******* ALCOHOLIC ALERT ********* I actually finished that quest once and got the robes so I must have been so drunk when I did it, I don't remember it. *************** ALCOHOLIC ALERT***************

I have over 700 hours in and I am still playing and enjoying my shadow mage character.

I doubt that any DLC will include dramatic gameplay changes - like a new combat system, which the OP seems to be after. If you change the gameplay too much, then it just becomes a different game, right?

RPG's, or games which claim to be RPG's, are a different duck than Call of Duty or your average (non-RPG) single player game. For a dedicated RPG player, at least one that's been around a while and has played a number of them for any period of time, 400 hours is just the honeymoon period. After that is when you really get serious and dive into mastering the different classes (in games that have classes) and styles and techniques and taking courses of action and quest-tangents you haven't tried before (in games that have quest tangents...), etc. Then you can easily get up to 800, 1000 hours, or more. I know of people who've put in at least 2000 hours, in FO:NV. That's the joy of replayability, in a game that provides lots of it.

In Skyrim, 200-300 hours seems to be about where your average player (who isn't an ADD rush-it-quick-as-you-can COD type of player) has seen most of the world, done a majority of the quests, and starts to look around and think "Ok, what now? The thrill is starting to fade..." That's where the true replayability of a game would either kick in or wilt on the vine, depending on how well that RPG game was made.

But a majority of those hours played up to that point in Skyrim, are mostly due to the incredible size of the world and dungeons to explore, and the sheer quantity of (largely radiant) quests to plow through. After that is accomplished, there unfortunately is not an awful lot to induce people to put in another 200, 300, 500 hours playing Skyrim. But with some key changes made to it, we'd see how it very easily could have done just that.

When Beth masters the art of putting some excitement and motivation into *replayability* in modern TES games, then they will truly be the masters of the game.

I'm nowhere near being bored with the game, but then I set out from the beginning to not try to do everything on one, or even just a few, characters. As a result there is still plenty of stuff I haven't done yet, and some stuff that I have already done is still fairly fresh since I've only done it once or twice and haven't seen everything there is to see about it yet.

It helps that I'm on a PC and love to make mods, since that allows me to alter the experience more or less at will and keep things from getting stale. Additionally, one of my favorite parts of such games is leveling up a character to see how a particular build plays; since each such is different, what would otherwise be a repetitive experience gets fresh life since they approach it in different ways.

Of course, the mods cut into my play time; I haven't really played any of my characters in days, because I've been building a combination Dwemer ruin and mine to use as a home base. After that's done I have other mods in the planning stages, so I won't be running out of things to do in-game for the foreseeable future.

me too got burned out after 3 months of continues play XD

Still going. I am about to do something radical (for me anyways). Complete save game delete.

No more 5 characters to work on.

One serious attempt at a very tight two skill build. I'm going to avoid all crafting until late levels. I'm still going back and forth on which exact two skills to combo up. This is going to be fun.

Doubt they'll add new skills, they did that developer fun time thingie were one developer decided to create a perk tree, meaning a skill, for Lycantrophy, so I think it's very possible to do, I just doubt they'll actually do it.
Why?
Cause what is there to add?
Mysticism has been split up between other magic skills so we can't really have that.
Mercentile and Speechcraft has been merged.
Unarmed and Polearm could work though.
But what is there really to do?
Add Traps as a skill for seeing, avoiding and disarming traps? I'd love that, but I doubt they're gonna redesign how a game mechanic works for one skill.

Besides, they seem very obsessed that every class type has 6 skills, so if Warrior get some then Rouge and Mage has to get some too, and like I said for Mage, I just don't see what there is to add.
Spell Creation maybe?

Idunno.
I just wouldn't hold my breath if I were you. If they go with 800 MSP DLC again then all you'll get are small side-adventures with nothing new to the main game.

I stopped playing it 2 months ago. Got to me, i got bored .. quests' were just boring nothing interesting happening. Every quest, enemy was being repeated and repeated.

So i started playing Dark Souls.

I would say that the new skill/perk system adds an incredible amount of replayability to skyrim (at least for me), and because there are no longer set classes the player is allowed full freedom to craft whatever kind of class they want. So my question to you is: What key changes exactly would make Skyrim more replayable? And I do expect specifics.

Still playing daily.

Yep, same here. I bought the game 11/12/11 and I'm still staying up too late playing. I'm surprised I still have a job, and a wife.

I just finished the primary quest last night, at level 29.

Didn't do ANY smithing, enchanting or alchemy.

Just used whatever I found along the way as-is.

It was a decent adventure, but I'm not feeling any desire to keep playing or do any of the side-quests now.

I did the Primary quest, the Thieves Guild/Nightingales/Brotherhood/Battle for Skyrim... and that's it.

The ending seemed really boring to me. I liked Oblivion's ending better.

I'm still excited. With new awesome mods coming in nowadays.. just make Skyrim much more interesting. Gotta thank all the modders out there for their great work!

I quit for a bit, but I am getting back into it, just gotta rock different styles.

1) Gear and itemization model that adds randomness to what kinds and qualities of gear you find, and where you find it. Having the same droll and underwhelming uniques in the same exact place every playthough, and seldom being able to find any item in the world that is better than what you can craft or buy in town, pretty much removes looting and item hunting from the game, as a replay motivator. There is NEVER any feeling of "ok, lets clean out this dungeon and see what kinda cool stuff might be down there, and maybe we'll get an upgrade this time!"

2) Fix crafting and vendor itemization so that you can't craft or buy stuff that is always better than what you can find or loot or quest for out in the world. As it exists now, these two things make getting the best items in the game too easy, and only exacerbate the problem in #1. Finding the best items in the game should always be something you have to at least leave town for, IMO. If a crafted item is going to be as good as any of the best items in the wild, then please make it *extremely* difficult to make- long, challenging quests to get the pattern/recipe and some key components, can't just buy most of the ingredients in town, must have maxed-out craft skill, that sort of stuff. The way it is now adds nothing to my desire to replay, or even just continue playing.

3) Some semblance of gameplay balancing, with a proper 'Master' difficulty, that actually provides a reasonable amount of difficulty to ANY player, even those who've availed themselves of the better items and gear the game readily has to offer, and the best skill and perk combinations available to all. Why do so many people quit their characters by the time they get to level 25 or 30? Why do so few players try to max out their characters? While there isn't any one reason that applies to all, I suspect this lack of challenge and difficulty once past the starter levels, is a rather big factor in that loss of desire to play farther, and eventually weaken's a player's desire to continue playing the game. By the time you build up a character to where it is starting to be strong, you've already beaten the game, and removed the challenge. Even if it's only level 25. Instead of having varying levels of 'strong'... getting strong at 25... getting stronger at 35, really strong a 45, and 'as strong as almost the toughest monsters' at 55 but still finding challenging combat from the hardest monsters... no, you just hit "ok, i'm 30 and I cream everything now, game over, man". Something's wrong, there. Lack of balancing-1. Replayability- 0. Fixing #1 and #2 will go a long ways towards fixing this too, of course.

4) Better written and more good quality quests, less emphasis on radioactive quests. Quests and quest chains with different dialogue choices, different options, different things to do depending on which choice you make, tangents, results that affect your character, your character's standing with multiple factions, how people and factions react/respond to you due to which choices and actions you have made... and lasting affects on the gameworld and the NPC's in it in response to your choices and actions. Stuff other companies have done well, so I know it can be done. This would freakin' HUMONGOUSLY improve replayability and longevity, and the desire to replay the game in many different ways in order to explore all the different quest possibilities. But, no matter what you do, or how you play, the quests will always be 100% the same, and utterly friggin' replayability-killing boring.

I'd add on some more things that also detract from replayability, but my WOT (wall of text) quotient is already redlining.

The good news is you got 400 hours of gameplay before getting bored.

The Bad news is 150 of those hours were spent pressing buttons to craft/enchant/sell and staring at loading screens

still loving after about... 400-500 hours...

TES has never been a "kill and loot" type of game, but yeah I have to strongly agree. The desire to kill stuff is WAY WAY LOW, because

• Nothing worth looting is going to drop
  
• All the loot is better either at the vendor or what I craft
  
• Why should I care if a bandit fort is "cleared" or not? Zero impact on the gameworld
  
• Even tho 95% of everything is way too easy, I can still get 1 hit killed by a 2handed hammer even with the best gear/perks in the game
  
• Dragons - the only challenging part is having the patience to wait for them to land.
  
• Dragons NEVER drop anything interesting
  
• Shouts - LULZ shouts are just Magic based on refresh instead of mana.. whats the point?
  
• Favorites/quick-keys = horribly slow way to do combat
  
• Potions, like favorites ruin any pace of combat
  
• RPG turns into pure action game by level 12
  
• NPC magic/melee not balanced
  
• S*C*A*L*I*N*G means everywhere you go is dumbed down for you. The world is like a helicopter mom, making everything you encounter perfectly suited to your ability to WIN