Skyrim - Dragonborn DLC - Nine Places OXM UK Wants to Visit

OXM UK has an editorial about the nine places in the Dragonborn DLC for Skyrim they'd love
to visit. The Dragonborn DLC will take place in Solstheim. They would like to go to various places, including the Telvanni Tower:

5. The Telvanni Tower
The fourth icon to appear in the patch notes is a 'TelvanniTower'. House Telvanni is the richest of the Six Great Houses of Morrowind's Dark Elves. Telvanni wizard lords (often necromancers, liches or vampires) tend to live in isolation and be contemptuous of all other living creatures, even other Telvanni, explaining this lonely tower (which may have no staircase, given the Telvanni's excessive use of levitation magic). Despite these negative associations, House Telvanni was proactive in closing Oblivion gates during the Oblivion crisis.

More information.

Looks fun but had to put my 'foot down' regarding the lack of quest bug fixes in the vanilla game. I might buy all these DLCs in the future (perhaps as a single package) when they're sharply discounted but not before then. Skyrim is a great game but Bethesda has been making games for over 20 years now and they need to improve their 'level of polish' to the same extent that they've improved their graphics - or it least move substantially in that direction.

The "level of polish" in Skyrim is very high.

Games like Skyrim will never be bug-free. At least there is a continued effort to patch the game and fix bugs. They are doing as good a job as one could expect of them.

Originally Posted by Fluent
The "level of polish" in Skyrim is very high.

Taking into consideration the last 20 years, I'd simply have to say that I disagree with you.

I'm not expecting a 'bug-free' game. But Bethesda has too many bugs in their games to start with, their patches are very limited in scope and introduce new bugs, and finally Bethesda tends to just leave a lot of them there while cranking out more and more content with sadly, yet more bugs.

And this is coming from a fan of Bethesda. I like that company and want them to succeed. And as a fan, I have to say that where they need a substantial improvement is in their level of polish - it is lacking. They aren't terrible or bad people. But that is a valid criticism. They CAN do better and they should. Especially if I choose to settle for a console UI on a PC platform.

The game seemed well-polished to me. As much as I'd expect from a huge title.

Have no idea what you mean when you say Skyrim's patches are "limited in scope". For a game to get patched several times throughout the course of a year since it was released is pretty crazy. Most games don't get that.

As for the topic, I am most excited about visiting the Telvanni tower as well. I'm hoping the wizard inhabiting it is one we met in Morrowind. Also hoping that Vivec makes an appearance somewhere on Solstheim, but I'm not expecting it. Would be cool to see some old Morrowind faces though.

Considering the scope of Skyrim, I think it's quite polished and with an acceptable level of bugs. It's an insanely BIG game in pretty much every way, and the complexity of system-interaction is massive.

There's just no feasible way they can release such a game without a significant amount of bugs. The only alternative would be not to release it at all.

That's not to say they can't do better - because that's always the case. But I think they've improved a LOT over the years. Skyrim has been the most stable of their releases for me - and I think I crashed only once in 80 hours of play.

Sadly, I've had several crashes after trying it again - but I've also been using dozens of mods - and I can't really say what the cause is.

Dart said it well. The game is insanely big. It's natural that some bugs are going to pop up. You have to give Bethesda credit for at least patching the game the amount of times they have. They didn't have to do that but they realize that when you create a huge game like Skyrim, it's going to need patches. You have to give them some credit for doing that.

Can they do better? We all can do better. But they certainly have done a good enough job for me to justify spending money on future DLCs and products.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
There's just no feasible way they can release such a game without a significant amount of bugs. The only alternative would be not to release it at all.

Every single player agrees with that.
What you're not saying is we bought the game, did a bugdetection part, reported them all so now dear Bethesda, a year after the release, please fix bugs. Bethesda. Not modders. Why were just a few rare bugs officially fixed?

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Sadly, I've had several crashes after trying it again - but I've also been using dozens of mods - and I can't really say what the cause is.

There is well established methode for dealing with that D'Art: untick all the mods and check if the game still crashes. If not, tick first 4 mods and check for crashes. If game crashes untick 2 of the 4 and test again. If it runs ok add next 4 mods. Rince and repeat

Originally Posted by zahratustra
There is well established methode for dealing with that D'Art: untick all the mods and check if the game still crashes. If not, tick first 4 mods and check for crashes. If game crashes untick 2 of the 4 and test again. If it runs ok add next 4 mods. Rince and repeat

Yeah, that would work if the crashes were consistent. Problem is that it can be hours before a crash - and you can have crashes due to mods that you started the game with, but decided to delete. You can also have crashes because you've introduced mods later in the game - and they could be fully stable if you'd had them from the beginning.

Your savegame can be infested with all kinds of issues due to mods and how they can conflict with each other. You can also have separate causes for several crashes, without being able to tell them apart.

Unfortunately, it's not a simple matter to be certain - and it would take a huge amount of time and work to rule anything out with certainty.

Originally Posted by Fluent
Have no idea what you mean when you say Skyrim's patches are "limited in scope".

What I mean by 'limited in scope' is that when you take into consideration the number of bugs that have been reported by the fans and compare that number to the number of things 'patched' in any of the given official Bethesda patches to-date, the number of things patched so far is quite small.

Bethesda has patched 8 times (I'm guessing since the latest is v1.8). It may be true that 8 patches by Bethesda is more than they've ever offered in past games. It may be true that as many as 8 patches is a notable number of patches in just over a 1 year period. But it is also noteworthy that the numeric quantity of problems with the game relative to the number of bullet-point items patched is very small. All those things are true at the same time.

Originally Posted by DArtagnan
Considering the scope of Skyrim, I think it's quite polished and with an acceptable level of bugs.

'Acceptable Level' is going to be subjective for every person. But I'm not even looking for or trying to define the proverbial the line in the sand that Bethesda needs to cross to provide an 'acceptable level' of polish. I'm more interested in seeing a trend where they up their game in terms of polish from the get-go AND post release.

I do give Bethesda credit for issuing more patches than they did with Oblivion. That's good. But what still is lacking is just how many problems existed with the game on release AND that each of the patches they've issued to-date only tackle a very small number of bugs given the over-all number of bugs that remain.

I'm a fan of Bethesa and I like their games. But I'm also looking at this from the perspective of, 'what can they improve?' Well, I think they can improve their polish. Does that mean I expect a bug-free game that never needs to be patched. Certainly not.

I'm quite happy with the level of polish…I mean look at another game that tried to emulate the experience and it took a ton of fan patches to get it right, gothic 3.

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
What I mean by 'limited in scope' is that when you take into consideration the number of bugs that have been reported by the fans and compare that number to the number of things 'patched' in any of the given official Bethesda patches to-date, the number of things patched so far is quite small.

Bethesda has patched 8 times (I'm guessing since the latest is v1.8). It may be true that 8 patches by Bethesda is more than they've ever offered in past games. It may be true that as many as 8 patches is a notable number of patches in just over a 1 year period. But it is also noteworthy that the numeric quantity of problems with the game relative to the number of bullet-point items patched is very small. All those things are true at the same time.



'Acceptable Level' is going to be subjective for every person. But I'm not even looking for or trying to define the proverbial the line in the sand that Bethesda needs to cross to provide an 'acceptable level' of polish. I'm more interested in seeing a trend where they up their game in terms of polish from the get-go AND post release.

I do give Bethesda credit for issuing more patches than they did with Oblivion. That's good. But what still is lacking is just how many problems existed with the game on release AND that each of the patches they've issued to-date only tackle a very small number of bugs given the over-all number of bugs that remain.

I'm a fan of Bethesa and I like their games. But I'm also looking at this from the perspective of, 'what can they improve?' Well, I think they can improve their polish. Does that mean I expect a bug-free game that never needs to be patched. Certainly not.

I guess different people are having different experiences based on which they quests they do, which locations they visit, etc.

In my case, I've played Skyrim 800 hours (five different playthroughs) and since patch 1.1 back in November 2011 I haven't had any CTDs at all with the vanilla game, only time I ever experience a crash is if I install two mods that conflict with each other.

The only bugs I experienced are minor stuff that doesn't bother me at all, like the multiple Louis Letrush clones, and this was fixed by patch 1.8.

In contrast, Oblivion was horribly unstable. I was experiencing CTD at least once per playing session, often every couple of hours, but I enjoyed the game so much that I kept playing, just got into a habit of saving every 30 seconds out of paranoia that it would crash.

Even a modded Skyrim with tons of mods is much more stable than a modded Oblivion. The vanilla gameplay systems, as well as the engine and scripting language are greatly improved from the previous game, to the point where there is no need for anything like FCOM or Wrye Bash, etc.

They might want to clarify that the zoomed out view of the island they use is from Bloodmoon and not a shot from Dragonborn.

Originally Posted by CountChocula
In my case, I've played Skyrim 800 hours (five different playthroughs) and since patch 1.1 back in November 2011 I haven't had any CTDs at all with the vanilla game, only time I ever experience a crash is if I install two mods that conflict with each other.

I'm still on my first playthrough and have clocked just under 200 hours.

To Bethesda's credit, I have not had to struggle with any serious bugs. In 200 hours I've crashed to the desktop and/or hard locked I think twice maybe three times - but that is easily 'acceptable' to me over 200 hours. I've also not run into any bug that has prevented me from completing any quest including the main quest (which i've finished).

On the flip side, I've had to stomach a very large number of annoying 'bugs.' Not any single one of them by themselves would be worth getting bothered by. But there are so many and so often annoying little things that together create a sort of anxiety while i play that I feel I cannot 'trust' the game. I save probably two or three times more than I would normally simply because of that - I just don't trust the game.

I'm running Vanilla Skyrim with just two mods - SkyUI and Bethesda's hi-rez texture pack.

I've had so much fun with Bethesda games, that I will probably throw money at them the rest of my life. Daggerfall, also know as Buggerall, was horrendous. Morrowind was better, then Oblivion was a step back. Skyrim has been major bug free, at least for me, but there are dozens of small bugs. It doesn't bother me, I just save a lot. Till somebody else allows every Tom, Dick and Harry to modify their game till its almost unrecognizable, there is just nothing close to compare a Bethsoft game against. It's the modability of the games that makes bug fixing so hard. If they hard-coded something so that bug A was fixed then it might make mod A, B, C, D, E, etc impossible to make; so they leave the bug in.