Apologies if this has been raised in other threads, but.... it needs to be raised. And raised again.

In Oblivion, you could play a thief. The thieves guild gives you a task - find an object located somewhere in somebody's house. Fun, right? Wrong! The compass indicator leads you right to the house... and once inside, it points you RIGHT TO THE OBJECT!!!

Of all the flaws of Oblivion (level scaling, etc), this was by far the worst!

I only play these games on the Xbox - Bethesda, please heed us - make the quest indicator an option. I'm in a dungeon. Why do I need a *forced* indicator pointing the exact way through the dungeon to my objective?

yet again it has never not been an option just chose another quest that you are not working on, also it has already been said (to an extent) that you can disable HUD

Unless I have missed some important information I don't believe we know whether or not Skyrim will have a quest marker.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1164653-which-optional-immersion-options-should-skyrim-have/ with the OP.


And yet again many quests were unfortunately designed with the quest compass in mind, so that if you "turned it off" by selecting another quest you had no idea where to go.

Plus, as is obvious by reading these forums, for many people having the quest marker close to hand is too much of a temptation (a "powergaming temptation") to use it. Only people who don't care about the issue say "make it an option": just imagine if Beth made dying when enemies hit you 'optional': would you roleplay death or keep running?

Edit: unless of course the option is only changeable when starting a new game, now that would provide a reasonable degree of restriction.


Oblivion and Fallout 3 had one, isn't it? (Not sure for FO3.) So odds are...

Because Bethesda wouldn't know a real option if one bit them on the ass. All we get are "Bethesda Options." (See signature)

yeh Fallout had it

I dont get this argument though, people say that they like Morrowind better becuase the directions were vauge and that lead to more exploration, however for the most part Oblivions was more vague, wouldn't that lead to more exploration than in Morrowind? and people are complaining so much about it, but they dont have the willpower to turn it off? it seems like they despise every feature of it so why would they use it? thought for food

I'm sure i read somewhere on this forum that NPC's now give directions to the PC.
Could anyone confirm if this is true.
If so,i would imagine this will be an option or not as bad as oblivion.
My view.

Couldn't agree more.


I'm sorry, but using a gimmick to get around something that's not an option isn't another option. It needs to be optional.


Todd himself stated in the podcast that there is a compass at the top of your screen.


Agreed.

Todd talked about it in the Podcast. He said NPC's give directions, and will sometimes follow you, to show you the way, and whatnot. This implies no quest compass. I know there will be a compass, but maybe it won't be so magical like in Oblivion.

This. Works just fine for Oblivion, even if NPCs don't give detailed instructions. During my playthrough I don't use fast travel and try to explore all the locations.

If it is too difficult and you want some kind of a hint, then you can always activate it when you are far away and then deactivate it before you walk towards the region where the quest marker was.




It's not a gimmick. You want an option to not have quest markers appear. This option is already built into Oblivion other Bethesda games - simply don't activate the quest. Very simple solution. Activating any quest in your journal serves no other function than to make quest markers appear. There is absolutely no benefit to activating any quests if you don't want to see the quest marker.

Errr... there's vague and vague really. Directions were actually precise enough in Morrowind (you haven't played it, I gather?): follow this canyon, then turn left when you see the rock shaped like this, and so on.

Now compare this to "here I'll mark it on your map". Go ahead, try and find the location with that information. Sure, it'll lead to more exploration: you'll explore the whole world twice before you accidentally stumble on the right cave (if you don't suicide before).

So the right solution is for Beth so include a quest compass for players who don't like to get lost, but allow player who like immersion to disable it either temporarily or for the whole lifetime of our character. AND give proper directions for every location.

It doesn't work fine at all in Oblivion. Many of the quest are as vague as "Go to this cave outside of town"... which is all but impossible to know where your suppose to go. Also, how is it working fine if I have to sneak a peak at the Cheat Marker to have any idea where I'm going? In that case I'm still using the damn thing and not just being told where to go. And what if I'm at the South part of the map and the quest marker simply points north? How exactlly am I ever going to find where I am going from that? Simple.... I'm not going to, unless I use the quest marker. I'm guessing you have never actually tried this, as I have and it does not work at all.

Oh, and In order for this to actually be "built into the game" the quest giver has to give solid directions. If they don't, its not "built into the game" at all and its idiotic to say it is. Something is only built in, when its there by design.

Well I don't remember where this was said, but NPCs will actually point out directions now. I think that indicates that they won't be relying heavily on a quest marker this time around, and rather dialogue. I wish I knew where I read that, but I can't remember. Perhaps somebody can help bring these facts to the table.

The problem isn't whether to make it an option or not, it is whether to design the game with the quest compass in mind. If the game is designed with the compass in mind, little to no direction is given to the player to locate the said quest item/location and thus modding the compass out would significantly and unnecessarily complicate the quest. If the compass were to be an option the game would have to be specifically designed with this in mind so NPC offer accurate direction on where to proceed.

Yeah, I'm thinking that Skryim is going to use, more or less, what Morrowind did.

many people said that Morrowind directions were vague and I agree the dwemer puzzlebox was a pain and I spent hours finding that wrecked ship in solstiem

I have played a few playthroughs of Oblivion over a period of a few hundred hours playing this way. Most of the quests mention the name of a particular cave or ruin, etc., and if you eventually find that location, you will know where to go without ever activating the quest.

If you are in a big hurry to complete a particular quest on the other side of the map, of course your only choice would be to glance at the general area on the map.

I'm not in any hurry to complete any particular quest, which is a different sort of playthrough, as I enjoy the journey more than the destination, in other words, the process of exploring and finding all the locations on the map.

I collect lots of quests traveling back and forth among the cities by foot and complete some of the steps that take place near whichever city I'm closest to at the moment. Eventually, I will complete all the quests.

The "activate quest" action serves for no other purpose than as a button to turn quest markers on or off.

I disagree, though I LOVED Morrowind(I would play it for hours) I could never get anything done, save the VERY simple quests from people around down, couldn't even get past like the 3 main story quest, something about finding some ruins, that took me awhile, then I had to find something in it, but I had no idea where to go. In all, I completed very few quests, because I didn't know where to go, and if you forgot something you had go all the way back to the quest giver.

people need to get used to the idea the compass is here to stay, a lot of casual gamers play it and bethesda will lean towards them

Yeah, but a wrench gets thrown in when you consider what Todd said about NPCs telling you detailed directions, and sometimes act as guides, as opposed to telling you to go to place X and having your compass tell you where to go.

Yes. These filthy elitists should be happy to have a chance to bask in the glory of being a simpleton that can't go anywhere without a magic arrow that points you all the way to the very item you're looking for. You people need to get used to it! I bet if Beth put in a button that automatically put the object of the quest into your inventory without the need to leave the quest-giver's side, you'd probably claim that's "dumbing down" the game.
I bet all you people that don't want a magic arrow to show you everywhere you need to go play on PC.
Wankers.

Right, so it seems like at worst what we'll get is: 1) there'll still be quest markers on the compass, but 2) if you activate a different quest, you aren't shooting yourself in the foot.

But then, if you're going to go to the effort of designing the game so that quest markers on the compass aren't needed, then it seems odd to not have an option to turn off quest markers completely.

:shrug:

Also, maybe it's not a one-size-fits-all system: maybe some quests will have NPC directions, and others won't.

maybe the compass got dialed back I just know it has been in 3 games released by bethesda (yes I am considering NV one of them) and they didn't take it out

Put Duct tape or electrical tape over your compass

That's a separate issue: the quest journal wasn't very helpful in Morrowind. But this thread is about the quest compass, that nobody wants to take away from you by the way: notice the word Option in the title?