Yeah I pretty much agree. It'd also be cool if you could see the travel taking place like in RDR, if you took a train you had to endure the whole train ride or jump off

Thank you. I couldn't recall any details about Fallout 3's travel system, just a fuzzy puff about fast traveling along subway routes. Maybe I will play it someday.


Thanks. It gets confusing sometimes, with the OP talking about Fallout and other players talking about Fallout 3 but saying Fallout. My poor brain! I hope people don't start simply calling Oblivion the Elder Scrolls. :bonk:

Well I would say it does, seeing as the devs put it in the game. Which they made. And they make TES games. So it does fit really, doesn't it?

I agree, Advanced FT and moving marker. It wont be the one in Skyrim, but skyrim FT will still be better than the other two.

How doesn't it fit a TES RPG? 75% of all TES RPGs have free-fast-travel-from-anywhere. There's only one anomoly. And that game's second biggest criticism is all the time wasted walking over a relatively small map, seeing the same damn stuff all the time. The primary criticism of that game is Cliff Racers.

I wrote that is was my OPINION that free-fast-travel-from-anywhere doesn't fit in a TES game . . . just because it was in previous games doesn't change my OPINION that it doesn't belong in a CRPG.

Scow2, your argument for fast travel is self-defeating . . . if the game world was only "a relatively small map," why was it so taxing for you to walk to the nearest location that could transport you?

I never played Arena or Daggerfall, so I'm relying on what little I know about those two games:
Arena's fast travel made sense, since the game map was of ALL of Tamriel AND the ONLY way you could travel from between the cities was by clicking on the map, and fast traveling to them.
Daggerfall's game map was HUGE, and Fast Travel was NOT free, and if you didn't plan well, you would arrive after the city gates were locked.
In Oblivion Fast Travel was pretty much nothing more than a cheat . . . it was TOTALLY free and it came with NO consequences what so ever . . . your health even regenerated while you teleported.

This is what I wrote on my website about the difference between Traveling in Morrowind and Oblivion's Fast Travel:
"I have always disliked Oblivion's fast travel (the clickable map). In my opinion fast travel is nothing more than more "mainstreaming" (and I'm being polite here). It takes no effort and it costs nothing - both of which ruins immersion in a RPG. Even though game time passes, there's no cost or effect of your travels, and the passage of game time doesn't even matter in vanilla Oblivion, so its passage during fast travel is practically meaningless."

"To me, having to negotiate travel added a great deal to MW - just hearing the mournful calls of stilt strider, as I entered a town, or hearing that deep scratchy voice of a dark elf, trying to drum up business, added to the game. The same is true of being able to go down to the docks and talk with the captain of a boat, and negotiate travel to a distant port. Or walking into a Mages Guild, and negotiating a teleport to another guild hall, and stepping onto the teleport platform and having the mage send me off. That's immersion that you just don't get from a clickable map."

It amazes me that so many gamers practically demand free-fast-travel-from-anywhere, yet these same people want the ability to climb mountains, want a very large game world, and complain that Oblivion (and Fallout 3) made it too easy to get wealthy. I honestly do not get this type of realism-if-it-is-not-too-hard logic.

I think each citizen of Skyrim should get their own rideable dragon once they come of age.

Edit: grammar

How the heck do you know it's the "same people?" Also I'd hardly call opposing the removal of a feature that already exists in the series "demanding free fast travel." It's more defending the status quo.

Carriages exist now, and there is your paid travel. As I said, "If you don't like it then don't use it." applies perfectly well. You are free to pretend it doesn't exist at all.

Oblivion's fast travel has effects. Time does pass. Spell effects wear off. You arrive at your destination. Negotiating travel in Oblivion is similar to negotiating travel in Morrowind: select a fast-travel destination strategically close to where you wish to go, then you march overland the slow way from there. Oblivion lacks the atmospheric touches of silt striders and guild guides and such, but it has its own atmospheric elements that Morrowind lacks. In Morrowind, I don't find lone, travelling, protective, torch-bearing Imperial soldiers on horseback.

The realism of paying for a ride on a silt strider does not invalidate the realism of not paying to walk.

I have no issue with the inclusion of Oblivion style fast travel, although I would like there to be decent role-playing alternatives. And if there aren't, well, enter the Creation Kit,

So you don't want Skyrim to include the ability to climb mountains? You're against Skyrim having a large game world? Or are you in favor of the way that Oblivion made it too easy to get wealthy?

And if you're going to quote me, please get the quote correct . . . because I wrote "practically demand free-fast-travel-from-anywhere," NOT "demanding free fast travel." I'm not against Fast Travel . . . what I'm against is free-fast-travel-from-anywhere.


Based on your argument, if Skyrim didn't include free-fast-travel-from-anywhere, you could just pretend that it exist. Including free-fast-travel-from-anywhere in a game like Skyrim is just poor/sloppy game design (in my opinion) . . . instead of actually doing Fast Travel right, we get just carriages, with free-fast-travel-from-anywhere to fill in the gaps.


Did you not see that I also wrote: " the passage of game time doesn't even matter in vanilla Oblivion, so its passage during fast travel is practically meaningless."

The fact is that Oblivion's type of Fast Traveling has no real consequences. When you walked anywhere outside of the cities in Oblivion, you almost always ran into enemies and attacking creatures. When you click on a map to walk-there-only-in-your-head, you don't lose any health or magicka, you don't damage your armor and weapons, and you don't consume any potions. You just totally avoid any battles that would have occurred if you had actually made the same journey on foot.


No it isn't . . . not at all.
First of all, it never cost you a single bit of gold. Secondly, in Morrowind, you had to plan your route . . . you couldn't just take a silt strider or a ship from one city to any other city . . . there was a realistic transportation network. Check my link to http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Morrowind:Travel

This is what we had in Morrowind:
1.) silt striders
2.) ships
3.) vivec gondoliers
4.) mages guild guides teleports
5.) propylon chambers teleports
6.) mark/recall spell
7.) intervention spells (almsivi and divine)

This is what has been confirmed for Skyrim:
1.) carriages
2.) free-fast-travel-from-anywhere

i like fasttravel only limited in cities or special magic teleporters but not in the open world, this destroys the feeling be in the wildness lost sometimes. maybe i like to wander.

But in Oblivion, the idea behind fast travel was that you select a place, your character walks there, but the walking scene is cut out. Why would you have to pay a fee to walk somewhere?

WreckSauce, I just put in a lot of effort to explain this just two posts up from yours.

Perhaps you could read what I wrote there, instead of me having to repeat it all again.

I think they should make it like Fallout where you have to discover the larger cities first instead of being able to fast travel there instantly from escaping from prison like in TES IV.

I still stand by what I said. You can quite easily ignore a popular feature that you don't want to use. You can't just imagine a feature exists that does not. Carriages are confirmed. That is in fact an alternate means of fast travel. Including a popular feature that's existed for most of the series isn't "sloppy design" it's "not catering to a vocal minority that wants it outright removed even after carriages are confirmed." If you would like to see more I could understand that, but you are in no position to deem carriages "not enough" not even having seen them yet.

If you want to sink multiple hours of backtracking into your play time that is your business, but there's no reason everyone else should either choose those hours of backtracking territory they've already covered or be inflicted with penalties for using a feature that removes zero challenge but saves real life time. If you want this to be some kind of virtual reality simulator you can play that way.

You can avoid battles on foot as well. It's not as if you're going to have to fight tons of battles and use tons of resources just to travel from place to place that you've already visited in the past.

Of course your do.

The MAJORITY of votes in this thread's poll voted for Morrowind's Fast Travel system, NOT Oblivion's free-fast-travel-from-anywhere . . . by 2:1 . . . which means that you're part of the "vocal minority," in this regard . . . not me. Morrowind did not have free-fast-travel-from-anywhere, because it was not needed with all the Fast Traveling methods that you were given. In Oblivion, Morrowind's Fast Travel network system was REPLACED by a clickable map (which most people hated). As I pointed out in my previous post, free-fast-travel-from-anywhere has NOT "existed for most of the series" . . . it ONLY existed in Oblivion.


Yes I am. Because I can do simple math . . . and 1 means of fast travel < 7 means of fast travel.
The entire northern border of Skyrim is on the Sea of Ghosts . . . so it makes no sense at all not to include transport by ship to the settlements that are near the coast. And what about the Mages Guild Teleports . . . were they just a fad in Morrowind? The only reason not to have ship transportation and Mage Teleports in Skyrim is that Beth doesn't have to provide a FULL transportation network (like what we had in Morrowind) . . . they can just appease us with carriages, and then use free-fast-travel-from-anywhere to fill in the gaps. If free-fast-travel-from-anywhere was removed from the game, they would have to replace it will a FULL transportation network, instead of a MW/OB hybrid (which is only going to make players who use free-fast-travel-from-anywhere happy).


Give me a break . . . the Skyrim game world is NOT going to be THAT big. It's likely about the same size as Fallout 3, and my Fallout 3 character could run from the southern border to the northern border in less than 10 real minutes. And in Skyrim, you'll be able to ride a horse (which, if done correctly this time, will be faster than waking), and you would ONLY have to walk to the nearest settlement, where you could pay for fast travel.

Skyrim's map (horizontal length) is about the same size as Oblivion's map and the mountainous terrain inside Skyrim's borders actually makes it feel larger (you must either climb or walk a great distance around); this was all confirmed by Todd Howard.

I heard it's going to be like shivering isles you to go to the town or place first to fast travel to it.

This was also the way it was for Fallout 3. You must discover a location before you can fast travel to it.

Reason and common sense?? You don't belong here.

It's great because in shivering isles you had to discover town and place like in oblivion you got out of jail and knew every city like I would fast travel to Chorrol join the fighters guild then go to Jauffre and didn't go to kavatch till I was level 20.

Let's avoid the walk-there-only-in-your-head, please. The logical corollaries of ride-a-silt-strider-only-in-your-head and sail-on-a-ship-only-in-your-head are the only places it can lead.

Lost health and magicka, damaged equipment, and consumed potions? Let's add diseases, lost arrows, expended charges, and used scrolls too. While we're at it, how about filled soul gems? Skill gains? Additional items? More gold? More ingredients? New, marked locations on the map? The balance of slow travel's consequences is almost always positive, yet hardly consequential in the grand scheme. Implementing such so-called realism in Fast Travel would require either random encounters or a great deal of effort. In balance, Fast Travel's tradeoffs are more than fair: you lose nothing; you gain nothing. Besides, avoiding negative attention and harm while travelling is not unrealistic -- it happens in slow-travel too.

Morrowind does require being at a designated starting point before you may execute fast travel through a service. In the early game, before the monetary cost of travel is inconsequential, your planning is also restricted by gold. In those aspects, it is different from Oblivion. However, in both Morrowind and Oblivion, to fast travel to an available fast-travel node, you select the node and poof, you're there. In both Morrowind and Oblivion, to fast travel to a destination that is not an available fast-travel node, you first select an available fast-travel node in strategic proximity to your intended destination and poof, you're there. From there, you then walk or swim the slow way to your ultimate destination. I would hardly describe one process as being "not at all" like the other.

EDIT: I was mistaking. Oblivion also requires you to be at a designated launch point before it allows you to fast travel. In that regard, the only difference between Morrowind and Oblivion is in the quantitiy or volume of launch points.

Morrowind offers a more entertaining variety of travel options. Its restricted availability of fast travel offers more challenge. Skyrim's greater availability of fast travel offers convenience. Whether challenge trumps convenience or convenience trumps challenge is a matter of taste and perspective.

With Morrowind's transportation you had to actually walk to the silt strider landing or walk to a dock and find a ship that offered transportation, talk to the person providing the service, and actually pay that person . . . that part is not only-in-your-head. Both are forms of Fast Travel . . . the difference is that with free-fast-travel-from-anywhere you only walk-there-only-in-your-head . . . no planning, no negotiating price of transport, no having to get to where transport is offered (and each was only offered transport to some locations, not every town on the map).


My statement was: "The fact is that Oblivion's type of Fast Traveling has no real consequences." and that is a true statement. Consequence is defined as "an act or instance of following something as an effect, result, or outcome" . . . I never stated that avoiding battles was only negative, but if the results were not perceived as being more negative than positive, why are people so insistent that Skyrim MUST have free-fast-travel-from-anywhere?


I never said that Morrowind was perfect . . . the economic system in both game was horrid. Pay for transportation could be made much more consequential IF its costs were better balanced with a better economic system.


No, it is more than just perspective. Skyrim's system (based on what we know so far) will just be a stripped done version of what we had in Morrowind, with free-fast-travel-from-anywhere to fill the gaps (which is only going to make players who use free-fast-travel-from-anywhere happy). Has it even been confirmed that carriage transport will come with a fee?

Oblivion Style Fast Travel :wub:
Haters gonna hate

People really look down on fast travel users like they are the scum of the earth... paying a fee for skipping the same mundane journey back and forth? NO