That article made a VERY good point. While I haven't played a lot, I can totally agree that they should give us 2 options - Let the game tell you where EVERYTHING is or give quests with more substance and explanation as to where and what I am doing. I'm okay with quest markers and being able to turn them off but unless you want to walk around aimlessly without a clue as what to do you want them on. They made it so we have to play like dummies.......

Please. Don't feed the troll.

Well , he might be trolling, but his sarcasm has a point, people act like its impossible to explore without a quest marker.

You don't have quest markers in Gothic 3 and that is a big open world game, you just have to look at the map and go looking for caves.

An easy solution would be to have the quest location and description also written down in a journal + the option to disable the quest-marker.

That way new players (Oblivion and beyond) can continue what they've learned to be normal TES exploration gameplay. An old fans can return to the reading the journal and finding the location style of exploration they prefered in the past.

It doesn't have to conflict with each other. Just like there could be plenty of other small changes that could drastically improve gameplay for old school fans. Like disabling fast travel (I know you can try to ignore it, but disabling would be even easier). Or bring back armor repair. All these things could be put on/off in the option menu or at the start of the game (like a custom hardcoe mode).

It wouldn't be hard to make for Bethesda at all. It would just offer more freedom, give players the responsibilty over their own game enjoyment instead of having Bethesda dictate how your should enjoy the game (which changes with each installment and often contradicts what players prefer).

Why should anyone be against these 'options'? If it was hard to implement and came at the expense of something else (like adding a new weapon type like spears + animations) than I could understand the objections. But this is easy to implement and offers great enjoyment.

DO.IT.BETHESDA.

Its impossible to do (most) quests without questmarkers, and that is the actual point.

playing without questmarkers is often impossible if you want to - sadly.
there is just not enough information in the journal. that is one of the bigger flaws of skyrim.
the oblivion ui wasn't good, but at least it had enough information about quests and your factions etc.
now you have to use the questmarker

What do you expect, for some mystical voice like GPS or something to say turn left here? Of course you need something to tell you where to go IF you never did the quest. Clairvoyance is just a fancy quest marker.

If you read peoples posts and try not to misunderstand them, you would see that the problem still isn't the quest markers. The problem is poor quest design and a lack of dialogue that helps you in completing quests. I have tried, and it is almost impossible to play the game with quest markers disabled, since the only hints as to where the next point in the quest is located is the quest marker.

You would never find ANYTHING in this game then. ever. there are waaaay too many caves.

While I do like having quest markers, it would of been nice to retain some information in one's journal about the particular quest.

I have been playing since day one with the compass and quest markers turned off. You can still find things just fine. It would have been nice if they included a few directions, but I have to imagine that my character was actually told a few brief directions.

To do this, make the quest active and then hit "show on map" while in the journal. The map will center on the place still but without quest markers you still have to look around that general area to find it.

It works well enough to give me the feeling of exploration. Quest markers are a hand-holding device I hope they will be able to drop one day, when they finally can record enough lines of voice to give us an actual conversation with NPCs.

You would need a ridiculously intricate description of where to go without them tho, it would be like follow x road to y road to z intersection, turn at a. road, and go off the road at x amount of steps and swing left and said tree.

If you had actually read the article, or anything on this thread for that matter, instead of just scanning it looking for things to insert a crowbar in, you would have noticed that many alternative options are provided.
A decent quest log being premier among them.

You would also have noticed that it has been stated previously that clairvoyance does not work.
Now.
Are we done with this malarky or can we actually contribute to the discussion?
For sheesh.

It's not the 90s anymore.

Yes, "something" has to tell you where to go. How about the NPC that gives you the quest? It worked great in Morrowind, why wouldn't it in Skyrim?

I turned off the in-game marker, but kept the compass and map marker. Of course it wouldn't hurt anyone to have more detailed journals, which would help you find what you need without a marker. But I don't care. If you have a problem with them, just look quickly about where the quest is, then turn the quest off and try to find your way there.

exactly, and frankly i found it annoying not getting any direction what so ever.

As I said in my recent post: it worked in Morrowind. Yes, there were intricate descriptions on where to go, but it worked, and it made for a better role-playing experience.

There are lots of stupid people on this thread, evidently. Who failed to understand the point the OP was making.

Players should receive some geographical indication of where to go. NO ONE DISPUTES THAT.

However, as past Elder Scrolls games have proven... The ideal level of geographical information is:

- Optional (you need to access a menu to see it)
- General (name of the city or dungeon only... Not the specific room in the specific house)
- Preferably written, separate from the graphical map



Skyrim's quest markers, meanwhile are:

- Permanent
- Omnipresent
- Excessively Specific (destroying the sensation to explore),
- The only viable option (journal entries are sloppily thrown together)



HOW they should be implemented is simple.. This is how, ideally, Quest Markers should have been implemented in Skyrim:

1. Journal text entries specifying the dungeon/city name and NPC name only.
2. Clairvoyance spell to be used to provide further, more specific GPS-ish locating function for when you are stuck.

This isnt morrowind, and wont ever be morrowind, I loved final fantasy 7, but are their games like it now, no, and they never will be again, its called change. Maybe you dont like the change, but more people do than dont.

Come on... That was not his point.

I love change! Change for the better. What is your problem with giving people the choice to play the game without being funneled to the next part of the quest? And don't tell me that I can remove the quest markers if I want to, that is still not the issue. And my point with comparing it to Morrowind was as to answer your argument that it would require very detailed descriptions, and as it has worked before, I don't see why it wouldn't work again.

After all this time, the map is still basically a square made up of a lot of squares.
In Skyrim, as in Morrowind, all you really need to accurately describe any location is its position relative to two other locations.
Such as: West of here and North of there.

Any location on the Skyrim map can be pinpointed thus.
So a detailed and accurate description could go:

The cave is West of Whiterun and North of Falkreath.
The best way to travel there is to start from Falkreath and head North. Follow the road until you see (a landmark)
Just after that is a windy path East up a hill. The cave is at the end of the path.

And if you want, you can then still turn on the markers.
Easy, immersive and ten times better than the opposite, designing a world around questmarkers and allowing them to be turned off.

Thank you for making my point in a much more cool-headed way.