Dev explains why Skyrim lag wont get fixed.

[Starke]

16 mb saves are a lot? I'm fairly sure my save folder for Dragon Age: Origins was close to 15 gb.

On a console? Also, and I'm guessing here, the content of those saves is compressed to some extent, the game then logs when and where everything is.

I suppose you could use an array to artificially limit the amount of memory used by state changes, but that would mean items are snapping back to their original place at some point, and a whole new Boolean field on the entire database to determine if this item needs to be preserved, then you'd need to take that and apply it to the 360 and PC build because you're modifying the .esm format, which would necessitate a revised version of the Construction Set... and you need to pray that nothing goes horribly wrong in any of these steps...

 

[Kroxile]

I have about 140 hours on my main character and it gets pretty laggy out in the open areas, but in dungeons its fine (since the recent patch anyway).

But yeah, I'm pretty pissed off that bethesda keeps getting away with releasing buggy as shit games every time they put something on shelves.

And so many people hail them as heroes of the modern industry... pfft.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

you have the best point ever. i always question why people complain and moan about there game breaking after 60 hours yet no other game has a campaign that can last that long. and is almost 10 times longer than others...baffles me. but yeah they should try to fix it in the coming year..and people need to get off there high horse. you pay 15 dollars for a movie.. 15 to ten actually...its 2 to 3 hours long..you pay 60 for a game...at minimum the game should be 8 to 12 hours long

Because First World Problems, and people will always find something to complain about, its how we are wired.

Just an FYI, i never said what you've quoted... you must've snipped the wrong part of something... or something.

But sure, These problems with the game arent the most pressing issues in the world.. but what kind of argument is that?... why complaining about anything when you can just say, well suck if up there are bigger problems.

 

[boag]

you have the best point ever. i always question why people complain and moan about there game breaking after 60 hours yet no other game has a campaign that can last that long. and is almost 10 times longer than others...baffles me. but yeah they should try to fix it in the coming year..and people need to get off there high horse. you pay 15 dollars for a movie.. 15 to ten actually...its 2 to 3 hours long..you pay 60 for a game...at minimum the game should be 8 to 12 hours long

Because First World Problems, and people will always find something to complain about, its how we are wired.

Just an FYI, i never said what you've quoted... you must've snipped the wrong part of something... or something.

But sure, These problems with the game arent the most pressing issues in the world.. but what kind of argument is that?... why complaining about anything when you can just say, well suck if up there are bigger problems.

Sorry about that, must have snipped the wrong quoter, it kinda gets hard to make out the walls of text after a couple of people have quoted.

 

[UnderCoverGuest]

Well, I guess I'll just keep playing it on my 8GB RAM, 64-bit PC then, trolololo!

That is very irritating though--it would require a massive engine change? Didn't you already make a massive engine change when you started making Skyrim?? Why didn't you fix this issue then!?!?

Developer neglect at it's finest--I'm just surprised that this is finally an issues for consoles. Usually it's games ported to PC that get the shoddy design work, weird that Skyrim is focused on consoles, yet the PC actually gets...wait, no, that's not entirely true...Skyrim is pretty buggy all around, isn't it.

Ah well, it's a fun game, and I only hope some independent modder comes along and devises a way to add more ram to the XBox or PS3, allowing--oh wait. Heh, warranty and lawsuit, right? Darn, weeeeeell, I tried.

 

[Deathninja19]

Ha ha! 8 GB of RAM on my PC. Try and lag me now, sucker! Or, at least try when I get Skyrim for Christmas...

From what I understand, Skyrim can not and will not use all 8. The cap for the game is 4.

Actually, the cap for the game is rather amusingly a paltry 2gb. However, there is a fix on Nexus that sorts that right out bumping it up to 4gb.

OT: Oh well, it aint the first time that Bethesda has released a buggy piece of unplayable crap. Nor is it the first time people decided to sue them over the issue. The GoTY addition for Fo3 was all but unplayable on quite a lot of chipsets for no given reason (They blamed the hardware every time, they never patched the issue and they ignored thousands upon thousands of customers, including myself, begging them for some help with the issue). However, just to say it, those issues were far worse then increasing lag over time. Try "Random freezes every 30 seconds - 1 hour that never unfreeze". It took me more than an hour to get through Vault 101. Seriously.

IMO Skyrim is awesome and the game is most certainly playable. And to the poor PS3 owners that can only get 60 hours of gameplay out of the game? In comparison to most modern games that is 5 times the amount of playtime you would be getting. So maybe when you hit that point its about time to try out a different character build and stop Godmodding your character to Jesus and back.

Yeah, I went there.

Am I the only gamer who sees this and thinks the same? Trying to sue them for making a game that you can only get 60 hours of play for each character you make is utterly ridiculous. 60 hours is a long, long time.

To put that in perspective...
60 hours is like playing portal 2 back to back 10 times. You gonna sue valve for only making a 6 hour long game?
MW3 clocks around 4 and a half to 6 hours (Being generous there) so you gonna sue Infinity Ward?
BF 3's campaign clocks in at 6-7 hours.

So...

Combined length of Portal 2 campaign (+ Co-op) 12 hours
MW3 6 hours
BF 3 7 hours

That is 25 hours.

According to my brutalised maths, people are complaining that they are only getting 6 games worth of time out of each character.

Boo fucking hoo.

However, that said, would it not be easy enough for them to patch this out? I mean, sure, its a workaround. But "Resetting" the save every 20 or so hours on the PS3 so only quest-related and plot-related events are still present and only the player house is saved from a hard reset? I know people would probably get angry at that "But I liked that pile of corpses" but it seems that that would be the answer to all this memory backlog causing uber lag. And it would actually help the PS3 godmodders as things would return to how they were allowing them to mess things up all over again.

Makes sense to me.

you have the best point ever. i always question why people complain and moan about there game breaking after 60 hours yet no other game has a campaign that can last that long. and is almost 10 times longer than others...baffles me. but yeah they should try to fix it in the coming year..and people need to get off there high horse. you pay 15 dollars for a movie.. 15 to ten actually...its 2 to 3 hours long..you pay 60 for a game...at minimum the game should be 8 to 12 hours long

Oh wow, so it's ok to not be able to complete a game as long as you get XX number of hours out of it? Doesn't that really defeat the purpose of a game like Skyrim?

Skyrim is a vast, open world game that let's you explore and play your own way, but only for XX hours per save file.

Man don't even try to question their logic because you'll get no reasonable explanation. This is probably one of the stupidest arguements to defend this issue.

not a stupid defense trust me on that. if a game sucks so much time from you i dont think you really have a right to complain unless your one of those people complaining about lengths of other games already. am i truly defending the lag..hell no i hate it when it happens... does it need to be fixed? definitly. is it worth bitching about. probably. does it bother me that it happens after playing and pumping so much into a game? not really since its more time put into games and less time i spend thinking about philosphy and stuff...i hate thinking long and hard on that subject...gets me depressed...so maybe im biased in that it lets my mind stop wondering.

Well it bothers me when I can't complete a storyline that I've invested(or wasted really) hours my life towards completing or those hours spent crafting just so I could get Deadric armour wasted, forcing me to start again.

Let's put it in terms of another game, I've spent 60 plus hours fighting Shinra, getting a golden Chocobo and unlocking Vincent Valentine and Yuffie and just before facing Sephiroth there is a huge framerate issue that makes the game unplayable. Could I start again? Sure but I lose every advancement I've made with my character essentially making me spend another 60 hours of my life not only to get back where I was but also having the chance of this happening again.

People play games for different reasons, you may play it purely for the experience and that's cool but I play games to advance either a story or my character and when you spend days or even weeks building up a character only for something to happen wasting all of that time spent building that character. That is just one of the many reasons why this bug pissed me off and why I am angry at Bethesda. Bethesda knowingly sold me a broken product so you're damn right I have the right to complain.

 

[Treblaine]

I think considering how bloody long they spent on Killzone 2 it might have looked better on 360.

Are you serious? I though KZ2 was one of the best looking games ive ever seen

Are YOU serious? Killzone had some terrible textures and those faces:

Spoiler

Killzone 2 & 3 had a lot of flash, but they failed to really deliver on the actual detail, the detail that supposedly PS3 would pull ahead of 360 with.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-crysis2-face-off

"The increased performance and resolution indicates that the Xbox 360 is the preferred (console) platform for Crysis 2"

Crysis 2 looks better than Killzone 2 or 3 and performs slightly better on 360, than on PS3. And it's the same story with RAGE, and so many other titles that push the graphics envelope.

And of course PC (when patched) perform better than either PS3 or 360, but going just with a console, you'd have done better with 360 than with PS3 this generation to spite the 360 being released a whole 12 months earlier (18 months for Europe) and at a launch price 33% less, or $200 less. Even greater price difference in pounds sterling!

Now I know that doesn't factor cost of Proprietary Hard Drives or of Xbox Live Gold Membership but from a purely technical standpoint I have to admire the Xbox 360 for pulling ahead with supposedly "inferior" hardware against Sony's smorgasbord of the latest and flashiest consumer-electronics hardware, yet Sony failed to build a comprehensive and well rounded system. It was poorly put together and doesn't seem to have really been designed at what would make for the best games console, but rather what would tick the must "my console is better boxes"

Worked for me. I bought a PS3. But Sony made a loss on every sale. And I have hardly bought any games for my PS3, not compared to my 360 and PC as I KNOW they are better quality on those systems! Also never bought a single blu-ray, rented a few but the increase in quality is not worth the

I think Sony's greatest strength is not in hardware, but in talent. Sony is one of the biggest and most important publishers in the whole business with Uncharted team Naughty Dog in their employ and the set the PS3 as their exclusive platform to focus on.

Microsoft doesn't do that to anywhere near the same extent. Epic is a 2nd-party employ and Halos are few and far between.

I'm genuinely interested in how much you could do on 360 if you put as much time and effort into a single-game as Sony did with Killzone 2. Boy did they take a lot time and spend a lot of money on that.

 

[Anthony Wells]

Ha ha! 8 GB of RAM on my PC. Try and lag me now, sucker! Or, at least try when I get Skyrim for Christmas...

From what I understand, Skyrim can not and will not use all 8. The cap for the game is 4.

Actually, the cap for the game is rather amusingly a paltry 2gb. However, there is a fix on Nexus that sorts that right out bumping it up to 4gb.

OT: Oh well, it aint the first time that Bethesda has released a buggy piece of unplayable crap. Nor is it the first time people decided to sue them over the issue. The GoTY addition for Fo3 was all but unplayable on quite a lot of chipsets for no given reason (They blamed the hardware every time, they never patched the issue and they ignored thousands upon thousands of customers, including myself, begging them for some help with the issue). However, just to say it, those issues were far worse then increasing lag over time. Try "Random freezes every 30 seconds - 1 hour that never unfreeze". It took me more than an hour to get through Vault 101. Seriously.

IMO Skyrim is awesome and the game is most certainly playable. And to the poor PS3 owners that can only get 60 hours of gameplay out of the game? In comparison to most modern games that is 5 times the amount of playtime you would be getting. So maybe when you hit that point its about time to try out a different character build and stop Godmodding your character to Jesus and back.

Yeah, I went there.

Am I the only gamer who sees this and thinks the same? Trying to sue them for making a game that you can only get 60 hours of play for each character you make is utterly ridiculous. 60 hours is a long, long time.

To put that in perspective...
60 hours is like playing portal 2 back to back 10 times. You gonna sue valve for only making a 6 hour long game?
MW3 clocks around 4 and a half to 6 hours (Being generous there) so you gonna sue Infinity Ward?
BF 3's campaign clocks in at 6-7 hours.

So...

Combined length of Portal 2 campaign (+ Co-op) 12 hours
MW3 6 hours
BF 3 7 hours

That is 25 hours.

According to my brutalised maths, people are complaining that they are only getting 6 games worth of time out of each character.

Boo fucking hoo.

However, that said, would it not be easy enough for them to patch this out? I mean, sure, its a workaround. But "Resetting" the save every 20 or so hours on the PS3 so only quest-related and plot-related events are still present and only the player house is saved from a hard reset? I know people would probably get angry at that "But I liked that pile of corpses" but it seems that that would be the answer to all this memory backlog causing uber lag. And it would actually help the PS3 godmodders as things would return to how they were allowing them to mess things up all over again.

Makes sense to me.

you have the best point ever. i always question why people complain and moan about there game breaking after 60 hours yet no other game has a campaign that can last that long. and is almost 10 times longer than others...baffles me. but yeah they should try to fix it in the coming year..and people need to get off there high horse. you pay 15 dollars for a movie.. 15 to ten actually...its 2 to 3 hours long..you pay 60 for a game...at minimum the game should be 8 to 12 hours long

Oh wow, so it's ok to not be able to complete a game as long as you get XX number of hours out of it? Doesn't that really defeat the purpose of a game like Skyrim?

Skyrim is a vast, open world game that let's you explore and play your own way, but only for XX hours per save file.

Man don't even try to question their logic because you'll get no reasonable explanation. This is probably one of the stupidest arguements to defend this issue.

not a stupid defense trust me on that. if a game sucks so much time from you i dont think you really have a right to complain unless your one of those people complaining about lengths of other games already. am i truly defending the lag..hell no i hate it when it happens... does it need to be fixed? definitly. is it worth bitching about. probably. does it bother me that it happens after playing and pumping so much into a game? not really since its more time put into games and less time i spend thinking about philosphy and stuff...i hate thinking long and hard on that subject...gets me depressed...so maybe im biased in that it lets my mind stop wondering.

Well it bothers me when I can't complete a storyline that I've invested(or wasted really) hours my life towards completing or those hours spent crafting just so I could get Deadric armour wasted, forcing me to start again.

Let's put it in terms of another game, I've spent 60 plus hours fighting Shinra, getting a golden Chocobo and unlocking Vincent Valentine and Yuffie and just before facing Sephiroth there is a huge framerate issue that makes the game unplayable. Could I start again? Sure but I lose every advancement I've made with my character essentially making me spend another 60 hours of my life not only to get back where I was but also having the chance of this happening again.

People play games for different reasons, you may play it purely for the experience and that's cool but I play games to advance either a story or my character and when you spend days or even weeks building up a character only for something to happen wasting all of that time spent building a character. That is just one of the many reasons why this bug pissed me off and why I am angry at Bethesda. Bethesda knowingly sold me a broken product so you're damn right I have the right to complain.

i play games for the story as well. thats the whole reason i actually bought modern warfare 3. to finish up the story. and look for other comments i have made cause i already conceded that you have a right to complain and so on and so forth. plus im biased against it cause it distracts me. i do plan on finishing skyrim for its story..also using final fantasy 7 as an example...i hate that game with such a passion that anyone who uses it in the same paragraph as one of my favorites....sorry that game is just such a sore spot for me. while i personally dont have a problem with skyrim especially since it doesnt lag very much. but you may very well have a horrible lag that wont let you complete it so there ya go everyone else speaks out of term about it and so do i apparently so you win you do have a right to be mad you are right but if i complained about it i would be wrong.

 

[Epona]

All true, but in the grand scheme of things: If Bethesda is unwilling to make the game work properly on the PS3, then they should not have released it on the PS3.

No one is saying that Bethesda is obligated to release their games on the PS3. They always had the option to not release a broken game on the PS3 and that is the option they should have taken.

True, but then there would be a hoard of people with pitchforks and torches clamoring for Bethesda to be flayed alive for not releasing it on the PS3.

Better that than having a hoard of people with pitchforks and torches angry because they can't play their new $60 game. In the first case, there are no legal issues, in this case though...there may be a class action in the future.

Agreed, then again its playable up to 60 hours right, im guessing people will go for the work around now that they now how to approach it.

More like 20 hours before the lag sets in for the average user. By 60 hours I would think you would be mailing your PS3 to Sony. They say that once the lagging becomes noticeable, you should stop playing or it could damage the PS3. I guess constant streaming from the HDD can cause overheating as well as HDD issues.

 

[Fearzone]

Well, they get away with it because what is good about Skyrim soars over the problems it has.

But that was good info. Kinda sad the PS3 is the "odd man out" when it comes to game development, because otherwise I really like the system. I would have bought it for the PS3 were it not for the lag, just to avoid the Steam DRM.

But, in the long run, I must be thankful for the game's lag issues because I got the PC version instead, which is beautiful. I used a game controller just long enough to know the mouse and keyboard is still miles ahead, despite what problems there are, which are mainly centered around the painfully bad UI. I really hope Bethesda just turns UI design over to the moders.

 

[Ilikemilkshake]

Sorry about that, must have snipped the wrong quoter, it kinda gets hard to make out the walls of text after a couple of people have quoted.

No problem, it happens

snippysnip

I guess we'll just have to disagree.

 

[Deathninja19]

i play games for the story as well. thats the whole reason i actually bought modern warfare 3. to finish up the story. and look for other comments i have made cause i already conceded that you have a right to complain and so on and so forth. plus im biased against it cause it distracts me. i do plan on finishing skyrim for its story..also using final fantasy 7 as an example...i hate that game with such a passion that anyone who uses it in the same paragraph as one of my favorites....sorry that game is just such a sore spot for me. while i personally dont have a problem with skyrim especially since it doesnt lag very much. but you may very well have a horrible lag that wont let you complete it so there ya go everyone else speaks out of term about it and so do i apparently so you win you do have a right to be mad you are right but if i complained about it i would be wrong.

Dude I'm not harshing on your right to complain about the complainers, you can have your opinions but I thought you were wrong so I told you how I felt. There is no winners and losers here this is about the rights of consumers being sold a faulty product. I agree that while I was playing I was having a blast but then the bug happened it basically ruined my experience to the point that when I look back on my time with the game all I can feel is anger that I wasted all of that time and money.

 

[boag]

All true, but in the grand scheme of things: If Bethesda is unwilling to make the game work properly on the PS3, then they should not have released it on the PS3.

No one is saying that Bethesda is obligated to release their games on the PS3. They always had the option to not release a broken game on the PS3 and that is the option they should have taken.

True, but then there would be a hoard of people with pitchforks and torches clamoring for Bethesda to be flayed alive for not releasing it on the PS3.

Better that than having a hoard of people with pitchforks and torches angry because they can't play their new $60 game. In the first case, there are no legal issues, in this case though...there may be a class action in the future.

Agreed, then again its playable up to 60 hours right, im guessing people will go for the work around now that they now how to approach it.

More like 20 hours before the lag sets in for the average user. By 60 hours I would think you would mailing your PS3 to Sony. They say that once the lagging becomes noticeable, you should stop playing or it could damage the PS3. I guess constant streaming from the HDD can cause overheating as well as HDD issues.

I thought it was with cumulative gametime and saves, this also happens if you play for 20 hours straight?

 

[Epona]

Well, they get away with it because what is good about Skyrim soars over the problems it has.

But that was good info. Kinda sad the PS3 is the "odd man out" when it comes to game development, because otherwise I really like the system. I would have bought it for the PS3 were it not for the lag, just to avoid the Steam DRM.

But, in the long run, I must be thankful for the game's lag issues because I got the PC version instead, which is beautiful. I used a game controller just long enough to know the mouse and keyboard is still miles ahead, despite what problems there are, which are mainly centered around the painful UI. I really hope Bethesda just turns UI design over to the moders.

I fail to see how a game you can't play because of lag has more pros than cons. Isn't "not being able to play" the ultimate con that no pro could touch?

 

[Epona]

All true, but in the grand scheme of things: If Bethesda is unwilling to make the game work properly on the PS3, then they should not have released it on the PS3.

No one is saying that Bethesda is obligated to release their games on the PS3. They always had the option to not release a broken game on the PS3 and that is the option they should have taken.

True, but then there would be a hoard of people with pitchforks and torches clamoring for Bethesda to be flayed alive for not releasing it on the PS3.

Better that than having a hoard of people with pitchforks and torches angry because they can't play their new $60 game. In the first case, there are no legal issues, in this case though...there may be a class action in the future.

Agreed, then again its playable up to 60 hours right, im guessing people will go for the work around now that they now how to approach it.

More like 20 hours before the lag sets in for the average user. By 60 hours I would think you would mailing your PS3 to Sony. They say that once the lagging becomes noticeable, you should stop playing or it could damage the PS3. I guess constant streaming from the HDD can cause overheating as well as HDD issues.

I thought it was with cumulative gametime and saves, this also happens if you play for 20 hours straight?

Not even straight, just 20 hours into your game. I started having serious issues 10-12 hours in and quit playing shortly after. The average, I read, is about 20 hours before the game becomes a slide show. Keep trying to play it like that and you could lose you entire PS3 or so I have read on other forums.

 

[boag]

I think considering how bloody long they spent on Killzone 2 it might have looked better on 360.

Are you serious? I though KZ2 was one of the best looking games ive ever seen

Are YOU serious? Killzone had some terrible textures and those faces:

Spoiler

I fail to see what is so wrong with those faces.

 

[boag]

All true, but in the grand scheme of things: If Bethesda is unwilling to make the game work properly on the PS3, then they should not have released it on the PS3.

No one is saying that Bethesda is obligated to release their games on the PS3. They always had the option to not release a broken game on the PS3 and that is the option they should have taken.

True, but then there would be a hoard of people with pitchforks and torches clamoring for Bethesda to be flayed alive for not releasing it on the PS3.

Better that than having a hoard of people with pitchforks and torches angry because they can't play their new $60 game. In the first case, there are no legal issues, in this case though...there may be a class action in the future.

Agreed, then again its playable up to 60 hours right, im guessing people will go for the work around now that they now how to approach it.

More like 20 hours before the lag sets in for the average user. By 60 hours I would think you would mailing your PS3 to Sony. They say that once the lagging becomes noticeable, you should stop playing or it could damage the PS3. I guess constant streaming from the HDD can cause overheating as well as HDD issues.

I thought it was with cumulative gametime and saves, this also happens if you play for 20 hours straight?

Not even straight, just 20 hours into your game. I started having serious issues 10-12 hours in and quit playing shortly after. The average, I read, is about 20 hours before the game becomes a slide show. Keep trying to play it like that and you could lose you entire PS3 or so I have read on other forums.

Now that really is a game breaking issue, if enough people forcibly bricked their systems via the game, then there really would be a valid case against Bethesda.

 

[TheHecatomb]

Ha ha! 8 GB of RAM on my PC. Try and lag me now, sucker! Or, at least try when I get Skyrim for Christmas...

Yeah, 16 GB here. I get lag. Skyrim isn't programmed to use it.

 

[Hakazaba]

Ha ha! 8 GB of RAM on my PC. Try and lag me now, sucker! Or, at least try when I get Skyrim for Christmas...

Too bad skyrim's memory usage is capped at 2 GB.
There are hacks to get around it though.

Please Bethesda, stop using Gamebryo!