Does anyone else get burned out on Skyrim technical issues?

[NiftyPower]

Even though I understand that I can't expect a game with this scope, and this many potential mods to work perfectly, I get burned out on all the bugs, especially the CTDs. I don't know where they come from, and I don't know how to fix them, I can't see them coming, and I don't know what to do about them.

 

I enjoy being able to tinker so much with so much, but I am burned out on trying to figure out so many issues with such little info to go on. This happens to me every once and a while, especially since this is my relaxation during time off, and I wonder if anyone else ever feels the same way.

Edited June 24, 2018 by NiftyPower

[tomomi1922]

I think this is the only reason I get burned out from Skyrim and FO4. It's not to say that the games are so great, but I did not get to play the games enough to get burned out on content. This is an irony. Because other games that I love, I spent some 100-200 hours on. Fallout 4 1500 hours, Skyrim SE (I just came back 2 months) already clocked 400 hours. All those hours messing around with mods and fixing them. In FO4, I finished the game once. In Skyrim SE (not counting my old Skyrim time many years ago), I haven't got past level 20.

I am with you on the whole ordeal of not having enough information. Something so simple can be so hard to fix.

[Evangela]

I get burned out trying to work around scripting limitations.

[kthompsen]

I barely CTD on SE like I did Oldrim.. and it's always due to mods. The vanilla game itself is stable... but the more we add on to them, ya never know what'll happen. It becomes like a house of cards. lol

[tomomi1922]

I barely CTD on SE like I did Oldrim.. and it's always due to mods. The vanilla game itself is stable... but the more we add on to them, ya never know what'll happen. It becomes like a house of cards. lol

True that, Skyrim SE is rather stable on its own. But for such an old game (not as old as Oblivion, but definitely not current), it needs some help to retain some attention. To be honest, I bought Skyrim 3 times. First around 2011, lost the DVD. Bought again on Steam just so I could "have it forever". and Skyrim SE came out, I bought it too because it has "all DLCs" without knowing SE is literately a different game than Oldrim.

 

I came back to Skyrim because it has something most games don't: open world with a lot of options (the mods). And also partly I don't want to see anymore abandoned broken buildings in FO4 and feeling guilty to look clean (not immersive). But this dang "open world fantasy" comes with heavy consequences. All these learning curves, these time spent fixing, diagnosing, ... I wish I could just be a dumb user. Why do I have to learn TES5Edit, BAS Extractor, FNIS, Resaver, NIF Optimizer, CK, Wrye Bash ... just so I could play the game in peace?

 

Using about 4x the hours spent in Assassin's Creed Origins to beat that game and did every quest within + DLC, I barely got to level 20 in Skyrim. 3 days straight rescuing Serana 3 times, did that Blood Chalice quest 3 times, I almost knew that Redwater Den inside out. In other games, I would think "What quest am I doing today?" but in Skyrim "what mod am I going to attempt installing today"

[Shivala]

It just takes some time to know what you are doing. Like pure graphical mods (textures) are usually OK to install without any hitches. Script heavy mods? Thread carefully and see if it utilizes SKSE and so on. Read the comments, read the manual and stop and take a pause if you are just guessing at things.

If you stick to those rules you should be OK. The problem is that in order to learn this you need to mess up a couple of times.

 

What I do

 

0) Have vanilla skyrim

1) Save right after the start when you are in the village

2) Slowly add mods, start with basic textures and models.

3) Check if everything ok, play for half an hour, e.g. go to Whiterun.

4) Save your mod profile every now and then.

5) Add the difficult mods that tweak and change things and are script heavy.

6) If you mess up, you always have your vanilla save and probably the profile that worked for you. With steam verify local cache.

 

Thats what works for me.

Edited June 26, 2018 by Shivala

[tomomi1922]

It just takes some time to know what you are doing. Like pure graphical mods (textures) are usually OK to install without any hitches. Script heavy mods? Thread carefully and see if it utilizes SKSE and so on. Read the comments, read the manual and stop and take a pause if you are just guessing at things.

 

If you stick to those rules you should be OK. The problem is that in order to learn this you need to mess up a couple of times.

 

What I do

 

0) Have vanilla skyrim

1) Save right after the start when you are in the village

2) Slowly add mods, start with basic textures and models.

3) Check if everything ok, play for half an hour, e.g. go to Whiterun.

4) Save your mod profile every now and then.

5) Add the difficult mods that tweak and change things and are script heavy.

6) If you mess up, you always have your vanilla save and probably the profile that worked for you. With steam verify local cache.

 

Thats what works for me.

This is what everyone should be doing. In fact, it is not hard to create a Vanilla save even we didn't create one in the past. We can recreate the Vanilla Data folder. The easiest way is to rename Data to Data1 (or anything). Ask Steam to check file integrity, in which it will redownload Data folder for you. Or you can just manually re-create Data folder by copying all Vanilla files over (given you know which one they are). And with MO2, you can simply run the game outside MO2. ENB doesn't bother your save because no data from ENB will be written in your save. Skyrim doesn't even know your ENB exists.

 

But having a save at Helgen doesn't mean a whole lot. Game progression comes with many stages, imagine you are at level 80, if you lose that save, and have to go back to Helgen level 1, how would you feel? Recreating your level 80 with console command is possible, but not fun. Replacing all those items you didn't yet earn feels like you are losing the personal touch. For example: I don't particularly like the Dawnbreaker. But one day I did the quest and got rewarded that weapon, nice surprise! (Because I totally forgot which quest gave Dawnbreaker). So Dawnbreaker means something for my character and myself: that late night I was trying to finish the quest and I kept dying, or someone kept messing something up, or something painful I had to go through (both game and RL) to earn that thing.

 

Again, not going against everything you said above, but all these are not even enough. Here are a few things I ran into that was rather game breaking:

- Looping OSA script, papyrus bloated to 2Gb log file, so glad someone found a fix, I didn't have to go back to old save.

 

- I use Quick Light, and one day the lantern stopped emitting light. It's not a Load Order thing, because old save worked. I tried cleaning with ReSave, uninstall and reinstall Quicklight, no avail. I went back 2 days of progress, would have to redo 3-4 dungeons (have yet to do).

 

- fxRandomDust script ... someone found a fix, thank god no going back to old save.

 

- Better Vampires glitched out, I found a fix. So glad author changed it after I reported. But I had to go back 1-2 days of progress because I don't trust a glitched out vampire.

 

- XPMSSE glitched out, something to do with weapon scaling script ... random CTD + CTD on save. I followed a fix, not sure if it is fixed.

 

- Game still CTD on save yesterday. I couldn't find a reason, going back to old save (5 hours lost) .... it is quite stable ....

 

All of these are problems that don't immediately pop up in my face. So certain mods feel deceptively perfect ... will cause troubles that I will find much later on. OSA has this eye looping script that causes log file to bloat to some 2Gb-3Gb (imagine a text file at 3Gb, that is like the amount of text US library of Congress combined). The only thing is to keep saving a lot with a long list of save files. Each file is around 5-8Mb, at this day and age, can be nothing. But still, the worst thing can happen is random CTD. Because things like black face I can live on. Some of my vampires still have black faces, but since I barely meet them, I don't care anymore.

[Jyotai]

I suppose if we stuck to 'SE as released' we'd not have "as many" CTDs and technical issues... and we'd have a lot more 'credit' yelling at the original developers for any that did occur...

 

But the game would also be long gone from anyone's memory... Something only played by people buying discount CD's in a bin at the local office supply store...