Skyrim Longevity Vs Past TES Games

A place to discuss anything related to The Elder Scrolls V Skyrim. No spoilers here please.
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Maigrets
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This will probably be TL:DR but I don't really care. It's not as detailed as my blog posts about the game, it's virtues and problems, unfinished features (followers and horses among others) and my experience with it, where sometimes I want to forget I ever bought it and other times I love it to death.

Anyway:

I've just been reading through the latest Unofficial patch thread which is very informative regarding the pitfalls and limitations of the game, the CK and using mods. A very enlightening read.
http://forums.bethsoft.com/topic/136686 ... -thread-6/

I use, fully endorse and recommend the Unofficial Patch myself and I believe it has saved me a lot of headaches from previous attempts to play the game compared to the basic patching Bethesda has done for this game. One look at the very long list of fixes should be enough for anyone to wonder why the developers haven't addressed these issues themselves. While some things are edits to wrongly placed statics and other seemingly minor things, a great many of them actually correct issues with quests and bugs that actually break the game in major ways.

This isn't meant to be an :angry: rant about Bethesda, or one of those "This game sucks" threads as I realize a game of this size and complexity is bound to have issues, however due to the fixed release date and apparent lack of attention to these issues I believe they've bought a lot of warranted criticism on themselves. Whether this is due to the business side of things which the developers would probably have little control over or not, I don't know. I do wonder if BGS are planning another patch before the DLC comes out which in my view will be pointless since it's already been done for them, so why would they.

A little history from my Skyrim experience. This will be shorter than it could be however, and just outlines the main issues I've had. I'm actually surprised that I'm still playing the game after all the crap I've had with it, although it has been more stable since 1.5, so I suppose this could actually be seen as a complaining thread depending on your point of view.

Currently I'm playing my 5th character due to save corruption on the others, the messed up Navmesh bug BGS tried to fix with the latest patch and failed, which made house and landmass edits or additions a disaster area and post official patch issues. This is with a vanilla game as well as modded. I did have one house mod that I liked, but now I don't use any because of possible future problems if and when there's another official patch where mods constantly have to be updated.

I have not yet managed to complete the main quest once past the first battle with Alduin at The Throat of the World which is mainly because I want to do it at an appropriate level and don't believe it should be done, or be able to be done early in the game. I'm not blaming anyone for that, it's just how I want to do it considering I'm supposed to saving the world at the height of my power, not as a lowly starter hero. I'm hoping to do it soon with my current character if all goes well.

I played for over 200 hours with my first character from release day with virtually no problems at all on a totally vanilla game, (skipped the 1.2 patch disaster), and suddenly my game started freezing and crashing so much I had to start over. It wasn't a save game bloat issue either as my saves never reached over 12MB. Then for some unknown reason the whole area around Riften and the town itself was a no go zone, which has resolved itself since the 1.5 patch, or by some miracle.

It seems to me that the further I get into the game, ie around level 50 or so, the more quests I do, dungeons explored etc the more the game becomes unstable and starts to falter. I'm a bit of a completionist when it comes to rpg's so if the content is there, I want and should be able to do it, except for things I choose not to do like some of the Daedric quests and the DB because I find them not to my taste.

I had thought about modding until I read about the limitations and bugs in the CK which is contrary to what we were told and more limiting than the Oblivion CS. I know of several well known modders from Morrowind and Oblivion who have mods in stasis because of the navmesh and other bugs that are waiting to be solved. There's also a noticeable absence of other well known great modders creating for this game, or they've already come and gone, back to Oblivion or for good.

On the first page of the thread I linked re the Unofficial Patch there's a good explanation about why mods can so easily mess up this game compared to Oblivion and it makes me wonder how long I'll play Skyrim after I've seen and done all there is to see and do. Which won't be that long since I've done most of it several times and even now find myself avoiding quests because I know what's going to happen and it becomes boring to do them again and again.

I used to play Oblivion with over 200 mods, some of them very complex overhauls and I could troubleshoot nearly any problem I came up against as well as mod it myself. I only stopped playing the game early this year in fact and it was my only constant game since it's release. Not so with Skyrim, and along with some of the other irritations and annoyances it's going to be almost impossible to even come close to that number of mods even though the limit is still 255.

All I can say is I have an extreme love/hate relationship with Skyrim and it's taken six months since release to be able to play it with some degree of confidence I can continue with a character without something going wrong. It's with great trepidation that I add mods now and nothing that adds scripts if I can help it since if I need to remove it that info is in my save for good and I'll be starting over again. Maybe.

I know I'm not alone in this and the longer it takes for the DLC to be released the less likely it will be I'll be playing the game, especially if the DLC is digital only and not released on disc. I don't do digital for a couple of reasons...budget and dislike of download only media.

I'm also aware that many people say they've had no problems with their game after many 100's of hours, but because of so many different PC configurations and other considerations I think they are the lucky ones. The fact I could play successfully myself for over 200 hours tells me something went wrong AFTER release with the incremental patches and having to start over after each one gets to be very annoying.

Now I've got that off my chest and just having one of the never ending loading screens where I couldn't bring up the Task Manager to end the process, (first time it's happened) I'm now about to play for awhile. :roll: I've got two words of the Storm Call shout and I want to try it out somewhere away from friends because it kills them as well, or maybe I'll wait until I get to the end of the main quest... :-o
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it sayingEnd Of The World Switch PLEASE DO NOT TOUCHthe paint wouldn't even have time to dry. Terry Pratchett
Gekko64
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Vanilla Skyrim is way better than Vanilla Oblivion, but I think a heavily modded properly built Oblivion is way better than modded Skyrim at the moment. I'm pretty confident this will change, but it will take a while ( who said years? ) since most modders who had big plans got their projects frozen until the game is fixed :/
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I agree. Vanilla Oblivion is poor in my opinion, but fully modded is pretty amazing, although I've played it to death with every mod that I ever wanted to use. I still have it installed but I doubt I'll go back to it.

Vanilla Skyrim is leagues ahead as it should be, but I wonder if it will be fixed considering the changes to the game engine and that's it's harder to mod because it's more setup as a console game. The CK is a pain to start with all the error messages and then it stops responding for five minutes before I can do anything which doesn't inspire me to actually mod.
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it sayingEnd Of The World Switch PLEASE DO NOT TOUCHthe paint wouldn't even have time to dry. Terry Pratchett
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anohosikara
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Bethesda should correct an error starting the CK soon. That is the negligence. :(
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anohosikara,

let me thank you once more. being able to use FCOM and WAC together has been a dream of mine ever since I've heard about WAC, and you've made it come true where everyone else said it wasn't possible.

I'm constantly left speechless about how magnificent my game world is right now. you never know what amazing beautiful creatures you might meet beyond the next hill, you never know what situations might happen from the interaction between these state-of-the-art overhauls.

I mean I've been attacked by a Sonic Hedgehog and managed to survive thanx to a nearby guard entirely clad in beautiful FCOM armor.

I've been attacked by a tiger, ran away and stumbled upon a party of guards near a unique imperial legion fort. then the bloodied tiger retreated and we chased it around the unique landscapes.

the possibilities are endless, I'm sure this game is going to keep me entertained for years. I'm very much in debt with you and all the other amazingly talented modders that turned this game into Videogame Nirvana.
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anohosikara
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You are welcome. :)
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anohosikara
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Since I have purchased around Oblivion OOO/MMM/Fran has been released, the volume of the game was very pleased. Remember WryeBash is but a tool such as had a hard time.

Skyrim has not been played yet only a short time, has complained to the type of weapons and equipment. Because it was made ​​for the home-use game machine to operate, there is a part difficult to work with the keyboard. I am hard to understand why what I turned off the hot key. :?

Many complaints will be resolved if we are rich still MOD.

NPC is a little weak attractive I will later in Skyrim. There were a lot of character stand out in Oblivion. Adoring Fan/Oreyn/Glarthir/Rohssan/Dar-Ma...

Bethesda, you should use a lot of effort to create more of the character of Skyrim. Will not enjoy, even if there is no appeal to the people excellent graphics. I have been waiting for the emergence of a unique character in the DLC. :)
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Maigrets
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OK, I don't get it. :-o Yesterday I played the game for two separate sessions of around 4 hours. No problems at all. I saved at High Hrothgar and exited. In fact since the 1.5 patch I've had very few issues with CTD's and freezes.

Now tonight I can't play at all because the game freezes my system completely after a few minutes. The game just stops dead and I had another infinite loading screen as well. I haven't done anything today except browse the Internet. I'm about ready to give up for good this time, but tomorrow I'll try reinstalling my graphic drivers just for kicks since I've done everything else like verify the game cache, defrag, make sure the PC is dust free etc, etc ad nauseum. Last resort will be to reinstall the game, but I'm not in the mood to do that just now.

Five times I tried to play tonight with the same result and I'm concerned about my HDD's with having to reset from so many hard freezes. I only bought my new HDD a few months ago because the last one died (faulty and different brand) and I don't want it to happen again.

I've added no new mods except for an armour but that was days ago.

It seems I will never get a character past level 57 or finish the main quest. :Iobject: This is so frustrating. I'd rather play my other games that don't do this, some of which are as system intensive.

/rant off
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it sayingEnd Of The World Switch PLEASE DO NOT TOUCHthe paint wouldn't even have time to dry. Terry Pratchett
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Maigrets
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My saves are all corrupt again so I'm out of Skyrim for the foreseeable future. Can't be bothered with the frustration so I'm going to replay Gothic 3 and maybe actually finish it with the Enhanced Packs until something better comes along. And save my sanity.
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it sayingEnd Of The World Switch PLEASE DO NOT TOUCHthe paint wouldn't even have time to dry. Terry Pratchett
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Maigrets wrote:My saves are all corrupt again so I'm out of Skyrim for the foreseeable future. Can't be bothered with the frustration so I'm going to replay Gothic 3 and maybe actually finish it with the Enhanced Packs until something better comes along. And save my sanity.
Jesus...how did Bethesda achieve to make Skyrim Savegames so vulnerable. Considering my own experience with Skyrim savegame corruption i understand your decision. I am also playing another game at the moment, not because of some problem like yours...but because i just wanted a little break from Skyrim. Ones i like to continue with my Spellsword Corael i will.

But i started to continue with my Might & Finesse hybrid character in Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning. :-)
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Yeah, I know. I'm going to reinstall at some point now I've cooled down a bit, but after a break. I do love the game, but it does have it's problems. /ahem...being a console port doesn't help considering most people with common sense can troubleshoot Oblivion, even with big complex mods.

:x Now I've got Windows Update wanting to install the same updates for Net Framework over and over, but I found out how to fix it. It never ends does it? I've never had so many PC issues as I have in the past year, partly due I think to the way software and how it's installed (and maintained) changes among other things. Google must love me so much I should buy shares. :)
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it sayingEnd Of The World Switch PLEASE DO NOT TOUCHthe paint wouldn't even have time to dry. Terry Pratchett
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Hmm that is odd, the part of Net Framework? That has not happened to me, but that might have something to do with how i have set the Windows Update. I have Windows set to check for updates but to let me decide which to download and install. At first i did not have it like that, but it kept mentioning that it hat found new drivers for my Nvidia card...and every time it showed drivers that where older then the one i hat already installed myself? huh
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No, I have Windows Updates set to notify me first as well. From what I read on Google it's not uncommon and it's the first time I've seen it as well. And I turned them off for Nvidia. Nothing worse than being in a game and it wants to let you know there are updated drivers.

I turn off auto updating for everything I possibly can as it's a pain in the rear when they bug you about it when you're in the middle of something. Plus, updates aren't necessarily better than what you have if it's causing no problems. I've been caught before with application updates that had issues and have had to revert to previous versions.
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it sayingEnd Of The World Switch PLEASE DO NOT TOUCHthe paint wouldn't even have time to dry. Terry Pratchett
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I guess i have been lucky so far then.
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Well by some means and thanks to the Eight Divines (but I prefer Talos be included :) ) I've managed to get my game to load and play for an hour or so....just until it CTD'ed :eek: I would have reloaded but it was so cold here in the early hours (even with a heater on) I had to forego continuing because my fingers were cramping up with the cold. A CTD is OK though as I much prefer a crash to desktop than constant freezing. Not to mention corrupt saves.

I have all my saves backed up, although I don't keep all of them otherwise I'd have a folder with GB's of saves. But, I found one lonely Autosave that worked from a few levels back when I launched the game via the Skyrim launcher by mistake instead of with SKSE, and it detected my system settings again. I let it create a new ini so Auto saves were still on until I changed it as soon as I got in the game, but it did have time to make one...the lucky one it seems. :-o

Suffice to say I may be able to continue and I made a number of new hard saves (that are working so far) just in case since all the others are useless.

This time I've increased the difficulty from Adept to Expert because I'm just one hitting everything, but it doesn't seem to be any harder. Next playthrough I'm going to invest in some mods that reduce the fast leveling, and make the game a bit more challenging, but I'll try to finish with this character first. If I add anything to her mod list I'm afraid it will break something.

A week or so away from the game makes one appreciate just how beautiful the world is though when you're not seeing it all the time.

No-one can say I'm not persistent. :grin: And I didn't have to reinstall which would have been a pain.
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it sayingEnd Of The World Switch PLEASE DO NOT TOUCHthe paint wouldn't even have time to dry. Terry Pratchett
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Good to see you where able to find a solution other then reinstalling the game. :)

As for the difficulty...yeah adept and expert are good to get to know the game so to speak. But after a while i started playing on master level. And i installed a few mods that would make the game more challenging. Installing a new mod with a new character is always a form of Russian roulette, it can mean everything will go well...or totally wrong. So if a mod seems pretty darn complicated in how it works, then i will also wait until i start a new character. :)
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This is why you should download mods that may be of interest even if you change your mind. I was going to download a mod yesterday and decided to wait until I start a new character when the 1.6 patch is official. Now, today it's under moderator review at Nexus and when that happens the mods in question very often never return. ;-(( ;-((

SkyRe - Skyrim Redone. Not much point in linking it since there's nothing there at the moment. Maybe I can find it elsewhere, hopefully not Steamworks though. Nevermind. It's back and downloaded.

I'm looking for an overhaul type mod that removes level scaling and generally improves things like perks and skills that can unbalance the game like enchanting and smithing just by leveling them, combat and AI tweaks and slower overall leveling. This mod caught my interest, especially since it's modular and because comments I've read say it's very stable.

I'm now tossing up between PISE (or ASIS) and Skyrim Scaling Stopper, both of which have good reviews. Unfortunately after Oblivion I'm at the stage where I don't want to be reading a novel just to install a mod as in with FCOM, as much as I loved it, so I want something not too over reaching. I spent too much time troubleshooting my Oblivion install and don't want to go down that road again if I can help it.

:-(
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it sayingEnd Of The World Switch PLEASE DO NOT TOUCHthe paint wouldn't even have time to dry. Terry Pratchett
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Maigrets wrote:I'm now tossing up between PISE (or ASIS) and Skyrim Scaling Stopper, both of which have good reviews. :-(
Hi Maigrets I am interested in such mods (did not know they even exist). Could you let us know how it goes when you decide to install one or the other...basically be our official tester... :)
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Maigrets
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MasterAub wrote:
Maigrets wrote:I'm now tossing up between PISE (or ASIS) and Skyrim Scaling Stopper, both of which have good reviews. :-(
Hi Maigrets I am interested in such mods (did not know they even exist). Could you let us know how it goes when you decide to install one or the other...basically be our official tester... :)
lol, sure I can do that. I won't be starting a new character until the 1.6 patch is finalized though. I'm using the Beta without any issues on an existing level 52 without any issues so far, but it's nearly time to retire her as she's too overpowered even on Expert. She's a sword and shield warrior with enchanted gear, but the vanilla game is so easy I can't imagine the need to level any further except to finish quests. I haven't tried playing on Master, but I don't see the point as all it does is add hitpoints to enemies instead of more enemies or other challenges, but with an overhaul it should be different...hopefully.

I'm liking the sound of SkyRe Skyrim Redone though as the author states it aims to be a bit like OOO which I always played with in Oblivion (and later FCOM) until WAC came along and then I bashed OOO and WAC together anyway for a couple of characters. There are a couple of things I don't want with SkyRe, but since it's modular at least I can choose. I like the way it changes perks so you don't have to take a useless one(and there a a lot) to get one you can actually use.

The only thing I don't like about it is it recommends to use a leveling uncapper which takes levels to 300 and the current 81 level cap is more than enough IMHO. I'd rather use a slower leveling mod instead as I can be level 5 or 6 before I even get to Whiterun and that's going straight there from Riverwood...but I usually go through Bleak Falls Barrow first though.

No-one knows when the patch will be official so I have time to think about it. :)
Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some cave somewhere, with a sign on it sayingEnd Of The World Switch PLEASE DO NOT TOUCHthe paint wouldn't even have time to dry. Terry Pratchett
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Thanks Maigrets,
I was a big user of OOO myself (along with WAC) and that's exacty what I am looking for in Skyrim. So cool just update us whenever you've started with the mod and patch 1.6. Thanks again.
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