All quests you find have quest markers. Personally I like it since there are so much quests and I explore anyway so....you have a map, and the map gets upgraded. Whats wrong with that.

I should have put quotes, but I guess such comment is understandable coming from someone who couldn't follow Morrowind's mostly simple directions. You just don't read what's written.

To everybody claiming that a non-GPS system using directions is impossible with procedural quests: You don't know what you're talking about.
Considering the level of complexity in Radiant Quests, I could (with source access) personally write a system to add functional directions leading to any point on the map.
I'd try making a mod to add it, but I'm not sure what the CK will be capable of yet.

i'd be willing to bet most of you have more than 40 hours invested in this game. Were they all excruciating and painful?

Whether or not you can turn the indicators off (I, personally, swap the files from saved ones with quests on and quests off), I maintain that any game that has exclamation marks over people's heads and directions that are so specific they indicate you need to open a door was, in fact, designed to lead you to the next incredible,awesome, action-packed moment without having to find it.

Summary of situation:
Us: Lots of quests are pretty much impossible to complete without quest markers.
GaelicVigil: There are quests you can complete without quest markers.

:facepalm:

To anyone who has played a substantial amount of the game it is obvious that you are either blatantly trolling or don't have your quests selected in your journal. I'll admit there are quests without markers. A good named quest for you to have mentioned would have been "No Stone Unturned" for example. Also the miscellaneous quest "Find 3 Flawless Amethysts" for Talen-Jei for example.

The reality, no mater how vehemently you try to deny it, or how many extra emphasis words like "blatantly" or "patently" you scrounge up, is that in virtually every single quest where you are required to go to a specific place to do something/get something they have plopped a quest marker down. As someone pointed out, sometimes you can find it by using the name of the location and the icons on the world map, but certainly not always. There are no actual directions provided or hints and searches required.

Which system is better, quest markers or dialogue directions, is of course debatable but to say the no quest marker, dialogue directions and clues system from Morrowind is alive and well in Skyrim is ridiculous, but I suspect you know that.

Keep it civil. This thread had a real discussion going on an now a few are going to ruin it for the many



OT: The point is I dont want the supposdly undiscovered ruin to have its exact location pinpointed on my map. I want the game to at least have some quests where searchign si involved, some quests with markers but still with general directions given and others can just be follow the marker.

The problem is when there are no quest directions. In some quests I've done, there have been practically zero directions - just a marker.
That's bloddy hand-holding that you can't get rid of in any way. It forced you to follow a marker, otherwise you have no friggen idea of where to go, what to do, how to do it, etc.
I don't like that - it's poor and lazy quest development.

Bethesda, think of this better the next time, thanks.

dno if it would have the same appeal as handwritten dialogue though
especially considering the fact it's actually spoken dialougue

wouldn't it always have some degree of cookie cutter-ness (for lack of a better word XD) since all it would do is insert certain locations into pre-written sentences
or compile sentences from a bunch of different possible inputs?

sort of like the navigation system in a car would do.

I'm 50+ hours in Skyrim and most quests that I've completed so far had a quest marker. Only a few of them did not.
Skyrim's quest system is a bit boring to me compared to Morrowind's.

Boy, I guess I'm expecting too much, but I expected more out of a TES community than this. To say that a "quest" can only be considered a "quest" if it is marked in your journal and given by an NPC speaks of the level of "video gameiness brainwashing" that has occurred with some of you.

Take a step back for a moment and define "quest" from a non-game perspective and you'll understand a bit better.

One problem with directions is that it complicates things like the whole Radiant AI/random quests and locations bit. You've got to have the voice acting in place to account for it. Also while most the people who come to the forums tend to be hardcoe fans and thus more focused on the RP aspect of the game it's not unreasonable to say that the bulk of actual consumers probably prefer the simple quest markers and generally click through conversation. Also, voice acting is expensive. 100 locations to account for means 400 or 500 lines of dialog to account for all the difference voice actors who may have to describe the location or directions. That's just speculation, but it can't be cheap.

Suggested compromise

- Leave the quest markers there but as is, allow it to be turned off in the INI. For set quests that already have the location voiced, have them say 'Location A, a barrow in the Rift'. Perhaps some hint as to the location (in the mountains near Riften for example) or perhaps not depending on the difficulty of the quest. Also let us toggle off the instant add map marker for locations we haven't visited. Even if someone gives me precise directions let me turn off the location in my map if I haven't been there. An INI option to turn just the compass off. I like having mana/health stuff but would enjoy the challenge of no compass.

- Text is cheap, comparatively. Also the wide variety of books in TES titles is a big part of the fun for those of us who enjoy the hardcoe game aspect. Hands up those who put together a personal library in Oblivion and tried to collect every book? Have some books that discuss 'Barrows of the Rift' for example and give directions. It could be a tiny additional step to quest, going to bookstores or sages to get the book that tells you where to find a location instead of just wandering over hill and dale, if you want.

- 'Nearby' conversation choices with common folk. Farm near Riften, 'nearby' conversation option gives directions to nearby dangerous places. There's a little of that in game already, just make it more common and repeatable.

This way if you want quest markers they are there, plus you get the option to get more info on exact directions in game if you want. You can also turn that all off and just wing it with a nice, low cost/effort impact option to implement. Maybe for TES VI?

@hlvr, I completely agree.



In Oblivion pretty much every quest had dialogue that was at least:

"Go to Rodrics farm adn kill the goblins, its southwest of Chorrol, near the river."

At least that adds some directions to the game and there is still a quest marker.

But some of these missions would be impossible without Quest Markers.

Eg. Dark Brotherhood Assasination missions, some are incredibly explicit telling you exactly where to go, what to do etc...

While other are literally:

"Kill this guy"

And then you just follow the marker. Instead of it being:

"He lives on a farm northwest of Whiterun, its still on the tundra near a lake."

The posts responding to the OP are quite ironic.

Uh didn't you just contradict yourself? I'm confused.

No, he/she didn't. "Virtually every" != "every". Here you go: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/virtually

Okay, then I don't understand his point. If he's arguing that I'm trolling for pointing out that there are quests without markers (and there are LOT more than a few), then he admits that I'm technically correct, then WTF?

Yes, by definition the game provides "quests" in the form of entries in the provided journal interface. As your argument crumbles around you despite your attempt to dominate the conversation by making every other post on this thread, I'm not surprised by your existential fallback to try and redefine what defines a quest.

I understand there are other tasks to be undertaken in the game such as exploring on our own, gathering crafting and academical ingredients, finding someone to marry, amassing a certain amount of gold etc etc etc and there are no "quest markers" for how to accomplish these things, but frankly absolutely these are not quests. Google "Skyrim Quests" and you will see that literally (maybe you can find the one exception on page 8 of the results or something) every reference to "quests" is referring to the entries in the player journal.

Just because you can decide to go check out some city on your own and maybe find some item you are curious about does speak to the quality or mechanics of the journal provided quests whatsoever. If you have a strong imagination and can invasion yourself on some epic quest undertaking of your own design then I applaud you but realize that you are pulling a serious Bill Clinton in your attempt to redefine "IS"... or "quest" in this case.

How can you still not get the point? Let me break it down for you:

1) We're saying that there are quests that can't be completed without the marker.

2) You're saying that there are quests that can be completed without the marker.

Do you understand how 1) and 2) are logically independent statements?

Opinions can't be false, herp derp. I like ice cream. false. I like cars. false. I like introspective reasoning. false.

This thread is dumb. true.

And you ignored the fact that we are arguing about quests being impossible to do with markers, while you keep reiterating that there are quests without markers. You are changing the direction of your own thread because you can't deny our points. Or just because your reading skills are that bad. Disable markers, and there's quests you wouldn't know where to go. You would know what to get, but to find it you'd have to search every marked undiscovered location on your map, which is not cool. You're telling me Bethesda aren't holding our hands more than ever by making us blindly follow a marker to do the quest?

Completely agree with you OP. In fact, to add to your statement, you can turn off map markers in the quest journal. Simply deactivate the quest and free-run it based on what you know. In every case where the quest-giver assigns you a quest, he or she knows the location of what he/she needs and where it is. It isn't like Skyrim is untamed land where nobody has ever been. The province is completely mapped and people know where thigns are, especially if they did research on it beforehand (which is the normal thing I assume one does when askign someone to do something for them)

I agree that there are many quests which require a lot of imagination, but they are still, by very definition, "quests".

Furthermore, there are plenty of quest entries in my journal that do not have associated quest markers with them. This would most certainly be considered an official Skyrim quest. How do you explain that?

Haha, I'll accept your surrender then if all you have left is to play semantics, and incorrect ones at that.

"Virtually every single quest" is not the same as saying "every single quest" and in fact the use of the word virtual there is explicitly included to admit the small number of marker-less quests I admitted to in the first paragraph. I'm surprised you couldn't understand something that simple.