I've put in well over 600 hours so far. I haven't played the game for ages, and decided to pick up a level 19 character yesterday and continue from where I left off all those months ago.

However after playing for maybe 20 minutes I just couldn't help feeling that I've finally burned myself out on the game. I really wanted to get that special feeling back but over-familiarity has put paid to that. Eventually I just switched off feeling a bit downhearted that something I once enjoyed so much no longer holds my interest.

Has anyone else suffered this, and if so, what did you do about it?

(PS, I play on PS3 so don't suggest mods).

I suffer from this regularly with my characters. It's the reason I've got none past level 5 at the moment, I keep restarting them and replaying the beginning, which in itself is beginning to get tedious.

I've taken a fairly long leave from playing the game, and have spent quite a while fleshing out my characters in my mind, so that when I re-make them (again) next time I load up Oblivion, they're fully functioning people, rather than the empty excuses to RP chars I had before (asides from Helena, but she's special).

I don't approach the game from a perspective of knocking out quests, because that can become repetitive and dry up. Rather, my character is one of my best friends and she just happens to live in Tamriel. I learned this approach from a dear friend and fellow forum member here named bobg who had an amazing rapport with his characters.

I first met Buffy on the 19th of April, 2009 in the Imperial Prison and have spent time visiting, traveling and adventuring with her almost daily since then. I guess we have played about 600 hours. In that time, she has accomplished perhaps 30 of the game's quests, for she is simply trying to live her life in a beautiful but sometimes dangerous land. She is a member of the guild of mages (Journeyman) and a University-trained mystic archer. She does love to explore and, along with her black mare Superian, has provided the Mystic Archives with perhaps the most complete and detailed map of Cyrodiil that exists.

She is curious and enjoys flexing her skills and exploring dungeons. Much of her time however is spent simply traveling and visiting friends all over Cyrodiil. Between taking care of her mare and her own needs (making a little money, shopping, bathing, eating, sleeping, etc), her days pass quickly. Fortunately as an elf, she has a rather amazing lifespan. Much of her time is spent simply writing of her thoughts and travels in her journal.

I believe when I visited her yesterday, she spent most of the morning trying to figure out what to wear. Finally, she decided to go shopping to buy something new, then visited her fellow mages at the guild. Perhaps today, we will go hunting - if she feels like it.

She recently visited a dear friend in Bruma. Lothran is a dark elf who travels with his mentor, mirocu. Lothran has been traveling Tamriel far longer than Buffy and has a rich and fascinating history that Buffy could listen to for hours. In fact, Buffy and Lothran correspond regularly via letters delivered by riders for the Black Horse Courier.

At less than 5 quests per 100 hours of play, and with dungeons, roads and wilderness areas that continually fill with foes and travelers, I don't see her getting bored. If she did, I'm sure she would ask me to help clear her memory and let her start anew.

If you listen to your character and allow them to live, perhaps they will show you the way.

Something you can try is make a level 100+ character or you can try roleplaying it may not be as good on PS3 as PC but its still alright.

We all have to take breaks... I'm taking one right now. Currently burning people up with a flamethrower in FO3, hunting for a red brick in Lego Harry Potter and sniping people in ME2.

I still pick it up every now and then. Still having tons of fun with it.

Vanilla version I played over 200 hours and did get burned out on it, PC version has extended the LIfespan a great deal as I estimate that I now have over 700 total hours in the game.

I've been playing since it was released. And I'm still playing now.

But burnout happens. So video game-wise I take a break in and venture into the Capital Wasteland in Fallout 3 or explore the Terminus Systems in Mass Effect, or Vvardenfell in TES III, etc. Then I go back to Oblivion.



That works for me. I seem to recall lots of posts about people "beating" the game in a few weeks then getting bored. Oblivion is not the kind of game to "beat", it's more about the experience.

Yup. Haven't played it in months. I've been going off and on ever since it came out except the first year when it didn't ever leave my disc tray.

I might start it again soon though, just to get back in shape for Skyrim..

I think I've fallen into that. When I start up the game I think "Right, I got a ton of quests to get through" and it becomes a sort of cloud hanging over the whole experience. Maybe I should approach it with a more relaxed attitude and just do whatever I feel like doing, whether quest related or not.

I felt it a while back with my discovery on the I.C walls and when I confirmed it big time in Morrowind my will to game fell like a rock and it′s not getting better :sadvaultboy:

However gamewise, with 1470 hrs and counting, I′m never finished :celebration:

I'm always starting and stopping. I'll play for a month or two and then take a couple months off.

I don't think I could play any game consistently without taking some kind of break now and then.

I'll get heavily into the game, then fall away from it for a long time. I just picked up where I left off with my most recent character, and the timestamp on the game save was 10/09/2009. 16 months ago.

I don't necessarily get burned out on questlines, because I don't always do them. This character, who was level 20 when I left off, had clocked about 90 hours, but had only done a handful of quests. A bit of MG and FG, and almost none of the main quest. Hadn't set foot inside of SI. No TG, no DB, no KotN. It was all just traveling around Cyrodill, mostly getting into mayhem out in the wilderness, and getting enough money/fame for the Skingrad house.

I can't get into any character that I haven't played in months.
By then I forgot there personalities,there likes and disslikes.Heck even what they were doing at the time.
That is imersion breaking,start over with a new character and see how it goes.

Oblivian is the game I keep coming back to because there is so much you can or can't do in this game.
Every character is differant for me,if it's not I move on to another game for a little while.
I just got through Fallout NewVegas,I played it three times fast because it gets old quick for me,now I'm back and all refreshed for Oblivian again.

Start completely over, that usually fixes that issue with me. I tend to have that feeling when I try to pick up an already in progress character after a while.

I had that recently, but that partly had to do with me accidentally saving my brand new level 1 mage over my lvl 36, 3-years old game that I put over 500 hours in... :brokencomputer:

But I actually solved it. I decided to, instead of doing quests, just let my character's life tell me what to do.
I NEVER use fast-travel, I walk everywhere, I listen to what people say to each other, I talk to quite a few people, I do almost everything I think of doing when faced with certain situations...

Hell, at around 3 hours in, I saw/heard stuff I had NEVER heard in my other games!

Also, it helps that my character isn't fugly this time around

And quite frankly, I find re-discovering Cyrodill just as thrilling as doing it the first time now, as since I don't use fast-travel, and try to stay on the roads, I end up seeing quite a few wonders.


So yeah, when you feel you've seen it all, start a new character, RP that character like it was your own life, and often t ake the time to look around. Don't forget that Cyrodill, while not being the most graphically detailled world around, it quite a beautiful world indeed.

It's one of the only game worlds that even after 3 years of roaming it, still finds ways to amaze me

Oh no!! I would hate to see your face after that happened.....

Back on topic, I suffer from burnout all the time after marathon sessions of Oblivion. In fact I hit the wall just recently.

My remedy is to play heaps of racing games (Forza 3 , NFS Shift). Those games are so different to Oblivion that I get everything out of my system for about a month, and then, presto, I am ready to hit Tamriel again.

I was like this, until a massive fight with my spouse - then it turned into a fully blown Skyrim fest.

EDIT: I put Skyrim o.O I meant Oblivion - God im so excited!