I hate the quest journal in Skyrim. There's no information in it whatsoever. Right now I'm on a quest for the thieves guild and I'm supposed to find [person] and get some information about [thing]. So what does my journal entry look like? It says exactly this:

• Speak to [Person].

Honestly what in the hell is the point of that? Why even bother with a journal if that's all it's going to say? Granted, the NPC that gave me this quest did tell me that the person is in [city] and can be found associating with [organization]. That's all fine, but why isn't that in my journal? Even worse, when I try to talk to anyone about this person when I get to [city], the guards don't have any conversation topics at all, and the citizens don't have his name listed as something to talk about, nor his organization.

So how is a self-guided player supposed to find this person? Well I could search the entire city, building by building. That was my second instinct, and that's what I'm going to have to do. But here's the catch, why is it that when I click on the entry in my journal to activate this blasted quest, I get a marker that shows me exactly where in the world, in the city, and in the room this person is located? How is this knowledge gained? How does my character know that? Did someone say it? If so, why wasn't it written in my journal? If nobody said it, why can't I ask for this information?

It's frustrating. This happens on quest after quest, too. The journal says nothing helpful whatsoever, but clicking the pointer gives you GPS precise homing beacon information on your target. I hate that. Hate is a strong word. Maybe it's strong enough to convince you not to do this again. Journals are for recording information and mine has nothing in it.

That magic GPS device is what shot every guard in the knee

Agreed. Oblivion had the same problem, but apparently it has not been solved, and i daresay, maybe even made worst.

I agree. I actually like the first quest Camilla Valerius gave you. She told you that "this road leads directly to it". But the problem is it is not recorded in the journal whatsoever

The Journal is downright useless if not for the quest marker

It would be nice to have a log of past NPC dialogues in case you get distracted by something in real life. That way Bethseda wouldn't have to take the time to buff up the text for 1000's of quests and quest steps.

I agree strongly with you. In fact, I've come across a couple of quests where the writing is so poor that no directions are given, and rather you are told that you will be 'guided by [Daedric Prince]' or that you should 'follow your Dragonborn instincts and you will find it'. Basically, it's telling you to turn quest markers on or stop playing.

As someone who plays without markers, that's just a kick to the balls. They've done absolutely nothing to accomodate players who refuse to be led by the hand and prefer to explore the world themselves. Incredibly poor game design, I have to say.

Skyrim simplifications strike yet again... (can we have a sighing emoticon please ?)

This became a little bit worse in Oblivion but it wasn't too bad, you at least had your journal, but in Skyrim you don't really have a journal, you just have something that resembles a modern digital notebook with a maximum capacity for 5 words when it comes to misc quests and even the bigger quests aren't all that detailed, it's luck if any direction is even as much as mentioned. I got a quest from a Daedric prince but she couldn't be bothered to give me any directions, just told me the name of the place and that's that. Imagine how that would go in Morrowind... and in Oblivion even un-detailed directions would at least sound something like "in a cave east of here called X.", not just "In X."

Not much I can say about this matter other than I honestly didn't expect it to be this bad, Bethesda spent way too much time on prettying the outside of this game and too little time on making the core of the game good.

This is why I hate it when people try and defend hand-holding features like markers by saying "it's optional".

Yeah, this didn't bug me at first, but nowadays it is bothering me more and more. Especially with investigation quests like blood on the ice, it pretty much just says "Investigate". What exactly are you supposed to do with that? At least tell me "XXXX seems to be hanging out in the western half of the city, I should search there for clues" or something like that.

Even worse, because its so limited, a lot of the time you can't tell if you're just doing it wrong or if the quest is bugged. For example, a certain quest required me to get a briarheart, which I already had; however, it called it a "Heart of Briar" in the quest description, and directed me to a certain area, where i found a briarheart. I killed him, took the heart, and the quest didn't update; finally I had to look it up, only to find that the quest was bugged, but i wasted good time in there trying to make it work anyway. Without that stupid quest marker, none of that would have happened!

*finds note mentioning cragslane, saying absolutely nothing about it other than its name*

*location instantly placed on my map*

its plain lazy. beth couldnt be bothered to give you any other way to find something other than magic pre-industrial GPS. not even to freakin type it into the quest description on the journal whose only purpose is to give you information about quests. this is a damn sandbox game, discovery and finding your own way are pretty important aspects of a sandbox the beth completely ignored with skyrim, and to a lesser extent oblivion; at least they gave you some vague sense of direction then.

seriously. all it would take is like a few hours of typing into the quest descriptions and beth could have completely averted this disaster of a navigation system. one guy pulls an extra shift to bang out the manual directions.... maybe then i might know how im actually supposed to get somewhere instead of just knowing the path of jump button exploitation i use to find everything because all i have is somethings 2D location on a VERY 3D world.

I liked the Morrowind Journal. It was actually a journal. Like literally, a book.

In Morrowind you can search for keywords you have spoken to NPCs with in your journal. Activating the words shows you all the dilogue of every NPC you've ever spoken to the subject about, no matter where your at.

It seems in Skyrim they expect you to get quest, look on map, head straight to marker. No need to even listen to most NPCs.

Yeah, Skyrim's journal is as exciting as a Russian funeral. Beth really "streamlined" everything across the board didn't they? Even bandits are call just that, bandits. Why not a generic random lore name? Or at least write something like "Diseased Orc bandit", "Redguard assassin", "Khajiit mercenary", etc.? Jeez, I can't wait for the CK to bring sanity to all this nonsense.

Hmm, I haven't had a problem yet. This game seems tailor fitted to my game playing style.

I really miss the journal from oblivion too. I mostly use questmarkers anyway, but at least in oblivion i had the option not to and sometimes i did prefer to find my own way. And, more importantly to me, i like to get some info on the quests i do when i actually do them, and currently in skyrim i might not remember at all what a quest was about when i finally get around to doing it since i have a ton of open quests in my log and there really is no information at all in the "journal".

Yeah its horrible....its "streamlined"....ugh... You NEED to use the marker system and have the game tell you where to go because many quest directions are like "go bring this rock to Jorlaf Redbrocker"... Where is this guy? Who is this guy? And when you go to ask the person to repeat the assignment information and the dialogue option is gone.

Babies are Spoon Fed.

REAL Role Playing Gamers use their wits (with pen & paper).

Besides, there's nothing wrong with The Journal, it works great !!

You have to know How to use it properly (go back & read the manual again).

It's incredible how many steps they take back each time the development team grows in size. If a team of 30 people could do it in Morrowind, how come they can't find one single person among the 100 that worked on Skyrim to add directions to dialogues and journal entries?

I think we all know how to use the journal: you click on a quest and suddenly the location of your objective is beamed into your character's head. It feels less like I'm Dragonborn, and more like I'm GPSborn. It's pretty ridiculous.

You rarely have to use your brain in this game.

Really bugs me in the dungeon puzzle aspect, but quests as well.

You are soooooo incredibly right. Useless isn't the word for it. I have a few quests just like that with NO map marker. I guess it's time to go door to door...

Esbern:
One of the most intelligent Blades in the Empire
Can't solve a puzzle with three variables

same thoughts here... most of us spend more time following that compass pointer rather than actually ADVENTURING.
with morrowind i actually felt like i was exploring a world. in skyrim it's like...
1) fast travel as close to target area as possible.
2) get on horse.
3) press C.
4) hold down the alt key.
5)charge towards the pointer

RUN! HIDE!!

You are the very type of console gamer who's mind isn't complex enough to comprehend the complexity of a big yellow map marker in Morrowind that Bethesda is dumbing down the game for!

/sarcasm

I just had to register to highlight the delightful irony of the above.

-k