Do you think that Bethesda will have addressed these issues? I am simply tired of getting hours into a game only for it to freeze randomly while attempting to load the next cell or region.

sure

wait....

we don't know.

Save game bloat effects every single long running game. Ive been able to beat it in the past by just having a PC that I can upgrade in a arms race against the degrading performance. Ive had saves corrupt before, but what spelt the doom for Alexander in New Vegas was the large amounts of mods I had installed and uninstalled. When it came time to buy my new PC, I just started over from scratch. I have to wonder how getting mods involved will work with consoles, since you can do major damage to your savegame modding the wrong way. Its not as bad as it was back in the Morrowind days, but there's still a lot of danger if you don't know exactly what you are doing, and with consoles you can't do the time honoured tradition of throwing brute force processing power at your problems.

Best guard against corrupted save games is careful modding.

Nah they probably thought the fans love it so much they decided to add it in as a feature.

Hopefully. I had some particular issues with bloat when Dragonborn released. For some reason, my save file rapidly increased in size during playthroughs after I installed the dlc - quite strange. I had to start a new save because it got so bad.

I know the issue with save bloating is largely related to items (weapons mainly) not being cleaned up because they're treated as a separate entity to whoever dropped it. The USKP patch fixed it by treating the item as part of the individual. So, trying to loot the sword the bandit dropped would just open up the bandit's inventory where you could then pluck the sword from his inventory. Not sure if Bethesda fixed this themselves in their own patches, though. It's been a long time and my Skyrim is so heavily modded any small thing could end up [censored] it up big time.

The bloat you're concerned with seems to me to be the byproduct of a highly interactive game world. The more you interact and change the world, the more the game must tract. I doubt there is any kind of magical method for tracking things that won't cause bloat. The alternative, of course, would be to not track them, but that doesn't sound like a good solution to me.

As others have said mods can significantly affect things, too. If you're not careful you can end up with a lot of scripts running in the background and that can seriously impact the game's performance.

Well one way to maintain performance is not having dozens upon dozens of save files. That will really slow your game down. Be cognizant of the mods you have (they will cause bloating and freezing) and especially where you are saving. There are things you can do to counteract this issue, but it's nothing BGS can permanently fix due to the vast and open nature of their games. You just have to be cautious of what you are doing and how you play the game.

I mean, I know next to nothing about software engineering. I have no idea if they've put together a way in order to keep my save files alive indefinitely, but I really hope they did, seeing as how it's their job.

Save files can be corrupted in any game, especially the more complex they are. They are especially prone to corruption when patches or new updates are released. There's always the possibility of your saved progress being at risk. The best thing you can do is save often and have a few saves in case one is lost. That's all the advice that can really be given.

I hope so. Todd Howard was saying in an interview that their #1 priority for QA is making sure saves don't get borked. But who knows with save bloating; ideally, it should take well over a hundred or two hundred hours before saves start becoming untenable... maybe longer.

I'm guessing this must be an issue with console versions as my PC versions of Fallout 3 and Skryim have never just frozen and locked up my system. Now New Vegas is another story....

I've never had any save issues TBH on PC. Console seems to get borked more often then PC It seems. Only issues I've had is CTD due to a funky mod or such but never a save issue.

The number of save game files does not cause performance issues. The size of the save game files causes performance issues.

The mods you have may cause bloating and freezing. (Not will cause bloating and freezing). It depends entirely on the mod.

Wasn't this caused by the Bloatfly?

I haven't seen those in the new trailer, so problem solved...

To expand on this, file bloat as I understand it is happens this way:

The game world is static at first. The standard game files have the starting location of each instance of each object placed in the world. What get's added into your save game file is the interaction of these items. If you move a nuka-cola bottle from the shelf to a new location, your save file has to store that. If you don't move it, no record of it needs to exist in your save file because it will use the game files "starting location." Then there's dynamically created instances of items, etc..

This is just part of the reason even in a vanilla version of the game, there are other variables that are also stored in the save files that can contribute to file bloat.

So, in short: No I don't think there's a real solution to file bloat.

That is a silly point to make given the longer you play, the larger the size of the file will become... The more saves you have compiled with the larger size of each file will cripple performance... Trust me, I had probably over 100+ save files on Oblivion and performance was absolutely terrible. When I removed most of the save files, my performance shot back up regardless of the size of the save game file.

Again, a silly correction. If you are a serious modder (using 50+ mods), you are likely going to bloat your game in some way. Especially if we are talking about comprehensive mods that change the game in dramatic ways, whethers its visuals, content, features, etc. Miniscule mods are not even being considered in this rationale. I am explicitly referring to significant mods.

I've simply learned to make a group of rotating saves with permanent back saves every now and then.. I definitely expect the game to freeze.. All games seem freeze on me at some point. Seems like any lengthy play time with any game can result in a freeze.

One tiny trick I used in Skyrim to help save bloating was to clean up after any fights. Any weapons and shields that I didn't intend to take with me I would put back into a corpse's inventory and they would get cleaned up with their bodies…. no more mountains of swords and shields all over the roads. It helped a bit.

This is something that I just do out of habit now and I'm sure will continue in FO4. I may kill everything in sight, but I am no litter-bug haha

Yeah I "love" bad written mods which cause save bloat too.

You can't see it, but I'm holding up a sign that reads "How Should We Know."

We ultimately will not know until we get the game. I will say I hope they have optimized the game better to reduce save game bloat. If they work on item clean up that will help as well.

Probably won't be an issue due to increased Memory.

I was just about to mention this, then again the leap in power seems to have been eaten up fairly quickly with all the added polygons, lighting and weather effects that this generation has brought (to consoles). It will likely be better, but I still would suggest the usual in-game maintenance in order to avoid it.

I was always curious as to what caused the game to freeze from time to time. I only play on console, 360 and now One, and am somewhat relieved to hear even PC had issues with it. This thread gives me some clue as to what causes it. When it comes to mods, I will wait a long time before I try one, and research it to hell and back before I even think of trying one.