Wow...some crazy numbers here! I guess I rely on my auto-save, resting and "opening-doors-loading" saves. I have all three on. But I've only logged in around 350hrs also....so you figure one hard save per hour. Of course if I turned off my auto saves, then yeah, I could see having thousands of saves. lol
Well, I still have all those autosave features turned on, actually. I just make LOTS of hard saves. Usually it's because I'm trying out a mod and I don't want my previous save to be corrupted by accident (has happened only a couple of times, but I don't take any chances).
Or because I'm setting up a scene for a screenshot. Usually this involves placing duplicates of existing NPCs just for the sake of having them in the shot and being able to manipulate them without worrying about breaking them. So I always hard save right before I do any of that to prevent any duplicates from escaping or my saves from bloating.
Plus, I'm a firm believer in "save and save often". If it's one thing I've learned from Oblivion, crashes can happen at anytime (though they're usually very few and far between). I just hate losing progress.
That's cool and makes sense to do "photo ops". lol "Alright people, take your places!!" lol I also realize I'll override a save sometimes. I'm a believer in 'save and save often' just not every 5mins. More so when I feel I've finished something or got through an epic battle. Like Julian said below, I believe the PC version has the 'quick save' and that's really nice. I recall that playing Oblivion on PC. But on consoles you have to open up the menu, hit save and wait for it save. Kinda a buzz kill.........and on a different note, man the loading seems alot longer in this new DLC!
I think some clarification is needed. When I asked how many saves, I was referring to the number next to your saves in your save/load menu. I have 3 different manual saves (all for different characters) but my number is almost 5000 as I always save over my old ones. Some of the numbers you guys replied with seemed really low.