It is highly unlikely that Bethesda is going to get rid of fast travel. Many people who are going to purchase this game are not going to want to play 700 hours and live in Skyrim, they are going to want to spend as much time with this game as they do with the next game they want to play. Some people are altoholics and will play dozens of characters. Fast travel makes different styles of gaming possible and is a factor in meeting the needs of a more diverse segment of the population.

Thankfully, Bethesda is extremely gracious in providing such wonderful mod support. There are a great many things that have been modded to make the world more believable and suited to hardcoe roleplaying in the past installments of the Elder Scrolls, and they are extending this courtesy to us in Skyrim as well.

However, the most important points from the opening statement post I see against fast travel are these:

"1. Trivial quests will regularly send you to the other side of the overworld because quest designers are - rightly - expecting players to utilise the fast travel system that they have been given.
2. There are no alternatives to teleportation fast travel except for walking, which takes ages, or riding, which is often even slower."

The second is, again, completely fixable by the ability to fully modify the game.

The first, however, is a problem that negatively impacts all types of gamers, not just people that want to walk every step of the way. If Bethesda tailors the game with fast travel in mind, they may again make it necessary to traverse vast distances to accomplish trivial tasks. This only serves to flatten the world out, making it less epic and trivializing all levels of content. Its not about roleplaying, its about the value of the experience for any type of gamer. If you have to travel 100 miles to retrieve someone's missing pants, both instant teleportation and 2 hours of walking are mindless where this quest is concerned. Bethesda should really focus on making the level design be more suited to not giving the INCENTIVE to fast travel so much, and instead design an engaging game that will make you want to explore and reward you for exploring, instead of just for accomplishing quest goals quickly. They just shouldn't design a game that expects you to use fast travel, but should leave it in.

No to random encounters (interruptions) while OB-style fast traveling. It's punishing a player group because another group thinks they have it too easy. Just leave them alone.

Yes to added MW-style fast travel and an option to totally disable OB-style fast travel for those who desire it.

Would be good.
Yes.

Oblivion's fast travel 100% definitely, wholly and absolutely needs improvement. It definitely should be done before 11/11/11. If not, Skyrim is definitely not the game as Todd described as "a game for both casuals and hardcoe-players". Having just simply OB's unimmersive and "bland" fast travel is definitely not trying to appeal to both sides.
It would be more like saying "Hey we don't care if you find it bad, if you don't wanna use it, don't use it, and walk everywhere instead", which would, imo, be something pretty disappointing and wouldn't solve the big problem as it currently is.
The devs can't just trying to repress the fact that a lot more find OB's fast travel pretty bad and that it can be improved or replaced, to somewhat represent what Morrowind had.

Suggestion:
Easy mode: OB style fast travel, no random encounters. Limited level-scaling. Morrowind style fast travel options available, but no incentive to use them except what's in your own mind.
Medium: OB style fast travel with random encounters. Standard level-scaling. Morrowind style fast travel allows you to avoid random encounters, but costs money.
Hard: No OB style fast travel. More challenging level scaling. Morrowind style fast travel options cost money, and services are not always readily available.

Anyone unhappy with this?

I don't like the fact that we're mixing MW-style fast travel with making the game harder in other ways. I just want the alternatives to exist, and be able to toggle OB-style fast travel on and off as an option.

I think that having too many gameplay togglable options like you mentioned, risk the game feeling "cheap" and "shallow", imo, if that makes any sense.

What would be necessary and enough would be having only one option togglable. Not like 3 options with several sub-features.

@GreyWyvern, agree with you. Never mix things that don't really belong together. Travel services is more for immersion and making things more believable. Difficulty is more for... well, difficulty.

/shrug What you see as an oversight I see as a well chosen content cut to meet deadlines/resources/etc. This isn't really an issue that is going to make or break the game.

Even so mods are used to fix many issues. Is it the optimal or preferred way? Obviously not, but it is an option. For those on console, well, they chose to buy it on console.

Well I honestly don't really think a dragon age style travel system would serve well. Really a great deal of the random encounters in Dragon Age were connected to the main story and weren't really random at all.

I think this is a dead horse until we know more about this aspect of the game. People have been b******* about this since Oblivion came out (nearly 6 freakin years?), most likely it has received some developer attention and will be slightly altered from OB.

The reason I add the level-scaling to the mix is because, if everything has its own separate option, then you'll spend too much time at the beginning of the game deciding how you want to play the game, and not enough time actually playing said game. I figured it would fit very nicely into a difficulty slider. In reality, it would be the most likely way the options would be implemented. I'm sure the devs don't want to put off potential new players with options they don't understand. I mean, think about it: if you were developing this game, knowing that the Oblivion-style fast travel is already in, and were thinking about implementing options, how would you really do it? If you have Oblivion-style fast travel on by default, but you have to go into a menu to enable random encounters or any other options, how many people would actually even know it was there? When you open your new copy of Skyrim and start playing, are you going to start by fiddling with the menus, trying to see what options there are, or are you going to dive right into character creation? In my system there, the default option would be the "medium" option. The way I normally do things when I start a new game is choose all the default settings while I'm learning the game's mechanics. Once I figure out how to play, I've usually figured out what I messed up in the beginning, so I immediately start a new game--and then start fiddling with the menus to see what all the options are. That first character is a test-run, and will never complete more than half of the game. It's the second run that matters. That's when I start officially playing the game. I don't think I'm alone in that. But if anyone has any other suggestions, do put them forward. I always like to hear constructive ideas!

I "fiddle" around in the options menu first thing I do

I still think that "don't like it, don't use it" is valid. Its all about the choices you as a player make. When I want to explore I'll do that, when I want to get quickly from one place to another because my game crashed and I forgot to save(the usual case) I'll fast travel.
Morrowind system is adds realism, and combination of Morrowinds and Oblivions would work out pretty good. Normal fast travel taking longer with a chance of taking dangerous encounter, whereas silt strider(or what ever in Skyrim) is faster and safer.
But in the end Oblivion over Morrowind on the convenient scale.

I don't think there was anything wrong with Morrowind's system. maybe instead of silt striders they could add a caravan fast travel along with the ships and striders. there was no element of danger when you walked outside a town in oblivion because all you had to do was fast travel back. it was not as enjoyable

"Don't like it, don't use it" actually also worked with me in Oblivion. I just never used it, unless I was feeling lazy. Same went for Morrowind, except I found that to be a more legit way of fast traveling. There was a boat or a bug and I was feeling lazy, not wanting to explore at that moment, or simply roleplaying myself into being in a hurry (although quests never actually "ran out"), then I would use the transportation and pay the fee. In Oblivion, it was only being lazy.

I've suggested several times on these threads to simply keep the fast travel system from Oblivion, and if there is "an excuse" for a need of travel services (let's say, a big lake would make a boat faster or a tundra "of death and agony" would make a sled service very useful), put that in. That would also make the services more 'legit' if you want that, and maybe if you try to fast travel across it you would be prompted to pay the travel fee and still be as lazy as 'one click travel'. :celebration:

It's a hugely important matter to me, though. We'll just have to agree to disagree there.

And please don't condemn console users like that. I am playing on console because I can't afford to upgrade my PC for Skyrim. That doesn't mean that I should lose out on features that really should be integral because BGS thought "the mods can take care of it". We are talking about how to improve the vanilla game - mods shouldn't even be coming into the discussion.

Seen this argument so many times : 'you can't say "don't want it, don't use it" about Oblivion, as the game was designed with fast travel in mind, because there were quests that sent you all over the place, and the only alternative is walking, which is not acceptable because Cyrodiil is bland/uninspiring/generic.
I have a few problems with this : firstly, why should quests not send you to the other side of the map? With or without fast travel, some quests would be local, some would require you to travel large distances. Don't want to walk all that way and back, then do all the local quests, leave the farther objectives to later, when it is convenient.
Secondly, I honestly believe that if all the quests were in the near vicinity of towns, there would be complaints along the lines of : 'Oblivion's design felt really artificial, all the quests were right outside the town gates, gave me no incentive to explore.'
As to the landscapes being too boring to actually traverse on foot, well judging by some of the comments on this forum, Bethesda got it wrong, but I bet in 2006 they thought Cyrodiil was beautiful, and sincerely believed we would love exploring the world they had made. They may have misjudged, especially for those who wanted the alien feel of Morrowind, rather than the real worldly, LotR inspired forests and hills, but it is beyond ridiculous to suggest that a part of the games' design was 'let's not put too much effort into the landscape, everyone will fast travel anyway.'
DA:O and Daggerfall were designed around fast travel, there really was no option, Oblivion had an option, but many people don't want to use it, maybe a flaw in the design, but not, I think, actually a part of the design.
As to Skyrim, If the game is as good as it looks it might be, if the landscape is fresh and interesting and exciting, and actually inspires us to want to walk and explore, then OB style travel, as a tool of convenience when gaming time is limited, may well do. Just adding a price for fast travel, either in gold, or by an encounter system ( my arguments against this are earlier in this thread ) does not seem enough to me to justify adding it to the system in OB, it is the same thing with an unnecessary mechanic tacked on, I think we either need a fully realised Transport system as in Morrowind, that makes sense in the setting ( mammoth drawn wagons, hey, why the hell not? ), and only between civilised, relatively safe way points, or tweak the non sensible parts of the old system, eg. no fatigue regeneration on arrival, time passed is much faster with a mount, and so on.

Same here, I have an aging MacMini for the internet, and use my kids' Xbox for gaming, would love to use mods, but I am pretty sure the government tops up my earnings with tax credits to help feed and clothe my three boys, not so I can spend 700 quid on a gaming rig.

Personally, I really like the idea of having many different options at your disposal to travel. For many cities, you could hire a stagecoach to take you to a city, like in Red Dead Redemption. If there are many cities that border a large lake or ocean/sea, then you could have boats that you could hire to take you to those other cities. It could also be possible that if there were large rivers, the boats could travel up those and drop you off at a dock near/in the city. Also, it wouldn't be that hard to put in 'portals' in a Mages guild area (or Skyrim equivalent of the Mages Guild) that would actually 'teleport' you to another area. The developers did this in the Frostcraig Tower DLC for Oblivion, so it wouldn't be that hard to make similar portals in Skyrim.

Also, to address the whole 'random encounter' idea - instead of having enemies 'ambush' you while traveling, instead make it so, if you are traveling, say, via stagecoach, at night, every night, you stop and make up a camp. You'd actually lay out a bedroll, make a small campfire, maybe cook some food, then go to sleep. While sleeping at these camps (or others you make when exploring on your own), you might be ambushed, similar to the Baulders Gate style. Also, making a camp would give you bonuses such as making items (a la Fallout: New Vegas), creating better potions (i.e. setting up a temporary alchemical station, instead of just putting things together on the run like in Oblivion), and maybe some other bonuses, such as something akin to Fallout 3's ''Well rested bonus'' to XP you earn.

Also, I would LOVE it if there were more 'random encounters' while traveling, on your own or otherwise. I think it would be awesome to just be walking around minding your own business, when suddenly a woman runs up to you screaming something about monsters. You change direction in the way she came from and find a bunch of bandits attacking a camp similar to the ones you make at night, with maybe one or two men trying to fight off the attackers but obviously in trouble. Help them, and maybe they would tell you about a 'treasure' they had, and Skyrim's Radiant AI would spawn a chest nearby that had some nicely leveled loot inside.


Also, I agree with the above post. A lot of us console players use consoles because we can't afford to buy a nice PC gaming rig, and staying current by updating things like the video card or other things. Mods shouldn't be thought of as part and parcel of making the game good; it should already be good.

Sadly, this issue wasnt even brought up in the recent Q&A so i doubt they care.... i get the impression that they feel they have already addressed this issue so now they can ignore it.

Since a fast travel system ally Oblivion is already confirmed, wouldn't it be fine to have that along with other travel systems? At least that way everyone can pick their style of travel and use that.

I get this feeling too. It's a pretty big issue, I mean it's about how we travel in the world. And travelling is connected to exploring, doing quests, etc etc. It's an important topic.



I wouldn't care if OB fast travel is in or not, as long as I have other, more immersive, fast travel alternatives that I can use instead. Travel services is one of those, and mark/recall and intervention spells can be quite handy too.

Red Dead Redemption had both a fast travel similar to OB, and travel services. I don't see why Skyrim can't have like that as well.

Still, I think the OB fast travel can be improved itself... like somehow making it more believable that you're travelling.
For instance, you could see a map and a dotted line that follows to your destination point during the loading screen when you fast travel.
That would be nice I think.
Another way to improve OB fast travel is to add random encounters that can interrupt your fast travel. It would work nicely with this dotted line thing I just mentioned, I think.

I agree with this.
Morrowind had fast travel,it was just way better,more immersive/better thought out.
Oblivions way was lazy in my opinion.
If they do keep oblivions full fast travel....fine..but like hlvr said....gives us that don't like it,other transport options too.
I also like the idea of fast travel having random encounter's ,that interrupt your travel...it's a great idea :thumbsup:
Also depending on how far you get in your travel,before interruption,your stamina should be effected too.
In a nutshell i agree.

Well then we're in complete agreement!

Nothing was wrong with Oblivion's system other than the fact that you could fast-travel to locations you've never reached on foot. If that were fixed, and there would also be alternatives for the "on foot" part (such as boats, carriages and whatnot), everyone would be happy.

There is nothing inherently "bad" with a fast travel system similar to Oblivion's. The only possible flaw I can think of would be allowing you to fast travel to the major cities from the start. Other than that there is nothing wrong with it.

The real problem lies within not giving you proper incentives to go out and explore. I hardly ever used fast travel in Fallout 3 or New Vegas and I never used fast travel in Red Dead Redemption in single player. Why? Because Fo3/NV gave me incentive to explore by not over-doing level scaling to the point where I knew there was no chance that I would find anything worthwhile in cave B. I don't remember a single unique artifact that could be found without doing a quest and even then they were leveled so there wasn't a point until you got high level.

For Red Dead Redemption it got riding a horse right. It looked good and was genuinely fun to ride your horse around and explore. Even better if you got a stage coach.

The other flaw within Oblivion's system was they designed quests around the assumption that everyone would want to use the compass, meaning there wasn't hardly any quests that required you to actually look for anything.

This is the way I see it:

Have NPC's give us directions again and possibly come with us to show us the way - confirmed.
Give me incentives to explore by not having everything scale to my level. - confirmed. It's closer to Fo3 than it is to Oblivion in terms of scaling.
If you have horses (we saw one in the gameplay trailer) make the look and feel right. Play RDR for inspiration. - semi confirmed. Todd did say in the GI podcast that they were using RDR as a example for how horses should be done in a game.

And finally this is pure fan service. Even though you have a fast travel system in place, put one guy on adding more realistic forms of fast travel in towns. Most players will say "That's pointless. Why did they do that" but that feature isn't for those kind of players. It's for the Role Players. Last time I checked Elder Scrolls was still a RPG (Role-Playing Game)

I'm happy that the ES community keeps this as an issue. The fast travel in Oblivion problem was my #1 pet peeve. I know it's going to be in Skyrim, but that doesn't make it the way to go. I'd love to just have the Morrowind style and that be all, but I know that the Oblivion style will triumph. Hopefully we have alternatives.