Travelling back to Skyrim

It's funny how you can ignore a game for a long time and then get completely back into it :)

I had bought the Dawnguard and Hearthfire DLC for Skyrim during the Steam sales, i used to play Skyrim A LOT, but at a certain pount got tired of it.
Not that long ago i somehow ended up on the Nexus and saw some great new mods out and that reminded me i had bought the DLC so i figured it was time to check that out.

I always fear starting my (modded) Bethesda games after release of updates/DLC because it always breaks the game/mods, and, no surprise, this time it also did.
I couldn't start building a house in Hearthfire and i couldn't enter the Dawnguard Fort without crashing the game..
Even without mods activated the game would still be bugged as hell, i would actually say even more bugged than with mods as i have quite a few mods that fix stuff that Bethesda left in.

So first i had to figure out what was causing all that, first thing of course is checking which mods i wanted to use and which mods could go, after that updating all mods to the latest releases.
That fixed my Heartfire problems, but the crashing at Dawnguard Fort still happened, in the end i found that there was a script in my scripts folder that altered the mannequins in the game (i think there used to be a "wandering" mannequin bug and this script fixed that), that script caused the crashing, after removing that script everything (seemed to) work.

But my happiness was short, apperantly my save game was allready pretty bugged, had a savegame with a huge filesize (226MB) and during play the game would constantly freeze, pretty much unplayable..
So a new game had to be started, with a new character.

Eventhough i hated abandoning my (first Skyrim) character, it does feel kinda nice to start over, despite allready knowing most of the quests, i am still seeing stuff i don't remember from my first playthrough.
I also enjoyed Hearthfire and Dawnguard, although Dawnguard was still buggy/glitchy like hell, i actually had to use the console at least twice to be able to advance in the questline because some scripted scene would not start (like Serana opening the portal to the soul cairn) and many more small glitches/bugs, overall i would say Hearthfire and Dawnguard where enjoyable, but i was not very impressed with them, but they felt very rushed, i have seen stuff in mods that is much more impressive and though out, and better working than what Bethesda showed in Hearthfire and Dawnguard (and mods are free!!).

I may have said it before but Bethesda really needs to take a look at the modding community over on the Nexus and get some of these people to work for them, i mean i see modders doing way more impressive things with (i assume) the same tools the devs use and usually a lot less bugs/glitches.

So far i have played over 500 hours of Skyrim and i think there will be many more :)
Although i doubt i would be playing this much without mods :)

Bethesda games: It's all about community

I have been playing a lot of Fallout New Vegas lately, and as usual i developed a love/hate relation with the game.
Some time ago i stopped playing because i got tired of the crashes, however, the urge to play FNV always comes up again..

It bothers me that a game can be so "crash happy", and to say it's the mods i use that's causing it, is a bit too much.
I won't deny that mods can cause crashes and i am sure some of my crashes were probably caused by them.
This does however not change the fact that when i started playing FNV for the first time, without any mods whatsoever, it crashed within the first 15 mins of the game (talking about a warm welcome), so this was definatly not caused by any mods.

Doing a Google search on Fallout gives a ton of results on crashes/freezes etc.
I find it pretty wierd that this gets through QA, either they don't care or they don't do QA testing.
It's almost as if they are counting on the community to fix their problems, and the community does exactly that and more.

It's the awesome community behind the games (Fallout 3, Fallout NV, Oblivion, Skyrim) that make these games as great as they are, without the community behind them the games would be forgotten pretty quick.

Imagine Blizzard or BioWare releasing a game as buggy as Oblivion, Fallout etc, there would be riots, yet the communty seems to forgive Bethesda for it.
Sure these games are awesome sandbox games and with the community made mods and improvements there's unlimited gameplay.
I have seen so many mods and game improvements out there that are way better than what the game devs put in the games themself, sometimes i really wonder if the game is just rushed to get it out and make money, they know it's going to sell because there's a huge community behind their games.

I have to admit, so far for me Skyrim does appear to be more stable and i have had only a few crashes/bugs, but i can't wait until the dev kit is released and we can see some real improvements to the game.

Sure Bethesda i forgive you, although i often feel like pulling my hairs out when i encounter yet another bug/crash, i'll keep playing until i am tired of the crashes, then i'll ragequit.... and be back for more later.