"there is another thing in this game that I dont have to ever use therefore I will come online and complain about it because it makes the game "easier" for others and that ruins my experience because all people should play a game how I want it to be played because casual gamers are ruining everything" To each their own, if you came on these forums for the first time you would assume the game had already been released due to how many people are whining about things that in some cases arent even confirmed yet.

I mean, it's a thread obviously meant to drive opinions lol sorry and [censored]

I dunno, if the NPC was hiding somewhere, or for story reasons they weren't in a place you'd expect to find them, I'd be with you. But as it stands, having a quest marker follow the NPC around their daily schedule just cuts out the busywork of having to figure out what their routine is and go check all of the places they might be. In fact, this is one of the reasons they added quest markers in the first place - when they introduced Radiant AI in Oblivion, you couldn't count on NPCs being in the same place all the time, and Bethesda didn't want their game to be about hunting down every NPC you needed to talk to. The first two Fallouts didn't really have this problem.

And yeah, nu_clear's right. The quest marker appears on our compass regardless of what perks we take - we see it in the E3 footage of the prologue before the character takes any perks. VANS is just even more guidance on top of that.

Given that the pipboy uses a combination of basic sonar and satellite imaging..... it shouldn't be that hard for it to find someone.

I literally never used Clairvoyance in Skyrim and assuming that V.A.N.S. is similar to Clairvoyance I probably won't use it either. But hate it? Not at all. Seems a waste of a perk point to me, but hey, I see no reason not to have the option.

I liked the idea of Clairvoyance, but I never had cause to use it. Now if it allowed me to track those pesky guild mages that roamed around... it'd have been gold. Because dear god I hated running around to find a certain spell vendor.

But it's not something the PC would or could know.

Markers on the quest compass can be thought of as the PC's own spacial awareness; and they point to locations the PC knows about.

(Personally I'd prefer it if those markers were off if the PC lacks affinity, skill; or has inaccurate information on the locations.)

What distinguishes one primate from another amidst the crowd? No, it would not be easy, and that's not something the Pipboy would, should, (or likely could) be designed for. It would also probably have become standard police equipment as well then; and have made the task of finding fugitives a non-issue.

re: compasses pointing at NPCs...

I can see the case for verisimilitude, and sure - when a quest calls for it, maybe you don't always need a pointer directing you right to the quest completion (if my quest specifically involves tracking someone down, if finding said NPC is the quest for example.)

But, if I'm playing tabletop and I've completed the quest and the party goes back to town to claim their reward we rarely have to specifically go to every location we can think of where that NPC might be. Generally, the GM will get the gist of what the party is trying to do and simply say something along the lines of "you find NPC A in location B." In a Bethesda game, where NPCs are going to be at various locations throughout the day, I see a compass as serving the same purpose.

Sure, it's an out-of-game abstraction, but it cuts down on tedium in that case. I've already found the quest-giver and completed the quest and now just want to return and speak to someone I've already found? Yeah, I think a compass pointing me to their current location makes sense, whether my character would have in-game knowledge of that location or not. If I'm heading back to Megaton to finish up the third part of the Wasteland Survival Guide quest for Moira and Moira isn't at her shop, is it really bringing anything to the table if I have to search the whole town to find her? In many cases, pointing my way to her current location can be how I learn about her daily patterns.

Back to topic, I don't see this as a Perk that I have much intention of purchasing. Maybe for kicks if I don't have anything else I want to level, but I don't see that being the case until very very late into the game, if at all. But I don't see anything wrong with it, either. And until we get some play-time I think it's tough to say categorically there wouldn't be any use for it, ever. I'll have to see how their level design pans out. If I find I'm getting lost all the time, then maybe this would be something that could come in handy sometimes...

I agree it seems like a bit of a waste of a perk spot. I'd prefer to have this a normal optional pipboy function. Kinda like in Dead Space where you could click R3 or L3 (I forgot) and it would highlight the path.

Maybe we'll find out more about it when the game releases.

Since I don't know much about it yet I'm kind of having trouble picturing how it would be useful. In Skyrim we had Clairvoyance .. which would have really only been helpful if you turned off all the quest markers. So unless vans is associated with being able to actually see quest markers on your map, it's only real use would be if you turned quest markers off. .. but if you turned them off that would probably mean that you'd rather wander about and find your own way without any help.. so you wouldn't take vans anyway. Did anyone use clairvoyance in Skyrim?

If you look again at the compass in the showcase, it's very clean.

You do have a few icons showing which I suspect change from muted to lit when discovered.

I don't expect VANS to be a 'glowing trail' like Skyrim, but simply a direction flag on your compass.

Maybe they will surprise us all and make VANS a literally crappy old van we can sleep in to be well rested and it travels with us as we fast travel.

In all seriousness I will take the perk... Never getting stuck in multi level places again = win!

I'm only sleeping in it if it's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3nhgfjrKi0o.

Well the other side of the coin would be that they make the default compass so useless that you must have VANS to find anything, which makes it equally aggravating that they make you pick it as a perk instead of you just having it by default.

So either you don't need it, and it is therefore a waste; or you actually need it, and there's no reason why they would make you pick it as a perk.

Related to this part of your replay. A few years ago I was doing a job at a tech facility and I was stooped down low in a back corner of a room where no one was allowed in unless they dropped all phones and other gadgets in a bucket before entering, even while under construction. While I was working a group of people were ushered in for a demo. Before I could muster the courage to speak up the demo began ,so I just stayed low and quiet in the corner. The demo consisted of zeroing in on a specific person from a satellite in space. Not only did they do it on our location, but on a location on the opposite coast as well. The image was so clear you could see the pores on the person's face. Given face recognition software, and this demo, it is entirely feasible for a device like our Pipboy, if linked to such a system, to find exactly who you are looking for and certainly is more believable than a clairvoyance spell.

Person or location? And if automated (not using a human operator), locating the person, or something they carry on them?

The Pipboy is a PDA. Technically any smartphone today can be made the receiver of information from a service like that; but what I'm talking about is more akin to finding one untagged monkey loose in a city. It's not the same as triangulating a cell phone, or a tracking beacon like in Total Recall.

Speaking of Total Recall, that's the very situation we are discussing; and they were tracking him by the location of the beacon in his nasal cavity. Once he removed it, they had no way of detecting him.

This is the peeve I mentioned... The idea that the player could set their Pipboy to track an unknown location that is on the move. GTA3 had a bit of this on the mission where you had to catch the Pizza Delivery Man [IIRC]. There the player could clearly see the him moving in realtime on their mini-map, even when they were two blocks away on different streets.

Personally, I'll accept a certain level of player convenience at the cost of a little in-game realism. I can hand-wave away the fact that my character shouldn't know the exact location of a moving NPC if it means I don't have to waste my whole play session trying to track them down instead of doing something more enjoyable.

Quest markers are (mostly) fine in my book, but VANS goes a little too far (for me). I enjoy finding my own way through the game environment better than I like searching for an NPC.

Well it's just gonna be a compass with the quest marker on it in the direction of the quest. Can't see how they could make it less/more useful.

This is just one of those features (like Perks that give extra experience) that's there for folks whose responsibilities won't let them play as much as they'd wish.

It could show distance, elevation, etc

From what I've seen, the quest marker indicates the distance, but not elevation - although there are elevation indicators for the enemy blips that appear on our compass in combat.

At any rate, the quest marker only shows you a straight line from your position to the target. Doesn't help at all for navigating around everything in between, like mountains and rubble and Deathclaws. VANS will help with that... well, except for the Deathclaws.

Anyone who thinks this would be a useless perk has never really paid attention to how many people in this world don't know their right hand from their left hand. Its roughly the same as the number of people that can't tell you which side of a map is East unless its marked...

Or as we used to say in the military, "Not that right hand you moron, your OTHER right hand."

I would only find this perk useful if there were no quest markers in the vanilla game. Of course we will have to wait and see if it does anything interesting besides the obvious.

Is it confirmed that the quest will show on compass indicator without need of V.A.N.S.?

Yes. In the E3 footage, we see a quest marker appear on the compass in the prologue before the character even has a chance to gain any perks. Or XP, for that matter.