That is a good point about want vs. need.  Personally, I would like some quest tracking with general objectives but low detail.  That is simply because if I go a week without playing it won't be "work" to start up again.  I do find that no matter how "hardcore" I try and play a game, if I have a quest compass that is "?" to "!" + "Next, Next, Finish" I will revert to that mentality if I don't find the quests engaging.  I'm playing Divinity Original Sin right now and the quest journal is only a basic guide, which forces me to actually pay attention to the dialog (unfortunately it is fantasy setting so instantly boring to me).

Alt + Tab + Notepad or a picture made from smartphone is our best friend but i tend to agree with

For example, you HEAR from a fellow sentient being that there's a disturbance in the Gamma Sextantis system. Or you buy from the Melnorme-like trader a lead that Delta Chandrasekhar has a planet that's very rich in Tzo Crystals. In these cases, I can get behind a blip on the star map that annotates these overheard references.

 And for BROADER mysteries, maybe someone can tell you that they detected a distress beacon or a crashed ship or a large explosion "In the Orionis constellation" and a bubble would highlight ALL those star systems, with a note about whatever you overheard. I'd be down with that as well.

Quoting Hunam_, reply 22

^ Or we can always magic marker the locations on the monitor/TV and take a picture of them with our smart phones. 

Use saran wrap first.

Funny thing is, automated quest markers have become such an integral part of some exploration focused games that the NPCs sometimes don't even bother giving directions anymore. Most recently this happened to me in Fallout 4. It goes more or less like this:

 NPC tells you to retrieve an item from the Juffo-Wup military base. Gee, is the base to the north, south, east or west? Or maybe near some known orientation point? NPC doesn't always say. Lol, just follow the marker. At that point the game world is actually reliant on automated markers as the only source of directions.

My god, how boring is that???   That is not longer a world to explore....its a MINI-MAP game to follow the arrow.

I know, right? Exploration based games are really swallowing their own tails all too often these days.

...

OMFG, WHERE IS THE JUFFO-WUP MILITARY BASE IN FALLOUT IV!!!!!!!!!!!!! I MUST GO THERE! Juffo-Wup fills in my fibers and I grow turgid. Violent action ensues.

I'm sure there are a lot of us out there that pined for this feature time and time again, which I think is more of a utility than a gameplay enhancer.

^ That is correct. I'd rather make notes on paper if I wanna make notes.

If anything, it'd be cool for the game to keep a searchable Personal Diary type of events log. Ex.:

Dec 2 2015. Left Sol in Gamma Pegasus direction. Had to slow down to fight off a pack of annoying Tywom. Need to visit their homeplanet (coord.: 4234,6351) to sign cease fire.

Dec 7 2015. Somebody peed in my cereal again. Spaced sous chef. (-1 crew) No other notable events.

Dec 13 2015. New alien contact. ..... Those Mukay would look better on my skillet with a good pile of chips.

A Captain's Log! It's perfect and make so much sense, especially for this game.

I could really get behind this type of logging.  Not a hand-holding quest to-do list, but an old-style captain's log.  Perhaps allow the ability to edit/add to the log?  Being able to go back and search a few events and figure out by myself what to do next (with a few hints to guide me) would be awesome.

I've said this a few times, but I think its worth repeating.....I don't want hand-holding through a quest screen.

I want an automatic tracking of the planets I've visited.  I do NOT want an indicator that I have to revisit worlds if I get a better technology.

I want an ability to manually add notes to the map and add manual entries to my captain's log.

I want important conversation pieces to be logged in my captain's log. I do not want a quest log that tells me what to do, where to do it, how to do it and when to do it.

I have a baby that will touch everything it can put its hands on, by the time SCR will be published. This "everything" will include physical paper notes.  I cannot depend on paper notes.

I remember playing Asheron's Call... there were in-game parchments and books that allowed you to type text on. That was the way to carry your notes around. But we're not playing a fantasy MMORPG, we're playing Sci-Fi.  I want my PDA with a Captain's log on it.

Am I alone in hoping the Tywom don't make it into the game in their current incarnation? It just doesn't seem like an incredibly detailed and beautiful creature like the other, squid-like race *name withheld*. There's nothing inspiring or intriguing about it, and almost no detail. I was expecting the conversation-screens to be much more detailed than that... unless... is the Tywom render from a different screen? Maybe you can see the captain inside the enemy ship on the combat screen? Or maybe on the little sidebar during a super melee fight? That'd be okay.

Right?

Well summarized.  Upvote.

This makes the Tywom sad. They are just looking for friends. 

Haha!

You read my mind. I honestly hated the sucker from the voice sync test vid.

Screw them, they are ugly AF and unmemorable. I hope they will be cut in favor of some cactus looking ethereal hedgehog.

Current incarnation, Vaelzad!! CURRENT! It's not up to the insane quality of the ***name withheld*** that was posted at the same time. That "thing" is gorgeous, with thousands of tiny details canvassing the entire screen. It's amazing and surreal.

Next to him, the Tywom just looks a little plain and doofy. But it's not even the design I'm talking about! It's the detail of the art. The other is GORGEOUS.  

I feel that the argument of a having a notepad to capture details about the game vs in game client is just a matter of the progress of technology. Having the ability to tag the planets yourself won't take away from any sense of exploration its just using tech to make something easier to manage vs totally doing it for you. Compared to having quest markers which I feel are just doing the exploring for you and take out a fun element of the game.

I don't like the idea of the auto tagging of map points according to what information you might gather since this is already like a "cheap" version of the quest explorer since if you see those tags you KNOW something is there, whereas if you are tagging yourself you are making the judgement calls if this information given to you is correct and also where it is trying to steer you rather than the computer doing it.

But things like then having to try and remember each characters conversation or scrap of information you obtained is just additional admin which can be simplified, I think the idea of a searchable captain's log is fantastic. Imagine you start collecting information about a race and so a search on your log will pull up all the past conversations and mentions of them. I'm almost imagining something like the Civilopedia from the Civ games but it starts off blank and slowly more information gets added as you progress and learn more.

I feel this would be a fantastic way to make things easy to use but not lose the magic of discovery

^ Great idea.. for the one who wants to play notepad simulator....

+1 for the ability to annotate the star map and record the stars you've visited. It was basically a requirement to do so manually for sc2 and it would be great to have the tools in game

Hey its the future! Just install Evernote version 900913 into the Captain's computer and presto!

With all the features like autotags, 3D tags, monster tags, and Juffo-wup tags!

 Autotags for mission in the map would be nice if you have already discovered the planet/location. No need to make it that much harder to go to a place you have discovered but can't remember because you had a dry-spell playing the game.

Evernote plug-in support would be a novel idea...

...But please limit it to Evernote. I don't want the game to give me the option to tweet, post to Facebook, Pin on Pinterest, or other such nonsense every time I discover a new planet, pissed off some aliens, etc. I never understood the whole "look at me! I beat level 1" mentality.

This is only for free-to-play garbage nonsense!