I.. couldve sworn there was a marker.
I must remember incorrectly, I apologise.

Yes, the game is much, much easier to navigate with the map. It showed all major roads, ruins, even caves.
I think the game was designed with the use of the map in mind, wich is something I didnt mind at all.
I remember happy hours minutely searching it with an actual magnifying glass for features Id never been to before. Actually getting quite good at reading deadric alphabet in the process.
Its a shame that 2nd hand copies will often lack such a thing that comes with every purchased edition, but I dont think you can fault the developers for that.

I considered them hills because they were much higher than the sloping ground to navigate and hindered progress in a way that using the path between them was easier.

I have no problem with any simplifying game aids as long as i can find a way to turn them off. That's not to say that I don't use them. I do use fast trave l and I do use quest markers. I just do so as infrequently as possible.

So by all means include them in the game - just don't jam them down my throat.

I can understand if no one had trouble with navigating using the paper map, literally everything is shown there, I just wish that map was in the game. The problems would still be there, but one would be able to easily overcome them.

The way that the Skyrim map is described, like it is as if you hover up above it, birds eye view, sounds like a map of the detail that the Morrowind paper map had is a possibility.
Lets hope so cause it was indeed fantastic.

I also hear that npcs will be able to help you find the objective, like go with you and guide you. Skyrim will probably still have some quest markers, but why would you need guidance if you have quest markers? Sounds like at least some quests are gonna be without quest markers.

I would be okay with them or without them. Or optional.

It would not be a big deal for me either way.

I"d probably have a slight preference for no quest markers.But only slight.

Having one in Oblivion felt right, not having any in Morrowind felt right, Judging Skyrim from what I know, a quest marker would be nice.

I think it should be optional , I would play with it off most of the time as it you get to explore the world , all the work gone into the environment of oblivion was a huge waste because you just fast travelled past all of it and i liked the environment but couldnt resist the conveniance of fast travel for those quests that required you to go to opposite ends of the map , and yeah the quest markers kind of took the "world" element out of it , I think they will be needed occasionally as they were in the brotherhood missions in oblivion after you've cleansed the basemant , I mean those quests took you absolutley everywhere ! and with the use of radiant AI which i can't wait for because as i understand it , the rewards you will get will be customed to your play style , so no more two handed swords for mages but with the new AI the location will be set to a place you haven't been yet and you could get lost , i think the markers should be optional in case you do get lost because you cannot look them up as they will now be random to each player so I think the best solution is to press a button on the map interface to turn it on and off , just like the button to turn the legend on/off in gta games , i think that would suit everyone

Your right, 85% of statistics are made up on the spot after all. 99.99% was an estimate of the number by me. The forum has mentioned only two quests that are reported to have completely inaccurate and misleading directions, no one has any more quests to add to those. It is widely reported that those two quests were bad, so unless you can add a specific example, stow it, you're out of line. I estimated that there were 2000 quests in Morrowind, then did the maths wrongly because I was tired.

Incidentally, if someone asked you how they could find Stormbird, they could find me from all the information available on this board, after being told I was on this planet. That information is also available to them. Assuming everything I have said is true, assuming I follow a normal sleep pattern of 10pm to 6am and assuming that I have lived in the same town all of my life, the following clues would be incredibly helpful to that search. I'll do some of the date and time conversions for you, just to make this easier.

I'm fluent in English - I'm also not bilingual enough to drop in random words from other languages, and fluent enough in english that I go on and on and on...
I have the intelligence or stupidity to be critical of mainstream pop-culture (My critique of the Hollywood movie scene) so I'm in the top 10% of my peer group in terms of achieving results academically, or the bottom 10%
I spell words like recognizing, "recognising", but only half the time
My list of important writers included Wilde, Williams, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Shadbolt, Mansfield, dikeens. Do you recognise Shadbolt or Mansfield in that list?
In the first part of this thread, I said in one post that I was at high school this year, but at university next year.
I expect that Skyrim will cost $110 when it comes out.
Assuming I live in Greenwhich, I've posted posts at times between roughly 11pm and 11am.
Assuming I go to school 9 - 5 weekdays, a worker at Bethesda would see that I am free to post all day on a Friday, but only free to post after 4pm on a Thursday, Wednesday, Tuesday, Monday and bizarrely, Sunday.
I am either a lisbian girl or a straight guy, because I have a girlfriend.
My countries exam system includes video games as an option to answer on in the English literature exams.
My countries exam system offers English literature as a subject.


Does that make it too easy? If you can use those clues, then you can cut down where I could be from 137 to 1 or 2 countries in the world, and who I could be from 7 Billion people to less than 100,000.
Incidentally, all the US military really knew that Osama Bin Laden wasn't dead, and was still on earth. There was a high probability that he was still in the middle east, but he could have quite easily ended up at a beach resort in Samoa. They found him. If you'd given them those directions 10 years ago, they would have been good directions.

According to http://www.gamespot.com/xbox/rpg/elderscrolls3morrowind/show_msgs.php?pid=480241&topic_id=m-1-58599573, UESP.net has 427 quests for morrowind. Lets assume that is an accurate number, just to keep things simple. That means that actually, 99.95% of quests in Morrowind had accurate directions. That's strangely accurate to the number I pulled out of my ass, huh? Call it 400 flat, like they did. My revised statistic is 99.5% of quests in Morrowind had accurate directions. The gamer not being able to solve them because the gamer wasn't pro enough has nothing to do with anything or anyone, except the gamer. Stop whining. the game beat you.

Other people have backed up my other arguments better than I would have. I'll just add some details to these ones.

After all, you're right. Sarcasm can't be done effectively via text. That's really true. You are a really smart guy, you know? Everything you say is just really smart.

On the contrary, the word scum means that the speaker absolutely has to change the entire mood of the sentence to reflect their condemnation of the object of that sentence. I could show that to my sister, right now, and she'd be able to say that sentence better than the voice actor in Oblivion, without hearing it in context.

Sorry, you get a massive sense of immersion when every character living in a swamp finds it noteworthy to talk about all the mud crabs they've seen? It would be like walking around New York having people say "My. The other day I saw a cab. Bright yellow cars. You've get to be careful not to be run over!" Oblivion did dialog worse than Morrowind.

Come on man. Very rarely is a movie sufficiently well produced that it does anything but insult the novel it was based off. . Most of them have a less complex plot, multiple characters being condensed into a single character et cetera. The only movies I can think of that are much, much better than the novel were the Lord of the Rings trilogy, if only because Tolkien did like to overdo things a little. movies do to books what most video games do to movies (admittedly, I haven't played a video game based off a movie since hiring Eragorn because my local video hire place didn't have Oblivion that day)

I can do without the quest markers, but I don't mind them being there either. Optional would be cool I guess or even if they just disappeared when you were in their general vicinity that way you could see the general area where you were supposed to go but nothing beyond that.

In theory I'm indifferent either way as I will still play it (like I did with Oblivion), but I'd prefer no markers.

While I agree with you in the case of characters through the written medium, I would argue that in the case of games like in film we are being presented with the character as interpreted by the writer, actor and director. The difference is this is the definitive version of the character, unlike your Gandalf example this is not an adaptation of the character from an original source that we now have to adapt to, this is the character from it's initial presentation. Anything they say is original and your interpretation is only relevent to your understanding of them not to the authenticity of the presentation. To use a game example you couldn't say that Bethseda's interpretation of Mazoga the Orc was wrong because before their use of her she didn't exist, theirs is the definitive version.

I voted yes for quest markers because I do not think its possible to include spoken dialogue for all the directions for every quest in the game. Therefore its mandatory to give the player that same information in some other way which is the quest marker. Personally I think that oblivion/Fo3 quest marker is too precise and I'd be happy with little more vague directions.

Example of text based quest: "go and fetch my heirloom shovel from Deeprock mine northeast of town. You'll get there easiest if you leave town by the main road due east, follow the road untill you cross whitewash river, then take a left turn to the road towards Nolthos. Follow that road up to the hills and turn right at the second crossing to reach the mine."
Example of voiced quest: "go and fetch my heirloom shovel from Deeprock mine" which would set the marker at the entrance to Deeprock mine instead of the shovel inside it.

Result of both example would be you'll know how to get to the mine but not exactly where the shovel is inside and you'd have to explore the mine!

I'd prefer no marker, or a less to-the-point marker, as long as the game gives you a good amount of clues to help you find what you're looking for

Although. I have to admit, I did get a bit annoyed in Oblivion on the few quests that didn't give me a marker, but that's mostly because I was used to having one in it. i would have felt a whole lot more accomplished had a found things without it pointing directly towards my goal, and that's how I want to feel in Skyrim.

Actually I'm not joking. I feel that that is a perfectly valid point to make, not reta rded as you might think. The majority of advlts can read well, so why design the game for people who can't?

Don't ask me, ask 1UP.
1UP.com criticized the conversations between in-game NPCs and the player: "...when an NPC greets you with a custom piece of dialogue (such as a guard's warning) and then reverts to the standard options (like a guard's cheerful directions just after that warning) it's more jarring than the canned dialogue by itself."

It was one of very few aspects of Oblivion that were criticized that actually degraded from the game itself. Voice acting holds back the game because without the voice acting, you'd never notice the NPCs chat away about the wonders of mudcrabs for the third time that day, you'd never notice that everyones bipolar, you'd never notice that everyone is happy to chat with you but has such a boring life that they can't talk about more than one topic, and, on topic, you'd be able to play the game without using the quest marker. To be honest, I actually don't mind how unrealistically the NPCs are portrayed as long as I can figure out how to play the game for myself without needing the quest marker. The use of text rather than voice means that my character can get all the directions it needs from the NPCs, and then make a note of it in it's journal, and follow directions it has heard rather than telepathically knowing what to do all the time. I want to be able to actually give my brain a challenge, rather than give my trained monkey something to do. If the new encryption techniques or whatever that Todd has mentioned work and the quality and quantity of voice actors is good enough to keep both camps happy, then I'll get my wish (quests completed by myself, not with the developer holding my hand), you'll get your wish (listening to the voice acting) and Chuckles will get his wish (eating bananas without me interrupting him)

Actually, it can. Go and do English literature mate, and discover all the nuances of language. Written text can do emotion perfectly well.
"Last month, my grandmother fell over - and broke her hip.
Yep. Just like that.
Just. Like. that.
The ambulance crew. They said - they said she was going to - to make it.
But well, you know how things go? She didn't. I'm going to.

- I'm going to miss her."

(and no, I'm never going to be Shakespeare) For a much better example, look up a play in the syllabus of the English literature department of the top 5 universities in the world, find a nice big speech by a character with no stage directions, and then quote it to me and tell me that it has no emotion. Or if you are just plain lazy, find a poem in the same syllabus and quote that. It's all about your ability to read between the lines. The thing that verbal can't do is pitch (gravelly/falsetto) and accent. (Vell, eet kood do assent, bit fat vood read vell not)

Ah.. what? So I should pay Bethesda $110 to DREAM about Skyrim? Are you [censored] kidding me? That's what I'm doing now, for free. Are you aware that you just wrote that in a sarcastic mood? I thought that subtle emotions couldn't be communicated via text.

My take on this: Scrap quest markers entirely and make sure NPCs give better and more directions, so that I can actually think and explore/track on my own; values which are fundamental to me in an open RPG like TES. I don't want to be a friggen robot that mindlessly follow an arrow on a magic compass. I want to think for myself and judge where the location is, depending on the circumstances in each specific situation. Alternatively, make quest markers togglable so that we who actually want to think and not be a mindless robot can do so. Making quest markers togglable would also allow for those people who like following an arrow on a magic compass instead of thinking for themselves to play the way they want as well.

I would be happy as larry.

Getting lost was the greatest part of Morrowind, that I missed in Oblivion. Even moreso than Werewolves!



The problem is, I'm worried that, if optional, Bethesda will end up tailoring the game for quest markers, and, regardless of whether they try hard enough, we wont get good enough directions. Especially a worry with the new random quest system.

I voted NO on quest markers.

I really like how they handled quests in Morrowind with road descriptions, like follow the road past the bridge, then take left past the ruins etc.
No magical quest-arrows, GPS-system or exclamation marks over heads in Skyrim please.

A random thought I just had - the terrain has some effect on "getting lost". Even with a quest marker saying "Go straight THAT WAY to get to the dungeon!", you frequently wouldn't have been able to do that in Morrowind - too many canyons / valleys / mountains / etc. Meanwhile, Oblivion's "we're in one big bowl valley" map made it hard to get lost even with spoken directions. (yeah, you sometimes had to go left or right to find the way up a sharp slope, but not much else).


Will Skyrim's map be canyon-y like Morrowind, bowl-ish like Oblivion, or a mix? Odds are towards the former options.

Im against it, full on. I don't want a magical thing leading me to where Im going, UNLESS my character actually already knows, like an explained location of a city. I'd say it should be optional, but then quests would be designed around markers, and that wouldnt work.

So wait, we didn't had good directions because of voice acting? You're not kidding, you're delusional.
You know, some people has said New Vegas had good directions and it was FULLY VOICED. Hell, there was Gothic also fully voiced, open world and no markers on the map. The list goes on.

And why else do we need voice acting? Because it's more natural. What happens when you talk to someone. You hear them talk, you see their faces, and their expression. You can also hear other people talking with each other on the street, not just to themselves looking for "that slave". YOU CAN'T DO THAT WITHOUT VOICE ACTING!

Didn't liked the quality of voice acting of Oblivion? OBVIOUSLY THAT MEANS ALL VOICE ACTING IS BAD!


This is a great example because I still don't know in what kind of emotion should I read this.

In a monotone? In a serious tone? While crying? While laughing? With a mocking tone?


This is what you're asking, to make up the half of it, because it would be more "immersive".
If imagining the voice is better, why imagining the picture isn't? As I have said, no more graphical glitches, no more bad animation (something BGS had problems with). Why not make a fully text game then?

Optional. Always optional.

Whilst I will try to avoid using the quest marker (I love the notion of always exploring, but my lazy side gets the better of me), I would always want the option to be there just in case.

Are you serious?
Usually at this point Im customary to ask if one has ever read a book in one's life.

Quit exaggerating, you know perfectly well what is meant by said text and what would be the emotional tone.

Not really. Sure, you can assume based on context, but one of the written cues that would indicate emotion are there. You know, the stuff outside the quotes, things like He seemed somewhat down or with a dead look in his eyes or Smirking, he said..... well, you get the idea.

Without knowing the actual context, no I don't know how it would've said.