At first Oblivion really started to draw me in bliviongate: you know, go and find the emperors missing son and save the world. It was great I got my mind around the level system and the places things were awesome. Then slowly it started happening, I would walk by an NPC talking about some ghost somewhere, and I thought cool I can go to that area see what I can find, go in a cave or two and find that ghost. I decide to talk to the NPC to see if there is any back story to the ghost (I like lore) :biggrin: As I enter the dialogue screen he tells me where to find the ghost to the very square foot of cyrodill where he is located ( he marks it on map of course) , also I am informed almost precisely on what to expect... at this point well... :stare: YOU SIR HAVE DEPRIVED ME OF MY ADVENTURE!!! Before I go further I say right now that I love oblivion, it is an AMAZING RPG but having the game almost finished (finished to the point where I am content with where I am. Obviously there is no such thing as finishing Oblivion completely) However, I have only played a bit of morrowind and I have to say the atmosphere was well beyond the ability of words to describe, I was an explorer in a mysterious land! IT WAS AWESOME (except the combat system it may rot in he**. Sorry guys but it was bad), the quests and finding people was great! I felt awesome, there was some planning involved and exploring and putting clues together in your head, etc. Basically I understood why NPCs gave me the quests they "couldn't do it themselves". You see in oblivion a large majority of NPCs who were leveled way above me or could turn into dragons were asking me to protect them or fetch their parcel from someplace where they could have easily gone themselves (Heck they even knew exactly where the damn thing is) I felt more like a butler then a freelance mercenary that was hired to do a job.

My point is I want a bigger challenge than oblivion, PLEASE GOD make it more challenging! Oblivion was great for getting me introduced to the TES world now send me feet first into hell plz! Anyone else agree, shouldn't Skyrim be this way?

Now I understand that there are people that thought morrowind was too hard and don't want to see something like that again, my reply to that is simple, hardcoe mode for skyrim, for those who want adventure and normal "there it is" mode for new players or people who prefer it that way.

Am I the the odd one out here who wants a harder game or are there more people that think like this?

I think I can agree that I preferred needing to explore to find locations in Morrowind rather than being just pointed to exactly where I need to go. I wouldn't necessarily say the quest compass was always a bad idea. I mean, it could be pretty helpful for finding NPCs in towns. In Morrowind, finding them was pretty easy unless they were meant to be hard to find because they always stood in one place, at most, they might wander around in a set area, they'd never leave the building they're in unless a quest dictates they should. So characters could just tell you where a character lives or where to meet him, and you could find him easily. But in Oblivion, due to radiant AI, NPCs tended to wander around, as such, NPCs really couldn't just tell you where to find them, and it can at times be a little troublesome when I'm looking for characters who do not have quest markers pointing to them, like ones who are not involved in active quests. Of course, some NPCs aren't in the habit of wandering around, but a lot of them are. However, dungeons and towns aren't going to move around, so finding them based in directions is not really a problem, sure, it wasn't always easy in Morrowind, but usually, with patience, I could find even pretty easy to miss places.

Still, I think we can probably assume the compass is here to stay as telling you exactly where you want to go seems to be the trend in games as of late. So my suggestion is to make the compass optional. I can't see it being too hard to add an "enable/disable quest markers" option. The main challenge with making the compass optional would be adding directions for quests, because allowing players to disable the quest markets would be quite meaningless if there is no way to find places without them, but it is doable, it just requires a bit of extra dialog for NPCs to tell you where to go. Even if you're using the compass, it would make sense for role-playing purposes for such dialog to be in the game because your character wouldn't psychically know where a place is simply because it was mentioned by name. Admitably, some quests in Oblivion adressed this by having NPCs say they would mark the location on your map, but not all quests had a line to that effect, yet often, even though that did not happen, you'd still know where to go. And in Morrowind, NPCs would often still give you directions on how to reach a place even when they mark it on your map. Of course, the game didn't have as many map markes as Oblivion, but generally, towns and cities still tended to be marked, and this made sense too since even if you know the position of a location on your map, you might not know the easiest route to get there.

You basically summed up my exact feelings about Oblivion and how things should have been changed.

So thank you, and I completely agree with you.

Welcome, and happy adventuring! :biggrin:

morrowind style directions -----------------------> oblivion compass

agreed but they should make it so that the quest journal wont open up auto all the time and also the red or green arrow on compass svcks. The npc that you ask about the quest should say like north from *this* mountain and west from the huge rock kinda like in TES4 the pale pass quest was (there was no guide arrow) bliviongate:

EDIT: They should make the quest arrow optional...

YES! ^ That is a great example of a good quest!, God it was an awesome quest

some directions, yes. let the player find things by himself.
one quest in O had more or lesse the feel u r talking about, i think it was Lifting the Vale. You had some rough map showing a few distiguishing terrain signs and landmarks that pointed u on how close u were to a specific area.
Another quest had a cool puzzle, involving you having to face a mausoleum at noon to see the reflection of the sun indicate you a map area, a nice different quest.
what i do not want is what got me to hate morrwoind the first week i bought it: some quest asked u to go to some dwarven mine, that u had to find first, so the directions were something like "on the way west to B you turn north and try to find it". And guess what happened? The directions were wrong. They fixed that later, so the journal description would get u there. But the amount of time i wasted retracing all my steps, reading, re-reading... because of a f**** bug in the journal-quest description...
:banghead: :swear: :flame: :gun:

You mean Dagon shrine?

I liked Morrowinds style because I had to ask around and got to see lots of stuff along the way...It's just a shame that most of the landscape consisted of dirt and Dunmer. Oblivion got the landscape right but kind of held my hand through quests while I was wanting to run off an explore the beautiful scenery. If Bethesda were to have an optional quest arrow and Morrowind style informmation then I would be happy...mostly.

Sorry, delete post.

Of course.

And while were at it no map markers magically popping up the compass.

I can explore on my own ty very much. Don't tell that Mephala's shrine is that way. (strangles game)

Another "Morrowind is better than Oblivion"-thread, ey? I personally would like a mix of the two. Oblivion could be too easy, and Morrowind too hard. I don't enjoy a game when I spend just as much time finding a dungeon as I do going through it, having spent most of my vital potions on the way. I don't mind directions, as long as they are easy to follow. Also, I don't mind map markers if they point you in the general direction. I don't really mind map markers either, there are more important things for me that makes a game great or not.

I cannot agree more with you.
The hardcoe mode is a good idea, the only diference would be the lack of specific informations in text or speech, giving only general aproximative clues, the no compass options or any device like map marking. The only one marking your map should be yourself.
The auto level, should be settable so the player can adjust the ramdomness os the level bracket and create a more dificult gameplay.
hardcoe could contain a more taxing weight/clumbesomeness to strenght ratio so player can carry less.
One of the other thing i really want back is not knowing since the start i am the zero. I want to start as a jhon doe and IF thing happens and i run after then i ll be someone. The OMG i m the hero is good for cheezy games.

I agree with the OP here. I once did a quest called http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Oblivion:Nothing_You_Can_Possess without any help of journal or quest-arrow and i completed the quest with the help of a book called http://www.imperial-library.info/content/oblivion-chronicles-brothers-marukh. The feel of discovery was fantastic because i spent weeks of trying to find the ruins. I recommend to do it this way if you haven′t done it yet. :toughninja:

So the quests could be a bit more vague, but it would be good if you had the option to beat the quests either "Morrowind-style"(more vague directions and fewer map-markings by quest givers) or "Oblivion-style"(Quest-arrow and marked locations). I think it would be great then.

I'm afraid i'm going to have to take the unpopular position of defending the quest arrow. Big, huge sandbox worlds filled with dungeons are what Bethesda makes best, if i need to find a specific dungeon in the middle of nowhere i'd like some guidance on how to find it. Not necessarily it's exact position, but i'd like to know i'm searching on the right side of the map.

I've been replaying Dragon Age too lately, those of you who have played it propably remember that it highligths questgivers with a shining ! above their heads. "dumbed down" one might say, i say "convenience". I rather spend time playing the game rather than fighting the game.

But a middle ground can be found in this too, perhaps have a quest arrow that points the general location, not the exact one. Give the schedule of an NPC instead of implanting him with a GPS beacon (like in the one Dark Brotherhood quest in Oblivion).

Regardless, i'm happy i'm not the one who has to make these decisions He is going to get yelled at, a lot, regardless of the decision :bonk:

Edit: some monster has removed the original *bonk* smilie :swear:

My point here is not that oblivion is worse or better than Morrowind, but rather, that oblivion was a LARGE full game tutorial to TES (mind you it was still epic and beautiful in its own right) it had some good quests as mentioned in the posts above but over all the game was holding your hand 90% of the game telling you exactly where to go and what to do, that's really what bothered me and what I hope we will see less of that in Skyrim...

I have to admit i liked the quest arrow first, but after playing Morrowind i found it great that i didn′t have it but at the same time i was usually checking the UESP wiki because i didn′t have the patience to find the quest location.

I wish the NPCs would give the quests in the style of Morrowind, but you can use the quest-arrow to help you if you want. So if you want to do it without the arrow, you can just remove it. If you don′t like to spend a week finding a dungeon, use the quest-arrow(Of course there should be a option in options to remove the quest-arrow).

With this implemented, i think it would please the both crowds.

I do agree that there was too much handholding in Oblivion. I also think Morrowind was too hard and confusing, making the quests often more frustrating than fun. So I would personally like a mix of those (either better directions or a more generic map marker). But the issue in itself isn't that big a deal for me either way.

Yes, having the quest arrow toggleable, and have written instructions in your journal should please both crowds, and should not be a huge strain on development time and resources either.

I am up for having it for some quests and then not for others. To me it makes sense if someone knows where something is and you have a map that they can point out that area for you. Now having it take you to the exact spot I think that can be changed to a generalized area.

I know in Oblivion there were quite a few quests that did not have any kind of quest marker or anything. Since the NPC's can be buggy at times I am really torn as to not have a marker sometimes marking where they are. It can be really frustrating looking for an NPC in a location and he is not there because he is stuck in a wall or glitched out somewhere. With this new engine hopefully that will not be an issue and then I would be more open to the idea of not having the compass and things like that.

I like games to be immersive but not to the point where it is frustrating because of bugs.

More close to Oblivion type than Morrowind type. Just think about those who have much work and not much time to play games, they would search for this one place and cannot find it, three days in a row because they play 30 mins every day. Must be a very great experience for them. This is why a somewhat correct map marker would be great, pointing you do the right direction but not the exact point.

Excellent OP! :goodjob:

The problem there IS the cheasy solution to a problem that should not exist.
What you basicly saying is: i don t wan t to have the thing pointed specifically to me, but we need it because Beth isn t capable of programing the game as it should so we need such to remedy Beth incompetence.
What about some vital NPC having clear and simple path even if wide in area so they don t have a chance to get stuck or buggy ?

I agree with you that there s nothing wrong with:
There s a ghost on the north side of the (insert name) hill, he usually appear near a (insert name/or not) ruin at full moon. To reach the hill take the nothen path from here, and when you reach (insert reference point) turn left and go on you ll reach the hill. If you have a map and wishes it i can point you where it is.
The direction is generic but followable, and IF you wish and IF you have the right map a help can be pointed to you on a generic reference, but NOT the SPECIFIC place.
Its not like oblivion:
Sir, the ghost is in grid 335346754, on latitude 23420 longitude 465433 let me feed your GPS by bluethooth transmition. Should we call an artillery strike or some strategic bombing run ?
No need Lieutenent i ll have spock teleporting me there Spock, On my mark 3,2,1..

I did not want to say it exactly like that but yeah if they have a simple path then I am all for go see this person in this town at this time and the only thing the marker points me to is the town.