I want to see a "Navigation" skill added to the game. With a low skill, NPC directions don't give you a very good map marker. Using Balmora from Morrowind as an example, once you get the directions you'll know the general location of the place represented by a circle within a range around the location, but not centered on the location. Once you travel there, your map marker will be a bit better, perhaps with the circle getting smaller as you become more familiar with the location. Eventually, after manually traveling there many times, you will know exactly where it is, and can finally fast-travel there. When you fast-travel at a lower skill, though, you aren't always going to be close to your destination. For example, you might have only visited Cheydinall twice with a low Nav skill, so you arrive about a thousand yards away from your destination. Traveling around and reading maps you can pick up in the environment will increase your navigation skill, and you will be able to learn locations faster. Traveling away from roads will improve your skill faster.

For example, a Novice will be able to fast travel to a new location after visiting it 20 times.

An Apprentice will be able to fast travel after 15 times.

A Journeyman can fast travel after 10 times, and can fast-travel directly to city stables.

An Expert can do it after 5 times.

And a Master can do it after only visiting once, and can fast-travel directly into cities, automatically stabling their horse.

You can have a fast-travel location added to your map by the use of unique pickups. For example, you might find an object called "Map to Anvil" on Oblivion, and that will add Anvil as a fast-travel location.

Additionally, the game would have a silt-strider style of travel, and if you use that instead of walking, it counts towards your "Times Visited" for a location, but you don't get an increase in your Navigation skill.


"But Nazzer, what would there be to stop novices running out of the area and back in 20 times?"

Well, that's a simple programming concern. A player would have to travel through a certain number of cells before returning. Using Oblivion as my example again, they could travel between Kvatch and Anvil a few times, or just wander the area around Anvil. This simulates getting to know an area before understanding where it is.

I think my system would be a happy medium between Morrowind's manual travel focus and Oblivion's fast-travel. You are forced to manually travel everywhere a bit before you can fast-travel, so it'll make sure no one can really complain about the tedium.

For balance reasons, it may make sense to allow players to buy maps to the major cities for some set sum of gold in addition to them being found in, say, NPC houses. Maps essentially serve the same function as Spell Books in Oblivion.

No, fast-travel is fine the way it is. If you want to walk somewhere every time, then don't use it. It's as simple as that.

Morrowind already had the perfect traveling system, so I don't see the use.

No thanks, just use Morrowinds Fast Travel.

I like the skill idea, but I don't like how you propose to implement it

I think instead of visiting said place so many times, I think that there should be a certain radius in which you can fast travel. The lower the navigation skill the lower the radius, the higher the skill the higher the radius. To avoid breaking immersion I say the radius shouldn't be able to get big enough to cover even 1/5 of the map, but idk.

Good god, people. Way to be constructive.

"NO KEEP IT THE WAY IT IS NOW!"

"NO KEEP MORROWIND FAST TRAVEL!"

God forbid Bethesda actually PROGRESS.

God forbid they offer more opportunities for a player to RP a hunter more sensibly.


EDIT: Look at darkm2021's post. THAT'S how you post. Actually criticize my idea, don't just say NOOOOO GRRRRR!!!!!!!!!

Because there are somethings previous games have done right, and what does this have to do with hunting?
I don't believe I said NOOOO GRRRRR!

I agree

and I'm sure this could have fit into http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1150031-skyrim-should-fast-travel-be-permitted/

Think about that for a moment. If you have a hunter character, what does that entail. He is good at finding his way around. Simply being able to fast-travel instantly to any location isn't what I'd call the trait of a "talented hunter", nor would I call taking a cab everywhere the mark of a good hunter. Now, an individual that is far better at finding his way to a location than a mere orc barbarian, THAT'S a talented hunter.


Fast traveling is boring, taking a cab doesn't fit a hunter/tracker/cartographer character much, and simply walking everywhere can be done by a warrior character equally as well as a hunter character.


@BoSStealthAgent: Oh, quiet. There's an entire section devoted to this game now, are you really concerned that this thread is going to take up space? If this thread is unpopular, it will fall to a further page. That's the way a forum works.

Keep an optional Oblivion style fast-travel available (for on/off toggle in the options menu), in addition to a Morrowind system and most players will be happy I think.

Interesting interpretation to this problem, however the problem people have with the fast travel system is that it drops an RPG element and the reason it was implemented was because a wider audience basically don't want to waste their time walking from place to place with such a big map.

I believe this system would just cause much more confusion to people and effectively make players meet the worst of both worlds, new players not understanding the system and getting frustrated just wishing to get to the place in the quickest time, and the hardcoe RPG's maxing the skill in the first 10 hours of play and just having fast travel fully available from anywhere for no reason.

Both Morrowind and Oblivions methods of fast travel had their merits, and Fallout has learnt from Oblivions folly it seems, however some people still want the good old, use the world as a world, not use the interface to move.

I'd personally like to see a hardcoe option which would force players to use the otherwise optional Morrowind Style transport.

However, i have faith in Bethesda, I'm sure they will provide an excellent system for all audiences, especially after making a few mistakes here and there, that's how we learn after all :fallout:

I don't think that makes much sense. This is an RPG. Why should a hunter or cartographer character not have an advantage in traveling to a particular hidden cave over some dumb barbarian?

I'm sure walking the same route 20 times is just as boring as fast travel.

Oh good god, did you even read my post? Think about how long it would take to travel between any two major cities in a game. (HINT: If you read my post, you'd understand that traveling "via cab" would add to the count as well) Every time would increase your navigation skill. This means that in a very short time, that 20 times shortens to a requirement of far fewer times. It's not rocket science.




I'm not sure it would be that confusing. It's quite simple to grasp that your character gets better at determining where something is on a map over time, and that reading maps will make you understand where a location is even more.

But he does have a point, no one will want to visit the same cave 20 times over just to be able to fast travel, thus my suggestion which I'm 90% sure got completely ignored

I like your a idea a bit better, but wouldn't you be essentially achieving the same thing of Oblivion-style travel but by jumping though ruins and cave markers?

I totally agree with what your getting at... that people should be open to change, or at least humor new ideas (especially ones like this that, while highly unlikely to ever be considered by Bethesda, is pretty cool sounding).

However on an issue like this you have to remember something: There are a lot more, and I mean a LOT more, casual gamers out there then hard core or RP style gamers. Having to walk to, and find, every location in a game world the size of Oblivion could take countless hours... and not everyone has the time for that. Some people can only play for a few hours a week, and they don't want to spend all that time walking from point A to point B... they want to spend it actually playing the game. Out of all my friends who played Oblivion/Fallout, probably less then 10% would actually want to spend time searching for locations like you had to in Morrowind. That's just my personal experience of course, but its a well known fact that casual gamers out number the more hard core by a wide majority... and very very very few casual gamers would be open to a system such as that which you have suggested.

Not to mention you are suggesting a semi-radical change to a game series that people have been playing for a long time... and people hate change. I myself don't much care for major changes to games myself in fact, unless of course something is broken.

As for your suggestion.... Personally? Your idea is really intriguing... but its over kill, and a little clumsy sounding to be honest. Going back to the way Morrowind handled exploration would likely be sufficient to make the game (and exploration) more immersive. Have a fast-travel transit system between set points would be a good start. Then, when it comes to finding quest locations... you should just be given the general location of the place you have to go and actually have to find it.. without a map marker or an arrow pointing the way. To satisfy the casual gamer, the waypoint arrow and map markers for quest destinations should be an option that users can turn on and off at will.... like hardcoe mode from New Vegas. That way, the game would appeal to both the casual and more hardcoe RP types.

Wait, is it the number "20" that he is hung up on? I wonder, if I say "I've got, like, a thousand pennies under my couch", would BoSStealthAgent say "BULL, you've only got 15!"?

Seems people can't understand that stated numbers DON'T HAVE TO BE EXACT. It could easily be a 8/6/3/2/1 visit requirement respective of level. You are missing the point if your complaint is having to visit a location EXACTLY 20 times.

Yeah, that's what i thought as well... and that would just be really annoying compared to Oblivion's traveling.

True. But that person would have had to find those places first

Would still be annoying after those places are explored.

I'm not sure it would in practice be so massive a change. After all, it still has Morrowind-style cab-travel, and it still involves fast-travel capability. The only change is that you don't automatically know every single location like the back of your hand because you traveled there once. And think about the casual gamer again: if you are going into a quest, you would be given a vague quest marker instead of exact GPS coordinates. It's not like a casual gamer would suddenly drop the game because he had a GENERAL idea of where, within 20 or so meters, something was, instead of the exact latitude and longitude of the cave they need to go to.


It's annoying to not automatically have perfect GPS coordinates of a cave you went to as a part of a quest, and instead just have a record of kinda where it is? To me, it seems like you're just being picky.

GRARRARARA I NEED TO NEVER GO OVER THE SAME STRETCH OF LAND TWICE IN A GAME!

Dude, it's not like my suggestion would always require you to travel for 40 minutes to every location. It'd add, like, one minute to a journey. You'd cab-travel to the nearest cab-travel point, then walk there. JUST LIKE MORROWIND.

What's more annoying? Going to a place multiple times to get a fast travel or having a limited range to fast travel to?
I really do liek the idea of a 'navigation' skill but, like I said, I don't like his idea to implement the skill into the game. I guess we could also have Morrowind fast travel along with the skill that I suggested has a radius effect instead of re-visit effect. Having a limited area to fast travel would mean that characters with lower level navigation skills would have to travel to a near-by city to access a service (mages guild portal?) in order to travel across the map.

I think he meanss jumping between landmarks to get to a goal, which is alot of loading screens as a opposed to one.