Why do people HATE quest markers?

[nomotog_v1legacy]

If your on a quest, then are you really out exploring? You know if you want to explore and be free, then you explore and be free. You go to quest when you want direction and that is when the quest maker comes in. The problem might not be with the quest marker, but the quest itself.

Another bit I thought of is how in Fallout 3, I would be encouraged to explore by the little triangle markers. I would be off following the main quest marker, see a blank triangle marker and few moments latter find myself inside an abandoned subway or robot factory.

 

[KarmaTheAlligator]

Quest markers take away any sense of exploration. You're not wandering an alien landscape, you're just following the pointy arrow like a good little boy or girl. And while it's easy to say "Just turn them off" that's not really an answer since in a good chunk of games which use quest markers, Skyrim for example, the quest marker is the only way to know where to go as the developers never actually gave the players any real directions.

Ideally if a game has both means of playing implemented then I have no problem with optional quest markers for those less interesting in exploration. But it often isn't, leaving 'follow the shiny arrow' as the only option for actually completing a quest short of random guesswork.

Personally what I like to do is go everywhere except where the quest marker indicates, only going there when I've seen everything else, as I really dislike stumbling onto a mandatory quest or the like while exploring. So yeah, I love quest markers.

 

[sXeth]

They tend to be a crutch for developers to be lazy most of the time. Rather then provide appropriate directions, intuitive level design, or artistically make a target stand out, they'd rather just plonk an arrow on them. I'm sure there's exceptions, granted. Basically, the markers aren't the problem, they're the bandaid ontop of the problem.

Thief (2014) is a good prime example of it. Stealable objects are lit up like xmas ornaments and you wouldn't be able to find half the doors without an arrow (those awful crawlthrough things are a big culprit). Skyrim also offered a few cases of "find this thing" or "kill this target", where they just lazily pointed a big arrow at it rather then make some identifying in-world characteristic.

The difficulty of finding the target isn't the overall issue, its that they take such an inorganic lazy way to denote it.

 

[AntiChri5]

Some folks don't realise that, in a game in which people actually move about like, say, Skyrim, they are a necessity.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

snip

Because Devs often use markers as an excuse to be lazy as shit. They will skimp on the NPC dialogue, skimp on the Quest information, and just outright not put a quest journal in the game sometimes. So instead they place a big fat marker on it and say "go here".

 

[Adam Locking]

The thing is, easy games existing do not mean that games like dark souls will stop existing. This is really just another version of "This game doesn't cater to my tastes, therefore it sucks and should die or be remade to cater to my tastes.". Because if all gaming caters to one audience, that means gaming is getting better because this hypothetical douche is in that group. And if others don't like it, then they need to find an ENTIRE DIFFERENT HOBBY because that's not selfish at all, is it?

Umm... several difficult game franchises have given up on the difficulty to suit the wider audience; DMCMC and Ninja Gaiden are prime examples. I've yet to find any examples of previously easy/medium difficulty games that have shunned their roots to embrace only the hard-core demographic, but if you find any, let me know. Take your time, I'll wait.

 

[Fulbert]

snip

Because Devs often use markers as an excuse to be lazy as shit. They will skimp on the NPC dialogue, skimp on the Quest information, and just outright not put a quest journal in the game sometimes. So instead they place a big fat marker on it and say "go here".

This. Quest markers are just crutches lazy devs use so that they don't have to work hard on level design. Sure, you could design a level in such a way that the right direction is kind of obvious. Sure, you could make quest givers explain where exactly they want you to go and what to do. But that would require effort, so let me mark it on your map.

That's partly the problem of open-world games as a genre since you can't hope the player will remember all the directions you've given them after they've sidetracked to the other side of the map and back. But surprisingly, the same lazy approach to directions was implemented to such a linear game as Bioshock Infinite. Follow an arrow because we could'd be arsed to make it obvious where you have to go.

 

[RealRT]

Quest markers take away any sense of exploration. You're not wandering an alien landscape, you're just following the pointy arrow like a good little boy or girl. And while it's easy to say "Just turn them off" that's not really an answer since in a good chunk of games which use quest markers, Skyrim for example, the quest marker is the only way to know where to go as the developers never actually gave the players any real directions.

Ideally if a game has both means of playing implemented then I have no problem with optional quest markers for those less interesting in exploration. But it often isn't, leaving 'follow the shiny arrow' as the only option for actually completing a quest short of random guesswork.

It's just the easiest way to get people into the game though. Directions require so much more extra voice-acting etc. to become good, and after that I can imagine people becoming very frustrated and snapping the game if they spend an hour looking for random cave 7 or old forest ruin 28 with a set of poorly written directions.

And this is why I always prefer Oblivion over Morrowind when it comes to directions.

 

[sXeth]

I will say, in the modern era, that if you are going to forgo markers, you need to give the player an ingame journal or ability to annotate their own maps. Expecting folks to bust out the graph paper and pencils is just being obnoxious. I've noticed console games in particular seem to regard using text input as some kind of abomination, with some games even having the feature on PC but not on console versions.

 

[Stg]

Quest markers are for people who get scared when they must think for themselves or they are for the game developers who are really bad at writing interesting dialogue. I loved the way Morrowind gave out quest directions and the lack of a quest marker made reaching your goal that much more rewarding because you found it based off your own wits and perseverance and you probably ended up at your destination with a fair bit more loot than you would have acquired had you used a quest marker. I believe quest markers take away the entire aspect of an open-world/sandbox game because what's the point in being able to travel wherever you want if you're only going to travel from point A to point B every time? Sure, you may stray from the objective if you see something neat off in the distance, but if you are traveling without quest markers, you could end up in an entirely different area than where you should be and you could easily find something you never would have found if you used quest markers.

Then again, not everyone grew up buying graph paper and spiral notebooks with every RPG since you don't have to draw your own maps or take notes anymore.

On the other hand, if the developers try, but fail, to add quest directions in a coherent manner, the lack of quest markers could make the game difficult to enjoy for a lot of people. For me, I disable quest markers as soon as I possibly can.

 

[Racecarlock]

The thing is, easy games existing do not mean that games like dark souls will stop existing. This is really just another version of "This game doesn't cater to my tastes, therefore it sucks and should die or be remade to cater to my tastes.". Because if all gaming caters to one audience, that means gaming is getting better because this hypothetical douche is in that group. And if others don't like it, then they need to find an ENTIRE DIFFERENT HOBBY because that's not selfish at all, is it?

Umm... several difficult game franchises have given up on the difficulty to suit the wider audience; DMCMC and Ninja Gaiden are prime examples. I've yet to find any examples of previously easy/medium difficulty games that have shunned their roots to embrace only the hard-core demographic, but if you find any, let me know. Take your time, I'll wait.

And yet the souls producer had to apologize for even suggesting there might be an easy mode.

Anyways, this will sound a bit strange, but the NFS series seems to have gone the hard route. In hot pursuit 2, you could smash through road blocks with impunity, as your car was immortal. In hot pursuit 2010, not only is your damage limited, but you can easily slide into all sorts of traffic, road blocks, and spike strips. I have had to retry some races at least 10 times. Believe me, it is not easy.

Yes, some games did get rid of hard mode. That doesn't mean all games will. There will always be challenge focused games. Just don't look to the AAA industry unless it's the guys who make dark souls. There are clearly still challenging games being made, you just have to look.

 

[Timzilla]

Jebus Christ, this thread is full of people who can't see that there other ways of playing games beside "Learn for yourself or get left behind". Yes, fellow Escapists, there are people who just want to get to the quest and not have to worry about where to go. Not every one using the quest marker is "a noob scrub who cant think for themselves" and a quest marker doesn't always mean that the game designer is "a talentless lazy hack who cant tell a story right." God help who ever isn't as hardcore a gamer as you. And really, if a quest marker makes you instantly fallow in a straight line, who's fault is that?

The reason I like quest markers myself is because I like to explore. The quest marker tells me "Hey, this is where the quest is and where the story continues. If you want to explore, do go here just yet." I hate when I am trying to explore a cave system or something and then get dragged back into the adventure, especially when that occasionally blocks off the area I was just in making it impossible to see what I missed.

 

[Therumancer]

I have mixed opinions when it comes to quest markers. For the most part I tend to be in favor of them as conceptually it shouldn't be difficult to find what your looking for in most cases, and really nothing turns people off faster than wandering around lost for an hour or two trying to do something simple or that should be obvious.

That said, making the point of certain quests being to find something based on directions is also quite workable, and of course in cases like that there shouldn't be much in the way of guides. Likewise as "The Secret World" demonstrated with it's "investigation" quests, there is nothing wrong with creating quests that the players need to figure out themselves.

When it comes to exploration, I think the problem is mostly that game developers are lazy when you get down to it, that's why most games tend to involve a situation where everything is connected to a quest, and you get sent following a marker to every point of the map at one time or another. Ideally in developing MMORPGs, in addition to the areas that quests take you/lead you to, there should of course be plenty of additional space, and of course game developers need to put things unassociated with quests out in some of those areas to encourage people to engage in exploration. For the most part doing things like that takes work though, and game developers don't want to put that in. Especially when you consider the content they generate that way will probably be missed by a lot of players (unless they hear about it second hand, or by visiting websites or whatever). This was one of the big reasons why raiding became so casual in a lot of MMOs, before that big changeover I was hearing things about Devs whining about putting tons of time into developing high end raid content that was only ever going to be seen by a relatively small percentage of the player base, the idea being that if a developer puts work into making something, they want it to be seen and played. This was part of the equasion a lot of elitists (which has included me) tended to miss, and still continue to miss to an extent, part of the whole "content for everyone" movement and "endgame is an entitlement" which creates problems in of itself largely comes from Devs who don't want to spend thousands of hours developing and testing something only 1% of a given player community will ever see.

Overall I tend to think "The Secret World" had the best ideas of any MMO ever on how to do quest content, as it had a your typical "someone sends you to the marked area to kill everything" quests, it had mob avoidance quests, and it had puzzles which even expected people to look things up online to solve them (The Secret World even has a button to easily open Google within your browser). As a result it wound up with a good mix of content for both relatively "noobish" players and more elite ones, and reality being what it is eventually the solves make the rounds so in time everyone gets to see everything anyway, but the elite can usually come out well ahead of the curve.

 

[Timzilla]

Edit: It was also a MASSIVE problem for me with Far Cry 3. You had to search for nothing. Every little thing was marked on the map. Thankfully mods addressed that bullshit, but it's a trend I'm not liking with open world games these days. You can simplify it without treating everyone as lazy morons.

Seriously? Just think for a second on how big the map in Far Cry 3 is. How the environment is LITERALLY a jungle. Not to mention that its dark sometimes, making it even harder to spot something in the trees. Yes, they are just side collectibles (at least I hope you are referring to the collectibles and not the animals, because that's even more ridiculous) but still, some of us don't always have time to search every nook and cranny of a gigantic map to find the last magic dildo of flavor text or what ever.

I will agree that there should be an option to turn it off, but calling everyone who used markers as "lazy morons" is a little much. They are just the same people who would just use a walk through to find them.

snip

Because Devs often use markers as an excuse to be lazy as shit. They will skimp on the NPC dialogue, skimp on the Quest information, and just outright not put a quest journal in the game sometimes. So instead they place a big fat marker on it and say "go here".

Yes, but all of those things cost money. (Both to hire voice actors and more writers) And at this point in the industry, games are making millions of dollars and still being labeled financial failures. Do we really need to add more costs to appeal to a minority of players? (and lets face it, that's what the hardcore gaming audience is now.)

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

snip

Because Devs often use markers as an excuse to be lazy as shit. They will skimp on the NPC dialogue, skimp on the Quest information, and just outright not put a quest journal in the game sometimes. So instead they place a big fat marker on it and say "go here".

Yes, but all of those things cost money. (Both to hire voice actors and more writers) And at this point in the industry, games are making millions of dollars and still being labeled financial failures. Do we really need to add more costs to appeal to a minority of players? (and lets face it, that's what the hardcore gaming audience is now.)

Or y'know, just use the same voice actors and same writers... Actually better writers, or just have the writers work with the rest of the design team like they should be. Having the VA use a slightly more descriptive line doesn't cost more money.
Having a design team that works cohesively isn't a matter of cost, it's a matter of talent and teamwork.

Also, I wouldn't call hardcore gamers a "minority". Dark Souls is basically tailored to hardcore gamers and it made shitloads and cost less than the bigger AAA titles.

 

[Racecarlock]

So, okay, wait a second. Quest markers can't be turned off because the directions were too vague, but they can't be in a game at all because that limits exploration?

Well shit, if the NPC was too vague, whatever. You're the one who said "I want to explore more", so stop whining and do some exploring. You want quest markers removed in the first place anyways, so pull on your man pants and start trekking, you so called "hardcore gamers".

 

[GabeZhul]

Dishonored did a good job of making them option for example. You could complete the game without easily enough and the entire 'follow the beating of the heart' to find the bonus things was a cool added mechanic. Skyrim on the other hand did a terrible job since on turning off quest markers, you'll quickly discover there are no other means given to find your objective. That can be annoying!

Actually, there is a clairvoyance spell that can point you towards the direction of your objective (it's practically the breadcrumb trail from Fable II except it costs mana so you cannot just have it on all the time). The only problem with that is that you have to continuously tick and untick your quests so that it actually shows you the way towards, say, High Hrothgar instead of some damp cave on the other end of the map by accident.
Sure, it's a pretty obscure and not integrated into the game mechanics very well, but it is an option.

 

[Rblade]

depends entirely on the game. It is disliked in games like the elder scrolls and assassins creed because exploring the open world is a central mechanic of the game. Therefor following a set of clues to an objective isn't just more challanging it also makes sense from the gameplay point of view. Add to that, that people will always first hate having to do more work for something but in the end find out that extra work only makes the payoff sweeter.

 

[MeChaNiZ3D]

Choice is good! An option to turn quest markers on or off is something I'd support in any game. Youwant to be told where to go all the time, fine by me, go for your life. But I have 2 main problems with them; they break immersion - pretty self-explanatory, and they encourage shitty game design - there's no need for NPCs to tell you things or to have intelligent levels when there can just be little triangles to tell you where to go. And that is the main problem I have with a choice, as well: You can't just turn off quest markers in most games because they have no other adequate ways to convey the information to you. You can't ask NPCs, you can't look on the horizon, there are no visual clues, you can't refer to the descriptions on your items and you aren't given enough information to use common sense. Which is why in most cases a choice isn't viable.

 

[Caiphus]

Choice is good! An option to turn quest markers on or off is something I'd support in any game. Youwant to be told where to go all the time, fine by me, go for your life. But I have 2 main problems with them; they break immersion - pretty self-explanatory, and they encourage shitty game design - there's no need for NPCs to tell you things or to have intelligent levels when there can just be little triangles to tell you where to go. And that is the main problem I have with a choice, as well: You can't just turn off quest markers in most games because they have no other adequate ways to convey the information to you. You can't ask NPCs, you can't look on the horizon, there are no visual clues, you can't refer to the descriptions on your items and you aren't given enough information to use common sense. Which is why in most cases a choice isn't viable.

Pretty much this. A lot of people, myself sometimes* included, don't enjoy it when you can't reasonably progress without quest markers. And when you can't reasonably progress, choice isn't available. And choice is probably the best way to go about this kind of thing.

Quest markers are usually immersion breaking. It's sort of meta-gaming. There's no reason for your character to know where the objective is, but the player can see exactly where it is thanks to a triangle.


*For MMOs, I usually couldn't give a flying fuck about immersion. However, I have my Skyrim modded to remove as much of the HUD as possible, including the compass and visible quest markers outside the map.