I think the article makes a few valid points but the title is not in in concordance with one main issue he complains like the thieves guild and the gems.
I too would like to get more directions in the jurnal but I can live with most of the marks. Imagine it like "go there do that, here let me mark the place on your map".
Yes, always pointing the NPC in a city/building/room is immersion killing, that I don't like even with what I sayed before.
Even a bigger problem is the example with that book you get a marker when the NPC just tells you to find one, I actually found a different one, unfortunately after I finished the quest so I can't tell if the quest could have been done with another book of the same kind. For this and the NPC finding situation a dialog with NPCs around cities to tell you it the one you look for is in the city and where would have been the nicest solution imo.
About quests you don't wish to do...I would be fine with them stuck in jurnal but at last give me a hint about something like the alignment related to that quest (like kill an inocent/kill a bad guy)
Now the unusual gems thing...that's actually bad design but has nothing to do with quest markers, it's a different thing. I didn't ran into this issue, I wished to join thiefes guild and found first gem after I did. But I had a similar story about me joining the mage guild...see my spoiler if you wish, (I'm really curious if I could do what I had to for other quest without joining the mages).

I feel the quest marker eventually makes the game mindless! I've actually found myself starring at the compass at times rather than enjoying my surroundings in game. Get a quest follow the arrow, complete quest, start another, follow the arrow! its not unbearable but a journal with better instructions would add so much more to this great game! I've found a great work around to the quest marker issue people mention! Every time I acquire a new quest I activate it, check its location on the map and then deactivate the quest, while making a mental note that, okay next time I'm in such and such area I gotta do something! After awhile just by using the compass directions I traverse the landscape from city to city and blindly try to finish the quest that I've made mental notes of! Example: okay I gotta go to riften speak with a few people, get my bounty from the Jarl and move on to the next city! It becomes more difficult when quest are outside city walls but I use the same concept! Most entries tell you the name of the location you must travel too, activate/deactivate marker, remember the name of the location and head to the general direction using the compass and start exploring! Its not ideal but you gotta work with whats given to you and I've found my experience in game way better using this method as oppose to following an arrow.

You just have to look and explore. The doesn't force you to explore by putting quests all around the map, they are quite local a lot of the times. Farcry 2 did the thing where they put mission at the other end of the map to force you to explore and Skyrim is similar, just follow the arrow and you'll find everything.

Game should be written with intent of not having markers at all, then add them as an optional feature. In the event of putting rather than getting some object, I'd even prefer a hovering arrow, glowing, or otherwise highlighted container to indicate what makes the quest complete. Then at least I wouldn't know until I had it in sight - call it character intuition or something if it needs a name.

I don't mind having helpers in a game, for people that wants them, as the "casual player" may be the majority getting Beth their money. But planning for them from the start makes the quest makers lazy. I'm lucky to be on PC, where I can mod such things out - unfortunately they are sometimes very needed due to this lazy quest designs. Poor console players who are more than casual gamers...

For POI markers, I have modded these out. Finding something by luck is a lot more fun now. I simply can't believe there is no option for these (without also getting rid of the bars, which I feel I do need).

I had a quest once from a man in the college and he asked me to find him books that were written by a famous mage and a quest popped up in my journal and it said find 3 books. There were no markers..... I thought that this was awesome. Now everywhere I go I should always look for these books. I just found it..... epic. I wish the quests were built more like this. That way you have a secondary goal no matter where you go. On a more normal quests if the NPC is vague or doesn't exactly know where the thing is you need to find then you should have no marker and if the NPC is specific (where to go and what your looking for) then a marker should appear. In all we should be able to clear out quests we are not going to do and we should be able to turn markers off and still have some idea of what to do. Yes, I can turn them off, but then if that NPC was vague, I will be searching for the place or thing which is fine but it seems more realistic that if they don't know where their "sword" is, then I don't know where their "sword" is.

Great article.

Just commenting on the original article itself, not any of the stuff you guys have been talking about....


See, I have absolutely no sympathy for this mindset. "I must do it! The journal said so! All hail the journal! Choice? What's choice?" is absurd. This isn't a linear game where you must do all the tasks given in order to unlock the next area. Or do all the sidequests in order to actually have enough XP/resources/etc to survive the final boss. I'm absolutely stunned by all these people who have apparently been so conditioned (in the Pavlovian manner) that they must do things because they happen to be on some checklist......

It's a forum cliche that generally doesn't apply to TES (because of all the different ways you can do things), but..... you're doing it wrong.



This. As someone who's played a variety of games over the past three decades, this, I just don't get. Sure, some games may work that way, but not all of them.


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That said, it is kind of disappointing that they couldn't have added some additional text & description to the journal. I was surprised the first time I went to it, that I couldn't expand any of the entries into a more verbose paragraph.

Its a shame that the journal doesn't give you directions to a location as an alternative to using quest markers. Skyrim is full of easily recognisable landmarks so making use of those to describe how to reach a location would have made the game much more immersive.

I think its fine having quest markers for those who want them and when you feel like using them, but in many cases you can't switch them off because the journal doesn't give enough information to point you in the right direction.

You can change quest texts to everything you want. You can add whichever objectives and descriptions you want. Do it yourself and let people play the game in the best way it was intended.

Most of the quests can be completed fine without quest markers. I've only had to use them a handful of times. I do wish the journal was more robust, though. There are a lot of ways they could have made it more useful. I just like the homey descriptions: "It's at the top of the hill just north of old Jed's farm, under that big old tree we used to play under" is much more evocative than "Your map has been updated."

I have no sympathy for the 'follow the arrow' dilemma, though. That seems more like a psychological disorder than a design issue. If giving people text descriptions is all it takes to 'medicate', though, then I think it's worth doing.

I believe the Radiant engine is to blame here. There can't be flavorful quest text for many quests because they're being made up by the engine on the spot. There is no real recourse aside from pointing the player directly at the objective.

You can take quest markers off -.-

Arguing about whether people should like quest markers (as opposed to their actual inclusion) is what is kind of asinine. If you don't enjoy it, don't highlight the quest for longer than it takes to point out it's location on a map. It's the difference, for instance, on a road trip between having to check your map from time to time and actually having a gps. Positing an opinion as if it were fact is the main contribution to the practice of forum trolling.

I commented on that article but I'll say it here too.
I agree with the main point of the article, but the mage at Riften specifically told me in her dialogue where she had left her stuff, so you are provided with the information - it just doesn't get written down for you.
There definitely needs to be more choice in quests and less "hand-holding" in future games, but it doesn't help the case if when there is something other than an arrow pointing the way the gamers ignore it and then complain that there's nothing but an arrow. You can kind of see why the devs would throw their hands up and just go down the easy route in the majority of cases.

I think there's also a generational factor at work. The younger you are, the more your life has probably been shaped by schedules, guided activities, and structured tasks (examples: playdates? Why do you have to schedule play?). Jumping through hoops is the way children are taught to succeed these days. Be able to have X, Y, and Z activities on your application to college to get in. Some players' reactions to quests in the game are thus not really a matter of intelligence or ability, but of conditioning, which that article pokes at. A lot of younger people (I'm not "old" but probably "older" than many here) can transcend their conditioning, but the "system" doesn't particularly give them any incentive to do so other than their own self-realization. Put another way, they are goal rather than process-driven.

I think the evolution of Lego illustrates this. My yellow Lego castle was awesome. You could build the castle if you followed the instructions, but those same pieces could be used to build a spaceship, a truck, or armless aliens with wings coming out of the top of their heads. You built the horses out of those same pieces. Lego castles I've gotten for my younger relatives these days have huge chunks of wall that don't really work as anything else. And the horses are a single prefab object. You COULD build a spaceship, but it would be a pretty crappy-looking spaceship. So unless you have a lot of other Lego sets, you're kind of stuck building according or close to the instructions. And when I try to help them build it, I'm struck by how upset the kids get when you're not following the instructions. In this case, "You're doing it wrong" doesn't mean you don't get the kids' arbitrary or imaginary rules, but that you are not following the externally given structure.

So a quest that tells people to "go out into the world and find something" creates a deer-in-the-headlights panic, while a quest that says, "Go to this specific place, get X from this specific monster, return to this specific npc" fits into the comfort zone. I'm not trying to say "kids today are lazy, get off my lawn!" but rather that this is the way we've been conditioning kids for a couple decades now, and we're seeing it reflected in game design, for better or worse. Probably worse, but it is what it is.

I'm sure once the CK comes out, someone will rewrite quest text so that you could turn off the arrows and still have enough information to complete the quest.

I agree with your sentiment, but the problem is, turning off the markers is not a viable option. The journal does not tell you in writing where to go.

It will simply say "Kill Bjorn Meadgulper" without any clue as to who, what, or where he can be found.

It would need to be something along the lines of "Kill Bjorn Meadgulper, a lumber jack in the Reach" so at least you could search the Reach for lumber mills, etc

?

He wrote that he did it because he wanted to find out what the gem was worth, and that required him to join the theives guild, which in turn required him to do the prerequisite quests.

Personally, I have a certain amount of sympathy for those who want to keep a clean, focused journal, rather than a journal filled with dozens of random, half completed quest lines. Maybe I'm overly pedantic?

I agree about the Radiant story element affecting what can and cannot be in the journal. In two different games, I had the same quest but the objective site was assigned to a different place in each game. That's why I can be fine with the way it is...I like the Radiant aspect of this game a lot.

Yes, this isn't a racing game.
The arrow shouldn't be there.


The arrow is what makes people think: "The story in this game svcks!".
The story in this game is good.
You're not listening to it.
You're following an arrow, instead of entirely reading a book, or entirely listening to a NPC.

It makes people activate 200 quests at the same time. Making them forget about half of those quests.
You'll often see in youtube videos, people with +50 quests in their journal. They can't remember all of them!
They'll forget the story, the story will become dull.

Why couldn't the quest giver hand you a piece of paper with written directions? Such as follow the road west from Whiterun until you find some tower then look for a cave noth of that near a river.

Well, there are quests like this.

But making all of them like this would be a bit repetitive. There is much more than 200 quests in this game.

I agree with this.

I had to roll my eyes when the article's author began complaining Wylandriah's quest. He says Actually, if you talk to Wylandriah, she will tell you where she left each item. You can complete the quest even if leave the quest marker off, if you pay attention and are willing to search the general area you're directed to by the dialogue. The same is true for many quests. I just finished a quest for the Temple of Dibella, in which I was directed to a town, but when I got there, the quest marker had disappeared. What did I do? I talked to people. Viola! Someone pointed me in the right direction!

I admit that the Radiant AI system hinders the discovery process, for example, bounty quests give you name of the location, and I guess the NPC draws it on your map? Unfortunately, the requirement for voice acting all dialogue means we can't have directions given to us by NPC dialogue in these cases of Radient AI assingments.

I also wish that the journal was more detailed. If I take too long to follow up on a lead, sometimes I'll forget the reasons behind the quest. The solution to that, though, is to start and finish questlines that interest you- in a timely manner. A little bit of self control and a dose of imagination goes a long way toward maximizing enjoyment in games like this.

I stopped reading that article halfway through.

If a player cannot control themselves from doing something they dont want to do, or roleplay that their character wouldnt do it, all because there is a quest listed in their log and they mindlessly follow arrows, well, that's their fault, not the game's.

Having a quest listed in my log has never made me feel like I "had" to do it, if for some reason I had a quest I didn't want, I turn it off and never look at it again. Easy as that.

And if having a quest marker means thr player just mindlessly runs straight away to that arrow, with no regard for anything else, again, fault of the player, not the game. Never once has an arrow told me how to play. Never once has an arrow dictated where I go or how I get there. I do things of my own accord, become immersed in the world, and the quest marker is nothing more than directions to an objective, not instructions on how to play the game.

Quest markers are not an issue in this series. They are not "dumbing down". And that article is bad.

I agree that the markers are annoying, and take out a lot of the exploration value. If an NPC gives you a quest to find someone in, lets say Solitude, then you should only get a marker pointing to Solitude and not to the NPC specifically. You should also be given more specific information on where the npc is located, or be able to ask other npcs in the area about the person your looking for. Morrowind had it right.

Yep.

I hate them, and prefer to play without them..it's nice that you can turn off the HUD, but I feel like you are still forced to be dependent on the quest markers too often.

Having a good journal, or droppable quests would take care of a large part of the problem IMO.


That would be true if not for the fact that the game is basically designed with the assumption you will either use them, or use clairvoyance.

There is no third "I want to try" option built in, you can kind of do it, but you have to be careful not too take many quests at once as after w while you will have all these vague misc quests that you don't remember, pretty necessitating some use of the quest markers.