A given, but I'm not saying that anybody else should avoid it. I'm stating that for me, point-and-click travel breaks immersion.

Nobody forces you to use it. Just ignore it.

Curiously enough, every time I come upon yet-another wayshrine in the middle of nowhere that requires fast travel to utilize its temporary power before it runs out, I hear a voice that also says, "Nobody forces you to use it; just ignore it." And every time it turns out to be a nearby kobold-in-hiding.

Now I'm sure you're not a kobold, so I know you appreciate better than one that other people have preferences and ideas differing from yours--or mine; and allowing that they may have their own perfectly valid reasons without telling them abruptly what to do, because one's own ideas are automatically superior to all others, is a hallmark of human civility.

The problem with not using fast travel in oblivion is there is no alternative.

In morrowind you had mark, recall, the intervention spells, regional routes (silt striders, boats), and the mage teleport service.

In oblivion you had fast travel, and foot (horses or your two feet) meaning you didn't really have much choice in the end but to use fast travel if you wanted to get somewhere in a reasonable time (no hopping to the mage guild without a DLC)

I can see the removal of the intervention spells (though divine intervention would have been useful), but mark/recall were a sad sad loss... those two spells see the most use of any I've had my characters learn.

As usual, we end up thanking modders for returning the spells, the portals, and the addition of carriages to take up the slack.

Hi fable2,
You changed your comment I see. Here is what I got in my mail box:


I'm not telling you what you should think. Just do so that this tiny feature doesn't break your immersion by ignoring it, it's that simple. What strikes me when I read these forums is the way people complicate their lives and sometimes I can't help but tell them. In Skyrim, you can also use this mod that disable the fast travel feature:

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=2075

As for quests that requires using fast travel; I don't remember having met one, whether in Oblivion or Skyrim. Maybe you could give me a list please? And if you want to use these temporary powers and don't want fast travel, if you're lucky enough to be on pc, you can change the timescale by using the console and slow it down. The command is:

set timescale to

1 makes the game time the same as ours; default timescale being 20 for Skyrim and 30 for Oblivion. You can change the timescale to 1, so that you can arrive to your destination in due time, and set it back to the default timescale afterwards.

I think that if people want teleportation spells and items that take them everywhere then let them but personally I prefer to only use them when I need to get somewhere fast or want to go home. I have my tree mods and improved landscapes and areas for a reason I love hiking around Vvardenfell!

It doesn't require because that doesn't work, fast traveling calculates the time you'd need to walk to a place, so if you fast travel the blessing can pass before you reach your destination. So it's really all the same if you quickly run to some place, or just teleport there.

In theory, yes. In fact, when I've tried fast travel repeatedly ,the actual time required varied from almost instantaneous to the expected time. And this was using the same two points, with the same encumbrance.

Mail box? I didn't send you any mail, and there's no record of any going out from gamesas's messaging. Please refer to my comments above, as those are the final ones I posted. "Nobody forces you to use it. Just ignore it," certainly is a blunt command. I gave my opinion of fast travel breaking immersion, not that it should be anybody else's opinion, but how it seems to me. Think of it this way: I live on the edge of a large city where there are a few very unpleasant major intersections filled with very deep potholes. My wife and I almost never go anywhere near there, but we still have an opinion about those particular potholes, and if someone else brings it up (as during an election year), we'll probably say something. It doesn't interfere with the rest of our lives. I presume that if we ever brought it up in conversation and you were nearby you would also interrupt with, "Nobody asks you to drive near there. Just drop it from your discussion," forgetting that we'd allowed your monthly payment to act as grand arbiter of our conversation lapse a good while back.


Exactly my point. Stating what I did about fast travel is my opinion in a discussion about specific features within a game genre (RPGs), not my complaint in an endless example of "Gee, ain't it awful" in Dr. Eric Berne's "Games People Play." I'm noting something as a person who has worked in the past on games design teams dispassionately, and you're assuming both my feelings on the matter, and that it's your business to tell me otherwise. Please don't.


I am aware of that. If you read above, you are also aware that I know of many mods that provide a more immersive fast travel-like experience in Oblivion. And in any case, the developers in Skyrim did provide immersive substitutes for fast travel. That's all beside the point. I'm explaining why I consider point-and-click fast travel an anti-RPG experience, and one you can't work around if you want to travel quickly in Oblivion. Please let it go. When I want you to tell me what to think and how to express my views, I'll be sure to contact you.

Wow really? It's almost the same every time for me, so I dunno, bug maybe?

Early on while playing Oblivion, I noticed that I didn't really like walking around outside the cities very much, and wondered about this--because it was something I'd enjoyed a lot in Morrowind. Leaving aside that I found cities in Oblivion far more interesting than Morrowind's, I came up with the following: 1) The overall terrain in Oblivion seemed to dull, featureless, and (mostly) without change. 2) Encounters were very unlikely. 3) Alchemical ingredients were often difficult to spot, and their sources, uninteresting. 4) The various caves, etc, were all going to have one of three or four groups of creatures who would all scale with me, so I knew what to expect from them; 5) The loot I'd find would all be scaled to my character, so I knew what to expect, as well.

So I found myself wanting to use some form of fast travel more often in Oblivion (and let's face it, silt striders, teleportals, etc, are all forms of fast travel), but the only alternative I had to walking and riding was point-and-click fast travel, which broke the game's fourth wall. From a game design standpoint, it seemed odd, because it would have been very, very easy for the developers to provide in-culture alternatives as they did both in Morrowind and Skyrim. A curious omission, in my opinion.

My experiences playing Morrowind on the other hand were that of a very diversified and interesting environment outside towns, with encounters possible, with alchemical ingredients easy to spot from distinctive sources. Cave encounters didn't usually scale, and while most were fairly easy, there were times when things could get very hairy, very quickly: a lone mage isolated on a plateau separated by water from my entryway summoning atronachs, etc. The loot, too, was sometimes out of the ordinary. Couldn't be sure what I'd find.

That isn't to say Oblivion's way of doing things is worse. It's just that, from my perspective, Morrowind's drew me to find going walkabout a lot more often interesting. That said, with Mart's and Fran's, and a bunch of other mods, I find encounters at least much more interesting now in Oblivion, and there are some cave systems added by other modders that have really made going out of town a lot more fun.

Its one of those games I will always have installed, may not play it much anymore buts its there when I do.

Could be. Could also be that my combination of mods causes this. It did furnish discussion in some of those interminable "Yes, it is/no it isn't/yes it is" topics in the early days of the Oblivion forum, but I tended to avoid those. Still do, in the Skyrim forums, now, but they're decreasing in number as the people who want a soapbox to cheer or rant go onto the next game, while the rest of us play and mod these.

Nobody forces me to use it, but in Morrowind I've got at least 5 alternative FT methods that don't clash with the game world. In Oblivion, I've got ONE, and it does clash. That might be bad enough, but in Oblivion, most of the quests give you little or no useful directions ("it's West of here" when it's half-way across the map in a NW direction) other than a map marker, which is inherently "anti-immersive". In MW you generally get a set of fairly detailed DIRECTIONS (not always correct, unfortunately), occasionally with a map marker, along with "Here, I'll mark it on your map" to make it at least somewhat "immersive".

If you're not happy with Morrowind's multiple systems, this is a Morrowind forum. "Nobody forces you to use it. Just ignore it" - to quote someone familiar to you.

Great points, and feel the same way. Modding keeps Morrowind alive in my own way as well.

When I opened up Oblivion and realized that I could just point and click to any city I wanted, it felt like using the console COC command... which, if you think about it, is actually more challenging because you have to spell the location name correctly. I expected to gain fast travel, but I thought it wouldn't work unless I'd already been to a city. I guess they figured that since you're not a stranger in a strange land, you've already been everywhere already? Your guy lives in Cyrodiil, right? So, I walked to Kvatch and found it gorgeous due to the engine, but rather empty. Granted, when I was done closing the first Oblivion gate, I think I fast travelled back... I was like... "that walk wasnt interesting enough to do again, so $^&%$ it." I put my gorgeous, gorgeous Oblivion away pending adding mods and went back to my Massively Modded Morrowind.

Some younger people complain about some of the "out of date" aspects of Morrowind, but seriously... all the games have their strengths and weaknesses. I'm in Morrowind for the unmatched imagination that was put into the world, and for the very rich and devoted modding community that keeps it fresh, alive, and evolving.

I'm creating a landmass mod, and I just added three boatmen that will give you fast travel around the island, However, they do not become active until you reach the far side of the island and speak to the boatmaster. You've done your exploring, now you can have his people deployed to take you back and forth. THAT is how it is done, in my opinion.

From what I can tell, Morrowind was an accident. They do not know how or why it was as fantastic as it was, especially considering the faults. but it WAS. Its a bit tragic really, this happens a lot. A company will, basically for no obvious reason, create a pinnacle game. After that, every game that comes after it must face comparison to it.

Daggerfall while fantastic is also so different that it really kinda...creates an end point where morrowind emerged from. And I think thats ultimately why the changes in skyrim seemed..unfitting. It wasnt an end point, a phoenix moment. No one expected the phoenix to show up the first time, it just kinda did!

nah ultimately, this is just like Morrowind vs Oblivion. They really arent the same game and its probably a bad idea to compare them all as if they were..

...On the other hand, I dont think Bethesda needed to do...well, you know... THAT... (Dont wanna post spoilers) to morrowind, after the 4th era started. That felt kinda vindictive. I mean, not as directly insulting as having M'aiq snark at us because we could walk if we really wanted to, but still not very nice.

But skyrim has a lot going for it too. As did Oblivion. I gotta tell ya, I loves me some morrowind, but It did feel a tad silly to swing your weapon about hopelessly missing, especially since the dunmer all have Sanctuary.. And the less said about morrowind's Alchemy, the better.

I try to take all the games as they are. Except Arena. Because F*** that game. Doesnt even let you remap keys.

That′s why they call it the Dark Ages

We might actually get to visit Morrowind again in a Skyrim expansion.

Have you heard something or are you just speculating? It sounds interesting

I love Morrowind, and I've spent over 10 000 hours in it. Only game I've ever had that lasted this long. Due to being generally busy in real life, I haven't been playing it the last 6 months, but I'm itching to get back into it. Only thing I really hate with Morrowind is all the time it takes to install all the mods I need. Also, when Tamriel Rebuilt is complete, I'm gonna go nuts

SPOILERS!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OENRSBD5vbE
It's just a rumor,but a convincing one.I've also read a good thread about this somewhere,but i can't seem to find it anywhere now.

There's something i realised the other day. with Morrowind, it took me days of gaming to ever even step food on the eastern coast of Vvardenfell, many more days to visit places like Azura's coast and Red mountain, where as with Skyrim a few hours of playing and i had already been to all 9 holds, not because i went out of my way to visit them all, on the contrary i consciously tried to avoid seeing too much of the province too fast, but Skyrim sends you all over the place right off the bat. You run into someone on the street that had an item stolen in whiterun, and you get sent to the reach to retrieve it. Someone kidnaps a person in Windhelm and you end up in Haafingar to rescue them. The Lack of fast travel in Morrowind forced the developers to keep early and miscellaneous quests relatively close to the quest giver much of the time,or at least within a general area thus you discovered the world space more slowly, i felt more like i was discovering a new land that way and it made the place feel bigger despite it actually being smaller.

Where as skyrim, its as if due to fast travel the devs didn't bother with that constraint and the game sends you all over the place right from the start, east west north south knowing you can easily fast travel back. Fast travel makes every part of the map feel like it's just down the block for me and that disappointing tp me. Ignoring fast travel isn't much of an option often because then you're stuck running from one end of the province to the next to the next to the next constantly which becomes ridiculously tedious fast. (Just the the Hermeus Mora quest is the perfect example, after a bit of drinking you somehow ended up traveling through half of skyrim and have to then revisit these places spread all over the world map to figure out what happened.)

Some people might prefer OB/SK style fast travel, but i'd much rather have Morrowind's style of it, with payed transport and such and having to walk the rest of the way, (though a few extra boats in a number of forgotten villages such as Ald Velothi would have been good.)

I whole-heartedly agree! Other than the quest. It was Sanguine's, not Herma's.

I dislike fast travel because it doesn't feel like gaming, and because I dislike the constant running from one end of the map to another even more! As if you have to use fast travel once it's there, or become bored instead. It was great in Morrowind, even in bigger quests, to take a silt strider or somesuch to a nearest town, then search the place where you wanted to go. Not like teleporting straight there.

And even searching a place, you didn't cover the whole map at once, because you were slow, things mainly happened close to you, and you couldn't even see far! In Whiterun Hold, you can see for very long distances, but in Morrowind, there was this feeling of excitement and exploring as you could barely see a few meters away!