I agree, working hard for something and then succeeding is a lot more fun than just going where a marker tell you to, imo.

I think the best solution is a combination of roads and NPC guides.

Roads would be the new "fast travel" so to speak. We already have roads in place between major cities and towns with signs and bricks guiding us along the path. There should be maps outside cities that allow us to fast travel to any of the other cities. This would be similar to Morrowind's forms of travel, but would be free and allow us to pick from all the cities at once. By not being able to teleport to every single spot on the map instantly for free, we solve the issue with fast travel. For those who do want to fast travel everywhere, I propose a second system of travel.

NPC guides would be our solution to locations in the wilderness. There would be scouts for hire at the major cities who can take you to the minor locations around their region, even if you have not been there before (They know the way, right?). You have to pay them to take you there, and you should be able to pay them to stick around for a little bit. This gives us an incentive to not hire guides: they cost money. In the old form of fast travel, one just warps to a location and then warps to the next. Who can avoid using something when it's free?

By making us pay to teleport everywhere, we give people a reason to go adventuring into the wild while still letting those who want to teleport do their own thing. I believe that my system best covers the need for fast travel between cities while reducing the heavy usage of fast travel that kills off the wild part of the wilderness.

As a closing thought, no matter what happens we need some random events in there. If using the fast travel system, I'd like to get mauled by a bear. If using my system, I'd like my guide to get murdered by bandits on rare occasion.

Edit: I forgot about the fact that half the time you're also trying to get out of the wilderness... To cover that there could be either teleportation spells (mark/recall, maybe interventions) or wandering scouts that you could hire to take you back into town.

I find it amusing that there is such a fuss about having everything so realistic, but at the same time people want to transport instantly between any place they have already been. I would really prefer to have Morrowind's methods of traveling: boats, mages guild, silt strider, mark/recall, and interventions. If we really need to make it easy for Bill to get around, I like the idea that once you reach a main road you can then fast travel along that route. But fast traveling from some isolated cave in the mountains is just ridiculous and makes players lazy.

Also along the same lines, no magic compass! "Let me mark the general location on your map" should be sufficient. I don't want to be lead directly to some long lost artifact that no one has seen in an era. How did my compass know it was there? Just ridiculous.

Exactly.

The character doesnt teleport to those places, havent you ever cheched the time be4 and after travel

No, but with telespells or like cart rides yes

My personal reasons why I don't like fast travel:
- I like realism
- I like exploring. You get to discover more while you travel
- you are often forced to travel, experience the environments a lot more; which I believe will eventually make you like them more.
- when you travel to some place, it gets harder. A long journey actually feels like a long journey. And when you arrive you feel like you've earned it.

A transportation system takes away some of these points as well, but it still makes it more realistic, and you also get to experience more towns and meet more people with it. If you eventually get a little bored of running to all the places, a light-weight transportation system can help a little with that, while still making you feel like you've traveled instead of just clicking on a button that teleports you directly to the place (fast travel).

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This would be the best solution in my opinion:

Implement a travel system as in Morrowind. Boats to the closest towns, teleport with Mages guild, divine intervention (teleport to the closest Imperial chapel/shrine), mark & recall. Perhaps even another transport as well to replace the silt strider (a carriage or something?).

Then, after having this as a "base", allow an option to disable and enable fast travel, so that everyone (on PC and consoles) can easily turn it off/on. People who like fast travel in Oblivion can still use it, and people who like the Morrowind travel system can still use it. The most horrible thing to do is to force fast travel to be on. Mods can solve this for the PC... but what about the consoles. Think about them as well

Also, a good thing would be to add some kind of scene, when you decide to take ex. a ship or a carriage (for instance), you actually see yourself traveling in that transport. And then you should have the option to disable this by clicking a button, after which the character lies down and goes to sleep. And then you wake up at the final destination.

Something else really cool would be to have a probability for the transportation (whether you're sleeping or not) to get interrupted by some kind of attack, by bandits... for instance. Pretty much like the OP said.

For me, the lack of fast travel or even map markers was a pain in the ass during my Morrowind playthroughs. (though when I played it, no one ever heard of fast travel or map markers )
I mean, if I am wandering around the Ashlands for 2 hours because I can't find some damned cave, what fun is it?
My opinion: Find something that's a solution less for 10 years old fast travel, and something that's better than the one that's suitable for people stuck in cryo-sleep capsules, giving them an crapload of time to wander around, looking for one place.

anything that doesn't break immersion reallly...

Some of my best and most rewarding experiences in Morrowind came from not knowing where something was and getting lost for a while. Maybe that's just me.

Not just you, I completely agree. Morrowind forced you to explore, causing you to find all kinds of stuff... It was pure awesomeness

They won't "force" us to explore in Skyrim. I think they will just use the morrowind system but make it so that there are more travel points around the map (instead of a select few towns having Stilt Strider Access in Morrowind)

I don't have a problem at all with Fast Travel as it was in Oblivion. It's there as an option and you're not forced - or necessarily encouraged - to use it if you don't want to. I would like to see integrated forms of transport like Morrowind had that are unique to the region however.

And I don't think that the whole, "Fast travel means that we won't get detailed environments" argument is valid at all. A high budget AAA RPG like TES isn't going to have bland environments just because of a fast travel option. It's in Bethesda's favour to design it well and properly. I also think people need to stop whinging and complaining about Oblivion - it's not like it was a rubbish game by any stretch of the imagination.

The disease of modern times: everything needs to be done fast, every little effort must be rewarded instantly. People expect the world to be saved/conquered in a matter of minutes in a haze of mad explosions most preferably (like the popularity of CoD despite its shorter campaigns). Renders the sake of role playing because of "escapism" obsolete if you ask me.
Make me earn this. Make it a long journey with a lot of obstacles and hard times... Make this a story of a quest, rather than rooting out all evil as a one man army in a day or two.

Actually now that you bring up oblivion. oblivion DID have a bland and boring enviroment. Anyway, the arguement "oh but it's just an option" really annoys me. Would you want VATS to be in oblivion, I mean it's just an option right? Of course you wouldn't it's still part of the game, and the very fact of it being the lures you to take the easy but often less rewarding way out. Besides that It really breaks immersion to have the option of basically teleporting anywhere. I realize time passes, but it still seems like a teleport, which is what is important. I'm not expecting fast travel to restored to a morrowind'ish level again, but atleast don't let us have all the cities from the get go...

No. I don't like it, IMO it ruins the experience. They take a lot of time in creating a huge world, so I'm gonna enjoy it.
What would be good perhaps it's something like Morrowind, fast travel but as a service.

That is a completely different matter. VATS clearly wouldn't be in The Elder Scrolls because it doesn't fit with their setting or the entire premise of the game. Fast travel, however, did to a degree that it helped new players. You can't say that it led to them making 'bland and boring environment' due to the fact you had to discover places before you could travel to them. So unless you spent the entire game hiding inside cities then you were bound to do some degree of exploration outside the walls.

Sure sure. But let it be optional. And by optional I mean OPTIONAL (turn off/on setting), it makes everyone happy . The argument "If you don't like it, don't use it" (identical to argument: "it's still an option, you can still choose not to use it") is completely useless.

Let's make a comparative example and anolysis:
You personally think the magic combat system in Oblivion is really really bad. It's way way way too powerful. You don't wanna use it, because you hate it so much. You think it doesn't suit the game at all. You also know many other people who play the game thinks the same as you.
Someone listens to your complaint, but responds only with "If you don't like it, don't use it".

Do you get the point? In this example, the magic combat system in the example is really powerful. Way too powerful. This could be tempting in a tough combat. You fight with your sword all the time and it takes so long, but if you use your magic you can kill the enemy in one hit. Still, you don't like the thought of killing any enemy (even the toughest) in 1 hit. You hate it, it doesn't suit the game. It ruins logic and atmosphere. Now, if someone says "If you don't like it, don't use it", how would you react in this situation?
It clearly shows that the option is still there, a tempting option since it's a quick solution that's always there, but which you still think (and many others) ruins the atmosphere, game and logic.

I hope, after commenting this, I'll never see the invalid argument "If you don't like it, don't use it" or anything similar like "It's still an option, you can still choose, simply don't use it!".

If you don't want to fast travel, then don't. It's completely optional.. like swimming. If you don't want to go swimming, then don't. There's not THAT much treasure at the bottom anyways. hahahahahaha ^ /thread

A game without fast travel would really get annoying (I loved MW though), it's just needed.

But I would also love additionally realistic ways of fast travel like in MW.

Then no one could complain.

Oh, and of course only fast travel to places where you have been, not like in the beginning of OB.

Why wouldnt VATS work with bows or a melee version for swords ect? But that's not the point anyway. I'm saying that the "it's just an option" thing is not at all an excuse to implement something that breaks immersion. ANd yea you had to do some exploring, and no it wasn't "just" fast travel, the compas added a lot to it aswell. but between the two it made so that you'd run in a straight line towards your goal a few times, then you'd have enough teleport point around the world to simply go within 100 meters of where you pleased.

It's like if BSG were crying out to us: "Look, you really can skip the whole of it, you won't miss anything if you do, there are no points of interest, the world around you isn't essential in a sandbox RPG, we deliberately made it so dull you'd rather die of boredom than of nasty encounters on your way to Chorrol. Just go there already!"
But they obviously did put a lot of effort in it, albeit I believe they've got what it takes to do better..

Morrowind.

I like your suggestions but I hate to break the news to you. The game has already had the fast travel system, the only thing they changed in Fallout was that you had to walk there once first, so I really don't think they will revert back to an older travel system because the one they have is what fans expect now. They might make it so you have to get to a location, including all cities, before you can fast travel to it and I think that is something that they could actually give the player control over. However I do not see Bethesda going back to an older travel system, not going to happen.

Granted, the real-time applications of fast travel are mindbogglingly easier to deal with, but my point is that the system just seems so uninvolved. Hell, I'd be happy just to see my cursor move across the bloody map, to be honest, but being able to choose my route, so I didn't have to watch a stupid AI take the longest way possible, would make that even more engrossing.