29 replies to this topic

[ShadowHuntr]

Well, the forced update I shun as well, still the problems some are experimenting with the 1.4.21 patch aren't due to it. There is no guilt in this actually for "these" are troubled times (I hope I could say were) both for the developers and the modders. Changes coming at fast pace, need to update every plugin which someway is tied with the game version or utility it was created (SKSE, Script Dragon...)

Is in the sum of all these factors the instability lies, the reason for the crashes. Everything MUST be at the same version level so at least a reasonable stability can be granted.

If only plugins were the problem for me.. but it is not and that, if one reads around various forums, is sure fast sounding like it's become the universal excuse dujour.
Just to be clear: System was fine - game played great and I was enjoying the hell out of it without ANY of problems OTHER people were having (quests, storylines, technical) - then Steamthesda changed everything in one fell swoop with this "update". I had even (supposedly) set Steam to NOT update. Oh well. You know, here's the thing... With past Elder Scrolls games I simply played the versions that were less buggy on any given machine I owned.. but that choice, it seems, is no longer mine (nor other users) to make. I don't know exactly how but I do know the results: by forcing my machine to take an update meant to fix other people's Skyrim problems they've somehow and most assuredly screwed up MY previously problem free Skyrim.

[nosisab]

The answer is yet the same, most reports about crashes and fall to desktop are due to something else, for most reports including myself is that patch did a hell of good job for the general performance and fixed a number of unpleasant quest bugs.

I had some crashes too but in the end was because of mods. Notice I don't blame the modders, just that in this stage things are still changing too fast and claiming for frequent updates. The user must be aware of this when installing the mods, mainly the plugins DLL based or linked to them from external scripts.

Just to give an example: Script Dragon was updated today, but most plugins for it don't. Despite this, one the plugins stating it is for 1.3.10 still works, the "Auto Stats and perks" (I had no crash I could link to it yet), on the other hand another plugin, the "Extra Hotkeys", albeit being updated today (sadly it's description fails to state the version it is meant) crashed when using the function keys, what means it still needs some more bugfix.

PS: SKSE too have yet a few plugins outdated which can lead to immediate crashes, one I can report doing so (for to the moment I'm writing this it was not yet updated) is the "container categorization", all the others I use for gaming or testing purposes are working nicely, what includes the SkyUI, Categorized Favorites Menu and CFM for mods.

Edited by nosisab, 03 February 2012 - 05:08 PM.

[elvinkun]

The patch, for the very first time, seems to actually fix a few things without causing even more bugs...but the CTDs, yeah... I'm pretty sure I had more crashes in last few days than in the two months before that, usually during loading, and i'm also pretty sure it's not a coincidence. Tryied without mods, skse and all performance mods, but no luck. I'd say it's one of the usual Bethesda "Ups, won't work on some system for some reason" patches.

And yeah, thumbs up for both Beth and Steam for forced patching, despite of settings, way to go.

Edited by elvinkun, 03 February 2012 - 06:02 PM.

[ShadowHuntr]

The answer is yet the same, most reports about crashes and fall to desktop are due to something else, for most reports including myself is that patch did a hell of good job for the general performance and fixed a number of unpleasant quest bugs.

I had some crashes too but in the end was because of mods. Notice I don't blame the modders, just that in this stage things are still changing too fast and claiming for frequent updates. The user must be aware of this when installing the mods, mainly the plugins DLL based or linked to them from external scripts.

Once more. I'm not running mods. Since trying a handful early on I've been running Vanilla Skyrim and I certainly didn't accept or use any mod at all that repleced any Skyrim data files... let alone DLLs or used external scripts. Much to early for that in my book. Point being - to specifically wait until a much more finalized version of Skyrim was out and modders around the world could then gear work towards that version.

Oddly enough I didn't have the problems so many others were having so much of. For some reason or other on my computer vanilla Skyrim ran just fine. My machine's performance had been solid. For some reason I didn't run into broken quests or odd quest updates. I didn't have system slow-downs or CTDs even with near ultra settings. My savegames weren't inflating. Indoors or outdoors, crowded city, room, or alone in the game's wilderness... narry a problem. Now, WITHOUT mods running (perhaps I didn't make that part really clear), this ubdate comes along - and I suddenly start having real problems - and, LngMAO, for some reason people keep trying to say it's because of problems with mods (which, to reitterate, are not installed, plugged in, or running) not being up to date. It's really a sort of comical Monty Python type of moment in a way.

Notice I didn't blame any modders either.. just STEAM and their deliberate forced updating.

Well to avoid reading another "It's a mod version versus skyrim version problem" reply right off again I think I'll go eat lunch first. I thnk my ironic funny-bone will be much more intact after bringing my blood sugar back into normal range.

[nosisab]

Well, I tried to sort out some possible causes of your crashes, for somewhat long experience with modding Bethesda games taught me than most of times is not enough to disable mods (mainly if it means only disabling the ESPs), sometimes even changes in the load order can cause instabilities and sometimes prevent saved games load... And sometimes, not always, a previous save game may become unstable after the patch, this last case may be hard to solve sometimes or be easily solved overwriting that save, but would be an unfortunate situation if one is to adopt the patch which is sometimes unavoidable if willing to have mods in game.

Even then, the ini files could be tweaked wrong... a lot of reasons including the patch can indeed have introduced instabilities in some systems or setups. Glad it did not for me, not at least on something I noticed.

And yes, I shun that forced update, the reason I learned to keep Steam blocked on the firewall, except since the beta test to which I willing applied.

Anyway I want to perform a test on something I noticed before and will report on Edit in this post.

Edit: Yes, it was not illusion, I put steam offline, did exit it, disconnected from the internet, restarted Steam, it of course asked to connect or start offline, chose this last and started Skyrim normally. The only thing I did not try in that experience was shutdown the computer at all. Did a second test putting it off line from online status with the connection down and restarted it and still got it to start off line with the connection still down. So, maybe it is not forcing check before going off line anymore?

Anyway, made me lost some seconds till it canceled the attempt to update itself...

Maybe things are not so "immutable" if enough people complain...

Edited by nosisab, 03 February 2012 - 07:27 PM.

[rabidNode]

This entire scenario with Steam is an absolute freakin mess.
script extenders having to keep up but then some of us do not update and lose support for the script extenders. No one has the manual patch to actually take a look at it and mod it or alter to create a community patch like in the past. Steam simply does not have a way to turn off auto updating besides always in offline mode.

As far as I am concerned just give us the base game and keep the damn patches and let the community mod it all and fix it. At least here with the script extenders and other such things there is actual communication and an attempt to work together. Steam talking to Bethesda or not talking to them then not talking to the community. I am not really sure whose brilliant idea this was but they completely changed their approach and way of doing things and have over time negatively and heavily impacted one of the greatest and most advanced modding community.

The next TES game will probably have half as many mods and community and the CK will likely be owned by Steam or a similar company. sigh...

[mcgtron]

after the 1.4 patch, i updated SKSE and removed SkyBoost. upon playing the game i was getting CTDs for the first time in months, my framerates were constantly dropping into the 20s (i have a powerful rig and used to play at 50+ at all times), and i was getting odd glitches and random wierdness. after reading a ton of posts about this, i decided to take a scorched earth approach.

i uninstalled Skyrim, uninstalled NMM, then went to my Steam\Common\Skyrim folder and deleted it, then went to my C:\Games\Skyrim folder and deleted it, then deleted everything in the Documents\My Games\Skyrim folder *except* for the Saves folder, which I left alone.

next i uninstalled my video drivers, and installed the latest version, defragged my HDD, and rebooted my system.

after that i reinstalled Skyrim, let Steam install all of the patches, edited my .ini files to my preferences (7 uGrids & some other minor tweaks), installed NMM, SKSE, and then reinstalled most of the mods i was using (SkyUI, SkyrimHD, and many others - but NOT SkyBoost which does not support patch 1.4). i loaded up the game and behold - i get a solid 50-60 FPS everywhere, on Ultra, everything maxxed, 7 uGrids, and this time i installed the Full version of SkyrimHD, whereas before i was running the Lite version.

so - even though i was SURE that the patch borked the game, it turns out that it was something that i did, or that one of the mods i was using did, or one of my .ini tweaks. the point is - it was my fault and it was fixable.

to all of you who are experiencing issues - did you try doing what i did? and i mean everything - especially deleteing the folders (just uninstalling and reinstalling does NOT create a truly fresh install). if you haven't, then i suggest you try it. it took me several hours, but it was worth it to play Skyrim in glorious HD at rock-solid FPS after the work was done.

[Lunytic]

This entire scenario with Steam is an absolute freakin mess.
script extenders having to keep up but then some of us do not update and lose support for the script extenders. No one has the manual patch to actually take a look at it and mod it or alter to create a community patch like in the past. Steam simply does not have a way to turn off auto updating besides always in offline mode.

Not accepting the updates is short-sighted. By SKSE only supporting the current game version, this makes the community as a whole migrate to the same version of software.

Which at first seems worthy of complaining about, but actually helps the community greatly. Only have to support one version of a software, rather than support multiple versions with different code makes their life easier and more efficient. There is always a little lag-time before the code for all the plugins can be updated, but it's a relatively minor amount of time.

This way of doing it isn't as user friendly up front as it's been in the past, but with SKSE and ScriptDragon and who knows what else eventually, only having 1 version will make it far more user friendly in the long run. It's just that frustration in the long-run is spread out of the years Skyrim will have a healthy playing/modding community and the short-run issue is more visible as many people have the same issue at the same time.

The more versions of a software you try to support the more headaches you cause in the long run. I personally prefer it this way. A couple of days of doing other things while SKSE and SD + plugins get updated and then back to the fun. Rather than having issues everytime a new must-have mod comes out that has people on multiple different versions of Skyrim, SKSE, and Script dragon running around clamoring for support.

*Edited for clarity*

Edited by Lunytic, 03 February 2012 - 11:30 PM.

[Tidus44]

after the 1.4 patch, i updated SKSE and removed SkyBoost. upon playing the game i was getting CTDs for the first time in months, my framerates were constantly dropping into the 20s (i have a powerful rig and used to play at 50+ at all times), and i was getting odd glitches and random wierdness. after reading a ton of posts about this, i decided to take a scorched earth approach.

i uninstalled Skyrim, uninstalled NMM, then went to my Steam\Common\Skyrim folder and deleted it, then went to my C:\Games\Skyrim folder and deleted it, then deleted everything in the Documents\My Games\Skyrim folder *except* for the Saves folder, which I left alone.

next i uninstalled my video drivers, and installed the latest version, defragged my HDD, and rebooted my system.

after that i reinstalled Skyrim, let Steam install all of the patches, edited my .ini files to my preferences (7 uGrids & some other minor tweaks), installed NMM, SKSE, and then reinstalled most of the mods i was using (SkyUI, SkyrimHD, and many others - but NOT SkyBoost which does not support patch 1.4). i loaded up the game and behold - i get a solid 50-60 FPS everywhere, on Ultra, everything maxxed, 7 uGrids, and this time i installed the Full version of SkyrimHD, whereas before i was running the Lite version.

so - even though i was SURE that the patch borked the game, it turns out that it was something that i did, or that one of the mods i was using did, or one of my .ini tweaks. the point is - it was my fault and it was fixable.

to all of you who are experiencing issues - did you try doing what i did? and i mean everything - especially deleteing the folders (just uninstalling and reinstalling does NOT create a truly fresh install). if you haven't, then i suggest you try it. it took me several hours, but it was worth it to play Skyrim in glorious HD at rock-solid FPS after the work was done.

Thanx for the advice and a post that made sense instead of a continuing whine about Steam.

Followed your advice and every problem I had in Skyrim is now gone and the game runs smooth as silk. Yeah, its a bit of a pain, but it worked.

Kudo's to you!

[Jeffro80]

I was completely stable under 1.3 but been having crashes with 1.4. Only mods I have is SkyUI (using skse). To make it worse my quicksave no longer works, so when it crashes I lose everything up to my last save point. And deleting save games out of the menu doesnt work either anymore. Annoying