fast travel is in, undeniably IN...
[edit]
"Pressing down in the compass menu pulls the camera perspective backward to reveal a huge topographical map of Skyrim. Here players can zoom around to explore the mountain peaks, valley streams, and snowy tundras that populate the northern lands. Pulling the camera as far away as possible gives you a great respect for the size of the game world. From the map view players can manage quest icons, plan their travel route, or access fast travel."
GI hub update Inside skyrim's menu system

yeah, im a bit pissed off that the extra effort wasn't made to refine the travel system but thats why im getting the pc version right.
convenience is ok if your just playing for a few hours, but this is elder scrolls, you do not play for "just a few hours"!!!
so im really hoping that this is one of the first things addressed by the mod community.

who will be the first modder to make the mammoth transit and mages teleporters?

inspirational mods for oblivion that try to do this:
dwemmer subway.
the stable travel.
mages guild travel.
mark and recall.
teleportation scrolls.

and nehrim. nehrim has an amazing travel system

morrowind had a decent travel balance, if only the cliff racers were less prominent i would have walked more.

im not bashing fast travel. i would just prefer an alternative to enrich the experience of moving around skyrim. convenience is a killer for me, i would like to enjoy the scenery that was meticulously hand crafted for us.
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if anyone says "IF YOU DONT LIKE IT DONT USE IT" i will virtually punch you in the face :toughninja: and ask for a mod to close this post.

I'm sorry but where are you getting this information...?

GI update today.
"Pressing down in the compass menu pulls the camera perspective backward to reveal a huge topographical map of Skyrim. Here players can zoom around to explore the mountain peaks, valley streams, and snowy tundras that populate the northern lands. Pulling the camera as far away as possible gives you a great respect for the size of the game world. From the map view players can manage quest icons, plan their travel route, or access fast travel."

Mammoth transportation. Much like the Silt Strider transportation in Morrowind. *Crosses fingers*

How will you get to me? I'll just fast travel away.

boats
mammoth-drawn carriages
tribal wise woman teleportation
dog sleds

Ok I agree that there should be a cool way to travel but nothing vast. I mean carts that will take you from town to town is a cool concept but nothing like a flying machine. I honestly just wish there was a giant body of water so they would add ships and such.

It was already confirmed in the GI magazine. :shrug:

"As you've come to expect, you can instantly travel to previously visited locations with the tap of the fast travel button."

duh

Who are you to say some people don't play for "only a few hours?" I play for an hour, and then write up a journal for my character, and then I'm usually done for the day. If I play for too long, my love for the game will wear off and I'll get bored.

If what bothers you is the fact that you "disappear and reappear" (which is not the case, time passes), then hop on a horse and fast travel that way, or bribe a guard to protect you to add to why there wasn't trouble along the way. I really don't see why the fast travel system is in any way a detriment to immersion, since most of the alternatives you suggested would just have you disappear and reappear at your location, just with a "story" behind it.

And if you want to enjoy the scenery... what is so wrong about telling you to walk or take a horse?

Edit:
I'm not saying alternative forms of transportation wouldn't be nice - actually, I would love it. But I also don't see how confirming fast travel in any way says that there won't be other forms of transportation.

That would make me so happy. People shouldn't just be able to travel anywhere for no cost.

TBH, I expected a New Vegas type "hardcoe" mode that provide alternative fast travel more like Morrowind, NV type sleeping and eating requirements, no "go here for quest" arrows on map, etc.

People would Happily not use fact travel if

THERE WERE OTHER VIABLE METHODS TO GET AROUND.

so please, dont start with that if you don't like it don't use it. those who don't like it would happily use other methods to get around via streams/ a guild that has access to magical teleportation, wagon rides etc etc.


but yeat its in.

the sixy thing about it however is that you only Fast travel to regions you've been to before.

SO EVERYONE'S WALKING FOLKS, and I can't wait to hear the crying about how long it takes to get from one end to the other before Fast traveling, make you wish there was an alternative huh .

Nevermind.

You're discussing alternate options with mods.

I don't even need a transportation network as extensive as Morrowind's. Just being able to, say, hitch rides on caravans between the five major cities would really help give you a stronger sense of appreciation for the province and the world's culture from a greater, more overarching perspective. Why exactly is it that to get around in the capitol of the empire, people had to travel alone on horseback or walk on foot? It just made no sense.

Yeah, this was 100% without a doubt confirmed like a month ago. Cry more.

I say do what you need to do. My job doesn't let me log in too much hours on the game so the fast travel saves me time but when I do have the time I just walk or ride. So ways of travel would be cool even though its just fast traveling with object, unless they made it like WOW and you had to sit and wait until you got there but really I don't think anyone wants that including me.

Thats the point. Sure time passes, but all you're left with is being there. You dont deserve to be there. You are taking a cheaters short cut. Do you fast travel to where ever you are going ? No, you take a car, bus, walk. Thats why when you use a travel service, you can relate your character to yourself. Plus fast travel doesn't really say how you get there. You just kinda do. Magic and then you have a nap for several hours? Who knows. All I know is that if you dont want to fast travel, then dont. But alternatives should be provided.

I'm fine with fast travel as long as...

1. It's similar to Oblivion, where you must discover the location first (but this should apply to all locations, in my opinion, you shouldn't pop out of the inevitable-prison-intro with the major cities already discovered
2. There are interesting things happening on the roads from point A to point B and new things to discover.

Number 2 was not in Oblivion. What I mean by that is, yeah, sure, there are caves and ruins that aren't quest-related and that you should only ever enter if you're just exploring, but they were practically hand-fed to the player. You'd get an icon on your compass that would show you that something is nearby and I didn't like that. Morrowind was so great because you could just find someone standing on the road in need of help, or you could turn a corner and--oh hey! There's an ancestral tomb! It was rewarding to just explore, but with Oblivion, who cares? You can effortlessly find every area on the map. When I play Oblivion, I feel like there's nothing left to discover, like I've done everything there is to do, but when I play Morrowind, I feel like there are still new places to find and new quests to complete, even though I've spent more time on Morrowind than Oblivion.

I'd like to see a combination of Morrowind and Oblivion though. I think the best system for fast travel would be:
- Include things like silt striders, mages guild teleports, boats, etc.
- Mark and recall
- ONLY include fast travel for friendly-locations (i.e., cities, towns, inns, etc.)

This way, if you finish a big dungeon and just want to return quickly to finish the quest, you don't have to spend half an hour finding your way back, you can just fast travel. But if you're going to a new dungeon you have not explored before, you can't just fast travel to some hostile environment that you've discovered before, instead you'll have to leave from a friendly location and find it from there.

lol, i thought it was vague. but i guess your right.
'

See my edit - I'm not saying alternatives shouldn't be in the game, but they didn't say that they wouldn't. They just said that regular fast travel will.

And you can make your own story if you want to. Like I said, you can "pay" a guard to "protect" you. You can also "pay" (bribe) a mage's guild member to teleport you. Horses outrun most threats in the game, so you can hop up on a horse and fast travel that way. The mere presence of fast travel doesn't remove any of the roleplay in my opinion, but that's just me.

But one of my points was that he said he wanted to "see the scenery," which most transportation networks doesn't allow, at least if it'd be in the style of Morrowind's.

Ugh, there's been like 17 threads about fast travel being in, and even threads specifically talking about the kind of fast travel being in, we've even had Gstaff come in and say it's gonna be like similar in nature to how it was done in Fallout 3.

mark and recall the dungeon. then use some teleportation scroll/rune to get back to town.

Actually I agree with YOU completely! Morrowind did have a sense of rewarding the player by running into random caves and never knowing they were there before. I mean hell to this day I'm still finding caves and tomes I never knew about before. Honestly Skyrim should throw out the compass Icons and let the players run into things to make it more exciting.

You know what? I'm tired of seeing all the fast travel system thread and having to explain a way that the fast travel system could be perfect. So instead I'm just going to say, I hope BGS makes it where modding out fast travel is Copyright Infringement so that fast travel mods can't be made so that people have to suffer with it or don't use it. That's all I'm going to say....

It was confirmed.


'In terms of the world size, the actual map is “approximately” the same size as Oblivion’s, and features five cities and 130 dungeons, all which can be fast-travelled to once discovered. The dungeons will also lock at the level you first explore them, so players won’t be able to return to them for an easy grind session.'

~PC Gamer.