R28 First Impressions

I suppose the first thing I want to put out there just to make sure I don't forget.. is that for the first time now my game is starting to crash. Technically to be fair this started in R27 in the crag foothills but now I'm starting to crash during transitions.

SotA has been totally stable for me for 2 years which is kind of amazing when you think about it.. but now? Sorry guys but not going to have a perfect stability record here. Nothing on my system has changed except SotA. I'm hoping this will be infrequent but I never know when it'll happen now.

Fortunately, that is my only major gripe and hopefully it'll stay that way for this release.

It's great to see all the new areas come in, even if they are place holders. It still gives the feeling (for me) of steady progress.

The big win though is all the of UI changes! Wow. Really liking pretty much everything so far. And the new tooltip on the XP pools seems much needed and equally welcome. I think I would like to optionally turn them off though just for us minimalists. Have say an 'advanced' setting and a default beginner setting. New people who coming in will need to see that description until they really understand what's going on.. but once they do understand, it's an awfully big tooltip for just looking at the amount of XP you have stored up. At some point I think people are just going to want to look at the number.

Of course give the new male body its due. Great work.. but I don't think I'll really be able to appreciate the upgrade until I'm actually building a new character and the work is really complete with the new hairstyles and whatever else isn't in yet.

Memory management isn't an R28 specific issue but.. as I'm writing this I'm loading Aerie and see.. wow less than 700M out of 6G free and I haven't even been playing for an hour yet. I gotta say it's really killing the improved load times.. when the game chews up that much memory it really starts becoming unplayable. Just quite out.. and I'm back up to 4.8G free.

Fortunately, in just over a fortnight I'll have my new laptop and I will probably never had to worry about it again.. but really guys.. Skyrim uses a lot less memory than SotA does right now.

I know memory performance is coming up soon and I originally wasn't planning on bringing it up but just me right now in-game so.. there you have it. I would like to say I'm seeing those noticeable load time improvements but for me.. not so much. SotA really brings to light that my once awesome computer isn't as spry as it used to be.

Still, UI updates including crafting.. very nice. Batch crafting! Haven't tried it yet but.. I'm sure it's awesome.

 

It just really hit me that the new containers when harvesting no longer block your stats.. that had always annoyed me. This is a nice and welcome change. Now if only we could fix that annoying "can't leave items here" popup..

 

No comment about the sky?

 

Should there be? Most every issue I've posted has now been officially written up. It'll get fixed when they have time for it. To continue to ramble on about it would be of no benefit to anyone. It's time to move on.