1st: If normal fast travel(OB style) is in just fast only travel from settlements and "imagine" you took a travel service.
2nd: FT was optional, I was approx. level 14 and a vampire in Oblivion, almost done with DB and Arena before I even KNEW there was a fast travel.(big facepalm when that happened)
3rd: Similar to #1, pretend you walked there and nothing of importance happened.
4th: As others have said, having both would be redundant.

I get your point as well but since time passed while fast traveling it didn't break it for me, if it was like an instant tel-a-port where no time passed it would have broke it for me then. Since time passed it was like I actually rode or walked there without the hassle, which for me includes chance encounters or attacks, especially later in the game, because I have more than likely beat an enemy exactly like the one I now have to fight again when all I want to do is store some of this loot and/or finish taking this artifact to so and so to finish this quest and get my reward. Although I am not completely against Fast Travel encounters if they can keep them interesting and not happen every time or even every other time and can be somewhat believable. I don't want to walk from here to there killing every enemy I have seen along the way to fast travel back a minute later and get attacked by anything,much less the same things I’ve been killing, during my trip, for at least a day or two anyway. And yeah the loading bars blow but I don't know what I wouldn't get tired of eventually.

Fast travel as a perk is the same as any other idea that has fast travel as some sort of reward inside the game - it doesn't make any sense, it ruins immersion, and in that special case it's annoying that you have to waste a perk choice for it (for quest rewards, the third argument is "and it's annoying to have to do that quest each time just because you want fast travel").

Perks are a way of specializing a character, making them more unique. They should never be substitutes for actual gameplay features. So neither fast travel nor subtitles nor background music should be perks.

In regard to your 1st and 3rd I guess i could just pretend my bow is a throwing star, and i can pretend my two handed sword is a spear... thats pretty lame dude.

That's what you are supposed to do. (That's always been what you were supposed to do.)

*That is what 'fast travel' is, and has always been; in TES, and just about any other RPG.:shrug:

**Though most other RPGs allow for the occasional important event along they way.

Since when has using a keyboard and mouse or a gamepad for an FPS been not optional; OF COURSE you can use a guitar hero guitar.

Their is your argument; he means optional as in "start of game option: enable immersion killing insta teleport click (yes) (no)" And then you have a network and mounts.

I don't believe Bethesda would even consider making fast travel a "perk" at this point.

There are simply far too many players who are get bored walking around for an extended period and already accustomed to using fast travel in a huge open sandbox world. It doesn't really matter to me one way or the other, but it's not going to happen, especially considering the projected sales numbers.

EDIT: it's possible that it might be incorporated in a way where you can only fast travel to locations you have already discovered, but I don't think there will be any sort of penalty or random encounter when using fast travel.

Not this [censored] again...

after listening to Todd Howard talk about making games, I dont think he will compromise what he and the bethesda stafff think would make the best game possible just because some people get bored exploring the world, cause i think a lot of people are bored with pressing a button to teleport to their destination too.

"but it's not going to happen, especially considering the projected sales numbers." <---you're so knowledgeable. do you work at bethesda or are you just a psychic?

OK, about the whole "no one forces you" argument. For me it comes to something incredibly simple: immersion. In Morrowind I could jump from side to side of the map and feel comfortable becuase they were realistic and believable services. In Oblivion it was a magical teleport button. I could easily ignore it in Oblivion and run everywhere, in fact it was quite fun at times. However, having ingame services would have been nice.

It's all about preference of play. I don't deride anyone who uses OB Fast Travel. It's there as an option. Just give us immersion freaks another option. I see no reason not to have both.

If it absolutely has to be in the game then yes, it should be a perk.

This is a brilliant idea. It would be great for me IMO because I would much rather get all the other perks and not waste a perk on fast travel. It would really help keep a lot of people from going straight to it with all the other perk alternatives.

I don't use fast travel in Oblivion, I just walk everywhere or ride a horse. For me, this is part of the fun, but a most players of Beth games find it boring, in fact I would be extremely surprised if it isn't the vast majority of players. Even the people arguing for some sort of Morrowind-style fast travel alternative also seem to find it boring to walk around everywhere, otherwise, they wouldn't be asking for an alternative means of fast travel. I don't think anyone wants to remove fast travel from the game, although personally I don't care either way.

Of course, the devs are trying to make this the best game they possibly can; however, different people have different ideas about what that means. I believe the devs' objective is to make the game appeal to as wide an audience as possible, which includes a huge number of players who who would find it extremely boring to spend 10-20 minutes walking in-game from one city to another, without alienating that long term fans of TES, for whom this is probably not the most crucial issue impacting whether they will enjoy the game or not.

If including Fallout-style fast travel makes it easier for Bethesda to sell a huge open sandbox style AAA game with a huge development budget, then I am all in favor of fast travel.

It makes no sense for it to be a perk. It should just be incorporated in the game world through various travel options such as boats, carts et cetera.

I really like the idea of making fast travel a perk. It could start off as a way to teleport back to places you've already been. the next perk related to that would be teleporting to any major city, or a given type of town/village. The final fast travel perk would make it Oblivion-like (bleh).

I would gladly not take those perks

I think it should be a Perk to not have Fast Travel. You could call it the full immersion perk. Then we would really see who didn't like Fast Travel, because it is probably the minority of the gamers playing this game.

yeah i would definently take that perk only if it was the only way to get transportation services like in Morrowind. I dont want to walk everywhere.

Ceaseless argument is ceaseless.

Derp, no. And keep myself from selecting a perk that's actually useful?

Why not just have fast travel in the game and, you know, not use it.

"Omg, no way." And, um, my sig.

People have said a million times in this forum why it wasn't exactly optional in oblivion considering there are no alternatives.

There's something Ive wanted to say about fast travel for a while, after reading the ridiculous arguments of BOTH sides.

There's no problem with fast travel, per se. Only a childish insistence that somehow fast travel is not "hardcoe" fuels the debate.

Oblivion had the problem of having it available at the beginning, which from a design standpoint, made it impossible not to use, since some quests were ridiculously placed at the other end of the map from where you got them.

To solve this issue in a way both sides can be content, I propose as follows (which is subject to change depending on the city layouts in the Skyrim map):

You should be able to fast travel to "safe haven" locations. By this I mean cities, and not villages, caves, or assorted places of interest (maybe to the more interesting ones would be reasonable, but the best of both worlds approach leads to accept only closed, safe places). Among acceptable locations would be havens in places away from civilization, and sort of become "landmarks" for travelling abroad. For example, there should be these kind of places in The Reach, since I dont think there are any cities in that region. The rationalization for theses places to be "fast travel havens" would be that no matter where you are going in the Reach, the best route is to simply get to that place, and follow the directions you have from there on (sort of like you do in real life). These can include some inns, that Blades temple, ect. The option to fast travel to these places only becomes available AFTER you visit them for the first time.

Fast-Travel? Not so much.

I'm of the 'travel system' a la Morrowind crowd. Unfortunately, not using fast-travel [as per Oblivion] isn't particularly an option all the time. Why? As a PC player, CTD's are far more apt to happen outdoors. If you want to get from point A to point B without crashing to your desktop, fast-travel was required.

But even then, just give me three mark slots and a recall spell, and I'd be perfectly happy. At least then, you have to pay attention to where you drop your spell marks.

People would still b****, because it is basically the exact same system as Oblivion or Fallout NV but in it you have to find the location 1st, no matter what, which I like better and makes more since anyway then fast traveling to any area you have never explored right off the bat, and the few that don't like it or don't want to use it would have the same idiotic arguments as they do now. As I stated in the past as far as I can tell from the arguments, Red Dead Redemptions two travel systems is the only way Bethesda could end the b****ing. It has a realistic travel system that continually moves from town to town with the option to view or skip the ride, plus the option to build a camp anywhere in the wild (away from enemies) to save the game, sleep, and fast travel from which Bethesda could improve on by letting us enchant or do repairs, alchemy, or whatever else. I wouldn't expect it in this game though, but you never know.

I don’t get why people with your argument would rather have mark and recall and assume your character is an idiot and can’t find his way back to a previously visited location unscathed, than fast travel. A travel system would be nice as well if done right but I would prefer other content or more detail than have the devs adding and working on that because it would take longer or they would have to make cuts elsewhere.

fast travel is going to be like oblivion it's already been decided, however I'd take it oblivion style over a perk anyday, though I'd prefer not to have it in general. (I probably will use it and like it though)