I've been roleplaying heavily tonight. Got the night free, so I'm taking advantage of this!

I just realized my character really only spends maybe 10% of his time in combat. Actually, that's on a school night. If I have all night to play without interruption (like tonnight) he'll spend even less than 10% it seems. Most of the time, we'll spend our time walking thru the game, admiring sights, studying landmarks, looking for places to attack.

And then there's the town areas. My Nord will spend a LOT of time just renting a room, sitting down in the pub, and listening to the repetitive banter and songs. well....I find it repetitive, he likes it, though!

I'm talking about my Skyrim character Th?r a'Z?ne, but truth is, this also applies to some of my Oblivion characters as well. They also spend most of their time doing activities that aren't constant melee. Combat is actually a small portion of my games.

It gets my adrenaline going, and when it's all over, the relaxation is divine.

Oh and I know poll options kinda svck. Let me know of anything I've missed.

the poll has also been made multiple choice, just in case some of your characters do different things

For me, the longer I play RPGs the less interested I seem to be in combat. A lot of my earlier characters were warrior types who always seemed to be in combat. My more recent characters are in combat much less frequently. Nowadays my characters (with some glaring exceptions) are more likely to fight only when attacked. I haven't yet tried a pacifist.

Interestingly, I seem to be spending a lot less time fighting in Skyrim than I did in Oblivion. I don't know, maybe I'm more immersed in the world and in Skyrim's atmosphere. But I finding myself walking in towns, spending time in Inns, strolling through towns and chatting with NPCs, crafting, playing tag with kids, requesting songs from Bards in taverns, chopping wood, doing almost anything, actually, but fighting, lol. There are a lot more non-combat things to do in Skyrim than there was in the previous two games. I love that.

That's it, too. Skyrim's immersion is deeper for me personally, way deeper than Oblivion in lots of ways, so that I think I may also be spending even less time with combat than in Cyrodiil because there's more interesting thigns to actually do in Skyrim besides combat.

Not that me and Th?r a'Z?ne don't like fighting! He's all about raiding bandit camps, that's his fave NPC to take down. But the fact that he also has a life outside of this, especially as a dead is dead character, only adds to the game. :yes:

For instance, he woke up in Riverwood today. Over the past few days, he and Jenossa took down a slew of Forsworn camps, and he's being viewed as a hero by a small portion of Markath's population. But he wanted to get away from all of this for awhile and go back to Riverwood where he has all his gold stashed.

And what does Th?r the mighty fighter want to do today? Go swimming. That's right. He went swimming, let the current carry him, learned how to catch salmon with his bare hands. No weapon. No armor.

It's moments like this that make me smile. It's Yin to the Yang. And it's also rest & recuperation. Everybody needs downtime, even figments of our imaginations.

It depends entirely on what character I'm playing as. Some characters will spend very little time in combat, others will revolve around fighting. Typically, it's about 50/50. Tamriel is a cruel and dangerous place to live in, and getting into a fight is quite unavoidable. Some characters are just trying to get from one city to another and to live their lives. Others seek out adventure and conflict.

But it's all consistent among all of my characters: they will fight. They will also rest, relax, and have time where they have no intention of engaging in conflict. I roleplay as realistically as I can, most of the time. As you said, everybody needs downtime.

Early on for my Argonian assassian/thief combat occurred quite often cause his cover was blown. As he gained useful gear to aide his sneaking and improved upon his sneaking skills and use of the bow he avoided combat a lot more. In fact the other night he snuck through a cavern system with out being detected at all by the resident ogres, assassinated their leader and stole a valuable item without raising alarm. As their leader bled out he deftly crept back out with no one the wiser. Would've loved to have seen the ogres reaction when they discovered their dead patriarch. :wink_smile:

That is relative. With vanilla Oblivion's system where every creature has to attack you, I'm in combat half the time? Why I put a question mark to that is, really, how accurate is a person's sense of time passing by. Now with OOO, every creature isn't out to attack me, plus I usually play characters that are maxed out and I know very well how to use Oblivion's resources in the game to my advantage, making dispatching enemies fairly quick and easy.

I hope me talking about Skyrim didn't get this moved to the Series Discussion forum. I apologize. I should have talked only about my Oblivion experiences.

Hee hee, that's why I said "I know the poll options kinda svck". I couldnt think of a choice other than "half the time". If you have a better suggestion, let me know, I'll change it or add something new.



No it was my fault. :unsure2: I originally put this in OB: General, but then started talking mostly about my Skyrim character Thor, so i decided the right thing to do was to have it moved and I contacted the mods. Kinda svcks, though. This thread would have had more votes and posts by now. Maybe I'll start an OB-only thread because I think this is an interesting topic.