Cyan's *Must-Have* Skyrim Mod Recommendation Super-Gush Thread - daily updates

[Shifty Geezer]

What's the gameplay bug situation like? I associate Elder Scrolls games with necessary patches to make the thing work, and considering everyone produces bugged games needing patches these days, logic would suggest bugs would remain an issue. But then it could be that Bethesda have sorted out their QA and this one works nicely. so, do we get NPCs running off preventing you from finishing quests, and that sort of thing?

 

[Sigfried1977]

So far it seems surprisingly polished. No issues besides a single system crash in about 25 hours. Maybe it was just luck, though. You never know with a game as complex as this I guess. Heck, supposedly some people didn't have any issues with the release version of New Vegas either (which I find nearly impossible to believe)

 

[assurdum]

hm... you mean drop triple buffer and v-sync if the framerate goes really bad?

Yeah, to be more specific why not drop triple buffer and v-sync only when the input controls become terribly laggy? Isn't it feasible? I mean, a lot of games on 360 drop vsync only when you tries to shot an enemies moving the cross sight or to hit him exactly how does the last skyrim in the close combat... I think most of player even would notice that because they are totally absorbed to the gameplay..

 

[N_B]

What's the gameplay bug situation like? I associate Elder Scrolls games with necessary patches to make the thing work, and considering everyone produces bugged games needing patches these days, logic would suggest bugs would remain an issue. But then it could be that Bethesda have sorted out their QA and this one works nicely. so, do we get NPCs running off preventing you from finishing quests, and that sort of thing?

The worst bug I've had is a companion disappearing. Told my dog to wait, went outside, and never saw him again

 

[Antan]

No crashes or bugs in the PS3 version Shifty.

 

[rabidrabbit]

The worst bug I've had is a companion disappearing. Told my dog to wait, went outside, and never saw him again

That's not necessarily a bug. The dog might have just ran away, stolen or eaten
Edit: Oh, you left the dog inside, then it sounds more like a bug, unless there was a backdoor and someone left it open.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

What's the gameplay bug situation like? I associate Elder Scrolls games with necessary patches to make the thing work, and considering everyone produces bugged games needing patches these days, logic would suggest bugs would remain an issue. But then it could be that Bethesda have sorted out their QA and this one works nicely. so, do we get NPCs running off preventing you from finishing quests, and that sort of thing?

The bug situation on the PS3 is shocking. I've sunk well over 20 hours into the game so far and have experienced zero freezes or progression-halting bugs. So yeah, shocking. There are odd glitches, such as the person you're talking too being drowned out by nearby NPCs or sound effects but that's the worst I have witnessed thus far. My longest play session was six hours and I can attest to others opinions that the longer you play a Bethesda game the buggier it becomes, often necessitating a quit and restart (Oblivion and Fallout 3).

I tend to give Bethesda some slack for their bugs because in such an open world where the dynamics of gameplay and environment interaction are so wide that some combinations of events are unpredictable and therefore much harder to test, but I am pleasantly surprised by my experience so far.

Sent from my iPad using Forum Runner

 

[assurdum]

The opening didn't stutter for me at all. Overall I'm very pleased. It's addicting as hell, much better thought out than Oblivion was in terms of character progression, and whatever they did to get rid of the aliasing works like a charm. Very clean looking game. Very solid performance as well. You can even make a fairly attractive looking character, both male and female, in a matter of minutes. The only thing that's bugging me a bit is some truly awful texture repetition. Seeing a hill from a slight distance that's been covered in 20 identical texture tiles looks rather cheap. I guess that's just the price you have to pay when a game as huge as Skyrim that also sports a tv season worth of voice overs barely fills out a dvd.

I don't know what's going on here... I have seen a bunch of videos where in some it's tolerable in others a completely disaster, especially in the first combat... I can't said whether it's caused to the different HDD or a glitch...

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I don't know what's going on here... I have seen a bunch of videos where in some it's tolerable in others a completely disaster, especially in the first combat... I can't said whether it's caused to the different HDD or a glitch...

My intro was also smooth (I played it twice) and I was expecting otherwise from the reports of those who received the game earlier than I did (last Thursday). PlayStation3 performance, from one machine to the next, should be a constant, so maybe it is the HDD that is causing such variable experiences.

I have an EU launch 60Gb (fat) PS3 but upgraded the HDD to a 7200rpm 320Gb drive about 18-20 months ago and it's around about half full. I don't game an awful lot so it's probably in pretty good condition.

It would be interesting is the game compared to itself on the same machine: one installation on clean or fairly clean HDD with plenty of free space and one with little HDD space to spare.

 

[Gerry]

The worst bug I've had is a companion disappearing. Told my dog to wait, went outside, and never saw him again

That's one of the saddest things I've ever read.

 

[Antan]

That's one of the saddest things I've ever read.

A toast! Wherever he/she may be, whichever path he/she took, may he/she continue life to the fullest! L.I.P

 

[warcrow]

I played some more over the weekend and hit level 41. My Smithing, Heavy Armor, and Blocking are all level 100. My single-handed skill is at level 96, so I should be able to hit 100 tonight.

I've crafted a complete Dragon bone plate set (including shield) with a Deadric sword (base damage 34). At this point my guy is only susceptible to magic damage. Last night I went into a dungeon and stood there for 5 minutes while two ghost smashed their maces against my face and my health never went below 97%. I did, however, get smacked down from an Elder frost dragon, and it was almost a relief because I thought the game was had reached an unbalance.

My next goal is to reach level 100 in Enchanting and power up my primary armor and sword.

Oh, also, the Bradly CE guide for this game is insane. It has everything, and it's something like 650 pages!

 

[BoardBonobo]

I met one section where the game froze and required the PS3 to be hard reset. But when I started again I was exactly at the point it crashed so I lost nothing.

I've seen a few graphical glitches, floating bodies, heads stuck in scenery. I met a few invisible corpses that you can search for things.

Last night I met a mammoth which was cool it looked like it was being shepherded by a giant. Is this the case?

 

[Arwin]

I've heard a while ago on a podcast about someone meeting a Giant who was hearding sheep, so that makes some sense. When he tried to talk to it it just clubbed him to death with one blow.

 

[Deleted member 11852]

I've heard a while ago on a podcast about someone meeting a Giant who was hearding sheep, so that makes some sense. When he tried to talk to it it just clubbed him to death with one blow.

Giant behaviour seems dependant on the situation. I stumbled, literally, into a giant and it did nothing more than look at me curiously. I tried to talk to it a couple of times (the 'press X to talk' prompt) but this illicited no response and we parted on our merry ways.

My next encounter, assuming all giants were non-hostile, resulted in me being smashed about 60ft into the air. I approached two giants and some mammoths boldly, the mammoths became agitated very quickly - stamping their feet and so on - and then one of the giants started waving his club or whatever blunt weapon he had, then when I didn't move, took two swift steps toward me and sent me into orbit.. insta-death.

I think they may be generally non-hostile but protective of their steeds. Whatever, they are way out of my league to kill - I give them a wide berth now.

 

[deathindustrial]

So far I have had one hard lockup on the PS3 after about 10 hours. There are inconsistent pauses when entering the cross bar menu which is minorly annoying because stick actions are queued up which means that sometimes I end up deep in a menu I didn't intend if I forget to wait a second before swinging the stick. I am also not convinced that the autosave always works as yesterday not too long after an autosave occurred I was killed but the restore put me back at my last formal save instead.

I find the perks menu super frustrating to navigate both with the sticks and D-Pad. Also, the spells "favourites" menu is kind of slow to use - it needs an option to fire the chosen spell directly instead of having to map it to a button first.

Those niggles aside however the game is pretty awesome so far.

 

[BoardBonobo]

I've heard a while ago on a podcast about someone meeting a Giant who was hearding sheep, so that makes some sense. When he tried to talk to it it just clubbed him to death with one blow.

I've stayed clear of giants so far and the mammoths. They just look a little too big for me to handle yet!!

Quite awesome to watch them wandering across the plains!

 

[Deleted member 11852]

There are inconsistent pauses when entering the cross bar menu which is minorly annoying because stick actions are queued up which means that sometimes I end up deep in a menu I didn't intend if I forget to wait a second before swinging the stick. I am also not convinced that the autosave always works as yesterday not too long after an autosave occurred I was killed but the restore put me back at my last formal save instead.

I've since switched all the auto-save options off (which results in a much snappier game experience) but before I did this I noticed when I died, it reloaded from my last manual save and not the last auto-save. Either the auto-save is broken or Bethesda changed its behaviour in Skyrim to be incomprehensible.

I find the perks menu super frustrating to navigate both with the sticks and D-Pad. Also, the spells "favourites" menu is kind of slow to use - it needs an option to fire the chosen spell directly instead of having to map it to a button first.

I much preferred Oblivion's quick select system because it gave you 8 options at your fingertips. I trust you know that you can assign items to the left and right d-pad buttons by holding them down while an item/spell is selected?

 

[Cyan]

That's not necessarily a bug. The dog might have just ran away, stolen or eaten
Edit: Oh, you left the dog inside, then it sounds more like a bug, unless there was a backdoor and someone left it open.

I think I saw him hanging on the mouth of another dog a few minutes ago. :smile: Now,seriously, it's such a fan anecdote.

Maybe a dragon took him... I wish your character could sprout wings and fly so that you could find the dragon and follow it for hours and hours just to see where he goes.

As for companions, I wish I had a pet bat. And he would hang on my shoulder calmly and I would feed him peaches and I think his name would be Charlie.

On a different note, Only a few days left! but since I don't have the game for now, meanwhile I'd like to pay tribute to Jeremy Soule and his fabulous soundtrack, which in some cases gives me goose bumps -- I shiver and get the chills easily when listening to some of these songs. I would love to listen to some of these themes if they were reworked in Skyrim. Anyways, the orchestras do The Elder Scroll songs justice, except for the mono sound when the clip was uploaded to Youtube, these are some nice pieces.

The first one is a song I loved in Oblivion:


This is one I didn't listen to in Skyrim, for obvious reasons, but it sounds fantastic to me


Orchestral theme


Another nice theme performed by another orchestra


Part of the Oblivion soundtrack


Skyrim on the piano, so glamorous.



And this is one of his themes in TA, a real time strategy game that I played back in 1997, when I didn't know a thing about The Elder Scrolls series. In fact I discovered TES pretty "late" in life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_CBTZqO83WQ&hd=1

 

[Deleted member 11852]

As for companions, I wish I had a pet bat. And he would hang on my shoulder calmly and I would feed him peaches and I think his name would be Charlie.

Random I know but my hunter in WoW has a bat pet named Charlie. The flapping drives me absolutely insane!

On a different note, Only a few days left! but since I don't have the game for now, meanwhile I'd like to pay tribute to Jeremy Soule and his fabulous soundtrack, which in some cases gives me goose bumps -- I shiver and get the chills easily when listening to some of these songs. I would love to listen to some of these themes if they were reworked in Skyrim. Anyways, the orchestras do The Elder Scroll songs justice, except for the mono sound when the clip was uploaded to Youtube, these are some nice pieces.

I music in Oblivion and Skyrim is phenomenally well done, the main theme seems to be the same score orchestrated differently. I think I read the choir they used to sing the Skyrim theme was sung in the game's native language - which is an impressive feat. Unfortunately iTunes (UK) don't carry it