The point is, it wouldn't change anything for you. To others this "unnecessary detail" can make a world of difference. Kinda like how people lamented the loss of item descriptions when Fallout 3 came out. These kinds of things add a lot of little bits of depth to the gameworld and make experiencing it feel much more "immersive" (yeah, I used the buzzword, sue me) and "real" for people who like that kind of wholesale storytelling. It may seem like a little thing, but it really is not when looking at the big picture. Not trying to blow this out of proportion, but think about it for a minute.

I agree 100% with the OP, especially for the miscellaneous quests.

A quest entry like "Talk to the Jarl of Riften" is simply silly. It doesn't indicate WHY you should talk to the Jarl, nor WHAT ABOUT. And, after a few days, I sure have forgotten what that particular quest was about!

It would change the whole log system for those who care about a journal worth its name and it would not change a single bit for those who are already happy with it, but feel free to explain how deeper quest description would hurt your gameplay.

You know a dialogue would help. I liked the way they had it in Oblivion, though even their, sometimes it was scetchy.

I know, I can reach down and pick up my book and find out what is what. But really that's not the point, I shouldn't have to. Also I'm in a position I rarely ever have to stop mid-quest. I also know that's not true for everyone.

I really don't see what it would hurt to add more to the journal, you don't have to read it if you don't wanna, just like the books.

Unfortunately this will not get added, one of the main reason's why Skyrim was successful is because they kept it simple and easy for a mainstream gaming audience. A wider audience equals larger profits, and inevitably that is what Bethesda wants.

It's sad that the core audience needs to be "mainstream" audience. Bethesda has all the capabilities of making really enthralling games that cater to a broad audience, with the hardcoe/oldschool crowd included, if they'd want to. But I guess they don't.

No, simple business rules apply even in the gaming industry. You always must have a target audience and your target audience should be the ones who give you the most money.

No argument there. But I do not see the point of the "no" in the beginning.

It seems that some people still think that most off us want the markers gone. I'm for one do like to have the markers and use them to get my general bearings.
But i did love the journal in Morrowind! (haven't played Oblivion yet) You could read up what you had done so far and that was great when you had to leave the game for a longer period (as Real Life commitments demand your little free time you have)

Sof far i haven't played Skyrim A LOT, but enough to have some quests lingering in my journal that i haven't got the smallest idea from where i got it and how to complete it. Specialy when you don't want to use the marker.

So yes, the markers have there purpose and there are a group off people that feel just good without more information in the journal and just follow the arrow to the point where they have to do something. But there is also, and i believe they are a large group, a group off people that love to read there journal just to get back into the game and really delve into role playing.
So if its possible, then let Beth bring the "full" journal back into the game and still keep the markers for the people that love to play that way!

I will say the quest description is so short it's confusing, it's also make it very hard to keep track on who you do quests for like then you want to do quests for an city to buy a house.

This is more an problem for an casual who play the game just from time to time and also pick up all quests he is able to.
End up with a long to-do list but no idea why and probably get pretty confused.

Aside from missing spell-making so much, I really miss quest descriptions as well. ARGH!

100% how it should be. Mods only possibly could fix this. But probably beyond their scope.

It's not as simple as that. Writing is not as easy as one might think. Quest descriptions each would need to be written, edited, rewritten (maybe), edited, then "published" to the game. It's easier to do what was done in Skyrim, for certain. And, being that the actions experienced are the same, I'd say it's a fair trade-off for more in-game content and less writing.

This topic has my full appreciation.

And: What is so problematic about offering a dialogue log. Just record the NPC diaologues and give the player an option to re-read it.

Each entry into a dialogue log consumes data space. Other than that, the only disadvantage is an experience that is arguably more "realistic". IOW, if you, the player, can't remember what was said, than neither can your PC.

I can not agree more with OP.

Bring back indications and a real journal, Morrowind style improved, instead of these arrows for dumbs.

i pretty much agree with pretty much everything this man says, he is right most of the time and most of his opinions are hard to argue unless you just want to be a dike (how can you say no spell making or something? not really an argument to this i think)

That is indeed the big question. This is why I'm not going around demanding that they remove fasttravel from the game, remove voice acting so they can offer more freedom in quets-design or want spears back (along with the texture clipping issues that it brings).

I know all of these things can't return because they will make the game boring to play or ugly to look at for the larger audience that loves Oblivion and Skyrim for its streamlined gameplay.

However what I'm promoting with this topic is an easy solution for both parties. The quest-marker can stay and people who prefer to be guided by it wont notice the differences. However by simply making the description in the logbook slightly more informative for the old fans, we can disable the quest-marker and be guided by the logbook again.

So to answer your big question: most wouldn't even notice the difference. If they select a quest in their journal than they might see a line or two more but it doesnt change the 'follow the quest-marker' gameplay that they enjoy. If that isnt enough then Bethesda could hide the text description as well. Just allow us to press a button to open the full logbook. It would be a part of the logbook that most gamers would never see or use, like the conversation journal in Bioware games.

Since Skyrim already has satellites in the sky and Google earth I don't see anything against supplying your character with a tape recorder and digital camera. Any conversation once listened to could be replayed at any time from your journal by clicking on the tape recorder tab. The conversations could be organized by speaker, quest or topic. Since those conversation are already in the game they would take no further room to store, all you would need is a list of links to the mp3 file in your journal. Relevant pictures could also be recorded in your journal. One of the old Zork games had this and it worked great to remind you of what you talked about with various people.

It wouldn't always solve the problem. The problem with voice acting is that they try to minimize the length of the recording so most quest givers fail to say where the quest objective is located. I'm not against voice acting, a modern game can't do without but it would help if the logbook had an entry giving directions to the quest objective even though the words were never said.

I almost must admit that I'm not a big fan of the satelite map and having pictures and Mp3 files in your journal would seem even further out of place. Of course any solution for my problem would be welcome but I'd prefer for them to just add 1 or 2 lines so the quest description is more clear and I don't have to use the quest-marker.

You CAN disable the quest-marker - the problem is the miscellaneous quests are reduced to barely functional notes on a to-do list. I've resorted to ye olde pen & paper, but would appreciate if Bethesda enabled the player to add notes to the in-game journal.

You are right that techically I could disable it, but without the quest description is makes quests impossible. For example yesterdat I did a thieves' guild quest (I wont spoil it) and the quest giver was first at location A and upon completing the quest he was at location B. This was a scripted location change and he wasnt walking around, the quest just continued somewhere else. Without the quest marker on I would have never found him.

So yes if they improved the quest description than I could do without the quest-marker. However I would also like it if I could disable it in the menu. Meaning that I could still make a quest active and immediatly recognize it in my logbook but still not see the quest-marker when ingame. This is of course only a minor issue, the real issue is the quest description, as you mentioned and the name of topic reflects.

this, is it so hard to beable to attach footnote written by the player to quests?

As long as it is optional, I am all for it. I would stick to the current method, though.