I do 100% get it. Think about this for a moment. These places have been around for hundreds if not thousands of years and because of that they are likely well documented. Sure giving a pinpoint location may not be all that realistic but from a design standpoint it was probably the best option. They could of done a radius circle of the places general location but maybe that would of just been unnecessary work.

On a side note Bethesda intended for players to use this marker. So complaining about a very minor flaw like this seems to be nit-picky. I would suggest you just cope with the marker and come up with a logical reason for its purpose.

The two biggest immersion problems aren't the markers.

It's the journal which doesn't explain anything about the quest, why would you "Talk to X", who is him even? And where?
And dialogs, which are inexistant or contain no informations. Many NPCs don't have a real dialog menu and just say random sentences, these NPCs could be the ones you'd ask about where to find X, or where is located "cave of ****".
The quest markers could even lead you to these NPC, like in Oblivion it lead you to beggars when you needed informations.

So the problem isn't about quest markers or voices, it's just about quests being too short and badly created. Not enough people worked on making these quests coherent, that's all.
They preferred working on radiant quests, which have no interest since they're all "find item X in cave Y, bring item X to Z".

At least if the main quests, like mage or thieves quests, were somewhat random, with two or three possible dungeons where you find information about Sarthaal, leading you there to carry on the quest line. That would add some real replayability.


Anyway it's a downgrade from Oblivion (never thought I could ever say that one month ago). Who care about what NPCs say, they have beautiful voices, and sometimes an out-of-nowher courrier will bring you a great random quest about finding random junk in a random cave and bringing it to a random dude, which you have no idea who he is or why you should work for him...

In TES 6 you will have no skills, no hp bar, you'll move à la Gears of war, and start with daedric armor. Who still cares about RP anyway...

Wow. This is the short, most concise but also most accurate way of describing it all. This is absolutely correct. Bethesda has the wrong approach concerning journals and fast travelling.

Well, it might be right for the large audience of casual PC and console gamers, but for Bethesda's original audience it's most definetely counterintuitive.

To many people this isn't a "very minor flaw". It can really ruin the questing experience for some.

From reading your posts I get the impression that Skyrim might be your first ES game. This would explain why you aren't really getting what we're saying.

This is an old problem that spread throughout RPGs (and other game genres) once companies realized that customers would willingly pay additional money for printed game guides from companies like Prima. That's also why game manuals stopped containing back-stories and maps.

I think it's a permanent change as well. As long as people will pay, why give it away? And once customers stop buying game guides, the publishers like Bethesda will cede the "market" to the wiki sites. Wiki sites have put a dent in the game guide market somewhat, but they are a bit thin for the first few months of a game's life. And of course their accuracy is sometimes a bit off the mark.

Totally agree with OP, I like to turn the compass off in the ini files and turn off quest markers in my journal but I keep getting quests that tell me to go to locations that are never mentioned in dialogue with the quest giver and are also not mentioned in my journal, thus forcing me to use the quest markers. I would like to point out though that having quest givers mark locations on your map, is essentially the same as pizza slices. What I liked about Morrowind is that not all quest givers marked locations on your map and instead only gave you directions to follow, that and the detailed, fully written out journal.


I have to fully agree with the poster that you're arguing against. The whole quest marker thing really came to a head for me when I was playing New Vegas when I suddenly realised after a while playing that I was essentially playing on autopilot and having no fun because of it. Also let me try and explain why some people might be against fast travel, since I believe it's directly related to this topic. Yes, I could ignore fast travel but that's not the point.

In Morrowind I was presented with an extensive and believable public transport system and various magical travel options, there were silt striders, boats, guild services, Dunmer strongholds and I could cast Almsivi and Divine intervention, not to mention mark and recall. These succeeded because they were fairly limited, I had to pay to use the majority of them (This would have been better if it wasn't so easy to get rich in Morrowind) and there were strict limitations on where I could use these transport methods and/or where I would end up when using them. One of the great strengths of these limitations was that it implied that some areas of the map were more wild and less settled and thus more dangerous, the best example of this is obviously Red Mountain, which had no fast travel options what so ever and if I wanted to leave the area I'd either have to run out or cast one of the travel spells which would then only take me to very specific places.

In Oblivion and Skyrim the options are either walk everywhere (which can be tedious) or warp around the map instantly at no cost and with only one limitation that gradually becomes negated by exploration. The carts are a step in the right direction but they aren't adequate to service those of us who dislike the current fast travel system since as far as I can see they can only be hired from about 5 places.

You want to explore the world yourself. Better start that grid-pattern search, buddy.

I agree with this whole-heartedly.


Redundant

I concur.

One of the many things that came up in the TES General forum post-Skyrim that we were flamed and such for pointing out the flaws of and how it would still be terrible if implemented to the idealists views.

Oh well, looks like we should move on to that other sandbox RPG with old-schoo- Oh, nevermind..

Actually no, it's load screens, and there's no fixing that.

Slippery slope fallacy. Read my signature.

Real quest logs are one of the biggest things I'd like added back into the game. They are in every other rpg, just not Skyrim.

I really do get what your saying but to me it's a very minor flaw and I was just trying to get you and the others to try to rationalize it so maybe you can look past it. Imay have had a bit of an attidtude in my first post so I'm sorry for that but I guess we just have differing opinions on this matter.

And no this is not my first TES game, I started with Oblivion back in 2007 and then picked up Morrowind a year or two later. That likely why I don't mind the current quest tracking as that is what I first knew and when I went back to Morrowind it felt like a downgrade.

Not entirely true. Numerous times have I been guided to the place I wanted to be, by an NPC. Always an inn keep though, and the tour always went to my recently rented room

Yeah, situation is very bad. Quest menu is good, but with no written indication on whereabouts or a quest and/or dialogue journal, preferably searchable, it's getting ridiculous. I don't want to play with markers, but I bloody have to in order to get any information whatsoever.

* Find Merari (or whatever name that doesn't come with a marker at all).
Edit: Name has nothing to do with the Merari on this forum/thread Purely accidental

Say what? Who was Merari? Where and when did I speak to him/her? What did we speak about? There are no relations to other quests I might have had active so I could backtrace it. In the meanwhile I'm carrying a bunch of items that this NPCs wanted me to find - the kind of items which doesn't show up all that frequently.

* Kill Abdul (or whatever name).

Say what? Why do I want to do this? Does this act of crime suit the character I'm playing? What's the backstory here? There is no reference to who even gave me the quest.

I'd like to see dialogue associated with a quest, and dialogue associated with NPCs, completely filterable, sortable, and searchable.
Please modders - listen to our plea.

Maybe use a real journal and record your findings on paper. maybe Skyrim is way, way old school

This part I agree with. I don't mind the quest marker but in looking back at older quests, I have no idea why the quest is wanting me to do certain things.

Go steal a horse. Why am I stealing this horse?? I don't remember, I picked this quest up a week ago and am just clearing out my quest log.

I have got to say, I got no beef with the fast travel system per se. Fast travel to me simply is your character running the distance without you actually controlling him. True, you can land in the middle of five bandits, but there are limitations and you can simply choose not to use fast travel. I agree with you tho that not using the fast travel system is tedious, since you can only travel from the 5 major cities and to the capitals of the nine holds. A bit more options wouldn't hurt anyone.

But the problem at hand is like op said: Being able to disable quest markers while not getting any decent directions in most cases. The implementation of this feature in this form is simply moronic. It's not that hard to simply make an entry "I must travel to .... which lies between .... and .... at the southern side of a mountain." If you add this for all the locations it's at most 1 hour of work for the development team...

//edit

The current system is ok, when the Questgiver herself doesn't know, where the one you should get the item to is (for example the second wife of the orc chieftain who wants you to bring a sword to her daughter), but in most cases it's idiotic!

Yeah I've thought about this. But the point is, I'm using a damn computer - why can't I take advantage of that? Hell, even write up my own notes inside the game would have been better than this. Using notepad would be nice too, if the game didn't constantly crash on alt tabbing. We have the tech - let us use it!

In the old days, sure, we were taking notes - but we also never had a gazillion quests available at any given time. Quests are dumping in my lap, and there is nothing I can do to prevent it.

No, I don't want less quests.