TL;DR: endless random quests and/or extremely powerful groups of ridiculously strong enemies after Main Quest is done.

Beginning of rant. Suggestion is further down.

I just completed Morrowind again, probably for the last time. This playthrough was with loads of modern mods, greatly enriching my experience. No silly game-breaking "cheat" mods, of course. And no Alchemy exploit or anything.

At first I got leadership in most guilds. Then I almost completed Main Quest, got everything but Dagoth Ur himself. Then — Daedric Quests, Bloodmoon Main Quest, leadership in all guilds. Then Dagoth Ur. At last, I completed Tribunal Main Quest, and enchanted Ebony Scimitar with Almalexia's soul, creating extremely powerful weapon (47-48 Fire, Shock and Frost damage on strike, 1500 charge, goes on for a while). Saved and tested it on some Ordinators — 2-3 hit kills. Then checked it on Vivec — he had no chance.

But I have absolutely nothing to do now with that save game, and while I knew it would happen, it is still kinda sad. I love this character. I love my expanded Tel Uvirith, stocked with Artifacts (never sold any non-generic magical item), armor sets, weapons, Ash Vampire souls (decided to soultrap every Dagoth just because I could) et cetera et cetera. That Ebony Scimitar is just a cherry on top, my character already was virtually unbeatable for a while, probably since she got that [censored] mace from Bloodmoon with 30-90 damage. And again, nothing to do.

Yeah, I can kill Divayth Fyr and that overpowered Bosmer in Mournhold. I probably will — just because I can, and just because this is still something to do with character I love. Or maybe not, because my latest save game is in perfect position: on highest tower of Wolverine Hall, during crystal clear night, staring on moons.

End of rant. Beginning of suggestion.

I can only wish that Skyrim will have something to do when everything is done. Of course this is self-contradictory, but all I hope for is random generation of quests which will include extremely difficult opposition, just for the kicks. These quests should become available after Main Quest is finished, and they definitely should be completely leveled, Oblivion-style. Rewards at this stage are irrelevant, though — these quests should basically require ridiculously powerful character, decked in artifacts. Because in the end, most characters becomes ridiculously powerful.

Of course, I understand that not everyone plays Breton Spellswords (read as "most overpowered race/playstyle combination in TES 3-4"), and if these random endgame quests will be tough for "Breton Spellswords", then they will be absolutely devastating for Argonian Barbarians and Orcish Nightblades, especially if player is roleplaying in somewhat restrictive manner. And that is why these random quests should not have noticeable rewards. You don't lose anything if you are not doing them. Although probably there should be some variation in random quests difficulty. "Easy" quests should be doable by any non-gimped character, "Medium" — for most archetypes, "Hard" — for most overpowered archetypes (and almost fatal for, say, non-magical warrior or pure mage without Alchemy and/or good weapons). Oh, and "Hard" should not be hardest setting. "Ridiculous" difficulty random quests should destroy just about everyone.

End of suggestion.

Hmmm . . . http://www.1up.com/previews/elder-scrolls-skyrim-speculation-know-want-rpg?pager.offset=0?

Paragraphs 5 and 6 state that Skyrim will have randomized side-quests offered by NPCs. In that case, each replay should be different and could mean infinite gameplay?

~ Dani ~

Sidequests, random events, random quests, non story line quests, monster slaying, npc murdering, mods if you have a PC, dungeon sweeping, exploring. You get the point.

It's a good idea, but it also comes down to implementation. Fable III, for instance, had a goal in mind of creating more to do after the storyline ended. The problem was, it became difficult to actually figure out which part was the ending of the story and which part was the bonus content. If they are going to end the story, then it should only be full of sidequests, all relating to whatever you did in the end. What should not be there is a post-main questline questline. That just makes it feel like the story isn't really over, even though it is, and you aren't setting the player up for a very good climix if you dismiss the earlier climix as simply another part of the story leading up to something else.

Seriously. My Oblivion install has dozens of new quests mods in it now and I can start a new character and play, literally, for hundreds of hours.

Mods will add so much content to game, particularly since there will be three generations of Elder Scrolls modders.

~ Dani ~

I rely on mods for content after the main quest is finished, the land is explored and artifacts are discovered. I have no interest in randomly generated quests just for the sake of having a quest to complete.

Mods. I fine the quest and story mods just as good as Bethesdas if not better. The mod community leeps the game going forever. All you have do to is look at Morrowind as an example. A lot of people are still playing that game because of the mods.

kill everyone in the game, then start a new character, BTW I hope this game is long

I think a potentially daring idea would be to randomly generate sub-quests once the game ends. This idea ties quite heavily into what radiant story can already do, it just involves a worthwhile amount of work. Basically you get a quest on a notice board, or via a boy coming up to you, or even via a conversation topic in a guild. These quests are procedural, and pool from a wealth of paths that can interchange objectives, needs, and so on. These could fund a reputation system, which in turn could eventually allow you to take on real handmade quests designed the players who invest 100+ hours. However the requirement is high. So you might spend upwards of 30 hours of random questing before the reputation system will access you to a handful of these "legendary" quests.

When mods come out, it could also act as a channel for faster and more cohesive mod releases, as you would just tie them into the reputation system benefits higher up the chain.

I always wanted something like this, but I would rather the Mod community do it, I'm about to run through OB one last time (after new PC build in a few weeks) and the wealth of Quest mods is amazing. If BGS wanted to they could crowdsource quests/DLC to the favorites of the MW and OB mod communities. Ruined Tail's tail, kragenir's death quest, etc....I could easily list 20+ good quest mods. In the EULA it even states they can take mods and use them for their own. I would have much rather had Tears of the Fiend as DLC than pretty much any of the others. Why not take the favorite quest mods, rebuild them in their CS with all the permissions and bells and whistles and add them to Skyrim, send the mod creators some money a copy of the game and put them in the credits, bam happy mod community. Who wouldn't want to have some of Addonays weapons in Vanilla Skyrim? Or the guys behind the Myths and Legends 2 mod making some artifact models?

I've gone way off topic here so basically I like the idea of post end game missions, bc as the savior of Skyrim (and the world) you would be constantly asked to help with this or that.

How is this topic still going on lol. Radiant Story...

TL;DR: Old idea: http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1179466-questsactivities-to-fill-up-time-after-the-world-is-saved/

Why would we want infinite gameplay?

As someone has already said, it depends on implementation and quality of these quests. If it's random kill quests without a decent story attached, I'm not interested. Since I can't use mods, I only hope that Skyrim has as many (or more) hours as (than) Morrowind and Oblivion.