There was a recent thread in which someone reported that in an interview with Todd Howard in a magazine, he said that quest-giving NPCs will now give the player-character more detailed instructions as to how to get somewhere. Morrowind's system could be infuriating, with the player spending hours walking in circles, trying to find some easy-to-miss dungeon, but I find it preferable to just looking at the map and moving in the direction of the little quest arrow. The thing is, if NPCs will go to the trouble of, again reportedly, walking you to a road and telling you where to go in detail, wouldn't having a quest arrow on your mini-map kind of defeat the purpose?

"Yeah, so what you need to do is walk down this road here until you get to a big hill. Then you want to take a right and continue until you come across a lake, at which point you want to walk clockwise around it, and you won't be able to miss that Giant that I want you to sort out for me." OK, thanks. Just give me a second whilst I adjust the little arrow on my mini-map until it's pointing up...and off we go!". It would seem strange to have both detailed instructions about quest locations and an arrow in your mini-map homing you straight to the location. Perhaps you need to listen to the NPC's instructions, and only when you are near the desired location will the little arrow appear on your map, pin-pointing you to your location?

What do you guys think? Will NPCs giving you detailed guidance on where to go be a waste of time if you can just skip through their dialogue and follow the arrow on your map?

Hopefully it replaces the quest marker, it probably will, as almost ALL (not all, almost) longterm ES fans hated it

They'd need to have all voices give directions to all places, since Radiant Story could put a quest almost anywhere you haven't been. I'd prefer it over quest markers, though. Even if they say "I've written the directions in your journal" I'd prefer it.

The thought of being pointed in the direction as claimed sounds pretty cool. I can already picture the epic ascending of a mountain to get to a cave within which lies a great artifact of power.

A lot of the problem with people getting lost in Morrowind was in either not paying good attention to the directions or not understanding them. One I recall seeing a lot was the Urshilaku Burial. The directions said to walk north from the camp, east along the coast until you reach a cairn and then south to the cavern. That took you right to the door, but I think a lot of folks didn't know what a cairn is.

I prefer vagueness in an rpg, because that leads to discovering the unexpected.

I think it must be a replacement for the quest marker. There's absolutely no reason I can think of that they would develop such a system, if they were planning to leave quest markers in. This has clearly been developed as an alternative to one of the most complained about features of Oblivion.

if they can tell me how to get to a cave with details of where to turn and what landmarks, why can't they just write it on my map? Morrowind had some really annoying places to find, and with npcs having no clue where they send you, you often got incorrect or extreamly vague directions

What would be nice is if instead of the quest marker being right on the spot in question, it would make something like a 'Zone' around the circle and you would know it is somewhere in the zone, but not exactly where. Also, any time you need to go into a city or a building or a cave the quest marker (if it returns) should go to the entrance of the cave or house and no further. How the hell does someone who has never seen or been inside the place tell you exactly where to go?

i highly dout the quest marker is gone... they might do somethin similar to red dead redemption and high light the region where the quest is which wouldnt be to bad, since anythings better than the quest marker.

and dependin on how much info is told, it could mak the region smaller if its more specific.

Like RDR? I like that. I would like the specific directions given by the NPC so you dont have to look at your map, but if you have to it gives a vauge general area the location is in. Once your in a dungeon though your on your own for finding things.

Not every quest needs to have a pinpoint marker, which was something that bothered me with Oblivion. I dont mind having markers in themselves but they did overdo it.



Like an MMO

Not that I mind the system, as I play MMOs.

Precisely. Most of the dungeons have been fairly linear in recent TES games, you usually just go straight to the back to find the item. It would be nice to have to dig around a dungeon, or perhaps you go all the way in and can't find it, and after an hour of searching you give up and head to the entrance, only to see the item you needed laying on the ground in a corner by the door. That would just be mean lol.

While it won't make sense if there are still quest markers, what someone can do is just turn the quest off through the journal/minimap. I am very glad for this news that there will be detailed instructions. It certainly will make traveling to the destination more enjoyable and more challenging.

Man, I don't understand you people. If you want precise directions, why not play a game on rails like Fable or a shooter. Where's your sense of adventure, exploration, discovery? Don't you miss building that cliff racer cloud up to a dozen members?

Oh yeah, bring back the names like Bthcüfaruun and Ysssimmarasssis for my amusemant watching people trying to spell them in Cheats and Spoliers when asking for those directions.

Yes, I loved the adventures I got in Morrowind while searching for the quest locations, and yes, I loved those fantastic names for Dwemer ruins, books, and the like.

So much more imagination used in making that fantastic game.

I really hope they get rid of quest arrows. Ruined the whole exploration thing when I'm in a dungeon for a quest.

Instead, have clues along the way to help you find the item, like books or scrolls telling a story behind it and leaving you clues on where to find this object in this dungeon. They did do some of that in Oblivion, but you still had those lame arrows so it kind of ruined the point

I like the quest arrows and I also like good directions. MW did not have good directions(and why can't the people just mark it on my map if they know where it is) and OB did not have direction most of the time at all.

Now I will use directions most of the time, but I won't have to get frustrated like in MW and go out of the game to check some website were what I am looking for is. I will just check my marker. The best of both worlds. They should do the same for Fast travel.

What they should do is give you a rough, drawn map with land marks and you have to figure out where those landmarks are and navigate according to them. Like when the Countess of Bruma gives you a map of pale pass so that you can find the Madstone.

True it's easier just to find the new location on the player's map... but sometimes I think it's so easy it bores me.

Yes it sounds like a good idée and would worked nice in Oblivion but I don't see how it can work with radiant story.
Many npc in Oblivion just mark the location on the map even if it's not a quest location.

I loved trying to find my way...something like...

"Head north from the coast, turn left at the two pillar rocks, and continue west to find the south facing cave."

That was interesting.

I hate quests where I'm told to find a missing person, and rather then asking around, I just get a fat arrow on the map immediately, what the hell is that about?

Having an automatic quest marker made everything too easy, I agree. However, I'd still like to be able to manually set my own marker on the map.

I didn't mind the quest arrows as much as the journal pop-ups. It completely ruined immersion for me and caused me to disregard a rather obvious clue in a certain Dark Brotherhood quest.

Quest arrow needs to die and be eaten by a dragon, which is then eaten by M'aiq, and who then makes fishy sticks out of it to scratch his back.

/End thread for me.

With less than 442353 dungeons crowding the entire map like in Oblivion, the quest arrow could be replaced with instructions of how to find the dungeon.

When it comes to NPC's though, it would be a pain to track down a single person if you don't know where he lives. We really need a lot better instructions than in Oblivion if the quest arrow on people shall go away, especially as some has weird behaviors (caused by faulty schedules) or traveling schedules where they head out to another town for a couple of days.

So I'm all for replacing the quest arrow on destinations such as a dungeon, if we get detailed instructions how to get there instead - but I'm not so sure about taking away the quest arrow on NPC's.

My thing with the whole quest compass thing is that... I find I kind of need it most of the time.

The thing with me is - unless a game has a useful way of storing and storing all of my open quests, and also linking each one with the pertinent NPC dialog (which, honestly, I've yet to see a videogame do this in a manner that I can effectively make us of;) I'm going to need to use that quest compass at some point.

Especially in a game series like the Elder Scrolls, it can be a matter of weeks (IRL) between the time that I talk to an NPC about a quest, and actually getting around to trying to do it. In that time I'll certainly have forgotten any directions the NPC may have given me - and often even which NPC it was that I'd talked to about it in the first place.

For the sake of "immersion," I always figured that of course my character is walking around with his map (the one that I, as a player, also have access to.) And the Quest Compass is simply a manifestation of the NPC marking the area on my map. (Any NPC that can give detailed enough instructions for you to find a place in-game is going to have enough knowledge to mark it on a map, after all.)

Anyway, that's my opinion on the matter at least...