Why Skyrim Should Have Been Delayed: An Argument in Pictures

[Ramare]

While I have seen people complain about the odd glitch occurring and never happening again, you do seem to be having an unusually large amount. I laughed rather heartily at the screencaps.

Kind of an off-topic question: Why is it that Skyrim has so many bugs? I play WoW quite frequently, also a huge open-world RPG, but these kinds of graphical glitches never happen to me. (I've never seen flying NPCs, quest givers melting into the ground, dragons exploring space,etc) The worst seems to be "oh this mob is evade-bugged", which gets fixed relatively quickly. Is it just a difference in the beta, the developer, or what?

I appreciate your attempts at diagnostics, but I actually updated my drivers right before installing the game and I'm using a cooling pad to deal with the overheating.

An Alienware Laptop???

Jesus, that's even worse.

Do you have anything useful to contribute other than being condescending to other people about their choice in computers? I thought not.

I'm not actually sure that comparing World of Warcraft and Skyrim is valid. WoW was built from the ground up over a period of what, ten to fifteen years (I don't actually know when it was released. Hell, could even be 15+ years old for all I know-- and I don't.)? And Skyrim was hastily built, on a new engine that also had to built I might add, in about two-three (I don't know how long it was since their last game, or how much of that was spent actually developing Skyrim-- I'm not up with the times, or really the type to pay attention) years?

I'd look that stuff up, but I need to get back to playing Killing Floor.
What, were you expecting me to say Skyrim like everyone else?
Nah, I'm too poor for that...

 

[imperialus]

It did not. My machine is a brand new Alienware (two months old) and runs other games without incident. I play Skyrim with no lag too.

And I'm running Skyrim on a rig that more closely resembles Frankenstein's monster than anything else... Parts of my machine are over 10 years old. My motherboard is 4 years old, my graphics card is 2, I have 3 different hard-drives including one that I use for backups that is a 5400 RPM artifact from the Pentium days, I have 2 different types of ram ect...

And you know what, with over 70 hours of play time I've encountered a single graphics glitch where Lydia got stuck in a wall. That's it. Know why? Because when I go out to buy a new piece of hardware for my rig I take the time to do some research into it, figure out how it's going to act with my other bits of hardware, what sort of drivers it uses, ect.

And for the record I'm not some computer genius either. I'm a 30something Jr. High Language Arts teacher. The most high tech stuff I have to deal with on a day to day basis is hooking up my laptop to a projector so I can show a slide show.

 

[dantoddd]

As far as graphical glitches go skyrim has given me little trouble.

The OP should try a different set of driver. Newer doesn't necessarily mean better even with drivers. I'm running 290.36 - BETA with a 3gb GTX 580 and the game plays very smoothly for me.

 

[beniki]

Well, I apologize that I don't understand the technical aspect of games. I'm comparing Skyrim to WoW because both are open-world RPGs, and I'm trying to understand what I don't know (Skyrim) by making an analogy to what I do know. (WoW)

But even with the difference in engines, I still feel like a lot of things could have been solved with more beta testing, but that's a different topic.

That's just it, 99.9% of the time, it works fine.
Just like WoW's NPC's.
However, unlike WoW's constant online world with GMs that can reset Mobs and NPC's, Skyrim relies on it's own code to solve these problems.

The difference here is WoW is basicly a Hotwheels car on a track, it sometimes falls off, but you can just put it back.
Skyrim is a robot who walks on his own and detects obstacles and moves around them. Getting "off track" is a far bigger issue here.

Ahhh, that explains a lot. Thanks for the explanation, and for being patient with my lack of knowledge.

There's also the fact that WoW is about a decade old now, with patches nearly every month or so. Skyrim's only been out for a month. Remember the early days of WoW? Some parts of the game were hideously broken ^_^

 

[efAston]

Yep, Bethesday don't finish games http://www.pixelrage.ro/articles/13-Oblivion-mods-that-should-not-have-been-inhouse-261,0.html . Remember the map in Oblivion? *shudders*

 

[Ensiferum]

Wow, I have never encountered ANYTHING like that. In fact after 50+ hours of play I've encountered almost no glitches at all save for a few minor things. I have a feeling it has something to do with your computer.

 

[Moonlight Butterfly]

I think it's your PC mate I am 230 hours in and I've had nothing even close to this.

 

[Zanderinfal]

Your rig is having trouble running it. Fullstop. Had this with Crysis and looked into it, found it with almost all games that it is because your rig is chugging like the little engine that could.

 

[Baldr]

No major Graphics bugs for me, only relatively minor graphic ones probably due to my older computer. However I did have a bug where I kept falling through the floor in the Companion HQ, no real problem. A bug that would not let me pickup a quest item(I had to leave the area and reload the game). A bug that trapped a Dragon Priest in the wall(made the fight much less challenging, lucky I could still loot the body)

 

[Nieroshai]

My only two glitches, and I mean at all, are thus:
A giant ice skated past me while I was horseriding, not even doing his walk animation, just sliding at twice my speed. This happened once.
A mammoth corpse burst from the ground, flew up a good 40 feet into the air, and landedd in front of me. Lovely.

These have only happened once though, my only persistent issue is the occasional texture that won't render until I'm close enough to lick it, but modded that away.

 

[NightHawk21]

Your comments are pretty hilarious.

The worst that's happened to me is the main quest bugging out (console command and a quick Oblivion fix, resolved that), and I once saved on top of a trap door and when I reloaded I fell through and couldn't open it since the switch was outside the gate. Lost like 15 min of play time, oh well.

 

[ranger12116]

those crystal trees look really cool to be honest.

I think the game is just a little buggy but with a game that size I don't really mind.

 

[Zoe Castillo]

---

 

[Guffe]

Those glitches are IMPROVING the game. They look fucking awesome!

Well maybe not the Red Pyramid of Death and that last picture??
But honsetly, killing a purple dragon and all it's aura or whatnot changing the surroundings, that sounds pretty cool me *.* and CRYSTAL TREES!!!
Maybe next time someone can get a CRYSTAL PALACE!!! (cookie for the one who knows this one xD)

 

[Athinira]

Obviously I know nothing of the machine you run this on.
But did the idea occur to you that your machine might have something to do with these graphical glitches?

It did not. My machine is a brand new Alienware (two months old) and runs other games without incident. I play Skyrim with no lag too.

Not saying your machine is bad, just that with a huge amount of hardware, software and set-up variables, the chances of something providing anything but a 100% compatibility is rather high.

Even so, the frequency at which I encounter these bugs is really absurd for any big name title. Especially one that has been patched twice. I've not encountered this many bugs this frequently in any other game.

That might have something to do with the fact that other games aren't a huge open world game with literally thousands of manipulatable items, character, locations and objects.

And this excuse is the most overused excuse ever for Skyrim by now.

Listen, for all the massive bugs that might be associated with having a world as big as Skyrims, texture and animation bugs are NOT. They are the result of poor programming, nothing more, nothing less.

There are plenty of other non-Bethesda games that have huge open worlds as well, and while none of them might be as big as Skyrim (with the exception of World of Warcraft), these games somehow, ironically, manage to stay more or less bug-free, or at least without having glitches of the magnitude that Bethesda-games are showing. So why can't Skyrim? I'll tell you why:
Because it's Bethesda. Not because the game is huge.

And you know what the worst part is? It's not that Bethesda makes games using systems that are buggy. It's that those systems are reused more than once for new Bethesda games, despite them having proven to be so buggy in previous titles. Why do you think many of the bugs in Skyrim are also bugs that have shown their ugly face in previous titles? Bethesda is copy-pasting their old buggy and terrible code and reusing it (being fully aware that it's buggy), instead of for once just pulling their sh*t together and writing something that works out of the box.

None of this is excusable with the games size. Period.

 

[sir.rutthed]

While I have seen people complain about the odd glitch occurring and never happening again, you do seem to be having an unusually large amount. I laughed rather heartily at the screencaps.

Kind of an off-topic question: Why is it that Skyrim has so many bugs? I play WoW quite frequently, also a huge open-world RPG, but these kinds of graphical glitches never happen to me. (I've never seen flying NPCs, quest givers melting into the ground, dragons exploring space,etc) The worst seems to be "oh this mob is evade-bugged", which gets fixed relatively quickly. Is it just a difference in the beta, the developer, or what?

I appreciate your attempts at diagnostics, but I actually updated my drivers right before installing the game and I'm using a cooling pad to deal with the overheating.

An Alienware Laptop???

Jesus, that's even worse.

Do you have anything useful to contribute other than being condescending to other people about their choice in computers? I thought not.

I'm not actually sure that comparing World of Warcraft and Skyrim is valid. WoW was built from the ground up over a period of what, ten to fifteen years (I don't actually know when it was released. Hell, could even be 15+ years old for all I know-- and I don't.)? And Skyrim was hastily built, on a new engine that also had to built I might add, in about two-three (I don't know how long it was since their last game, or how much of that was spent actually developing Skyrim-- I'm not up with the times, or really the type to pay attention) years?

I'd look that stuff up, but I need to get back to playing Killing Floor.
What, were you expecting me to say Skyrim like everyone else?
Nah, I'm too poor for that...

WOW is by no means open world. It's an MMO. Sure you can go anywhere, but you can't actually change anything in the world permanently, or even for more than it takes for the Murlocks to respawn. It's completely static. Not to mention it's had years of post release support on its side. Skyrim was hastilly built? On a new engine? Do you even realize what an oxymoron that is? They've been working on it since just after Oblivion came out several years ago, being developed alongside Fallout 3. It's a completely laughable comparison, like saying Rogue Squadron and are comparable in any way.

OT: Not to beat a dead horse, but it's your graphics card. Also Alienware. Send it back and use the money to build yourself a respectable rig and use the money you save to buy lots of beer. Drunk Skyrim is like drunk sex: it's just better.

 

[Sandernista]

Kind of an off-topic question: Why is it that Skyrim has so many bugs? I play WoW quite frequently, also a huge open-world RPG, but these kinds of graphical glitches never happen to me. (I've never seen flying NPCs, quest givers melting into the ground, dragons exploring space,etc) The worst seems to be "oh this mob is evade-bugged", which gets fixed relatively quickly. Is it just a difference in the beta, the developer, or what?

Maybe it's because Blizzard has hundreds of people working on how to fix every single problem with their giant money printing machine? (But seriously play WoW the second a new expansion comes out, glitches galore, but within hours its fixed by the aforementioned hundreds of QA testers.)

 

[Trippy Turtle]

I have had no bugs that negatively effect the game at all except one case of a body disappearing when I needed the key from it.

 

[Dunvi]

It's always so cute when people pretend they know even a modicum of computer programming.

 

[Febel]

On the one hand, these problems may, as others have suggested, be unique to whatever system you are using.

On the other hand, your post was very amusing and definetely got a chuckle out of me.