Dev explains why Skyrim lag wont get fixed.

Ilikemilkshake

New member
Jun 7, 2010
1,982
0
0
Sorry if this has been posted before, i did a search but didnt find anything.

Here's the Link http://www.gamersmint.com/ps3-skyrim-lag-problems-unlikely-to-be-solved-dev-comments

(EDIT: For the benefit of anyone who might see this post and not read into the replies, heres another link user Jamash posted that also goes into detail and has vids of the lag in question
http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-ps3-skyrim-lag
It basically proves the game is broken, they load a 65 hour save which at times gets 0 fps, then a completely new save which is completely fine)

So basically a dev who worked on FO3 and FONV has shed some light on the memory issues that are causing alot of problems for players, especially on the ps3.

For those too lazy to go to the article i'll try and sum it up as best as i understand it:
Basically everytime you interact with something, the game makes a note of that change, whether its picking up an apple to murdering a guard, This is why save files increase so much over the course of the game (mine is currently at 15mb).

This is a problem because the game continuously keeps track of and loads everything in the game world even when you're not in the area, so all of your changes are draining ram meant for actually just playing the game.. meaning you lag.

He explains this probably wont be fixed, because like in FO3 and FONV its an engine issue, they'd have to completely redesign the game.. which wont happen in a patch.

The PS3 is also particularly susceptible because unlike the 360 which has 512mb ram which can be used for anything, the ps3 has divided ram, half for graphics half for processing. Meaning that a patch isnt going to fix the PS3 problems, and the game will stay broken for anyone who's put any time into it.

Considering that these issues have existed since FO3, why have Bethesda 1) not fixed it. or 2) bothered porting the game to the ps3 when they know that the way their game works will almost definatly cause the game to degrade to a point of unplayability?

I love Bethesdas games, especially Skyrim but i dont understand why they keep putting out fundamentally broken games and getting away with it.

EDIT: ATTENTION ALL LAG SUFFERERS

Try this: http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.330193-Temporary-solution-for-Skyrim-on-PS3-A-fix-for-PS3-lag#13426790

wait 30 in game days, this apparantly resets all the non essential crap that gets stored, and reduces save game files considerably! slightly annoying but if it works its less annoying than the lag!

Good Luck!
 

Jamash

Top Todger
Jun 25, 2008
3,641
0
0
I read Digital Foundry's analysis [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-ps3-skyrim-lag] of this problem on the PS3 and it's pretty bad, dropping to 0FPS at times, but apparently if you only play for a maximum of 30 minutes then save and restart your PS3, the game is just about playable.

On the bright side, since the game and engine is fundamentally broken and can't be fixed (and it will just get worse and the game progresses and more content is added), anyone who bought it for the PS3 should be entitled to a full refund (under UK law and the Sales of Goods Act, Skyrim on the PS3 is technically "unfit for purpose").
Ilikemilkshake said:
Considering that these issues have existed since FO3, why have Bethesda 1) not fixed it. or 2) bothered porting the game to the ps3 when they know that the way their game works will almost definatly cause the game to degrade to a point of unplayability?
I think the reason they haven't fix it is because they can't. Todd Howard has admitted there are some things about their engine that they just can't figure out or fix, so instead they just avoid the problem (e.g. they couldn't get ladders to work, so there are no usable ladders in their games).

As for why they bothered to release it on the PS3 in such a broken state, perhaps it just didn't get picked up by the QA team. After all, the problem only manifests after a substantial amount of time and the QA team were doing 2 hour speedruns.

You can't really expect them to test a game for as long as any customer might play it, not when they had so much to do in so little time. Remember Skyrim had to be released on all 3 platform on 11/11/11 otherwise it wouldn't be special.
 

michiehoward

New member
Apr 18, 2010
731
0
0
I have only had notable lag once on my 360. Fighting a Forsworn with his heart ripped out. It lagged so badly I died three times.
 

Macgyvercas

Spice & Wolf Restored!
Feb 19, 2009
6,103
0
0
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...

EDIT: Ergh, okay, okay, I get it. Skyrim is capped at 2GB. Everyone can stop quoting me about it now. Jeez!
 

Tiger Sora

New member
Aug 23, 2008
2,220
0
0
Hmm I've put in over 30 hours to Skyrim on the 360, all is still well. Good to know 360 kicks so much ass.

Guess I should feel bad for PS3 users. Well maybe...

N' way to go Beth, you've made another problem, it being worse than any previous I believe.
 

Shirastro

New member
Sep 1, 2010
311
0
0
I pity the console players...well i always pity them, but at least now i have an actual reason.

I don't think Bethesda should get away with this, PS3 users should be refunded fully, if the game is actually unplayable.
 

Ilikemilkshake

New member
Jun 7, 2010
1,982
0
0
Jamash said:
I read Digital Foundry's analysis [http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-ps3-skyrim-lag] of this problem on the PS3 and it's pretty bad, dropping to 0FPS at times, but apparently if you only play for a maximum of 30 minutes then save and restart your PS3, the game is just about playable.

On the bright side, since the game and engine is fundamentally broken and can't be fixed (and it will just get worse and the game progresses and more content is added), anyone who bought it for the PS3 should be entitled to a full refund (under UK law and the Sales of Goods Act, Skyrim on the PS3 is technically "unfit for purpose").
Ilikemilkshake said:
Considering that these issues have existed since FO3, why have Bethesda 1) not fixed it. or 2) bothered porting the game to the ps3 when they know that the way their game works will almost definatly cause the game to degrade to a point of unplayability?
I think the reason they haven't fix it is because they can't. Todd Howard has admitted there are some things about their engine that they just can't figure out or fix, so instead they just avoid the problem (e.g. they couldn't get ladders to work, so there are no usable ladders in their games).

As for why they bothered to release it on the PS3 in such a broken state, perhaps it just didn't get picked up by the QA team. After all, the problem only manifests after a substantial amount of time and the QA team were doing 2 hour speedruns.

You can't really expect them to test a game for as long as any customer might play it, not when they had so much to do in so little time. Remember Skyrim had to be released on all 3 platform on 11/11/11 otherwise it wouldn't be special.
That article is a very interesting read, since it gives a better explanation that i did, ive edited it into my first post just incase people dont see your post.

And okay, they cant test the game as much as millions of players can at home, but surely if this would have come up? It took me 20 hours to get my save to 6Mb (reportedly the point at which problems start happening).. surely someone must have played for at least 20 hours?
And even if they didnt these problems have been recurring since FO3. My Ps3 Goty FO3 (wow alot of acronyms there) save file ended up somewhere in the region of 24mb, and alot of the DLCs i had to struggle through at 10fps (i was determined to play what i had paid for)

If they cant fix or change the engine to solve this problem, they really shouldnt be selling a broken game.
 

Ranorak

Tamer of the Coffee mug!
Feb 17, 2010
1,946
0
41
I only once had a drop in frame rate, but that was because a dragon got stuck in some tries and the game tried to figure out what to do next.

Xbox360 though.
 

Rooster Cogburn

New member
May 24, 2008
1,637
0
0
While I doubt a complete fix is coming for the PS3 version, I also kind of doubt this problem is truly impossible to solve. Things like this are unfixable only until they get fixed, if you take my meaning.
 

Miggiwoo

New member
Aug 7, 2011
67
0
0
Likewise. I have many hours clocked on many characters and have never had a prolonged framerate issue.
 

F4LL3N

New member
May 2, 2011
503
0
0
Wow. I'm on 360 with 165 hours and I've only had serious lag occur once. It was

the final mission in the Thieves Guild, in the cave with the pretty sparkilies

and I simply restarted my console and no lag since. I always assumed the PS3 had superior hardware to the 360. Guess I was wrong.

Shouldn't have released it on PS3 and should offer full refund. It's a fairly blatant error that was surely forseen. The one time I had lag it was that bad I could barely do anything and felt like smashing my TV to pieces. So I kind of feel bad for anyone who's having these issues.
 

Ilikemilkshake

New member
Jun 7, 2010
1,982
0
0
Jove said:
I don't know what's going on with some of the people, but I have clocked in over 120 hours on my first play-through and I've had the game freeze on me ONCE and very little lags. I think people just need to take care of their system/game better or something...
My brother is playing the game on a pretty much new PS3. It functions just as badly as it does on my 4 year old PS3. I myself have the game on the PC, which more than meets the minimum system requirements. We both take good care of our systems seeing as combined we've invested in the region of £1600 across my PC my ps3 and his ps3.

Saying its OUR fault is not helpful at all. The game is at fault, not our systems.

Well done you're lucky and arent having any bugs. Does that mean problems dont exist? of course not. Ive put in 128 hours into FO:New Vegas according to steam, yet i suffered almost no bugs/crashes. Despite NV being one of the most notoriously buggy games this generation, i had no bugs.. does means everyone else who was complaining must not take care of their systems?
 

Call me Baz

New member
Nov 26, 2011
86
0
0
I remember there being a complaint about MW2 or BlOps, (I forget which) where there were some big frame-rate issues, there were none on the PC, a minimal amount on the Xbox and an abundance of them on the PS3. Then it all got fixed.

I understand the difference in problems between CoD and Skyrim though. Lets hope it is just as fixable
 

EHKOS

Madness to my Methods
Feb 28, 2010
4,815
0
0
I only get FPS rape near candles....wth did you do to those candles Bethesda....
 

Tharwen

Ep. VI: Return of the turret
May 7, 2009
9,145
0
0
But... the point of using a save file is that those changes aren't in the memory all the time.

Who the hell designed this engine? Why are they still using it? Why did they lie when they said they weren't going to use it any more?

Fucking Bethesda, how do they work?
 

Prof.Beany

New member
Apr 22, 2011
81
0
0
F4LL3N said:
and I simply restarted my console and no lag since. I always assumed the PS3 had superior hardware to the 360. Guess I was wrong.
Hardwares on par with 360, they just have a REALLY weird architecture (the whole split RAM thing, and the whole no voice chat because of OS taking up RAM thing a while back too).

In my opinion Beth should offer everyone with the PS3 version a digital download for the PC version, seeing as it actually works (I use the term works rather loosely, dam constant random crashes) and they probably paid more for the PS3 version then the steam price.
Although, proving who actually owns a copy of a PS3 game would be a logistics nightmare...

Tharwen said:
But... the point of using a save file is that those changes aren't in the memory all the time.
Well the save file itself is actually there so you can.. well, save your game and store it somewhere so it can be reloaded into the memory at a later point, rather then to just be accessed instead of the memory.

Why it doesnt just read certain parts of the save memory related to the zone your in and load JUST that still baffles me though.
But hey, Im no engine coder, Im just talking out my ass.
 

Ilikemilkshake

New member
Jun 7, 2010
1,982
0
0
Prof.Beany said:
Why it doesnt just read certain parts of the save memory related to the zone your in and load JUST that still baffles me though.
But hey, Im no engine coder, Im just talking out my ass.
Apparantly because certain things HAD to be persistant like NPCs, if they didnt load everything up, the game would crash because NPCs would try to interact with the unloaded objects.

Jove said:
Ilikemilkshake said:
Jove said:
I don't know what's going on with some of the people, but I have clocked in over 120 hours on my first play-through and I've had the game freeze on me ONCE and very little lags. I think people just need to take care of their system/game better or something...
My brother is playing the game on a pretty much new PS3. It functions just as badly as it does on my 4 year old PS3. I myself have the game on the PC, which more than meets the minimum system requirements. We both take good care of our systems seeing as combined we've invested in the region of £1600 across my PC my ps3 and his ps3.

Saying its OUR fault is not helpful at all. The game is at fault, not our systems.

Well done you're lucky and aren't having any bugs. Does that mean problems dont exist? of course not. Ive put in 128 hours into FO:New Vegas according to steam, yet i suffered almost no bugs/crashes. Despite NV being one of the most notoriously buggy games this generation, i had no bugs.. does means everyone else who was complaining must not take care of their systems?
I'm just using that as another possibility. It doesn't mean I'm right when clearly what I said was purely subjective. However there a ton of people at the same time that take really crappy care of their games. you know the one. The one that leaves the disk in the system after he/she is done, or leaves the disk out on his tabletop, or puts the disk on the wrong case. The one that constantly moves the 360 around or is one of those people that puts their 360 in the vertical position.
Sorry if i sounded hostile, i wasnt really having a go at you, more the argument that its the users fault and not Bethesda. (infact that argument is pretty much invalid if you take a look at the eurogamer article i edited in. They show the game failing on a 65 hour save, then they play on a completely new save and it works fine)

And im not saying that those people who dont look after their stuff dont exist, i have friends who leave their systems on literally all day even when they arent playing it. And they'll leave games lying around out of their cases much to my dismay... so when their crap breaks i dont really have sympathy for them.

But they arent really relevant to this because its pretty much proven that the game is fundamentally flawed.