Simple isn't it.
-The 10th Divine.
Too simple for some people. Thay believe if it's in the game they HAVE ti use it and it "Destroys" the game for them, just like perks can make them OP. Aso some people don't like 'choice' which is what it is, to use it or not. Same way some hate the idea of the choice to have hardcoe. Can't understand it, don't want to understand it, the more choices IMO the better.
I turned my floating markers off on day one. They reminded me too much of World of Warcraft. Fortunately, as a PC player, I am able to modify my HUD and menus to be a little more to my liking. I used to turn my compass off completely and avoid ever opening my in-game map. But that was slightly tedious. Nowadays I avoid opening my in-game map and use a mod to make my compass much less noticeable, and also to turn off POIs, so that I have a slim compass that only displays N, S, W, E. I find this is a good compromise for me.
The problem with written directions is, as Solitudian points out, that they can be misleading, or even wrong. It's no accident that one of the first fan websites - and certainly the most popular until Wikis appeared - devoted to Morrowind was Hannah's Wherizit site. This site gave accurate directions to POIs in Morrowind. All of us bookm,arked this site for years. I used it almost everyday, not only for myself but also to link in these forums, for the flood of threads we had ever single day asking where something was.