I could agree to this with the caveat that they add some kind of tangible method for it in the game. (e.g. silt Strider or caravan)



They just need to get rid of the compass idea all around and go back to the minimap. It was a much more useful navigational solution in my opinion.

Useful, yes, but you're much more likely to be carrying a compass than have a helicopter above you broadcasting the surrounding area into your head so it can be always visible to you.

Agreed - TES is about immersion. I like having incentive to actually pay attention to my beautiful surroundings rather than keeping my eyes locked on minimaps and little indicators everywhere that most games are stuffed with these days.

However you also have to keep user convinience and game flow in mind, if you have to stop every 10 seconds to check your map it can get tedious fast. I'm all for a optional mini map again.

That's a very strange and inconsistent comment you just made. You rationalize using a compass because it's somehow more believable, but you can't see a mini-map as what it is. You know...a map? You have to jump to a helicopter anology?

I don't buy your original premise anyway. I'm positive in this sort of a time period a compass would be much more expensive than a map, so I'm pretty sure a map would be a lot more common.



I find the compass to be much more intrusive. With the compass I feel like I have to be heading straight to where the little dot is pointing. If I wander off and get turned around, then I have to stop and get my bearings and find my path again. Whereas with a map, at a glance I can see where I am, where I was, and where I need to be going.

Why would you keep your eyes locked on a minimap anyway? It's not going anywhere.

I don't want a mini-map as part of the HUD OR a compass...

I NEVER used the compass in oblivion... I never even notice it
but I would prefer it wasn't there altogether

Do you plan on navigating by the stars? No, wait. The moss on the trees?

:mellow:

I don't take objection to the compass. It's the points-of-interest system and the GPS quest markers that have to go.

Points-of-interest are negated by properly designing old roads or natural features such as passes or riverbeds, etc, to give an actual followable semblance of a path to most locations, save perhaps the stuff buried in the deepest wilderness. I see no reason to be able to detect such notable tourist attractions as the shrine to the King of [censored] or the body-strewn cave-doorway to a necromancer's den, just by walking within 1000 or so feet of them.

GPS quest markers are negated by 1) Actually having your NPCs give spoken directions, and then recording said spoken directions in the journal, or 2) if the dialogue resources are too much, have NPCs give out written directions. Another problem with the quest-compass-arrow is that you end up cutting a straight-line swath across the wilds, when REAL off-the-beaten-trail paths do exist to lead you to close to your destination. As for moving targets such as NPCs with schedules, if someone's going to send me to find a person, they'd better give me at least one piece of information regarding where I might find them at a given time. Like where and at what time they work. Or, if they don't have that information, then townspeople should be able to supply bits and pieces of an NPC's schedule, until by asking around for a while you know just where that NPC will be.

Well firstly there are landmarks, secondly it would be cool if you could use the stars to traverse the land, third I still have my trusty map!

Oblivion was perfect.

But no horses anymore please.

Or if they are in, just make them invincible and unattackable.

Its VERY annoying that you have to keep track of where your horse is, and whenever there is a dungeon, it gets relocated etc.

Just an idea up for debate, but why not do both mini map and compass?

Cos' they are 2 things I don't want (in my opinion)



You have to be kidding me... :shakehead:
Sorry it's just in my opinion a terrible idea. Also why would bethesda take out horses if they put them in oblivion and were very popular (except for their comparatively slow movement to the pc)

Simply have the mini mpa at least opional AGAIN... i mean it WAS optional in Morrowind so why not now anymore?

:yuck:

Perfect is a little too extreme, isn't it? Even Morrowind's not perfect, and Morrowind's perfect. No game is. Okay, Pong maybe.
You prefer not to have horses, despite their popularity. I understand it's just an opinion, I'm just sayin. You didn't enjoy galloping across the random countryside (until the invisible wall stopped you) ? I love to dis Oblivion, but this is a feature that simply can't face the chopping block. Of course, I could have said the same thing about Levitation (among many other great things) prior to Oblivion's release. Levitation simply can't face the chopping block.
Chop!
Okay, let's say the horses are in. Yay, let's ride! I'm so excited, it's going to be in a completely random direction! Which was actually quite fun. Anyway, you weren't annoyed by NPC's that were invincible? That didn't ruin any amount of realism for you? The fact that, for whatever roleplaying reason, your vengeful character can't kill 100% of the named population? You don't think that a band of minotaurs should be able to sledge your steed to death? I think having your horse killed and leaving you stranded makes for some very interesting gameplay. It's only realistic, right? I'm no horse expert, but in the movies those damned beasts are constantly running away. The scruffy outlaw ties his steed to a weak branch, the horse gets spooked, poof, he's gone. It's realistic! You don't think a hungry land dreugh wouldn't enjoy your horse while you're five stories underground?
This ain't GTA, if you were looking for a garage that remembers your cars.

I think travel should be like Fallout 3 which forced you to find places on your own first, to an extent. There should be ships, some sort of beast of burden, mages guild tele, mark/recall/divine intervention, and you should be able to reach those destinations immediately as long as you can pay for the service, without having to find them first your self and save time. And all of these would work fine side by side with the fallout 3 style of fast travel because the paid methods of travel and spells would get you where you need to go much faster than if you had fast traveled your self, walked, ran, or rode a mount of some sort. Also, remember how in Morrowind if you slept outside, you were interupted by a creature of some sort? There should be something akin to that for fast travelling on your on, like a certain percentage of the time so that fast travel is not always 100% safe. I know you guys have reached some of the same conclusions as I have and posted it, but when topics are brought up multiple times things get repeated.

Yeah and they said fast travel was optional........

Optional is in "you can turn it off and on" and NOT "you HAVE to use it because they scattered the missions so much over the map you have no other choice".

Honestly optional mini map is NO obstacle and the "but fast travel wasnt that optional" argument doesn't count. In Morrowind it was optional to turn the mini map on, i liked using it and many others SIMPLY DIDNT USE IT.
There is no big drawback from not using it (as Oblivion showed) but a lot of good things WITH using it. In that case option IS the way to go.

And you DID have the option in Morrowind so there's absolutely NO SENSE why they removed it.
And if you say "the mini map should not be in AT ALL", give me a good reason WHY. If you say "it kills immersion", you can turn it off. In that case if you feel too tempted to use it think of this, if you can't get yourself over using it is it REALLY that bad then?


The whole "fast travel is not really optional and therefor flawed" argument is flawed in itself, NOT becuase fast travel was bad but because they spaced the missions and objectives as far apart as they could, every damn little fetch quest shooed you all the way across the map. THAT crappy design choice made fast travel not optional and NOT because you couldn't avoid using it.

The Minimap is superior to the compass, as it both shows the terrain and near entrances (if you have an eye to see them on the thing) and it acts as a compass by showing you your directional facing.

But it doesn't really matter if the compass is in again. What's important is that quest markers and locational markers get reworked. I could do without location markers (the things that point out nearby dungeons), and quest markers need to have multiple types. If an NPC knows exactly where an objective is, it will be like the pointer marker in Oblivion. If they are unsure, but know the general area, then it will be a circle (on your map) and a horizontal line on your compass in which the objective is somewhere within that area.

There could be a way to make the compass less pinpointing.
If someone gives you a EXACT location it doesn't make sense that the compass can't show that, you DO know the exact location so why hould you suddenly forget it, you'd get a marker on the map so the compass just cuts a corner.

However like in Morrowind you could simply get a rough direction, this doesn't EXACTLY mark your target location but it shows you the direction you have to go, you still have to look for the exact place yourself.

On the compass and map showing stuff around you there's a solution too, line of sight. Simply they can't show what YOU can't see. When there's a burried ruin you can stand right on top of it and not notice it because you still can't see it (at least the targe mark for it). But look around a bit, you spot the entrance in your line of sight and PING it's there as a temporary marker. When you inspect it closer you get a permanent marker on your map.
Like this looking down from a high position can help you too since you can roughly mark the positions of towns and small settlements on your map.

I actually did http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=1041304&view=findpost&p=15107251 which however was quite "drowned" sadly.

I have tried and tried, but I still can NOT begin to comprehend what people like you are saying. If your choices are use a fast travel system that you don't like or walk, why don't you walk? What do you have against walking? What is wrong with walking? Why do you complain about something that's an OPTION? And don't give me that "the game's built around it" bull, okay? Because the first time I played Oblivion I didn't even know fast travel existed, and that was the most fun I've ever had with the game. The map is mad small as it is, why can't you just hoof it?

Because walking is the only other option that is other then "Fast Travel" Oblivion Version. It does not help that the way the quests is set up in Oblivion, doing a quest will take a hell long time to get from point A to point B if walking back and forth. It get to a point where doing all that walking for one quest or traveling to a settlement get very tedious and the fact that all the traveling service and teleportation has been remove, fast travel up end the only option to doing these quest or basic traveling for that matter.

I have honestly never found walking annoying.

Well even though i don't oppose fast travel i can still see where the sentiment comes from.
Oblivions fast travel system did seem a bit "cheaper" and "got off free" compared to Morrowinds but honestly, compare the two.

In Oblivion fast traveling simply made you "walk the way" (time did pass so there was something happening), it didn't cost you money and you didnt lose health or items... which is fine really, i men WHY should the system PUNISH you?
In Morrowind you had the travel services which did cost you money and only had limited points from where to where they could bring you... which was fine too.
But compared honestly the only difference is A: Money and B: from where to where they could bring you. But otherwise they where the same, you just skipped your way instantly. Only in Oblivion you'd only go thorugh ONE loading screen and it could bring you to more precise locations like a mod that allowed you to travel to the houses you bought for example.

Also while i did say it in a way myself, the game was not built around fast travel but they just did a poor job at laying out quests. If every little quest sent you all the way over the whole map it didn't FORCE you to use it but it just made it tedious to walk the same paths over and over and over again. In the end you just fast traveled to cut the boring walks.
Imagine if the quests where actually clustered more around the locations where you got them AND the quests that did demand a longer trip where actually WORTH it. Those two aspects put together would encourage walking over fast traveling a lot since you wouldn't have to go insanely long ways for each quest AND if you are on the way to a bigger one you can do some smaller quests you encounter on your way.
It also encourages to stay in one location for a longer time rather than just jump from place to place, you'd walk less over the same ways over and over and you get to explore certain areas better. It would be a WIN-WIN situation.

Now also on fast traleing itself, in a longer post in this thread (which seemed to got burried too) http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=1045305&view=findpost&p=15163359, have different "sacrifices" they require and different benefits. It was basically a remake of Daggerfalls travel system which actually simulated your trip, the path you take, how long you traveled and how much you had to spend (minus the risk of dieing on your way).
With that system you can too start FROM any point and go TO any point at least on foot or on a horse. There would also be different travel services, each with their own advantage and disadvantage.

I'd also be for a "fast foreward travel" system that just makes you go along your chosen path speed up and allows you to jump out at any point.


PS: Oh yea just on one thing. How come people say "Oblivions system was crud, it felt like teleporting" BUT the same time ARE fine with TELEPORTING. Ohhh it cost 2 magic points, yea that makes a HUGE difference .

My call, have VARIOUS travel system instead of saying "THIS AND NOTHING ELSE!!111!".

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?s=&showtopic=1045305&view=findpost&p=15165586

That is, to say, that it's about as optional as breathing. To get from Point A to Point B quickly, there is but ONE option. By not using that option, one will NOT travel from Point A to Point B and in a manner qualifying as "PDQ, accelerated, active, agile, blue streak, breakneck, brisk, chop-chop, dashing, double-time, electric, expeditious, expeditive, flashing, fleet, fleeting, flying, hairtrigger, hasty, hot, hurried, hypersonic, in a jiffy, in nothing flat, lickety split, like a bat out of hell, like all get out, like crazy, like mad, nimble, on the double, posthaste, presto, pronto, quick, racing, rapid, ready, screamin', snap, snappy, speedball, supersonic, swift, velocious, [or] winged." There is not "optional" if there is no alternative that offers a similar outcome (getting from Point A to Point B quickly, or in any of the other synonyms previously mentioned).

By that logic you'd have to say though "Morrowinds system was not optional because there was no alternative" since they ALL where "you pay someone, you go somwhere", while in different costumes it WAS the same.