For PC I'm sure it's pretty easy to make a mod that disables it, but it really svcks for console players who can't :banghead: A thing that svcks is that probably the graphics will be repetitive and walking long distances may be a hard thing to do, especially because the quests they make assume you'll use fast travel.

If something already has a definition does that mean it's opposite doesn't deserve one? If there is a "fast travel between locations" why can't there be a "no fast travel between locations". You are focusing solely on the result of having and not having the option, which everyone knows is the same. For some people the result is less important than the process.

Unfortunately I think a system like the OP suggests would just become annoying or gimmicky. While I would argue that Morrowind's fast travel system is the best that has ever existed in any game, it's also unfortunate that we'll probably never see it in a Bethesda game again. (Without mods, of course.) I guess you've got to take what you get in this kind of situation. Adding random encounters would just make it worse.

I will never understand the disgust with it. :shrug:
I don't think it needs any formal disabling of Fast travel unless there is some link with achievements.

I use fast travel when I choose to, and just as often make the full trek from place to place 'real time'.
In this one case I agree with the "just don't use it if you don't want to" suggestion; but I cannot fathom why anyone would not want to.:shrug:

IMO Random encounters would make it excellent; with that included, I would then have no problems at all with "Fast Travel" ~IMO its how it should have always been.

I've never seen a quest that assumes you'll use fast travel, unless you mean one that goes from one city to the next. And what's the problem with that? If you're in the Thieves guild and you steal too much in one place, you'll attract attention to yourself. Same with the Dark Brotherhood. If you're saving the world, the entire world needs to be saved, not just Bruma. If the quest takes place in a cave/fort/ruin, you still have to find the place so you can't fast travel to it initially even if you wanted to.

I'm still honestly not seeing the issue here. I mean, besides the fact that they say you're on a Stilt Rider, what's the difference between taking the Stilt Rider between one city and the next? You're still not experiencing the travel, and it still jumps from one city to the next. Is it the fact that it's limited? If so, use self control and limit yourself. Just because the devs give you a convenience feature doesn't mean you have to do it. Aside from my "let's do the main quest" character which I only used once I first got the game, I've never once used fast travel and I've been perfectly fine with walking.

If it's the fact that you're just walking between towns instead of using something like a stilt rider, hop on a horse and use fast travel that way. Bribe a guard for protection to get you there safely. If you're determined to have everything immersive, it's perfectly possible to do so with the fast travel feature.

Like I said before, I'm perfectly fine with an on/off switch, even though I don't see the point (even as others have said, you can just turn it back on). But I don't see how fast travel detracts from the game.

No, I have I very clear idea of what I want - fast travel, completely unmitigated, to be used whenever the player sees fit. Those who abuse it will abuse it, and those who want to work for their rewards and appreciate the journey, not the destination, will hoof it and be satisfied.

This is based entirely on my selfish ideal of what Skyrim should be - I'm not interested in compromising by creating a system that penalizes the player for its use.

No, if you don't like fast travel, don't use it... Simple.

Imagine that you are in a room full of tools, it's your favourite room and you love every bit of it, but there is one tool you don't ever, ever want to use (like a turture rack or smth) - will you feel pissed when you find that you, for some inexplicable reason, can't move it and that you will forever have to see it there in the corner? You can cover it up, pretend it's not there and even blow it to bits but you will still know that it was meant to be there in that corner and that corner is reserved for it. Now it comes down to whether you would be able to forget about it. I wouldn't.

As I said, the result of having and not having the option is indeed the same, but the ways you can go about not using it are different. One can constantly lie to oneself(pretend fast travel doesn't exist) or one can feel happy playing along by the rules made(put that check next to the "disable fas travel" option) . I'm not a fan of the whole "penalize them fast travelers!" idea either, but at least it will, just a tiny bit, make it seam like that option was quietly added.

This anology is better applied to the shop room at work. The tools you mention were put there for the use of all who work in the shop room. A better anology is one's subscription to a gym, and while there you have free access to all the workout tools they make available; you would not seriously sit at one and contemplate loathing the other workout machine that you plan never to use, nor would you complain to management about removing it, or covering it up while you are there.

Even so, I don't see how this applies ~at all to Fast Travel; I don't see why it offends anyone at all... I've played RPGs for years and the offered reasons do not make any sense to me. :shrug:

How is it possible to abuse? ~Seriously I mean. What is the first example that comes to mind?

**Edit: I'll give you both a wonderful example of another RPG that implements a Fast Travel system. Arx Fatalis. (Zenimax now owns the company that made it).
In Arx, the PC can activate a magical portal in certain major locations. Once activated, he can always (and this time literally) teleport to the location; skipping all the dangers and tedium of treking on foot for 10 minutes real time, to get back. This is by design, it is not a cheat, nor does it cheat the player.

That is entirely different from TES. TES just assumes that the PC made the trek. Its like an enhanced "Q" key that not only keeps you walking, but makes sure you arrive, and omits all the bumping into walls. It represents compressed time.

Sigh...One last time all the facts:
1) fast travel breaks immersion and (for the non-casual gamer) therefore serves to weaken the gaming experience
2) by eliminating the option to turn off fast travel Bethesda basically says: this is the way we want it to work, we want you to use fast travel, because if we didn't, even for a second, we would have typed up those 10 lines of code and made it an option just like with hardcoe mode in New Vegas - that is an indisputable fact. It's not a matter of end results it a matter of how those results were achieved.
3) if I am not playing the game the way it was intended to be played, especially when something as important as travel between locations is concerned, I am effectively altering my gaming experience - the same as cheating or using mods that tamper with the game's mechanics.

If after over ten totally understandable messages that I posted, people can't understand why I need that "no fast travel" button then I must be a totally new kind of person far ahead of my own time... :shakehead:

1. That's not a fact. That's what you think.
2. This is not a fact, either.
3.This has nothing to do with fast-travel. You are fully able to run, or ride the horses provided for you, from any location in Oblivion to another in a reasonable amount of time. It's not Arena, in which you absolutely needed fast-travel, or Daggerfall, in which you needed fast-travel otherwise you would spend real days travelling. The developers put trainers in the game, as well, but it doesn't mean I have to use them.

I am going to use fast travel since im going to beat the game as fast as i can. Saying this im going to skip dungeons since theres no use on at the early level thanks to terrible dungeon system imo

Oblivion had an alternative to fast travel...

HORSES

This is some broken logic you're wielding here son! My advice--find a repair hammer and use it. :biggrin:

I'm not for fast travel myself, and I don't use it, but I have a feeling that the people who do use it far out-number the people like you and me.
So what if they don't type in the code to make it a toggleable option in game. You have the option not to use it from the start. Do you really need a menu in game to tell you that fast travel is turned off, just to put your troubled mind at ease and your uncontrollable urge to use it to rest?
And as far as you saying that Beth won't make it an option that you can turn off, because they want us to play using fast travel, is utter nonsense. If that were the case then why would they bother populating the game world at all--or better yet why would they build any part of the game world that didn't involve some kind of quest. Your argument is fueled by flames and has no credibility behind it at all.

I hope Skyrim has a hardcoe mode for all of the complainers just like Fallout NV only worse. All of you complaining about Fast Travel and all of the ones that want to have to eat and drink to survive can have at it. I hope they have no fast travel at all for yall, you have to eat and drink an in game equivalent equal to what you would in real life to get by day to day, money has weight, every item has a realistic weight, and you character can only max out at about a 100lb limit unless you use magic which only increases it by 100lbs for a few in game minutes, but your magic and fatigue only replenishes after you’ve slept a full 8 hours every night. Yall do not get that yall are in the minority on these issues because if yall weren’t it wouldn’t be a separate mode it would be the main game and Bethesda would advise you to play in hardcoe mode instead of not. That’s what is wrong with the USA today everybody caters and have been catering to the minority of people and opinions and now things have turned to s***. I loved reading the articles about FONV hardcoe mode because it was like a big FU to all the complainers and more power to you if you like it. Keep up the good work Bethesda I love the Fallout and Elder scrolls games I have played, thank you.

Do you really think just because Fast Travel is a feature of the game they made it to where you start at point A then go to point B to point D back to A then to C? If so I have to say, you sir, are a moron. I can’t remember a TRUE open world game since the Playstation 2 came out that didn’t use this concept with or without a fast travel system. And if you think Fast Travel wasn’t included, the game would have you start at point A go to B to C to D to E to F and finally to G to win the game (that’s what I get by confined to a local presence), you need to keep playing platforming games and get out of the open world category. The reason they send you traveling around the world constantly is because that is a real life scenario, not everyone you meet sends you to the next town then the next then the next without you having to go back and forth on occasion, if that were the case cops would be solving every crime that happened in less than an hour. Point A- Did you shoot this man? No he did. Drive to point B- Did you shoot this man? No it was him. Drive to point C- Did you shoot this man? Yes. BINGO BANGO we caught the murderer.

Fast travel is for all of us lazy and/or ADD people that don’t want to look at trees and animals we have seen for the 30 or more hours we have been playing so now we can Fast Travel and assume our trip was just like any of the other boring trips we made when we walked the distance ourselves. Don’t like it don’t use it, get bored use it, they didn’t design the game around it they added it so if you got bored of traveling you wouldn’t just stop playing the game and maybe not go back to it, or buy the next one. Of course a good fix for the next game would be to implement both of the Red Dead Redemption styles of traveling. But I’m sure someone would still b****.

1) How!? How does it break 'Immursion' (and while you are at it... what is your personal definition of 'immursion' ~as we all seem to have a slightly different idea of what it means).

2) hardcoe mode in New Vegas allows you to fast travel. :shrug:; they just got silly and prevent you from using it if you have crippled limbs. :bonk:
(What this means in practical terms, is that I can spend 14 minutes limping back to GreenSprings to get the leg cured, but I can't use Fast Travel to do the same thing and get back to adventuring... I mean... that's the reason that Fast Travel in the games! :banghead: ~for the player to be able to skip the back tracking, or simply to arrive at some location because that's where they want to be ~more so than they want to sit through the the long walk).

In FO New Vegas, if my PC has a crippled leg and I've no means to heal it, I need to get him to the doctor, and pay the fee... But why should I be masochistic enough to inflict upon myself the long tedious walk back to town at ? speed, and then to just run the same trek back to where I was at the beginning? Fast Travel lets me skip the hours that my PC spends limping his way back to town for a doctor, and then lets me skip back to where he was before the leg got crippled and resume what I had had him doing ~and its sometime later... Just as if he had made the boring trip back by himself... Which is the idea. :shrug:

I consider myself about as hardcoe an RPG player as you're likely to find, but I've never perceived the use of compressed travel time as being in any way an 'immursion' breaker. Not in any RPG I've ever played.

I didn't use the hardcoe mode example to tell you hard core is awesome - no use trying to discredit my statement by saying it svcks...(although you probably just wanted to tell everyone how much you hated it and now finally got the chance :celebration: ) I used it to provide an example of an instance when Bethesda made a legit on/off button for something that was important in terms of game mechanics. After all, they could have just left it to the players to pretend they are affected by hunger ingame and how much ammo they should realistically be carrying and countdown the seconds they would need for a stimpack to heal them up. They made a legit button for it - no one has to pretend. Not for fast travel.

ImmErsion for me is the feeling of being part of what is going on onscreen, you live the experience and it grows on you - not the usual detached feeling one gets when playing pacman or smth like that. The best anology I could come up with is reading a book - you soak up the words and forget the pages are there, your mind starts playing out every word your eyes see.

How fast travel breaks it? The same way other things like massive glitches and and broken quests break it - the unexplained instant teleportation+loading screen immediately tells your brain that it is looking at a computer screen and and this is all just a silly little game that is completely inanimate and...don't make me continue.

Did I give you the impression that I thought HC mode was bad? I refuse to play NV without it :lmao:

Why would I try to discredit you of your opinion? I'm trying to understand how time compression so damages the experience for you and others that post dislike for Fast Travel.
Will you tell me your opinion on the difference between Fast Travel and using "T" to wait for the sunrise? (or some other arbitrary number of hours where the PC is assumed to be standing around doing nothing while the clock ticks)

Pac Man is not an RPG ~and not trying to pull you into the world... But since you bring it up, there is no reason it couldn't be. It gives you control over a vulnerable character. One with a mission, and whose actions do in fact change the game world.
But when he advances a level, its right back like it was ; and as he gets faster, so do his opponents ~such that he never really gets an edge on them.... Rather like Oblivion no?

As far as I can tell, there is no teleportation in ANY Fallout game (1, 2, 3, or NV) ~unexplained or otherwise. In Fallout 1 it took weeks to travel between some towns. In fact it was initially rather important as one's vault was running out of water and you had to keep an eye on frivolous travel; every trip had to count ~because it was counting (the days until they started suffering).
Now you would not expect the game to depict weeks of mundane walking for the player to sit through; and it didn't. It depicted the PC's progress on a map ~like with Indiana Jones.

I have to say... that playing Fallout 1 had me feeling more a part of what was going on onscreen than Fallout 3 ever did. IMO Fallout 3 was like playing a treadmill I was role playing, but nothing ever changed (except for set piece events like the Megaton bomb). In Fallout 1 the PC's actions had unmistakable, and sometimes very harsh consequences; and the world was changed. Very few RPGs were as 'immursive' to me as the original Fallout.

I now understand what you were trying to say. You look for a simulated environment with detail enough that it can subvert your sense of reality for a time; make you forget you are playing a game, and be as though you were really in that fictional world on the screen. I'm usually unconcerned with that. I'm more interested in roleplaying the PC and have no interest in forgetting that it is a game. To me, "Immursion" is a believable ~I should say a "plausible" world within its context. My interest is in extrapolating what the personality of the PC would choose to do in the various situations they might be exposed to in that world ~their world. Whether they are honest or not, whether they would choose to say "no" to shady profit on ethical grounds alone ~or would they steal a thing that others depended on, and take it for their own selfish needs and reasons. I can do that with a decent text based RPG (as I assume you know, having accurately described what its like to read a good novel). When I use Fast Travel in any RPG, I take it for granted that the PC traveled the distance from one place to the next in their own time ~regardless of whether it was instantaneous to me. Hours pass in the game. :shrug: This does not break 'immursion' for me; whether its a first person, third person, Isometric, of even text based RPG.

You know what, in my leisure time I want to have fun. I don't have much of it, and I'd like to get the most out of it. I enjoy walking around, taking in the sights and exploring, but some times I just want to get right to what I need to be doing, or if I'm backtracking a lot, I'd like to skip parts I've already seen to get to the good stuff.

How is this a bad thing? The system is completely optional.

Regardless, there's no point in even discussing it honestly. The system is an integral part of the game and there is no chance it'll be removed this late in development. At any rate this seems to be something Bethesda is determined to keep going with, which is fine by me, and it's something everyone else needs to deal with.

But fast travel doesn't affect gameplay mechanics if you don't use it. Beth doesn't design the game for the fast travellers, they make fast travel an option for those people that can't be bothered to appreciate the journey through the gameworld, and thats fine--to each his own--but they still design the game for those of us who travel by foot and by horse, and ultimately the experience we get from the gameplay will be much more rewarding(IMO).

An option to turn on/off a hardcoe mode and an option to turn on/off fast travel are two separate issues and can't be lumped together. One creates stricter paramaters within the existing gameplay itself, while the other is only an option to loosen the already established gameplay mechanics around which the game is designed. To embed an option in the game that allows us to turn on/off fast travel is redundant--its already turned off when you start the game and you only turn it on whenever you decide to use it--YOU ARE THE OPTION.



Here we are in agreement. I can understand the immersion, escapism that you desire from the game. I'm the same way, and this is why I find it so hard to believe that you are so persistent about wanting an option to turn off fast travel. To me it makes no difference whether its there or not, so long as I don't have to use it for anything--which we don't--then I'm happy.

I'm not gonna use it regardless and would expect you to do the same, since seamless immersion is what you crave.

No stop hating on Fast travel if YOU don't want to use it don't. But don't deprive the rest of us of a valid feature, if you want such a feature you can mod for it.

You should read a few earlier posts of mine - I'm not out to kill fast travel I just want a button that toggles it. There is nothing harmful in it for the fast travelers.

I played through Oblivion without fast travel. Apart from feeling the boredom of a world that was made with the hope that people would walk the same road twice at most before switching to fast travel (and don't even argue with me on this one! Go on, fire up the exe and make three round trips from Anvil to the Imperial CIty through vanilla oblivion - you'll end up in a mental institution within minutes) there was something else that worried me: It's hard to explain but simply put I felt like I was doing something wrong - on purpose. There was just something very unsettling about what I was doing. Not using a mechanic that was intended to be used to satisfy my bitter old self who just stubbornly hates that evil fast travel... :violin: Sure there is the immersion thing, but yeah, there are things that mess it up even more...does that excuse it? :shrug:
I can only hope it won't be the same with Skyrim. There just might be enough awesomeness in it to overcompensate everything I find wrong with the absence of the button...

If you really want a longer/tad more philosophic explanation go a few pages back - I'm tired of repeating myself to everyone who comes in for a quick glance :wacko: