I always pay the guy 250 to take me to the island. I could fast travel for free and arrive at the same spot without the annoying autosave. But it breaks immersion so I just pay the guy. And I always enter Windhelm and go through the back door even though I could swim. But that water looks cold. If you don't want to do something, don't do it.

So because you don't agree with the current system they should remove it for everybody ?

I used FT extensively with the first few characters, now I use it infrequently. That's my choice.

And when you need to travel to Dragonbridge? Or Rorikstead?

Or any other place that the carriages don't go?

I think Beth hit a happy medium with the fast travel/carriages, actually. You can get to the major towns, even if you've never been there before. Everyplace else, you have to find it first.

Hearthfire allows you to hire a carriage driver for your house that can take you to all those places.

Dawnguard extended the fast travel network with ferrymen that you can hire to take you to port towns.

I love these additions to the network, because unlike regular fast travel it is rooted in the game-world. It would be wonderful if in the next TES game the entire fast travel method was treated this way, to have a logical and defined place in-world. Like in Daggerfall and Morrowind.

I also think it kinda makes sense for your own personal carriage to be able to go to places that the big commercial travel companies are unwilling to go to due to lack of demand and cost/ profit considerations.

It would be great if you could only fast travel while on a horse, or having to use carriages and other public forms of transport until you are wealthy enough to afford one of your own.

There could be a myriad of fun, interesting customisables for this mechanic, horses, boats, airships, who knows, a Dwemer underground railway that can take you to various out-of-way places similar to the Propylon network in Morrowind. Just thinking out loud here, but I do prefer mechanics rooted in the world over something meta that is superimposed on it.

Ferrymen? Dang I didn't know this! Thanks for the tip! This is awesome!

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Skyrim:Transport#FerrymenDG.

Bethesda really listens to fans, adding much-requested features such as arrow smithing, skill and perk resets, vampire and werewolf perk trees, crossbows and also this extention to the in-world fast travel network.

To me carriages are just as lazy as fast travel. I only fast travel in annoying quests or when it's really unnessicary to replay a certain scenario (did it lots in Dawnguard instead of running back and forth from the vampire castle to the dawnguard caste-that trip gets old the 10th time)

Fast travel is just a convenience that you could choose to use or not. They don't have to tell you to use the carriages, like you're trying to say. You use them if you want to use them, and don't use them if you don't want to use them. It's that simple. Carriages don't give you the opportunity to travel to EVERY SINGLE LOCATION and that's what's so good about fast travel.

I wouldn't mind seeing it implemented like in Dragon Age: Origins. You can see your path being marked on the map as you travel, and there's a chance you may encounter enemies (for example, bandits) on the trip. Once you've dealt with those enemies, you could re-open your map, select your destination again and continue.

There ya go right here. If you don't like don't use it. That's what I love about the Bethesda games, you can make your own choices.

I wouldn't want to get rid of fast travel, but I wish there were more transportation options. Learning the transportation system in Morrowind was awesome. It feels just like learning a public transportation system in any city. "Gotta get to Khuul. Let's see, I can Almsivi Intervention to Balmora, take the Guild Guide over to Ald'ruhn, then take the Silt Strider there. Or I can hoof it over to Seyda Neen to take the Silt Strider to Ald'ruhn and do it that way." It gives so much character to the world.

A return of mark/recall would be fabulous too.

Morrowind didnt have fast travel, but it had... Learned Travel. Everyone who played it enough realized how the tricks worked. Between the silt striders, the boats, the propylon chambers, Mark and Recall, Almsivi and Divine Interventions and the Mage's Guild transports, the world could be travelled fairly quickly -- with experience.

Even having carriage only travel would make the world so tedious to get around. It needs more. And if they arent going to put all the stuff like i said in, then fast travel becomes a necessity. Like how do you get to Riften from like, anywhere? That one path thats overrun with monsters and cliffs and ruins fileld with things that kill everyone, or that other path that goes through Helgen and mountains?

In the end, fast travel has existed in every ES game, from Arena to Skyrim. It even half-existed in morrowind. I appreciate your sentiment, I really do. But... Its just not how it works. The game is not built for it. Now if you want to say, start an effort to get ES 6 built in a way that facilitates alternative forms of transportation, I'm right there with you.

But Skyrim, like Oblivion, is built with fast travel in mind. And thats just how it is. Its the same discussion as removing quest markers: yeah, that seems like a good idea, until you realize the game tells you virtually nothing about what to do. Theres not even a real journal. So half the time, you have no way of knowing where to go without the feature.

But Morrowind has stuff like Slit Striders and magic and other cool things. Skyrim is more of a barren wasteland...honestly, what transportation have you seen NPCs in Skyrim use aside from carriages and horses? If you wanted to diversify traveling methods in Skyrim, a land with just bears and trolls and sabrecats and horses and a population that hates magic...what would you even be able to come up with with that?

I agree with everything you said. Excellent post.

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And honestly simply saying "don't use it" is a copout. If fast travel is implemented the entire city/continent -- as well as the quest content -- is built around the use of fast travel. That's just the way it is. In Skyrim, I feel you're only working against yourself if you decided to turn it off.

As I said once before, I envy anyone who can enjoy the time it takes traveling from Rifen to Markarth. Especially with not too many options at your disposal to get to your destination. It's no debate with me - I'm teleporting my way there.

Morrowind is just great in this regard - it has a fast travel system in context with its lore/setting. All the different options you have available to you makes the task of traversing vvardenfell interesting.

I agree that Skyrim probably could have benefited from some more immersive or imaginative modes of fast travel. But fast travel of some guise is needed, the way the quests are structured the game becomes tedious very quickly. I really wish that each quest giver didn't send you all the way across the map to complete a task. It seems to happen with every second quest and its not fun, its padding in the worst possible way...

That said, I would have no problem walking from place to place, if there was a greater chance of encountering monsters along the way. I run around for about an hour last night and come across maybe nine wolves...

Anyone got a mod for that?