The size of save files was not the cause of framerate issues affecting PS3 players of The Elder Scrolls V: Skryim, Bethesda claims.
Speaking to Kotaku, chief game designer Todd Howard said that the problem, which reduced PS3 framerates to single figures in places and was finally patched last week, was in fact far more complicated in nature.
"The way our dynamic stuff and scripting works, it's obvious it gets in situations where it taxes the PS3," he said. "And we felt we had a lot of it under control. But for certain users it literally depends on how they play the game, varied over a hundred hours and literally what spells they use.
"No it's not [connected to save files]. That's the common misconception. It's literally the things you've done in what order and what's running. Some of the things are literally what spells do you have hot-keyed? Because, as you switch them, they handle memory differently."
Howard claims that the problem was largely fixed with the 1.2 update, released in November, though there are plenty of PS3 players who would dispute that. Bethesda asked those still having problems to send them their save files for analysis. Patch 1.4, released last week, appears to have finally taken care of the problem for the vast majority of players.
"Now that we've been through this, we're not naive enough to say we've seen everything, because we have to assume we haven't," Howard said. "There are still going to be some people who have to come back to us and say: 'Okay, my situation is this.' Send us your save game. We literally need to look at what you have running.
"We [had] one guy who had seven dragons on the other side of the world, and a siege about to happen in this city and another 20 quests running. And, okay, this is what it's trying to do and it's having a hard time running that."
All of which is fine, but Bethesda did little to correct that "misconception," asking affected players to send in their save files for analysis and with each patch addressing the issue causing save files to reduce in size.
Howard also insisted: "We did a ton more testing this time around, so the game is definitely our most solid release regardless of platform." It's all relative, admittedly, but how many Skyrim players go through the game without a sprawling list of open quests dotted all over the map? It's the way the game is meant to be played so should it not, therefore, have been tested in the same way?
Source: Kotaku
Comments
3Bethesda did little to correct that "misconception"? Excuse me, but since when was it Bethesda's fault that everyone and their dog jumps to conclusions about the cause of the problem? A save file is going to contain all the information they would need to know about how a player's game has progressed; I mean, asking them to hand over a save file merely to see its size would be making a rather simplistic assumption of the nature of the issue wouldn't it? A little more humility wouldn't go amiss in the realisation that everyone who made this size-based assumption was wrong.
Now the game runs but the visuals suck. Simple trade off - quality vs. frame rate. Obviously the ambition has overtaken the tech know how when it comes to the development/authoring of the PS3 version of their 'brand new' game engine.
If they're devoting processing power to actions taking place on the other side of the world then it's not gonna work is it? My 10 yr old cousin knows that. It's bloody stupid. And why don't dragons go and hassle someone else after a while. What they're saying there is that once a dragon appears somewhere, it stays there forever. Even if you never go back to where you saw it. Forever after that, the system is processing it's position and having it chase sheep and kill bandits and all the other shit that goes along with that. It's fucking naive to think that's plausible never mind sensible in a game like this. You don't need a degree or a wage or anything other than common sense to know that.
The 20 quests and seven dragons comment in the article makes it sound like Bethesda are saying its our fault that the game is broken. It's not our fault guys, it's yours, and you should be ashamed. NO play tester ever noticed that this 'lag' flaw existed? Nobody noticed that the game suddenly just runs like shit after a while? Nobody noticed that the simple act of moving was stressing the engine/machine/whatever perameter they blame this week (delete as appropriate) after a few hours of gameplay? Mr Howard seems blissfully unaware that after the 'fix' the game now looks like a PS2 title. Never has a videogame developer ever had to defend themselves for shipping a broken game and making it worse instead of better with every patch. Morons. You're not helping us guys, you're trying to atone for conning us in the first place.
If I was a play tester and my PS3 was crashing once an hour during testing, I may take that as a sign that the code sucks ass. I don't think I'd be wrong. I do think that Bethesda would ignore my feedback. They obviously did.
I will never pay full price for a Bethesda title again. They ship whatever is in the can at the deadline, customers be damned. GAME OF THE FUCKING YEAR? Ludicrous.
It does sound like a bit of a cop-out, to suggest it was the extent to which someone amassed quests available to them, and met with but didn't kill dragons, that was the cause. The way the engine was modified from Oblivion clearly couldn't cope with all this going on on the PS3. But then there was probably no reason early to believe it would be an issue on said machine. So what can they do? Hope that not too many folks would suffer the problem? Hope that most PS3 players would take on quests a couple at a time and finish them before moving onto more? Probably.
One wonders if they'll ever be able to squeeze out the performance desired in the manner required in this engine on the PS3. There's little point in shouting at them for it, though there should be some sort of recompense (free wallet money perhaps? I dunno) for those suffering in what was either a stupid mistake in missing it during testing, or an episode of "shit, ah well, fingers crossed, there's nothing we can do now!".