I agree with all this, i've never understood why people favour a point and click fast travel system over one that makes sense :shrug:
But as hlvr said, the arguments seem to be along the lines of "it takes too much time" or "i dont want to have to walk somewhere ive been before" (an argument negated with the inclusion of spells/scrolls/potions of mark/recall) and also alot of people just want to "get to the action without wasting time walking everywhere" (not too sure why people using this argument are playing an open world sandbox type RPG really), i personally enjoy not only the destination but the journey as well.

I voted for option 1, though option 3 would be great as well.

BRING THIS THREAD BACK TO LIFE!

seasonal travel routs.
some travel hubs might block off access to certain cities depending on the time of year or the weather.
like in the spring a river that is normally crossable is now impassible by horse
or in winter a mountain pass may be too harsh for a horse and the hub suggests you take an alternate rout to another city that can take you around the mountain.

just a thought.

[this is based on the idea that fast travel is structured in a intelligent way and not just "CLICK HERE GO THERE!"]

[from the seasons thread by hlvr]

Reposting my ideas that I already posted in another thread. Not all apply depending on what "systems" are already in or can be implemented. But the idea is still "fast travel as determined by a series of options that affect the security, time, and cost of the trip, that also serves as one of many artificial systems that can help prolong the game time so that seasons might have a purpose". The fastest, cheapest, and most secure way of getting there is by manually walking the distance, it allows for travel services which most of us old timers want, and the fans of OB style fast travel still gets theirs with a cost (could be money, but it doesn't have to be - anyway it's cheap) so it doesn't alienate them either.

---snip---

If fast travel remains in the form of clicking where you go, I want "a few" changes to it:

1) How Option box, determining *how* you want to fast travel, but new ones since DF ones doesn't "work" anymore (too small area):
* Walking (affects stamina, more stealthy)
* Jogging (affects stamina, more noisy)
* Horse Riding Fast (may bump deeper into trouble, and affects stamina).
* Horse Riding Slow (much more safe since you're able to stay unseen, less chance of ambush, but some stealth is sacrificed).
* Available services (ends up at nearest "hub", but is super safe). Need to make a new travel when you get there.
+ By boat checkbox (expensive and slow, but super safe, and only service that allows horse and cart).

2) Reaction Option box
* Avoid Combat (will attempt to avoid combat, but is affected by your speed if on a horse).
* Stop To Fight (always stop to perform any combat needed to get through an area).
* Ask (stops animation and asks you what to do, but you may get information about foes).

3) Time Option box
* Day and Night (more useful for higher level characters, or when you've gone godlike).
* Day Only (considered much safer to travel by day, due beastiary and bandits).
* Night Only (suitable option for a few selected characters I guess, so should be there).

4) Camping Option box (hidden when using services).
* Inns and safe havens (costs money, but is super safe and non interruptible).
* Outside (use own camping gear to setup a camp, but always suspectable to interruptions).
* Existing camps (pretty much guaranties a fight unless recently cleared).
* No camping (faster, but affects stamina and probably health as well in a bad way).

5) Exploration Option box (hidden when using services).
* None (no exploration is done during detours).
* Auto (marks any found location on the map, but that's it).
* Stop (stops the travel so you can investigate).
* Ask (stops animation and asks you want to do).

6) Estimations Info box
* TOT - Time Of Travel (how many days, hours, and minutes the trip is estimated to take).
* ETA - Estimated Time of Arrival (when you think you will arrive - double to ease off mental calculations).
* Cost - How much gold the trip will cost you.
* Risk - Chance of interruptions along the route.

7) Command buttons
* Set Default (makes current selections the default mode of fast travel).
* Continue (if you had an active travel that was interrupted).
* Go (will be hidden if you've made bad settings, such as camping outside if you have no gear).
* Cancel (guess )

Travel will be shown as an animated dotted line, complete with sun/stars (time of day, roughly).
As you sleep (if needed), you'll see your health and stamina bars animate to show progress, based on some survival skill.
Travel will stop if you're on foot and you become over encumbered. Fix problem, open dialog, and choose continue travel.

So instead of the timed teleport with builtin cheats, you setup your fast travel with a bunch of options on how *you* would do it if you did it manually. Some ideas only work well if they have need to sleep and fatigue that depletes slowly over time if you don't eat etc. Using services will be safe, cost more, and can take a considerable amount of time depending on the travel service situation; are you ranked high enough to use mages guild teleportation, when does the caravan (upgraded silt strider service), dilligence, or boat, operate etc. If you chose avoid contact and are on foot or horse, you try to circumnavigate the enemy contact (also animated), and you may find new locations in the process.

Each time you click an option, a green circle will highlight around all legal destinations (or red for illegal), shrink and fade away, and leave the location icon in the highlighted color - it focuses you attention, and keeps it for reference, without getting in your way.

This is with fast travel option activated. For hard core fans, when this is turned off, we have to take notes on when the services operate etc and do everything manually. Fast travel will take a few seconds from hub to hub, but it will still be the ease of use interface wise. Best of all, the current exploits/bugs are removed (probably some new ones though, lol). The actual traveling still takes place, only at a much faster rate.

---

That would very cool yes. Makes traveling even more interesting. And challenging.

Kinda off topic... hehe, but it reminds me of the movei "Into the wild" where the main-character got stuck on one side of the river because of the huge steam that flowed in spring after the ice had melted.

Thanks for bringing the thread into life

oh yeah, he wasn't prepared XD...that was sad. :violin:

and no prob. this is more relevant now that the magazine has come out.

That's a great idea!

Fast travel is fine as long as there are different fast travel options (regular 'walking' like in Oblivion, payed transportation via mage's guild or other service) and different risks associated with each option. That way you have a choice of method, and you have to do a trade off every time you pick.

Fast travel should remain for those who want, but an alternative, and immersive, system of transportation should be provided as well. As long as an alternative to fast travel is provided, there is no need for an on/off button; just use the alternative means instead of clicking the icon on your map. Simple and easy.

I'm not up to par on my Skyrim lore, so I can't suggest immersive means of fast travel beyond horses that you can "rent" from a stable and ride to another stable. A great example of this is Lord of the Rings Online.

Mammoths are a good idea, I'd also like to see boats, Carriages and mages guild teleportation(or whatever Skyrim's equivalent is)

That's a lot of good ideas. It's good that people post their ideas. I think Bethesda needs to know both our ideas for new improvements and our opinions of existing things.

-----------------------
That mammoth idea by senju instead of a silter strider is also a really good one. Something would have to replace the silt strider. Something unique to TES

lol risks...i may be thinking too much but...
if you go the mages guild way you may get teleported in a place you didn't want to go but still in the same general area. lol.
or if you take the boat you may not be able to dock and have to swim for shore.
or if you take the other mammoth/carriage [siltstrider] whatever, you may have some encounter in the wilds or you find that you cannot go any further do to some random reason like a road block XD.

Personally, I think fast travel is kind of cheap, so I would like to have a lot of public transport options like ships, and hopefully you can actually see them moving and you could just sleep on them to make the time go by quicker. Also chariots would be cool, again so you could see them moving and possibly getting ambushed. Also, I think that the roads should be less treacherous! In Oblivion the guards always told you to stay on the roads for safety, but they were not really any different than the wilderness. If you were a commoner trying to travel alone you'd be toast, I remember trying to race from one city to another and I had a train of like a troll, a minotaur, wolves and bandits following after me, if that were the case no one would travel on the roads. The gaurds should also be smarter and you should be able to tell them that there is danger up ahead or a murder or something so they would race towards it, it might also be fun to try and trick a gaurd into a trap. Nightime should also be a lot darker/dangerous, so that there would be more reason for you to sleep or carry a torch or something, although that could attract more attention.

Hmm... seems to me that people are pretty agreeable on this.

I chose the first option, but the third option would be fine with me too. All I want is just a travel system that is incorporated into the game, I really don't give a crap if "point-n-click" style is in or not. Leave it in for the people that want it, fine, but please add an immersive role-playing style of travel. Then we could have the best of both worlds.

Well, methods with less or no risk would be more expensive.

I kind of agree. I'm not sure. It all depends on how Bethesda would implement it. It could turn into an annoyance, but it could also turn into something unique, realistic and cool. Things don't always go as planned, right?

If Bethesda does it right, I think it would be cool if your travels could get interrupted at very rare times (otherwise it would become an annoyance I think), by... bandits? Or by some people in the civil war? Or if you're on a ship it hits something and is starting to sink?
I'm still not sure. As I said. It depends on how Bethesda would implement it

No, you had to cross south to north without speaking with anyone. That meant no travel services, merchants, or even talking to good ole fargoth about his ring. You could use mark/recall, the interventions, or the propylon chambers to quickly get there. Plus, I thought that was an awesome quest. I ended up walking the whole way. (Propylon chambers lag the heck out my old computer)

Well, regardless of how much we want an alternative to fast Travel, Pete Hines practically confirmed there will not be one.

On his Twitter someone said they should include an alternative and he used the "If you don't like it, don't use it, walk" argument.

Yes I read that too. Makes me sad. That was only to the question fast traveling being a setting to turn on/off though. It was not about a transportation system. Although I still hope Bethesda will make it toggleable... can't hurt, only help
Lots of people here want it, including me. I want it to be able to go away completely, and not just be something I have to chose not to do.

Hopefully Bethesda will realize that people do want a more immersive transportation system. It's still fast travel, but has a little more logic and RPG-feeling into it than click on that map. At least that's what I think.

yeah i read that too. but he said he couldn't answer the question. the reason he said it was probably so people wouldn't bug him.

also this IS fast travel, its just fast travel restricted in a more realistic way. dude its an exploit.

I picked the third option. I like OB's fast travel, and I'll be using it in Skyrim even if there's a more "immersive" option. Why? I primarily used it for tasks that were going to be tedious as hell - like hauling junk back from Ruin X to my house. I could walk back and forth or use a horse, but that adds up, and it's a waste of like half an hour.

In Morrowind it was necessary due to how slow your player was, because it would take you a month to get from one side of Vvardenfell to another. Unless you had a super high Speed or the Boots of Blinding Speed, you were much slower than even the default move speed in OB. Even then it was confusing and hard to remember what exactly went where - trying to get to Dagon Fel or Hila Oad unless I remembered to use Service X to go to one place and use Service Y to go to another, then Service Z to finally get to my location.

I'm hoping for travel services in Skyrim, and I'll be honest why. Immersion is good and all, but I don't want to hear this argument any more. Since OB released it's had about five hundred billion threads complaining about the exact same topic, even when nobody was forcing people to use FT. Take a week or two and code some travel service to major cities, Beth, and make these people happy. The already totally optional FT keeps those of us who likes it happy, and I don't have to see this again.

I voted for Oblivions style just because I didn't like the other options. Again, don't like it, don't use it. Yes you say not to say it, but why? Why does it have to be togable. I have seen no explanation why if it was toggable how that would stop people from going into Options and just toggle it back on.

That is like saying you don't like Fable, but you keep playing it. Do you need a toggle switch to stop playing it? If a person really wanted immersion, he would never fast travel, if it is there.

An option that I would have voted for is, for something like Daggerfall. When you fast travel, you had 3 options and it costed money and time. Also I believe if you fast traveled, you could be stopped by bandits.
I agree that if a person has no self control or free will then yes an option would be great. Thing is, what will stop the person from toggling it back on? That is what needs to be answered, and that is why I beleive Bethesda will not spend the time or resources to do so.

Todd Howard said something about "You don't like it, don't use it". So far nobody has proven this. The original poster ask to show that people want it, but I haven't seen anyone prove why they need it. Going back to page one and reread everything just in case I missed something.

Ok, regardless of how much we want a realistic moer involved version of fast travel

But yea. Here's hoping.

Just a question for you all - Would you use free fast travel if you could pay a fee for MW style transport?

i would pay myself

i would pay every time, gives me a reason to spend my gold and it makes the world more atmospheric and immersive. and i dont want to use an annoying exploit like oblivions fast travel.

and as for the other guys, todd howard didn't say that it was another developer.
the reason why daggerfall had it was because daggerfall was huge. and oblivion had it because all the landscapes looked the same. morrowind had travel services for obvious reasons. same thing as fast travel,just presented in a better way.
give me a break.

Ah I have missed this post.



This is a friendly debate correct? So let me comment on what you have said. I like what you have said for 1 and 2. 3 is what I have a problem with. You are forced to travel. We should never be forced. So if you can refrase it where a person who wants Fast Travel and not be "forced" to walk for 1/2 and not have fun. While you may have fun, I do not, so why should I have to be "forced" so I can experiance the enviroment? As someone said before, we have experianced the enviroment alot in Oblivion, how much more do I have to see forests apon forest apon forest?

Again, you can do this already. How does having a toggle switch prevent you from not using fast travel?


This is a great idea. I think it would be great to have the best of both worlds. Have Morrowinds system for those who want it, have Oblivions (I rather have Daggerfalls) system for who want that.

But again, why does it have to be toggable. So far I haven't read an explanation how Fast Travel being "Off" will make them have more fun. If people can answer this, then you will have proven why then an options should be avaliable. So far it's, "lots of us like it" but it doesn't prove why, which I believe the origanol poster ment.