Of course I remember. It didn't take me 3 hours, maybe 1 hour at most, and I swear God it was fun. We just have different taste for fun. I like to be put to trial and exposed to error, I'm not in a hurry to "beat" the game or a specific quest, I like to be tempted to try, to search, to be desperate sometimes, hammer my keyboard and then try again, to have to note down things on paper maps, to have my mind puzzled. Oblivion's compass was great for people who wanted faster gameplay straight to action, but what about us, who enjoyed greatly Morrowind's blind crawling? There must be a halfway meeting point, I guess the compass should stay but be completely optional with alternative npc directions system. I don't want Morrowind or Oblivion, I want Morrowind + Oblivion.

For me exploring is a broad term. And tracking is not really it for me. Tracking is more when you know the location.
Exploring is, to me, more when you are given some direction like "the cave is northeast from here" or "take the road west of here, then look for two big trees to your right. The cave should be near those".
Looking for that location is "half-vague" to me, and I think of it as kind of exploring. A feeling of exploration.

True, I vow to murder anyone who gives me specific directions to something, but refuses to mark it on a perfectly fine map. Especially if they start talking about landmarks.

Here here!

I think you've got it reversed then. If you know where you're target is, than you don't need to track it down. That's why hunters track their prey via footprints and other signs, because they don't know where it is, but are trying to find it.

Exploring is what you do when you don't have a specific goal, you're an explorer, vs a tracker.

Yeah I absolutely agree with you. 100%

Well, I actually just want Morrowind's... but I fully understand that others prefer fast and easy quest markers. Best it to keep it an optional setting... but then there has to be some directions to replace the quest markers.
But then again, there are directions even with quest markers, right?
The NPCs don't just say "A monster hit our village. You must find and kill it! Go!" and give you a quest marker. The NPCs still give some direction. So... it would be better to just improve that direction a bit by default, I think

@Daydark: Maybe you're right. But it still doesn't matter. The importance of tracking/exploring is just as important anyway...
I felt that Oblivion pretty much ruined that with quest markers. And with nearby compass icons...

Only If I can kill the NPC's who give me bad directions. if they have been to the place before why not mark it on my map. If Iam looking for a specific person then there damn well better be a marker. I hate chasing down NPC's total pain in the ass.

Sure, I'm find with quest markers, but they could do it so the quest marker just leads to a region, or general area, instead of directly to what you're looking for.

Adding a quest marker makes quest designers lazy, I didn′t have a problem finding stuff in Oblivion since I played without mods and without mods you either have the choice of having a really long and hard to navigate through list of quests or to track the current quest and then have the quest marker, I ended up having the quest marker. And if you look at WoW the designers there have lost all sense of direction, I play WoW in Cata without using the built in quest helper and more often than not a quest tells me to maybe go west when I should go east, or north when I should go west and so on.

Remove quest marker, we already got the sense of sight and hearing, taste does not help too much unless in weird situations perhaps you find two patches of yellow snow, if you′re good enough as a tracker and just happen to know the difference in taste between a yellow snow made by a wolf or a Breton... well that′s just pushing it, for smell they could have it as an option (cos some would find that this would break immersion) that if you come perhaps within a 1 KM radius of a camp and the wind is blowing towards you from the camp you might perhaps get a pop-up text somewhere saying "you smell the aroma of meat roasting over fire to the east" or something like that, touch would not help you find your quest target really... but if someone wishes to prove me wrong be my guest. Balance and acceleration just isn′t a long range tracking sense as much as something that could rather be used in combat and Temperature sense could work like I suggested smell would, Kinesthetic sense is a self-thing, the sense of pain is not gonna help you track anything and the sense of direction (as in the built in sense that allows you to detect direction by the earths magnetic field) is a sense you will probably only see in animals like birds.

Just remove the quest marker I say.

If there is a reason in game why the area can not be pointed out on the map I would agree with you.Take Sancre Tor in Oblivion.Its location was lost right up til the point you got the quest.Sleuthing out its location by gathering info and directions from varied sources would have added to that storyline.Doing so for every location would more boring than difficult.If the directions are simple( head south to the intersection look for the single tree to the west the cave is there) it adds nothing to the game.If they are more involved and no mistakes are made by the Devs it may add enjoyment to some not all.If a more logical game mechanic exists it should be used.I.E. pointing at your map.As I proposed you would only get the arrow by talking to a scout.

I don't want a simpler game I want a more Logical one.

I don't care about the compass so long as, on missions where you don't know where a target is, that it give you a circle on your map (a general idea of an area). I recall missions in Oblivion AND Fallout 3 that pointed to something that I was never described that they knew where they were, in fact, they made it sound like they were hidden.

I second this :tops: . Doesn't show you where it is, but tells you that you at least aren't searching in vain.

How about a more vague version of the magic compass? Like instead of RIGHT SMACK DAB ON THE GUY YOU HAVE TO TALK TO it goes to like the district of the town he is in. Or within a certain distance of a location in the wilderness, requiring you to search around. It would be like directions, only with a visual aid.

I think the compass could be more vauge or toggleable, but in Oblivion you could go without it, just by selecting another quest as your active and doing another one, yeh the directions were kinda vague but still it is plausible, and the more vague it is the more exploration you have to do which is one of the reasons people dont want a quest marker

I'm surprised here no-one has mentioned the GPS like ability the map has to always know exactly where you are. That, IMO, is more immersion killing than having a map marker that someone can easily draw on.

Keep the quest arrow, just tone it down a bit. The arrow, reasonably, should represent someone marking a location on your map (which is actually more realistic than giving verbal directions; who does that if they have a perfectly good map on hand to use?), so restrict the arrow to fitting that description. The arrow can point you to a dungeon entrance, but once you go inside, you're on your own; the arrow might point you in the general direction of where a person can usually be found, but you shouldn't have the arrow following the person around as he goes about his day.

Compass arrows are less of an issue for me than the dotted lines on the maps going straight to the location you are looking for. I can (and usually do) ignore the quest markers on the hud. I really don't want some NPC giving me vague directions that get me lost or takes me two days real time to find. Morrowind was difficult and frustrating, it is the only BGS game I didn't replay to death.

I recently installed Morrowind again. It took me two hours to realize what it was about the game that made me not want to play it any more. The lack of decent information and the incredibly slow movement of the character are a big part of it. Morrowind seems like a huge place because it is impossible to get anywhere quickly, or to find what you are looking for in a timely manner.

I suppose if I was 12 and had nothing to do but search for some obscure location in a video game I might agree that fast travel and quest markers on a compass were undesirable, but since I seldom have that much time to play I have to disagree with getting rid of it or redesigning it. I like that if finding a place is becoming an issue I can make a quest active and go to the location quickly. I see it as a way of role playing my character being given excellent directions to the cave, tower, or fort I needed to find.

All this is likely moot since the hud doesn't exist as we know it from other games. If I remember correctly there will be something about it this week on the GI hub.

That's why you gotta love mods. Map Marker Overhaul had an option to remove the GPS arrow, and randomize the position of the map when you opened it. If you were completely lost, you could click on the button that centers the map on you and that would work, but normally it was up to you to use the landmarks.

I do use Map Marker Overhaul . Very awesome mod. But still surprsies me that no-one has complained about it :S

i hated the compass, i've been playing morrowind lately and i spent an hour looking for a cave in the wrong direction... THATS adventure, damn it!

i dont want some invisible man holding my hand the entire way through this game like with oblivion... if they wanna keep the compass, fine, but give us the option to turn it off!

that old line "dont want it, dont use it" doesnt work when something is right in front of you and impossible to ignore without putting several inches of grey duct tape on your HDTV!

if i want to wander around for hours looking for a single person who is playing hide and seek with me, i want to be able to!

i dont care if they make us search for a specific dragon, which the compass would practically be needed for, i still want to try my luck without it.

the life of an adventurer is supposed to be hard and filled with trials... not cakes and candy with a happy clown holding your hand and honking loudly when you're approaching a freaking objective!

yes it is, you just set another quest as active that you arn't working on

So now we don't have a compass (not even for telling north, south, east, west) and we don't get directions anyways because that's too much voice acting work. How many times did you get directions in Oblivion or Fallout 3? Practically zero (if they did give you any directions, they were usually vague or general).

So no, when the entire game is built around a mechanic, one can not ignore it and still be able to play effectively.

:laugh: So true.

Compass I am fine with, it was those damn quest markers that were rediculous. Just give me directions and I will find my own way. I remember in Morrowind I got lost many times, but that is also how I found other dungeons and ruins as well.

I used this technique, as well as often removing the compass from the HUD entirely (it was still visible in the map menu), but it annoyed me that sometimes completing a quest stage seemed to re-activate that particular quest again.