I am on my testcharacter for more then 200 hours and he will be retired when I know which Mods I will use for the long run. The Character from the long run will never be retired. She will stay as long as I play, just like my character in Oblivion - she is not retired yet.

Anyway. i retired a couple of them because they died or were killed by my other characters. i'll retire my immortal character that i've used in Oblivion and Skyrim after i get to play the dlc with him. i'm working on his last story but his soul will be placed inside his sword until he's needed again.

TES 6

I have several characters, but a single "main character" that do almost everything with. He never gets retired.

Other characters are for things that my main wouldn't do. For instance, I have a mage character for the mages guild and a legionaire for the legion side of the civil war. I use these characters to play though those aspects of the game and then I am pretty much done with them.

I never truly retire my characters but I have different ones for different guilds so they usually take a long break when I want to try something new.

I follow a pretty strict role-play as far as character goals go. Generally the character will do one or two side factions, maybe the MQ, and that's it. I can find no way to justify any one character doing it all in a role-play, besides I really like playing the more focused characters.

Most my characters are finished around level 35. I did get one character up to level 45, but that is the highest.

When I tired of playing my current one. Usually it happens when ...

1) For some reason I get fixated on a different character idea and want to explore it.
2) I want to try out a new mod build (this one is actually the most common).
3) I'm coming back from a break in playing ... If I haven't played in a while I'm pretty much always going to want to start fresh when I pick up the game again.

I don't retire my characters. The only times I'll stop a character is if I get bored with them or the file gets nuked by a bug. The latter hasn't occured since I was playing Oblivion a couple of years ago when I had a Nord file and that file got corrupted by a bad autosave. That was a good file I lost, the character stat wise at level 17 was incredible.

Most of my characters are retired after completing the main quest/whatever guild questline fits their archtype, but my current roleplay is more story oriented, so I'm going to handle it a bit differently.
My current character was a high ranking officer and strategist in the army of Elsweyr; he, along with a small group of soldiers, staged an unsuccessful rebellion against the province's leader. After being defeated, he fled to Skyrim where he was picked up by guards and brought to Helgen for execution. He's going to complete the main questline, Companions, Thieves Guild and fight as a Stormcloak. He is cut down in battle during the civil war and dies on the battlefield.

once I feel that they have done everything that fits their build, usually around the 150-200hr mark for my main toon's, but I do get distracted by new build Ideas so I've only retired 2 toon's since release.

I personally share your view more than anything else. I definately prefer a focused character with set goals rather than an all in one.

I've never made it past 48. My first guy never finished the main quest. I played oblivion with one guy that I got all 1500 in achievements, but ever since then I've played Beth games with many character builds. My favorite part of all of them is the starting levels when you a wimpy adventurer scavenging for gear.

When I have accomplished everything I wanted to

I retire my characters when I get bored of playing them and want to start a new one, simple as that. I don't really have any specific requirements for myself as to when my character is finished.

I retire him whenver the hell i want to.

i Have kinda retired,But i still play on my 200+ hour character.Like to explore now,Just taking it easy,Fight some dragons,turn into a werewolf then run through the forests of skyrim,read in-game books,drinking nord mead,finding treasures.
And welliam still having fun withthis old character.
Right now i am going tovisit the graybeards. Find all the shouts.I have more stuff to do
Love this game,Also this may sound stupid to some of you but i tend to retire acharacter if he/she dont look like what i want him/her to look like.I retired a character that i had played for about 195 hours with,then i started over becouse that one character didnt look the way the character was meant to look like.So i restarted and played as the samecharacter but with a different appereance.

It seems I might have to retire my "do everything, except the obviously bad things" character, because the file no longer loads with the mods I want to use.

I used to play dead is dead like you, but then I .. well, you know.

I usually have one or two larger roleplay saves and a dead is dead save. Still working on getting through some quest-lines.

When i get bored of my char, i roll a new one.

Typically when I'm bored with him/her, which for me typically happens at around level 30-40 where combat (the only thing in the game that can be challenging) feels routine. I cannot live on imagination, I need game mechanics. My current one is level 60, but I've planned retirement for quite some time.

'Cept for my main (who I will max in every aspect that I can until a glitch ends his journey), I do the same thing. I'm currently on a vengeful ex-Thalmor and follower of Talos who is looking for redemption, a young Orc warrior trying to prove himself, and a Bosmer refugee modeled somewhat after Katniss Everdeen in the Hunger Games trilogy.

I HAD a great character. He was with me from Oblivion and evolved so much over the course of Skyrim that when I recreated him for my 2nd character (first character for games is always just a quick breeze playthrough to get the mechanics down and have some fun with console commands). He logged about a hundred fifty hours.

I had a connection, related to him slightly, and really liked playing his character. But then I had to completely manually uninstall Skyrim and the custom made batch file deleted my save permanently.

i really don't want to do a system rollback because I don't want to reinstall Mass Effect 3 so I'm creating him AGAIN.

When I feel I am done with it.

Sorry to hear you lost your character, i always back my saves up every now and then.

i never retire my characters, i just lose the saves when [censored] up my harddrive

..I don't know. My interest in continuing to play her has dropped a ton today..