Someone's gonna pay for making me find these friggin' key cards.

I agree, although not to get off topic. The journal seemed like an actual journal in Morrowind. And I liked the journal set up with pages and dates and etc. In Oblivion I understand how they tried to make it easier with Completed, Unfinished, etc. However I think the entries themselves lacked an the urgency of doing something.

I reached the Great Sigil Stone and closed the Gate. The Battle of Bruma is won! Now to give the sigil stone to Martin.

I found the Heart of Lorkhan within the giant artifact Akulakhan. I struck the Heart with Sunder, then struck it again and again with Keening until the enchantment was destroyed. Severed from the sustaining power of the Heart, Dagoth Ur was destroyed. But the disturbance triggered an earthquake, and I had to flee for my life.

Now although they are somewhat similar. Your character in Oblivion- "Oh I won. Yay"; Your character in Morrowind- " I found the statue. I cant believe its size. after relentlessly fighting I figured it out. After the fight I almost lost my life again to an earthquake." Oh by the way, if you werent sure what to do with the Great Sigil stone because either you didn't listen to Martin ramble or your a complete idiot bring it to him.

Theres such a difference in how they feel. Even if theyre somewhat similar the fact that he/she writes so much more seems to make it more lively to me.

However, horribly off topic. Lol

~Regards, Wolf-Lord

Edit: Content

~Regards, Wolf-Lord

That's why you should be able to ask around. Ask some stranger about him, they could say "I don't know where he his, but Sam runs the Office of Imperial Commerce and is good friends with John. Why don't you ask him?" You go ask Sam: "Ah yeah, Joe. Well, he usually eats lunch and dinner at the pub in the Market District, but you could probably find him in his house in the Talos Plaza District early in the morning and late at night."

See, you shouldn't need the quest marker even for that. But sadly, in Oblivion, the devs pretty much built quests around the markers, so doing the above would be impossible in Oblivion. This is why they need to just cut quest markers all together.

Honestly, if you pay attention to the dialog and some journal updates. You'll get a lot of that info anyways. You just typically get it right from the start.

John: Ill need you to get retrieve my iron sword from Bob.
You: Where might I find Bob?
John: I'm not sure but I know he spends a lot of time at Aleswel. Why don't you try there?
Journal Update: After talking to John, he asked me to retrieve his iron sword from Bob. Bob spends a lot of his time at a popular inn. From 6 am to 9 pm, he eats breakfast. From 9pm to noon he does blah blah blah.

I just don't get how after just getting the quest you get all the information you need. ALONG with a magical needle telling you where to go.

~Regards, Wolf-Lord

Edit: So also say you hunt him down. His wife tells you well he'll come home tonight. Hell, even if she says hes out of town and will be back in a couple of days. Its not like that's unrealistic at all. So now your forced to wait to find them. Big bo hoo. Thats life. The game doesn't revolve around you. Your just another soul in this world. You shouldn't get the magic ability to travel the world to find him. And if she does tell you where hes going and you go there looking for him. I hope you miss him and then your forced to go back to his house because you couldn't just wait 24 hours.

~Regards, Wolf-Lord

Well, yeah. Good game design is good game design.

And, imo, giving players the option to play how they want is the epitome of good game design. I personally find it to be far more of an immersion breaker to have to use an outside source to find a quest objective than to switch on an ingame quest marker and have the game show me where it is. Ideally you don't need any of these things because the NPC given directions were good enough, but it's impossible to be sure that every quest gives directions that will be adequate for every player.

The big difference between Morrowind and Oblivion, the way I see it at least, is that, with Morrowind, they put their love of RPGing into every detail and made sure that every little corner of the world had personality and atmosphere and with Oblivion, they slapped it together so they could get to work on Fallout 3.


Because you're the Champion of Cyrodil.

On that problem I suggested that you still have the compass pointing pretty exactly where you need to go, HOWEVER, it only points to locations you know about.
If you got the info to look for a certain person and the only thing you know is where he works the marker will point there. If you know from what time to time he works there the marker will only be highlighted at that location at those times.
When you get more info like where he lives you will get another marker there. Combined with the work place marker the highlight on them will change depending on what info you have, if he works from 8 - 6 the work marker will be highlighted from 8 - 6. In the remaining time the home marker will be highlighted as that's the most likely location you will find him at.

You can expand that to many more locations and times, they can be based on what time schedule and places the NPC has assigned to him.


I did write a more detailed version of that system some time before but i think this will do for a general info.

Unless you've been commuting there every day for a week, you're not gonna know exactly where to walk just from intuition alone. So a pointer always breaks immersion for me, no matter what.

No, but from ASKING people who know that person maybe. I didn't say "you just suddenly know those things" I said it's based on what INFORMATION you have.

Read my post.

Unless I've PHYSICALLY been there, regularly (in which case the pointer would be irrelevant, anyway) I won't be able to know the exact way to go without remembering what was said to me and scoping out landmarks myself.

Therefore, the pointer always takes away from the experience of exploration and always breaks immersion for me. And I want it to be gone completely, not integrated deeper into the mechanics in some vain attempt to make it more immersive. I just want it gone and you're not convincing me otherwise.

Cheers.

Uhm people can give you directions too, in Morrowind they pretty clearly explained where to find Cauis Cossades in Balmora. If they give you a street name and house number you could very well guess where that is.
Until you have that info you just know then town, after asking around you maybe know the street and after some more asking around the exact address. If it's a shop or another commonly knowable place they could just tell you which street to look for too.

Ok, simply put:

Quest Compass = Hand Holding

Hand Holding = Immersion Breaking

Immersion Breaking = Bad

You know in Morrowind, you always heard "Ask questions. Talk is cheap." I don't think you got that feeling in Oblivion. Now I can see why dialogue was constricted in Oblivion seeing as how they voiced it all over. But the fact is. Id rather have text dialog with so much conversation then actual voice with limited conversation. If you had a real conversation with someone your not going to be limited. You can ask every person pretty much the same thing. In Oblivion they seem to limit what you can talk about to who it concerned. In Morrowind, I remember asking some ashlanders about say like....the Thieves guild. They would give you a short conversation saying " I have no idea," but here and there every now and again you might find someone who could say, oh well last time I was in Sadrith Mora I remember something about that. Why don't you check out such and such. And from there you now have basic directions.

~Regards, Wolf-Lord

Honestly, I could settle for a map marker on the world map, but ONLY if the map marker on the local map goes for good. The local map markers need to disappear and never come back. I mean, I dislike map markers on the world map too, and think it isn't necessary, but I understand that, because of voice acting, making directions for every quest isn't exactly viable. But once you get to the location, there is absolutely no need for a local map quest marker. In a quest to find an ancient and powerful artifact, it slaps immersion in the face for there to be a magic arrow telling me which doors to take to get to it and the exact spot where it is.

Only if it's being forced. And I consider being frustrated due to being unable to find something ingame to be far more detrimental to my enjoyment of the game than a little "immersion breaking."There are a TON of ingame features that could be considered "immersion breaking" (why does the world suddenly pause and kindly wait around for me while I dig through my bags and drink a potion?), but I don't see many people riling to get them removed.

I agree, although Daggerfall could have benefitted from a local quest arrow. If Bethesda decides to make Daggerfall-esque dungeons the average dungeon again(very unlikely, but possible), we need a local quest arrow.

I would say a very big reason for this is Bethesda's decision to go with voice acting. In fact, going heavy voice acting is also probably why there aren't as many ways to complete different quests compared to previous games. Think about it, if someone's playtesting a game like Morrowind and a new way to complete quest is figured out (for example, finding someone's lost pillow then returning it to them before you even get the quest telling you to look for it), this could be accommodated by adding some new NPC text to acknowledge whatever it is the PC did. Do the same thing with a modern sandbox game like Oblivion and you have to call in that NPC's voice actor for another session.

It's an unfortunate side effect of the industry's booming popularity. Making Morrowind today would take MUCH longer and cost a lot more money relative to what it did "back in the day."

No, not only if it's being forced. Have you not actually read the previous posts? Why is it that it's perfectly fine for those of us who hate the quest markers to be able to have it togglable, even though it brings up the many problems we've come across, yet my suggestion about releaseing the quest compass as a free dlc goes completely ignored?

Also, how often was anyone "frustrated" about not being able to find something in Morrowind, for example? I believe there was one case that people often get annoyed, during the quest involving the Dwemer Puzzle Box. One of the proccesses of a game series is learning from previous mistakes. Have you noticed how mounts where added again? Have you noticed how bugs where removed? This is no different. If there is no stupid quest marker, I doubt there will be such hidden items during the main quest. you're also making this assumption on one small oversight by the devs.


Because it's not feasible to create a real time menu option for me to look through my bags, without it just being plain silly. There's only so many hot keys, and it wouldn't make sense to only be able to do one of 8 things at any given time.

A quest marker isn't necessary. Quite the opposite, in fact.


I also think the poll quite clearly shows that the majority of players hate the quest marker. Bethesda should listen to the fanbase, and look at what they like. Also, looking at the better selling previous games; Arena, Daggerfall, Morrowind, not one had the stupid marker, yet all where some of the best games of thier time, and will likely be more of classics than Oblivion.

Why are you trying to convince me anyway? I'm not a dev.

I still think though there is a BETTER was to solve such things than just saying "remove it entirely" because personally i think it's at least a good base idea that just needs to be improved and implemented correctly.



Because I'm here to make suggestions and clear up misconceptions. I want to IMPROVE things and when I think something was ok but not perfect i try to suggest how to make it better.

I agree with you 100%. Getting rid of something doesn't fix it. That's what were discussing here. Ive heard a lot of good options. I also understand how they would be pressuered to make a fast game but the fact stands its up to them. And they know that they can design a game under standards and make money, but Id bet my life they are also aware that if they design a great game, taking a little more time. I bet they would profit a decent amount more. We can only hope that the devs read this and take our ideas.

Now I dont ever expect a perfect game but they can make damn good games.

~Regards, Wolf-Lord

Because making it available as free DLC is a completely pointless distinction from making it an available option out of the box. Your argument is that removing the quest markers will force the devs to make NPC directions better, yet the fact that they would be fully intending to release quest markers will somehow not have any affect on the quality of the ingame directions. If they can make good ingame NPC directions while fulling knowing that they will later add quest markers then there's no reason to go "oh, just release it in DLC" when it could be added to the game from the beginning.



People have trouble finding things in games all the time. Have you ever tried introducing someone new to gaming with Morrowind? Lots of people have trouble walking around without staring at the ground, much less finding someone's missing fork in a world as expansive as Morrowind's, no matter how good the NPC's directions are. Heck this is a problem new gamers have with lots of games, even games that have been supposedly "dumbed down" as the hardcoe "fans" love to say.



Neither is being able to dig through your inventory during combat, yet that doesn't stop us from having it ingame despite being an immersion breaker.




Wrong, the poll shows that the majority of Bethesda's more hardcoe fans hate the quest marker. Imagine that, a community made up of only the most hardcoe fans of the series (those are the only people you'll find on a game's forum), many of them hardcoe gamers, think that a feature meant to help newer, less experienced players should be removed from the game. :rolleyes:

Like I've been saying, make it togglable. There's no good reason to remove it outright other than to want to decide how other people play the game. If you think it's ok to "add it as free DLC" then there's no reason to not just have it in the base game.

There have been a number of sarcastic, personal, and unconstructive posts made by members who did not take the time to understand what the discussion was about or how they might enter the discussion constructively. Those posts are going away, and the members who made them should not post again until they have again read and understood the constructive criticism rule.

No, seriously, I truely believe that the biggest improvement would be to do away with the quest pointer completely. Any deeper integration of it just makes it more in my face and required.

The same can be said of anything; if you're new at something, odds are good you will be bad at it. Downright crappy, even. This is not a good reason to put padding over everything, however. I don't want ALL bicycles to be required to have training wheels because some people need them. I don't want all books to become children's books so that everyone can pick up and read any book out there if they're still learning to read.

The problem with making something that can be toggled is that it almost requires only a surface level of depth. If I want to toggle, say, whether lava hurts you, they have to go back and look at any areas with it to make sure the balance isn't being completely screwed up. Or, on topic, toggling the quest compass in Oblivion would be awkward because it only leaves you with unhelpful directions. If an option can be toggled, it was never necessary or very influential. In many cases I'd rather have a single option in which effort has been invested to make it an actual, substantial game mechanic. Saying something should be a toggled option is, itself, more or less deciding how other people should play. Odds are good that it's deciding the feature can't be used to the extent the other side wanted.