Exactly. That's like asking if the pause menu is a magical piece of paper that can magically become a box of holding or Pipboy-3000 and store your equipment.
(I managed to get a Dungeons and Dragons reference AND a Fallout 3 reference. Granted I did force it a bit.)

This is simply not true.
There are only two instances in the entire game of Morrowind where directions are vague or wrong, and one of those is on purpose. Its a Daedric quest and not supposed to be easy.
Morrowind directions were on the whole precise and accurate.

Oblivion directions however were nonexistant.

I would like to see directions as in Morrowind as opposed to just the name of the place and nothing else as in Oblivion.
If there are adequate directions I shall turn the quest markers off and never look back.

It's Radar. Yes they have radar. It's not silly at all.

My problem isn't with the compass, just the arrows.

How do you become the leader of all the organizations throughout the province within hours?

Because Magic Compass

Simple, easy solution : compass opacity option in the settings menu. There was HUD opacity in Fallout 3, so no reason whatsoever, no excuse at all, for not having the choice in Skyrim. Not only gives the 'hardcoe option of no compass, no quest marker, no POI indicators when invisible, but as an added bonus, we get our sky back [ The Dovahkiin looks to the heavens for skills, there are the constellations, shining just above the great celestial compass ].

Exactly. I can't believe people found the directions in Morrowind hard to follow.

*sigh*

Will fix this for you - this game is aimed at a broad spectrum of people, some who do not play open-world games the same way you do.

And no, just because you think a game should be played a certain way does not mean it should.

And then, of course, there's the issue of recording lines for the directions to variable-location quests generated by Radiant Story.....




I enjoy walking between areas, bashing bandits, and looting cool items..... which is why it was nice to have fast travel in OB and FO3, so that I could spend more of my time doing exactly those things, rather than walking back and forth through completely empty areas with no bandits or loot (because I already killed & took them).

:shrug:

I feel that hitting ` and turning on god mode is something like cheating. So, I don't do it. (Well, ok - I did it once. When trying to get the armor from an Armor Mod I'd downloaded. Armor with basic leather & iron stats..... which was held by a group of five incredibly high level NPCs. I could see it if the armor was crazy powerful.... but it was basic, weak stuff. To be able to use it at an appropriate level, console sleaze was pretty much required. Ah, well. :tongue:)


Luckily, FT should be less "tempting" in Skyrim for those who can't avoid it even though they dislike it or think it's cheating, since there's the in-game/immersive carriage system.

THANKYOU. ffs this a horrific topic, just accept that there IS a compass and you can't get rid of it.

Funny.

I think the map should have been stagnant with only the large cities located on it with few areas of common interest (close to OB) this full on interactive map with a notitall compass should be scaled back.

++1

im pretty sure i heard somewhere that it will cost something to fast travel... maybe thats like RDR's stagecoaches, or whether its just the magical transportation leprechaun i dont know....

IMO the compass should be togglable (if thats not a word then... meh you know what i mean...) so people who dont want it, dont have to have it, and the people who want it, can have it...

i know that if this is the case then ill start off being all hardcoe (I R L337 SKYRIM PLAYA!!!!) and not using the magic compass at all, but when i get stuck ill switch it back on and forget :whistling: to turn it back off

isn't the compass technically a tiny map ? meaning all the castles, ruins, caves etc... would be on every map anyway regardless that u personally haven't been in the area. so the compass plays out as if the character has a map with these locations on it. that's how I see the compass as

The compass reveals less immediate information than the Daggerfall map.

I always viewed the compass markers as things my character spots off in the distance and marks down to check out at some point. Since my characters inevitably have sharper eyes than I do (I'm legally blind), this is an easy thing to imagine and is a feature I truly appreciate.

Sorry to read about your retinal degenerative disease (?), but it seems quite a number of posters are willing to go to great extents in their rationalization in order to swallow a toad they wouldn't otherwise engulf.

Just make the darn thing toggable, Bethesda.

Simple, easy and painless.

In fairness most RPGs including morrowind have GPS, which is kinda cheaty. Im okay with the compass if there are no directions, but I'd rather have no compass and NPC directions.

Yes, "East of Caldera" is extremely clear cut.

Eh, this doesn't bug me as much as it does some other people. It just doesn't.

I dislike the concept of a toggleable option, however. Just in terms of game design, I feel that one should have enough confidence in their game that they shouldn't need to worry about letting players pick and choose major design concepts. A better solution would be something everyone could live with.

Personally, this is what I would've liked to have seen, that I would think would at least make more people more happy than they already are (since you can never please everyone all the time, of course.)

Why not make it a magic compass? Simply explain it in-game so that it fits into lore. Fancify the HUD so that it looks less like a generic UI feature and more like something integrated into the world. Say that it's some ancient relic that is drawn to various locations around the world. Heck, make some massive fetch-quest that lets you track down every dungeon in the game to collect pieces of a massive puzzle (these pieces being what the compass is pointing to.)

Even have a couple of Rare locations that can only be found by seeking out the right NPCs who possess clues to their location, and don't show up on the compass.

Cities and such, you could have - lore-wise - maybe some stone or something that you place down once you've found it so that you can always find your way back again. (Cities are pretty easy to find, anyway - so not having a compass location until after you find it I could see as being a good compromise.)

And who knows - Bethesda's team are smarter than I am. Maybe they've already thought of something better...

I really liked this part, thanks. :thumbsup:

I dislike that whenever there's a gameplay mechanic that divides people's opinions on forums, it's always suggested to make it a toggle. Well guess what, now the devs have to account for more than one way to any mechanic and spend even MORE of their limited time and resources developing the game to work around these multiple choices instead of just focusing on a single thing and making it as good as possible.

you know what if they make it a 3d cool looking magic compass and give it some lore I might just live with it.

A toggle isn't really a good solution as nu_clear_day says, but in this case it's the easiest and simplest way to make it optional and not forced, and thus make everyone happy.
There are other solutions though, as written below...

Personally, this is what I would want for a compass instead:

A compass that you can buy in a store (or find as an item) and that you can hold in your hand like an actual item.
It would work as an actual compass, with no markers or icons. However, since Tamriel is a magical world, you can enchant the compass with a spell to get certain effects.
An example would be to enchant the compass with the spell Clairvoiance, which would make the compass show quest markers to your goals.
Another possibility would be to add a detect spell and enchant the compass with that, which would make the compass show nearby dungeons like compass icons.
A detect life spell to enchant the compass with would make the compass show nearby life forms (enemies/friends).

The pros of this would be:
- it's immersive
- it works with the two hands system Bethesda got
- it's 100% optional since it's easy to remove, it's also 100% optional in every enchanting stage it has
- we get a truly HUD free screen, with no obtrusive compass at the top of the screen which blocks the sky
- it makes sense in the world of Tamriel
- it can work as an actual magic compass, of which you can enchant spells to in order to get certain effects (quest markers, compass icons) in an optional and immersive way.
- you feel that you've earned to be shown quest markers, compass icons because it takes a bit of work to get it enchanted

The cons of this would be:
- if Bethesda is lazy and have built the game around quest markers, not having the compass enchanted as a magic compass might break the game (like not being able to find out certain places without constant quest markers)
- probably too late now to change things?
- Bethesda might never see this discussion and suggestion?

I like the compass, if only because I have a really bad sense of direction, be that in video games or in real life. So a magic compass that shows me the vague direction of where I'm going is a plus in my opinion.
Of course, a way to make it optional would be nice. Though one of my characters (Faire) has probably got an even worse sense of direction than I have, so it wouldn't surprise me if she had one.

thi

I support this, but ain't expecting it. Too late. TES VI?
Make it toggable.
No, not the perfect solution.
The Realistic Solution.

I think all I have left to say on this topic is this: you can please some of the people some of the time, but you can't please all of the people all of the time. Compromises are a simple fact of life.