dont worry about it i got severely bashed for saying i was disappointed that they didnt have a auto-lock or auto-target casting OPTION. Granted i didnt explain the reason I would like to have it (partially disabled in one hand) but people in every game will be elitists and bash you if you dont fit their mold.

Take a closer look. I know its hard to notice, but they don't pop up until the wolves are visible and right in front of you.

That doesn't mean that will always be the case. They're still there, marking where enemies are.

Okay, but with the details we know, they only seem to pop up with wolves, and they only pop up when they are close enough to you. I know your concerned, but when its pretty obvious how they will work, there isn't a reason to make yourself worried.

I don't think it is obvious, yet. I think you're making an assumption based on very little evidence.

This. I don't like being told exactly where to go.

Exactly. I think it's just a lot more fun.


I would like the compass to know my direction, but I don't want quest markers or enemy markers. Map markers, and cardinal directions are fine.


Will probably be modding it.

This,


As a console player all I can hope for is a on/off toggle, and the ability to place it somewhere else other than where it was located in the e3 demonstration. I'd probably use the compass just to double check my bearings from time to time during the first playthrough. After that I'd remember the lay of the land, and probably just turn it off if I could.

Maps aren't even part of the issue. That is a complete red herring.

You are of course, correct. Fake difficulty is NOT fun. In Oblivion, there were numerous daedra placed in every Oblivion gate that did not need to be killed in order to close the gate. In the very first Oblivion gate you come to, you only need to kill the Sigil keeper, and every other daedra can be disposed of by running through the gate and reaching the Sigil Stone. For me, that fake difficulty was not fun, because it made combat unnecessary.

After playing Oblivion for 80 hours, I learned that the fastest and, in fact, only way to complete many quests within the game was to follow the red quest arrow until it turned green, then follow the green quest arrow until I got the quest completed dialog. The most efficient way is to ignore all enemies. Assuming that Skyrim's main quest will be a road to defeating Alduin in single combat, with quest markers I will easily get up to that point of the game in 10 hours. If I end up being a higher level, I will be able to defeat Alduin in at most, 10.5 hours. The developers say that Skyrim's main quest will take 25 hours to complete, meaning that on my first play through I just got up to the final boss in less than half the time that the developers designed it to be. Do you know what is terrible about that? I am not even a normal gamer, in the past 6 months I've spent at most 15 hours actually playing a game. That is about 45 minutes a week.

Consider the fact that in order for someone to be entertained, they actually have to be interested. A game that writes it's own walk-through for you is not particularly interesting. Normal people get bored, and so if the game is not engaging, they won't be entertained.


I know it is a terrible example in comparison to TES, but look at a game like Bad Company, which I myself have not played. In Bad Company, every player can probably complete the same single player campaign, and be exactly as good as one another. What every player can not do is get MVP in a multiplayer match. When I play Oblivion, I am as good as the developers and every other player who will ever play the game. What does a Bad Company player actually get from Oblivion's quest targets? They can't compete with their friends, or in fact with the game itself, because the game is telling them how to play and the friends would have to be blindfolded not to be able to complete the same quests as the Bad Company player. The advantage I can see in Skyrim is that now the Bad Company player can say "well.. I completed the Assassination Quest of Dragonis Rex without using Clairvoyance"

For me its about exploration, discovery, and wonder.
I like it much more when I take a little detour, climb a hill, find a nook and in it is a cave than I like walking along and seeing a marker pointing towards a cave wich happens to be cleverly hidden in a little nook.
The latter takes away all joy of discovery.
A game should be a rewarding experience and that comes with certain obstacles and difficulties.
It is much more rewarding and therefore much more fun to minutely search an area untill you find for example an entrance in a hollow tree than to be guided there by a magic gps.

Quest markers remove a lot of enjoyment from a game, simply because its like a crossword puzzle with the answers already pencilled in.
You dont get to discover.

That's arguable.

If I don't use quest markers, I would still like directions detailed enough that it doesn't take me half an hour to find something I need.

Crossword puzzles are amazingly dull.

Why are you arguing against this? In many cases in Oblivion, if you didn't use quest markers, you didn't have the directions that were detailed enough for you to find something you needed within half an hour.

That's your opinion. My friends opinion is that Oblivion is the most pointless game in existence and doesn't even bare mentioning.

Yes, well, lol it was just a turn of phrase.
Of course there need to be adequate directions and I probably meant 'for what feels like half an hour' because of course there are limits.
But still, say an NPC tells you the exact area, the little clearing north of the statue, it would be more enjoyable to search the area untill you find an entrance in a dead tree than it would be to just be directed to the exact spot the entrance is at.

Oh I would definitely prefer quality directions to the quest marker. As long as it gets no worse than the dwemer puzzle box.


Why are you arguing against me? You aren't allowed to do that.

And what you said in the second sentence? Exactly my point.

It's pretty much implied that whatever I say is opinion, unless I call it a fact obviously. If you get excited by crossword puzzles, then that's perfectly cool with me.

I apologise for the potential double post - this post is actually on topic and answering the OP's question.

I don't mind having a compass in TES. What I do mind is walking down an abandoned road somewhere in the far reaches of the wilderness, going right around around the bottom of a mountain and seeing an Aeyleid ruin spread out beneath me and thinking "Finally". Or, as actually happened, completely ignoring the existence of the mountain and just going up and over it because I already knew where the Aeyleid ruin was and the road was taking an unnecessary route away from it. What I didn't like in Oblivion was that my character already knew where everything was, despite it being hidden behind something. More than that, I disliked that the most efficient way to 'explore' the country side was to pick a direction, pick up a map marker, move towards it until you discovered it and then join the dots with the next one that you had already picked up. My view is that if you have the time and patience to play an open world, sandbox game, then you really shouldn't mind walking straight past a cave hidden in the rocks and discovering the next fort instead, because it all adds to the adventure.

I mind quest markers because they mean that Oblivion has no long term sustainability. In 30-40 years, I may find Oblivion in some dusty old attic somewhere, search for a computer and load up the game and do a speed completion of the main questline in more or less the same time that I can do it now. I'll have forgotten every detail about every quest, and I'll still be as good a player as I am right now. It's not a mental challenge at all and the combat isn't a physical challenge in terms of reflex times

The other part I hate about quest markers is that it lead to every quest in a quest line being as difficult as the tutorial dungeon.

On an unrelated note, you might want to have a look at my sig.



I'm not saying that you aren't allowed to argue against it. However, you appear to be arguing for quest markers for the reasons that we are arguing against them - because in Oblivion without them, you wouldn't be able to complete the quests without the UESP walk-through. Except the UESP walk-through gives you hardly any information that isn't found from the quest markers (with the exception of how to avoid quest breaking glitches and so on.) Exactly your point indeed. Not to mention the one about fake difficulty.

Well, of course, but you presented "crossword puzzles are amazingly dull" as a fact. You used it to nullify the argument that quest markers in Oblivion make it the spiritual successor to a crossword puzzle with answers attached. Which is even more dull than a crossword puzzle without said answers, except that you can ask your five year old daughter to complete the crossword as a handwriting exercise.

30-40 years?

Good luck even getting the thing to run in that far in the future. Nevermind the 3-4 new TES games that would have came out in that time.

I get it, you think the game is too easy and the rest of us svck for not being the gaming grandmaster that you are. Are you done broadcasting your superiority yet?

Because you are not getting any kudos out of it. And no one is impressed.

so let me pose this question then..at the end of they day, after say months of gameplay, how do you know if you've played the game to its fullest? meaning how do you know if you've discovered most of what the game has to offer, particularly non quest related, caves, dungeons, villages, farms, and so on? Do you at some point after say beating the game consult a walkthrough of some kind or turn them on?

There were markers in the map view.

Indeed. I wosh it will be atleast optional, i still have no trouble with compass.

Considering that the family computer 5 years ago could run Morrowind perfectly, I think that keeping the computer I own now in a box in the attic with Oblivion will more than suffice, don't you?

Correct, never mind the 3-4 new TES games that would have come out in that time. Even our beloved Skyrim does not include compulsory quest markers (that we have seen thus far), but instead has an entirely optional spell for a similar effect. (I'm hoping, at least)

Except I'm NOT a gaming grand master at all. I'm not broadcasting my superiority. I easily took 40 hours to complete Crysis on normal difficulty, and the developers estimated that it would take a gamer 6 - 8 hours. Considering that fact, and that 8 months ago at a friends house we played for an hour to get from one checkpoint to another in COD Black Ops, and after that hour hadn't got anywhere, it could be said that I'm at the exact opposite of the scale, and I wouldn't be able to deny that.

Seeing as your entire rebuttal of my argument was a personal attack on me, and the only point that relates to the argument was flimsy at best, I would say that if anything, you know perfectly well how accurate that argument was.

Using the marker in Oblivion did not guarantee you'd find everything in the game. So I'm not sure what your point is here.

I would prefer no quest marker... And a journal that isn't useless. (aka people have to LOOK at it)

The clairvoyance spell did seem like a nice addition though.

I love it when Bethesda comes out with a new game. The old factions and rivals muster their arguments. The Morrowind Tribunal declares war on the Imperialist Oblivionites, and the fast travel mages do mortal combat with the anti-fast travel necromancers. Its like watching an episode of Rome. But yeah, I'll throw my lot in with one of these noble houses. The compass is here to stay, and it will svck as usual. I hate starting a sentence off like this, but it must be done. Morrowind did it better. Giving you an idea of your destination, with landmarks and terrain details, added a sense of adventure and mystery to the game, it also improved re-playability and just generally made things more interesting.

So lets look at some strengths of both camps.

No Quest Marker

- You discover places of interest you may not have normally come across
- You become lost, and have to make do with the materials you brought on your journey
- You encounter other quests along the way
- You feel like the world is bigger than it actually is
- You have to keep your wits about you, what lies ahead is unknown

Quest Marker

- Quests are easy
- ????
- Don't have to read/listen to information to know what you need to do.

I thought Morrowinds use of the map as a compass worked great......oh wait we dont even have a map in this game, we have 3D google Nirn....

On topic i want quest markers gone. And i hope there is nothing in the game that directs me towards points of interest that would be terrible.

edit: while it would still be possibly to include a fixed compass in some way on the 3D map it seems that it would be a bit dissorienting/confusing because of the whole 3D aspect...perhaps just bring up the rotating compass when the map comes up.

Also i agree with all points made here.


I want to have to go through town talking to locals to figure out how to get to where i need to go......i REALLY would hate it if quest markers automatically popped up as soon as we accept a quest.

I would prefer over everything else if it was like morrowind....you ask around town and get directions like "to find the cave of blib...take the road south of blah blah and follow it west to fort shmeg....once you reach the fort head south west.....if you reach the foyada you have gone too far."

This would of course go along quite nicely with a good old vague paper map that leads to lots of exploration/discovery...........OH WAIT i have 3D gps/mini model and i can see every nook and cranny of the mountain so you can take that sense of discovery/exploration and toss it right out the window.

They should make the compass a purchasable item that the player has to equip in order to activate. That would be neat and would make its use optional.

I also like the 'spell as your quest marker' thing. Very cool way to integrate an optional UI element into the world.