Sounds to me like someone just wants to complain about something.
dont like it being tracked then dont mark it active in the quest log.

If by "pay attention to a lot more" you mean "know where everything is on the map", then I agree. Look at the example I gave with the stolen books. It's supposed to be a reasonable quest given by a reasonable quest-giver. But there's no natural way for you to find out where to go, other than by prancing about the map and hoping to happen upon Fellglow Keep at some point in time. But this is pretty silly, no? This kind of thing isn't exceptional to this quest. Sometimes you even get a "directionless" quest that is urgent, in which case the prancing-about method is even sillier.

Isn't it understandable for some people to have a gripe with this setup? Especially given that we complained about it being like this in Oblivion and were told that it wasn't going to be a problem in Skyrim.

I think most people like to have voice acting in their 2011 AAA immersive RPG games. That's what makes it the most fully-realized 3D world in gaming to date. Please try to understand that your preferences don't define what's better. If you prefer playing Morrowind, feel free. If you want more text-based interaction in Skyrim, make a mod for it or shut up. Complaining just spreads negativity and accomplishes nothing.

We were told a lot of things.

I have the compas turned off, I have markers turned off. Now I actually have to use my eyes and lok for things, rather than having my eyes glued to the top of the screen.

You're overlooking the fact that this particular quest is a radient story one, and all the radient story quests assign random objectives and/or locations which is not typical of all quests in the game. If this were Daggerfall, the Orc Librarian's quest would be "Please go find . I've tracked it down to . Please hurry!" Instead because this is Skyrim the quests is "Please go find . I've tracked it down to

Bethesda made it perfectly clear that Skyrim was going to have quests with some amount of random generation. The only alternative would be to have very good instructions but no radient story. That can be argued either way.

I think some people are having a problem agreeing as to what degree they want things removed, or implemented. Probably a majority of players either use the quest track system and love it, or just haven't really thought about it otherwise, as in it's just not a big deal. Some people like myself and a few others who have posted turned all that off in order to fully explore the map. If I happen upon the quest, then I'll do it. If not, there's plenty more elsewhere. I'm an explorer, so that's what I do. I have no problem with things showing up on the map in that way, because no explorer with any sense would go into the wilderness without a map, and the best way to find something is to mark it. So I have no problem with that. Once I cut the quest track off, I can explore totally independent of the questing system. What some people want is something in the middle, something more Morrowind-ish. The problem is that probably just as many people want Oblivion-ish, or love Skyrim the way it is. You can't have it your way because others would hate it and vice versa. It works fine right now becuase it's a medium, and the only real medium that could be taken with the type of AI and voice acting it has.

You make it sound like we were robbed. I've barely been able to play (PC isn't set up) but I still feel like Bethesda have given me way more than I could ever have expected for $60.

I guess i can't really argue this, most people seem to like Skyrim the way it is, only choice for the rest is to not play it and go back to the stuff we love.

Unless I'm totally misunderstanding Radiant Story, my example isn't a Radiant quest! It's part of the College of Winterhold questline.

And I've had this experience with many other non-Radiant quests, e.g. the Dark Brotherhood quest in which you're told to trackdown Arnbjorn, and even quests in the MQ...

You realize he marks it on your map?
You realize you can turn those off?
You realize this makes you insanely stupid and you shouldn't even play the game if your gonna fly over the dialogue and get angry at a completely obvious, optional thing.

im sure its already been said,....

you can simply not use the quest highlight feature, pretty genius on the part of beth..

Well, AGAIN never said my preference is better than any other.
First of all you said "go play this", using a url showing text only games, also you're free to no appear on threads complaining about the lack of text on Skyrim ,since this is a General Discussion Forum, we can discuss whatever we want related to Skyrim, you approving it or not, so don't throw on me a "If you don't like got make a mod or shut up", because if I want to complain here on the forums, I can and I will, and I won't go out saying "shut up" to people who disagrees with me.
You do not only doesn't know how TES series works, but also doesn't know how a discussion forum works.

Ugh... I can't believe you people aren't understanding what we're saying. Oh well, I give up on this thread.

You're correct, oversight on my part. I thought you were still talking about the OP's example which is a radient story quest. Your example is a non-radient story quest which should have the quest-giver giving instructions, so no excuse there. The problem is there are two quests that involve the Orc Librarian sending you to find a book, one for the faction storyline, one as a radient-story quest.

That's not cool. They should atleast have you research it a lot

Cheers

Just curious. I've noticed that when i'm told to retrieve something from said dungeon, the location will appear on my map when i have not found it yet. Wouldn't it be possible to turn off the compass, and then turn of your characters location indicator on the map, to then use it as a real map (You don't know where you are except land markers but locations are indicated on the map.) If that is possible i think it would be closer to what you are looking for. In fact its kind of a neat idea and will look into it further.

boy, life is hard isn't it?

Well you're pretty slow then.

There is no option to decipher the quest for ourselves, as EVERY quest gets a marker in the exact position you need to go, and there is no quest log or conversation that would allow us to do the deciphering.

I play with compass off, quest markers on. Quest markers are supposed to represent as if the character had given you detailed instructions without having to actually use the resources and development time to verbalize it. That's fine with me. The part about the quest compass that irritated my in Oblivion was the part where it pointed you right to the quest objective (for example, if you were looking for a long lost item hidden in a dungeon it would point it right out to you without you having to look). If you just use the quest markers on the main map it isn't a problem. The local map is where it's a problem in my opinion. Thankfully Skyrim's dungeons are so linear that the local map is all but useless.

it's not that we don't understand, we just don't care

I only turned on the quest marker for this quest because when I got to the final area, I could only find two books. I spent like half an hour spamming spells around the place looking for the last book. And then I resorted to google, "Where the #%@ is the 3rd book of the caller quest"? And found some obscure forum with a guy saying "Just turn on the quest marker, probably got knocked away during the fight", and I was like... :facepalm: Turned on the quest marker... and yep... book was in the shadows in the corner, really hard to see. One of those things where irl you would have been able to see/feel it, but just couldn't in the game.

No, you (or a lot of people in this thread I haven't looked at all your responses) don't understand.

Well you've made it clear that you just want to complain. Your complaints have all been addressed but I guess it's easier to say "you don't get it." If you're going to say you wish the game was a certain way, I'm going to point you in the direction of games that are like that.

I play like this, and let me tell you that the ENTIRE gripe here in this thread is that we have nothing more to go on. Occasionally (probably one in five quests) I'll get some kind of clue as to where the place I'm meant to be going is, but other than that, nothing. The worst thing is that instead of it being recorded in the quest journal, I am just given the ability to make it active or not. Why they couldn't add in some quest location description to go in the journal I don't know (or I do, because without location descriptions it gives them more freedom in workflow because they can place the dungeons later).

So yeah, turn the arrows and all that crap off but you've still go to contend with the fact that the game doesn't really want you to play without them.

Also, I think a lot of people here who are pro quest markers don't realise that they are there as a shortcut for Bethesda. It is undoubtedly easier to just skip building the geography of the world through location descriptions, or location rumours, and much easier to just plop a marker on it. Sure, it represents the character giving you directions, but at best, it breaks the immersion of you actually working it out for yourself (which is usually a pleasure because the world is so beautiful) and at worst, ludicrous and anti-story when they mark an ancient, unknown, mystical barrow on your map like it was a MacDonalds.