People begin to complain at the little things. There is nothing massive that people hate which shows how awesome of a game Skyrim is going to be. When you have to complain about people not having toes, that's a very good thing, because the broad game looks and will be amazing. Maybe people won't have toes, who cares! we get dragon shouts! Sure there are minor things like 3rd person horse only, lack of toes, and no changing your characters after, but who knows, they might fix that before the game comes out, we still have a bit til 11-11-11

Long time Elder Scrolls fans have become accustomed, and somewhat resigned, to the harsh reality that an Elder Scrolls game will have multiple bugs on release. It’s a ‘trade off’ – we get a huge, expansive, detailed and immersive world. And the sheer size and depth of that world will inevitably mean that there will be bugs out there that don’t get squished in beta testing.

For most of us, it’s a trade off we are prepared to make. After all, can you imagine the howls of anguish if Bethesda were to announce that the release date for Skyrim was to be pushed back to 2012 so that further bug testing could be carried out? The official forums would no doubt go into meltdown!

Previous games have each had a couple of patches – the usual pattern seems to be that we get an initial, interim patch within a few days or a week after release, followed by a more substantial patch a few weeks later. But, inevitably as the development team resources are switched to the next game (Fallout 4 one assumes?) the ability of ‘fix’ games is reduced and eventually it is left to modders (at least on PC) for fix things, and in that regard, the Unofficial Oblivion Patch has become a standard, ‘must have’ download for PC users.

So, there was an interesting ‘change of gear’ mini-announcement coming out of the current PAX event going on down in Seattle. It appears that Skyrim is going to abandon the occasional major patch philosophy in favour of some form of in-built ‘live update’ system. Apparently, that is commonly used on the PC by companies such as EA, although I’m not very familiar with it myself.

Console users will also get ‘live updates’ on a regular basis, one assumes via X-Box Live and Playstation Network. Of course, Steam users will already be familiar with the auto-application of patches and fixes via Steamworks….

Whilst insisting that his team are currently doing everything they can to get rid of as many bugs and glitches as possible before November, he appears to take a realistic view towards producing a totally bug-free game.

“Are there going to be bugs we didn’t catch in a game of this size?” he asked rhetorically. “Our assumption is there are going to be.”

Whilst some may regard that as defeatist, others would term it realistic. The reality is that post-release patches and/or ‘hot fixes’ are an accepted part of gaming nowadays. And, to be fair, Bethesda has had a worse reputation that most for producing bug-laden games. It’s a point that Todd Howard himself concedes:

“It’s a known issue and a very valid complaint,” he said. Before launch, Howard said, Bethesda is testing Skyrim rigorously and more heavily using a system that runs automated versions of the game overnight, searching for bugs and helping the team squash them. “We’re getting better at it,” Howard said.

Vision of banks of machines playing Skyrim all through the night on ‘auto settings’

We can only hope that the combination of three years of development, a brand new engine, extensive testing and quicker ‘hot fixes’ means that we’ll be playing something that it is at least 99.9% bug free.

And if not, well, there’s always the inevitable ‘Unofficial Skyrim Patch’ to look forward to

No spell creation, no degradation, no attributes, no jump height or speed variable, marginalized H2H, all big problems.

No spell creation, no degradation, no attributes, no jump height or speed variable, marginalized H2H, all big problems.

http://theskyrimblog.com/?p=1114

Why I know Skyrim is going to be good?

Because Bethesda.

For every "no" there are 10 "yes"s.

That's why Skyrim will be good?