What keeps you interested (besides roleplay or mods)

[Pavouk106]

Hi to everyone,

it's been really long time since I last played Skyrim (few years) in which I started weird character in Oblivion (only absord health spell for damaging enemies, no weapons, no other offensive spells) and I have restarted Morrowind (again).

I remember myself getting home at 2AM right after buying pre-ordered Skyrim that midnight and driving home. I spent one hour creatin character and playing before I went to bed (and to work a few hours after that). This first-made character (stealth, 2x dagger, bow) completed main quest, all guilds quests, daedric quests, Civil war ... well, I have gained all trophies (PS3) with this character. After completion I asked myself "What would I do next?"

I have made pure melee combatant (two handed hammer) and finished the main quest and some minor quests. And the question came to me again...

Well, the next character was pure mage (robes and spells only) + higher difficulty (4/5 at that time). This one was challenging and fun to play, but I simply didn't want to replay anything for the third time.

I have ejected Skyrim disk from PS3 and haven't used it from that time. It was the time when no DLC was available yet (for PS3). Because I'm not that good at roleplaying (I just can't stick to self-imagined rules) and because there are no mods on PS3, I'm probably finished with the game.

And here comes the question - Am I alone or is there anybody who has it the same? Obviously mod-users and RP players are not the kind that I'm looking for.

[MetaCthulhu]

I was at a point like that once. I had used the Resto-loop trick to make myself invincible and able to one punch dragons (literally), but I got bored and I didn't pick up Skyrim for a year.

What I did was two things:

1. I bought all three expansions (But I hear you cry, "but they won't last me very long!". True, there is only about 30 hours worth between them, but many of the powers and items will help with step 2)

2. I started making builds. (They not so much as roleplays, (I can't stand eating and drinking and sleeping as requirements) as saying, "What enemies do I want to kill, and what powers and equipment will work the best?". For example, I had a heavy armour warrior who kept getting killed by mages, so I made a new character: a Breton who used wards, the staff of magnus, the atronach stone, and a bound sword. Low and behold, mages couldn't touch me. Sometimes I just want to show off a piece of equipment, so I say, "What powers and items would help show off this things full potential?")

If it helps, I also play on PS3 and I've gotten bored with Skyrim more than once, but both times I revisited it after awhile and just found new stuff (You ever hear of Sniffle's Path?)

[Pavouk106]

You play on PS3 too? The game was frustrating when I finished with it. Freezed PS3 every so often and laggy the whole time. I was only 40-50 hours in the game and the game became unplayable. At that moment I promised myself to never ever invest in any Bethesda game again (including DLC).

Why I ask - I have the urge to delete save games + cached data (I suppose it would un-lag the game) and start once more. I just need some impulse to do so.

[MetaCthulhu]

"Game skipping frames like a stop-motion movie" I believe adequately sums up many of my 30+ hour saves. It doesn't get so bad unless you've been playing for about 2 hours in a row, but at that point there's a 50/50 chance it'll lock up in the next hour, so it's best to save and reboot anyway. (I believe it's a memory issue that cause this, but I'm not certain.) I got my expansions on Amazon, so they were only 10$ each (except Hearthfire, which cost as much as a candy bar.)

I say do it. The Tamriel Vault has a couple builds that are good starting points, and, this may sound weird, have you ever played a vampire? On legendary difficulty it's like a roleplay, but the rules are enforced: you go out during the day? prepare to be one-shotted. You forget to feed? prepare to get mobbed. But at night, when you can use your illusion magic, and sneak bonuses, you can sneak up on and kill anything that looks at you funny.

[The SheoDovah]

You play on PS3 too? The game was frustrating when I finished with it. Freezed PS3 every so often and laggy the whole time. I was only 40-50 hours in the game and the game became unplayable. At that moment I promised myself to never ever invest in any Bethesda game again (including DLC).

Why I ask - I have the urge to delete save games + cached data (I suppose it would un-lag the game) and start once more. I just need some impulse to do so.

Thats rather odd. I mean, my copy never froze or became a lag fest. That said, i always disable autosave which seems to help. That or i am somehow blessed with a supernatural ability of having Bethesda games run well for me. :O

As to what keeps me interested in Skyrim?

Long breaks after i am truely bored with the game. Last time i played it was i think in the spring of '14 and just haven't had an urge to play it since then. Probably play it in 2016. Got too many games to play and well, me moods change in terms of gaming. But the sheer amount of content allows me to put together a plan. E.g. end game armour, guilds and 1 house. The books keep me interested and the random chance of battling the dragons is always something to spice up a journey. Granted, dragon battles do get mundane after a while but the soundtrack refuses to believe that and goes out of it's way to be epic.


Then there's the ruins and the sheer amount of...... fresh apples i can loot from it. Or the master locks i can waste all my lockpicks on just so i can get 1 lockpick. Then the battles inside the ruins, bandit slaying, lollygagging, quests and generally being the most dangerous thing in Tameriel. Apart from Giants.

[Pavouk106]

SheoDovah: It seems that the game could be played this was - just for fun and only once a year (or less). It seems pretty legit, I would probably fire it up someday and enjoy the game only to waste some free time doing funny things.

(about PS3: Skyrim, Fallout 3 and New Vegas - they all lag like hell after 30-40 hours on one save. F3 also freezes the system after running a few meters in-game just after loading. Skyrim freezes only occasionally, but it becomes laggy like hell after a few hour session. No patch could solve this, although it got a little better at the end. There's no bug in PS3 system, because ie. Gran Turismo 5, InFamous or Oblivion could run for more than 10 hours consecutively and all was normal.)

[The SheoDovah]

Regarding Fallout 3, that is a pile of donkey crap due to poor coding. The PS3 has only a small amount of RAM thus Skyrim, Fallouts 3 and New Vegas struggle to run when it tries to remember a lot of data at once. Oblivion was ported by Ubisoft and ironically, runs very well. It's rare for me to have a crash on Skyrim.

[Pilaf The Defiler]

The thing that keeps me coming back is that there's so many different ways to experience the game. Before the Fallout 4 bug got ahold of me, I started a playthrough of Skyrim on my Steam version and pumped about 75 hours into a new character from around August until November. I decided to play a Dunmer Conjuration mage and focus mostly on exploration of random locations, which is a specific way I never played with any previous character. In a year or two, once I exhaust Fallout and its DLCs, I'll go back and do another Skyrim playthrough and try something different. Maybe mods this time. The Jedi stuff I saw in videos seems fun and cool. Overall, between all my various characters, I've put over 1,500 hours into Skyrim from 2011 until now. I don't expect I'll ever truly leave it behind, although with the release of FO4, I get the impression it won't be too long until Bethesda buckles down on production of ES 6. Its sheer tangibility is starting to be felt in the community. I just know I'm gonna fall in love all over again.