The distance from a location of interest when it would appear on your compass was too large in Oblivion. Sometimes you saw a village sign there, and you were looking in that direction and you didn't see anything even though there were no obstacles. When a marker first appeared on your compass, it could take you a long time until you finally reached that place, and that was unrealistic.
Another problem was that there often weren't any paths that you could follow in the first place. There was no way to tell that you might find something interesting behind that hill, even if there was the largest Ayleid ruin of all Cyrodiil. Heck, there wasn't even a sign near Chorrol that said "right up that hill is one of the most famous and important locations of Imperial history, Sancre Tor".

So those are the things that will hopefully be changed. I like following paths sometimes to find out where they're leading, but I also like the compass markers as indicators that my character actually noticed something that I couldn't notice. For example, more footsteps than usual on the ground that indicate there's a village nearby - without the corresponding textures, this is just not possible. And if they did use corresponding textures, it would become boring very quickly, and it's also much more work than it's worth in the end. So I'm all for compass markers for special cases like this.

As has been mentioned, the Fallout 3 enemy markers were a result from having a high Perception. That is something that is typical of RPGs since the day D&D was invented, and you shouldn't leave out features like this because you want to be "immersed". Because then immersion simply means that you are playing yourself in that situation, not someone else, and you stop playing an RPG. In that sense, the classical RPG is the exact opposite of this modern interpretation of immersion. (And I say modern because people used to be just as immersed in a game like Ultima Underworld than they are now in a game like Dead Space, only with a different mindset - back then, the stats and numbers helped you immerse in the world and get a grip on what your character is like, while now the lack of visible stats and numbers is a sign of immersion.)

Its in the barrels. Bethesda put them right under your nose! You just don't know! Its so great :biggrin:

100% agreed OP. sadly we'll still see different dungeons far away on our compass, which is stupid.

I think it would be nice if quest makers were just less precise, rather than absent or pinpoint specific; like giving the player a range or a small region instead of a point on the map. Your compas could guide you to the right area, and stop when once the player is there. I think that would help peserve the some of the best elements of both systems. Some people might get very lost with no marker at all.

I'm hoping for a toggle option, since it's so intrusive. It practically (or almost completely) ruins the meaning of exploring & finding hidden dungeons, which is otherwise a truly great and fun part of exploring.

Bethesda have so far shown pretty nice care for both sides I think... with both OB fast travel and carriages and with the Claryivoience spell (or however it's now spelled).
I think there is good hope for a toggle option for the compass icons.

If not, I can just say... I'm so glad I'm on the PC. It wouldn't take many minutes to mod out compass icons completely. Easiest way would be to simply replace the textures with transparent ones

Your PC doesnt have internet?
How do you write all these things if you don't have internet?

True, but still, a toggle ought to be included, can't really be tha hard.

Also, we'll still have quest marker which are more tricky to remove due to the quest design expecting you to magically know where to go.

A toggle would be extremely simple and easy to implement, yes. A good developer would have it in to please both sides, with little effort done at the same time.

Quest markers? Are we 100% sure we have that in Skyrim? I thought it was never confirmed fully...
Anyway, IF they are in, I'm still hoping for a toggle here as well. It's true that they could be tied to quest design, but I think (and hope) stuff like that have changed now. It seems directions are much better now, since NPCs can actually come with you and point out the direction.

There was a toggle ini. option for quest markers for Fallout 3... so that brings the hope up a bit

dear God I hope we can turn off the crappy GPS compass markers FOREVER

man that was horrid in OB

There is the problem with modding the compass icons out. You have to make up for it with a more detailed quest description. Personally I would have no problem with a Journal or Questbook that includes detailed quest text such as Morrowind gave you. This allows people who enjoy following a linear path to your quest objective be happy while simultaneously allowing people who care more for immersion, exploration, and surprise to have their chance to "get lost" in the massive landscapes and stumble upon things on accident rather than on purpose.

Well, the guide spell does give me hope actually, makes me think that the wanna give people move of a choice on how to play the game. And you're right, but I just assumed they'd be there since location markers are back and in my head they're sorta one pack.

Man I need that fan interview soon.

Why not just turn them into perks? Keep the compass, fine (although I much prefer to not know whether I am going N S E or W; easier to get lost that way ) But how about having perks that unlock the locations of ruins on the compass. Same thing for enemies (if that is even confirmed to be in). This way you can justify it by saying that it's the characters perception of the world and intuition, rather than automatically knowing where everything is. This would also provide players who do not want these features in the game (myself included) the option of not being bothered with them, without having to mod the game. Meaning console gamers can join in on the fun.

I am not trying to be insulting to anyone out there but IMHO the emersion and exploration in these games has gone out the window. Because too many impatient people out there that are gamers now days want fast paced action, that alot of people play a game for a few days and toss aside for the next big thing. Another problem is the game companies haven't figured out how to give us both at the same time. You either just get generic faced paced action with no imersion or you get too slow a paced with a good storyline. Can't we just have both, so we are all happy with the games.

:angel:

Perks can be nice solutions for many features like this that even make sense in the world, kind of.

Question is... what skill would the perks be tied to? :rolleyes:

We already know like... 16/18 skills? I doubt one of the last skills would be a "perception" skill...
I do think though that it would be a nice idea.

But toggle would work just as good...

Only "requirement" is that directions are given properly as a base.

Perception is about more than vision, would actually make sense that a Khajiit could smell nearby enemies.

It was a fun idea if the game could know the wind direction


And yes the point of interest was a good idea at least the way many caves in Oblivion was hidden, sometime had to search even with the markers.

Now back to the quest markers, it makes some sense that the quest giver know the target well enough to be able to pinpoint it on a map, it was generally easy enough to find locations in Morrowind with some exceptions: small cave entrances could be hard to find but unlike in Oblivion they usually had a track leading up to them. If you come the wrong direction they was often very hard to find.
However in Skyrim it would be hard to give a verbal description of the location as it would be pretty random for many quests. In Morrowind the quest giver gave you the route to travel from him to the target. Now quest markers inside dungeons are usually pretty stupid,

Not skill, tie them to size of nose, as it’s sense of smell my avatar has larger nose than your :celebration:

It'd be nice if you could toggle on and off certain locations that would remove/add them to both the map and compass. So you could toggle off dungeons, caves, etc, while still keeping major towns on the compass. It would allow you to play casual, hardcoe, or somewhere in between.

This is true. I hadn't really considered that to be honest. I suppose I haven't really been following up on the perk information. Are there no more 'miscellaneous' perks like from Fallout 3? Or are they all tied to a skill? Either way I would have to agree with you and say that a toggle is just as viable an option, probably even a better one. I see no reason why that can't include that. I hardly suspect that it would be game breaking not to include.

However, reading this thread brings to my memory a point that someone made a long time ago on the issue. He said that because the compass is in the game, the developers will design the gameplay and dialogue around the compass. In Morrowind when you received a quest, you also received a piece of parchment with directions, or you would have to search your journal for the spoken directions (I much prefer this to the compass). But in Oblivion, you are given a quest, the character tells you the name of the dungeon, but you aren't given directions because you already have the compass.

My question is, assuming that we could toggle off the compass, would the NPC's still give us directions to wherever a particular quest takes place, making us actually explore for it? Or will they just say, "Here, let me mark it on your map for you." and take the easy route with it?

It depends on how all this is developed. Just because there is a compass doesn't mean it has to be developed around it. If there is a toggle, I'm sure the developers would have thought about it.
... and since the problem was so big in Oblivion, I'm sure the developers have thought about it even more.

I don't remember how it was in FO3; if anybody do remember how... feel free to post. Would be interesting to know.

Right now, we have no idea how it's developed. We don't even know for sure if there are quest markes in the game, or if there's a toggle.
We know too little right now and we can only hope and speculate.

Perhaps the fan interview will bring this up? I'm sure a lot of questions were asked about this. Let's hope Bethesda has chosen to answer them, and let's hope the answer is good for everyone

Personally, I miss crappy NPC directions to quests. Getting lost and having fun not doing the quest was the best part of doing the quest...

As for the compass, I like games with little or no HUD, but a map with a compass and markers, so you find landmarks on the map, and then walk to the visible landmark in the real world. Kind of like using a map in real life.

IIRC Far Cry 2 had a good map system (while driving anyway), where you could open the map and keep driving while you glanced down at it.

Now that there is such a massive draw distance (judging by the gameplay videos) it might be feasible (from a design perspective) to limit the prevalence of compass and map markers.

1)You follow the directions to a quest but you're sidetracked by wolves and another dungeon.
2)You follow the quest marker to a quest but you're sidetracked by wolves and another dungeon.
What's the difference?

Human error (followed by interesting scenarios) can take place with the 1st one.

By "interesting scenarios" you mean getting lost, getting worked up not finding the area, looking up walktroughs and guides for the exact coordinates... then yes.

The difference is not knowing whats is coming next vs knowing exactly what is coming next. I would much rather not know whats around every corner.

For some perhaps. In my opinion, getting lost and not knowing what was around the corner was one of the best parts of the series. You truly felt like you were exploring this other world. Taking that to quests, when some NPC gives you poorly written directions to a dungeon on the other side of the game world, you now have a quest within a quest. You now have the challenge of finding said location. I am not suggesting that they make it incredibly hard to find out where you are supposed to go, but just to bring back some of the enjoyment of using my brain to figure out where something is, rather than using a GPS system.