Would you rather have Skyrim on 11/11/11 or wait another 6 m : V - Skyrim

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 4:01 pm

It's a Bethesda game. I'm betting on gamebreaking bugs, huge performance issues, frequent unexplained crashes... we can only hope it's not all of the above this time. And 11/11/11 is such a clean sounding date! No way will they let themselves miss that. That thing is going out the door regardless of the state it's in. Hopefully they've given themselves enough time.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 5:40 am

The only Bethesda developed RPGs I've played have worked fine when released. Fallout 3, Morrowind (which I never got patched since my original xbox didn't have live), and Oblivion didn't have any huge bugs that got fixed later. I trust the devs to know when the game is ready. If they say it'll be ready on 11/11/11 then it'll be ready then. If they need to delay it they will. However, most good, experienced developers don't set a date unless they're sure it will be ready then as delaying games usually are red flags that something went wrong (since they were wrong about when it would be ready either they didn't know when it would be done and were just BSing to generate hype, or they were right but ran into unforeseen problems that couldn't be solved in the set time frame). We've got a new engine, too. Don't forget that part, so we really have no idea what to expect bug wise based on past performance with Gamebyro.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 5:26 pm

Hasn't Bethesda been at this for two years...also they are distinguished with this franchise, there is a new engine and the game has been pretty much completely overhauled...or am i out of the loop? I have my faith with this game and its developers.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 1:17 pm

They already had one more year and a much bigger team. So i don't know why ist should be that buggy at all.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 1:31 pm

It's a TES Game. That means that I wait until the good people over at TES Nexus and/or Planet ElderScrolls catalog the various bugs, address all the important issues, and release a super-comprehensive unofficial patch that allows me hours of worry-free gameplay.

Also, waiting for some of the more interesting mods is always helpful. Supreme Magicka for Oblivion, for instance, was a great game-changer that made enemy spell-casters into real opposition, and I intend to wait to see if Skyrim will need something similar.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 1:28 pm

6 months- 1 year extra on top of regular development time just for play testing and bug removal!?

Jesus no, that's very excessive.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 4:46 pm

Just because its released on the date that was originally announced doesnt mean the game is going to be buggy.

Theyve have nearly 5 years to develop so im fairly confident bugs wont be too much of a concern (nothing like the job done on new vegas, anyway).

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 6:43 pm

i've never had any major problems with Bethesda's games vanilla, other than Fallout 3's quicksave corruption stuff. only when i started putting mods in them did any real instability arise, but not only is that not Bethesda's fault - it's also happened much, much less often with each subsequent game, and usually only if i'm using a bunch of weird stuff put together that i was too lazy to check for inconsistencies between.

of course Skyrim will be buggy, and of course it'll be buggier than Mass Effect 3 or Dragon Age 2 or whatever the hell - and that's entirely because of the kind of game it is. i'm entirely confident however that it will be fully playable from start to finish unmodded without any major bugs.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 6:20 am

5 years of dev time...Im pretty confident in its stability lol. I bet its playable right now. Looking better than many finished games.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 8:15 am

I'm not native english-speaker person. So I have to wait until localizator will give me in native-language (voice and text) game + till that moment some patches will be applied as well.
Also - Oblivion is GREAT game and there is still many life in it. I've bought 2 copies of Oblivion – 1st release without voice localization and last GOTY fully rusificated edition as well :facepalm:
But nowI've learned the lesson and will wait until my "pies become fully cooked/ready for eating"

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 11:25 am

i put other...........i actually would have preferred that they put off skyrim till the next gen of consoles was out for a year or so. unfortunately the nords are my fave race and skyrim which is full of nords appears to definitely look much better than oblivion but wont be crysis or far cry 2 good looking. overall im happy though. at least they didnt make a game in elswyr or the black swamp.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 11:10 am

First of all, patches can be downloaded on any platform. But also, this game has been in the works for a pretty long time (From what I've read they originally started working on it when Oblivion was done), and I think it'll be stable enough, or at least to the point where an extra 6 months wouldn't make much difference. The whole reason they waited so incredibly long to announce it was so that they could work out all the kinks. That poll is also really biased, considering the "No" answer goes on to say basically "I don't care if it's stable or less buggy, I'm just impatient", as if that's the only reason we want it on the official release date. All I'm saying is, I think they've given themselves plenty of time.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 11:11 am

Hey, I wasn't even expecting it to come out this year. So I'm ok with waiting, especially if it means I don't have to deal with freezing and lagging on my PS3. We all have seen what happened to New Vegas. But hopefully the new engine isn't as buggy as the old one.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 6:42 am

Hasn't Bethesda been at this for two years...also they are distinguished with this franchise, there is a new engine and the game has been pretty much completely overhauled...or am i out of the loop? I have my faith with this game and its developers.

Nearly 5 years now. As for the game development I would think 3 years because 2 years of design should be long enough.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 6:05 pm

Lets just put it this way. I played New Vegas right when it came out. No problems. I enjoyed the hell out of that game. Even if it did have bugs and such, who cares? It's entertainment, it's a game, I expect it to have bugs even after all of the patches. There's a reason we have the Unofficial Oblivion Patch which fixes an unbelievable amount of bugs years after the last official patch.

There is no lesson to be learned other than the one you should have known for a long while. Big open world games with hundreds of quests have bugs. Tons of them. And they don't all get fixed. I mean how many hours (or years rather) can they put into a game before they realize their profits won't even make up all of those man hours?

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:16 am

i put other...........i actually would have preferred that they put off skyrim till the next gen of consoles was out for a year or so. unfortunately the nords are my fave race and skyrim which is full of nords appears to definitely look much better than oblivion but wont be crysis or far cry 2 good looking. overall im happy though. at least they didnt make a game in elswyr or the black swamp.

I agree with what you're saying, but I fear that if they design the game for next gen consoles, they may run into some of the same problems as when they developed Oblivion for consoles that did not yet exist at the time, like the Xbox 360. The problem is, not knowing what exactly next gen consoles will be like, they end up designing a game for hardware that they're unfamiliar with, and the result is (as with Oblivion) the game doesn't run as smoothly as possible on consoles, lots of freezes and glitches occur, and they're not able to turn the graphics up as much as they should be able to, all mainly because they just don't know the hardware well enough yet. However, now they're well aware of what the 360 can do, they know how to make better graphics run more smoothly on it (the same goes for the PS3), and they can therefore make an overall smoother game because they're much more familiar with the technology.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 11:17 am

Okay, okay, now this may be just my crazy old brain, but I was thinking I would rather:

Get it in November and get a patch in February if it's needed, still having the opportunity to play for a couple of months with a slightly less than perfect game and then getting it perfect

then:

Get nothing in November and then getting a perfect game in February as I would have anyway but having nothing to play beforehand.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 8:47 am

This is an incredibly biased post... the game is likely pretty much done, and they are confident on the release date for a reason. You have no idea how long they have been working on it, and for all we know it may be virtually major bug-free by the time of the current set release date; evidently, that is what they anticipate.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 3:22 am

God. You know, if they started cleaning up bugs right now they'd have 10 months to get the game polished. If you give them another 6 months, they'll add another city, do more quests, w/e.

They have a schedule that I'm sure has been in place since the game was first being designed. Adding time to that schedule does nothing but give them time they do not need. Now, if they find that they cannot make that schedule, they may add time. And I doubt it will be anywhere near six months. That happens to games which are announced at the begging of development, because they have no idea how fast their progress will be. The game, right now, is 90% done. They've got some last minute content/effects/voice acting to add, and then play testing/bug killing.

They aren't in a rush. They didn't decide to release it 10 months from now 12 months ago. They decided to release it 10 months from now 5 years ago. And I'm guessing they're on schedule, or they would have changed it already. Who knows. Maybe the original release was 10/10/11.

Christ.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 7:03 am

I voted Yes, No, Yes.

Extra time to try to find and patch bugs. YES!
Will the quest breaking bugs actually be found and fixed before release, odds on they won't. It'll come to patches that fix some bugs, and introduce new ones, with the cycle repeating several times, before Bethesda just stops work and leaves things in an unfinished and unfixed state, expecting the fanbase and modders to do Bethesda's job.

Merely waiting for and buying the game on release day... Hell No! To ensure I get a copy of the CE, that means pre order and paying for it in full BEFORE release day.

Jenifur Charne

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 6:47 am

The results of this poll are exactly why the developers have no motivation to release a bug-free game.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 2:34 pm

I'm less concerned about bugs than overall gameplay and design content. Daggerfall was full of bugs, but people play it to this day. I'm not sure if people will play Oblivion 15 years from now, despite being less buggy.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 5:21 pm

I am really getting tired of games being released early, and we have to wait months for patches. By months I mean, game comes out,
buggy as hell, (like most Bethesda games) then for alot of people, they can't play the game, have to wait a month, or 3 months to be
able to play the game, then another 3 months for the 2nd or 3rd big patch to fix the game.

I rather wait that extra 6-12 months for them to make that patch, and just have it ready when the game finally comes out.

I really hate the buy now, wait a month or so, so the game can be playable and then wait some more for the next patch to fix issues.
For me, I would like for the game to be held back and fixed and finished properly. I wouldn't mind rather waiting 6 months or a year
for this to be done. Since we know this most likely will not happen, and it will be released 11/11/11 (who knows maybe it will be held
back like Morrowind and I think Oblivion was held back as well) this will most likely be my last game I buy on game release.

For me, TES games are the exception (I just love Bethesda and expect them to release a buggy game

) so I will always buy their
games on Day One release day.

Assuming that Bethesda is pushing the game out too soon. They have been working on it for years, not just post Fallout 3, even before that.

It is ignorant to assume something when you don't know anything. We won't know if the game was pushed out too soon till it actually comes out.

I would prefer as few bugs as humanly possible, BUT, I don't want them to delay the game because we don't know for sure that the game will be released as a bug-fest. Will there be bugs? You bet your bottom dollar there will be, humans are not perfect. If Bethesda says the game will be ready for a 11/11/11 release, then more power to them. Todd did say that from the time they announce the game and when its released, it will be the shortest they have ever done.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 10:28 am

New engine should equal less bugs, not only that but Bethesda has been working on Skyrim for awhile now. They have plenty of time left to fix bugs. Besides I like bugs they are interesting and sometimes quite funny.

Oh yeah, and I'm not buying it on day one.... I'm pre-ordering it for more than one platform.

» Tue Aug 10, 2010 2:14 pm

Didnt they start production on Skyrim like directly after they shipped Oblivion?

If its been in production since like 2006, and they have a playable demo 10 months from release, I highly doubt an extra 3 months wait would benefit that much.