A post on the Bethesda blog, titled ‘Skyrim — what we’re working on’ indicates there will be an incremental patch released next week.
The patch will hit the PC first, with PS3 and Xbox 360 ‘later in the week’ and will fix what Bethesda are calling the ‘the rare, amazing backwards flying dragon’, a description that makes the bug sound like an endangered species David Attenborough should be documenting.
The patch will also fix the magic resistance bug which the previous patch managed to insert.
Bethesda say they will be prioritizing code side fixes over problems with quests as these are usually problems with data rather than code. Data problems will start being fixed ‘in a large way with the January updates.’
Source: Bethesda Blog
Watchful
Maybe I should stick to making my living as a producer of enchanted weapons and avoid the quests until January then.
jikomanzoku
Leather helmets of magicky upness ftw! leveled up my smithing and enchanting so fast with those bad boys. Can’t be an inhabitant in my instance of Skyrim without a glowing blue leather hat by now I swear.
R4U Eldave0
New patch? I look forward to next set of bugs then :D
I know they put together some great games but Bethesda must have the worst playtesters and overall quality control in the business.
Omac_brother
No game is shipped without bugs, and when you make something as immense as Skyrim or Fallout,a lot Bugs happen. I agree, Some of the more glaring ones should have been caght in testing though admittedly.
Tuffcub
So make the game world more manageable and smaller so it wil have less bugs.
Saying “Well its big so has more bugs” is not a valid arguement. Whats the point of creating something if doesnt work?
Work within the limitations, things you can achieve.
Not things you want to do because its impressive and bollocks if it works or not.
Tuffcub
Sorry that rant was at Bethesda, not you Omac :)
R4U Eldave0
“No game is shipped without bugs”
Last-gen says ‘hi’ ;) Ok I’ll admit some games had a few performance bugs but nothing in comparison to the crap we buy now.
Besides, there is a difference between a few little display issues and the stuff we see in Bethesda games.
Gamoc
The fact that I’ve played 72 hours of Skyrim clearly shows that it clearly does work. I’ve encountered quest bugs, but if I can’t fix it via console (or if I was playing on a console) I can just go and do one of the thousands of others that are working perfectly fine until it’s fixed.
This whole this is overblown – there are bugs, yes, and a lot of these quest bugs shouldn’t be there, but at no point does the game just not work.
R4U Eldave0
That’s not strictly true. The game frequently crashes (the result of which corrupted my 30+ hour game save recently!) and has a number of bugs such as doors not opening or more extreme ones meaning you can’t progress with the main quest or side missions.
Yes (when it works) Skyrim is a fantastic game but that doesn’t make it ok to release it in it’s current un-finished state.
Paranoimia
True, no game is shipped without bugs. But come on… Bethesda are not far from becoming a running joke.
The problem I have with Bethesda isn’t that their games contain bugs – it’s that their games so often contain large, glaringly obvious bugs which even the smallest amount of beta or playtesting should bring to light and get resolved.
Prior to the first patch, Fallout 3 on the PS3 practically froze when any system notification message popped up, such as people signing in. Okay, it was an offline game, so you could just sign out – but a bug *that* obvious should never have got through.
Fallout New Vegas had rotating heads on NPCs – again, that should never make it through testing.
And now they patch Skyrim to fix numerous other issues, and suddenly dragons are flying backwards!
You’re supposed to learn from your mistakes and take steps eliminate them, not keep repeating them game after game.
Watchful
If you’d ever tried to attain full coverage (test every path through the code) when testing even a modest piece of software you’d have some understanding of the scale of the problem Bethesda have.
Is it really any surprise that a game that offers so many different choices to the player is shown to have a few holes when tested by millions of players who are all playing it differently?
There is no practical way to test like that.
Tuffcub
Which is EXACTLY my point. Make something you CAN test, not something you cant and release not know what the fuck is wrong with it.
Watchful
I’d much rather have a game like Skyrim with a few rough edges than not have a game like Skyrim.
R4U Eldave0
“a few rough edges”
….really? the game is a complete mess :P
jikomanzoku
I’m with you Watchful, I’d rather have it as is, than reduced, it’s a massively complicated piece of software in which the gamer is pretty much free to write their own heroic yarn and that for me makes Skyrim far, far greater than the sum of its parts. It’s odd as well, because in almost any other release I’d find such bugs almost offensive, especially in “Generic FPS 26 – return to multiplayer Iraqistan” It’s the scope I guess, that earns it my forgiveness.
200+ hours in, no crashes for me, though Feandal was fired 300 yards over a roof to his death by an opening door O.o
Gamoc
Again, it’s not a complete mess. Not even close to a complete mess. You can’t play 72 hours worth of a game that’s a complete mess.
Watchful is correct.
OriginalJonty (Aran Suddi)
Can’t we keep the backwards flying dragon? Please? I’ll feed it and take it for walks and clean up after it.
f4rgo
I dunno…..backwards flying, do you get fired at by the poopy end?
The Lone Steven
We talked about this Aran, you can’t keep backward flying dragons as there is no room for it at TSA towers. plus, it would cause a lot of damage and eat a lot of memebers. You can keep the mudcrab though. :P
Watchful
Memebers? Is that what we’re calling stabbings, rain and haircuts these days?
Forrest_01
Lol *likes*
The Lone Steven
It’s Skyrim so naturally, everything in Skyrim should be drunk as it is the Nordic(aka beer drinkers) homeland. :) At least it’s not Fallout 3 amount of bugs which they cba to patch thus me being very paranoid when playing it.
Looks like i will be spending an hour waiting for the patches to download then swear when i realise i’ve got the no spiders one when i get Skyrim.
mugsybalone
Tag line made me laugh. Sadly I had a mouthful of coffee as I read it. Bug fixes and patches are an annoyance, but I’d rather sit through a stream of updates knowing that the developers are working on improving the product than be stuck with a broken game. Of course, a game which was bug free to start with would be much preferred, but I doubt that’d ever happen.
MayContainEvil
I’m level 42 after 84 hours spent playing the game and I haven’t had a single quest related glitch, rarely get the PS3 lag and it’s only crashed three times. I’m loving it! :)
bunimomike
84 hours in and you’ve turned into a crappy 80s band. Now that’s a bug!
Forrest_01
So it isn’t just dragons that are a bit ‘backwards’ then?
Aw.
shields_t
I wasn’t aware of the “magic restistance bug” to be honest, that makes a lot of sense really, I have struggled a lot with my mage dude when I come up against other magical charaters and creeatures.
..But maybe I’m just crap.
Gamoc
That resistance bug applies to the enemy mages as well, you know. Quickly, go Palpatine everyone whilst you’ve got the chance.
bacon_nuts
Backwards dragons going… I won’t get to see any then :(
AdmiringWorm
Hmm, I can’t help to wonder what problems will occur with their new patch.
Oh I guess we’ll see next week
Radboud
Can’t be any worse than the last patch…
My game us unplayable since than. It crashes after about 30 minutes every time I start it up. Really starting to far patches now, because it was working extremely well before the patch :s