Yet if the point is to try to justify fast travel as it's presented in the current light, your character really doesn't have the choice. The character can't implicitly disable their chances for random encounters, getting attacked on the roads, etc.
If a dragon in Skyrim had a chance to fly down on the character whilst the character was walking around, there is no way the character can affect the raw probability of that occurring. If it happens, it happens, and the odds stand the same.

If the player chooses to FT, they force their character out of the world, out of the bounds of possible occurrence, out of any mechanic whatsoever.

So if your argument for FT is that you want to completely and unimmersively skip through anything that you the player don't want to go through on a whim, then so be it.
But let it be clear that boredom is nonsensical, and in-game consistency is incompatible with it.



Perhaps those that choose a single version of any mechanic they want, also want that to be the only mechanic. And they probably could offer a decent base for why it is they want that. I stated earlier that I'd rather have my least-favorite mechanic be the only one, rather than have all three be present. Is that a lack of consideration for others' playstyles, or is it a demand for in-game consistency as a whole over preference of how the individual gearworks move?

problem is your in first person (for the most part) and your in the same big world, DA gets away with it by making pocket universes for random encounters.

In skyrim it would need to figure out where you are, place you, generate the world around you and generate the mob. I can already see the orientation, lag and cheap death mess that makes.



well that′s kinda the point of FT to begin with, to give the player the tool that if he/she want to avoid that dragon while just getting back to the capital to repair his/her armour or some other small pickens

it′s basicly the purpose of any form of FT Morrowind, Oblivion or other.

checkbox - beginning - world tailored to choice

Therefore, yes, I do consider that inconsideration because a gameworld could still very easily be consistent with only one mechanic (the one chosen) present in the gameworld.

I want Morrowind like travel services.
I dont care for instant fast travel but have it as a toggle option when starting the game, as that would please the most people without detracting the enjoyment of others. :shrug:

As mentioned, it's not like that. You have no idea what you could encounter if you manually travelled. With click'n'go Cheat Travel, you don't even select your path. You just teleport, then the game pushes time forward depending on the straight-line distance.


Would be an excellent idea, except people don't seem keen on that option, so the game gets designed around the idea of using some fast travel method.


Personally, what I'd like to see is, first of all, quests not designed with use of fast travel. If you want to use it, fine, but don't assume we all will. Second, make fast travel take actual time, an expected amount of time if as if you had travelled the main roads when possible. Third, make time an important factor. Timed quests, for instance.. not so bad that it's much of a concern, only that you may want to sometimes rethink taking the main-road path that FT gives you. Fourth, and most importantly, be interruptable. If the path takes you through an area that has high enemy counts, the more likely you should be dropped out of fast travel for an immediate battle. If there's a persistent enemy in your path, you should drop out of fast travel always when you reach them. Or if you're only mobile due to the effects of feather or something, and it runs out along the way, you should automatically stop.

That way, fast travel would have some risks (higher in-world travel time, no cheating past encounters), while not being an effective cheat and still significantly cutting down on the amount of real-time it takes to travel, so that it is "fast travel".

And yet Bethesda must still design and incorporate all three systems, determining how they work the world in three different avenues, and in the meta sense, still easily contributing to dissonance in the game.
Things are rarely so clean as to reform themselves to a toggle-switch. And even if they were, I still want Bethesda to focus on one. Slippery slope though it may seem, if Bethesda starts making a habit out of creating interchangable systems at player will, I'm going to start feeling robbed of time gone awry.

And though it may be an appeal to Artistic Authority, I want to see the game in terms of its mechanics as Bethesda themselves envisioned it, so that I can get a greater sense of the gameplay they are trying to craft, if that makes sense. In the view of the game as a complete whole, throwing 3 or 4 different optional versions of a mechanic into that whole reeks of a designer appeasing a vast sea of consumers' whims, rather than working to impress the consumer through changing the mechanic by itself or reworking how the mechanic by itself fits into the whole.

all of that sound better to work with a horse, especially since as I mention in a above post, dropping out of fast travel in a FP view would be very disorientating, and the way Elder Scroll games build he world, most likly not lag free, and thus there most likly be a lot of cheap deaths that your character "realisticly" wouldn′t be subject to.

No, that is not the point of fast travel. What you described is blatant cheating. The point of fast travel is to travel quickly in real-time, as opposed to game-time. It is a flaw if the result of fast travel and manual travel are not the same in-game.

Right, because allowing the ability to click and instantaneously travel with some time going by in addition to a base system of travel services is incredibly demanding in resources, correct? Where you thinking about the other way around, by chance?

hmmm traveling quickly in real time...kinda like people did in the old day with a horse

Yes, and as long as the availability of instant teleportations does not affect the quest designer's enthusiasm in adding adequate directions in the quests.

You could think of it as the character being too intent on travelling and walking into an ambush.

But truthfully, I don't see it as a big problem, as long as a good graphical representation is used. Something where you can see where you are as you're fast travelling, so you, the player, can be alert if you stop prematurely. Kinda like how DA:O does world travel, except faster animations and without the pocket map syndrome.

Why the continuous polls on fast travel?? Seriously....

Indeed, i think it would be best if the world (and quests) were designed around the inclusion of a travel network, with instant fast travel being added as more of an afterthought.

Well, let's think about this critique first, eh?
For a Morrowind system, you're going to have to consider the travel network even so early on a city-placement, depending on how many cities you're going to want to allow travel from. After all, depending on the mood you want to create, you can't make too many or too few travel hubs, and you have to consider carefully where you place them in relation to each other and to any areas you've flagged as potentially dangerous. And depending on the different iterations and revisions on what theme of the world you want to have, this could be a bit of a time sink.

You then have to design transport methods/creatures, determine travel points, how major factions are gonig to affect those travel points, make sure it's not too cumbersome or too easy to get from place to place (i.e. what are the minimul number of iterative travel steps one must take to get from furthest point A to furthest point B? Better start calculating some combinatorics, or maybe use some finite state machines...).

And then you have to factor in any magical transportation, any chapels for divine intervention, which cities should hold chapels in terms of ease of escaping such dangerous regions, etc.
Along with determining and implementing the ease of acquisition of mark/recall as both a spell and as a scroll, etc.

And then, after that, you'll have to factor in how to preserve that sense of danger in the world while allowing travel from everywhere, to everywhere. And that's gonna be no easy feat.


I notice you didn't bother to address the Artistic Authority point. To add another point onto it, might I suggest that implementing multiple iterations of old mechanics as opposed to actually taking the effort to try to make breakthroughs with a single mechanic stunts growth of the mechanic as a whole?. For instance, would Beth have had any real incentive to innovate the leveling system if it was in their practice to simply include the various old systems as an optional playstyle to choose at the beginning?

and I don′t see the problem with just sticking with a Horse, it′s basicly the same, faster then walk travel that you control and offers a easy way for the game to throw random encounter at you.

And then leave FT for people who sometimes don′t want that fuzz, it′s a single player game, leave it to each person if they wanna "cheat" or not.

And that would be a fine method of "fast travel" as long as horses were fast enough and not scarce.


A game shouldn't have freely-accessible in-built cheats. If you allow for it, you just fall into the argument that it's okay for the game to keep throwing the Armor of Impervious Protection and Dagger of Insta-Kills at you to use. The so-called, "don't like it, don't use it" argument that's been done to death (and beyond). If it's accessible in the game, it should be designed for you to use.

Frankly now your over reacting, being able to jump from discovered point A to discovered point B is not the same as having battle winning uber gear. And that′s kinda why I go back to the horse, with it there are two, accessible in the game methods to travel, FT for those who like that, horses for those who don′t.

I agree I think they're crying over spilled milk, but if they want to keep talking about it that's their business.

To see so few have experienced and appreciated Daggerfall's fast travel system is disheartening. It kills the total lack of immersion that both Morrowind and Oblivion brought to the table with their respective fast travel systems. All it needs is to be made less intrusive (default to the last used settings) and we would be in business.

TL;DR version at the bottom for lazies who refuse to read.

I hate Oblivion style fast travelling, I really do. Loathe it. But at least I consider my argument to be fair (to a point):

I accept that a fast-travel option be in place. As many people have (rightly) pointed out, you don't have to use it. I often don't.

Others have (also fairly) stated that it breaks immersion. Well yes it does if you can magically teleport, but since time passes as you do so I like to roleplay and think of it as just walking to your destination, but skipped/fast-forwarded for the sake of gameplay.

A couple small quirks of fast travel that I can live with:

• When you fast travel to an area with hostile enemies, such as a camp in Oblivion, you magically teleport right in the middle of all of them, who are suprised at seeing you and immediately attack. This indeed is immersion breaking; my solution would be that fast travel would teleport you to the edge of a destination and not the very centre.
  
• By it's very presence, fast travel is an option which is quite tempting and can often lead me to break my roleplaying by resorting to using it. Sure, you may chalk it up to a lack of willpower on my behalf, but I think it's unfair that Bethesda won't even add an option to turn it off. A simple and necessary function that should not have to be implemented with mods.

Anyway, those aren't groundbreaking. However, my real beef with fast travel is that it acts as a substitute for other means of travel, replacing perfectly viable (and presumably easy to implement) options such as boat, carriage, caravan, etc. by the sole option of fast travelling. I say this is unfair to those of us who would like to use more immersive transport methods. The case study is of course Oblivion, where we had three options: fast travel, walk or use a horse (which is quite similiar to, if not the same as, walking). Didn't like fast travel? Too bad; start walking. Not too nice if you don't want to have to use it.

TL;DR The problem with fast travel isn't its presence, since you can simply not use it (as many people insist on reminding us), but rather that it has been used as the only means of transportation other than just walking, with no other means of transport provided to those who won't use it. I'm fine with fast travel as long as other transportation options are present. As things are in their current state, people who don't mind it get to use it; people who do get stuffed and have to walk everywhere.

The main problem I have with Oblivion's fast travel is that it's unimmersive. It has no explanation, no downside, and you can use it from anywhere to everywhere.

Morrowind's fast travel system (also called transportation system) solved these problems.
There was an explanation - travel services (Silt Striders, Mages Guild teleportation, boats; also mark/recall and intervention spells existe; To note is that the Silt Strider can possibly be replaced by a Mammoth)
There was a downside - costs of money by travel services and costs of magicka by mark/recall and intervention spells.
You couldn't use it from anywhere to everywhere - travel services (NPCs) were on specific locations near towns, which only took you to specific (often nearby) towns. Mark/recall took you from its own spot (self explanatory, but from anywhere; making it a good option when you were tired to walk back) and intervention spells (Divine or Almsivi) or a took you to the nearest Imperial Cult shrine or the nearest Tribunal Temple (this location can be changed though to something logical and suitable for Skyrim).

The result of this, is that I find Morrowind's fast travel system more suitable for an open-world RPG like The Elder Scrolls series. It has some possibilites and some restrictions; and I feel that it is a nice balance between hardcoe (travel services) and casual gameplay (mark/recall and intervention spells).

Another possibility is also to keep Oblivion's fast travel in the game, while also including Morrowind's fast travel system. My guess is that this would please both crowds, and it would be, from an utilitarianistic point of view be the best solution.
My personal recommendation is that there should be a togglable option for Oblivion's fast travel system, because I believe having two systems that accomplish the same thing simulatiously, but in two completely different ways, is breaking logic.

The real question is therefore not about resisting a temption not to use Oblivion's fast travel system (and to walk or ride a horse instead), but to improve and change the foundations of how to travel in the world to what I believe to be a more immersive way - a way that gives you an explanation, a downside and where you can't travel from anywhere to everywhere.

"They have taken you from the Imperial City's Prison, first by carriage and now by boat. To the East - to Morrowind. Fear not, for I am watchful. You have been chosen." - Morrowind

they should implement Indiana Jones style fast traveling with the music, if you know what I mean.

Voted "Daggerfall’s travel options, with Morrowind’s travel services, and Red Dead Redemption’s real time travel with Oblivion fast travel", but that implies that "Oblivions fast travel" is one of the options in "Daggerfall's travel options", which also presents automatic use of "Morrowind's travel services" (and more). So when a user selects options that corresponds to "Oblivion fast travel" or use services, there will always be SOME kind of cost.

Basically what I'm looking for is a system that have depth to it. I don't like being forced to walk as that is the only way of getting around when you find fast travel waaaaaay too convenient. This way, I get to have mine, and fast travel fans get to have theirs. I've explained it in detail before, not doing it again...

I voted for Oblivion's (technically also Fallout 3's) system because its the simplest and most effective. It allows me to play whatever part of the game I want, whenever I want. All these Morrowind fans saying it's "unimmersive" sound like a bunch of unimaginative whiners.