Why do people HATE quest markers?

[Hero in a half shell]

I was in Dawnstar, at the top of the Skyrim map. I talked to a ship captain and he asked me to retrieve a shipment pirates had stolen from him at sea while he was coming from Dawnstar.

That was the extent of the directions. He asked me to hunt down the pirates and retrieve the goods. Were they in a cave? a fort? a bandit camp? He didn't specify. The only way I had any hope in hell of ever completing that quest was to use the map marker, which pointed me directly to a chest, at the bottom of a cave... in South Markarth. Literally the other end of the map.

You're using an example of pirates? Isn't it possible, for realism and immersion purposes, that these pirates weren't waiting around in one place for you to find them?

This sounds like people less want immersion or realism than game tropes. Like the lone goblin guarding ancient treasure locked in a 5*5 room in D&D. I mean, if you want to play it the way you want to play it, fine. Don't play it up as realism or immersion, especially if your example is pirates who stole something but are bound by the rules of fair play to hang out nearby so the player has a sporting chance. That's contrivance.

The pirates didn't have to wait around, I didn't need the Captain to give me the exact location of them, but there are other ways besides quest markers to give you there location. As Biscuittrouser alluded to, more information from the quest giver is an option, maybe a "They have a secret cove down by ... where they sail their ships to after a raid, but no guards have ever successfully chased them out of it" leading to a unique pirate port location, or as Colt47 said, have people you can go to ask/interrogate information from. Maybe raid a nearby camp with links to the pirates and get a note with a map to the cave written on it (there are treasure maps so it would be possible)
Or maybe just give a vague area and I have to kill bandits until one of them is a random bandit chief that has the loot stashed on him?

That's three different ways that quest could have been handled that would be more immersive than 'follow the arrow', and there are many others. I'm not saying the pirates had to be nearby, but at least offer me some other way of getting directions other than the nothing to do with the in-game world white arrow that floats above the objective point.

It brings extra content, provides variety to the tasks we have to complete, and offers more options for how you want to play the game.

 

[st0pnsw0p]

I love quest markers, because I don't like it when a game that wastes my precious time. In an open world game, if there aren't any, I feel obligated to follow a straight line from one location to the next and spend little time exploring because I could easily get lost and waste hours trying to figure out where I'm supposed to go again, and that's not something I want to do. If there are quest markers, I feel free to spend hours and hours exploring the world because I know I won't get lost and waste more hours trying to figure out where I'm supposed to be going gain.

I love exploring game worlds, but I can only explore for so long before I get bored and want to go accomplish something more meaningful; and if go explore, get lost and don't know where I'm supposed to go anymore, that means I'm forced to keep exploring, even though I got bored of it long ago.

 

[BiscuitTrouser]

Actually a game that did this SO well is dishonored:

(Minor spoilers)

Spoiler

I played with no UI so i had no markers really, it was interesting that in one level I heard guards talking about a room where they brand you and torture you, and if you bare the mark you are exiled forever. They sounded scared. Immediately I knew how to perform a non lethal run of the level, i didnt need a single marker. I COULD turn it on, but those guards discussing the room and its function was normal, not contrived and gave me vital information that did away with the need for makers

 

[ZCAB]

To me, immersion in questing means knowing as much as reasonable in the context of the quest, whether you get a quest marker or just written directions.
If it makes sense that the quest giver knows the cave where bandits took the sword they stole from him, then the quest marker should take you to the entrance of the cave and have you explore the cave itself to find the sword. If he (for some reason) knows the specific stash box where the weapon is stored, the marker should point to there. If he only knows the general area where the bandits have their hideout, then that should be as much as you know. The marker shouldn't take you right to the "stash box" for every single quest, especially if that "stash box" is a moving NPC.
The quest markers themselves aren't the problem, it's that they just don't simulate what you should plausibly have for directions in each quest.

I know that many others do like how Oblivion and Skyrim point out quest goals so specifically, and I wouldn't want that changed just because I don't like it myself, but it would be nice to be able to choose between that and markers that reflect how much the player character is actually told.

 

[loa]

If it's a subtle way of you looking up where to go next like the breadcrumb trace in fable 2 or the light trace in dead space where you're never really completely lost if you don't use it, that's fine.
What's not fine is a huge arrow constantly being shoved in your face in case you dumbass don't know where to go next.
In most cases, the game will be made with the assumption that you have that arrow to show you where to go next so why bother funneling the player in the right direction with good leveldesign or giving coherent directions so there's no other way of knowing where to go if you (can even) turn the arrow off (see skyrim).

 

[bigfatcarp93]

From what I can gather, a bunch of morons have basically decided that gaming is NOT in fact something in which you can mess around and have fun or get anything done easily, but rather some kind of god damn military fitness test where you must play on some insane fuckin difficulty level or not play games at all.

Because a false sense of accomplishment is apparently worth making games so fucking hard that nobody outside of gaming can possibly get into it unless they have the patience of a tibetan monk. Because people want to believe that gaming is not just a big waste of time and that it is also far more serious and important than it actually is.

People don't want to accept that they're just pushing buttons to execute coding. They want to feel like they're actually doing something, so naturally the only way they can get that is through difficulty. The implication being that if you defeat a really hard boss, it means you are way smarter than normal people. Thus justifying those who do beat said boss to be smug douche nozzles for the rest of time. At least in their minds.

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?

Oh my god, thank you so much for saying all of that better then I ever could. Seriously, you rock.

 

[SnakeTrousers]

For me it's largely a visual problem. Floating objective markers are noticeable; they stand out and, while the reason for this seems obvious, the result is that they become the focus. Your eye goes straight for it instead of taking in the environment, which fades into so much background noise.

If developers could start making the markers a little less conspicuous I doubt I would mind so much. We don't need an arrow to tell us where to go when putting a little white dot over the spot will suffice. Or, dedicate a button to making the marker pop up, then have it disappear when the button's released. It's there when I need it, gone when I don't, and I don't even need to go into the option menu to switch it off if I don't want to use it.

 

[userwhoquitthesite]

Okay yeah, quest markers often dumb down a game. But they're not the anti-christ. I'd like having an option for them in the game.

So if you wanted to have a casual session, turn the ability on, follow the marker.

However if you wanted an immersive gaming session, you could turn them off and use the direction in the quest journal that the NPC gave you or whatever.

I've played Morrowind, yeah it's cool having directions and adding an extra layer of depth, but when you're following blatantly wrong directions, or spending 45 minutes out of your precious hour gaming time looking in every house of a town looking for the NPC, then yeah that sucks and the convenience of a quest marker would be helpful.

Similarly in Skyrim, turning off your compass and just using the map to orient yourself is pretty fun at times.

Morrowind has exactly ONE instance of wrong directions, and the map denotes exactly who's house is where. Skyrim has NO instructions on where to find anything, and is entirely dependent on quest markers to function.

The problem with quest markers isn't that they exist, it's what that existence represents.
Instead of taking the time to work out the instructions on how to do something (in a series that is famed for the massive amount of lore and detail in its setting), the dev team is lazy and throws up a magic beacon.
Instead of using your brain and exploring your surroundings, the player just trundles over to the magic beacon and gets an undeserved feeling of accomplishment.

It's worth noting that Skyrim has at least one quest where following the game's markers causes you to "fail" the quest. Blood on the Ice (a notoriously bugged quest already) requires you to ignore the game's whole standard and confront the target, in opposition to what the quest dialogue and markers tell you, in order to stop the murder spree.

Quest Markers can be useful, yes, but don't belong in a game that can otherwise give all the instruction the player should need in order to continue. Sprawling areas like the Halo series maps, which aren't meant to have written instructions breaking up the game and can easily become confusing due to layout or sheer size, throw them up. Stage-base games make sense with markers, because all it does is say "when you finish this stage, the next stage is this way"

They shouldn't be pointing me to the crucial pieces of evidence in a conspiracy.

 

[SajuukKhar]

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.

That's pretty much a lie in 90% of quests.

Radiant quests from towns all take place in the same hold in which they were assigned, and the locations name is either directly told to you in dialog, or is in the journal.

It should take all of about 3 seconds to open your map and check the like 25 locations in the hold you are in to find the place you need to go.

The exception to this is guild radiant quests, which are admittedly like that, and the one side quest from that hunter who asks you to kill spirit animals, but besides that, I was able to easily find everywhere I needed to go with the quest marker off.

 

[Sande45]

Ugh. Quest arrows are ****ing horrible. They pretty much defeat the entire purpose of having an open world to begin with. Best option would be to give proper instructions to find whatever you're looking for. And even if that can't be done they could just mark the dungeon, important person's house etc. on your map. Just point the player in the right direction and place whatever they're looking for so that it can be found with some common sense.

You're using an example of pirates? Isn't it possible, for realism and immersion purposes, that these pirates weren't waiting around in one place for you to find them?

They'd still probably have a hideout where they stash their loot since it isn't like they could just carry everything with them. And a quest like this could be structured so that the quest giver tells you which way the pirates sailed and you could go looking in that direction and either stumble upon the hideout or ask around in nearby settlements and be pointed in the right direction. Way better than *ping* "I know they're there because reasons".

 

[suitepee7]

i'm in solid defense of them. i will explore anyway, and my natural instinct is "go in the opposite direction of the quest marker in case you miss something". without them, i could trigger a cutscene that i can't go back from, or the directions could be vague and i could miss something obvious, making me get pissed off and look for a youtube walkthrough so i know where i'm meant to be going. the perfect way of doing it IMO is to put a marker on the map, but not update with how to get there. i'm also quite happy for quest markers NOT to be on the minimap, so they are used as a general guide rather than a compass

 

[Darth Rosenberg]

Reason: because it destroys all sense of personal discovery and, for me, immersion. Simples.

I'm on 360, so I'm forced to completely disable the entire HUD on Skyrim just to get shot of those cheat-oh-markers. I've played through it enough now that I can orient myself just by using the terrain, but still, trying to pick up small items is sometimes an exciting will-I-get-a-fine mini-game, and I rarely have any clue as to how much health I've actually got left in combat.

Bethesda! Masters of design, I salute thee! (it does, however, make me a crack shot with bows, as I can nail moving targets without a crosshair, turning something - at long last - into a matter of skill in a TES)

For most games it doesn't matter as much, but I also believe every game should allow the player to fully tailor their HUD. If world immersion is important to a game, the player should be allowed to get rid of everything on screen if they wish, and not be punished for it, Skyrim stylee.

 

[T_ConX]

I kind of want a halfway solution here

I remember some quests in Skyrim that required me to find a specific item. Sometimes these would be items hidden in plain sight, like a book on a shelf. Unfortunately, my character MAGICALLY already knows it location because there's a floating arrow on top of it.

That shit has to stop.

On the other hand, there's the Morrowind system, where you have no markers and NPCs have to actually give you directions to places. It's immerse, but as OP mentioned, it's incredibly easy to get lost, and you always have to follow the directions the directions from the place you get them. In these instances, it would make more sense for the NPC to just point out the location of a dungeon on my map. That is when a quest marker would make sense.

I don't care how many times I have to hit refresh, I'm not doing on the ad captchas...

 

[Hero in a half shell]

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.

That's pretty much a lie in 90% of quests.

Radiant quests from towns all take place in the same hold in which they were assigned, and the locations name is either directly told to you in dialog, or is in the journal.

It should take all of about 3 seconds to open your map and check the like 25 locations in the hold you are in to find the place you need to go.

The exception to this is guild radiant quests, which are admittedly like that, and the one side quest from that hunter who asks you to kill spirit animals, but besides that, I was able to easily find everywhere I needed to go with the quest marker off.

I just gave an example of being given a radiant quest in Dawnstar and the cave was located in Markarth. Completely different hold. Other notable quests I can remember off-hand are the prisoner appearing in the wilderness saying they escaped from bandits (several times the fort has been located in a completely different hold that I've been amused to note several major settlements between the fort they escaped from and the point I found them)

There are cases of quests always taking place near the position of the questgiver (Amrens' family sword is always in 1 or 2 camps beside Whiterun) and the argonian lady at Windhelm docks always has her necklace in a nearby cave. But there are definitely many radiant quests which could literally be anywhere in Skyrim, and some don't even specify whether it's a cave, fort, camp or whatever.

The radiant quests are pretty broken.

 

[DoPo]

I kind of want a halfway solution here

Well, there already is.

I'd like having an option for them in the game.

Only Skyrim failed in that regard and yet, for some reason, was used as an example. To be honest, Skyrim's Clairvoyance spell was a nice touch but fell slightly short in several regards:

1. It required knowing the spell.

2. The spell ONLY showed you the "official" path, so if you chose to use it, then no leaving the beaten path for you (or prepare to get even more lost as the spell behaved rather erratically as it tried to calculate the nearest straight path to a road).

3. note; I believe this was fixed in a later patch, but still it was my experience with it) you need to recast it at every fork in the path. So even if you do take to the road, chances are, you'll have a horse, and you need to dismount at EVERY fork, then cast the spell, then mount again. Also, you would do well to stop every couple of minutes, dismount, cast, mount again anyway, for you may have missed a footpath or just straight up no path, as the spell tells you (correctly) that you need to go through the field but also it may (incorrectly) require you to leave the road at a VERY SPECIFIC place, or it would just tell you to return to that and THEN to continue onwards.

4. Not a problem with the spell, per se, but still a problem that I had with using it in Skyrim - the terrain was rather limiting. So you HAVE to use Clairvoyance, if you want to the other side of the mountain - the map doesn't tell you which road to take - some just end up somewhere in the mountain or not even close. And in the majority of cases, you can't climb you way through it. At least in Oblivion and Morrowind, acrobatics could help, in Morrowind you could even use several spells to bypass obstacles, and in Daggerfall, you even have a climbing skill which would have been useful. But I quickly learned in Skyrim that the mountains be dangerous and I should not attempt to climb them. I. Got. Stuck. In a mountain. Yes, this actually happened - I was trying to climb (up or down, can't recall) a slope and I got stuck behind a rock. I couldn't move, I could jump but not high enough to let me move. So I had to reload. I kept thinking how if there was an athletics skill, I could, in theory, just keep jumping and eventually I'd get enough ranks in it to escape my vicious trap. But then my thoughts turned to the level designers - obviously, I was not supposed to be there...yet I was. Because I foolishly thought I could move freely through the world.

At any rate, the Clairvoyance spell was not too bad, but I have some minor gripes with it. I feel a better realisation of it is Dishonored's heart. If you turn off all markers, the heart can still give you indication where to go, but it doesn't give you a specific path, it also doesn't give you a very detailed information what you'll find there - it just shows you the direction and approximate distance to an objective.

 

[cdemares]

I love quest markers. Games are, and have always been, terrible at telling you what to do or where to go. I'm serious, if I had to rely on quest givers, I would never finish some games. Seriously, what are these people talking about? Does that mean I can't think for myself? Maybe. But why the hell should I have to play Sherlock Holmes to figure out what some damn farmer wants me to do with a magic rock at the haunted well while equipping the fuzzy dice? I shouldn't. Especially if I have to stand in some arbitrary spot that nobody even mentioned. I'll "think for myself" when these quests stop sucking so much.

 

[CpT_x_Killsteal]

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.

The fact that it was successful is based on the fact that they didn't try and make it a game that required 30 million to make money.

And? It's almost as if the design team had enough talent to not require 12 times the amount of copies to be sold to make a profit. It's almost as if... big budget games can still be shit.

 

[Cybylt]

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.

One game that sold 2.5 million is hardly a trendsetter for "hardcore" gaming. The fact that it was successful is based on the fact that they didn't try and make it a game that required 30 million to make money. But they're still successful with a very small number of the overall player base. And that's fine. While I can't be arsed with a game like DS, I appreciate the place for niche games. I just wonder why people need to pretend they're something more than niche.

Because their personal internet echo chamber tells them everybody loves it and they lose perspective. A lot of dumb arguments on the internet happen because of that.

On topic, I don't dislike quest markers, I dislike the use of one mechanic to exclusion of all else. Morrowind and Oblivion had paragraphs of text giving you context and directions to quests; Skyrim has "Go to Draugr infested cave #58743259. Directions? Huh? What are you, gay? Use the arrow."

 

[Colt47]

"I lost my ring. Could be in the tundra, could be in the desert. Could be middle of the ocean. For some reason im unwilling to share ANY of that information at all".

You just accused me of farcical strawmen, yet you phrased that in such a deliberate way as to be completely absurd. Perhaps practice what you preach?

I was in Dawnstar, at the top of the Skyrim map. I talked to a ship captain and he asked me to retrieve a shipment pirates had stolen from him at sea while he was coming from Dawnstar.

That was the extent of the directions. He asked me to hunt down the pirates and retrieve the goods. Were they in a cave? a fort? a bandit camp? He didn't specify. The only way I had any hope in hell of ever completing that quest was to use the map marker, which pointed me directly to a chest, at the bottom of a cave... in South Markarth. Literally the other end of the map.

You're using an example of pirates? Isn't it possible, for realism and immersion purposes, that these pirates weren't waiting around in one place for you to find them?

This sounds like people less want immersion or realism than game tropes. Like the lone goblin guarding ancient treasure locked in a 5*5 room in D&D. I mean, if you want to play it the way you want to play it, fine. Don't play it up as realism or immersion, especially if your example is pirates who stole something but are bound by the rules of fair play to hang out nearby so the player has a sporting chance. That's contrivance.

Actually, the problem has nothing to do with how the supposed pirates acted. Imagine someone going and telling you to find their purse and not only do they have no idea where to look, but no one else in the remote vicinity has a hint either. Then, for some reason a small floating icon appears on your local city map that is pointing at a location labeled "Purse is here!".

So instead of using the quest in a logical socialization, the designers just decided to have sticky notes on your map that magically appear for no good reason. Some of the quests in Skyrim actually do say where to go and the quest marker makes sense, other times not so much.