I don't see how complexity can keep a game alive longer. If for instance there would have been a difference between axes, swords and maces and not a generic 'one handed' stat would that have made the game more replayable? New content, esp. multiple endings multiple paths, is the only way to increase the life span of a product. I just don't see how acrobatics, spell crafting, levitation, waterwalking or other things bethesda 'dumb down', could improve on this game. Sure micromanagement would increase, but tbh for the masses micromanagement and also grinding is pretty boring (strategy games excluded ofc). That would be like tweaking your pong bat instead of playing it (to keep up with the anology)

I`m 50 something hours into the game and now just at the final bit of the main quest, but i can`t say my interest is ebbing in the game.
In my character, perhaps, as i tried delving into too many skills and now it feels he`s a jack of all trades but master of none. I will probably restart with another character soon and play a totally different style. There is just so much i`ve still to find, i seriously reckon i can play this game, well into hundreds of hours, if not over that.

Not even the dragon age series made me wanna put the game away that fast o.O certainly not Skyrim... fable 3 did tho...
if skyrim proves to be as enjoyable to me as i found oblivion, i might be still playing this even a year from now. hopefully with several DLC's ^^

Well there you go, some people prefer to get home from work, turn on the console, boot up the game in 3 seconds and sit there with their finger on the X button for 4 hours. Personally this isn't to my tastes, I prefer a bit more involvement with my games.

I've watched Bethesda change their target demographic over approximately 15 years and I'm not a fan of the decisions they've made. I'm all for the free market and private companies making billions but I'm not going to hide the fact that I'm slightly dissapointed in the direction they've taken. I understand that profit has to be the primary motivation, I also understand that they have to cater to 6-7 year old console architecture/technological constraints, however, it's like we're watching them go backwards in everything but the graphical department (and even that isn't upto scratch in 2011).

It's frustrating. Apologies, this is a little off topic and it's been said 15 milion times before and it's not going to change anyones mind. Still...

Different playstyles would increase as well, enhancing roleplaying.

There are less viable builds in Skyrim than in Morrowind or Daggerfall by far.

all games Ebb over time

These.

If you treat Skyrim as a bit of eye-candy and just want to beat the content then, sure, you'll get bored fast. Why would you want to play it over with another character? You've "completed" it.

That's not how I play. As others have said I like to have multiple characters and play them in different ways. Right now I have a lv 27 Khajiit archer/thief with no morals and motivated only by gold. I have a lv 12 Imperial warrior who wants to restore his honour after being arrested and almost executed by his own people and I have a Dark Elf spellsword seeking power among old Nord secrets...

Point is it is the playing of your character in such a detailed world that makes the game have lasting appeal. Sure mods add some freshness and kept me playing Oblivion a long time, but this is an RPG so you're meant to play a role to get the most out of it...

Well, all games lose the 'new game' feel after a while, so it's normal for the excitement to die down a bit. But after 30 hours played I still think Skyrim is the greatest RPG I have ever played, and I look forward to seeing what else is in store for this character and to running many different character builds through the game.

I also thought the loot dumping runs were getting tedious so I decided to only pick up vendor loot that weighs 1 or less.

No. I think it is still overly amazing.
I do recognize bugs and missing features. But it is still my favorite choice of game-drug. And will be for many many weeks yet.

Here's something. Right when I was losing interest and about to go to be for the night(8 am), I saw some bandits by a Dwemer Ruin, and decided to kill them real quick before getting off. Then I saw a Word Wall marker on my compass, so I decided I'd nip over an get it real quick before I got. Next thing I know, I'm in teh middle of a vast stone crater, on a mountain top, my horse slain, being pummeled by a blizzard, whil struggling for my lie against a horde of undead and a Blood Dragon is soaring overhead spewing flames. I used massive pillars as cover to avoid the Dragon;s flames. In between bouts I'd dash to the next pillar, firing missiles of magic and arrows at the undead as I passed. Once the Dragon was slain, I became my Werewolf form and engaged the Draugr Deathlord in Hand-to-Hand combat. Once that was done with, I took a tumble downward into the ravine below, where assassins were waiting for me. After dispatching them, I made my way through the ravine, fighting cave bears, until I found a cave. The cave was inhabited by an angry gang of vampires, and one giant Spider. After fighting my way through the snow cave, I finally found my Word Wall, but in front of it was a tall tower adorned with a sleeping Blood Dragon, I ran up and got the shout, then used it in conjunction with the soul I gathered earlier to help dispatch the dragon, and secure m life for another day.

This was all within 45 minutes of real game time, at around 50 hours in.

If you're getting bored with this game, then you simply aren't playing enough, or are possibly [censored].

For what has cost me the equivalent of a couple of rounds in the pub - or around an hours'-worth of Premier League football - I'm going to be entertained for months. Fantastic.

Then again, I probably put well over 100 hours into 'Adventure' on the Atari VCS back in the day, so I guess I'm easily pleased...

Seeing how i spend most of my working day reading this forum waiting patiently for home time so i can re-enter the world of Skyrim.

My answer would be no

You can draw bold conclusions but it doesn't help your point. I'm not the 'hold the x button' kind of guy. I've got it for PC and don't even own a console. And ofc you can't be serious that booting put a game in 3 seconds is a bad thing (it takes my pc about as long). Also saying your 'for' a free market is kind of silly as making games is not a goverment job nor are you an innocent bystander. If this game would not have a wide audiance and would only appeal to 'hardcoe' rpg pc gamers it would probably cost thrice as much.
Cathering to xbox/playstation is something I dread. The PC is a far superior gaming platform in preformance, if you have the right equipement. However it is a reallity the users have forced upon the devellopers. If people wouldn't buy a xbox or more would get this game for PC the porting would work the other way round with a far superior pcproduct being dumbed down for console. Don't really see how Skyrim is going backwards by a meaningfull margin, there have just been some removal of minor things. Content is king and it's all in there. Graphics are up to par if you boost the graphics and far superior to Oblivion.
And to Merari, there aren't a lot more different playstyles. You have your archer, thief/assassin, mage, battle mage, warrior (both sword/board and 2H). Making small differences with all weapons specialities versus two generic styles (1H/2H) isn't a real difference. This difference is primairly defined by content, not playstyle. Even Baldurs Gate (still my favorite game) didnt have as many different playstyles. Priests played like warriors or mages, bards like thieves, etc. Roleplaying needs your fantasy and there is still plenty room to do that.

So all in all, I do think things have been streamlined and compromises have been made for consoles, but in the end the diffrence isnt that big that you could call it gamebreaking.

The game certainly won't last forever in its current state, but it should last hundreds of hours if you role play it as intended. The game just has too many neat features to throw away after 40-50 hours. For example, I was doing a Companion quest and fighting alongside a fellow Companion. We were fighting a group of bandits on a cliff when he did a finishing move where he jammed his sword through the bandit, lifted her up right over the cliff, and pulled the sword out causing her to fall lifelessly down the cliff. It wasn't scripted or anything. It was just a cool, epic fight moment that wows me once or twice every session.

Once the modding community gets up and running I have a feeling we'll see some truly amazing changes to the game to add hundreds of more hours to it.

Agreed. This is one of the problems with video games now. This market has turned into such a money driven economy, much like the rest of America, and video games and Fantasy in general have become far more mainstream than they were even 10 years ago, that people who normally would not play RPGs now play them. And developers make RPGs for a broader audience. A bad thing in my opinion but since I'm not the one making money on it, I have no say.

Just take a game like Demon Souls for example. That game by nature is only made for a niche audience. 10-15 years ago, only a small small audience would have picked up and enjoyed a game like that. Now? IGN and Gamespot hype it up as game of the week (since they need some game to be game of the week every week to keep their site alive) and then 1.2 million people have bought it the first week. I can promise you the majority of those people aren't really RPG people. Most people who play RPGs today don't even know what the term means. And most developers today don't either for that matter.

But in short, I agree with you. Skyrim really isn't a game for everyone - regardless if it is the hot flavor of the week. Open world games in general only appeal to a certain crowd and I feel that more mainstream gamers who aren't really RPG fans won't enjoy Skyrim as much as people who have either grown up playing the series, other sandbox/open world RPGs, are an RPG fan in general, or a combination of these. To be honest, I only buy RPGs/MMORPGs these days. I can't recall the last game I bought prior to Skyrim. RPGs are the only genre I find that are sustainably playable and give you enough bang for your buck. Games like Uncharted? Gears of War? No thanks. I'd rather not spend $60 bucks on a game that will last me 10 hours, max, and then offer either no or very boring multiplayer.

I try to look it like this.. New class, new playstyle.. So the fights will be alot different.. For example i play what i call a pure warrior now.. When am done i might do an archer, or even a mage.. Just to get another feeling over the gameplay..

And as some has said above, different factions/guilds for different characters..

I am having that same problem with my hotkeys unmapping at random.

Remember two things:

• The Construction Kit still has to be released, so mods are still on the horizon (for PC, at least).
  
• DLC will be released; Beth already stated this. They also stated there will be fewer DLCs but they will be more extensive. Frankly, I think the FO3 DLCs were fine, so if they do even more, that would be pretty amazing.

Finally, it's a role playing game where you create a character to play. Therefore, there are an infinite number of replay possibilities; the only limit is your imagination.

50 hours in.

Not even a little bored. And actually having to fight my own impatience to try a different character type before I've really done a lot on this one.

Even if you do everything on one character (I don't see why you would, but to each his own), you're talking about 300 hours of play.

Another lol thread! Keep them coming!

And I'm tired of peolpe looking so hard into "restarting it" there is only ONE thing that constitutes restarting, The Storyline thats it, everything else is a given with time, Tech, Art, gameplay etc etc. Restarting it has nothing to do with the reduced options, and if you think pushing some wood through a sawmill is "deep" then....just

Good post. I understand the reality of the situation, Skyrim could have been better though, both in terms of gameplay and graphics. Obviously this is my opinion.

I'm running an Intel I7 920 and Radeon 6780, 8gb quick RAM with Vista 64 installed on a solid state HDD. It's one of Overclockers (UK) custom built systems although I've upgrade the GPU since buying the system. Ie,, I can click 'Ultra' and wahck the AA etc up to full and it's a nice 60fps pretty much constantly. My point? It's not a patch on the Witcher 2 or Battlefield 3, and arguably looks worse than Crysis (the original, not the poor looking sequel). It's acceptable but it's not testing a 2011 PC's abilities, it's not DX11 and in all likelihood, never will be (sadly). I do like the art direction though, and for what it's worth the distant mountain tops still look impressive in DX9.