I'll hold off on the discussion of the subjectivity of "fun" until the end.
It is specifically unfair because some players feel that if an unseen force hurts you then you are being treated unfairly. It would be like in a strategy game moving to a location and half of your troops are injured because of some random disease or event. Something that I don't see should never kill or hurt me in a game. Fast travel is supposed to get you to the rewards faster that is what the fun is about the current system. If there is an established price then no it is not unfair to pay for something but to deliberately damage stats or other things is something most people would hate with a passion. You can rationalize it but it does not seem fun at all to me. If you want a cost to fast travel you already have it with the lack of experience or not being able to find locations right away and having to walk there or not meeting other quest givers, so on, and so forth. My point is more if you already have a system in place that is free why on earth would you pay or take longer to get to the same place?
Though it's not quite one-to-one, an argument could be constructed along the same lines of reasoning that Nightkin in FO:NV treats players unfairly. They are, after all, an unseen force.
But the unseen isn't really the issue. The player has to know, at the basest level, that they are simulating traveling through terrain in which there are more than likely supposed to be obstacles that would normally damage the player. In that light, there is nothing at all unseen about simulating damage based on FT mechanics, because it should be obvious that something has a chance of being there to cause it. It's more than obvious that the player didn't get from starting point to destination by merely twisting spacetime.
As for the last sentence, I don't quite get what you mean. With any of these implementations (at least as I see them), "free" FT as seen in OB/FO3 would not exist side-by-side with these revisions. In this particular example, there would be no system in place that would allow somebody to subvert either paying or taking their chances.
Dragon age does this and it just waists time that I don't want to spend unless it is part of a quest or otherwise. Eventually slogging through fights would be something that just waist time and get old fast. It has never been a fun aspect unless there is a specific reason that gives you something for it I see no reason to have it. even If they happened 10% of the time it would just jar me where I am expecting to get someplace and finish a quest that really is only a five minute walk and I get interrupted by something I would have just ran past otherwise.
I found Dragon Age's interrupts, though sometimes frustrating in the moment, to give a decent flavor of danger and hindrance to the world. That was in some ways the point. The world was not so stable and defensible that roads would be devoid of encounters, and it made absolutely no sense that you would just be able to prance on by in a digital "Sorry, Fast-Traveling; Please Do Not Disturb" cocoon. In fact, if encounters were omitted, that would contribute to my being pulled out of the world, knowing that though the roads were overrun with the horde, I was never going to experience anything to indicate it directly.
The difference is a small amount of time that it takes such as the 30 seconds to load the 10 second to get to the wait and setting it to the right time. The next 30 seconds to load. This might not seem like a lot to you but I find it very annoying when I could have just chosen 1 place on the map and gotten there in 30 seconds.
I don't know how fast load times are for you, but I just tested the time required to wait 3 hours and FT to a different region: 20 seconds with waiting and FT; 13 seconds with just FT. So 7 total additional seconds spent waiting for 3 hours to pass, which IMHO seems pretty trivial. There are far worse wastes of 7 seconds within these games.
Besides, that doesn't even deal with the possibility of allowing for in-game travelers every in-game hour (2 minutes) or every in-game half-hour (1 minute).
There are plenty of resolutions. Guild guides, for instance; no waiting involved there. Just instant transport for money.
The problem is they have to label the places on the map anyway so the point is moot. Mark and recall are just points on a map 400,139 same with how fast travel works but you don't need to set the spells which saves you 5 to 10 seconds. (not a lot but like I said before these things add up and get stale fast)
What I was envisioning was not a literal mark-recall spell system. Instead, you'd have a small tab of say 4-5 places to choose from, or reset. One thing I forgot to mention from the original conception is that those recall choices would have to be made at the city. And since there is literally an infinite pool of ways to enable a user-interface for such a drop-down, I don't see how any legitimate claim can be made regarding the hypothetical time such a menu might take or the redundancy of menu design. And while each individual travel destination works like the original fast travel, the difference is the overall scope that the systems have. And that is a big difference.
Where as instead I would still have to do the same thing but it would take me longer if we went over to the morrowind side of things. you still have a loading screen with your versions I say it takes me out of the experience because I want to get to the quest faster not slower. I enjoy the quests I will explore the game in my own time but when I play the quests I want to get there and get on in a very linear fashion. I disagree that fast travel is designed to take you out of the experience because it gets you to where you want to be 5-30 minutes faster in a game like Elder Scrolls. To say that walking everywhere is more immersive maybe but thats a choice that anyone has already. (I use saving as an example. It happens, and happened a lot during morrowind for me where I would lose a lot of progress and I would stop playing the game for weeks because its very annoying. Maybe my fault but I still accomplished all those things for nothing which makes me mad as a player.)
Well for the record, I'm not actively promoting a Morrowind-specific mechanic. It usually gets promoted because it's the standard of what works in terms of a limited FT system, and it's usually what gets modded in because it's easy to duplicate without much redesign. But I'm not directly advocating a Morrowind FT 2.0. I don't necessarily point to walking everywhere as an idea of immersion. What I am getting at is that there is a fine line between completely jumping from A to B, and from just walking straight from A to B. A hypothetical system that can act as the middle ground, not be MW 2.0, give people a good portion of the convenience they are used to, and at the same time give them qualities of immersion.
This entire conversation we are having is purely subjective reasoning. You would have to name objectively what the terms are. I am giving you my argument and my reasoning which is mine you obviously don't share this but this doesn't mean that I am wrong or that you are wrong. I don't feel I have unsoundly argued anything here at all my concerns are viable concerns.
About moving back(literally) to morrowind. Most arguments about morrowind and oblivion are simply more towards the nostalgic side of things and personal preference. Some things morrowind did great, The map, quests, graphics, animations, gameplay movement, magic, and fighting system were things I think oblivion did better. Morrowind was more in depth, there was more to explore, more weapons, and no leveling objects/enemies was very nice. Both games have their strengths I personally prefer the smoother experience of oblivion.
It's true that the crux of subjectivity applies to me just as equally as it does to you. But that in a way is kind of the point. After re-reading my post, I realized I was actively and directly pointing to you when I was referring to the concreteness of terms, and I apologize; that wasn't really my intention. Instead, I guess that was more directed towards everyone who either defends current FT or attacks current FT. My point was that just because one view of what should be FT is in the majority as of right now, it by no means guarantees it will be popular later down the line. So instead of having potential radically shifting systems, and disappointment from all that those systems don't appease, it would make a lot more sense for all sides to compromise slightly. I would be perfectly willing to accept a OB/F03 FT system that merely incorporated payment for secure travel. In terms of which perspective is giving which, it seems a relatively fair compromise. Why is it that my (or others') fun must be completely put aside so that people of a different persuasion can have precisely the system they enjoy?
If people wanted believability they would not play a game with mystical creatures and magic. The argument on fun relates to why people play games. There are games that are simply not fun mostly because they have you do things that are redundant, pointless, hard to get to, time consuming, aggravating, or repetitive ETC... Why would a system going back to morrowind be more fun is more my question. I think its just a nostalgia argument that says "in my day we had more immersive traveling that was super realistic. Half the game was spent walking we were hardcoe." There has to be a better reason then that for things to change. It has to be meaningful. Like I said if there is something thats better then I am game to listen.
Well, there's a huge difference between realism and believability. The former may be out-of-place with mystical creatures and magic, but the latter most certainly is not. A game with mystical creatures and magic can have its own consistent and internal believability. And it's totally applicable tp such things as fast travel. Fast travel as in-world spells is believable in relation to the world, for instance. Fast travel as nonsensical porting from A to B is not believable in relation to the world.
Again, it's not that I'm advocating MW 2.0. Nostalgia is not my issue, nor is being 'hardcoe.' I like games that impose certain limitations on me; it forces me to be creative or to plan or to strategize or to reach an understanding about the world in which I inhabit. It's just that I find it interesting that all I generally ask for is a pittance thrown my way as a legitimate mechanic, yet such compromise is generally looked at as completely unacceptable.
» Tue May 17, 2011 8:27 am 
