So if your like me and keep making 1000's of characters and never get that one that sticks post in here and lets work toward helping each other stick with a characters.

I think together we can finally all have characters that we keep and love. Who else is interested in making a concentrated effort toward kicking restartitis, and who has ideas on how we should go about it?

My ideas:

1. Identify the problem
2. Help each other build characters we will keep
3. Provide support for when we want to restart
4. Introduce new ways of breaking boredom with characters


Sounds kinda pathetic I know, but I really dont like the fact that Ive had this game for so long and nothing solid to show for it.

Who would like to join me in a support group (here in thread) committed to beating this?

Im game for this!!! i myself have made 4 characters this weekend alone , i rarely get passed lvl 15 . i can never make that perfect character!

My problem mainly is that i keep adding mods until the explodes and i need to do a clean install. I've only played two serious characters. Many, many times, though.

Part of the problem however may be that the start of the game is more exciting than the higher levels. Your character is still fresh, and you're still getting familiar with his/her battle tactics. It makes fights more exciting, especially if you have mods that make high level enemies available from the start. On higher levels you know what to do, and it gets more boring. Atleast that is how i feel in many games, including Bethesda's.

What are you trying to accomplish with your character, or what are you getting bored with?




Try unmodding the game. Play the vanilla style and see what happens, so crazy it might work *shrugs*


______________________________________

My problem is that Im very indecisive and I want to do something unique, however I know that at this point unique just means svcky because all of the proven good characters have been taken.

I understand restartitis. I think it is a good thing up to the point where you are very comfortable with the game. Then, it can get to be troubling and frustrating. I went through many characters tweaking and redoing them for almost a couple years. Then, just over a year ago, I fixed it. Since then, I have happily played the same character for about 500 hours with no end in sight. I guess, in my case, I would attribute curing the disease to several things:

1. I quit trying to build uber and effective characters with good gear etc. Rather, I intentionally designed a vulnerable glass cannon with many challenging limitations (never raising endurance or touching melee weapons for example).

2. Rather than trying to 'become' my character, I decided to travel with her as a mentor. She has her own personality that has blossomed over many, many hours. We both need each other to survive in Tamriel. I try very hard to listen to her. Sometimes, she listens to me. Sometimes we argue. Regardless, we are happily stuck with each other.

3. I encouraged her to keep a journal of her travels and adventures. That has helped greatly to 'fill in the gaps' only hinted at within the game itself.

4. We honestly don't do that many quests. Rather, much of our time is spent exploring and creating some quests of our own. When Buffy does do a quest, my goodness she can turn it into a major full blown production!

5. Yes, I added a few small mods to enhance RP, like a portable campsite and more active horse animations for example.

I'll tell ya, it's magic when you find the right character and combination of things that work for you! A worthy pursuit indeed. :rock:

Hey guys, this is my first time here

My name's Mishaxhi, and I'm a restartaholic

I guess it all started when I first started playing Oblivion. I was just never completely happy with any character I ever made. Especally with the addition of mods, there are just too many opportunities and different kinds of characters to play

Anyway, thanks for listening. I think it'll really help me to share this and get it out in the open

For years my characters lasted only a certain ammount of time as I blitzed through looking for rewards, which became hollow power building.
Now I think of it less as a game where I have to beat everything and more a place to just have fun.
Personnally talking on this forum, seeing other peoples stratagies and roles, while talking about my own builds.
Has been the best way to get creative and carried away in story and personality of my characters.
So the way to nearly kick restartitis for me is to talk here about the game, so I can just focus on enjoying it when playing.

To be honest , i dont know what im trying to accomplish. i have never really set out a game plan , just build a character then have at it , i have gone through every questline throughout the game , just started up with dungeon diving and i have never ever used alchemy ever...maybe i should... and i have never really tried the RP way to play , tho dead is dead i always use...but then again my characters have never died unless i make them jump off dive rock when im sick of looking at them...I also play on xbox360 so mods are out of the question for me.

I end up playing the same sort of character again and again, I don't think I've ever picked up a bow...I've made a new character who I'm sticking with for now, but I'd like to help if I can. I know how annoying it is to have a great game that you just get tired of.

OK Im starting to see a structure on how to go about this now.


So for now lets concentrate on goals.

How long do you want the Character to Last (at Least)?
I want to keep him untill Level 40 or untill next Summer.

What do you want this character to be able to do?
A little bit of everything. Stealth can take a backseat if it needs to. Generally a warrior class though, possibly a battle mage.

What kind of experience are you looking for?
A generally deep experience where I do a lot of quests as well as sandbox.

What can you narrow down about the character you want to create?

six:
Male

Race:
Imperial
Nord
Orc
Breton
Argonian
Altmer

Age:
20-30

Specialization:
Combat

Attributes:
Intelligence
Willpower
Strength
Endurance
Speed

Birthsigns:
Atronach
Apprentice
Mage
Steed

SKills:
Conjuration

Here is an example of what i go through.....I built a female imperial names Selene Septim , the daughter of Uriel Septim. She was always told she would never rule the empire because she was in fact a female so at a very young age she ran away from home. Many years later she was thrown in jail for pick pocketing citizens in the imperial city. well u know the rest after that...i got to about level 15 and decided i didnt like her looks or her stats , so i deleted her and built a female wood elf which im playing right now as we speak. Wood elf , the thief , magic is her specialization , major skills are as follows....Conjuration , destruction , illusion , rstoration , light armor , marksman and sneak , i usually use blade instead of restoration but i hated how long it took to build my restoration skill up. other than those 2 skills i have never chosen any other skills. I love the stealth characters but i am getting overly bored with the same old game play.....

I mainly changed the imperial to the wood elf cause i like the ears better...lol

Im not too hot on back-story I prefer to sort of develop the story or my character as he goes along. That way you dont set yourself up for a quest that is inconsistent with the character you've thought up.

I actually have a character idea that you might find happiness with.

Race:
Khajiit

Specialization:
Stealth

Attributes:
Strength
Speed

Skills:
Blade
Illusion
Light Armor
Sneak
Acrobatics
Athletics
Mercantile


This would be basically a samurai assassian or maybe just simply a hitman style character. I think using Blade instead of Marksmen will add a challenge or new dimension to the stealth game for you while retaining what you already like. What do you think?

Sounds like a pretty ok build , ill try and do that one tomorrow. as for the back story , that was the first time i ever attempted a story , Daughter out for revenge sounded good to me. but i think ill leave the story telling to acadian and buffy!

I disagree with the premise of this thread. In my view, there's nothing inherently wrong about restarting. There's nothing inherently wrong with having thousands of low-level characters. If a player enjoys restarting then that player does not have a problem. It is only when a player ceases to have fun that there can be said to be a problem. This goes for anything connected with Oblivion. No matter how you play the game, if you're having fun playing the way you play then you're playing Oblivion the way it is supposed to be played.


Did you had fun during this time? If you had fun while playing Oblivion, then you do have something solid to show for it.

I have had fun, but I would have more fun if I could just once fully develop one of my characters. Ive done the thing where I play all the types and experience different stlyes. Ive now reached the point where I want to set on a style and perfect it. I want to see the rewards of a high level character because that is what I HAVE NOT done yet. Thats the premise of the thread.

I had the same experience untill Osmundas Hlaalu came along.
He is a rogue style character but very jack of all trades in every aspect in Oblivion.
He does not sneak to backstab often, rather relies on speed and evasion, mixed in with a fair bit of illusion magic, command when out numbered, paralyze if outmatched.
Poisons, and potions to keep healthy and gain a small advantage, invisibility to get through hoards.

Mostly he relies on blades as a fencing style of long swords and rapiers, he took his skills..
Alteration, illusion, alchemy, blade, mercentile, speechcraft, security from what he learned with his background, rather than to control his level as I use them all often.
So what he is, is someone who can do quite a bit, but with other factors such as his weaknesses to attacks and my lack of use of ranged attacks or melee criticals.
He needs to plan attacks and adapt in combat rather than just sneak and shoot.
A glass cannon as he is very strong now on normal difficulty, but a melee focused one which losses health rapidly if left facing two or more foes.

Made a little progress. 1st off I know that I dont want to remake myself anymore. I did like 10 ZS characters.

I know that I like an emphasis on Combat, I know I like a do good character, and I like a little bit of Magic. Im also very partial to the knights of the nine quest. So I am going to be a paladin character.

Im thinking of a Nord with long Blonde Hair and Blue eyes...

For me, I keep restarting, because I find new things with the game. Another thing is sometimes what you think is good for rollplaying is bad for the game. I hardly ever use Restoration as a major skill or the skill that lets you do feather, because I use them all the time and level too fast, so i had to restart.

Other times, is because you find out, if you get a certian item or magic spell, it's more powerfull if you get it later and not to early. So I restart so I get my weapon or spell stronger so it's not so weak.

One of my favorite games was having a each individual skill as a major using the Antronach sign. It was so refreshing and fun. Why I restarted? ... I forget, why, I think I got a new 360 because the old one was a rental and I didn't want to restart the same way again.

If you try to optimise all the items and everything you will go insane. By the time you break level 20 or so your godly anyway.

Something I tend to do that helps me roleplay and stick with a character is saving and taking a break from one character when I finish something. For example, I start a new character, play until the end of the sewers, and save and quit. Then I load one of my other characters and play with them for a while. I eventually make it back to the character who's just left the sewers, and I go visit Jauffre. After conversing with him, I save and quit to p;ay on another character. It's as if the lives of the characters are TV show episodes, in a way. Dungeon-diving? Clear it and switch characters. I've got a bout 6 right now. Lol. May not work for you, but it seems to for me. :]

Nevermind still thinking.

That's pretty much what I do, but not quite that rigidly. At the moment, I've got 20-some active characters. Some I haven't played in months, but most of them have been out at least for a bit at some time in the past month or two. I play my characters as separate individuals-- they're the ones who are living in Cyrodiil and I'm just pushing buttons and following along as they go do whatever they do. As long as I'm interested in one and have a pretty clear idea of what s/he wants to do next, I keep playing it. When I reach a point at which I'm not sure what the character would want to do next or I just get the urge to play another of them, I park the current one and switch. They're spread out all the way from level 1 to, IIRC, level 34-- all different races and genders and classes and abilities and personalities, so pretty much whatever I'm in the mood to play, I've already got going somewhere. And if not, I create another one.


ALTHOUGH-- Zak-- I know that doesn't help you, because you've got a completely different set of obsessions than I do.

All I can tell you-- I think it's great that you've said you're not going to do another ZS character. Stick with that, but don't stop there. Don't make him an Atronach, don't rush immediately to get the Spelldrinker Amulet, don't spam alchemy.... don't do all the things you keep doing over and over, because that's why you get bored. You already know how it works, and you end up god-like by level 20 and it's just not worth it to do it all the same, all over again. So you lose interest and decide to start a new character, and you hem and you haw and you try on this idea and that idea..... and you end up with a young, male Atronach who rushes to get Spelldrinker and spams alchemy.

I sincerely think, and I've told you before, that you need to get rid of all of your preconceptions about what sort of character you want to play and do something ENTIRELY different. The easiest thing to do is play a female character-- that, all by itself, makes it impossible for you to just sleepwalk through the game, doing all the same old things that YOU would do. You're not her and you can't be her-- she's her, and that's just the way it is. So you have no choice but to get to know who she is and what she's interested in and play the game the way that SHE wants to play it-- not the way that you do.

I'm willing to bet that if you play another young, male Atronach who spams alchemy, you're going to be back here in a couple of weeks (if that), bored and looking for ideas yet again.

Just my $0.02.........

Perhaps it would help to get the perspective of someone who doesn't do a lot of characters.

I typically play a single character for hundreds of hours;
Severus Snape, over 700;
Sarrah over 500;
Angel, currently 249 and still going.

The things that keeps me going with just one character are;

I truly like my characters. They don't have to be perfect. They just have to be someone I like. I've rolled a few that simply didn't do it for me and I quickly dropped them. I discovered early on, that my Jon Luc Picard was simply too stiff and proper to be fun.

My characters all take the time to be still. They watch sunrises and sunsets. They bath in those little ponds, and picnic beside waterfalls. They ride horses so that they can look around as they travel. Angel once spent a night sitting on a nearby hill, admiring the energy pouring out of an Oblivion Gate and pondering the questions of whether there was a way to harness that energy and what the world would be like if they could. Then, she watched a khajit bandit who came too close to the gate, fight a Spider Daedra to the death. Under cover of chameleon cloaking, Angel healed her and then patrolled with her for hours. She would later write in her journal how dearly she regarded the bandit.

Being an amateur artist, I recognize the thousands of artist hours that went into creating this lovely little world and the creatures and monsters that occupy it. At times, playing is like watching a landscape painting that can drift from flower decked meadow to a mystical, snowy mountainside. I think that keeps calling people back to the game but they don't always recognize it and right away start trying to do RPG stuff.

I had the re-staring problem before, but I beat it pretty soon. Here's what I did:

Have one character to be everything. Yes, everything. It will get you attached to the character better than ever. You will see it through thicks and thins, and you would have had him do everything he could; be sneaky, strong, cast spells. You know your character through and through. You have to be one heartless SOB to delete him after that..

The next few characters are experimental, so feel free to screw around with them, try every race/class combination, birth-sign,etc. and just see which one you enjoy the most. For me, my personal favorite are always Hunter builds. Archers which kill animals for their meat and skin, then sell them for money. Choose a region to know, and an Inn to always stay in, until you can afford a house.

Now, for the final few characters to stick to; choose the character's you may have shortlisted as your favs. In my case, it was one hunter, and one deranged Bosmer. (Aside from the main character). Make each character with a goal in mind. Ideally it should be a profound goal, but it can be anything. "Become Arch Mage" "Make a million gold" "buy the most expensive house and furnish it" "do all daedric quests". It could be something never-ending. "kill all bandits" "kill all wolves" "collect all cheese in-game" etc. it can be absolutely mindless. "punch each count atleast once, regardless of consequences" whatever. But set about that goal, and go about it. You can even have multiple goals.

Anyway, that's how I did it. I hope the post wasn't too much of a drag. Hope it helps!

I would understand "restartitis" if this were a Diablo or Sacred game but its not. Pick what race you want to look at for dozens if not hundreds of hours and go. Restarting is for games that dont allow you to re-spec and with Oblivions leveling system we all know thats not a problem.