How is this possible...

[umber hulk]

i have about 700 hours on my dragonborn in skyrim, maybe another 200 on other characters.

i play other games, but i'm choosy, there would only be four or five games a year i would actually finish, maybe two of those i would play through a second time, so nothing else gets the attention that ES gets.

as far as finding the time goes, i'm not one for sharing my time easily, if my friends are just sitting around watching tv or some movie i'm not interested in, then i just won't hang out with them, i'll be playing games instead.

[Mattbott]

I usually find once i get to know a TES game, my number of characters might increase exponentially, as i try and do a particular quest line with a particular character or see how a particular specialisation might work out

at the moment in Skyrim i have a 'high level (60)' jack of all trades and an evil sneaky assassin mage khaajit (28th i think), and i have just started a Nord who will do stormcloak, dwemer and hearthfire stuff, so may well be retired by level 25ish. But once all the dlc is with us, who knows. The game is a year and a half old and we havent played it in full yet.. which is strange when you think about it

[Unionhack]

I've racked up more hours in Skyrim than I did Oblivion, but only because I didn't have mods for Oblivion, which makes a huge difference in how long I've played a game.

[Dohva.]

^^ This. For the most part, I'm weary of mods. Since the installation of Frostfall (weather/wilderness survival) and complex needs, the hours spent at game play are mostly focused on getting my characters from point A to point B (no fast travel) without freezing or starving. I think I have completed 2 quests on separate characters in the last several days. Skyrim has extended its life on my game...not that it had a chance of burning out anytime soon either BUT the mods have added to that.

[perylousdemon]

I've tried some of those realism mods. They took the fun out of the game for me, personally. I quickly got tired of seeing "You're feeling peckish" popping up in the corner of my screen five minutes after I had just eaten something... Even adjusting the timers didn't seem to help any. I do have Hypothermia installed, though I had to raise the core body temperature for my Bosmer (it was set to 20 for my Nord).

[CBR JGWRR]

It's meant to be 37 degrees celcius on average for a human IIRC... According to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothermia at 20*C core body temperature your nord would be dead. If not dead, incapable of organised movement minimum...

Or have I missed something fundamental to the mod here?

[Believe]

It's meant to be 37 degrees celcius on average for a human IIRC... According to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothermia at 20*C core body temperature your nord would be dead. If not dead, incapable of organised movement minimum...

Or have I missed something fundamental to the mod here?

You have, my friend.

It's a game

Anyways, I've probly racked up around 200/300 hours on Skyrim, although alot of that is because I have CRS. (Chronic Restart Syndrome for those who don't know).

I've only actually ever finished 3 questlines. Once each. The DB, then College, then the Main one.

[Mauin]

Anyways, I've probly racked up around 200/300 hours on Skyrim, although alot of that is because I have CRS. (Chronic Restart Syndrome for those who don't know).

Ugh. Yes. I forgot about that. When I don't have one of my main characters (rare), or I don't have anything left to do with them (more likely), I'm almost always messing with Character Creation. That leads to a lot of characters who are created, and then last maybe a total of an hour before they're deleted and another one is created.

It just makes me wonder how many of my 1680 or so hours were spent in Character Creation.
Then again, I'm also wondering how many of those hours were spent testing mods and troubleshooting glitches and whatnot.


Longest I've had a character last was 300 hours (Mauin the Argonian, my first Skyrim character and the first incarnation of Hunts-With-Fury). Considering my habit of constantly starting, deleting, or restarting characters, it's a miracle she lasted that long.

Unfortunately, the same habit extends to Oblivion and Morrowind.
Now I'm wondering how many Elder Scrolls characters I've had in total. Certainly more than I can count.

[Frogmander]

I consider myself a HUGE TES nerd just like most people on this forum, but I've actually only put in around 350 hours into Skyrim. Granted I play lots of other games, but Skyrim is not just a game to me, it's a story, it's way more than a game. And thus it's not something that I can just pick up and play at any time, so I usually don't. I was wondering, how are some people able to have put more than 300 hours in *1 character*? It just kind of baffles me.

Is Skyrim the only game you play? Or something else?

I have about 500 hours in Skyrim, though I've easily done double that in modding and such.

Oblivion I have far, far more. I feel it has a bit more replayibility, few different ways to do the quests. In Skyrim the guild quests are REALLY short, and a large portion of that is scripted, or a lot of parts you simply have no control over your character.

And like many other people here, I have the problem of restarting my character every hour.. DX. Latest character being an argonian...Monk you could say (That's what Baurus guessed I was -shrug-). 2h maces, bows, hand to hand, sneak, athletics, acrobatics, mysticism.

[Spelling Police]

^^ This. For the most part, I'm weary of mods. Since the installation of Frostfall (weather/wilderness survival) and complex needs, the hours spent at game play are mostly focused on getting my characters from point A to point B (no fast travel) without freezing or starving. I think I have completed 2 quests on separate characters in the last several days. Skyrim has extended its life on my game...not that it had a chance of burning out anytime soon either BUT the mods have added to that.

Yeah, I have mixed feelings about mods like that too. FF really can get in the way of the rest of the game (like you said) but I like having distance mean something, and the satisfaction of finally getting back to my house after a long round of adventuring. I honestly think it's partly just the way Skyrim is designed - the game's quests love hurling you across the province every five minutes. The needs mods are more annoying, mostly because food and drink are plentiful enough that there's not that much strategy to it, it just becomes a chore.

On a less off-topic note, I'm in the same boat as Believe with regard to restarting way too much. If not for that I'd probably have a lot more time logged in Skyrim, because I wouldn't get burned out on doing Bleak Falls for the 50th time with different character configurations. At the same time, I agree with others here in that the main replayability of Skyrim comes from the variety of different character setups you can make, both from a gameplay and RP point of view. The perk system offers a lot more flexibility and specialization than Oblivion did (and maybe Morrowind, but I haven't played that one).

I've racked up more hours in Skyrim than I did Oblivion, but only because I didn't have mods for Oblivion, which makes a huge difference in how long I've played a game.

If it weren't for a few serious flaws in Oblivion (dull combat, even-worse balance, awful AI, sketchy voice acting, awful animations) I'd probably be playing that instead of Skyrim for the same reasons. Oblivion seems more replayable than Skyrim to me at the moment, and that's largely just because there's a much greater depth of mods available for Oblivion. Still, Skyrim does have a lot of great gameplay mods, and those have really extended the life of the game for me.

/disorganized rambling

[Frogmander]

I feel the "radiant AI" is a bit better in Oblivion also. Which is sad to say...People actually talk about normal things, like seeing a mudcrab or something, not randomly bringing up sweetrolls. In Skyrim I saw Ysolda repeat the same conversation 3 times -facepalm-

[Br3admax]

People in Oblivion all sad the same thing and all due it like 32 times a day. If Skyrim improved on anything it was that. Seriously, that stuff in Oblivion made me vomit. And "seeing a mudcrab", that happened so much in Oblivion that Bethesda makes fun of their bad programming in Skyrim. That was a bad move., not a good one.

[ZackyZombify]

I much rather like the Oblivion NPCs more. Sure they don't interact with the environment and repeat the same thing. But I find them more memorable, I liked walking around and seeing them converse with others no matter how random it was. In skyrim I really don't find any non guild NPC worth remembering.

[Frogmander]

I much rather like the Oblivion NPCs more. Sure they don't interact with the environment and repeat the same thing. But I find them more memorable, I liked walking around and seeing them converse with others no matter how random it was. In skyrim I really don't find any non guild NPC worth remembering.

A lot of non-guild people aren't even named. Skyrim has an overabundance of "City Guard" named people.

[Xarnac the Conqueror]

I don't understand restart-itis. Why not just make another character?

[Mauin]

... That's kinda what restartitis is. You can't stop making new characters.
You make one, find something you don't like about them, delete them, start another... Etc. Etc. It goes on and on.

I've probably had over 100 characters come and go that way.

[Frost Mage]

I feel sort of unfulfilled when a character fails to entertain me, but I am willing to continue on with that character, usually. I don't delete characters, ever.

[perylousdemon]

It's meant to be 37 degrees celcius on average for a human IIRC... According to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypothermia at 20*C core body temperature your nord would be dead. If not dead, incapable of organised movement minimum...

Or have I missed something fundamental to the mod here?

Eh, they're just the values the modder decided to use. Default is 22; lower means your character gets cold more quickly, higher means he/she gets cold more slowly. That's all.

[Xarnac the Conqueror]

... That's kinda what restartitis is. You can't stop making new characters.
You make one, find something you don't like about them, delete them, start another... Etc. Etc. It goes on and on.

I've probably had over 100 characters come and go that way.

That's not restart-itis, that's just making new characters. I'm talking about people that make a character, then have to restart that character because they messed up, or want to change something about their build and/or delete them. I know people that have restarted the same build a half dozen times and that doesn't make sense to me. Restart-itis usually has to do with not knowing what or how you want to play a certain build, but I don't understand why people would make a build they hadn't realized before hand. If you get tired of an RPs play style, you make another character to add to the stable, not delete or have to restart the same build. I was just curious as to why some people do this?

[CBR JGWRR]

Especially in Oblivion...

[Avron the S'wit]

... That's kinda what restartitis is. You can't stop making new characters.
You make one, find something you don't like about them, delete them, start another... Etc. Etc. It goes on and on.

I've probably had over 100 characters come and go that way.

That's not restart-itis, that's just making new characters. I'm talking about people that make a character, then have to restart that character because they messed up, or want to change something about their build and/or delete them. I know people that have restarted the same build a half dozen times and that doesn't make sense to me. Restart-itis usually has to do with not knowing what or how you want to play a certain build, but I don't understand why people would make a build they hadn't realized before hand. If you get tired of an RPs play style, you make another character to add to the stable, not delete or have to restart the same build. I was just curious as to why some people do this?

I restarted my Imperial character in Skyrim about three times before I felt I had him right. It wasn't that I tweaked his build or anything, as I still played him the same way (battlemage), and he still looked the same, but it was just the way I got into the character that prevented me from proceeding. I literally could not get into him the first few times around. I have no idea why, it was just frustrating to play him, and since I like to crawl inside a character's head and really feel like I'm in his shoes, that was the most infuriating experience I could ever had. Now, however, I've had a blast with him.

To me it's really about pacing. The annoying thing about Skyrim - to me, anyway - is that it throws a quest in your face every five minutes. If you're roleplaying a character, it's tiresome to make excuses for why you can't stop everything and just chase after the quest. Once I get to a pace that suits me as a player, it's smooth sailing from there. (In Oblivion, for example, I waited until level X to do main quest level X, and it was a system that worked well. I haven't devised anything like that for Skyrim - it's more about just a feeling of how smooth the game play feels to me as the player.)

I guess it's more of a feeling of perfection or just rightness sometimes.

[Mauin]

... That's kinda what restartitis is. You can't stop making new characters.
You make one, find something you don't like about them, delete them, start another... Etc. Etc. It goes on and on.

I've probably had over 100 characters come and go that way.

That's not restart-itis, that's just making new characters. I'm talking about people that make a character, then have to restart that character because they messed up, or want to change something about their build and/or delete them. I know people that have restarted the same build a half dozen times and that doesn't make sense to me. Restart-itis usually has to do with not knowing what or how you want to play a certain build, but I don't understand why people would make a build they hadn't realized before hand. If you get tired of an RPs play style, you make another character to add to the stable, not delete or have to restart the same build. I was just curious as to why some people do this?

Erm. No. It is. Look at what you said and compare it to what I said. They're the same thing.

But whatever. I'm not going to argue.

Edit:

I guess it's more of a feeling of perfection or just rightness sometimes.

That is so true.
When I'm making my characters, I'm extremely obsessive over small details. And I do mean small details.
I don't even want to know how many times I've restarted a character just because they're eyebrows were just a little too far apart, or their nose was a little too long/short.

Everything must be perfect on my characters. Especially Vulom. I'm a heck of a lot pickier with her than the others. She's on her third main reincarnation, but I can't even keep track of the other versions that were created and deleted because something was off about their appearance.

[Eltee]

Mmh. Restartitis? I have heard Chronic Restart Syndrome, must be the same. In either case, I very much have it, hehe.

The good thing with Oblivion is that you could tweak your character, look at it, and tweak some more, go outside, see how theyt look in the sun, reload, rinse, wash, and repeat, till you liked your character.

You need to go through a whole lot of [&@%!] to be able to even look at the character you have created, in Skyrim. It's infuriating, and it has contributed to a loot of early trips to Riften for me because I am unwilling to restart the game... >.<

[Mauin]

PC players with SKSE (1.6.9 currently) and RaceMenu can help things a bit.
It allows for greater customization of the player character, and allows you to zoom in/out and turn a light on/off to view your character a little better. It even allows for you to edit the individual colors (it's like the Extended Slider Colors mod, and is actually made by the same author) for tints.

Example Argonian, for instance.

The problem is that I've found that it makes me a heck of a lot more particular about certain things. Now the colors for makeups and whatnot have to be exactly right. Bah.
And I'm having issues with the newest version... Ever since I updated, I've been getting odd beard/eyebrow clipping. Hmph.


And for some reason, I never visit the face sculptor in Riften when I mess up a character's appearance. I'm just more likely to restart.
I always keep a save for character creation. Always.

It might just be because I get frustrated when I mess something up, and so restart out of frustration. Or maybe I forget the face sculptor is even there. Honestly? It's as much a mystery to me as it might be to anybody else.

[Xarnac the Conqueror]

...
Erm. No. It is. Look at what you said and compare it to what I said. They're the same thing.

But whatever. I'm not going to argue.

Restarting your RP=/=making new characters. You said making new characters is the same as restarting a character because you didn't fully realize the role play before you made them. One is changing your mind (and probably deleting them), the other is adding to your role play/build/character stable. I can understand being addicted to making a bunch of different RPs, but not constantly restarting any of them.

I was just wandering why people that suffer from restart-itis don't just shelve their character until they do realize them? To not fully understand who an RP is before making them, is alien to me - that's why I'm curious. Not arguing, just discussing. Also, I can understand getting all the details right, even the superfluous or seemingly unimportant stuff (Lore correct enchanted names that nobody but you will see), but that's why I put all the thought in before I even create them. So maybe my question is, how much thought do people that have restart-itis put into their character before they create them in game? Or is it more of an improv or sorts, that you don't fully realize until actually playing with them?