Oblivion's quest compass was discussed and derided a lot, but the quest pop-ups were more of a nuisance to me.

Oh, and some of the game messages were just redundant and annoying, e.g., the infamous "loading area".

Do you hope that TES V will suffer less from these? I have only played Fallout 3 very little - does Bethesda seem to have learned their lesson in this regard?

One reasonable compromise might be to add a "training wheels on/off" switch (well, perhaps named othwerwise) in the game menu. Also, tutorial messages in the introductory dungeon (I assume a start similar to those in previous games) should be toggleable, since many people like to start plenty of new characters.

No more game breaking quest pop ups please! It's better a little message in a corner that the quest log has been updated, it's my choice to open it and read or just ignore and go on. The same with dialogue window where the whole world freezes while I'm talking is plain stupid.

I think a quest compass basically means that go there and press e on this character/location becomes just that. Finding out for yourself is much more rewarding.

However, the quest info on Morrowind, even after the update, was poor. It was a pain the backside going back and forth, there was not re-ordering, I was never even sure if it stopped displaying completed quests.

The idea of having things optional is rubbish, like the argument that fast travel is optional so therefore why complain is a rubbish argument. The game is geared towards that, Having a quest compass/marker means there is a lesser requirement to have descriptive and well thought out quest clues (in the same way that not using fast travel in OB is not an option as there are no viable alternatives, such as mark, recall, boats, sylt stryders etc).

Edit - the pop up didn't worry me so much - loads of things break immersion.

However, it did seem a bit Duplo compared the Morrowind's Meccano.

The "loading area" notifications need to go away, but I don't mind quest notifications.

The Quest compass needs to be able to be toggled on/off and I'll be disappointed if it can't be done in the game menu. I understand the need some have to use the little green arrow and I admit I may need that arrow myself from time to time, but I want the chance to try to accomplish these things on my own. If I can find a little box in a big ruin or a burial cave in an ash storm, then I like the chance at accomplishing the challenges that await me in Skyrim on my own.

The compass should only point you to, for example, an NPC in a city you need to talk to (assuming said NPC isn't in some "secret location"), due to NPC schedules. But it should never lead you straight to an item buried somewhere in some dungeon.

The Morrowind journal gave well enough hints and orders where a quest compass wasn't necessary. THis being said it was poorly organized and annoying to go back to unfinished quests. An organized version of the Morrowind quest journal would be my best bet for TES V.

I think it's impossible to say seeing as the new engine is something no one has seen in action yet.

For me the compass is awesome and I don't really mind the pop-ups. In fact I don't really even notice them anymore.

I'm indifferent with regards to the pop ups, but I agree that the compass is awesome. People actually aren't against the compass itself, it's more the quest arrow, which should probably be a optional thing, so the developers should make sure that it is possible to get to a place without it.

I would like to see the return of a quest journal ala MW, but make it organized by quest instead of just written in the exact order that you receive the information. If I was keeping a journal for quests, I wouldn't just stream-of-consciousness write every bit of information I got, but would section things off by quest for easy reference. If they could make the journal update individual sections, there would be little reason for the quest compass. If an NPC has a schedule where they walk around the city or frequent a shop, you should be able to find people in the city who could tell you about their schedule, and that schedule would get written down in your journal.

As for the "loading area" dummy alert, it's unnecessary but not the worst thing in the world. I think random trees popping up out of nowhere is more immersion breaking than the message. At least the message lets me know that my game hasn't frozen.

EDIT: speeling mistakes