Is Skyrim as buggy as Oblivion and Fallout w/ mods?

[Pkatt]

Pretty much what the title says.  

 

To elaborate, I ran Oblivion with a bunch of mods, and stopped playing, because of all the bugs and CTDs.   I've started playing FONV with mods, and it looks like its going the same direction as Oblivion, having to deal with CTDs and various bugs. 

 

I was determined to play Skyrim vanilla, so I wouldn't have to deal with that, and could finish the main quest.  I did so, and enjoyed a relatively bug free experience.

 

 

So my question is for those that have played all three games and ran them with lots of mods.   When I get around to adding mods to Skyrim, do I have the same experiences to look forward to, or is it any better?

 

thanks

[Leito86]

I very rarely get any CTDs when playing modded Skyrim.  I've played modded New Vegas and that game crashes almost every hour...

[cornbreadtm]

It can be if you use unclean and incompatible mods.

 

But if you just use about 7 scripted mods (2 combat, 3 immersion, and 2 for anything else) and armor mods then your fine.

Maybe just 1 mod that changes the leveled lists for spawns and the unofficial patches so you can actually play the game without half of your quests breaking.

Skyrim's Wyre bash isn't as powerful as Oblivion's or Fallout 3's so you can't just mess with the level lists as much without problems.

The Tes5Edit helps a lot with it's problems but there are Edits for all of the Bethesda modded games so it's nothing special.

 

Stability wise from most stable with mods to the leased:

 

Morrowind

-

Skyrim

Fallout 3

-

Fallout: Tale of Two Wastelands

-

-

Fallout: New Vegas

Oblivion

 

Since Bethesda started making there games with console play in mind, they have gotten less and less stable all around but lately they have been getting better and the games have been improving for the vanilla and modded versions. Skyrim is proof of this.

 

On the other hand, the problem with Skyrim is Save corruptions. Play long enough on a heavily modded game and your going to have problems that weren't there 10 hours ago. Random CTDs , infinite load screens, crashes on cell loads. Luck plays a factor as well. It kinda sucks and there isn't a hard fix for it yet.

 

[Someone92]

I've been playing Oblivion for a few years with 50-100 active mods, a few dozens merged mods and a few dozens more mods that only changes textures/meshes/etc. and I've rarely had any bugs or crashes.

I haven't played Fallout 3 and NV much and had only around half a dozen to a dozen mods installed but haven't experienced much problems either.

I'm now playing Skyrim with roughly 30 active mods and all crashes I've experienced so far were caused by not reading the READMEs thoroughly enough and missed to install a requirement.

 

So, from the fact that you didn't managed to get a modded Oblivion and FONV to run smoothly it's likely you won't manage to get modded Skyrim to run smoothly.

[gregathit]

As most have stated already, the crash factor of any of the Bethesda games is "user" driven and not some much mod driven.  You need to pay careful attention to what you install and how you install it, as well as understanding and using the tools the community has made to clean plugins that have dirty edits.  Finally you need to understand load order priorities.

 

I play all three games with an excess of 100+ plugins each and the game only goes to desktop when I select "quit to desktop"  from the menu.

[VictoriaG]

I'm sure as soon as Skyrim reaches 3.1gb of memory usage it will crash, also Skyrim stores mod info into the actual game saves which can be a problem if you are trying to remove a problem mod as it will probably corrupt the save.

[Pkatt]

Thank you for the info, exactly what I was looking  for!

 

I feel like I have a very basic understanding of mods, but wish I had the time to sit down and learn more about how to identify problems.  I try, but it seems too much like work, which is what I'm trying to relax and escape from.   I feel like I barely have time to devote to any games as it is.  Too much real life, and not enough time for games!

[Astaroth-Lite]

Skyrim is by far the most stable of all the games in the series, with the latter Fallouts included for good measure.

 

And I'd say New Vegas would be the least stable; but that's just my experience.

 

Big open-world games like this are so hard to test and fix since there is so much open area and so many variables that are involved; so I do let it slide.

[Guest Spikes]

For me, Oblivion most buggy and hard to tame, skyrim most stable but still wild beast cause of mods.

 

On the other side OBL>Fallout series>Skyrim in terms of what's more interesting/fun,again cause of mods.

[Astaroth-Lite]

It's pretty obvious that Oblivion would have the best mod selection seeing as it has been around for a good half-decade now.

[kingkong]

any game heavily moded will find Big CTD if the user is just dumping the mods inside the game without reading requierements and knowing what he is doing.       (why bethesda does not use BOSS engine    --+but even boss can loose the north if there was not a devoted team to keep it a live)     

 

you are just expecting that a box of toys full with toys will arange it self to your taste       IF you find a box like this call me !!!

[Pkatt]

Just in case there is any misunderstanding, I would like to point out that I do read every mod's readme, and try to do what is required, and put them in the right order according to the instructions.  I also know that if two mods do the same thing, I'm supposed to put the one I want after the one I don't want, and make a merged patch.

 

My level of knowledge drops after this part, when there are apparently things inside the mods that conflict and cause bugs, that aren't pointed out in readmes, or anywhere else. 

[kingkong]

i am far from beeing the best and often climb the empire state building      my game "oblivion" is heavily modded and is very stable and when  rarely almost never have a CTD  i know exactly the culprit and fix the probleme directly

(ex i had a ctd 3 times randomely.--+  few days before i made an update of a mod but forgot to update his dependency doing the dependency update corrected and no more ctd)   often and the majority as i see it is a load order problemes         and some times just mod incompatibilities or some files not being installed.   

 

for me oblivion  fallout   and skyrim   use the same engine just more recent one from the other   and just go and see the technical support thread and you will have exemples of problemes you might encounter.

 

i post here not to discourage you  in the contrary i just want to point that most of ctd can be fixed and just being aware can you might resolved it more easily if encountered.

 

 

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

New Vegas is the most buggy, unstable things I have ever played, and that's WITH mods to reduce crashes and fix bugs. When I finally uninstalled the game, it was due to getting 10 crashes/lock ups in under one hour despite every load order I have tried combined with mod pruning and trying to keep compatibility at a maximum. Fallout 3, for all the shit it gets, and for the fact that I get crashes in very specific places across multiple installs on multiple machines with patches, both official and not, I have never gotten the amount of crashes as New Vegas, nor have I ever clipped and gotten stuck in the ground like in New Vegas, which happens at least a third of the time for me even when patched up.

 

Skyrim is the most stable, and even with vanilla, it feels the least buggy. Oblivion never felt that bugged out, and honestly every crash I had feels like it's due to the fact that I have a metric ton of mods for it and don't keep my load order as clean as I should. Morrowind, even with patches still crashes at the weirdest of times and for the strangest of reasons; I've gotten crashes from using armorer hammers to trying to dispose of bodies; this one is the most consistent, across multiple machines to the point where I cannot dispose of any corpses in the sewers of Mournhold without the game instantly crashing, and this is with less than 10 mods and the patch project installed.

[Adam Jensen]

New Vegas is the most buggy, unstable things I have ever played, and that's WITH mods to reduce crashes and fix bugs. When I finally uninstalled the game, it was due to getting 10 crashes/lock ups in under one hour despite every load order, mod pruning I have tried and trying to keep compatibility at a maximum. Fallout 3, for all the shit it gets, and for the fact that I get crashes in very specific places across multiple installs on multiple machines with patches, both official and not, I have never gotten the amount of crashes as New Vegas, not have I ever clipped and gotten stuck in the ground like in New Vegas, which happens atleast a third of the time for me even when patched up.

 

Skyrim is the most stable, and even with vanilla, it feels the least buggy. Oblivion never felt that bugged out, and honestly every crash I had feels like it's due to the fact that I have a metric ton of mods for it and don't keep my load order as clean as I should. Morrowind, even with patches still crashes at the weirdest of times and for the strangest of reasons; I've gotten crashes from using armorer hammers to trying to dispose of bodies; this one is the most consistent, across multiple machines to the point where I cannot dispose of any corpses in the sewers of Mournhold without the game instantly crashing, and this is with less than 10 mods and the patch project installed.

 

Same here, I flat out raged quit New Vegas because of that. I spent a good chunk of hours fixing everything, checking the load order, cleaning everything, etc. At 3am when I finally finished everything and was about to start playing, I stepped out of the doc's house and boom, crash. It kept at it until 4am when I decided to stop playing it.

 

Haven't touched it ever since.

[Astaroth-Lite]

Even with all the CTDs, I enjoyed New Vegas the most out of the Gamebryo Bethesda games.

 

 

And Fallout 3 the least.

 

[Adam Jensen]

Even with all the CTDs, I enjoyed New Vegas the most out of the Gamebryo Bethesda games.

 

 

And Fallout 3 the least.

 

 

I like New Vegas more than Fallout 3. I don't care what anybody says, that game had a lot more content that 3 and a lot more of variety.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

And I don't care what anybody says, I still prefer Fallout 3 to NV. If it had the crafting and ammo system, I'd never have tried so hard to get NV to work.

[Astaroth-Lite]

We can all like different things and that's okay.

 

All in all, I still liked Fallout 3, just not as much as the others. And even more truth, my favorite Fallout overall is still the second one.

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

My only major problems with 2 is the fact that it has the hard coded 13 year limit, and the fact that you can't pull a jackass moment and side with the Enclave, like you could the Master in Fallout 1. But it's still my favorite of them all. Hell. I even enjoy Fallout Tactics.

 

But I was a bit harsh with what I just said about NV; I do enjoy the game, despite my issues with setting, the NCR and plot stuff... it's just heart breaking to have that game refuse to so much on so many systems despite my best effort. And the people who still defend Obsidian after this... oh god... but that's another issue all together.

 

I'm honestly surprised with how stable Skyrim is, especially given Bethesda's track record, even with mods all over the place. The only problem is, of course, since mods are so deeply pushed into saves, you can break everything with removing a few too many mods (or just one if it's scripted enough). Most of my crashes have come from removing a mod here or there and thinking that maybe I can keep a save, which proves me wrong. Even with making saves from before the mod is installed, I sometimes fall into the trap because I make some actual progress, don't want to lose it but don't like a mod, then wham, I'm getting CTDs or save corruption.

 

You have no idea how sick I am of making a new character because I'm an idiot and have ruined everything because I just don't learn...

[Adam Jensen]

That happens to me a lot, especially with those freaking armors, that some of them look pretty good in the pics and when you tried them out they look like crap.

[cornbreadtm]

 

Even with all the CTDs, I enjoyed New Vegas the most out of the Gamebryo Bethesda games.

 

 

And Fallout 3 the least.

 

 

I like New Vegas more than Fallout 3. I don't care what anybody says, that game had a lot more content that 3 and a lot more of variety.

 

 

This is the reason why I've been in love with Tale of two wastelands for so long. It's embarrassing how much more fun the capital wasteland is with NV components. Combats better, sexout, crafting, sexout >_> *cough* *cough* etc.

 

I honestly think New Vegas is the best of the Bethesda games as well, but Obsidian has about 90% to do with that but also probably 90% of why that game is so bug stricken and crash ridden, especially if you look at their history. And the fact that Fallout 3 is about 90% more stable that a game made from it

[Astaroth-Lite]

My forgiveness of bugs in Obsidian games is near-infinite partially due to the fact that they have most of the people behind Planescape: Torment in their studio.

 

I mean, how could you ever be mad at them if you are aware of that?

[Kamen Rider Kuuga]

Never played it, so fuck Obsidian. Fuck them, fuck their bugs, fuck their defense force that always cries rushed and everybody else being at fault even if they get years of extra time and budget extensions but still churn out something half finished.

 

And the worst part is, most games they put out have so much potential, but it's all fucking ruined by their inability to actually finish anything.