my posts proporly. I comment on the PC issues with respect to other PC users, who expressed their experiences here.
    You're obviously an "expert" on PCs so surely you can appreciate that the wide variety of PCs available might make for variable Skyrim experiences for other people.
    And don't misinterpret what i said in my previous post. I'm not trying to insult anyone and i have an absolute respect for the PC modding community for making Skyrim the game it should have been.

    However i think you should know i typed the following with you in mind.

    "Too many people here are losing site of the issue at hand.

    Would those please stop with the infantile fanboyisms and commment on the issues at hand."
    Edited by 1 at 04/12/11 @ 19:14

  • morriss #174 3 months ago

    Lazy devs, shit machine, or both?

  • George-Roper #175 3 months ago

    @myms1ps3

    Then don't generalize.

    Nowhere here do I see PC gamers having 'technical issues'. So where is your proof that Skyrim on PC is a 'technically piss-poor' game?

  • ashmon #176 3 months ago

    The Engine is SHITE all round. I mean they couldn't even code ladders into the engine.
    "No really, the engine in Fallout and Elder Scrolls runs into AI problems if ladders are introduced" - Bethesda's Todd Howard
    http://kotaku.com/5613374/hey-+-why-arent- there-any-ladders-in-fallout

    Perhaps gamers will do more research on the products they buy. Instead of buying into the hype "its LIKE an all new engine" and then complaining that the game does not meet their standards.

    You've paid for a re-skin of Oblivion.
    Edited by 3 at 04/12/11 @ 19:59

  • myms1ps3 #177 3 months ago

    @George-Roper

    From official patch list;

    Fixed crash on startup when audio is set to sample rate other than 44100Hz (PC)


    From user "Aiyoki" on "Minecraft foruns"

    "Well I installed the game and got it to run but there are some major factors that have just left me to Sigh and turn the game off and even consider returning the game, reporting it as a defective product.

    The problems I'm having are as follows:

    First and foremost it would appear that Bethesda's PC gaming expertise were not with this game as the controls are very sluggish, the sound quality is terrible...

    Anyway what I'm trying to fix are the following and I have found that they have no applicable ingame settings adjustments...

    -1: Mouse Lag in the world = There is a distinct lag when moving the mouse to move the character's view angle. This reminds me of the default Internet explorer smooth scrolling which is not what I want. I want the game to react as fast as I move the mouse, without delay.

    -2: Turning radius... = I can turn my character's horizontal view in Minecraft 180 degrees in the same effort it takes to move 20 degrees in Skyrim... On the fastest ingame setting! looking up or down is about 3 times worse... I'm unable, as of yet, to get it to the optimized settings that I enjoy so much in Minecraft.

    -3: Menu screens = Smooth scrolling + mouse delay makes selecting and viewing items in the inventory or any other window that I open up quite frustrating. I have not found a way to eliminate these elements from Skyrim...

    -4: Maximum sound setting in game sounds like a whisper even after maximizing my other, PC related, audio settings    ."


    REFER TO EUROGAMER ARTICLE New Skyrim patch, PC dev tools incoming



    That's all the time i'm going to dedicate to you.

  • orpheus #178 3 months ago

    Fucking christ there are a lot of whiny, bleating faggots in this thread, and the cunt who made the comparison of the Occupy protesters with Communists should flogged and given a fucking history lesson.

    Over 90 hours in on 360 and not a single game-breaking problem sighted (I've avoided 1.2 though, to be on the safe side), and I've plenty of friends with it on PC, none of whom have reported anything out of the ordinary beyond the known issues with 1.2.

    The problem is the PS3 architecture, as it works fine on both other platforms. From what I can see, going by Beth's past performance this is easily the least buggy of their TES releases overall. Some people just have nothing better to do than piss in the wind.

  • George-Roper #179 3 months ago

    @myms1ps3

    From official patch list;

    Fixed crash on startup when audio is set to sample rate other than 44100Hz (PC)



    Holy smokes, stop the press. That, from the official patch notes is definitely a show-stopper.

    I mean, how will PC gamers survive? ;)

    From user "Aiyoki" on "Minecraft foruns"

    Oh oh, here's definite proof of Skyrim on PC being a 'train wreck' and 'technically piss poor'.

    "Well I installed the game and got it to run but there are some major factors that have just left me to Sigh and turn the game off and even consider returning the game, reporting it as a defective product.

    The problems I'm having are as follows:

    First and foremost it would appear that Bethesda's PC gaming expertise were not with this game as the controls are very sluggish, the sound quality is terrible...

    The control system is marginally worse than that of Fallout and Oblivion. In other words, it's simply not a problem, nor has ever been for the entire time that those games have been out.

    I guess I'll put my Dolby Digital speaker setup in the bin then. Oh wait, no I won't because Skyrim has fantastic, positional audio and sound quality, as anyone else with a decent setup will also attest to.

    Next?

    Anyway what I'm trying to fix are the following and I have found that they have no applicable ingame settings adjustments...

    -1: Mouse Lag in the world = There is a distinct lag when moving the mouse to move the character's view angle. This reminds me of the default Internet explorer smooth scrolling which is not what I want. I want the game to react as fast as I move the mouse, without delay.

    Ahh, the old 'My PC is definitely good enough to run on X settings' line. This is clearly a case of them attempting to run the game on higher settings than their system will allow for.

    Any PC gamer worth their salt will know that you must fine-tune games to get them working optimally and that includes reducing graphical fidelity, to increase performance.

    Clearly this joker is trying to convince everyone that his 'Minecraft worthy' PC is easily good enough to run Skyrim. LOL!

    -2: Turning radius... = I can turn my character's horizontal view in Minecraft 180 degrees in the same effort it takes to move 20 degrees in Skyrim... On the fastest ingame setting! looking up or down is about 3 times worse... I'm unable, as of yet, to get it to the optimized settings that I enjoy so much in Minecraft.

    Hang on...they're comparing Skyrim to Minecraft, control for control, graphic quality for graphic quality and performance for performance?

    Why the fuck have you even wasted any of your time copy/pasting this? Does this really equate to Skyrim being 'technically piss poor' on the PC?

    -3: Menu screens = Smooth scrolling + mouse delay makes selecting and viewing items in the inventory or any other window that I open up quite frustrating. I have not found a way to eliminate these elements from Skyrim...

    Yep, I've encountered some of this too. Easily worked around, when it happens.

    Even with these very occasional glitches, the game still controls better than on the console versions.

    -4: Maximum sound setting in game sounds like a whisper even after maximizing my other, PC related, audio settings."

    Maybe I should tell my next door neighbours that they're hearing things, because when my sound is on 50% volume, PC and amp, Skyrim blows my windows out.

    Seriously, this is what you call proof of Skyrim being 'technically piss poor' and a 'train wreck'? A copy/paste job from a Minecraft forum poster, who clearly wanted to tell everyone how much Minecraft was better than Skyrim.

    It's laughable. A joke. And so are you for even bothering to post it.
    Edited by 3 at 04/12/11 @ 21:23

  • myms1ps3 #180 3 months ago

    @George-Roper

    . . . . .

  • moartofu #181 3 months ago

    I only got this for the ps3, only on my whim for controller preference. Shame I might have to hand it in for the experience I'm supposed to have (on the 360) thus a few wasted pounds.

    I adore this masterpiece but the PS3 is suffering unintentially due to the 360 being behthesda's prized platform. It's wrong for this to get past PS3's Quality & Assurance, it's simply impractical to play.

    I'm all up for a new update for the good of the PS3 release but my dragon is starting to cough it's guts out now the patch isn't working.

  • myms1ps3 #182 3 months ago

    @George-Roper

    Look son, you're either disabled or or an ill-educated 12 year old because you're behaving irrationally.

    - I don't have a problem with PCs.
    - YOU asked for proof.
    - I gave you 3 SIMPLE pieces of information out of courtesy.
    - I never called Skyrim a "train wreck", i implied it was "technically piss poor" across the board when all problems are taken into consideration.

    If you're having difficulty understanding this post, get an educated adult to help you deduce the information from it and help you process and understand it.

    Just refer youself - if it's not too hard - to the first 3 lines of post #176 and we'll leave it at that.
    And if you're going to continue to be aggressive and confrontational with the whole PC inferiority complex thing, have the decency to message me in private and leave this forum free of bullshit.

    SORRY TO EVERYONE HERE.

  • Rasmusk #183 3 months ago

    Every article ive read about the lag seems to completly miss the point. The real story is, that bethesda released a game for ps3 that they knew was unplayable. The same engine displayed the same problems in fallout 3 and new vegas as the dev on new vegas has admitted. So this is not a story about what is wrong with the game or why it is wrong. Its a story about a company that decieved a number of their customers and made millions in the process. They build enough hype to ensure that it would be a day one purchase, and they only released review copys for xbox 360.

    The evidence is right before us. Play fallout 3 and new vegas and skyrim. Same engine. Same lag. They knew, and that is why they didnt release any review copys for ps3.

    They trusted that a generaly non-journalistic gaming press would miss the outcry of disgruntled customers. Thankfully that didnt happen. But the gamingpress still miss the real story. A story that is incredibly easy to document, just play the games, read past quotes about the engine and confront bethesda. They must have known.

    Sorry for my english, im a danish journalist and gamer

  • George-Roper #184 3 months ago

    @myms1ps3

    LOL, you've provided precisely zero proof of anything.

    Here's the facts. Skyrim on PC does not suffer from any of the console-based issues that this very article is based on. For anyone to say that Skryim is 'technically piss-poor' across the board is just flat out incorrect. It's 'technically piss-poor on the PS3' and for that I'm incredibly unhappy for PS3 gamers who are being impacted.

    You've been caught generalizing and now you're in defence mode because you've dug yourself too deep to admit it.

  • myms1ps3 #185 3 months ago

    @George-Roper

    "Skyrim on PC does not suffer from any of the console-based issues that this very article is based on"

    Umm, that's because they're console based.


    @George-Roper

    "For anyone to say that Skryim is 'technically piss-poor' across the board is just flat out incorrect. It's 'technically piss-poor on the PS3'".

    That's unfair to the XBOX owners with their respective issues.


    @George-Roper

    "I'm incredibly unhappy for PS3 gamers who are being impacted"

    Thanks.


    @George-Roper

    "You've been caught generalizing and now you're in defence mode because you've dug yourself too deep to admit it".

    Oh. My. God.
    Wow. Just WOW.

  • Mr.Gordons #186 3 months ago

    After the patch I can't even play the game (PC) if I fast travel or save at all the game crashes to desktop (it is not random, it happens every single time -120 hours in-) I have no mods, and I also tried loading an earlier save. the only thing that works Is using the original Tesv.exe (which I had backed up after the first patch) only problem is steam does not log the time and achievements don't work. Waiting for the new patch. any other PC gamers have similar issues ?

  • orpheus #187 3 months ago

    @myms1ps3

    "That's unfair to the XBOX owners with their respective issues."

    Most xbox owners, myself included, haven't noticed any issues bar the odd quest glitch. Sounds like a good 80% of people on PC and 360 are having little to no trouble prior to 1.2, with the few brain-dead spergers raging about backwards flying dragons and other nonsense being the definite minority, even after the 'problem patch'. Some people will always have problems with new games, either due to hardware or just plain old ignorance.

    I'd have to assume, as you did to another here, that you're either disabled, or some ill-educated twelve year old - because if you had even the slightest modicum of common sense, you'd know that sperging retards on the internet are hardly a reliable source of information.

    Unless you are one, of course.
    Edited by 1 at 04/12/11 @ 22:57

  • myms1ps3 #188 3 months ago

    @orpheus


    "That's unfair to the XBOX owners with their respective issues."


    Obviously wasn't meant for you if you've had none. But for those that do. Surely that's not difficult to understand???

    In fairness i probably should have specified. Apparently I gave you too much credit.

    @orpheus

    "Most xbox owners, myself included, haven't noticed any issues bar the odd quest glitch. Sounds like a good 80%"

    So you have the official numbers on the amount of people experiencing problems?? Why haven't you shared this with the rest of us??

    @orpheus

    "I'd have to assume, as you did to another here, that you're either disabled, or some ill-educated twelve year old - because if you had even the slightest modicum of common sense, you'd know that sperging retards on the internet are hardly a reliable source of information."


    Will you elaborate please? evidently i'm retarded. What retards on the internet???

  • myms1ps3 #189 3 months ago

    @Mr.Gordons

    Hard luck Gordons. Hopefully the upcoming patch will make it playable for you to some degree.

    I know how you feel.
    Edited by 1 at 04/12/11 @ 23:30

  • ROCK-NYC #190 3 months ago

    @javvyman How will they get properly implicated when reviewers keep throwing 9s and 10s up their asses.RPG games should not be reviewed until at least 50 hours are played to imitate real player usage.

  • George-Roper #191 3 months ago

    @myms1ps3

    "Skyrim on PC does not suffer from any of the console-based issues that this very article is based on"

    Umm, that's because they're console based.

    Exactly. That's the entire point.

    You came into this thread and stated, very openly that the PC version of the game was sub-par and that Bethesda should be slated for releasing poor code right across the board. That Skyrim is dogged with severe issues on all platforms.

    That is simply not true.

    You know it, I know it and I'd wager a good slice of PC gamers know it.

    That you then tried to (pathetically) dredge up 'proof' that the PC version is a technical mess was nothing short of a joke. I mean, its all here for everyone to see. I don't need to try and make you look bad, you're doing it all by yourself.

  • myms1ps3 #192 3 months ago

    @George-Ropeo

    Copy and paste the quote where i said the PC was sub-par.


    @George-Roper

    "That you then tried to (pathetically) dredge up 'proof' that the PC version is a technical mess was nothing short of a joke."

    Jesus fucking christ.

    Did i not just explain that to you. Are you fucking stupid or something???

    How the fuck you escaped from you're cage and managed to drag your hairy knuckles from the ground to the keybourd is beyond me!!


    @George-Roper


    "That Skyrim is dogged with severe issues on all platforms.

    That is simply not true."

    Are you taking the piss.

    These articles are here for a reason. And there's an "S" at the end of article, in case you try to manipulate that sentence poorly too.

    This is the last post from me to you. There's obviously something wrong with you judging from your posts to other people here and other articles.

    Either that or you're TROLLING.

  • smelly #193 3 months ago

    >The simple fact is Bethesda released a technically piss poor game

    Er, there is SOO much wrong with that one sentence there... That i dont know where to begin.

    Still, i assume you're able to produce something technically superior? Or are you comparing it to a corridor shooter?

  • myms1ps3 #194 3 months ago

    Christ. They're out in force tonight.


    @smelly

    Really?? Because there's alot of people here whose bad experiences say otherwise.

    @smelly

    "Still, i assume you're able to produce something technically superior"

    Well since I'm not a developer with vast resources, NO. Silly question.

    But I purchased Skyrim AND the official strategy guide so I think that gives me an automatic right to judge the game on how it performed - just like everyone else here, who spent their hard earned cash. Are you going to criticise them for their OPINIONS too??

    It's essential we give an account of the poor performance of the game to rightly warn people of the risk of getting it, and hopefully encourage Bethesda to act and discourage them from taking the piss.

    Now are you going to make a valid point with respect to the article???

    I think it's pretty obvious the state of the game. Do I have to spell it out for you too??? Because you're on a gaming website with multiple articles and accounts on the performance of the game.

  • Lucodeath #195 3 months ago

    -4: Maximum sound setting in game sounds like a whisper even after maximizing my other, PC related, audio settings."

    Odd, my pc version is loud as fuck through my set up. Good quality aswell.
    Last of all Rimlag sounds like what convicts do on each other.
    Edited by 1 at 05/12/11 @ 01:56

  • Natas_Enasni #196 3 months ago

    Those of you pointing the finger at QA clearly have no idea what you are talking about. The chances of someone from QA having a 65 hour+ save are pretty much nil. The QA team probably had the final build for about a week; with all the checks needing to be completed in that week. A standard work week in QA is 40 hours. Even during overtime rarely will a QA member go above 60 hours on the week (it's just not economically sound, and work production goes through the floor).

    Factor in all the other responsibilities a QA member has that wouldn't factor into the game time or save size (checking menus, different resolutions, etc) and you have a very good chance that this bug was impossible for a member of the QA team to find; unless they were not following proper protocol and using a save from a previous version.

    The problem lies with this idea of rushing a game out; and patching it on release. This leads to the quick turn-around of builds and ESPECIALLY patches; and that means no 65 hour+ saves.
    Edited by 1 at 05/12/11 @ 02:17

  • JHo #197 3 months ago

    Hey guys.

    My last post regarding my very positive experience with Skyrim on the 360 was negged substantially. I honestly don't know why. PS3 lovers who are upset that I'm actually experiencing the game as it was intended? 360 users who aren't as fortunate as I have been? Either way I can say... "nanny nanny foo-foo!!" It's not like my post was inflammatory or rude. It was honest and truthful and my empathy for those having issues on the PS3 was genuine.

    Now I don't give a fuck.

    Since the last patch I can honestly say that the game is incredible. Honest to God I've had NO issues whatsoever. Granted the PS3 version seems to be broken. From what I understand this is actually an inherent design flaw with the PS3's memory architecture. There are articles around as I type this from designers who worked on Fallout3 on the PS3 who claim that it can't even be patched. It deals with the PS3 having no "unified" memory. Half the memory is allocated for graphics, half for the other stuff. This is AN IMPOSSIBLE STUMBLING BLOCK FOR THE PS3 TO HURDLE. My sincerest condolences.

    In order for Bethesda to conquer this broken, Sony proprietary inferior technology, Bethesda would have had to completely rewritten the entire game engine simply to placate those who don't have the common sense to own an Xbox360.

    Just kidding.

    Honestly though, if Bethesda knew that their open-world game engine couldn't run properly on the PS3 they should have made it Xbox and PC exclusive.

    But given the fact that this is one of the greatest games ever conceived the Sony camp would have been absolutely LIVID.

    Hey, if I want to play Uncharted or Little Big Planet or Killzone I need a PS3. If you want to play The Elder Scrolls5 Skyrim you need a 360.

    Just saying...








    (Neg away you insecure sheep, lol. I'll try really hard not to lose any sleep over it)
    Edited by 2 at 05/12/11 @ 04:54

  • JadedSoul #198 3 months ago

    This is another reason why I stopped being an early adopter for anything technological. All my life, for as long as I remember I recall countless stories about early adopters paying top whack in order to be beta testers.

    I'd recommend you all save your anger and live your lives slightly out of phase with the hype we are all subjected to and simply wait for the product to stabilise and by then it will likely be a lot cheaper. Granted you may not be able to keep up with the Joneses as much and you may need to stick your fingers in your ears from time to time to prevent some loudmouth spoiling the plot but to me it's worth hanging back.

    This cycle won't change, so change how you consume these products and you may find your frustrations simply go away.

  • Smoped #199 3 months ago

    It really does seem like this game was developed for the 360 and then ported to the PS3 and PC with minimal care and resources, doesn't it? I've only put in about 40 hours into the 360 version and the only bug I've encountered so far is that I can't sleep in the bed in my own house because it is "owned". Of course I still haven't downloaded the recent patch, waiting for them to patch it.

  • Darren #200 3 months ago

    Christ, the PS3 version does run badly and there really is no excuse for missing such a serious bug during testing. Quite obviously no-one played it for the length of time the people who bought it have otherwise it surely would never have been released? It's shocking really and my sympathy goes to all PS3 owners who are suffering from this issue. I really hope Bethesda permanently fix it sooner rather than later. On that evidence it seems they need a better Quality Assurance department!!!

    I've been playing the PC version now for almost 105 hours (more if you count the number of times I've died and had to reload!) and have seen comparatively few bugs, missing wall textures (Riften jail) and floating horses aside! Certainly, performance is the same now as it was when I started the game (thankfully) despite my save games being 12.6 MB in size (plus I have 411 of them!). I have come across one broken quest though - the Hagraven Petra one would not complete because I'd already killed her from exploring earlier but I was able to use the command console to 'resurrect' her and once she died a second time then the quest completed. Fortunately! Also, Bonechill Passage seems to have a bug that almost guarantees the game will crash to the desktop while travelling through it. Happened to me twice in a row but I was able to complete it on the third attempt.

    Like many PC owners, I've encountered this dreaded 'crash' or exit (as I prefer to call it since there's no recorded error entry) to the desktop at least a dozen times, though the 4 GB Large Address Aware tweak and now the clever 4 GB Skyrim executable that someone wrote to bypass the Steam protection has reduced those significantly such that I'm no longer nervous every time I fast travel! I still had one though even with the v1.2 patch, which happened yesterday but this was after 15 hours of playing the game across two days. Because I save regularly and the game only takes 15 seconds to restart it's not that annoying now the frequency of the exits has been reduced but Bethesda really needs to fix this. As the article points out it seems that all versions of the game are affected by some kind of memory leak and while the console versions may be harder to fix, that excuse certainly doesn't apply to the PC.

  • Byzanite #201 3 months ago

    Patched my 360 version yesterday and now I have stuttering/framerate issues, mainly in dungeons but it wasnt there before. :(

    And @JHo: You narcissistic idiot.

  • SikoSoft #202 3 months ago

    I'm roughly 120 hours in on Xbox 360. I have seen some stuttering, but it's quite irregular, unpredictable and probably not as bad as described on the PS3.

    Oddly enough the stuttering has shown itself more times, the longer I've gotten in, so I do wonder if there is a connection.

    In the first 20 hours of play I maybe say the frame-rate completely hiccup frozen for 5 seconds a couple of different times.

    Since then I have seen stutter maybe 10-25 times more; the stuttering moments last a bit longer when they do happen now, and on a couple occasions, the game appears frozen. Actually, the game has frozen 3-5 times (slim console).

    On an unrelated note, I have not patched to 1.2 because of the horrible things people have been saying about it.

  • tankboi #203 3 months ago

    I say stop moaning about the software and start moaning about the hardware. You all want state of the art games, but you expect them to run perfectly on (over) 7 year old tech. 7 years is an ETERNITY in hardware years. Its about time Sony and MS stopped milking the shit out of these crusty fossils and bring some new tech to the table that allows devs to make games like the beautiful Skyrim without compromise.

    You really expect something like Skyrim to run on a Sony George Foreman without an FPS hit?? Seriously get your expectations in-check, and blame MS and Sony.

    As for long-term problems...well that is obviously a memory leak right? You know how hard it is to find memory leaks in games of this complexity? I am sure they are working hard to find them as we speak, so sit tight, play something else for a week or so and come back to see what is happening then.

    Its so funny how consoles have just turned into PCs now. Who would have known.
    Edited by 1 at 05/12/11 @ 10:05

  • shadowmind #204 3 months ago

    Can I get my money back?

  • w00yay #205 3 months ago

    Wow, as an owner of both 360 and ps3 I was in two minds as to which version to go for, but went with the 360 as I'm a bit of an achievement whore and I'd heard about the new vegas bugs and I don't fully trust bethesda.

    This is the first time I have seen footage of the bug and I'm ashamed to say I hadn't had much sympathy for ps3 owners before, but I definitely do now! It is quite frankly shocking that it could be released in the state that it is and I'm a little surprised that more hasn't been made of this in the press, thank you to DF for raising this so well here though!

    In terms of my experience, I have not installed the latest patch as I heard about the resistances bug, but I did uninstall the game from the hd so that I could get the high res textures. The only changes in performance that I have noticed have actually been since I uninstalled the game and that is a slight increase in lod.

    However I just pushed over the 80 hour mark last night and encountered some frame rate stuttering and immediately thought of the rimlag issue, but whether this was a one off or not it is hard to say, it wasn't persistent so I would assume not.

    The only real negative thing I have encountered was actually an achievement breaking bug (well not so much a bug, more of a design oversight) to do with the thieves guild which did piss me off a lot, seriously I plugged over 8 hours in order to complete that quest line and now I cannot!

    Now I'm not fully defending the developers on skyrim, but as developer myself I would think that they do care very much about these issues and they are probably working their asses off trying to fix the issues as I know that I have a perfectionist attitude and end up caring about my work a lot; it's very rarely that I am 100% happy with my released code even though it may have full-filled the business requirements.
    However in this case I personally think that the issue was known about before release and due to the imposed and heavily publicized deadline 0f 11-11-11, I wonder if it would have been pushed upon them for release from higher up the chain. This does not however excuse the release of such a game breaking issue as it is truly terrible, and I would hope that if this is the case that the developers are seriously pissed off about it because I know I would be if my work had been forced out when I knew it wasn't ready!

  • vizzini #206 3 months ago

    "tankboi: I say stop moaning about the software and start moaning about the hardware."

    Lets take your ill thought out statement to its limits.

    If AI machines could develop games, would they have any problem producing Skyrim to Sony exclusive QA levels(and better) on PS3 or any other format?

    The obvious and correct answer is no. And the reason being that software bugs are a human creation; either from lack of design thought to compliment the problem domain, natural lapses in concentration when implementing code or a misunderstanding of the design at the point of implementation.

    If you knew anything about electrical engineering, you'd know that the PS3, like the PS2 was just ahead of the curve as a commercial product with EE techniques, making it seem more complex.

    Only recently the Khronos group for OpenCL 1.2 are again making big noise about heterogeneous programming now being the normal future for computing.

    You know? The very same design skills that the PS3 hardware has needed and introduced in a high performance commercial product (2006); years before others realised they needed to embrace a heterogeneous parallel programming future.

    The 360 and PC represent homogeneous CPU architectures(fyi) and so only now have they seriously started pushing fully, heterogeneous software design (GPU+ multicore CPU). As the Corei3 systems and higher in Windows have now added OpenCL intel drivers (for the CPUs), a delayed copy of Apple's Core2Duo initiatives with OpenCL(that aren't getting Windows drivers from Intel by the way).

    So everyone that suggested the PS3 was too complex and the wrong design should realise their complaint was the equivalent to trying to hold back the sea when the tide comes in. Even Bethesda will be forced to improve their development on PS3 by this design paradigm shift.

  • FuzzyDuck #207 3 months ago

    @JHo

    'Neg away you insecure sheep'?

    If owning a 360 makes you feel more content and happy with your life then good for you buddy.

  • JHo #208 3 months ago

    @FuzzyDuck

    Taken out of context my comment does seem rather childish, no? What I meant was that in my opinion the need to simply hit the "negative" command when dealing with issues or opinions you disagree with strikes me as rather insecure.

    If you have a contrary opinion good for you. But don't hide behind your inability to express your opinion in a thoughtful, articulate manner by anonymously clicking the minus button at a whim.

    I personally don't use the "like" or "dislike" options when I'm online. If I have a valid opinion and feel I can express myself in a semi-mature, articulate fashion then I take the time to do so.

    Anyway, back to Skyrim. 85 hours in, level 36, and having absolutely no problems whatsoever.

    Well, I haven't slept in a while...

    Cheers!!

  • Doynik #209 3 months ago

    100+ hours on my 360 save, no stutters at all here.

  • NRL_dude #210 3 months ago

    Vizzini, will this paradigm shift take effect before or after my death? With only three or four decades left on this lovely planet (assuming I'm average for my cohort), I need to start prioritising my gaming experiences.

  • Lucodeath #211 3 months ago

    So everyone that suggested the PS3 was too complex

    So why were most cross platform games inferior on the ps3 early on? Doesnt matter what technobabble people come out with it just was. Why make it twice as expensive to develop a game when compared to another platform?
    According to Vizzini's jargon the ps3 is the most powerfull system ever, I might aswell bin my I5 2500 pc.
    Edited by 1 at 05/12/11 @ 14:05

  • mastablasta #212 3 months ago

    The P$3 is such a rubbish console. I feel sorry for anyone who only has it as their main console.

  • tankboi #213 3 months ago

    @vizzini

    Wow an internet smart-ass. So we meet again.

    a) Are you seriously comparing human efforts with AI??? I mean...really mate, you sound ridiculous. Also, the term 'NO SHIT' springs to mind. You do also realise that the PS3 architecture was created by humans right?

    b) When did I say that the errors were not created by humans? What does that even have to do with anything that I said!? Really??!!

    c)I don't give a shit about the curve. Every dev finds the architecture of the PS3 a headache. We are hearing/reading about it all the time, and seeing the evidence first-hand with multi-format releases which are always poorer on PS3. It doesn't matter how impressive the tool is, if it is difficult to harness it's power then its pointless.

    d) Again, I don't give a shit about the curve. My point was that if we moved forward a gen then devs wouldn't have to waste time dancing around the tech to squeeze everything in.

    e) What are you talking about with 'so only now PC has been pushed fully'?? I am sure Crysis pushed nothing forward did it? Or the ATI-Nvidia-Intel battleground? It must have only been all down to the PS3 of course.

    f) I appreciate you are getting very excited about the insides of a PS3, but lets face it, in every direct comparison between the PS3 and XBOX360 title, the PS3 falls flat on its face. So where does that put your fancy architecture?.

    You do seem to have missed my point completely and gone on a massive geek-rage. And you clearly work for Sony's tech team given your fanboyism over a point I didn't even make. I said it was old tech, which it is. I never said it wasn't very impressive when it was released.

    All I was saying was that it is time for a new generation of consoles, and what you argued was...well does anyone know what your point was? That AI machines should use super high-tech PS3 architecture to create games??

    Please read a comment and understand it before you jump to some pretty far-out conclusions that you rage-ride all the way to PS3-land and back on your smug-steed.

  • Jamiesan #214 3 months ago

    Managed to get my 360 copy to lag, but it was only temporary while a backwards dragon was spazzing out trying to do the death animation while flying. Leaving the area completely fixed the problem.

  • riseer #215 3 months ago

    Bethesda done a good job on oblivion port,after that they have really been fked Ps3 owners since.I agree the Ram setup in Ps3 is weird but 256mb of that ram is Xdr running at 3.2ghz.I would like Bethesda to come out and tell everyone wheir they fked up.I am sorry but oblivion for Ps3 looks better then Skyrim does on Ps3.

  • Uncompetative #216 3 months ago

    Perhaps they attempted too much. Sure, you don't want the immediately regenerating enemy camps of Far Cry 2, but just keeping track of the last 3 hours of gameplay effects in a queue would be ok - with stuff witnessed long ago regenerating when out of sight back to the initial default map. Trees hacked down would regrow, fires started would burn out, enemy camps would get re-staffed. Not as perfect as storing every change, but be reasonable... we probably all need SSDs to do that.

  • smelly #217 3 months ago

    @myms1ps3: So you're SERIOUSLY telling me that you think skyrim is "technically piss poor"?!?

    Oh brother.

    Technically, i cant think of a single other game released in the last year that even holds a candle to it. Sure, yes it has bugs. But this game is a slight bit more TECHNICALLY complicated than (for example) modern warfare - which involves running down linear pre-defined paths pointing your cursor at things and waiting for the next cutscene.

    Yes sky rim has bugs. But to say it's "technically piss poor" is complete nonsense and goes to show just how clueless you are.

  • PlugMonkey #218 3 months ago

    @Uncompetative

    The thing is, they don't need to re-staff all the enemy camps. It's not the 'cleared' flag that's causing the problems. They could and should record that, and just forget everything else.

    I don't particularly expect the body of someone I killed several days ago to still be where I left it, so why bother wasting the time and effort of preserving it?

    This the thing that really baffles me about this. The source of the issue is a feature which is of absolutely zero value to the player!

  • vizzini #219 3 months ago

    @tankboi

    So your view is; that because one publisher renowned for shipping games that have significant technical issues at launch(and months after) on all three formats can't sort out a memory leak, we should abandon this generation of consoles now, because the PC's huge RAM or window's aggressive garbage collection hides the issue?

    This is a fault with the published software; not a fault of console hardware, and you are doing all games consumers a huge disservice(like reviewers and Microsoft/Sony) for defending the technical failings of any version, just because you haven't had issues yourself.

  • mukki #220 3 months ago

    Yikes!
    Great article and man that is one annoying bug...

  • myms1ps3 #221 3 months ago

    @smelly

    "Technically, i cant think of a single other game released in the last year that even holds a candle to it. Sure, yes it has bugs. But this game is a slight bit more TECHNICALLY complicated than (for example) modern warfare"

    Modern Warfare is a FPS. Skyrim isn't.
    And comparing these games in that respect is peripheral to the subject.

    As for any other game that hold a candle to Skyrim in the last year technically??
    I remember i could use ladders in other games without going to a loading screen,
    something Todd Howard laughed off in an interview if i'm correct.

    @smelly

    "Yes sky rim has bugs. But to say it's "technically piss poor" is complete nonsense and goes to show just how clueless you are. "

    Wow. How many times do i have to explain myself.
    I think the fact there's been severe widespread problems across platforms proves otherwise.
    The evidence is there, so i don't know why you're arguing to the contrary - maybe it's a personal problem with my point of view, which is a reflection of my experience with Skyrim, and influenced by the experiences of people here with similar issues or issues on their respective platforms.

    Are you saying they're clueless too and the article ill-concieved??
    Edited by 1 at 05/12/11 @ 17:37

  • smelly #222 3 months ago

    "I remember i could use ladders in other games without going to a loading screen,"

    ?!?!??????

    WTF?!?

    Yes.. If you're playing a linear corridor shooter, where it knows exactly where you're going - then yes, i can see why there shouldnt be a loading screen there.

    You seem to be completely clueless as to what is "technically good" and what isnt, to discuss that you need to understand how things work - and you clearly dont.

    Skyrim is MASSIVE, it's a huge accomplishment, it looks stunning, and is technically far superior to most games released in the last few years.

    Does it have bugs? Yes. But this is a hugely technically complicated game, where the player is free to go and do whatever they please, etc etc. This isnt like other games released this year where it's all just linear corridors. Even the bug mentioned in the article - you need to play for 60 hours, then you need to fast travel lots of place a lot, and THEN it shows up... That's not exactly an easy bug to find during normal testing - and it wouldnt exactly come up in a game which isnt as technically complicated as skyrim.

    "tehcnially piss poor" .. sigh... I leave you to go back to your obviously "technically superior" games - which im sure there are MILLIONS available out there - you complete moronic fucktard.

  • George-Roper #223 3 months ago

    @smelly

    Whoa, I don't usually agree with you but it seems that in this case we have a common perspective. That of myms1ps3 being utterly deluded about what does and does not constitute a game being 'technically piss-poor'.

    Personally I think the guy is just venting because his favoured platform is suffering so badly (just look at his forum name).

  • Mr_Fujisawa #224 3 months ago

    I thought that after 30 hours on Xbox I was having the issue. I was over by Dead Crone Rock in the far west. I went outside and the game started to stutter. I had trouble with the combat it was so slow. I saved when safe and rebooted, it was the same. I the. Walked up some stairs and found a Giant Frostbite Spider trapped in a small tent. Killed said spider and all was well again!

  • lord_raiden_128 #225 3 months ago

    <quote>super_monty wrote:
    What never ceases to amaze me is review sites giving broken games very high scores.</quote>

    Agreed.

  • myms1ps3 #226 3 months ago

    Back in you're cage roper.

    Smelly, it's obviously pointless trying to get through to you.

    And i don't have a favourite platform.
    That's just sad.
    User name's inspired from a profile on a console.
    You're clearly not as smart as you're mother tells you judging from you're poor assumptions.

  • myms1ps3 #227 3 months ago

    @smelly

    "you complete moronic fucktard."

    LOL. Somebodys getting angry.

  • smelly #228 3 months ago

    >Somebodys getting angry.

    Clueless morons on the internet make me angry. It makes me wonder where we're going as a society. And especially where the games industry is going when some clueless fucktard can look at skyrim and call it "technically piss poor".

  • smelly #229 3 months ago

    You're clearly not as smart as you're mother tells you judging from you're poor assumptions.

    ----

    And judging by YOUR spelling, you're not either.

  • Devox #230 3 months ago

    You can't help but think that DLC may not be released for PS3 as it will only make things worse. So glad I'm a PC gamer. PS3 owners....I'd go for a refund.

  • dirtyvu #231 3 months ago

    after all these years, people still don't get that most multiplatform games run poorer on PS3 than other platforms? If it's not Skyrim, it's Rage. If it's not Rage, it's some other game from a large list of games.

  • Silverzgreen #232 3 months ago

    I found that for some reason the Internet connection affects play. I'm 85 hours in and with the Internet off, it works better.

  • gandhimaster #233 3 months ago

    @Velios completely agree. ninty can always release less powered consoles as nobody apart from nintendo themselves release any games for them. Sony, this gen, have done brilliantly with their own output, but 3rd party stuff (generally) has been fucked from the 1st day. You gotta be out first in a generation to be able to command developers use a "lesser" tech as the lead console, MS did it this time and thats what killed Sony's momentum from the PS2. ps Vita is gonna make the same mistakes, its just a PS3 to play on the bog. :D

  • funkateer #234 3 months ago

    It probably wont help that much if you return your PS3 version of the game.
    What would be much better is to organise something with as many as affected PS3 gamers as possible. Let the media cover thousands of copies of PS3 Skyrim being returned to shops.
    Perhaps that will make some people at Bethesda prioritise this 5 year old game-breaking bug.

  • Tarkovsky #235 3 months ago

    I've been playing on 360. I'm at 120 hours and a 20 MB save, and I'm not noticing any significant problems. I copy the save to PC sometimes when my girlfriend wants to use the TV when I want to play, then copy it back. No problems on the PC either.

    There have been a couple moments of stuttering on 360 recently that seemed out of place, but only in two isolated incidents. It's definitely not a consistent problem, so I don't know that it's the same thing.

    That said, the recently fixed texture streaming issue was horrible. The gloves I always wore were the lowest possible resolution and it was unbearable to look at because they were always on the screen. The patch fixed it and it looks a hundred times better.

  • HokutoNoKen #236 3 months ago

    Skyrim — what we’re working on (Updated)

    "Updated 12/6: While the 1.2 update fixed the long-term play issues for most PS3 users, we are aware that is not the case for some. We’ve been reaching out to a number of those users to collect save games, so we can take a look at their specific issues. Right now we know it’s not one thing, but a combination of smaller ones that some folks are seeing, but others are not. Some seem to be the PS3 autosaving in the background (you can turn that off), some may be SPU AI updates, and some may relate to dynamic system memory allocation. These fixes are not in the current 1.3 update that is in final testing, but will be in future ones. We understand how frustrating it can be when your game is having issues, and we thank all of you for your continued feedback and patience. Rest assured we take your gameplay experience seriously and will continue working on this until it’s resolved."

    http://www.bethblog.com/2011/12/01/skyrim-what-we re-working-on/

    / Ken

  • Silverzgreen #237 3 months ago

    I have turned off the Internet on PS and it has had literally no frame rate issues. I'm 87 hours in with an 11 MB file size. Don't know why it works but it does and obviously it shouldn't have to work this way, but it's nice to play this ridiculously awesome game lag free.

  • Joco84 #238 3 months ago

    Bethesda's games in the past have had similar issues, but the press let them off with the whole "it's a massive game, there's bound to be issues" bullsh!t.
    Looks like they've finally cocked it up and no amount of patching can help them.

    So glad I didn't purchase on Day 1 and I've now completely lost faith in the game and the company and I will not be getting another Bethesda game on Day 1 again.

  • chaz1873rfc #239 3 months ago

    i bought elder scrolls oblivion when it first came out for ps3and it started having issues so i sent an email to bethesda to complain,to which they replied that they werent particularly bothered about ps 3 as it wasnt the lead platform.basically saying that there were no plans to patch the game.so from that moment ive never bought another bethesda game on ps3 and judging from their last 3 or 4 releases they are still no further forward in giving a damn.

  • Cotw #240 2 months ago

    Great video. As a PC user I always thought everyone was pretty much exaggerating. I stand corrected.

  • Vaarna #241 2 months ago

    You know, the last time I bothered playing a Bethesda game was back in 1996. It was Daggerfall on the PC, and I distinctly remember my character falling through the floor of the starting dungeon into a black void that I couldn't find my way out of.

    Bethesda has hardly changed since then. They've probably been hiring the same incompetent QA guy all these years.

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  • Velios #242 2 months ago

    @mastablasta "The P$3 is such a rubbish console. I feel sorry for anyone who only has it as their main console."

    I used to say the same about Atari ST owners when I had my Amiga... When I was fucking 10

  • funkateer #243 2 months ago

    "after all these years, people still don't get that most multiplatform games run poorer on PS3 than other platforms? If it's not Skyrim, it's Rage. If it's not Rage, it's some other game from a large list of games."

    FYI, Rage runs great on PS3.
    In case you missed it, this is not about some insignificant graphical difference, but in Skyrim it's a game breaking bug.

  • CORIANA_SIX #244 2 months ago

    i caved in and bought it on ps3 this weekend. could not resist the half-price offer. its on my gaming backlog shelf now. hope there's an effective patch out by the time i get round to it!

  • AtlasVG #245 2 months ago

  • GRIM-R34P3R-IVI #246 2 months ago

    Was the same problem on BRINK and it took them an age or should i say month or two to fix the problems in that game then everybody just got fed up of waiting for a fix and traded it in.... now the game is in the bargain bin with fallout new vegas.. and everyone should of expected the stutter and lag because that's how oblivion was too even on the 360 :rolleyes:

  • HolyKnight #247 2 months ago

    Conclusion:

    Bethesda SUCKS and so do their games. Skyrim was crap anyway. Grab Dark Souls instead.

    Farewell.