First of all, let me say that Skyrim is a wonderful game, full of opportunities for adventure and entertainment. It is a vast environment with enough content to keep most people satisfied with the amount and variety of things to do. I must say that for myself, certain aspects have a detracting effect on the experience of playing the game. Taken individually, these things are admittedly minor and have little effect on the enthusiasm I have felt for this game. However, taken as a whole, enough of these instances can have a debilitating effect on my ability to enjoy the game. This is not meant as a rant or a complaint to Bethesda. Instead, if others share my experience and would like to add some of their own, specific instances where the game stops being fun, perhaps then Bethesda will gain a perspective on how they can best achieve what they have so long proclaimed was their chief goal in presenting a vast, enjoyable game world.

• Meeting Esbern for the first time and watching in happy amusemant as he gathered his things for the journey ahead, appreciating the distinctive tones of Max von Sydow's voice - and then to be jolted into disbelief as another voice actor makes what is presumably an attempt at mimicking von Sydow's voice seem more like an Austrian Kermit the Frog impersonation. Take a look at this video if you want to know what I'm talking about: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujIq5tWt_Qc
  
• Advancing my character's combat abilities until I finally acquired the ability to deliver a running, jumping power attack on my foes - only to observe my victim's final words to invariably be, "what's the hurry?"
  
• After receiving a simple quest to retrieve a dragon bone and dragon scale for Esbern, I receive a potion that seemingly does nothing. Investigation reveals that this was broken by a past update (1.3.10.0) and has not been fixed. To fix the problem, I have to reload a previous save from before receiving the quest and use several console commands, utilizing what is in all rights a debugging tool to completing a quest.
  
• Investing time, effort and perks in the Smithing skill perk tree, only to realize that simply by quaffing even the most rudimentary Fortify Restoration potions (and re-equipping enchanted items), any weapon or piece of armor can be improved to Legendary (and beyond), regardless of perks.
  
• Determining that an armor rating of more than 567 is without purpose - either due to the ease with which a character can achieve this rating or the lack of enemies that make use of armor-reducing weapons/perks/abilities.

Surely there are other aspects of the game that reduce its enjoyability for many people. If you have an experience that you'd like to share, please do so. I only ask that you not list things that can not be attributed to specific events, such as "crashing every 5 minutes." If enough specific examples are provided, it is conceivable that Bethesda might take notice and address some of these. Maybe then, Skyrim will receive the polish that it so richly deserves.

Quest are boring, lack of RPG elements and there is no innovation at all in this game. I must admit I play the game mainly for just exploring and messing about now days.

I haven't played this as much as Oblivion, or as much as Morrowind, or as much as Daggerfall.

However I love exploring in this game, just going for long walks in it. I wish there wasn't so many bears / wolves who offer no combat enjoyment and are just a pain. Offen spawn outside a camp so I can't sneak up on them.

Currently Mass Effect 3 is stopping me from playing. But once i save Earth, Ill be back to fantasy.

Basic needs force me to stop playing Skyrim: sleeping, working, day to day things to do... Otherwise, I don't find negative things in the game; I don't judge it, I don't expect anything from it, I just play.

Boredom after four playthroughs and probably 200 hrs sunk into it. A normal reaction I dare say. Not to mention that I need to balance between my hobbies and RL and family, etc... I think I'll invest my spare time in it heavily once the expansions will be out.

When I have to go to sleep or work...

Bugs. Broken quests make me rage.

Freezing and save corruption.It pisses me off so much that i can't play anything for a few hours.

Overall, Skyrim is (to me) less fun than Oblivion or Morrowind, despite having an improved graphical appearance. That, rather than any specific technical glitch or oversight makes me stop playing:
- Boringly repetitive quests present more quantity than quality or imagination.
- Dreary landscapes make much of the game world feel too inhospitable for comfort.
- Too many quests are forced on the player at unawares.
- The gaming experience feels like being railroaded through a long to-do list.
- Quest journal entries are totally inadequate and force the use of map markers.
- Relatively little of the game world has been left for open, questless exploration.
- Independent exploring is likely to break the quests anyway.
- The user interface is unreasonably cumbersome and unreliable.
- Furthermore, I seriously miss the player "paperdoll" model, without which it is more difficult to appreciate the player's equipment and appearance.

As a side note: Even though I mostly play in 1st person, it was nice, that in Oblivion one could rotate the 3rd person view around the player character to see him/her from different angles while walking or running (though one could no longer control the direction of movement when doing that). I find it just amazing, that even though Skyrim was supposed to better support playing from the 3rd person perspective, I have not found a way to see my character walking or running from any other angle than from behind (with normal playing controls, and not involving any camera mods).

But you still play it don't you ? exploring is Tes main driving force

I'm convinced that you haven't played even Oblivion like Morrowind,or Morrowind like Daggerfal before dont you ? for the bears and wolves

Yeah, I haven't really played in a month. After about 325 or so hours with two characters around level 60, it just feels tired. When you get around that level, it feels like everything is pointless. Gold is absolutely meaningless; I have about 300,000 now, and nothing to do with it. Loot is the same handful of crap all the time, and now I don't even have a reason to pick it up anymore (see the gold comment). Way too many skills and their trees are already fully realized and exhausted; this happens way too quick and easy because of stupid game design decisions. Combat is pretty boring anymore with nothing new to try and no new enemies to fight. Almost all encounters are without challenge on the highest difficulty. Stupid AI is the only one dying from traps. Way too much of "look at the markings on the wall / item, pull these levers in that order (herp derp, a-derp-a-duhr)". That's the extent of puzzles in this game? It's the same boring crap over and over.

Right now I'm just wandering around looking at the rest of the nooks of the world, trying to find something new to do. But mostly it's more of same looking landscape, with the same looking dungeons with the same enemies, same traps, same loot, same pull these four levers in this order a-derp-a-duhr. Oh well, it was pretty fun while it lasted. I guess now I'll wait for expansions and try out mods.

In summation, my main complaints are there's some serious balance problems with skills and leveling which cause things to become easy and uninteresting quickly, stupid AI, all the technical issues, and there's not enough variety (but enough for 150 or so hours, maybe).

What makes you stop playing Skyrim?
bug, bug, bug, bug, bug ....

Discovering yesterday the deflect arrows perk bug and constantly having to add and remove the slow time shield perk everytime it goes pear shaped

Hopefully these are fixed soon.

I just got tired after 500 hours. It took about double that to do me in with Oblivion. Still, 500 hours for a $50 game ain't too shabby. Only wish all the games I buy kept me busy that long.

For sure, it's what I like about the game the most. I'm currently enjoying Two Worlds 2 for the RPG elements and the exploring is good as well.

It doesn't seem like anyone is offering specific examples as I requested in the opening post. I wanted to avoid this thread becoming yet another list of hyperbolic complaints, so if a moderator could oblige me and please close this thread, it would be much appreciated.

My main grudge with Skyrim is it's shallowness: Most characters only have a few lines of original dialogue. Followers have generic lines for the type of dungeon you are currently exploring but not much more. I want to get to know them! What is Lydia's background? How did she become a housecarl? No one knows, not even Lydia herself. I'm just using Lydia as example here, the same goes for just about every follower. But the shallowness isn't just about characters, it is also about how little anything you do actually affects the world. The civil war hardly changes anything, other than removing one or two named NPC:s and moving a few others to new locations. You never really feel like there is a war going on. I can be a stormcloak hero and walk freely into (imperial) Solitude without being recognized? That's just... I don't know. It makes the whole experience so bland. Nothing really matters to Skyrim, it seems.

Not very specific maybe, but there you have it. Hopefully the upcoming DLC:s will bring some much needed depth to the world of Skyrim, not just "cool new features" or new landmasses (with more shallow content).

What stops me playing Skyrim, is when its 3am and I have to get up in 4 hours : ) Lol

When I 100% my achievements and kill every bandit in the world with my warglaives of azzinoth....and only then until significant new content comes out.

What makes me stop playing Skyrim?
Come to the bethesda forums see if there is some news about updates, because I'm still playing Skyrim. After 480 hours and in level 63, I'm more in love with this game than ever. And with mods, this game ROCKS!!! ...

You are an utter [censored]. I hope yr game crashes forever. Furthermore, you just requested no bugs details, but you ran on about Esbern's potion bug. Hypocrite.

Hah... that was my first impression as well. Although in retrospect I'd lean more to a Yoda which fits his old guru image. Both voiced by the same person.
Edit: My mistake... Frank Oz voiced Yoda and several other Muppets but not Kermit; Jim Henson voiced Kermit.

I can see how you in your enthusiastic excitement might be taken back by other people unfortunately not sharing your exact thoughts. However, I do not see that as a valid reason for failing to appreciate people replying to you.

Anyway, please allow me to note, that the comments I made previously were quite specific, and they accurately addressed your question of giving a reason for stopping to play Skyrim. Furthermore, they also very directly addressed your concern of:You may disagree, but that I cannot influence even with my best efforts.

To be honest i think that 325 hours -and even 150 -are a fair amount of time -if not exorbitant compared to other games of the same price.

I agree with you on some points (puzzles,wavering Ai,bugs and glitches etc.) but sincerely I don't think there is any cause for complaint about "variety" in a game with such a great landscape/world design that have kept you busy for so long.

And there's always room for improvement with the future Dlcs (and patches for the bugs/glitches) not to mention the mods for the pc version that clearly improve and extend the experience.

Sorry if i say this again,but i have the suspect that too many expectations were too high for the vanilla version of Skyrim.

Of course the game is disappointing on a few aspects,but you've to consider also his strengths,and i dare to say that they're far superior and prevailing In the end.