Bug-i-ness

[Brandy1123]

First off, I don't plan on this being a rant or flame against Bethesda. They bring us countless hourse, days, weeks and months of sheer gaming pleasure. Thats not to say, we as gamers don't find frustrations in our game play, but if you think about what we get for our $$, its not a bad trade.

 

I, myself, dislike Steam and have for many, many years. I tire of the ever staggering diconnects and the thoughts that THEY have to be involved with my personal gaming. I can not stand the crap spamming I get on launch. I paid for gaming. Gaming I chose to look at and load. Not them to get a profit from my gaming habits AND spam me with all the garbage they want. *sigh* anyways...back to the "bugs"...

 

I walked the entire circumference of the available map. Climbed to the top of the throat not using roads, swam the length of all the rivers and even died several times going over waterfalls and into crevaces.I have gotten stuck more times then I believe even they at "B" could have anticipated. I have seen and played through a lot of broken quests with books and stones and instruments and weapons and some just flashed across that they were not attainable for whatever reasons.

 

Here's my first issue. Why can't a quest item NOT be able to be picked up until the quest spawns?. With all the other boundary/item/collisions being calculated, is it that much more to set a flag for the quest being spawned? Or for that matter, Have it - the quest - auto spawn on "touch". Counsole commands to rid yourself of vagrant or persistant items is a bad choice. You may think a quest is broken, but really it's not. Sometimes the person needs to be doing something (else) then what they are doing when you try and talk to them. So, you actually break the quest by advancing it by command. Then, events based on that incident may not happen and it further complictes things.

 

Big things i have a real hard time enjoying my gaming expericene is the distance a follow stays, or doesn't stay. The pushing, crouding, blocking in. Come on Bethesda. I understand with elevation changes and wireframe collision that the NPC needs to stay close, but to the point of wearing my armor... am i'm still in it? The other gripe I have are persistant NPC's. Once I do enough damage to them, they should not be a combatant for "X" number of hours. If I can't kill them, then don't have them stand back up in 12 seconds with 50%+ health and fully tracking/attacking me. Windhelm and the thieves guild are horrible for this.

 

My map looks like a pin coushon of findings. Each one traversed to but not necessarily cleared. It's amazing the depth and available places to go and see. For a rendered graphics visual experience, its nothing short of breathtaking. Good people at Bethesda, your work on the graphics in simply astounding. A little less dumb down for us PC players would have been nice. A few larger bugs to iron out and you'd have a masterpiece. For now it's a bit more then the "ridgy" nose our dedicated and talented modders seem to have to patch around.

 

On to Character 2. I might even go looking for a house karl I can call my own this time. Cheers!!! Have some honningbrew private reserve on me!!

Edited December 20, 2011 by Brandy_123

[RitchieTheMerc]

I agree with you about Steam. I've only just got into PC gaming. I don't have a very good PC at the moment, but I can run games like Fallout New Vegas very smoothly on Low (XD) so it's OK I guess. But anyway, it annoys me that I HAVE to have Steam connected (I know you can disconnect or play offline), but it's annoying that you have to start it up every time you want to play.

I wish we could just go back to when PC games could just go like this - Insert disk, install, play. No BS about Steam updates and crap.

 

OT: It has been quite annoying for me with Skyrim glitches as well. Although I can get good FPS on New Vegas, my computer can't play Skyrim. (But I'm getting a gaming PC in about a month or two, so ya XD).

So, because I can't play on PC, I bought Skyrim for the PS3, and I have to say it is a really bad port. I mean seriously, I expected to be able to pick up the game and play it. Which I could...for a while. After a while, the framerate dropped lower and lower as my save game size increased. A few WEEKS later a patch was released. It fixed the problem, but now I sometimes have EXTREMELY long loading screens, and other errors.

 

Ah well, I'll be in the land of PC gaming soon enough :) Where third-party mods and unofficial patches will (hopefully) fix all my problems. Plus mods!

But for now, I wil be playing the Hell out of New Vegas with mods!

 

Happy gaming!

[debuskjt]

Here's my first issue. Why can't a quest item NOT be able to be picked up until the quest spawns?. With all the other boundary/item/collisions being calculated, is it that much more to set a flag for the quest being spawned? Or for that matter, Have it - the quest - auto spawn on "touch". Counsole commands to rid yourself of vagrant or persistant items is a bad choice. You may think a quest is broken, but really it's not. Sometimes the person needs to be doing something (else) then what they are doing when you try and talk to them. So, you actually break the quest by advancing it by command. Then, events based on that incident may not happen and it further complictes things.

Why would you do this? I've used very few console commands to fix quests. Not that many are bugged for everyone. And I only did so after Googling the quest, ensuring it was indeed a bug, and then following directions verified by other players. Just advancing a quest because something didn't seem immediately apparent seems like a setup for mistakes.

[David Brasher]

So, because I can't play on PC, I bought Skyrim for the PS3, and I have to say it is a really bad port.

 

This is fascinating to hear you say this. I have Skyrim on PC, and I have been complaining to everyone that it is a really bad port. (Maybe they built it for the X-Box 360 and ported it to the other two systems?) On the PC, the game cannot accurately sense where your cursor is pointing while you are in menu mode and you can easily click on the wrong thing and have something unintentional happen in your game. The menu layout does not utilize large numbers of keys on the keyboard, so you have to go through lots of menus and do lots of clicks to complete an action. This makes me think the interface was designed for a console game system and not a PC with a mouse and large keyboard.

 

I have been annoyed by quest items too. I have several that have served their purpose, and the quests are completed, but I can't drop them unless I dig up some console codes.

 

I had my main quest bug up so badly that I couldn't go on and I had to experiment for a half hour before I finally hit the right console codes to get it back on track. (One of the quest givers was trying to kill me and my companion for no reason at all, and there was no way to make her stop attacking. She couldn't be killed, and if I had been able to kill her, then she wouldn't be able to play her part in the main quest, and I would have been unable to finish.)

 

I don't see why Steam is any sort of advantage to anyone really. I think achievements are lame. I mainly only play characters of a certain alignment, and I don't imagine I will every get the achievements earned by those of the other alignment. I don't like that little immersion-breaking box to pop up while I am playing and inform me that I have achieved something random and irrelevant that I wasn't even striving to achieve.

Edited December 20, 2011 by David Brasher

[Seviche]

I'm not bothered by being able to pick up quest items before I have the quest. I'm bothered by not being able to put them down after I find their owner and give it to them. I learned the hard way that "Tom's Lute" or "Gregor's Toenail Clipper" is something that should be left alone until someone asks you to get it for them. There's just no appreciation for pro-active people in Skyrim.

 

I'm not bothered by Steam, but after reading some of the recent threads on that bugaboo-like topic, it appears that my not hating on Steam 'till my saliva foams like a rabid wombat makes me some sort of moral deviant. I can accept that.

 

I am bothered by the appearance of a lack of PC love for Skyrim. The obvious console-bias in the interface, which is quite the fiddly mess on a PC, is something of an embarrassment for a game this good. It's like buying a top of the line luxury car and discovering that all the knobs for the interior are made out of cheap plastic with that crappy pseudo-nickle chrome coating (which promptly flakes off the first time you go to adjust the radio). Sure, it's still a top-of-the-line automobile that accelerates like a cheetah with it's ass on fire, but what idiot decided to skimp on the details like that? How did they keep their job? Simply saying "Oh, the aftermarket people will take care of that for you" doesn't pass the smell test.

 

Still, I love the game to pieces and I can't wait for the CK to come out. It's going to be such a better game when the modsmiths are done with it. So. Much. Better. :thumbsup:

[Brandy1123]

The controls are a pain in your behinder. When you accidentally grab everything from a chest when you click something, swapping "R" and "F" keys, remapping a space bar it s a horrible thing done to us PC users. They make a fantastic game, then dumb it down to a console that was released in 2002. Makes you wonder how frame rate drop, particle count and shadowing can possibly be a problem on a mid to upper end PC rig. Turn AA of - turn it on, buffer it, let shadow filtering go and turn down anisotropic filtering... THAT should make things better for your $3K custom system. OR, just buy a $150, 10 year old game system and it will run just fine.

 

What was I thinking!!!!

[Sheralynn]

The controls are a pain in your behinder. When you accidentally grab everything from a chest when you click something, swapping "R" and "F" keys, remapping a space bar it s a horrible thing done to us PC users. They make a fantastic game, then dumb it down to a console that was released in 2002. Makes you wonder how frame rate drop, particle count and shadowing can possibly be a problem on a mid to upper end PC rig. Turn AA of - turn it on, buffer it, let shadow filtering go and turn down anisotropic filtering... THAT should make things better for your $3K custom system. OR, just buy a $150, 10 year old game system and it will run just fine.

 

What was I thinking!!!!

 

And this tells you it was tailor made for Xbox. Now to have created something like Skyrim on a machine with only 512MB is nothing short of a miracle. A tremendous feat for Beth. But then to have it run so poorly on PC's with easily 8 times to processing power.. seems like the PC was little more then an afterthought. It was ported to the PC but hardly optimized.

The very first thing that struck me when I first got my hands on my copy was the relatively small size off the game. Compared to some other recent games that are nearly double in size. And this was supposed to hold the entire world of Skyrim somehow? With all those unique locations we were promised? Same answer applies. Yes they managed to squeeze everything into the package but not to make a better game but to keep within the limitations of Xbox. Same goes for other things like the UI thats purely designed for controllers and works horrible with kb and mouse.

 

I do not hold it against Beth for going for the money and catering to Microsoft so obviously. In the end they are just another company whose primary goal is to make money. What I do hold against them is giving their PC base second class treatment. They have gotten tremendous amount of love from the PC gaming community throughout the years, improving their games and keeping them alive long after the expiration date. Giving us the cold shoulder just because we are less profitable. Still bringing in tons of money, just not as quick and and as much as the console version sales. As a PC games my opinion of Bethesda has changed in that after this Skyrim, which I intend to make to most of, I wont be looking for them for future releases. To me the future of PC gaming looks to be in smaller companies still aim for the PC market like CD Projekt. Let them take over this segment of the market seeing Bethesda doesn't really deserve it anymore.

[csgators]

I'm not bothered by being able to pick up quest items before I have the quest. I'm bothered by not being able to put them down after I find their owner and give it to them. I learned the hard way that "Tom's Lute" or "Gregor's Toenail Clipper" is something that should be left alone until someone asks you to get it for them. There's just no appreciation for pro-active people in Skyrim.

 

I'm not bothered by Steam, but after reading some of the recent threads on that bugaboo-like topic, it appears that my not hating on Steam 'till my saliva foams like a rabid wombat makes me some sort of moral deviant. I can accept that.

 

I am bothered by the appearance of a lack of PC love for Skyrim. The obvious console-bias in the interface, which is quite the fiddly mess on a PC, is something of an embarrassment for a game this good. It's like buying a top of the line luxury car and discovering that all the knobs for the interior are made out of cheap plastic with that crappy pseudo-nickle chrome coating (which promptly flakes off the first time you go to adjust the radio). Sure, it's still a top-of-the-line automobile that accelerates like a cheetah with it's ass on fire, but what idiot decided to skimp on the details like that? How did they keep their job? Simply saying "Oh, the aftermarket people will take care of that for you" doesn't pass the smell test.

 

Still, I love the game to pieces and I can't wait for the CK to come out. It's going to be such a better game when the modsmiths are done with it. So. Much. Better. :thumbsup:

 

Sadly on my latest play through I made sure to get the quest for Finns Lute before I found it. I still have the damn thing!!!!! This lute is killing me!