Skyrim Bugs: Why We Should Stop Whining
Skyrim’s bug complainers are failing to do the math(s)
Glitches and bugs, bugs and glitches. An NPC glitches into the side of a building. Treasure disappears before our eyes. Quest lines end in dismal failure on account of important storyline characters badly gored in the anus by a random mammoth.
Now, we’re not going to talk here about how great a game Skyrim is. This is not that place and there’s no need; if you’ve played it for more than a couple of hours, you already know. And neither are we here to defend the existence of these kinds of bug, nor here to argue whether or not the final experience of the game could or should not be perfect. No, we’re here to throw some numbers at you.
But first of all, let’s talk about consensus. Out there in the big, wide world, there’s a consensus that Skyrim has too many bugs. But in a game as complex and unpredictable as Skyrim, we’re all experiencing different bugs, rather than the same bugs. That in itself should tell you everything you need to know about the issue at hand.
If we were to ask the average gamer how many bugs there are in Skyrim, the answer would most likely be anywhere between ‘lots’ and ‘millions’. However, ask that same individual how many bugs they have personally experienced and that answer somehow manages to drop to somewhere around ‘a few’. This then becomes less about bugs and more about the overwhelming power shared experience has to colour our opinions. Through YouTube and through various internet forums, we’ve adopted this notion that the ‘millions’ of bugs in Skyrim are all-prevalent.
If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to here it _ so the saying goes – will it make a sound? In the case of Skyrim, if we don’t experience a bug personally, what right do we have to stomp about the internet whining about it?
This point is perhaps a little churlish, and perhaps we are going out on somewhat of a limb, so let’s draw it back in. Let’s do some sums. Let’s say, for example, that the bug you experienced in Skyrim was indeed a mammoth killing a quest-imperative NPC. Let’s say that when that NPC left his house that morning to come to work, there was another NPC blocking the doorway to his shop, and that second NPC was there because of a bizarre sequence of random factors conspiring together to get that single unusual result. Let’s say that the chances of the second NPC blocking that door on that day are 500:1.
Now, the quest NPC has to make a decision. He can’t work that day, so what shall he do? Let’s say there is a 10:1 chance he’ll cross the bridge out of town and go up the road a way to pass the time before bed. The matter of him being on the road then becomes 5000:1 (500×10) – a figure we’ve pulled out of thin air by our own admission, but we reckon it’s a fairly conservative estimate.
Now let’s talk about the mammoth. That day, the mammoth, along with its giant herder, was attacked by a dragon. The giant died, the mammoth survived. Let’s say the chances of this occurring at that exact time of day at that exact location with that exact outcome are – conservatively – 10,000:1. Then let’s say the matter of the mammoth stampeding across the road at the exact place our NPC happens to be is about 500:1. This means that the chances of attacking our NPC are, for the sake of argument, around 5,000,000:1. Multiply that by the chances of the NPC being there and you have a bug that crops up exactly once in every 25,000,000,000 (25 billion) games.
Of course, looking at that figure, it would be easy to suggest that if that were the case, then it would never happen. The fact that bugs like this happen all the time is that Skyrim is not a game with just one mammoth and one quest guy. It’s a game with hundreds of thousands of different factors all playing out against one another.
Still think it’s fair to criticise it for being buggy? Yes? Okay, how about we take a look at the cost to a developer to find this specific bug and fixing it. There’s no need to chuck out any specific figures here. It’s a simple curve. The less bugs, the more the cost of QA spirals out of control. A conservative estimate suggests that to have Skyrim bug-free at release would have cost Bethesda literally billions of dollars; perhaps even hundreds of billions.
There is no way around it; the final leg of QA must be done by us; the gaming public. It’s not like Bethesda is refusing to fix these things is it? And so we come full circle to the article title. Calm down, be glad that games exist of such depth, intelligence and complexity, and most of all… please… quit whining.
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“A conservative estimate suggests that to have Skyrim bug-free at release would have cost Bethesda literally billions of dollars; perhaps even hundreds of billions.”
Seriously? Are you seriously trying to say that getting this game bug-free at launch would cost somewhere in the same ballpark as say, a B-2 bomber? Maybe a small fleet of nuclear powered submarines? Listen I totally agree with you that the ‘OMG GLITCHES HERP DERP!’ crowd is getting a little out of hand (in my own 60+ hours, all I have run across is a single mammoth levitating for a moment so one of it’s friends could pass underneath of it), but making up numbers off the top of your head isn’t going to make anyone reading this take you seriously.
I have had minimal bugs,besides the skyrim crash while i was alt-tabbing. Yes people have looked funny and a few quests im unable to do, so i just did another quest. There is just so much to do in Skyrim and i will buy another Elder Scrolls game day one!
“There is no way around it; the final leg of QA must be done by us; the gaming public. It’s not like Bethesda is refusing to fix these things is it? And so we come full circle to the article title. Calm down, be glad that games exist of such depth, intelligence and complexity, and most of all… please… quit whining.”
This is joke right? You aren’t really saying the consumers should be testing the game for Bethesda because that is just utter nonsense. this isn’t even the first time this has happen either they’ve never tested their games i don’t think they even know what QA is, yes the Game may be good but for them to keep letting these games go untested and then expect the player to find the bugs is just poor business.
What an idiotic article! It contains nothing of substance – only opinionated drivel.
“The Mouth” is the one who should stop whining.
Skyrim is NOT a great game, certainly not technically. And the interface is inexcusable and a massive hindrance to immersion. I’ve stopped playing because it’s so broken and I’m scared of ruining my progress. That’s NOT what I paid for.
In many ways the first Elder Scrolls game was better – it was much bigger, and it even worked!
Bethesda should have done (more?) internal testing before releasing Skyrim – but I suppose it was more important to release it when the date was 11:11:11, right?
Software cannot be returned after purchase, which is why it’s particularly important that it works properly. Also, computer/video games are extremely expensive, compared to other forms of media.
Is it unreasonable to expect a game to be playable?
I wish the author had used their real name so I can ignore other articles by them. Guess I will just have to unsubscribe from the entire 360magazine website, if they insist on publishing unprofessional crap like this.
This is quite a ridiculous article.
Let’s look at a couple of the “glitches” that have appeared within Skyrim.
1) The fact that on the XBox 360 version, if the game was installed on the hard drive, there was a problem loading high resolution textures is awful. So you get the advice a couple of days after launch: Don’t install on a HDD. Are you seriously telling me that the QA department, before a title goes gold, shouldn’t at least have a couple of playthroughs on various configurations? i.e Game installed, game not installed. Because, as someone who works in the software industry (not the gaming industry admittedly, but still), I think that is pretty lame and highlights some fairly glaring problems in the development process,
2. The fact that the Playstation version’s save file continued to grow to such a stupid size during play that the game literally ground to a halt. Did no one do extended playthroughs on this title? Becuase if they did, surely they would have picked this up.
If they’re not doing multiple playthroughs on different configurations of PCs and consoles then that is incredibly poor quality assurance.
And this is just sloppy.
And it is inexcusable.
And it’s a trend that is growing, we’re increasingly seemingly happy to accept sloppy. substandard products because we are happy to accept that over the coming months we’ll get patches that might fix those issues (although in Skyrim’s case, the patches are quite often making things worse). What other product do we accept this as the norm? And it’s okay to tell people who have stumped up the cash for this sub-standard product just to “stop whining and accept it?” – Do you work for Bethesda or something?
Basically the industry is hurting itself with this approach.. I am very wary of buying games from certain dev studios on release day as I know that what is shipped on the disc will inevitably be buggy as hell. Why pay full price for something that’s not finished? Better I give it a couple of months, and pick it up a couple of months later (most likely for half the price I might add) if the issues have been resolved.
About what about people who don’t have their consoles connected to the net? I know it’s a small minority probably, but still.. they are stuck with a game that is broke..
As long as we tolerate crap, we’ll be shipped crap, if you’re happy with that then enjoy it in vast quantities.
“In many ways the first Elder Scrolls game was better – it was much bigger, and it even worked!”
Umm, no. Arena had quite a few bugs as well. The players that enjoyed it so immensely were simply a smaller crowd and more forgiving, given the game’s overarching technical accomplishments at the time. In terms of size, only the cities and a very small subset of dungeons were pre-scripted and hand-made, with all the rest of the wilderness and creatures randomly generated. It did not keep track of thousands of static NPC entities like Skyrim does. In terms of the amount of content and static size, Arena was a great deal smaller. You’re either mis-remembering your experiences, or you’re trying to use Arena as a fictional point of contention in the hopes that no other gamers frequenting these comments are old enough to call you out.
Skyrim IS, in fact, quite a technical accomplishment in its own right, on several levels. You’re just mad because the original opinion piece struck a nerve with you by knocking that chip off your shoulder, pointing to it, and telling you to go put it back on the woodpile. Anyone reading this post with a modicum of objectivity will realize that all the numbers were thrown in for conjecture’s sake, including the final dollar figure offered up to convey the significant cost involved in making sure Skyrim was bug-free. If you’re getting bent out of shape over both the content of this post and Skyrim itself with no room for mediation, then I submit that the problem is, in fact, you. Go back to Call of Duty.
I’ve experienced a lot of bugs, as everyone has, but only a few have really effected my play.
-PS3 framerates.
-Quest tracker (it pretty much is useless).
-Quests being glitched/unfinishable.
-Dragons never landing or slaying one and not obtaining a soul.
Totally honest question here. I just broke the 100 hour mark in this game (purely because I am an achievement whore). I’ve encountered literally at least one bug for every non-misc quest I’ve done. A few have been resolved with reloads. Most of them have just plain been stopped in their tracks. Including finishing; main story, companions, mages guild and the thieves guild. I didn’t bother starting the DB. So now, is there a single quest in this game that there hasn’t been a bug for?
I love the games, understand they’re complicated but I don’t think most of us asked for a glitch free games, just one that could be played. I wasn’t planning on paying 65 bucks for a faux cloth map of a world that exists only in fantasy, and I’m not talking about video game fantasy, I’m talking about my fantasy of having a playable game.
The purpose of the numbers was to show how a particular gltich that happens is not something that Bethesda did not fix, it is something that just happened to you, with so much going on, little things happen that you cannot predict every single thing that could possible go wrong. I hate it when people pretend to be gamers, but then they complain about the particular glitches that happened to them and a few others, and that makes them not like the game, like they expect the company that made the game to see every outcome of everything and see what gltiches could possibly happen in any situation.
*glitches
Even a few bugs is too many when you are expected to pay full price for something you expect to be a good product.
However, there is an entire generation now who seem to have become quite accustomed to getting less than they are paying for – so that’s what they get, buggy software.
(“Let the user find the bugs.” I hear it all the time.)
Releases of a product like this ought to be for some amount LESS THAN the estimated full retail value of a GOOD end product.
Then, as bugs are found (by the user) and fixed and new releases come out the price can go up incrementally, until the price of the good, finished product may actually excede the original estimated full retail.
Actually, this would be an excellent marketing tool for gamerware companies as they could then easily get users to purchase multiple copies of the same game – wanting to know what it would be like to actually go through the entire game without experiencing those BUGS.
So… don’t bah humbug me… FIX THE F’ING THING and I’ll buy another copy!
(See… what did I tell you! But, I might want a bit of a rebate on the first one seeing as how full price was paid for it.)
Oh… one other thing… while you’re at it… you think you could fix it so Jordis could wear something besides that awsomely figure-enhancing steel plate armor? I bet she’d look good in… (well, no point finishing that, you know what I mean).
So this was a while go, and I totally get you here, and you’re right. With a game the size of Skyrim there are always going to be bugs, and heck, it’s a Bethesda game. That means good, but glitchy.
I would disagree with you about “a few” bugs though! And to be honest, most of the ones I’ve encountered are very much known bugs which are listed on the wiki pages. But just for fun’s sake, in no particular order, here is a list of every bug I can remember encountering in (totally vanilla) Skyrim, doubtless missing out a good many minor bugs which weren’t so memorable:
1. Ralof wouldn’t let me into the keep the first time I played. He just stood there yelling “come on!”, forcing me to reload after about five minutes of gameplay.
2. The lift at Alftand kept crashing the game to desktop. In fact, most lifts cause a CTD unless I disable autosave.
3. The game crashed to desktop every time Sheogorath swiped me from the Blue Palace until I reloaded a save from about an hour earlier.
4. Meridia repeatedly dropped me to my death from a great height. Not even reloading or saving during the fall fixed this issue. I had to use the console and become temporarily immortal to continue with the quest.
5. During Vaermina’s quest, the game would crash to desktop any time I tried to save inside her temple.
6. During Molag Bal’s quest, I was stuck inside the trap with no dialogue options, and therefore no way out of the house. Reloading didn’t help, I just had to skip that quest with that character.
7. Karliah kept walking off during Nocturnal’s quest, every single damn time she was meant to open that gate. Reloading didn’t help. When she finally did open the gate via some trickery, she pulled the lever twice and locked us all inside the cave, forcing me to use the console to get us out.
8. I keep encountering wildlife dropping from the sky to their deaths. On one memorable occasion, a deer fell to its death right on Larsi of the Companions’ head. (With 160lb of flying venison landing in her face, Larsi went straight to Sovngarde.)
9. Foxes and deer keep fleeing from me straight into the bowels of Nirn itself. They just run right down into the ground to avoid me.
10. When riding my horse, an unseen force keeps picking me up and usually gently, but sometimes alas none-too-gently, dropping me back down on the ground. This is usually just annoying, but I’m inordinately fond of Shadowmere and seeing him topple to his screaming death on top of the dovahkiin for no damn reason at all is upsetting.
11. I have on several occasions fallen through Solitude. Just right through it. Into the earth itself.
12. When entering Sky Haven Temple, everything goes blue. I can’t see a damn thing. I have to run forward through the blue and just hope in order to reach the actual floor.
13. Boethiah’s quest left me with a fine red mist around my vision every time I attempted to sacrifice to her. This would be fine if it didn’t stick around indefinitely and prevent me from actually seeing.
14. Similarly, with another character who was able to do Molag Bal’s quest, Molag Bal seemed to have afflicted me with a permanent B-list horror movie vision effect after going into the house. It just wouldn’t go away– I had to reload from before going into the house to make it stop.
15. During Blood on the Ice, with any character I do that quest with, if I go too near Hjerim before going to the Hall of the Dead it will skip me forward in the quest without checking my objectives, thus preventing me from ever finishing that quest.
16. Also during Blood on the Ice, the Strange Amulet will never become the Necromancer’s Amulet if I go straight to the Jarl’s steward to tell him what I’ve learned, or even to Wuunferth who actually tells me that it is the Necromancer’s Amulet, without visiting Calixto first.
17. During that quest in the Thalmor Embassy, asking the prisoner what he knows has on several occasions failed to make the Thalmor who have the keys handily turn up for me to slaughter.
18. Shadowmere has occasionally just gone off his belligerent Daedroth nut and started attacking friendlies for no reason whatsoever. I don’t mean that like, we were fighting a dragon and they landed an accidental hit on his rump, I mean that he turns around and starts attacking them out of nowhere.
19. Legate Rikke ran at me brandishing her sword as I rode up to tell her I’d completed her mission, I jumped off my horse to defend myself, and… she kept attacking my horse (which I had only just purchased before going to see her). Apparently it really was just my horse she had a grudge against– she eventually killed it despite my best efforts, stood there over the corpse of my faithful four-legged travel buddy, and then calmly turned to me for a chat. OK, Rikke. To this day I still don’t know why she did that.
20. When sniping bandits, soldiers, or unsuspecting citizens with a bow, if they are sitting or lying down they will partially fall through the chair or bed and their corpse will lie there kicking and jerking indefinitely. It’s not game-breaking by any means, but it’s pretty disturbing.
21. Bodies will also sometimes simply disappear. I will be able to move my sight over the area and search them, but I will not be able to see them at all.
22. Objects on shelves also often disappear if I take one item off the shelf. They just all turn completely invisible when I pick something up.
23. Having nicked the Statue of Dibella from the temple in Markarth, I nipped back to Riften to place it proudly on my bedside table (Mei Flowergate collects stolen Dibella statues), and it simply fell through the table, floor, room below, and into the bowels of Nirn. I never did get it back.
24. Many a time I have shed sweat and frustrated tears placing all my loot aesthetically around my house when the weighting of the objects is determined to make them all upside-down, walked out, and come back in to find all my carefully placed things in a big heap in the middle of the floor. I have no damn idea why this keeps happening.
25. Getting stuck in the terrain. OK, playing Skyrim Parkour probably doesn’t help with all that jumping down mountains, but this has also happened in places like the plains around Whiterun and the woods around Riften, in very safe and flat looking places.
26. Pickpocketing the soldier in Solitude firing arrows into the target, stealing his arrows, and replacing them with a single Daedric arrow will cause him to fire infinite Daedric arrows. This is actually a really pleasant bug seeing as you can just stand next to the target and collect a few hundred Daedric arrows, but it’s still technically a bug. (I like to think it’s just the Daedra messing with the guy for a laugh– slowly corrupting him as he unrealisingly uses the unlimited arrows they keep supplying him with. “Hey guys, guys, do you think he’s noticed yet? Let’s give him some more!”)
27. Another pleasant one: pickpocketing the Strange Amulet off Calixto will allow you to sell it back to him, pickpocket it again, sell it back to him again, and so on. Being paid to train your Pickpocket skill? Sure. I like to think he just really, really wants that amulet. But it’s still also a bug.
28. Clipping isues. Can we say clipping issues? I can say clipping issues. Nothing breaks immersion like the sight of a battle axe gently waving through your character’s ass.
29. Only yesterday I swam across a river to escape some Thalmor while I had a bounty on my head. One of the Thalmor ran forward to the bank, glitched through the landscape, and all of a sudden was gently bobbing away down the river yelling “Don’t you see? Elven supremacy is the only truth!”
30. I’ve found several times that I got a bounty for killing or pickpocketing someone when the eye on my screen assured me that I was “hidden”. A lot of other people have also reported this one.
I can think of a few more, most of them much more minor, but since I’ve reached a nice round thirty I’ll just leave it there. My point is that “a few” doesn’t even cover the game-breaking bugs I’ve encountered, let alone the minor, helpful, or just funny ones. I’m not saying that it spoils the enjoyment of a game in which I can steal the clothes off the backs of every guard in a city and watch them all unsuspectingly walking their beats in their underclothes, but it’s really not just a few unique bugs, it’s well-documented known bugs that just keep on coming up, and that’s not what I paid for or expect from a game this popular. I’m a customer, not a damn beta tester.