Compass has been discussed since the day it was announced as a feature for Oblivion. It has been the subject of many controversies and a reason to numerous flame wars. What I'm intrested in now is how the community sees the evolution of the compass.

Here are my experiences:

I didn't like the concept in Oblivion, but I accepted it as part of the game. It was probably easy enough to turn it of and play without it back then, since the Quest Journal worked in a similar way as it did in Morrowind - most information was there. I just didn't care enough about Oblivion being disappointed in the game as a whole to do something about it.

Skyrim is a different case. I really tried to resist the hype and was pleasntly surprised by the game's similarity in concept and atmosphere to Morrowind. I also believed what devs said about compass being a matter of choice. At first I tried playing with it on though and I even managed to simply not looked at it most of the time. Much to my surprise and anguish it turned out to be physically painful to have it on (yes, my eyes actually suffered from strain when I had it on). And it wasn't because I tried so hard not to look at it, what I realized was that it worked as if my hair was constantly falling over my eyes simply because it was now in a very uncomfortable place on the screen. With both my weapons drawn and the compass above them, my field of vison shrinked to a square the size of one third (or even less) of my whole screen.

That's only half of the story though. Of course I turned of the compass manually (from the config file that's in the folder with savegame files) and then the real fun started. Being used to detailed descriptions of quest goals and hints in the Journal in all the TES games I played (2,3 and 4), I was faced with a huge surprise. There was almost NOTHING about locations in it. What's more, I couldn't even ask an NPC for directions, because the dialog options describing the quest disappear more often than not once you accept the quest. And it's not like the guards are any help at all (I really preferred the talking signpost versions from previous games).

I'm still playing the game this way though. It's extremely hard to find some places, even the map markers are not always very helpful, but I manage. My only complaint is that Bethesda seems to have focused so much on making the game menus as scarce as possible that they forgot about players that like their games for the depth they offer.

What is your take on the case?

It's very good as it is now IMO. If people need to modify them to their tastes, there are and will be mods.

Unless they decide to bring back paid traveling hubs in a big way, like Morrowind had, I'm totally fine with the compass as-is to allow fast travel.

Having the option to turn it off and instead maybe have NPCs or the journal give more directions (or less depending on the situation) would be nice for those who may not like it.

Overall it hasn't bothered me, but I would have no problems going back to a solely paid traveling system. I might even prefer it for immersion reasons.

For me it's not the question of modding the compass itself. It's that playing without it has made me realise how much less information we are given in-game about the quests. It shouldn't be that hard to add to the quest description where is the place you need to get to located. It's a question of immersion, simple as that.

I think the compass works fine as it is, for those who like to use it.
However I'd like the option to turn it off (on xbox myself)
I would love better spoken/text directions myself, but I think that will be much harder to implement then a turn compass on/off button, so I'd settle for just the ability to turn the compass off, so I can stop sticking a piece of paper over the top of my tv screen.

Well, then the question comes in how they made the game. I think it's meant to be played as it originally is set up. Anything else would be more like "tell Heinar this and that" "but wait, where the [censored] is heinar?!". Or of course it'd have to be modded.

But yeppers, no1 complained about Oblivion, no matter how little options about "immersion" it had, because mods made the game godlike compared to the vanilla version.

I find the game much better without the Compass.

The things I don't like about the Compass (not in any specific order):
- Position (better immersion without it blocking the view)
- Map Markers showing undiscovered locations (exploration is much more rewarding without them)
- Red Dots showing enemies even when they're not in your sight (without them combat is better as the game doesn't tell you where enemies are)

Quest Markers aren't a problem as they can be turned on/off from the in-game quests menu. Now if only NPCs and the Journal would tell more about the quests locations.

In Oblivion my Compass looked like this:
http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b148/ActionDragon/Oblivion/OB-1.jpg
When there are mods available to only show the compass points, and to change the compass' location in view then I'll enable compass again in Skyrim.

No compass or markers or arrows for me. I like little information, it makes me more explorative.

In fact, I'm considering not using the UI map at all, and only using my *real* map, plus the one in the castle on the table. It has flags on most of the locations so I look at it & mark it on my *real* map. I wonder how my gaming will go with that gamestyle

Yes, but there's also the thing that they kept saying "compass is optional", well, it's not and we were simply lied to. All it would take is expanding information saved to the Journal. Guess they didn't want to "force" players to read too much... For me though reading such additional info would be more optional than what they did here.



Well, as I wrote, Oblivion had one major advantage - in its core it was built similarily to the previous games. You could play it without the compass and still have all the same pleasure.

My experience was the opposite. Oblivion's game style required the compass. Lack of procedural dialogue options meant that the compass was how you found things. It literally pointed you toward anything you wanted to get to, none of that nasty finding-stuff gameplay nonsense

I use the mod No Enemies on Compass to remove the red dots indicating enemies. No longer having magic radar made a huge improvement in gameplay. Otherwise, I agree with the OP that the quest log is so terse that many quests - which often require one to traverse half of Skyrim - would be nigh impossible to complete without having quest markers. For that reason, my compass remains.

I suppose I could try turning off the compass altogether and spamming the spell Clairvoyance (which I have ignored thus far as it initially struck me a kind of cheat) instead.....hmmm....might be worth a try.

At least non-hostile enemies don't show up as red dots. I'd honestly remove the red-dot thing is it was possible on the PS3. Other than that, it's good.

Clairvoyance sounds like a really good new addition. Perfectly useless when you have a large compass/radar/TomTom up in the top of the screen, but for those of us who've disabled it... yeah. A good idea

I only need the Quest Markers in the Map screen to find Quest locations. And I don't need to check the Map screen often. I just once check the direction I'm looking at and set myself waypoints (towns, cities, crossroads) for the trip, and off I go.

Call me stupid, but Clairvoyance doesn't work for me. I mean I use the spell, but nothing happens. Does it only work in dungeons?

More info in the quests would definitely be a good thing. I just started using no markers at all and I am enjoying it. I work around the lack of information by using the "show on map" function to get an idea of where to go next. For any who do not know how to do this:
1. Open the map (M)
2. With the map open, open the journal (J)
3. Select your quest
4. Press "Show on map" (M)

The map will scroll to the right place. What is nice is that the map shows the location at an angle and from a height, so you don't see EXACTLY where the quest objective is, but it's close enough to find it.

Good point. Between the map and Clairvoyance I should be able to find my quest targets. OK, now I'm going to definitely try turning off the compass!

Are you tracking a quest when you try it?

Well, reading the http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Clairvoyance, Clairvoyance may not be that good a solution, unless you only track one quest at a time. But it should help once you are in the building/dungeon/etc. containing your objective.

I ve been [censored]ing about it since someone came with this moron spoon feeder feature.
You don t have a compass in your head, you learn to use the freaking map.
1 rst thing i always try is to turn it off, its always more fun when you can get lost.

But the compass being there with all its hand holders is really not the problem.
The problem are the consequences:
1) No option to remove it without a certain degree of modding, give the option to remove it (ALL OF IT) right from the box, if you are competent enought to remove the aim from the menu i suppose you can be competent enought to do the same with the compass.
2) Weak journal, really a freaking lazy job, zero misison description, hand holding from map and compass showing stupid GPS precision, wan t precision ? We got a Clairvoyance spell doesn t we ? It should be enought Mission should be better described and location described with game references and the compass being an optional feature.

I would vote but couldnt find my answer for


Perfect
Fine, but in the wrong place (prefered Oblivion - bottom style)
Fine, but would prefer additional information in the Journal (questlog)
A good idea, but requires complete revamp (describe in post)
I use it and I'm happy, and don't care for additional stuff.
Not something I would use, but I don't care
Wrong in the concept itself.
A reason other quest related aspects are lacking in depth.

The compass (with markers) is one of the worst things in the game. It completely goes against the idea of a good open-world experience... and as far as detrimental features go, i'd put it in the same bracket as level-scaling.

The frustrating thing is, there's a simple compromise to the problem. They should design the game without markers at all at first, writing all the quests under the assumption that the player won't be using them. Then, they should add markers as an option in the game settings that's off by default. At the moment, they've got it backwards and are designing quests around a completely detrimental feature that holds the player's hand and drastically lessens the the quality of the game experience by default.

Yep. Handholding and built-in walkthroughs should be optional, not default/necessary.

Ok, sorry I'm not reading everybody's answer, but I'd like to precise my vote.
I don't like the current compass system, but that's linked to the quests. IMO the quests are too simple, too "take 'em all" and the whole spirit of those quests leads to a simplification of the quest journal that forbids actually removing the compass.
I'd like to remove it, but it's not a problem of editing INI files, I can do it without problem. But with Misc. quests being so numerous and so badly described, I honestly can't do without compass.

hate having too much info, I eventualy got a mod now to remove the red dots, markers etc from the compass.

They really do need to make this crap optional... I found myself eventually just watching the compass rather then where I was going >_>

Turn it off or not, just put more clearer informations in the journal or conversations, that would be nice.