Crono1973 said:
Zagzag said:
This is exactly what they are doing. They have decided not to (yet) release the DLC for the PS3 because it won't work. Would you rather they release it anyway, and have to put up with the same shitstorm they got when people discovered the save file issue on the PS3 in the first place? Given that the way their game's engine works, adding extra plugins will definitely increase the PS3 lag issues, and I'm not convinced that this can actually be solved.
The problem that they were having in the first place was the ever increasing save file sizes taking up too much RAM, and therefore causing lag. Since installing plugins (mods or DLC) on the PC increases the game's RAM usage, it would be natural to assume that this also happens on consoles. Due to the RAM architecture on the PS3 this would probably make the game nigh unplayable right off the bat, even if your save file isn't exactly huge. I'd very much like to be proven wrong, but I suspect that there just isn't enough RAM on a PS3 to run Skyrim + DLC.
Which is why they shouldn't have released Skyrim on the PS3 in the first place. PS3 owners paid the same $60 for an inferior product compared to the PC and 360 versions. Bethesda had known about this problem with their engine long before they decided to release Skyrim on the PS3.
I think they should be offering exchanges to Skyrim PS3 owners.
The thing is, I don't think that they did realise it was in inferior product. The performance issues only start once your save file reaches a certain size, assuming that no DLC is installed. I remember someone saying, (althought I dont't remember the source right now), that the QA testers never played any single save file for long enough for the problem to become apparent, and it was only noticable for actual end users. You are quite possibly right in saying that they should offer exchanges (although patching most of the movable clutter out of the game WOULD fix this problem for most people for a fair bit of time).
Basically, the product is inferior, and whether that means exchanges are in order is debatable. However, I don't think that they definitely KNEW that this would be the case beforehand. If someone can prove this not to be the case, then I'll happily change my mind.
GunsmithKitten said:
Blaster395 said:
Except that the PS3 is brutally difficult to develop for, considering it has a Supercomputer-type cpu (8 core CPU, but each individual core is very weak so you have to program to multithread on all of them or it will run terribly) and 256mb of its 512mb total RAM cannot even be used for games.
Then why do so many other companies have no problem developing DLC for it? I pointed it out earlier, Saints Row 2/3, Sleeping Dogs, Dead Rising 2, ect...none of them had any issue releasing cross platform DLC (with the DR being the exception, and that wasn't because of technical issues, it was an exclusive deal with MS). Why is this only seeming to plague Bethesda? What is it doing wrong that THQ, Capcom, and Squenix are doing right?
GunsmithKitten said:
Basically this. I won't claim to be any kind of expert in programming/console system architecture/anything of the kind, but from my experiences as a player, every single game I've bought for the PS3 *except* Skyrim, hasn't had a single problem in running, DLC or no. This includes any number of games that were released cross-platform.
I'm more inclined to think that Bethesda is really the problem. If they can't deal with the PS3, fine. Then don't develop for it. I won't hold it against you - everyone's got their preferences. What I will hold against you is knowingly releasing a hideously bugged game, then taking ages to *partly* fix the problem, and then making vague statements about the DLC you're failing to produce, and generally treating (a portion) of your customers like crap.
The problem that Skyrim has (specifically with DLC) is that the world in the game is absolutely massive, and in contrast to other game with similarly large worlds, is actually fairly persistent. If you knock over a wine glass in someone's house, then the glass will still be on the floor the next time you go there. If you were to store the position of every object in the world in save files, they would take up gigabytes each and saving and loading could take tens of minutes each, so a solution was required, and instead the game only actively stores objects that have moved from their default position. These changes in position all have to be stored somewhere, and unfortunately the PS3 doesn't have enough memory to actually hold all of this, once you have made ehough changes to the world. (although it wouldn't have enough space to hold the entire world either, so this is much better than the alternative, which is simply not making the game anywhere near as big)
DLC however actively takes up memory space just by being there, and for this reason the game on PS3 is basically unplayable. Once the game runs out of memory objects and level geometry don't load. (you can even get this on an amazing gaming PC with PC mods, since the game has a stupid arbitrary cap on the amount of memory for mods, since it seems to think your PC has the same RAM as an Xbox, and DLC is installed the same way as a mod.)
It isn't strictly incompetence that caused this change, it is Bethesda making gigantic worlds in all of their games, and making them persistent.
