Ok I'd just like to say a couple of things about being "lost" if I may.
First of you can argue that getting lost is one of the risks of exploration.Getting stuck in a traffic jam is one of the risks of driving, that doesn't make the experience fun.
Furthermore the dictionary definition of "Lost" is having wandered from the way; uncertain as to one's location. Getting lost is quite a feat in these games if you consider that every single one of them has had an automap feature, that clearly told you were you where. (Ok Daggerfall's can become something of a clusterf*** but you could shift through it to get an idea of your location)
Getting lost, and not being able to find what your looking for are two different things. The first can potentially be dangerous, the second, baring a life or death need, is frustratingly annoying.
Personally I don't understand complaining about a tool designed to save you time by pointing out where you need to go. I especially don't understand belittling others for appreciating such a feature. I don't think that makes someone any less a fan of these games or a gamer, and to say otherwise just reeks of snobbery bs to me.
Some people do not like spending an hour or so hunting for some tiny spot on the map in an ash storm, while using vague directions given to them by an Ashlander, all the while killing there 100th Cliff Racer that hour that just insists on annoying them. That's not a character flaw.
As for following npc directions. These games are pretty much fully voiced now. Which means in order for Bethesda to dump the guide thingy in liu of verbal directions, they would have to do it for every npc that gives out every such sidequest in the game. With the sheer number of sidequests these games have, that simply is just not going to happen..
Please don't be iffy about words. People are using lost in it's meaning of having wandered from the way in the context of solving a quest, not in the context of being lost in the wilderness being killed by cliff racers. It's the connotation of having to figure out whether you are still on the right track. Connotation and denotation are two VERY different things. Read it in context. Go and look up the definition of quest and explain to me IN DETAIL how Oblivion with quest markers could possibly call anything a quest.
I spent an hour doing that because I svcked at the game. The directions were specific, not vague, so don't use my example to further your point. I spent an hour trying to complete a certain mission in Black Ops because I svcked at the game.
See the connection?
To the rest of the forum, but also directed at you Crossforge,
Quest markers take away the fundamental right of the gamer to achieve something in their gaming session. Skyrim is R18. For advlts. Nothing in life gets handed to you on a plate, so we, the advlts playing this game, should have the fundamental right to be the best. It's hardwired in a humans genetic code that they will enjoy something that they think they are good at. The quest markers show the player they are on the wrong track, and guide them back to it. All of a sudden, I'm a kid again, being coaxed by my Dad into kicking a soccer ball a metre in front of me. Granted, not every player of the game is going to be a veteran of the genre, but not every player of the game is a trained monkey incapable of learning. The tutorial is the tutorial, the first quests you might encounter are the ones that are supposed to be easy and teach you the ropes. Those are the ones where the instructions should be direct, that should teach you the basics of completing every quest in the game so that you can do just that. How to wander into a dungeon and kill everything. How to follow clues from the game world. The best quests in Oblivion were the ones that were possibly unsolvable. The ones without quest markers. Those ones were quests, in the true sense of the word.
You guys have to get it out of your heads that this is an action game. If you played a single player action game where all of your enemies drop dead because you have a feature that instantly snaps your gun and shoots each enemy, has 100% accuracy and an instant kill, without you touching a button, you'd never, ever, ever, in your whole life, pick up that game again. If you play halo/cod/whatever online while using that feature, no one else will consider you good. Heck, the video game industry won't consider you anything more than a half decent programmer, if you programmed it.
Completing this game should not require a particular skill in killing enemies. They shouldn't be the main obstacles when completing a quest, only representative of you progressing through the game. You aren't going to kill a level 200 NPC at level 1 because you, the player, has better reflexes then him. The computer character is going to slaughter you every single time because he has more health, he does more damage. On the other hand, on an even playing field, you will beat the computer every single time, because you have a human brain. You can learn all of the weaknesses the computer has and then it can't touch you, and the computer will never, EVER be able to do that. The computer is, quite simply, a weak foe. Playing a game where the other player lets you win is for kids. In this series of games, the other player is the developer.
Beating the developer should be hard. I shouldn't be able to pick up Skyrim and complete the main quest in 2 hours. That's just an insult to the developer, unless it was designed to be completed in 10 minutes. My friend who completed Halo 2 on legendary in 3 hours first time he played it was considered a Halo GOD by ALL of my friends when I was 11 or 12. If he annihilated me when playing Halo 2, winning 25 - 0 while he was playing easily, then my frustration was because I svcked, not because he had godly skills.
The developer developed the game, they have set the whole premise of the games about creating a world where our completely insignificant character can become, essentially, a god. Not a game where you have to fetch some stuff, then kill dragons until you can kill the god of all dragons. that doesn't sound hard to me, that sounds like I can unplug my brain and go in for some mindless killing, with the occasional fetch the sword of dragonslaying task along the way. The developer should give me enough clues to complete every quest in the game without using the quest targets. Essentially all the quest target is is a walkthrough, and a video game that can only be completed through the use of a walkthrough is pointless.
Oblivion didn't give you any option to play a character incapable of writing and psychic ability.
"Blood ran blue, and dragons flew high. Under broken towers and broken bodies it now lies" - theres no way to complete that quest without using the quest target. No one tells you where Fort Blueblood is. Your character isn't supposed to solve the riddle, but search around Leyawin and surrounds. Why even bother doing that, when you've got a nice red quest marker telling you where to go? You can't head north knowing perfectly well that the quest marker is telling you to go south, you know theres no hope in completing the quest before you begin, so why bother?
Please don't get me wrong. I support quest markers. Quest markers stop you from wasting time when you are given misleading or wrong directions by the developers. It's arguable, however, that some of those 'wrong directions' were given by the developers just to keep the player guessing, or keep up the realism of the game world. In the event that they were actually an oversight, then fine, in those instances quest markers are useful. I'd look up a walkthrough to complete that quest, so keep them toggleable for those moments.
the key points of my argument, for those who recognise this was too long and didn't read it. It's actually a reworded argument so I don't go off on a rant, and isn't a summarised version.
- Skyrim is rated R18. This is a game for advlts, and an advlt is a person who understands they can fail. Quest markers are a safe compromise to avoid failure. It's a part of the game that you can fail.
- Skyrim should not be a game where the combat is the focus. There should be quests without combat equally as fulfilling as quests including it.
- the quest marker fulfills the roles of a walkthrough. It's also essentially a game exploit/hack whatever, I don't know what the proper wording is. It is exactly the same as using whatever gives you instant headshots when playing COD. Finally, it's a cheap substitute for making the game complete. I didn't care how Morrowind looked graphically or sounded in comparison to Oblivion. I cared that in Oblivion, I had to download a walkthrough to complete WAY more quests than I should have because there was no other way to complete them, unless you were insanely lucky. There are times when the feature is useful, when a quest goes bad, when an NPC is in Bruma not Bravil. It's useful, but it detracts from the rest of the game.
I'm sorry for being a snobbish bastard/[censored], whatever b means, Crossforge, the feature was a cheap cop-out on the part of the developers. Oblivion was better in every way than Morrowind, except that in Morrowind, completing every quest in the game was an achievement you could tell a teenage girl about, describing how good you were at problem solving etc. You'd never get laid, but she'd be able to say to you "You waste too much of your life playing a game, when you could be achieving big in the real world", rather than saying "You waste too much of your life playing a pointless game"
- I am as good as any other Oblivion player out there. I am as good as the developers who developed the game, and I am as good as anyone who will ever complete Oblivion. I will only ever be as good as them, because on an even playing field, we will take exactly the same amount of time to complete any quest, we will complete every unglitched quest we start. In 2008, when I bought my copy of and played Oblivion, I was a casual gamer. I had a girlfriend, a part time job, school and so on. In other words, I had a life. I was as good as the guys at school who lived and breathed it. If Skyrim has quest targets, then the guys who live and breathe Skyrim, hell the developers of the game, will complete it at the same rate as me, and I'll still have a girlfriend, still have a life, still have a job, still have lectures at uni. I'll still only be a casual gamer.
Holy S***, that really was far too long wasn't it? Sorry guys.
» Fri Dec 25, 2009 8:37 am 
but honestly id rather not complete that quest than have constant hand holding for the rest of the game. 
