I think to make fast-travel more engaging and immersive, it should be replaced by "map-travel".

What is "map-travel", do you ask?

Why, it is an overview mode for traveling long distances.

How does it work?

Well, you pull up your world map and plot a course, which calculates the resources you will need and how long the journey will likely take. You then gather the needed supplies and start the journey.

You see some representation of your character on the map, traveling along your route in sped up time (maybe just a little dotted line), while interface representations show you the passage of time and the weather and your supplies and fatigue etc. (Oregon trail/ Sid Meier's Pirates).
-- At the same time, perhaps you get a "travel montage" (Indiana Jones, Lord of the Rings).
Sometimes (and by sometimes I mean very very rarely), you will run into pseudo-random encounter on the journey, and given the choice to pop out of map travel and engage the situation (Pokemon, old RPG's, Neverwinter Nights 2: Storm of Zehir ), such as an ambush by bandits or a rival faction or an assassin, or attack by a pack of wolves, or an encounter with traveling merchants, or stumbling upon some people who need help (healing or transportation/etc.).

Having high mysticism or marksmen allows your character to anticipate these situations before they happen, allowing you to go around them.

Sneak and illusion would allow you to better avoid them as well by hiding.

Speech or mercantile would help you diffuse situations,

High athletics means you can travel quicker on all terrain (though you travel faster on roads by default, and the better the road the faster you travel).

A high acrobatics allows you to travel across worse terrain more quickly, or through terrain that would be impassable to those with low acrobatics.

A high strength allows you to carry more on journeys while becoming less fatigued (you don't have to stop and rest as much).

A high endurance means you travel much farther before having to rest.

A high luck means you meet more positive encounters and less negative encounters.

A high personality means you attract travel partners who might help you if you run into trouble.

A high speed means you move faster.

A high willpower means you can travel farther before having to rest but you suffer some penalty (because you are using willpower to overcome physical tiredness).

A high alchemy allows you to travel with less supplies and "pick up" supplies/ingredients on the way.

You can travel in different modes which affects your speed, fatigue, and resource consumption.

If you are good at sneaking or illusion, you could travel in a sneak mode that covers your tracks and makes you more likely to be able to avoid unpleasant encounters, but you would travel slower and so need more resources.

If you have a high endurance or willpower, you could travel in rush mode, that makes you move faster and farther without stopping but at a detriment to your stats until you rest in an inn for a good period of time.

This is just off the top of my head if you have any suggestions for the mechanic, please post them.

I'll just walk thanks

I like the "see you travel thing" instead of just going to a loading screen but I don't really like the collecting supplies part, it would probably get tedious after a while which would encourage me not to fast travel

Cool, you would still be able to do that.

I'm talking about an option in between taking hours to walk around the map -- and, breaking immersive continuity with insta-warp, one of which can be very redundant, time consuming, and boring, and the other of which breaks immersive continuity.

I'd like to see a dotted line on the map showing your travel path instead of a loading screen. Everything else is just a bit too much... I'll take the carriage.

Also I think this would work better if the game was like 100 square miles rather than 16.

Hmmm... see to me, gathering supplies would be engaging and meaningful, because it would give meaning and cost to your travels. Insta-traveling everywhere takes away the costs that traveling in a world like that would carry, both monetary, physical, and temporal.

Perhaps the supplies could be a "hardcoe-mode" thing.

Yeah, at the very least, I'd like the game to give players the sense of travel: the movement of time and location in the world.

I think it should be a hardcoe thing since you wouldn't need any supplies if you were just going to walk everywhere

Idk, I'd like to have a variety of morrowind-like fast travel options, plus the oblivion system. Then have an option to disable the oblivion system.

Honestly I don't think BS wants to spend much time thinking about and developing the fast travel system. I think they want to focus on other things, so they implement a quick and dirty insta-warp system.

The counter to that is, it really wouldn't take that much work to give the players a sense of traveling across the the landscape and the passage of time. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Arena had something like this... even if it was just a picture of a guy riding a horse...

When you are working on a game as expansive as The Elder Scrolls, taking away a day or two and having a single programmer add in this type of map travel would mean a lot but cost very little.

Bethesda, if you feel you have to include fast traveling, please dont turn fast traveling into a minigame.

Anything is better than a plain old loading screen.

Yeah, I think the dotted line idea wouldn't be too hard, just you have to use a good pathfinding system that sticks to trails, rather than a straight line across the map or awkward backtracking issues. I was talking about having all those variables dependent on all the skills, just seems like a big endeavor.

I agree here, I really don't see the point of making fast travel walking more onerous than normal walking. Even the hardcoe mode in New Vegas just had you eat and drink after you reached your location.

Instead of a normal loading bar, make a dotted line the loading bar.

Ha ha ha, very funny, you are funny man... not really... no...

He means like DA: O's dotted blood line on the map.

that OR they could keep with the carriage system and fast travel like theyr already going with :thumbsup: by the way the carriage allows you to go to cities you havent been to b4 whereas fast travel does not (just think silt striders)

This isn't about that, they can still have carriages and fast-"map"-travel.

I'm talking about giving meaning back to the traveling, and increasing the role-playing and immersive aspects of the game.

okay o.0...taking a carriage seems pretty realistic no?

And you would still be able to do that.

Might aswell just play Oregon Trail.

Just saying.

This fast travel alternarives been beaten to death. you now have an in game option.

Whole point was to please those who wanted an ingame equivilant to fast travel for their own realism needs or "RP" needs.

Everything else you can just mod yourself or find a mod for. I can think of a hundred other things Bethesda can improve on.

Moving on from my current streak of trying to sound positive on them I'll reiterate, Oblivions problems such as generational ones brought by being their first fully voiced game or perspective ones like returning to classic fantasy much to the disdain of purely Morrowind fans aside,

Fallout 3 compared to 1 was pathetic. I only give it good grace as it wasn't made by the original Black Isle team.

In tht regard 2 and New vegas failed hard aswell.

Bethesda should be using resources on better writers. Not these small individual nitpickings. In which case every game in existance svcks since they don't have everything you ever want in them. Otherwise we'd buy no other sequel or game.

As for the little calculate resources and etc.

Why the hell did you reply to my thread at all? You dismiss the topic (and my argument), and talk about completely unrelated subjects?