Skyrim Skyrim - 300+ hours of content?

Has anyone played for that long yet? Do you guys think there really is 300 hours of content? Actually, Todd Howard said he "stopped counting at 300 hours", so really there's even more than that. 300+ hours.

To me, it seems like 300 hours may be a stretch, at least in the sense of one single character, who is role-played a certain way. For example, if you role-play a good character, you won't do the evil content, and vice versa. So of course that is going to cut into your play time.

But not even counting that aspect, I've been to most of the major cities and gathered all the quests I could find. I didn't get a whole lot of them. Not 300 hours worth, anyway.

Now if you rationalize 300+ hours by saying you'll spend one hour at least in each of Skyrim's 150+ dungeons, that gets you closer to the 300 mark. And one hour per dungeon is feasible, if you take your time and look around. Or is it? In any event, there's a lot of time to be had inside the dungeons. At least 100 hours of dungeon crawling alone, I'm sure.

All that said, I'm 80 hours deep, level 35, and have only explored about 1/3rd of the map. There are cities and areas on my map I haven't even touched yet. So there's no telling what content I have left to find. I do have the feeling I haven't seen everything there is to see yet, which is a good thing.

Thoughts on the 300 hours ?

300 hours is nonsense, it has about 80 hours' worth of non-random quests.

If you never use the quick travel option im guessing it might be possible to stretch it out to something around 300+ hours without doing the random repeatables but for a normal playthrough that sounds very exaggerated.

I am around 70 hrs in, mid 20s level wise and my highest skill is in the 50s. Focusing on warrior/thief/alchemy/smith/enchanting skills mainly.

At the current pace I see no reason I won't have 300+ hrs of content. Keep in mind he said "content" not "scripted quests". Adding all the time fighting, smithing, potion making, harvesting, exploring etc on top of scripted quests and its quite clear that is a accurate statement in my mind.

If I keep playing, I should easily reach 300 hours. I'm level 22 after over 80 hours of taking my time and I have tons of quests I haven't even begun.

If you explore every dungeon and do all quests I think 300 hours is realistic, especially if you play on master.

My longest game in so far is 110 hours, I'm lvl 46, done about 75% of the quests and maybe half the dungeons.

It depends what your definition of content is. I know people who put in over 300 hours with Morrowind, but a lot of that was just collecting stuff, etc.

Isn't Skyrim supposed to be a bigger game overall than Morrowind or Oblivion?

I'm at ~230 hours now, with six characters, but 5 of them share perhaps ten hours of game time, the rest I spent with my primary character who is level 42 now (like the band). I have ignored two guilds so far (won't do their quests with my main char) but finished the main storylines, done heavy instatraveling, and now I'm just wandering the countryside. But seeing how I bump into new quests - small and not quite as small - all the time, usually a long time before I arrive at the place I initially targeted, I see myself reaching the 300 hours sooner or later, but it's an exploration game after all.

I'm level 57 and have played for a little more than 200 hours by now. I have finished 2 guild quest lines and I'm a Thane in 7 out of 9 cities. I still haven't joined up with either the Storm cloaks or the Imprerials and I have not progressed very far in the main story line.

I can easily see myself putting another 100 hours into the game so yes: I think 300+ hours is very likely.

Yeah, I can see there being 300 hours in the game. You might not do that much with one character, but people need to get over this idea that one playthrough of an RPG should allow you to do everything. This character won't do the companions, bards, thieves, assassins, or many of the daedric quests, but the next one will do some, and then the next will do some more.

I'd say about 200, but it definitely depends on playing style. I'm somewhat systematic, so I probably spend less time than the average player. If I can get to 200 before completing every side quest and what not, 300 should be fairly realistic for people who roam around more randomly.

In other words: Skyrim has a crazy amount of content.

I've logged well over 300 hours total time, but I'm a chronic restarter. I don't really care if I get 300 hours with one character, although I'm sure that'll happen. I always play a cartographer game, with the goal of uncovering all maps. Those games generally run into the 500 hour range in Oblivion. You'd be amazed at how many items are hidden on the world map, just laying in out of the way areas. Kicked a bucket somewhere nw of Markarth and it had a very nice helm under it. Since then, I've been paying a lot more attention to what's inside of things. I had missed tons of items in the earlier dungeons.

I can easily see there being enough content to keep you playing that long, not sure I will though, I suspect I'll be bored of the game before then. (a change is always nice after all)

Daniel.

I think there's more "meaningful" stuff to do in Skyrim than in any previous TES game, as well as in the latest Fallout games.

That means unique content and unique quests.

Obviously, Daggerfall had almost infinite content - but meaningful?

Certainly to me, I can easily see it last 300 hours - whether or not that's spread out on multiple characters and playthroughs.

I will say, however, that the Guild questlines are too short - and that I would probably have preferred more attention on them, than filling the world with unique quests. But that may just be because the questlines are what you're used to as the main content - and when I think about it, it's pretty damn cool that seemingly every single location in the game has multiple quests available with full voice-overs and a unique storyline.

JDR13 said:

Isn't Skyrim supposed to be a bigger game overall than Morrowind or Oblivion?

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It's marketed as such, but it's quite smaller than morrowind. One huge time-sink in the game is that a lot of quest locations are dynamically picked and since you've likely already visited most quest-apropriate locations near the quest-giver he's gonna pick a far-away location on the other side of the province which involves more time spent traveling. A town may only have 3 shallow fetch quests that consist of going into caves/bandit camps but you'll spend hours just traveling the roads there. In morrowind when you arrived in a new settlement most of its fetch quests didn't have you going to to the middle of nowhere on the other side of the map. Just going from Balmora to Vivec for the first time was seen as a long trip you had to prepare for.

The people who claim there's hundreds of hours' worth of content in skyrim are the same who found hundreds of hours' worth in oblivion, I assume they're just spending most of their time smelling the virtual roses. If you avoid the completely randomized quests and don't larp by walking everywhere etc there's no more than around 80 hours' worth of unique content. What level you are after how many hours is no indication of the amount of content in the game, someone who focuses on a couple of thieving skills with no followers will level more than twice as fast as someone who focuses on warrior skills or tries to be a jack of all trades with followers.

Well of course if you rush through to "beat" the game as quickly as possible you'll get fewer hours out of it. Nyarlathotep forbid anyone take their time and enjoy the experience.

KapitanUnterhosen said:

The people who claim there's hundreds of hours' worth of content in skyrim are the same who found hundreds of hours' worth in oblivion, I assume they're just spending most of their time smelling the virtual roses. If you avoid the completely randomized quests and don't larp by walking everywhere etc there's no more than around 80 hours' worth of unique content. What level you are after how many hours is no indication of the amount of content in the game, someone who focuses on a couple of thieving skills with no followers will level more than twice as fast as someone who focuses on warrior skills or tries to be a jack of all trades with followers.

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That's the point. There is hundreds of hours of content in the game. If you choose to bypass most of that content (working your smithing skill up, working your alchemy skill up, exploring, dungeon crawling, harvesting resources for your craft skills, becoming a thane in the cities, etc) any only do the core scripted quests/main plots and that is it then that is not the games issue, that's yours. The content IS there, but if you choose not to engage it then that's on you, not the game.

Who said anything about rushing? I read everything every character has to say and explored every nook and cranny of every location I find, but when some random npc gives me a quest to retrieve another family heirloom from bandits/a cave on the other side of the map for the 100th time I'm not going to slowly walk there as if it was still new and I was afraid of what might be on the road or stop to watch the snow fall again.

Harlequin said:

If you choose to bypass most of that content (working your smithing skill up, working your alchemy skill up, exploring, dungeon crawling, harvesting resources for your craft skills, becoming a thane in the cities, etc)

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I've got the 3 crafting skills to 100, thane of every town(oh wow, 3 fetch quests+1 decent one to become thane to the king of the 5-shack village), finished all the questlines, finished all the divine and daedric and every misc quest you get in towns or on roads or locations there are roads to or quests to, am now hunting for isolated quests that start in the middle of nowhere, have a chest with hundreds of almost every ingredient that I get from picking flowers and shooting critters while running through the roads.

Harlequin said:

The content IS there, but if you choose not to engage it then that's on you, not the game.

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Unless your idea of content is going out into the middle of the woods/plains to shoot respawning deer or going on the infinite randomly generated quests(go here, kill x) then I have no idea what hundreds of hours' worth of content you're talking about. The unique content that there is(quests that aren't completely randomly generated and all the exploring, dungeoneering, skill raising and crafting that go with it) aren't worth much more than 80 hours and they're already spread thin by the exceedingly long dungeons and ridiculously distant quest locations.

Well said, Harlequin. It'd be like someone saying that something doesn't exist just because they haven't seen it personally. I wonder what other things the poster doesn't believe

KapitanUnterhosen is full of shit in this case - as he's either RUSHING in a big way, or he's just plain lying.

The "randomized quests" don't prevail in the way he makes it seem. There are many quests that randomize ASPECTS of the quest - as in where you go get it and likely other elements, but ALL quests have unique content in terms of voice-overs and story.

The only truly "randomized" quests in the game that I've seen are part of the guilds once you finish the questlines (or in the case of TG - something that starts earlier) - but they're overtly trivial and meant to be a means of acquiring money and not completely closing off the guild perks. They don't try to pass themselves off as anything but filler quests - and they're the only ones without unique voice-overs and story content. Oh, that's not true - there are some "bounty" miscellanous quests that repeat that kind of content as well - but they're obvious as such, and you know when you get one. I'm sure there are more quests of that nature in the game, but that's beyond the hundreds of unique ones.

There are hundreds of unique quests (well, I'd estimate 200-250) with unique stories and voice-overs, and though many are small - just as many are not.

Also, there are 120 dungeons and they ALL have something unique about them, beyond just the layout. That means they either have a quest associated with them, some journal (or journals) lying around - or a story told through the dungeon. At least, of the 40 I've cleared for far - they've all been like that.

Oh, and then we have 300+ unique books.

There is NO way to finish all unique content in 80 hours - unless you deliberately rush things (fast travel everywhere without exception, and spend 0 seconds thinking or taking in the view, etc.) and completely ignore the flavor and immersion aspects of the game.

If you're a fast player like me, then maybe in 150 hours without smelling the roses.

Oh, and it's MOST DEFINITELY not smaller than Morrowind in terms of anything whatsoever.