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[Macmanus]

Can't say I like the implication that publishers should get free reign and benefit from releasing broken software.

The results typically are people stop purchasing said product. But here we are again, a bunch of PS3 owners buying up glitchy Bethesda products and complaining about them on the forums because the same shit happened again.

If I drop a body or an expensive gear in the middle of a bustling city it'll stay there permanently and being constantly loaded in memory. It's just bad design decision.

It's an absolutely wonderful design choice, and one of the many reasons Bethesda games, specifically TES are so cherished. Its lead development platform is PC - and for blatantly obvious reasons.

Wut?

The problem is their dumb engine trying to make a database of every object and its state. If they would just try not to remember where ever book is lying weeks after I moved it they would not have this issue. Being open world is not the problem.

Brilliant. PC games should be even further nerfed to satisfy console lust.

Luckily the writing is on the wall, and PC gaming will become more of a focus in the future. I think this generation will be the worst as far as the consolization of games and we'll see more of return to normalcy next round.

 

[cgcg]

If I drop a body or an expensive gear in the middle of a bustling city it'll stay there permanently and being constantly loaded in memory. It's just bad design decision.

 

[AgentP]

One of the issues,

With that ram (or was it core) the game had it be re-written once on the blueray for every ram pool/core it uses. So textures had to have multiple copies on the disk, or something like this.

Some one verfify this, it was so long ago before I read this.

Wut?

The problem is their dumb engine trying to make a database of every object and its state. If they would just try not to remember where ever book is lying weeks after I moved it they would not have this issue. Being open world is not the problem.

 

[sleepykyo]

The results typically are people stop purchasing said product. But here we are again, a bunch of PS3 owners buying up glitchy Bethesda products and complaining about them on the forums because the same shit happened again.

Haven't bought a Bethseda after NV and never will at all. I'm not sure how many of the Skyrim overlaps with the NV crowd, nor do I really care. Are we really supposed to defend knowingly releasing defective products?

 

[Nilaul]

Wut?

The problem is their dumb engine trying to make a database of every object and its state. If they would just try not to remember where ever book is lying weeks after I moved it they would not have this issue. Being open world is not the problem.

Issues lie in both, Both in Sonys weird and experimental design desisions and in Bethy. However since Bethy decided to create a game for that console, they should had made sure its worked smoothly at a somewhat decent and smooth framerate.

 

[whalleywhat]

The results typically are people stop purchasing said product. But here we are again, a bunch of PS3 owners buying up glitchy Bethesda products and complaining about them on the forums because the same shit happened again.

Yes, 0fps should be expected. Every person who bought Bethesda's highest selling game should've been familiar with the problems of Fallout:NV. You've really honed in on who's to blame here.

 

[Blue Ninja]

Good that t'heire being honest, at least. Just sucks for PS3 owners that they have to wait.

 

[Raistlin]

The rumors that 720/PS4 will have pretty similar core architectures sounds more promising everyday.

 

[cgcg]

It's an absolutely wonderful design choice, and one of the many reasons Bethesda games, specifically TES are so cherished. Its lead development platform is PC - and for blatantly obvious reasons.

If I hit a chicken a guard will come running a mile away tracking me down but if I drop a corpse in the middle of a city nothing happens and it'll stay there forever. Yea really wonderful design choice indeed.

 

[James Woods]

I'll wait for Fawn Guard, where the player character is a human seduced by the luxurious coif of a precious bambi

 

[sleepykyo]

The rumors that 720/PS4 will have pretty similar core architectures sounds more promising everyday.

Memory, gpu and what about the WiiU?

 

[Ein Bear]

PS3 has just as much RAM as the 360, it's just divided into two seperate pools instead of being one chunk.

There's no reason that they couldn't have gotten the games running on the PS3 properly, it just would have required a bit of effort to tailor the engine for the platform. Bethesda are just lazy fucks really, and released three games in a row that suffered from the exact same problems.

 

[Starsunder]

The rumors that 720/PS4 will have pretty similar core architectures sounds more promising everyday.

YES. Enough of this "let's make our system as unique as humanly possible" horseshit when it comes to the internal parts. The consumer doesn't give one shit about unique CPUs or graphics cards or whatever as long as the end result looks good. The PS3 being a bitch to code and develop for is shameful on Sonys part. Luckily, from all the rumors (and if the Vita is any indication) Sony seems to have learned its lesson.

EDIT: To be clear, I'm not defending Bethesda here. They should absolutely have a large portion of the blame.

 

[Benjamin1981]

PS3 has just as much RAM as the 360, it's just divided into two seperate pools instead of being one chunk.

There's no reason that they couldn't have gotten the games running on the PS3 properly, it just would have required a bit of effort to tailor the engine for the platform. Bethesda are just lazy fucks really, and released three games in a row that suffered from the exact same problems.

This!

Especially considering Oblivion on PS3 didn't have any problems. But that game was ported by another studio and not Bethesda.

 

[yn-neko hates a cat]

PS3 has just as much RAM as the 360, it's just divided into two seperate pools instead of being one chunk.

Not pointing fingers to either the beth camp or the sony camp in this argument of memories (... not trying to get involved in that war) but your understanding about the implementation of RAM with respect to both consoles is wrong.

The 360 has a unified memory architecture meaning any of it's three cores and its GPU have access to the same RAM and just about all of it for that matter... certainly more than the PS3 has because of the larger footprint of the PS3's OS.

The PS3 has three areas. GPU memory, General RAM ad SPE memory. memory in GPU can only be used by the GPU. RAM in CPU can only be used efficiently by the general processor. The general processor has to copy off or recieve information to the GPU and the SPE.

I'm not knowledgable enough to know if the SPEs can talk to GPU memory or vice-versa.

EDIT: My parting point is that the PS3 cannot utilize all of its memory for any operation, it has to pick and choose as well as guggle and shuffle information.

 

[Ein Bear]

This!

Especially considering Oblivion on PS3 didn't have any problems. But that game was ported by another studio and not Bethesda.

From what I recall, the PS3 port of Oblivion actually ran smoother and looked better than the 360 version. I can only assume Bethesda didn't get the same devs to handle Fallout 3/New Vegas/Skyrim because their PS3 budget was $10 and they gave no fucks.

 

[Commanche Raisin Toast]

if the memory footprint issue is true and applies to skyrim on PS3, then there absolutely 0 chance that bethesda didn't see this coming when they were in the process of making the PS3 version of skyrim itself, and should have informed everyone when they realized DLC probably won't be happening.

so hopefully the fact that that hasn't happened yet means that there's a way for them to get it in there and working. i don't care if there has to be a DLC toggle menu at the main menu, as long as we get the shit coming to other platforms too (save for the custom fan-made stuff).

 

[StuBurns]

Indeed, the PS3 doesn't have as much available RAM as the 360.

 

[Ein Bear]

Not pointing fingers to either the beth camp or the sony camp in this argument of memories (... not trying to get involved in that war) but your understanding about the implementation of RAM with respect to both consoles is wrong.

The 360 has a unified memory architecture meaning any of it's three cores and its GPU have access to the same RAM and just about all of it for that matter... certainly more than the PS3 has because of the larger footprint of the PS3's OS.

The PS3 has three areas. GPU memory, General RAM ad SPE memory. memory in GPU can only be used by the GPU. RAM in CPU can only be used efficiently by the general processor. The general processor has to copy off or recieve information to the GPU and the SPE.

I'm not knowledgable enough to know if the SPEs can talk to GPU memory or vice-versa.

EDIT: My parting point is that the PS3 cannot utilize all of its memory for any operation, it has to pick and choose as well as guggle and shuffle information.

Ah my mistake, thanks for clarifying!

I still definitely feel that Bethesda could have done a better job than they did, though this does explain the hardware's problems.

 

[CorrisD]

Isn't the issue with the PS3 the way the RAM is split up? IIRC that is what they said anyway why PS3 version has issues.

The PS3 having split ram is no different than previous consoles or generally how a PC is, the odd one out in a way is the 360 that has a total ram pool that can be used for anything, which is where the problem lies, they design the game for the 360 and wonder why it doesn't work perfectly on the PS3.
If they had done it the other way around I doubt we would be having this trouble, and they could have always increased what the 360 version could do instead of trying to fit the game into the PS3 memory structure.

One of the issues,

With that ram (or was it core) the game had it be re-written once on the blueray for every ram pool/core it uses. So textures had to have multiple copies on the disk, or something like this.

Some one verfify this, it was so long ago before I read this.

They spread the same data across a Blu-Ray to help load times, I've never seen anything to do with loading it to each ram pool, to me that doesn't even make sense but I'm sure someone will correct either of us.

Blu-Ray uses a constant speed across the disk, DVD has fast and slower sections which iirc are higher and lower than the PS3 blu-ray speed depending on the sector. To combat this developers plant multiple copies of data across a blu-ray so it takes less time to find said data to decrease loading times.

Brilliant. PC games should be even further nerfed to satisfy console lust.

Luckily the writing is on the wall, and PC gaming will become more of a focus in the future. I think this generation will be the worst as far as the consolization of games and we'll see more of return to normalcy next round.

Has nothing to do with nerfing PC games, and should have everything to do with scaling to hardware.
Bethesda continue to build upon an engine that had these issues multiple games ago yet doesn't fix the problem and then wonders why things wont just work.

 

[Macmanus]

If I hit a chicken a guard will come running a mile away tracking me down but if I drop a corpse in the middle of a city nothing happens and it'll stay there forever. Yea really wonderful design choice indeed.

You understand that your analogy is nonsensical, correct? The issue of guard AI is absolutely not congruent with world data retention.

Try again.

Has nothing to do with nerfing PC games, and should have everything to do with scaling to hardware.

I can get behind that line of thought.

Yes, 0fps should be expected. Every person who bought Bethesda's highest selling game should've been familiar with the problems of Fallout:NV. You've really honed in on who's to blame here.

FO3 and NV. However at no point did I blame the consumer for faulty software. However I find it incredibly hard to grasp the concept of a NeoGaf member not understanding that the PS3 is the absolute lowest tier to be playing Bethesda games on pre-Skyrim - one of the most prominent PC developers of the last decade+. You want them to spend more time properly porting their software? Stop buying it. But by all means I've no doubt that gnashing teeth on forums will go an equal distance.

 

[yn-neko hates a cat]

If I hit a chicken a guard will come running a mile away tracking me down but if I drop a corpse in the middle of a city nothing happens and it'll stay there forever. Yea really wonderful design choice indeed.

LOL... i'm understanding the game system of Skyrim after the hundreds of hours I've spent in the game. Being the aggressor to a none-combatant NPC will force the law down on you but should a none-combatant NPC for whatever reason attack you then you have a right to kill them. It's typically a matter of who attacked first.

I find it more impressive, as janky as it is, that a guard can even become involved in your random mussings because it shows just how awesome beth is in having so many systems interact with one another in its vast open world.

another good one is the way you can actually attack at a distance far enough that the target will cool down before they can get to you... so funny

 

[Snuggles]

Maybe Bethesda will release Dawnguard at a discounted price on PSN as a way of saying sorry about the broken game. It's the least they could do. But don't give the discount to the people who championed that mess of a port just because the issue only affected their favorite console.

Anyways, I laughed when I saw the price tag today. I'm all for fully fledged expansions, but this doesn't quite look like a Shivering Isles or Bloodmoon. I'll buy it at the proper price point if I can ever get back into Skyrim in the future.

 

[KageMaru]

At least they are being honest and up front about it this time. I can't really fault them for that. The game is incredibly complex, so I'd much rather them take their time with it instead of launching a broken piece of code.

 

[coopolon]

Wow, the backlash of the PS3 version must have finally at least touched their checkbooks for them to start caring.

Better late than never I guess.

 

[Impeccable]

Wow, the backlash of the PS3 version must have finally at least touched their checkbooks for them to start caring.

Let's see if it's enough to stop exclusivity in their DLC.

(lol)

 

[Guerrillas in the Mist]

I really didnt have much of a issue with New vegas... other then it being a expansion pack

I can't think of too many expansion packs with over twice the content of the original game.

 

[Mxrz]

I'll give Bethesda props for being honest, and actively working on the problem. But this delay, on top of the MS exclusive-month, isn't exactly helping me keep my interest either. Maybe release it a little cheaper later? $15 first week?

Area any of Bethesda's games worth playing on PS3? I've been tempted to buy the GotY editions for FO3 and New Vegas but I've only heard terrible things about them. I plan on getting Skyrim at some point but it needs a price drop.

This is just my experience, maybe it varies.

Skyrim - I waited until March or so for the Patches to fix the fps drops. It froze once during the opening, but after that it played just fine from start to finish. No other freezes, no 'lag,' no noticeable fps drops. I platinum'ed the game at around 120 hours, and while my save size was around 9-10mb, the only thing I noticed were longer loading times.

New Vegas - Standard edition, no dlc. Started off okay (with patches), but by the end of the game--as I was getting the platinum--it turned into a damned slide show at the dam. Insanely frustrating. I have the PC version too, and noticed its no technical marvel on there either, but I'm still bitter.

Fallout 3 - Played it in 2010. No problems outside freezing once or twice. I'd read not to use laser weapons to keep the save files smaller, so I avoided them. Maybe that helped. No DLC.

Oblivion - Played it on PC myself, but the PS3 version is supposedly just fine. Lot of mention of it during Skyrim's initial performance disaster.

 

[Brad Grenz]

Indeed, the PS3 doesn't have as much available RAM as the 360.

And that is the relevant difference. The problem is Bethesda's engine tries to keep the entire save in memory at all times. Given the size of the game this will eventually exceed the amount of RAM available if you play long enough. It effects the PS3 version sooner, but the 360 version is also vulnerable. They can optimize assets to try and alleviate the problem by freeing up memory, but a real solution involves rearchitecting their engine to a degree they are unwilling to commit to this generation, at least.

 

[bryehn]

To be fair, sony should had created a more developer friendly console in the first place

I had all kinds of game breaking glitched shit on the 360 too, especially after I passed 120-130 hours.

 

[Live Free or Die]

Too little, too late.

Yes it is.

 

[BadData]

Probably a great time for you guys to build a gaming PC anyways. Come on, join the master race.less for FO3 since its an older game.

I want to but I'm scaaaaared. It's going to be expensivvvvve.

 

[yn-neko hates a cat]

I had all kinds of game breaking glitched shit on the 360 too, especially after I passed 120-130 hours.

That's not necessarily the truth. 500+ on two playthrough. Definately lots of bugs and a hand full of crashes but never a game-breaking bug (for me).

 

[Dan]

And that is the relevant difference. The problem is Bethesda's engine tries to keep the entire save in memory at all times. Given the size of the game this will eventually exceed the amount of RAM available if you play long enough. It effects the PS3 version sooner, but the 360 version is also vulnerable. They can optimize assets to try and alleviate the problem by freeing up memory, but a real solution involves rearchitecting their engine to a degree they are unwilling to commit to this generation, at least.

That, to me, seems like an obviously dumb choice for massive and practically unending and games like Bethesda has been making. That's just asking for trouble from the very start.

 

[sp3000]

They shouldn't have released the game for the PS3. Period.

People would have complained, but they are in a worse situation for wasting the time to develop for that system and then releasing a broken game anyway

 

[Mxrz]

They shouldn't have released the game for the PS3. Period.

People would have complained, but they are in a worse situation for wasting the time to develop for that system and then releasing a broken game anyway

Except the main game hasn't been 'broken' for a long while now. At least not any more broken than it is else where. Its a question of doing a different set of optimizations before or after launch.

Didn't notice the brief mention of user mods. Allowing the console--or ps3 at least given MS stance--to bring in some user mods is still something i'd like to see.

 

[giancarlo123x]

New Vegas with DLC on the PS3

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3gWvxHWFuI



http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=454358

This is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen on PS3. My shitty PC can run this better.

 

[Fox Mulder]

This is the most disgusting thing I've ever seen on PS3. My shitty PC can run this better.

While Bethesda should be ashamed, they have a history of shitty ass console ports, even on the 360. MS and Sony should get more heat when they let a broken game through to retail. I thought that's what the whole certification process was for.

I remember buying fallout 3 dlc that was broken on release day. It's like nobody tests anything anymore.

 

[Arklite]

Nice, keep those interns working hard on the PS3 version.

I still remember my nights with Fallout 3, crashing at least once per play session. It's crystal clear their interests are elsewhere and the PS3 versions are afterthought slops made to supplement already successful sales on other platforms while cutting Sony a piece of the pie.

Better to move on if you're invested in this particular mess.

 

[Toki767]

I think the real sad thing about this is when they do put out Dawnguard on PS3 and even if iit runs like crap, they'll still have the nerve to charge people $20 for it. And people will buy it because they don't have a 360 or a PC good enough to run the game.

 

[Veezy]

I think the real sad thing about this is when they do put out Dawnguard on PS3 and even if iit runs like crap, they'll still have the nerve to charge people $20 for it. And people will buy it because they don't have a 360 or a PC good enough to run the game.

Gamers, well consumers in general, have short memories. Here's a company that has repeatedly, and with many accolades I might add, released products that are functionally broken.

However, they continue to sell millions. Fallout 3, New Vegas (same engine), Skyrim (also engine similarities).... it's a joke.

At least they get them game of the year awards.

 

[neoism]

Dawnguard also releasing on PC today on Steam.

holy fucking SHIIIT... just found out now ... :O

 

[neoism]

can you us your main character I for the DLC I don't want to use a new character... I have 225 on my only one and want the dlc is it possible...

 

[Averon]

To be fair, sony should had created a more developer friendly console in the first place

That's a poor excuse. The PS3 has been out for years. Its architecture, ram situation, programming quirks, and other stuff is well known. If you still can't make a stable PS3 game six years after its release--and having multiple attempts to do so with other games, yet all still suffer the same damn problem--that's totally on you.

 

[Infinite Justice]

Not surprised tbh but hopefully it will work out

 

[Jawmuncher]

Hopefully next gen Bethesda doesn't have so many issues running games on Playstation hardware.

 

[AgentOtaku]

Nice, keep those interns working hard on the PS3 version.

I still remember my nights with Fallout 3, crashing at least once per play session. It's crystal clear their interests are elsewhere and the PS3 versions are afterthought slops made to supplement already successful sales on other platforms while cutting Sony a piece of the pie.

Better to move on if you're invested in this particular mess.

Sounds about right

 

[Wuthering_Heights]

Skyrim on PS3 was so bad it actually made me dust off the 360 I haven't used in years just to play it.

Not sure I'll be giving them any more of my money. =/

 

[cgcg]

You understand that your analogy is nonsensical, correct? The issue of guard AI is absolutely not congruent with world data retention.

Try again.
.

You understand that my point was to illustrate how crappy that design decision is and the persistent nature of every object is totally not realistic? A lot of them make no sense. Nothing to do with AI. Not that hard to understand right?

 

[SMT]

There must be actual flying witches in this one, if you get my drift. You try an open a door after completing a puzzle, only to find yourself outside of the dungeon, or in another dimension.

Dialogue glitches could be pressing a button to address someone while the audio skips and you hear a word lol.

These are the magnitude of glitches I see Bethesda preoccupying themselves with.