I'm now working towards completing Guild quests, and I'm looking through the journal to see what I have left. But, it's so badly done that I simply can't figure out much.

Seeing how I haven't touched the game since November, because the game was finished and became playable 3 days ago, I simply can't remember small details and quest names among all these quests (seriously, I have around 25 active and countless completed). So I'm proposing something, which I really can't figure why it was left out in the first place:

Quest grouping. Group quests by Guild, Faction, Main Questline, City - add and substract whichever categories you will. Is it really too much to ask for? I have to search through dozens upon dozens of quest names to see if I have completed the Thieves' Guild quests, to see if I haven't or if it's bugged out (unusual stuff, eh?).

Thoughts on this? And if anyone from Bethesda reads this, can we ever expect this to be implemented?

It was playable since November, unless you're completely computer-illiterate and managed to screw up the game.
Just look at the damn quest descriptions, it's not that hard to read, or do you want the games to become even more casual and hand-holding? I bet you never tried Morrowind.

Completely agree with you. The journal is very poorly done in this game. Not enough quest description and you should be able to organize it by faction and town. I think that's what an adventurer would do as well.

Maybe he's playing on the PS3. Lost of people had serious game breaking problems before patch 1.4.

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Quests

look for knotwork, at the end of the page

That's a good tip tight there. Didn't know that myself.

The journal is easy enough. The journal says who gave it to you, all objectives you did and npcs involved. The game gives you markers that tell you where to go.
Having 25 quests showing up in the non-miscellaneous part is very unlikely, unless he went around accepting every single quest there was before he started actually questing.
An adventurer wouldn't drag around 4/5 different journals and would most likely just write it like Morrowind, where the journal was one mass of badly sorted information and no quest names.
Again: it's really not that hard to read the quests for a minute or two.


Skyrim was playable on PS3, I know plenty of people who played it on their PS3 through November and December, only with an occassional freeze. They didn't even get the save game bug yet.

The journal is poor. It consist of quest name and a poor description. It doesn't provide anything more than that. A description of where you need to go without needing to follow the quest marker blindly would be nice. Also a smart adventurer would write what faction he does the quest for. You don't need several books for that.

You can make a mod for it

PS3 here. It doesn't bother me while playing but it is just one of those small things that they could have done better.

Xbox here. But I do agree that it could have been done better

In my opinion, the main problem about the journal is: "It is not even a journal". It doesn't give you any information regarding your quest. If you missed what the NPC tells about the quest somehow, you are completely dependent on -hand holding- map markers. The "said" journal only says "Go find X". Where should I go? Why? Who wanted me to go there? Why does he want me to find it? There is no information. When you find it finally, journal says bring X back to Y. This is even worse for the misc. quests. As a result, the player is not role playing and doesn't know the scenario. He/She only does what the journal "orders" him/her to do. I love this game but the journal system is a peace of crap

It's something they could improve in the next TES. It's not like it's the Oblivion Crisis or anything, lol

First off, thank you MyRisk, I didn't even know that the knotwork played any part in this. That's a helpful way to distinguish quests. I also agree with Ar-F and Nordh, it's not something game-breaking, but it's a part of those little details that could vastly improve the experience.

Nezhi, I like how you let the PC elitist in you get unleashed. I'm on the PS3 version, and yes, it was unplayable since November. Problem?

Edit: Nomad, you are correct as well. Sometimes I willingly skip dialogues and such, but sometimes I'm tired and all and I might misunderstand a couple of things of what the NPCs said, and the journal provides no way to re-read the dialogues, or even a small sum of it all.

I miss the old Journal. There's no narrative, or story or info, anymore, just a 'Do this, do that' roundup. If you're not using quest markers, it's often impossible to even know where you should be going. There's no directions, no opinions like "I think I should maybe talk to X, at the Y, first".

It's a list. A boring list of chores.

Just re-started playing Baldurs Gate 1. Now that is a proper journal.



That would be a herculean task worthy of writing a [censored] novel.

Indeed

I played a fair amount of lotro and loved the quest descriptions there (don't flame me)

Never played it. Any good? But if the quest description works then maybe that's something Bethesda should look into.

Exactly.Sometimes even if you are not tired and willing to listen to the talking NPC, another NPC starts talking, making it impossible to hear the details about the quest. Example: "You should go and....*the guard passing by starts talking* : I was an adventurer like you, then I took an arrow in the knee"
Also sometimes you would want to finish your active quest and do the new one afterwards but you can't remember the details.

I find the "main" quests adequate....it's the Misc. Quests that are a big mess of "to do'' items.

I say reroll and start over.

That's the big question that most CRPG's never address. Game designers put quests in for two reasons: to showcase their leet writing skilz and to make sure that none of their expensive content goes to waste. When compiled from that point of view, every quest log will be either a hand-holder or a spreadsheet - or sometimes both.

But that's not what the PLAYER is looking for. When some random guy on the street tells me that his brother is sick, or that he really likes some girl named Evilyn, or whatever, I'm like, "So, why the Hell are you telling me this?"

Now, in the game of course, we all know this is a plot device that we're supposed to follow and it may or may not lead to something interesting. But, even then, I don't give a rat's ass. To a game designer infected with terminal writer-itus, this is a dream job. He gets to write infinite random crap, and he knows that millions of dollars worth of programming will make people keep wading through his otherwise unpublishable prose.

Of course, as the player, none of that matters to ME. What I'm trying to do is explore the game world and gain more power and equipment. I may want to get in good with the mage's guild to learn new spells; I may be tired of caves and want to see the ocean, or I may just need a new pair of gloves. I may want a very difficult challenge, an easy place to pick up soulstones. That's what I want to see in the quest description.

Sure, go ahead and throw in some sob story about how somebody's cat died if you want to. And red herrings are fine, as long as they're the exception and not the rule. But don't make me click two dozen times to hear an unemployed actor bloviate through an interminable cut scene, and don't make me guess which random response you've decided is the "right" one for whatever random turns you want the dialogue to take.

Writers look at it from the opposite point of view as most players: They don't see this as a game that they're supposed to add a little color to. They see this as an opportunity to write a Choose Your Adventure type storybook with a captive audience.

I'm not a PC elitist, I have plenty of friends who have been playing Skyrim on their PS3s without problems.
It's not limited to a platform to not want a game to be dumbed down by people who blame Bethesda for not knowing what to do in a game after not playing for 4 months, or because they are too stupid to understand the text.
The people here say they miss the old journal, but maybe they forget the fact that in Morrowind, they didn't say where the questgiver was or part of which quest it was. There was no order, all entries were put in like you progressed through the story. If you wanted to finish a quest you had to leaf through all the pages to try and find the quest and hope you found the right one.

it was playable... see when someone says "unplayable" i think they mean that it's so buggy the game won't star. so obviously you have no idea what your talking about. And it would be nice to have them grouped, but there are more important things that should be fixed and or added.

It's fine for me if quests are not grouped - there aren't too many quest chains anyway. But their descriptions certainly could use some elaboration. Especially "Miscellaneous" group (see, it's actually grouped out). If the entire quest objective and hint is laid into three words "Talk to (Name)", and nothing else, well, that's sad. Why talk to (Name)? Where is he/she? Who is he/she? Talk about what? What's next in store in TES 6? "tlk 2 sumguy"?

The new Journal is unfortunate I really liked the old ones.