Skyrim’s PS3 Lag Getting Addressed This Month

I'm intrigued to what this patch will bring to the table. Here's hoping for a functional weapon rack in my breezehome.

@ProfessorEss: Yes, because then consumers aren't paying money for an inferior, severely troubled version of the game.

Just in time for me. I've been just starting to get the lag issue, have to restart the system every few hrs, but I'm well over 100 hrs of play so I don't think It's been as bad for me as some people make it sound so broken.

Played the PS3 one for nearly 100 hours and only had minor issues. Ran perfect if I restarted it every 2 hours or so. Took a break due to some oversaturation and to play Saints Row, so this is happening at a great time!

Irked me that Mortal Kombat got knocked off the top 10 due to buggy online multiplayer and yet Skyrim suffered no substantial repercussions for having major game breaking technical issues.

@Renachan said:

@Arjuna: Something to think about is you could use your PS3 controller with PC by using something like MotioninJoy. I went for that with Bastion for example, because I don't have a 360 and would rather make use of the controller I already have. Just let the game think I'm on a 360 from the settings, and it's worked pretty well once I got over the slight learning curve of what is mapped to what.

@PulledaBrad said:

How the GB guys can award this game GOTY and it being horribly broken for an entire system yet tossing MK out the window because its multiplayer was busted for a bit seems kinda contrairian to me. I mean I dont think MK should have gotten GOTY, but buty that criteria, Skyrim shouldnt have gotten the top nod.

A better comparison is how they disqualified Bayonetta for this exact same reason. That was more or less broken on a system, and GB wouldn't look at it for GOTY. Skyrim does the same, and that's okay because it's Bethesda

Unlike the other games you mentioned, Skyrim was a good enough experience to them that it overcame those problems. Bayonetta did not. (In their opinion, of course).

Framerate issues be damned! As the one person stupid enough to return the Skeleton Key to it's resting place, I would like to see how that quest pans out.

Assuming it isn't supposed to end with me in a pit, trying to talk to somebody who is busy waving their hands in front of them.

Also, Saints Row The Third is my GOTY for 2011.

I've played Skyrim on PS3 for almost 100 hours without problems. I have to note though that I turned off auto-saves, cleaned-up after every battle (I'm an archer, so that means trying to find all the arrows I missed), did my best not to hoard stuff and only visited 3 or 4 major towns (the moment you explore a new town a big amount of data is usually added to your savefile).

I didn't have any big framerate issues... but it is kind of dumb I had to keep "oh-no!-what-will-this-do-to-my-save-file-size" in mind with everything step I took.

100 plus hours on first gen PS3 no freezing or any other problems.

I just did the 'wait 30 days' suggestion and then did a few of the civil war Fort takeovers, holy shit the framerate was terrible. I really hope they actually have a fix for this, and they aren't just putting a bandaid on it.

Well, that's nice. Didn't skyrim come out more than two months ago?

@snap: Yup. They're either aware of the problem and thus completely amoral, or they aren't which makes them beyond incompetent. But...they had to know right? It must have come up in Q&A.

I've stopped playing now. Hopefully I'll be able to get back into it when this shite is fixed.

I am at about 60+ hours, 8meg save file, all auto-save options turned on and I had no issues yet appart from a broken save file once... And yes I am playing on a PS3!

I'm yet to to reach the point of impossible gameplay but know I'm nearing the moment of death at 15mb. I honestly can't see how they will fix this which sucks as PS3 is the only platform available to me.

@SOLO323 said:

Elder Scrolls was always a PC & XBOX game i always have problems with the PS3 versions

What are you talking about? Skyrim is the second Elder Scrolls game on the PS3 and Oblivion ,due to extra time devoted to the PS3 system, ended up running smoothly and with a minor graphics update. Look at the PS3 version gametrailers review.

Skyrim didn't go through the proper QA, it would be interesting to know how far someone tested the PS3 version as a problem this widespread would be hard to miss.

It bugs me that Bethesda got game of the year all over the place when it released a broken game. It really makes me disappointed in not only Giant bomb but other gaming sites that they have double standards for Bethesda and the rest of the industry. 
 
If you bought a car and it was broken out the shop would you give it Car of the year because it had the biggest hopes and most boot space?

I haven't been playing the PlayStation 3 version, so keep being vocal about your experiences.

Is all of the complaining getting annoying or something?

2 months too late, Bethesda. Already traded in my copy for SR3. What a game!

@Jubei: "I had no issues yet appart from a broken save file once" Uh, I would consider that a major issue.

Even though Giant Bomb awarded The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim as 2011’s Game of the Year, it came with a very specific caveat: it didn’t apply to the PlayStation 3 version.

You know, Saints Row the Third does not come broken on PS3, instead it came with a copy of Saints Row 2 for download.

From the very little I understand the PS3's architecture makes it almost impossible to totally sort out the lag problem unless they want to seriously reduce quality in other areas.

@Brendan said:

@Renachan said:

@Arjuna: Something to think about is you could use your PS3 controller with PC by using something like MotioninJoy. I went for that with Bastion for example, because I don't have a 360 and would rather make use of the controller I already have. Just let the game think I'm on a 360 from the settings, and it's worked pretty well once I got over the slight learning curve of what is mapped to what.

@PulledaBrad said:

How the GB guys can award this game GOTY and it being horribly broken for an entire system yet tossing MK out the window because its multiplayer was busted for a bit seems kinda contrairian to me. I mean I dont think MK should have gotten GOTY, but buty that criteria, Skyrim shouldnt have gotten the top nod.

A better comparison is how they disqualified Bayonetta for this exact same reason. That was more or less broken on a system, and GB wouldn't look at it for GOTY. Skyrim does the same, and that's okay because it's Bethesda

Unlike the other games you mentioned, Skyrim was a good enough experience to them that it overcame those problems. Bayonetta did not. (In their opinion, of course).

Thats still kinda irksome though. Bayonetta is to date the best game in it's class. They disqualified it based on performance issues on PS3. Skyrim can become unplayable yet it gets a pass - not to mention the fact that Vinny and Jeff were against it and Ryan didn't play it, in fact still hasn't played it. This is all of course taken with a grain of salt since it's their site etc etc. Just seems silly.

Skyrim was my game of the year, and I played it on PS3. Even with all the problems it still outclassed everything else. Also I'm fairly tolerant of lag issues, although they were pretty bad. Hopefully this is the end of them, although I doubt it will be completely watertight.

@Humanity said:

Thats still kinda irksome though. Bayonetta is to date the best game in it's class. They disqualified it based on performance issues on PS3. Skyrim can become unplayable yet it gets a pass - not to mention the fact that Vinny and Jeff were against it and Ryan didn't play it, in fact still hasn't played it. This is all of course taken with a grain of salt since it's their site etc etc. Just seems silly.

You also have to realize that the GOTY awards are as much based on their personal experiences with the game as well as the objective merits of the games themselves. In the case of Bayonetta, Ryan played the PS3 version and hence had a first-hand knowledge of it's inferiority to the 360 version. Not to mention for Bayonetta, the performance issue happens with every copy of the game. The Skyrim PS3 situation was not experience by any of the bombcast crew firsthand and doesn't happen to every person who plays the PS3 version. Not to mention that Bayonetta didn't really have a chance in the first place.

Anyway, as broken as the PS3 version of Skyrim is, the 360 version isn't that great either. I think Skyrim is one of the better examples this generation of a game that just cannot work well under the restrictive hardware of the current generation of consoles. I really feel sorry for anyone who has to play the 360 or PS3 version of the game because they cannot play the PC version. I myself put into over 100 hours in to the 360 version and I have to say that the PC version is far superior product (even more so than say Dragon Age Origins on the PC vs the consoles) On the 360 version, I literally had to limit myself in how much stuff I carried around and stored in my houses in order to avoid lag and slowdown. This demonstrates that some hardware limitations cannot be overcome by optimization or experience with the hardware.

@Humanity said:

Thats still kinda irksome though. Bayonetta is to date the best game in it's class. They disqualified it based on performance issues on PS3. Skyrim can become unplayable yet it gets a pass - not to mention the fact that Vinny and Jeff were against it and Ryan didn't play it, in fact still hasn't played it. This is all of course taken with a grain of salt since it's their site etc etc. Just seems silly.

GiantBomb is not in the business of consumer advocacy -- unless, of course, it suits their interests, I guess, as per Bayonetta? It's the same across all gaming sites, though. I come here because it's fun and entertaining, not because it's ethical or consumer-minded. Maybe that makes me part of the problem. I do think the goal of 'garmes jurnulizm' should, in part, to be to advocate for consumers, but the industry seems set up in such a way that any site to make that part of their mission statement would be easily shut out, and there are a lot of outlets who just don't give a shit. I don't know if I can fault GiantBomb for doing what everyone else does, except to question where I put my money when subscription time comes around again.

@WrenchNinja: I think he was being sincere and wants to hear the feedback so he knows what the currents status of the games brokenness is.

I might go back and try skyrim again when 1.4 patch comes out, stopt playing about 3 or 4 weeks ago, I was just getting verry frustrated with the lag issue on my ps3 and having to reboot every 45 min to an hour to be able to just wander the province , after turning off all the auto save options at least the system lockups had become a lot less frequent thanks to bethsofts "pro tip"

It just makes me sad that I waited about 4 years for the next Elder scrolls, and I only have a ps3 to play it on (360 died long ago and playing it on a bootcamped macbook is just not an option), so I'm left with a busted version.

Here's hoping they get it right

@michael_katarn said:

@WrenchNinja: I think he was being sincere and wants to hear the feedback so he knows what the currents status of the games brokenness is.

Ah yeah, probably. Took it the wrong way I suppose.

@paintmafia: Kind of the same here, I get occasional freezes at loading screens, which so far have always corrected themselves when the game finishes playing it's current song and starts with it's next. Kind of afraid Bethesda will manage to break something again when fixing an issue I've never noticed in the game (like breaking the Magic Resistance in the first patch which was also supposed to do something about the lag).

So when's the Creation Kit out?

@ProfessorEss: You have a good point. Exclusives winning GotY is fine to me because they were developed and tested on one platform. Maybe not trying just is better. Lots of games come out on PC and 360, but not PS3 because the developer can't make their game work on it. Honestly, this entire argument becomes invalid if this patch fixes the issues.

This is the reason I quite playing New Vegas -- horrible lag. I've logged about 30 hours into Skyrim on PS3 and so far it's smooth sailing. My save final is around 5Mb, does anyone know the point at which save files start affecting the game.

@J_Rad said:

This is the reason I quite playing New Vegas -- horrible lag. I've logged about 30 hours into Skyrim on PS3 and so far it's smooth sailing. My save final is around 5Mb, does anyone know the point at which save files start affecting the game.

40-60 hours, once your file starts creeping into the teens.

wow! looks like bethesda got around to hooking up that PS3 that they got last christmas.

boy are they in for some good times when they fire up uncharted 3.

Well, my son and I play on the PS3. We have not had any problems, including lag, until the previous patch. Suddenly our game started crashing during chat options with NPC's in town. It would "Freeze" at loading screens between areas. I finally had a dragon act very weird on my game, he flew away at low health and then started flying in very tight circles ascending the sky.

My son has about 150 hours into the game. I have over 200 hours in the game and am lvl 47. The problems do piss me off, but I continue to play the game.

OH YEAH, i have recently Pick Pocketed an item from an NPC called DO NOT DELETE. It appears to be a, somewhat boring, chest. I dropped the item in my house and it was never to be seen. When I came back later the, DO NOT DELETE, chest was there and floating in the air. I picked it back up and I am now holding on to it for fear of anything odd happening.

I can post a few pictures if you want.

@AriesDog: since the game autosaves so often it was a minor setback. I had to replay about five minutes to get back to the state of the broken save file... so no, that is not a big issue, especially since it happened only once... :-)

I am by no means excusing how Bethesda obviously did not do a proper QA with their game, I just wanted to point out that not everybody, who is playing that game on a PS3, has these severe issues we heard so much about.

@ProfessorEss said:

If Bethesda decided to stop making PS3 versions altogether would that put them back into the running? Not even trying is greater than trying and failing?

"Trying and failing" is hardly the same thing as trying, failing, and actually releasing said failure in the guise of a finished retail product.

@Catarrhal: Another perfectly fair argument - made that much fairer by an undeniably excellent user pic.

Just curious how people felt about available on only one platform versus broken on one of them.

Ive only had 1 problem the whole time playing, were you break out of the prison with the forsworns I misunderstood what I had to do and started attacking the guards instead of letting the forsworn take the heat, i had to load a earlier save an hour earlier to fix this if I hadnt been manual saving I prob wouldnt been able to go back to markarth. That aside im loving the PC version of this game I've got so many mods installed (the first time Ive tried mods) and it looks amazing, im tempted to go back to New Vegas on PC now in a month or two when ive finished this game, does anyone know if they have done many visual tweaks for that game.

How much you want to bet this "patch" won't fix anything?

How much you want to bet this "patch" won't fix anything?

I put 90 hrs plus on the PS3. I did experience some lag during dragon battles in holds but it wasn't completely broken.

Ouch that sucks

They should of done more testing of the game before sending it out, last thing you want is unhappy users, like when the hacking happened and server problems started going on I actually switched to xbox