The quest arrows do not bother me at all, mostly because I, as some other poster said, actually listen to what the NPCs tell me. And the big quests (not the radiant ones) usually give you some directions, that's why I don't need to use the quest markers all the time.

That said, I don't like when a quest arrow points exactly to the item I need to get/read/interact with or whatever. If I have to find a book somewhere, give me the general location and then let me search for the object. I know many players were frustrated with the infamous puzzle box in Morrowind, but this doesn't justify the addition of a marker pointing precisely where a small item is located.


Unfortunately, what you suggest is far from being something "easy to implement". Armor repair, for instance. It's not something that you add in a patch. It is a feature that has to be part of the overall design for the game. In Oblivion, you could repair your armor to level up your armorer skill, and this had an impact on your character. In Skyrim there is no Armorer skill anymore, they put Smithing instead and now you can create armor and weapons.

So how do you add the ability to repair armor and weapons? If it becomes part of the Smithing skill, it would unbalance it because it would be very easy to level Smithing up to 100 in a few levels. If it is a perk that you can get when Smithing is at, say, 60, then players would complain about it being irrelevant or not making sense. So it is not something 'easy to implement'.


Precisely. Radiant quests dynamically change the locations, so how would you add this to voiced dialogue? And if it magically appears in your quest journal with a fancy detailed description, you would complain that the NPC never said that and your character couldn't possibly know such a thing, so the game is bad because it is magically giving you directions you couldn't possibly know.

And that's exactly the point for many of us. Some people want a game with depth they can spend some serious time on, while others like you want a Mario style game they can just plug in and play for half an hour. Unfortunately for us, there's very few games left for the former of the two.



You actually shows the point very well, why the current system is faulty.
Yeah, you can turn off the compass pointers, but what's the point, as long as the quest givers, doesn't provide any sort of directions, and the quest log just shows "follow the compass pointer".

All of this could so easily have been fixed by simply letting Quest Givers give you actual directions, and keep them in the Quest Journal, so it'd actually be possible to find the spot without the magical compass.
Then people who prefer the compass could keep it on, and people who don't like it could turn it off, and still play the game.

This seems to be a circular self-fulfilling reason to have a quest marker. The quest markers are good because there's no other way to find what you're looking for? I call quest markers bad because it removes gameplay. If I'm following the quest markers, I'm not playing, I'm following. I'm being told where to go & what to do. I'm playing the game with a built-in walkthrough. That's not gameplay to me, that's simply.... doing what I'm told to do. It's like the oft-quoted "press X to win" only not so severe.

Recently I played out a quest where I had to re-forge 3 items back into one item. I'm sure most people know which quest I mean. Anyway, because I have quest markers & arrows disabled, I did not have any idea about where to go, the game literally has no other way to inform me OTHER than the quest marker. I had not visited the location before so my map didn't have any idea either. This means that the primary game mechanic at work is the built-in walkthrough.

Built-in walkthrough guys. Think about that.

i still wonder why they totally abandoned the journal of morrowind. yes, it had problems, but, i think it would take us all about 15 minutes to come up with a great way to use and implement it.

an additional journal page would do obvious wonders.

from what im egttign at is that the people who have a problem with quest markers are not the markers themselves but that the games quests and journals pretty much little to no information whatsoever and there isnt any where to get all the information ur needed without just exploring and accidently coming onto an objective.
peopel who are complaining against the peopel complaining havent figured out its not the quest markers themselves but the lack of direction given to the players because the quests were built on the quest markers being active and giving the all the infor the player needed.

Its for the lack of direction and information that i have left the quest makers on but turned off my magic compass. so far its the only compromise i can get without being handed every information on a silver plater to me.

Exactly.. it should be so simple to provide both information, and a quest marker for those who prefers that.. unfortunately, that's not so.

Gothic 3 was pretty huge. May not have had quite as many locations as Skyrim, but even if it did, the quests were given and detailed in a much, much better way than in Skyrim. 1 example, in one of the towns (Montera iirc) you spoke to someone who had lost their husband, kidnapped. Very little else was said, so you carried on, pretty much in the dark speaking to other folk, doing side qiests within the town. If you wandered north of Montera, you came across a large wheat farm. Talking to the residents you hear about their wheat being stolen, presumably by bandits. They seemed to come from the north beyond the forest.

So you headed north, and found a forest. Exploring the area beyond you come across a cliff face, and then a cave. You fight your way past some rather unpleasant folk before finding some wheat! And lo and behold a dead body bearing the likeness of the missing husband.

You head back, with little prompting, first to the wheat farm to drop off their goods, and then back to Montera to give the lady the bad news.

2 quests done. Your journal throughout was updated with scribblings as you revealed more of the puzzle, making it easy to come back to at a later date and still "get" the context of the quest.

Skyrim would have started the quest in Montera, told you to go to the wheat farm (highlighted on map) then they would have told you to clear out the cave (highlighted on map) and then to return to both places (fast travel ftw). As the article mentions, it makes the core mechanics of Goto point A, kill and get item, Goto point B and profit quite stark. Even if you don't want to follow the markers, to get the job done, you do.

Simply having an option to turn off the quest markers isn't enough unless the game is designed in such a way to make quests feasible without the quest markers. As it stands TES simply doesnt do a good enough descriptive or narrative job to remove the quest markers.

There must be a lot of people who just want to get thru the game and done as fast as possible, which is a shame to me because this world simply screams out for exploration and discovery. Sure you can do that without even picking up quests, but what if the discovery and exploration was actually part of the quest in the first place.

As someone said, its about the journey, not the destination. Id love it if Skyrim was about the journey AND the destination.

EDIT: Some details of the Gothic example may be a little sketchy, its been years since I played it, but the gist was there.

No, it is the UI. As Merari said on page 2 an ideal alternative is a better journal. I don't know if you knew this already but the journal is a part of the UI.

I haven`t read this whole thread (didn`t even know it existed)...

But quest markers, as well as those markers that show enemies and things on a compass like some technologically advanced GPS of the year 2050 are bad because...

1. They make looking at the map, seem hard, which it isn`t. Basically it makes people ridiculously lazy.

2. They spoil the gameplay view.

3. It`s easy to press one button and see where you are on the map.

4. It makes Bethesda lazy too. Half their quests don`t even bother giving you directions to a place any more.

5. There`s nothing wrong with pressing one button and looking at the map. Did I already say that one?

6. It destroys the very essence of role playing in a sword and sorcery world- EXPLORATION and DISCOVERY. A key point.

7. It views advlts like stupid children and treats them as such .

8. Morrowind did it right.


People really don`t know what they`re missing. Imagine watching The Lord of The Rings and being told where all the characters were going to go and who they would see and fight- Wouldn`t that ruin your viewing enjoyment? Would you actually enjoy watching Frodo following a giant triangle quest marker to the next location instead of looking at a map or asking someone where someplace is?

But hey it`s for marketing and making more money and Bethesda don`t give two hoots for rpg as long as they make loads of money- But they`re happy to lip-service like they do.

On Bethesda`s side they have at least provided those of us who want the true, immersive experience with the ability to destroy quest markers and such so we can actually explore and discover things like say in lall good rpgs and fantasy movies.

I couldn't agree more with everything you said.

As for the "my quest log is full of quests I won't ever do and I can't get rid of them" issue, it doesn't bother me. I see the quest log as a sort of note book where I store bits of information that I learned in various ways: talking to NPCs, overhearing conversations, getting some item etc. So I just have to do the quests that I feel like doing. And if I make some progress in a quest and I don't want to get involved with it anymore, I just forget about it; if the game won't allow me to cancel that quest, I just deactivate it and go do something else.

That said, I wouldn't mind if the quest log would give me a few more info about some of the quests, so that I can quickly know what the quest is all about.

Wow, speaking of clueless. No, I don't want "Mario" style play, obviously (oop, or maybe not). But thanks for ignoring most of what I said. Or maybe you just didn't understand (I guess my post was too linear for you). I love the Morrowind Elitists on these boards.

They did it in Morrowind. There are no quest markers, no "magic compass" and no clairavoyance spell. In Morrowind you have to listen very carefully to what people tell you, read signs, books etc. to get enough information about your objective and then find it in the world. Morrowind has a detailed journal that keeps track of most (but not all) of the important stuff people tell you, so you can refer back to it when in trouble. It is very rewarding to find your objective in Morrowind because you had to work at it. Sometimes it can be annoying because you spend an hour looking for someone who should be easy to find. I wish they had made Skyrim more like Morrowind in this regard.

That's probably the main reason why we got quest markers in the 1st place, so that we don't have to waste an hour looking for an entrance to a cave or something similar.

I can agree with the sentiments in that article ~though I don't share the irritation or opinion that it is "devoid of soul".

When I play RPGs I assume that the character is the one with the details; with the peripheral vision and hearing. I view the compass ~not as a physical device, but rather as the PC's own sense of direction... the markers being the PC's mental note of where they mean to go. In FO3, the grenade location reticle is just the PC's cognition of where the grenade went. [To me] it's the same with quest markers; (though... I don't particulary care for dynamic markers that point out the exact location of a moving NPC. IMO the marker should point to their city, then their, house, or their last hang-out).

turn the marker off, no one is forcing you to have it on. There are also general instructions above the quest objective. Most of the time, I can figure out what they are on about. A few hints left and right would be ook, but seriously, people act like a quest marker is the biggest game breaker ever. FFS people. Just play the game.
Heres a news flash, this isnt morrowind. ANd more people like the markers than dont. Deal with it. Not everyone wants to rack their brains or spend 4 hours trying to find a single cave. Hell, not everyone has the time to do so.

Well, you call it "wasting an hour" while others call it "gameplay".

Most people call it wasting an hour. Amount of games sold 10 + million, members on this forum, not nearly that amount.

ex PLUCKING zactly! don't call my gameplay a waste of time. ever.

if it's wasted, i'll label it as such.

I like quest markers. People who don't like them can turn them off. Seems like they just want to complain.

I don't get the "no time to find" argument. That sounds to me like "no time to play this part of the game, only got time for that part". Isn't tracking down your location part of the game? Certainly used to be. When did finding get removed from the gameplay? My money is on when they introduced voice-acted AI interaction. Things got a lot more dumber since then.

Meh, I don't mind them. I'd prefer them to lead you to the general area, rather than the specific spot.

It's almost as if you haven't bothered to read the thread.

This would be fine, but having none and epecting people to spend 4 hours trying to find a single cave is just dumb. Cumbersome, and boring.

Do you consider exploring the landscape of Skyrim for an hour a waste?

You wouldn't have to be completely on your own, you could be told of a landmark in the vicinity, or given a general heading (not detailed GPS style instructions like buddha suggested) or some other clue to point you in the general direction.

The point is being hand fed all the info, the exact location, the exact target simply svcks half the fun out of discovering the answer for yourself. Its Grand Theft Auto questing.

Because it's a waste of time aimlessly searching for something. Like, for instance, the Redguard quest where they just tell you to find a women they've been searching for. No quest markers or hints whatsoever. It's not fun. It's work.


Thank you! haha