Dev explains why Skyrim lag wont get fixed.

[Epona]

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?

Because it's not a universal problem. Everyone's acting like it's some HUGE thing and that EVERY PLAYER ON THE PS3 CAN'T EVEN PLAY THE DAMN GAME!

No... no, that's not true. While IGN did a poll, only 51% of people experience lag, and only a small fraction of them experienced it so bad they had to restart the game. Even a smaller fraction said the game was "unplayable".

You simply have to do some developer magic to get it to work right... but it's not as bad as you'd make it out to be... or anyone, really.

Every single copy no matter the system has the potential for the exact same issue. Playstyle will be the main determininator as to when you experience it though and how you can minimise the impact it will have. That is undisputable fact backed up by developers who have worked on the engine based entirely around the way in which savegames and object data is both stored and loaded in engine.

Other minor thing is this a framerate issue not lag which is a fundamentally different thing altogether.

It doesn't matter the potential. Potentially, the earth could collide with an asteroid and all life cease to exist at any moment - it's actually a statistical miracle that in the time humanity as existed, we haven't had a cataclysmic end to our species (we almost did a few times though). the Yellowstone volcano and a couple other super volcanoes around the world are set to erupt at any moment, which would kill off most plants and animals. There could be a new plague at any second, breeding in some murky, swampy, trash water in Thailand. If you want to talk about the potential of something happening, that's fine, but you might as well be talking about theoreticals here.

Bethesda obviously tested it ENOUGH so that the average experience is stable and fine - otherwise you'd see mention of it in the reviews, sales wouldn't have been as good, and instead of forums being oversaturated with "ZOMGWTFBBQ SKYRIM!!!!!" they'd be oversaturated with "I CAN'T BELIEVE I BOUGHT SUCH A FUCKING GAME!"

Case in point: this is the first serious thread I've seen on the escapist talking about this issue.

I don't hold potentials against a game company like Bethesda who does such a good job of making a type of game that is INHERENTLY buggy, because potentially has never effected me, and based on the polls, seldom effects others too.

Well actually, Bethesda didn't send the PS3 version to reviewers because they knew it was flawed and it would lower the score. I have read that the Official Playstation Magazine UK dropped the score from 9 to 7 though. I read it here:

http://forums.bethsoft.com/index.php?/topic/1305215-finally-the-press-is-doing-the-job-on-this-issue/

Your case in point is wrong, this issue has been talked about on the Escapist in a few threads.

You know, so long as people say "not affecting me so I don't care", we will continue to get buggy games that should not have been released.

 

[Terminate421]

I have only had one leggy moment in-game on 360 so I'm fine with that.

Also if one has that much opportunity to interact with every object in game than that's quite a problem.

 

[Something Amyss]

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.

Because people will buy them. Skyrim's a phenomenal seller, and knowing these issues have existed since Fallout 3 is yet to deter the public from throwing money at them.

When you guys constantly reward them for a fundamentally broken product, what reason do they have to change anything?

 

[Myke_storm]

http://i42.tinypic.com/wuov7m.jpg

I eventually got to 270hrs on that game before a quest glitch persuaded me to restart the game,I had lag worse than most of the vids that a posted on internet but usually a simple reset would reneder the game playable

when I restarted I deleted everything to do with skyrim and re-istalled it,and it's a million times better in terms of lag.the worst the lag got on my first game was a point in the story where I was fighting a blood dragon,along with a forsworn camp whith two friendly NPC's I hit the same point with my new game and there was no issue other than a slight stutter

 

[zelda2fanboy]

The point is that we shouldn't have to restart we should be able to play for however long we want. I appreciate where you're coming from, I love Bethesda but if a company releases a broken product it is their fault not the consumers and Bethesda should be doing all they could to fix this or replace defective products.

Through the years I've constanly had problems with Bethesda products but I remained an apologist but this is the straw that broke the camel's back, I'm not defending Bethesda anymore they are in the wrong here and I'm not gonna fall for their shit anymore.

People have said this for every Bethesda game that has come out, yet they keep on buying them...

 

[Juventus]

The thing that annoys me is that why isn't there more of an outcry about this, I mean you are lucky if you bought a non-PS3 version but people fail to understand if we let Bethesda get away with this then that gives them free reign to this this in the future and on another platform. This is a huge thing affecting all gamers but people are ignoring it because they got what they wanted so fuck everyone else.

mainly because it's not EA or Activision. if it was one of those you'd hear about it to no end about how the evil publishers are destroying gaming.

 

[Epona]

man there is so much wrong with this topic and with that article the OP posted.
An Obsidan dev talking about bugs in a Bethesda engine is not really something i will take at face value after FO:NV.
If he knows the engine so well: why was NV such a buggy piece of crap?
Also i dont think you can compare the engine version they used for NV with the one used for TESV that easily, plus, the guy did not work on Skyrim.

Well, both games have the same problem but YOU, in your rush to defend Bethesda, think that they can't possibly be related and that a dev who has worked with the engine on a game with the same problems doesn't know what he's talking about.

My God people, what lengths will you go to? I have seen people blame Sony, the PS3 and even PS3 owners because apparently Bethesda can walk on fuckin water.

 

[zelda2fanboy]

Damn it Obsidian made New Vegas, I actually know that one.

It's not lag unless it deal with network speeds what your referring to is just regular old slow frame rate due to what I would consider a memory leak. (although its not). Gamebryo is ridiculously broken and stupid but I can see why they don't want to redesign the sucker. Nobody wants to make a new engine since it takes forever and in the end you wind up with something that cost a ton and to players looks almost identical.

Thanks you! People referring to this as "lag" is driving me nuts.

 

[mjc0961]

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.

The problem has been in FOUR games now (Oblivion, Fallout 3, Fallout New Vegas, Skyrim). And with people who played those games complaining, they don't get to play the "We didn't know about it" card. They knew, and they kept making games like this instead of finding a new way to do it or starting over with a new, less shitty engine.

But do they care? No. Just release a broken game anyway and rake in the cash from unsuspecting PS3 players.

Damn it Obsidian made New Vegas, I actually know that one.

Yeah, they made it on the engine Bethesda handed to them and Bethesda pushed that game out for PS3 anyway knowing it would have the same issues as their other games. Bethesda is still fully to blame for it.

 

[Unesh52]

I don't like having to deal with the lower framerates, but at least 2.01 is playable in some sense. Then again, the latest save I've been playing on hasn't involved much dungeon diving, so maybe I'm not altering the game world as much as in my first game. IDK, but for now, I'm ok with this. I've had at least 50-60 hours of a rip-roaring good time, and that was worth my money. It's just not the 300+ hour experience I was hoping for, I guess. And god knows how I'm going to get that "get to lvl. 50" trophy now!

The only lag I'm really concerned with is when I bring up the menu and my controls suddenly go dead for about 3 seconds and I can't select anything. It's annoying as hell and it happens whenever I bring up the menu.

I bet it's a console thing, too...

I also have this problem.

 

[Macrobstar]

Have not picked it up yet for the PS3, and I am hopeful that the problems get fixed.

So, Skyrim, the Escapist's Choice BEST GAME OF ALL TIME, is unplayable in 1/3 of the copies.

Thats assuming all players get to the point when their save is that large

 

[Blondi3]

I'm glad I'm playing on PC. logged 160 hours so far and no crashes. Weird bugs galore, but no crashes at least lol

Ditto! This is why I go out of my way to buy the PC versions of all Bethesda games. The modders fixing what the company is too lazy to do is the reason these games are worth playing and remembering imo.

 

[Macrobstar]

man there is so much wrong with this topic and with that article the OP posted.
An Obsidan dev talking about bugs in a Bethesda engine is not really something i will take at face value after FO:NV.
If he knows the engine so well: why was NV such a buggy piece of crap?
Also i dont think you can compare the engine version they used for NV with the one used for TESV that easily, plus, the guy did not work on Skyrim.

Well, both games have the same problem but YOU, in your rush to defend Bethesda, think that they can't possibly be related and that a dev who has worked with the engine on a game with the same problems doesn't know what he's talking about.

My God people, what lengths will you go to? I have seen people blame Sony, the PS3 and even PS3 owners because apparently Bethesda can walk of fuckin water.

Well considering the creation engine is heavily modified I doubt the obsidian dev knows what the fuck he is talking about

 

[Deathninja19]

The thing that annoys me is that why isn't there more of an outcry about this, I mean you are lucky if you bought a non-PS3 version but people fail to understand if we let Bethesda get away with this then that gives them free reign to this this in the future and on another platform. This is a huge thing affecting all gamers but people are ignoring it because they got what they wanted so fuck everyone else.

mainly because it's not EA or Activision. if it was one of those you'd hear about it to no end about how the evil publishers are destroying gaming.

Quoted for truth my man, though it's unfair to single him out but if this was EA Jim Sterling would be railing against this in every article and yet he fawns over it in an alost embarassing way.

This is the problem with gamer mentality, we pick sides and them stick with no matter what, it happened with the console wars and now it's happening with the companies themselves. I've been guilty of this before, I love Atlus to death and will usually side with them no matter what, but we as a gamers need start standing up for each other and calling out bullshit when it happens.

 

[Epona]

While I'm not excusing Bethesda, I don't think Sony should get a pass on this one either. Not having enough RAM is just silly. Not having cross game chat is annoying and this isn't the first game to exhibit issues because of it. DC Universe Online used to crash religiously because of the low memory problem. Also, when I'm online on my PS3, it will occasionally freeze or tell me there isn't enough memory so the web page is being replaced with a blank screen.
For Bethesda's part, releasing this game when there is a known issue, without at least a warning is shady.

LOL, what?

Blame Sony because Bethesda can't make their games work well on the PS3? Sony may share some of the blame, they should have told Bethesda to fix it before they allowed it on the PS3 but Bethesda's incompetence is not Sony's fault.

If you tried to make a game for the Wii and it lagged really bad, would you really blame Nintendo?

First, don't start a post with "LOL, what?" It makes you sound either goofy or insulting, neither of which are conducive to a discussion. Second, I'm not blaming them for the games issue per se, I am saying that they have a memory problem, that has caused issues across a few games and applications, that has annoyed me in the past and probably will again in the future. And who the hell buys games for the Wii?

I'll start my post any way that I see fit.

Let's review:

I don't think Sony should get a pass on this one either. Not having enough RAM is just silly.

First of all, the PS3 has just as much RAM as the 360, it just uses it differently. I think the PS3 RAM is actually faster.

Bethesda knew going into this how the PS3 RAM worked but instead of customizing the engine to deal with that, they just released ANOTHER broken game. This isn't Sony's fault, it isn't like Sony changed the way the PS3 worked in the middle of Skyrims development.

If Bethesda had developed Skyrim for the Wii, would you be blaming Nintendo for poor performance? Skyrim COULD have been fine on the PS3 if Bethesda had put more effort into it. The PS3 is the most powerful console this gen so if the 360 can run it well, then so COULD the PS3.

Sony is to blame for letting Bethesda release this though, they should have pushed it back and told Bethesda to fix the memory problems. Isn't that the point of a license, to make sure the game works properly before you license it on your console?

 

[Macrobstar]

The consoles have rather pathetically low RAM, and have done even since release.

512MB is just an awfully low amount, especially in this day and age.

Consoles don't need as much because they don't have other functions to do like the PC, 360 is running fine on 512 and the ps3 would be if the RAM wasn't split, its not the hardware its the fact the Bethesda have made a shoddy port

 

[Epona]

man there is so much wrong with this topic and with that article the OP posted.
An Obsidan dev talking about bugs in a Bethesda engine is not really something i will take at face value after FO:NV.
If he knows the engine so well: why was NV such a buggy piece of crap?
Also i dont think you can compare the engine version they used for NV with the one used for TESV that easily, plus, the guy did not work on Skyrim.

Well, both games have the same problem but YOU, in your rush to defend Bethesda, think that they can't possibly be related and that a dev who has worked with the engine on a game with the same problems doesn't know what he's talking about.

My God people, what lengths will you go to? I have seen people blame Sony, the PS3 and even PS3 owners because apparently Bethesda can walk of fuckin water.

Well considering the creation engine is heavily modified I doubt the obsidian dev knows what the fuck he is talking about

Well, considering the Creation engine has the same memory problems, I think the Obsidian dev does know what he's talking about.

I mean the problem is real in Skyrim. The problem was real in FO:NV. What is it that you disagree with?

 

[Unesh52]

It's not lag unless it deal with network speeds what your referring to is just regular old slow frame rate...

Thanks you! People referring to this as "lag" is driving me nuts.

I am aware of the difference, and it used to annoy me too. However, the two phenomena are very similar to look at, and there's no easy, 1 syllable word for "drop in frame-rate" or "slow-down" that sounds right, so I think appropriating the term to this problem is appropriate. It looks like it's happening no matter how you feel about it anyway.

 

[VanityGirl]

The 280+ free GB I have on my 360 means I have few problems with memory storage.
Sucks for people with limited memory left on their consoles (or PCs).

 

[Unesh52]

It's auto-saving when it does that. I'm pretty sure you can turn it off in your settings menu.

It auto saves when I open the menu? That's... odd. But ok, I'll turn it off next time I play it. Thanks for the tip.