PS3 Safe Mode Could Improve Skyrim Lag

Bethesda receives positive feedback on PS3 previous performance recommendations and suggests a new, but risky option.

[Euthanasia78]

Great game. Terrible news. Nobody should be denied their Skyrim! I have a sneaking thought that this has something to do with the split 256MB memory articture. I'm just saying.

[Drekken]

Oh yeah... thats it. It has nothing to do with horrible coding.

[decrypt]

So how is it the game runs flawlessly on the PC and the Xbox 360?

Infact for the PC version they mention relatively old hardware is capable of 1080p @ high settings.

"The good news is that you don’t need an uber-rig to enjoy the game. A 2.5+ GHz Phenom II matched up to a Radeon HD 5770 or GeForce GTX 550 Ti is enough to enjoy at least 40 FPS using high-quality details at 1080p, even with FXAA enabled to help smooth out the bothersome aliasing artifacts. That’s a reasonable requirement that probably won't necessitate many upgrades. Best of all, the result looks almost as good as ultra-quality details."

http://www.tomshardware.com...

Wonder why Bethesda would purposely badly code the PS3 only. Or perhaps it really is the PS3 memory limitations holding the game back?

[jony_dols]

@decrypt;

You're kidding right?
I own Skyrim on for my 360, & while it's a great game, I have never encountered so many glitches in the one package.

First of all there was the texture streaming issue, if I decided to save the game to the HDD, then I experienced the Giants glitch; where you get catapulted up into space if hit, then there was the flying mammoths, also I got clipped into boulders & had to load a previous save to escape, ect ect.

And on-top of all that the game has crashed on me 4 or 5 times.

Flawless my ass, Troll.

[MisterAV]

@decrypt
...........
so when the latest generation of nvdia card 5XX becomed old hardware?

[bbadbill2]

@MisterAV

My single 5870 runs well, to answer your question though... I'd say the day a card is announced is the day it begins to age.

It's a total bummer they haven't released a patch for the PS3. Hopefully they can produce a fix for those experiencing the issue.

@Drekken

I'd be hard pressed to find a dev that's made a flawless game for a single system let alone parity amongst cross development but some are closer than others.

[baboom223]

@decrypt I have the 360 version and I haven't experienced any problems.. other then like mammoths falling from the sky ;P

[Bigpappy]

Decrypt is correct. The PC and 360 version run almost flawlessly. I have is on 360 as that is my only gaming system and I have had no issues what so ever.

@jony_dols: Stop being a tool son. The things you are complaining about have nothing to do with hardware and are trivial at best. I you had to stop playing Skyrim because a giant hit you so hard you flew into orbit, I would suggest you stop playing video games and just wait for the movie and hope the director doesn't make any error. Do this for your own sanity. What texture loading issue? Just don't install the game if you have that issue. Instaaling to the HDD is an OPTION.

It amazes me that people are going to get so bent out of shape over minor gliches in the biggest game with this amount of content and detail. You know what? Just trade in the game the and the 360. Get yourself a copy of dark souls and any version of Uncharted. I am sure those games have no flaws and you will get more out of them than you ever can playing skyrim on an evil 360.

[MysticStrummer]

Those that think Skyrim is flawless on PC and 360 are either liars or fooling themselves. I play only on PS3 and I'm not having many problems with the game but I'm aware that many are. It's just the nature of glitches... just because you aren't seeing them doesn't mean they're figments of someone's imagination. It's not hard to find lists of confirmed bugs and those lists are lengthy for all versions.

[jony_dols]

@Bigpappy
'So how is it the game runs flawlessly on the PC and the Xbox 360?'

I was replying to this comment. I'm just speaking of my own experience with the game, and it runs far from flawlessly.

I don't even know why I'm replying to your comment in the first place, it is just laughable!

The fact that you brought up Uncharted (?), and asked me to trade in my 360 (????) is beyond me.

I'll enjoy not reading your response, mainly because you used up your only bubble.

[Grip]

i have the game on PC my friend have the game on Xbox 360 don't lie we never have lag in this game expect when auto save game in Xbox 360. PC i don't have any problem.

[xX TriiCKy Xx]

@jony_dols

I thought being catapulted into space was apart of the game since its happened to so many players including myself.

[Heartnet]

@decrypt....

Its not the ps3s fault at all lol no games (to my knowledge) have had this problem ergo its Bethesdas coding fault and lack of research and porting to the Ps3....

If this happened on every game then yes it wud of been the ps3 but this isnt the case and is all down to bethesda... Its a bad port and this shudve been found out in the beta..

[StraightPath]

PS3 memory limitation.

[Crystallis]

PUULLLEASSEE.. Go search Brink and then come back at me. The lag in that game was horrible and guess who it was made by? And Dont come at me with that open world nonsense. FFvsXIII is confirmed to be open world and I bet you it wont be riddled with bugs. Stop giving bethesda a pass just because skyrim is an open world game.

What I say is this "you want to create an open world game?, Fine but it better be tip top shape."

[Ducky]

^ Brink was made by SplashDamage. Uses idTech4. Is not an open world game.
Skyim was not made by SplashDamage. Does not use idTech4. Is an open world game.
I'm not sure what you're trying to accomplish by bringing Brink into the discussion.

FFvsXIII isn't released yet, and you don't know how it's going to run (nor do you know how complex it's open world would be)

What I say is this "you want to criticize a dev? Fine, but you better have some grounds to back up your criticism."
... Unless of course, if you're content with Bethesda removing some features to make the game run better.

[Crystallis]

My by bringing Brink in the discussion is the point of bad programming. Bethesda are the publisher of that game and if you don't think they had a hand in making Brink then your mistaken. My point being is that bethesda are bad at coding regardless if the game they are making is open world or not.

And with regards to FFvsXII , I was only making an assumption and I know Noruma's track record.

[Ducky]

"Bethesda are the publisher of that game and if you don't think they had a hand in making Brink then your mistaken."

... how am I mistaken?
Bethesda doesn't know much about idTech4, so it's not like they could really offer much programming help on Brink to begin with. SD did all the programming, and if they wanted help, they would've asked iD, not Bethesda.

An entirely different team made Brink, so again, there isn't much of a link between it and Skyrim (aside from publishers which doesn't say much)
... and you can make assumptions on the next FinalFantasy game, but assumptions don't make good arguments.

[HSx9]

@Crystallis

Dude give up, you don't even know what you are talking about.

[Redlogic]

Well I was having a bit of lag (about 63 hours in and 9.1 mb save file at this moment) so I went in and turned off all the auto save options and also find a corrupted data save file so I deleted that as well. The game has been running flawless since then. As a matter of fact I haven't had any freezes either. Right now I have only two Skyrim saves on my system (deleted all the old auto saves). It may be a pain to always remember to save but the game is playable and I love it more than ever! Just a thought for you folks...also I have a ps3 fat.

[rob6021]

The problem is Bethesda is using the same old engine from ages ago, and only tooled it to run well on the 360 for oblivion. Bethesda failed to retool the engine to work on the PS3 correctly. As it currently stands the save file gets larger and larger and as it eats more ram, the game becomes less playable. The reason the save file resides in the ram is because it was never a problem on 360 with 360's memory architecture and there was no guaranteed hard drive on that console so they had to put it in the ram.

From what I know this has little to do with PS3's architecture and more to do with Bethesda's complete oversight on worrying about retooling the engine to work correctly on PS3. They had the time, but they decided the PS3 fans weren't worth their time and money - and that PC and xbox fans were first priority.

[Crystallis]

Right, just like all those other multiplats and exclusives that run great. Bethesda are bad programmers, plain and simple.

[Ducky]

Just like all those other multiplats and exclusives that have a persistent open-world.

Oh wait.

I wonder who knows more about programming; Bethesda, or random N4G users.

[vickers500]

I don't know FatOldMan, Crystatallis DOES have more agrees than you do. Obviously that means he's right and you're wrong.

[GraveLord]

Yes that is the problem. Bethesda was too lazy to make a proper PS3 game. They took the easy way out which is developing for the Xbox 360 and porting to PS3.

[BuLLDoG909]

tryed it, along with all the other "fixes"
doesnt do shit.. and unless you have an old ps3 that you have dL'ed and deleted alot of stuff off, its pointless..

[El_Barto]

I feel bad for people that are having trouble with this amazing game.

[Euthanasia78]

@ Drekken. I'm not a fanboy. I own all systems. I feel bad for anybody that is having a problem playing this game. I don't want to start a war, but if I were to put PS3's memory arcicuture vs. Terrible coding. Idk if thats even a close call? Ur blaming Bethesda? Studio for terrible coding? It has nothing to do with PS3's layout being different than a PC's or XBox's? Cmon man.

[raWfodog]

Of course the split memory is a factor. That has already been stated by the Obsidian developer. But its always been split and Bethesda always knew that. But they still chose to code the same way that has always caused them problems with the PS3 (see Fallout NV).

So, I wouldn't call it terrible coding but let's say it's not optimized for the PS3.

[Crystallis]

I would say both coding and not being optimized for the PS3. All version of skyrim are pretty bad with regards to glitches. Now of course we are only talking about lag witch seems to consist only on the ps3 but all version are not up to par.

[xyxzor]

Look at Bethesoft's track record. It's horrible.

[DonaldBeck]

bethesda will fix it, you guys are overreacting.

[ZombieAssassin]

Don't count on it Fo3/TES4/FoNV never had any helpful patches, they're still using an over half decade old engine that was crap when it was released...they don't know how to roll with the times.

That being said I love their games...just not how they go about releasing them.

[Dark_Overlord]

The Fallout 3 GOTY edition is still horribly broken, Bethesda can't even be arsed to fix that, so I won't hold my breath

[ElementX]

I exchanged my PS3 version for the 360 version. It looks better and I'm sure any glitches the 360 version has can be patched. You can't patch the PS3 architecture. Only problem is that I have to catch up to where I was.

[Colonel_Dante]

Learn to code, Bethesda. Email the ace PC devs , Dice, they'll show you ol' timers how the cell works!

[Euthanasia78]

I was thinking Valve as ace PC devs!

[Pintheshadows]

I'm wondering if mines running ok because my HDD is fairly empty.

[Ducky]

I think it has to do with how much you fudge the world.

I don't know the exact details, but the game feels the need to track every change you make to the world.
So if you go around humping every table you find and basically, creating a big mess... that mess gets saved so every time you revisit the area, it's still messy.

... eventually, if you make a mess too big, the game struggles to keep up.
So, you might start experiencing issues later on in the game (50+ hours?)

[Pintheshadows]

Actually i've been playing for 160 hours. It was mentioned on the Bethblog that freeing space on the HDD might help but I haven't encountered any severe framerate issues in 160 hours so I doubt I will. Just hit lvl 50 finally.

[n4gisatroll]

Why can't it work in regular use? What's the point of selling a game, and trying to get game of the year, if it can't even play right. If this wins and gets most votes for game of the year, then there is something wrong with the game industry.

[Bathyj]

I have plenty of HDD space.

That probably explains why I've had no problems since the patch.

[rayzorn]

i have been playin on ps3 im about 60 hours in now and all i have seen is one dragon fly backwards. one not give me a soul gem till i reloaded. and i crashed like 3 times.

i just got a new hard drive though a little while back put a 320gb in my old 60 fat. so idk if thats why im not having the problems like some people are or what. but that is no worse then either fallout. or oblivion. but i think the next game they make i am gonna get for pc either way.

i never had the problems with daggerfall or morrowind that i have been having with thier new games thats for sure. but i never got those games on day one either and im sure they had a few patches out by the time i picked them up.

[ZippyZapper]

PS3 has a safe mode?

What is this Win95?

Can you run DOS commands too?

[Yukicore]

Probably not the safe mode you think it is... It opens up a quick emergency fix which allows user to choose from different fix options which might fix your problem.

[terrordactyl]

The PS3 architecture has been the same since release in 2006 obviously. Split memory is no great surprise.

Bethesda has already released Oblivion, Fallout 3 and Fallout NV (with Obsidian) on PS3.

As Skyrim is their 4th PS3 release, you would think that they were familiar with PS3 architecture by now and it's idiosyncracies.

Blaming Sony or PS3 for a Bethesda release is ridiculous. There are plenty of other openworld games on PS3 that work. Saints Row, GTA, Just Cause etc...

[kramun]

That's why having a gaming pc is a godsend when you also have a ps3. You don't suffer at all, you've got your bases covered.

Having only a single console is like having a gaming disability.

*Smugmode off

[blaze22-qwerty]

I commented 2 weeks with a fix that is the same as this fix (safe mode fix) and i got more than 30 disagrees and people called me a troll.

[Euthanasia78]

It's just a shame some ppl are having problems playing this game. I absolutely love it.