Hmm. I'd still want it. Exploration-wise not only would I rather have VANS (or Clairvoyance, which I assume it will work like) instead of the quest markers (again, assuming we can deselect quests like in Skyrim)..... it also would be good to knowing which directions are the wrong one so I go ferret around in them, first.

Another example of people not knowing what they want.Fans were extremely vexed about the metro tunnels being "confusing" and BGS has now offered a solution to this general problem in FO4, to the consternation of the fans seemingly.

If you want Fallout to be a mainstream success you'll have to tolerate the provisions made for the lowest common denominator.

I told you ... just wait , you ll see how much they screw it up. You did not see nothing yet....

No, you do not have a marker if you turn the markers off. I would imagine that people want to be able to turn the markers off to remove the omniscient "magic compass" and instead have something in-game that acts as a guide, albeit a vague and imperfect guide that won't tell you any details about the path shown (i.e., encounters, terrain obstacles, etc.).

For OP, I do not see any "hate" overall. Some people may think it's pointless or hate it because they (1) want even more in-game guidance ala Morrowind or (2) want to use the markers and don't plan to turn them off (and thus won't bother taking a perk, nor will they actually immerse themselves in the gameworld due to the "magic compass" guide for everything). Such people certainly are not the majority of the millions of players for this game, though.

@Eden:

No, fans were not at all "vexed" by the metros in FO3. On the contrary, most of us loved the metros. People who were "vexed" are, once again, in the minority and do not immerse themselves in the gameworld. Those of us who do found the metros very easy to navigate due to the guides offered in-game and the fact that we actually roleplayed our characters.

HAlf brain people wants more and more guiding witch is totaly [censored] and guess what? Bethesda is totaly fine with that and thats why they gave them what they wanted, perk with magic hand witch will hold em and telling them where to go and what to do... So if someone expected hard kick ass blood pissing experience from the game (as it should be ) you ll get nothing of sort. To many spoiled brats are now "fans" and Bethesda just love those sheeps who will buy enything without critical opinion about anything , just give them a lots of guns and rambo style option to play from the beggining and they will say its GOTY for them....

If you look at Eurogamer's speculation that SofaJockey linked to above...

...they make a good argument for this perk simply being used to toggle on the quest-objective marker that so many people have complained was hand-holding in the past. In other words, it's possible that this perk doesn't give you more help than before, but ignoring the perk means you end up with less help than before.

If that's the case, I hope they have improved in-game directions over Morrowind's. There was a reason they introduced the quest objective, because they knew they got things wrong with Morrowind. Maybe not the best solution for some people, though.

I hope this is what the perk is. An in-game way of giving players the choice between less help or the same amount of help as in previous games.

The MW journal made more sense for role-playing. The point was that in real life we don't have quest markers telling us where to go. Well, that is unless you have a smart phone ... then never mind what I said.

Well, there were no cellphones in real world, and no magical equivalent of GPS in Tamriel back in Morrowind times

Haha. I meant Vault 101, of course. Shows how much grip FO1 has on me that my brain auto-defaults any Vault number to 13. But yeah, it was pretty sad. "What are you doing? You've been in that room before! Just go out to the hall and walk right ... No! Not LEFT, man!" "You know I don't have good direction sense!" "You're lost in a single hallway with 4 rooms!" He somehow managed to beat both FO3 and New Vegas, but I shudder to think how much of his game time was wandering up and down hallways trying to find his way out of a building.

I don't think it's a case of fans not knowing what they want. Some fans wanted it, some fans don't. Simple as that. I don't hate that Bethesda has included V.A.N.S. It will obviously be a lot of help to fans like my brother. When I say it is a waste of a Perk, I mean for MY character builds. I'm not saying it shouldn't be an option on the Perk chart.

I thought the Clairvoyance spell in Skyrim was cool. I used it leave the dungeon I got it in ... and then never used it again. So if V.A.N.S. does something similar I can't see myself using it.

I'm not sure if I'll take the perk or not. It'll come down to three things:

1) Game walls. If this game is built like ESO's Grahtwood, I'm getting the perk. I freaking hate it when I have to walk 20 miles out of my way because a designer decided to take up massive amounts of game space by throwing up vertical space we can't climb.

2) The compass/nav system has been re-tooled and isn't at all user friendly.

3) If it gives more than 1 path option, rather than the fastest/shortest path. Like our current maps on phones, I want choices. If this option is possible, I'll most likely get it as it won't break immersion nor will it take away from exploring while maintaining a "line of sight" to my objective.

I have no clue how quests will be delivered in this game, but if it's like ESO, where I've explored an area and could have picked up a quest item right there, but instead, had to wait until the quest is given and must return, I won't be too thrilled about that. I'm no fan of unnecessary backtracking.

I'd rather say, "Oh, you mean this? I found it while exploring. Here you go. Anything else you need from me?"

Your enthusiasm for this game is just mind blowing! I always look forward to reading your posts, the same way I love diving head first into concrete walls. I think that you may have even been the inspiration for the new Party Boy artwork.

But seriously though, did it not work out for you after they ditched the last series of the X-Files?

K

I love it, an optional perk for those that might make use of it, and those that complain the loudest are those that scream they won't use it, or that they aren't buying the game. Oh, and its a single player game, meaning those that do pick it won't effect those that don't in any way whatsoever.

Yeah! BGS SUX!!!

Quests compasses aren't something that's ever bothered me at all. My knee-jerk reaction on these is always that you can just not set your quest as active, and you won't get one on your compass - but I do understand that's not really the issue people have with it. I understand that for most who dislike the mechanic, they just want more of the "here's some clues to this place, now find it" sort of quests.

I can kind of grok that, but I think it makes sense for that to be limited, for the most part. I don't need cryptic directions to get to a known city or landmark, for instance. "Here, let me mark that on your map" just makes more sense to me, if I'm getting directions to a place where is makes sense in-game that everyone would know where it is. If I have to hunt down a lone hermit who is the only surviving person who knows the location of a long-lost tomb - sure, make him half-mad as he gives me cryptic clues to a place he barely remembers anymore and have me search far and wide to find it.

But there's no reason we can't have both, anyway. You can certainly have some "find it" quests where you have to go based on someone's directions and following hints and landmarks. Let's not forget Fallout 3 actually had some side quests like that - there were a number of those radio stations where you had to find the broadcast point based on the signal's strength (which I thought was a pretty inventive new little gimmick for a bit of a change-up, actually.) And there were some other unmarked quests where you had to piece together clues to find out the location of a hidden cache.

I don't think anyone really missed out on anything from not having to find verbal directions to something like Rivet City, though - where most people in the Wastes probably have at least a rough idea of where it is, and is something anyone who knew the place would be able to point it out on a map (or your Pip-Boy.)

As far as the actual Perk goes - we'll have to see what it actually does, I suppose. I actually like having a lot of notifiers on my hud about places around me - helps me make decisions about whether I want to go off-trail or keep going to my original destination. There's tons of information that my character ought to have access to that I won't as a player. I don't mind abstracting a lot of that and just placing the end-result in my HUD in a non-intrusive manner.

Sounds like the Perk is just going to highlight a route for you. For me, that may come in handy at times when I'm getting turned around in a dungeon or something. But at the same time, I feel it was be almost more useful to have a Perk with the opposite effect. When I'm exploring in a Vault it can be easy to get turned around, or not remember if I'd taken a certain path or not. I usually want to make sure I've spotted all the "important" stuff before I move on in a dungeon, and there have been cases where I'd thought I'd cleared a place only to find out I'd totally missed it (like the first time I did Dunwich, actually.)

So I think it'd be interesting (kind of late to ask for this now, I suppose) to have a Perk that would tell you which areas in a dungeon have already been explored. Rather than highlighting a path to your next objective, I'd like to see something that shows you the corridors you haven't already been down.

I kind of wish games would do quest markers like they did in Far Cry 4. You were directed to the general vicinity of your target but once you got there you had to find whatever it was on your own. It annoys me to no end when I get a quest to "search for clues in Billy's room" and the quest arrows literally point you to every clue taking the search aspect completely out of it. At least stick with the "shimmer" that some games use for important objects and make me work a little bit for it. Another annoying one is "Find Suzy in Winterhold" and instead of giving clues like she enjoys hanging out in the tavern at night and taking walks to Dimpledorf lookout in the mornings, they just have a quest arrow right on top of them.

I for one am excited about this because the simple fact of them having it as an optional perk more than likely means they actually spent time on detailed quest descriptions so I might have to use my brain for a change.

Just a bunch of whiners looking to moan and complain about something. It's all optional. Pay them no mind and play the game your way.

I agree with you, but I still had to highlight this.

That's the thing, even in real life we accept the streamlined version of "here's the marker on your map". I'll agree that precise quest markers when the goal is "search the room for clues" are pretty lame, but I only remember that happening once in Skyrim with Vaermina's quest - but I remember more quests like Deathbrand, or the Destruction Ritual Spell quests that didn't give you anything.

And in cases where the target moves around, like an NPC or a radiant quest location, quest markers are the best option. I honestly wish I had quest markers for the wizards at Winterhold, so I wouldn't have to canvass the place to find whoever I wanted training or spells from at the time. Written directions worked for Morrowind, but I'm not sure they would have worked for any other Bethesda game.

lets not lie ourselfs people V.A.N.S. or no V.A.N.S its an open world game and every hardcoe fan WILL explore every last bit of it

Yeah, I mean Elder Scrolls is one thing, but in Fallout you at least have a fancy wrist-mounted smartphone complete with a map. Sure, I would prefer if standard quest markers don't necessarily point right to the secret door you're supposed to find - just getting me to the general area is plenty I think. But for the most part, who's going to give me directions in Fallout when I can just stop them and say "hold on, show me on my handy wrist-mounted electronic map where this settlement is." There's actually a number of dialogs in all the Fallout games where the NPC specifically says as much. So in the context of the game, I think quest markers more than make sense.

And that's a good point about moving NPCs. It can get a bit tedious trying to find the quest giver you already know the location of when their route encompasses the entire city. You already know "where" they are, but you don't necessarily need to check all of their hang-outs just to turn in a quest. Sure, if dialogs in these games advance to the point where you could stop random NPCs in the street and ask "have you seen quest giver #4?" there could be some interesting gameplay wrinkles brought to the table. But otherwise, I just like quest compasses for cutting through tedium.

Like I said, give me some quests where I have to piece together clues and find hidden locations. That's great. Fallout 3 already invented a couple of different takes on that. Hopefully they do more with that.

I don'r hate it but will probably not take it

I actually like that it was implemented as a perk. People view that sort of thing as a handholder, and to a large extent, it is. I will never, ever take that perk, as I share that opinion. I like to explore for myself, but not everybody feels the same. It's a good idea for Bethesda to have included it in that fashion.

I didn't use that spell in Skyrim much so I doubt I'll bother with this Perk.

Besides, I like getting lost. I'm damned good at it.

If you deselect your quest markers, VANS won't know where to point you.

Does everyone remember just what prompted objective markers and this VANS thing?

If you truly are a Morrowind player, you will know.

All I will say is it's puzzling and cubic.

Aw man, finding that thing was hair pullingly frustrating! Also getting lost in the Ashlands trying to find the Cavern of the Incarnate was something I remember too. After finding them I really felt like I accomplished something!