I'm all for Morrowind's system.
Although I hope for good directions. A few quests in Morrowind gave very bad directions.

Some people actually enjoy orienteering, where you go out with a map and a compass and have to find a place on your own or something that somebody has hidden and believe me, it is NOT all about luck, it is about perserverance, map reading and also the logic ability to tell where you are and where you should go next.

This is what makes adventuring appealing, your post I quoted is what is leading TES games to be dumbed down so it appeals to the lowest common denominator.

What this guy said. I don't have problems of things being shown on the map. You don't have to follow the map. I mean you could duct-tape your compass and wing it.

I think it is rediculous to have something marked on your compass the way it was in OB. I would actually like to see things marked (as in differently, circled or something) on your map. Even for tracking people, circle all the locations that they are know to frequent. But no pin point on their head, and no needle tracking from the compass. It is just supposed to tell N-S-E-W.

Sometimes in Oblivion I felt as if I was on auto-pilot. The quest markers just give you too much information. You enter a dungeon, and you know exactly where you need to go. Sometimes a quest wouldn't even tell you where you needed to go, or explain why you needed to go there, you just looked on the map and suddenly "Oh, I need to go to the southwest corner of Cheydinhal", or "Oh, I need to go to the Talos District of the Imperial City". The directions were too precise, streamlined, and arbitrarily given, and made me feel like the developers thought I had ADD or something, as if I would put the game down in frustration if I didn't find my goal in the first thirty seconds of knowing I even had a goal. This is what I think about when I hear people talking about how Oblivion was "dumbed down".

In this regard, Morrowind was better than Oblivion. There was more of a sense of accomplishment, and it was more realistic to have to hunt around a bit, go the wrong way, give up, come back to the quest later, or randomly come across it when you're looking for something else. Is it hard to believe that some quests should be difficult?

Please don't get me wrong, I love Oblivion and Morrowind both, but there are some things that Morrowind did better than Oblivion, and some things that Oblivion did better than Morrowind. Morrowind just happens to win on this particular subject.

I agree. I would much rather have to actually search the cave and actually find the location rather than having convenient red and green arrow points showing the way.

yeah I enjoy adventuring, but not in morrowind, because in morrowind I get a no map island picture, and no compass, How do you map read that, funnily I somehow still know where on that picture I am, and which way I'm pointing, even though I have never been on the island and have no compass to speak of. It's a good thing that when I look at the map I somehow always manage to look at it so that north is always up. I then get vague directions which can't be discussed, and even though these people seem to know exactly where they want me to go, they still can't show it to me on the map. I mean the first thing I do if I get bad directions, is get them to show me on the map, at least in daggerfall you simple but more importantly, precise directions.

wow yeah, I completely forgot I used to do that. I think the last game where i did do that might have actually been MW.

Man this is such an important reminder for me... had a little flashback going right back to playing Elite and noting down prices of things in different systems.

Wow i am surprised this got so many comments but then all the points I have read are very valid and true. I can agree with the toggle system to allow the option for markers or not but for a person like me that started on morrowind was used to not having this option in the first place. But all your contributions have been very interesting

I think that map markers should be optional. That way, its okay for both parties. Of course you're going to have the people who will complain anyway, as if they're being forced into using an optional feature (like the people against fast travel), but hey, its simple logic.

I remember doing that in Morrowind

I now have a mod for Oblivion that lets me write in books in-game, so I do that a lot now too, like where my favourite looting areas are, places of interest, favourite potion recipes and also the best location for certain ingredients that make up my favourite potions.

I really hope Skyrim adds the ability to write in books, it adds a lot of immersion and would encourage more casual gamers to start taking a more deep approach.

This. It made the game so much more interesting.

I don't know. I personally like the idea of having to find the items based off vague directions, but it might be annoying to some players. Maybe they should go with a toggle on/off option.

I have a love/hate relationship with the compass in Oblivion. I hate it when it makes the quest too simple. But I gave up Bloodmoon after I spent two real-time days trying to find people for some quest or other. They were in the middle of nowhere and even the UESPwiki wasn't much help.

Maybe a pointer that can easily be turned off, or only points in the right general direction or something.

I liked how it showed locations of main quest... that way i knew where not to go if i wanted to keep screwing around. I think the quests should be more puzzling than hard to find.

Hell, I say bring back the magic marker, but make it a high-end divination spell. Sense Fate or something along those lines.

I would like an option to turn off the quest marker but if it's in there I'll just go about my quest with a different quest selected so that way I'll know that the marker is in the wrong spot anyway and won't use it.

I want to play a video game, not play find the cave in an ashstorm. I've always hated it. I find it to be too tedious, boring, and therefore horrible for entertainment. I want to play, and there was very little that interested me about running around and looking for a place with not even some enemies and loot along the way, excluding cliffracers and other wild creatures. I would much rather be given a marker to show me to a dungeon and find the object in the dungeon without a map marker, but I don't understand what was appealing, at all, about Morrowind's system. The actual quest part, where I go through a dungeon, was also very disappointing, in my opinion, and there was absolutely no incentive for me to go through that. The quests were typically forgettable and the searching was repetitive and boring, in my very strong opinion.

I guess most of the people replying to this thread must be console users. As PC users, we can mod the game however we like. All of the games since Olbivion have been moded to allow you to show as little, or as much, hand holding information as you want. You just have to know the mods are there and to look for them (or ask).

In Oblivion, in addition to removing quest and location markers from my compass, I went so far as to remove the compass pointer from my map and I would move the map so it wasn't centered on my character. I'd then have to observe the surroundings and figure out where I was on the map. I also disabled all quest and location text from appearing on the screen. I also got rid of the 'You've found messages'. I had to hunt for everything and enjoyed it (most of the time).

By using quest markers, they can get in the habit of being lazy about creating the NPC quest text. They don't have to have the NPC give you specific directions.

i agree with this very much as long as they dont put items that your looking for under rubble or in cracks in the wall or the type of place that you either find by accident or take three hours looking for. such was the case for me in new vegas recently and that has an arrow

and that's a good thing?

Apparently, it is. :shrug:

I don't understand it.

Better than: "Here. Go."

Why do people want their hands to be held? In these games you're supposed to be a singular warrior or the messiah incarnate, not some juvenile loser.

What they need is to do away with the quest arrow and the repulsive fast travel system.
With those components, all satisfaction of travel and questing is completely removed, and replaced with blind path following.

I like how they added highway men to the roads in order to make traveling more exciting, but it was obsolete since no one wanted to travel by foot.
A simple solution would be to offer carriage or wagon services to those who are willing to pay for fast travel (you would still see the travel, by looking outside the carriage, but it would be fast and efficient.)
That way the "convenience centered" players can have their transportation, while the imersive players can explore on foot.