Have you played around with character transfers? Seems odd, I know, but it created a new dynamic to explore.
A lot of folks are recommending mods and alt servers but there is also your mind and playstyle which can be altered. What you tell yourself your goals and objectives are, makes a huge difference in how you view activates and content. I dunno how to communicate this well without writing one of those text walls that are so common here but maybe projecting iconic character qualities can make it more easily understandable? Like before you sit down to the game each time, reimagine yourself as your choice of such and play within that mindset. So like envision Scrooge McDuck and play as a totally greedy and selfish hoarder who will take advantage of anyone and anything in order to gain wealth, or in the opposite of that; some odd combination of Tinkerbell and Robinhood who lives only to serve others and right any wrongs in the world. Or any number of other examples you can think of that are different from your current CE mindset.
I’ve noticed in CE perhaps more than any other game that frame of mind and frame of reference when playing can potentially make it seem like there are totally different games within the CE world. Probably Siptah facilitates this best from what I’ve noticed but as others are suggesting mods or the SW alt map might well offer some needed mechanics to enhance this sort of thing.
Right, what was the line in “Total Recall” again? “What’s the same about every vacation you’ve ever taken? Yourself. Why not go as someone completely different…” 
Edit:
And then of course there are always other games out there to consider too. Valheim is good and getting better all the time…
There’s RUST, SCUM, ESO, Black Desert, and DayZ that I’ve played and are very good! And if just CoOp is enough to meet the human connection aspect of it for you, there are literally hundreds of other games as well which are just completely awesome.
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After knowing I was going to get banned and just not wanting to play the “Did I delete enough?” game on servers where I had bases 3 years old, I went the vanilla private server as my previous experience with mods did not bring me joy.
So I started from scratch and haven’t looked back.
I still love this game, I am just not willing to endure a transitory TOS and, for me, what had become a toxic public server environment.
For the vanilla server I run, here are the rules:
“Welcome, have fun, build well, just don’t be a d*ck.”
Ya I’ve gotten that way too. What I’m doin now is playing foreign servers like Asian, Oceania and Latin. Start from the beginning no transfer, cheating and no looting. Play thru and wonder what everyone’s saying about you.
Almost in my sunset too…
I have no suggestions to give you my fellow veteran. I believe like @Croms_Faithful is saying a “hiatus” is necessary.
I will leave everything to decay too.
I want to miss the game and when I 'll start back to begin from 0 .
We love this game, we loved it more than all the other games, that’s for sure…
But gaming must be fun…
So, if you don’t have fun anymore take a break.
Surely I am.
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I know exactly how you feel my dear friend. And although I have only returned from a hiatus fairly recently myself, I think I am going to take another one. Or at the very least fade of the scene and minimise my presence here for a while. As wonderful as the game is and has been, 3.5 years is a long time to be playing any game without a ‘rest’ from it. Especially when we consider that most of us veterans have put in over 1,000 hours + a year. And Funcom should not feel bad about this. It speaks of the games strenghts, versatility and overall addictiveness, not its faults. It is sad, but as the old saying goes “all good things must come to an end”, at least eventually. I am likely going to leave again, or as I said, at least wind down until around Update 3.0, which if its as big as they are teasing, we should be in for a treat.
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What about something off the wall. One thing I always come back to because it’s just so much fun…treehouses
I hope it is as fun as being promoted.
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Just curious, can I use mods in single player mode, and if so, do I have to delete them every time I want to play on my public server? I guess my big fear is that after an update, I will not be able to log in to my public server and will lose all of my builds.
You do not have to delete any mods. You only have to remember to change your modlist for what you are doing. Just keep a backup of your Singleplayer map in case you login to it by accident.
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What is “nuclear option”?
Private server - currently have Exiled Lands and Siptah backed up with alot of stuff weve built. Running Savage Wilds now with-
Pippi
Fashionista
Pickup+
Stacksize increase
With mod maps from the Community , the game has great replay value.
Oh i also maintain houses across 13 servers just cause i can. Kids want to play also.
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Oddly enough, the hiatus we (my household) took due to issues with connecting to a local server (we had to keep copy/pasting into direct connect and it just got annoying) was one of the best things we ever did. So much changed during the time we were gone that when we came back there was a lot to discover (not the least of which was FC fixing the stupid bug that chased us off). I just wish I had remembered to disable thrall decay during that time.
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The private server that I have run for years - no one has any special privileges or powers. We also aren’t PVP so its really about building, exploring, fighting purges and doing dungeons together as we feel like it without worrying about griefers or trolls undermeshing us or offline raiding us lol.
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I will miss them and that is my objective here. So when I fix new ones I will catch my self comparing them, some thralls will live as legends in my mind.
One of my clan mates on 3728 delivered all my “fortune”, so I deleted character in this server, I will never go back. On 8013, 8080, 3504, I let everything to decay. Playing on several servers was tiresome so I will never do this mistake again.
I see my self starting in a European server doing my crazy run, stay there for a week to gain all the knowledge I need and transfer to Siptah European. I don’t want to gring knowledge again for endless hours, I want to mount my horse in different directions every day and enjoy the map. I will farm some Asuras from exile lands to have my precious friends on Siptah too. This time my house will be very small, I ain’t gonna fix tier 3 benches either chests with thousands of materials and legendary weapons. Just a relaxing game, nothing else.
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I played on an EU PVE-C server for awhile. While I did not interact with anyone, the average headcount was around 20 per day and they interacted with each other in chat rather nicely. Most spoke English, but some spoke French and German. It was a good server.
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This is probably one of the more optimum ways to play the vanilla game. You get some nice QOL features without anything lore breaking. And with Savage Wilds, you have a map that just has a crazy stupid amount of content. Its literally the best of both Exiled Lands and Siptah, dialed up to 11 and probably more stuff to do than both maps combined.
That is an understatment. I know I sound like a broken record in regards to Savage Wilds, but I’ve been playing it regularly for 5 months now, and I don’t even know if I’ve got half of it figured out yet. There is so much to do there.
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I personally do not believe that you should start with heavy mods like savaged wild, aoe and there like or in general play on heavy moded servers since it all can be very overwhelming at the beginning which can lead too much frustration and stress.
What I did first when I got into mods, was getting the pippi mod and starting out in sp, building a little trading center, then watched some tutorials and also figured out a lot by myself how the mod is working and tried it out myself. It also gives you the knowledge about how admins on privat work with it. What they can see, what they can do and what you can do with it. For example building telport points, spawn points for npc´s, creating trading post and much more.
Once you have a feeling for it, add another mod to the list, like Fashionista or a building mode. Something simple. The more you add mods at the beginning the harder it is to figure out what mod does what and if you like them or not.
It will not make you happy if you start out on servers, where you do not like the mods.
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Complete agreement with @Narelle . Nearly 8000 hours my side and I still find things that appear new.
Swapped over to private, modded servers over two years ago and not looked back. All depends what you are into really. There are many private servers out there to suit almost all player needs. Take a holiday from your current servers and sample a few in your region. I like servers that Admins have added more random stuff into. PvE and Roleplay servers. PvE basebuild showcase servers. Thematic servers, etc.
Just always check the mods the servers use. Make sure you go for the servers with mods that are still maintained - when Funcom releases updates it usually means mods need to be updated too and that can take time and therefore server downtimes occasionally.
You could always even get your own server, set it the way you want, and then bring in players. Good luck! 
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Nuke the base down = deleting the whole stuff without a warning if it is against the TOS.
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