I have mixed feelings on the Skyrim journal.

Firstly lets go back to Morrowind (again). The journal there was very comprehensive. It had a thorough log of each quest and the background to it. The organisation of it though was awful until the upgrade came via Tribunal.

Oblivion was a lot better, cant remember much about it as it has been a while since I played.

Skyrim however, it a bit frustrating. The organisation of it is excellent, I especially like the
miscallaneous section for tasks which are not really quests. And the link to the map is pretty good.
My gripe though is that it is not a journal, it is more of a 'things to do' list.
I have quests in it I have no idea where I got them from. I want to be able to see the background of each quest, just like you could in the previous TES games.

Thoughts please.

^{I'd like to see the background story, too. If nothing else, maybe have a way to reread the conversation or at least have the person's name and location from where the quest originated.}

Exactly.

I agree with you here, the texts are way to short, just name of target, no name of quest giver location or setting.
Had a quest about talking to somebody, but no idea he was in the thief guild base.

Had worked way better with some lines of text with the background for the quest objective.

Prefered the oblivion one at least, items seemed better organized, all the in game information, stats birthsigns dieseases was all there in the one feature largely better laid out rather then the 2 seperate menus for items magic maps and skills and then quests and system info. The layout a design of the menu features doesn't help (all positive and negative effects listed under magic in the one subheading) the map not really feeling like a map, I thought I'd like the new one more but it grew old quick with all the fog lack and detailing like roads and still not being able to place markers of your own (not waypoints) for some of the things they haven't marks (talos shrines for example). And the quest journal itself not even feeling like a journal at all. I guess the misc thing is sort of better but it quickly becomes an endless like of things to do unless you keep on top of it all the time.

You'd think in this day of modern computing the devs would have at least implemented the ability to add your own notes to these quests. Instead, I'm resorting to ye olde pen & paper so that I don't have to follow quest markers like a trained monkey.

Yeah thats a good point. Simple, but a good idea.

Indeed Skyrim is a game with a valuable gameplay. With bad UI? Maybe. But.. I play E.S. since Oblivion.

Skyrim is better at gameplay while the other TES are better with UIs etc. Well.. so it seems.

But I can't really feel bothered with it.

So no mods for this yet? Two mods I really want... journal writing for quests and updated UI that shows your character and all the stuff he/she has on.

Yeah I miss being able to see an image of my charatcer in the menu setup.

Yes, I do miss that also. But that's relatively simple to solve... You can put in third person mode and configure.
Someone WILL develop a mod that SCRIPTS that. You'll press I and you'll be set in third person, the camera will angle and you'll do your things in the inv.

I dunno I rather enjoyed the falibility of forgetting important things and coming to the realization I may need to resort to my own recourses "ye olde pen and paper" as it was so aptly put.The extremely bare interface to me was rather refreshing after coming off of a rather long stint of wow play and DDO raiding.Of the 2 I would actually DDO posed the biggest challenge UI-wise as it was possible to change almost everything in combat and the hot keys were able to be reproduced for endless amounts of weapon sets , gear changes , etc.This minimalist approach was definitely good approach for to keep me immersed in the game boosted with the occasional smack in the forehead for not paying attention.If you're a veteran of other games with massive amounts of hand-holding you succumb to the practice of skipping everything , accept the quest , run off killing stuff , turn quest in - rinse/repeat.

Going to the store and buying a couple of small spiral-bound notebooks made me giggle a little as i returned home and fired up my advanced beastly gaming rig so I could start writing in my new "quest journals". Fun can be made on your own too , don't just rely on the game to do everything for you , it hurts your imagination and resourcefulness which we all possess.Plus it changed the entire game for other characters for me I can plan their gameplay to streamline what I'm gonna do with them by flipping through what I've already learned and done.

Well put sir. Who would have thought relying on the old paper and pen could solve the problems. At least then you have the control of what is put in said journal.

Fine for those who don't have conditions impeding their writing ability, but since writing is actually downright painful and extremely difficult - I prefer using an electronic journal.

Electronic would be good, but we dont have that option of keeping our own electronic journal.