I don't get what the OP is saying either. You say it's not about fast travel but you are talking about it in 70% of your post.
I liked how it worker on Oblivion. I could explore whatever I wanted and when I got tired it was like "Ok, I'm tired of this, let's go back to that place to continue with the quest"


As a suggestion, I would like some kind of fog of war (RTS style) in the map, just to know what areas I didn't explore yet, that was a real mess on Ob, after a few hours of game I didn't know where to explore next and I could never know if I missed some place, but I was also lazy to explore all the map again, just dropped it.

Unfortunately people here miss my point... nevermind. Let it become another regular fast travel thread...

I don't really agree with this point, which is not to say it's wrong, rather to highlight that different people have different requirements from a game and there generally isn't a 'one size fits all' option. It would annoy me somewhat if I was forced to watch what was essentially a cut scene of the world going by every time I fast travelled, yes it's kind of cool the first time but after that, unless something changes it's a waste of time.

Edit: on further though I think I've interpreted this wrong.

Good Lord people, they've already said it's going to be using FO3's version of Fast Travel, in which you can only travel to areas you've been, whining about it is a Moot Point.
I personally LIKE fast travel, because, having a life, I don't have the TIME to walk all the bloody way across the map and back for a Minor quest. If I want to explore, I EXPLORE.

Fast Travel does absolutely NOTHING to the quality of the game. It's completely optional. THE END

EDIT: PS, WTF was your point anyway beside FAST TRAVEL RUINS THE ARTISTIC VALUE BETHESDA NEEDS TO CHANGE IT HERP DERP.
Which is essentially, a Fast Travel Thread.

I agree with the OP. But all the people wanting to simplify this series should go play something else. Go play something maybe with multiplayer so you can have your little satisfaction of playing the way you want to... As for me, I want to finally play a game that takes more than preschool education to beat. It's actually sad how dumb and lazy people are now days, but that's a different subject. Complaining that you don't have the time to play the game without quick FT? Don't have enough spare time in your life? Then why are you playing an open world game like this?!?! Go play something else! But why every game has to be dumbed down from the original great versions they were, made for the loyal hardcoe fans, instead of appealing to every [censored] out there, just for their convenience and to fit their busy schedules is more than frustrating. Video gaming is a dying art...

The people who say you don't have to use it are right, you don't. But then you can't appreciate most of the work that the developers put into making their games. Oblivion's environments granted, were bland. But I think they should make you spend time running around making it to FT locations instead of lazily fast traveling from mission start to mission end. Cause then you might as well be playing some linear heavily scripted game and EVERYONE knows we have enough of those!

Look, all I'm really trying to say is look at what game your playing. Don't expect to be handheld through every game you buy. Your paying for what the developers hopefully think is a masterpiece. Your not paying to be catered to! That's what the [censored] handbook in the case is for... All in my opinion of course.

Yay, Vsions is visiting my thread. I hope he doesn't think I'm talking about mainly fast travel either. But more about the feeling of exploration, the journey, which I think lacked in Oblivion. Vsions! Comment please!

EDIT: Damn >_>"

Now that is just a point I'm throwing into the discussion, adding it in a spoiler to save up space and easy to ignore if said in thread 1 or earlier in this thread.

As for the fast travel and travelling in general, I do want alternative methods like we had in morrowind, but at the same time not making those completely ignorable if oblivion style fast travel is in, but have some limitations to the free-fast travel. However the fast travel ala oblivion is already in and it is not going to go out.


Personally, there is still a lot of exploration to be made as long as we don't have locations already pointed on our map in the beginning of the game, even with the oblivion style fast travel. This can be seen in fallout 3.

I disagree with the line I emphasized in red. In Morrowind you could leave Balmora, go past the fort nearby and then head up the trail north between high ground and stumble right into a Daedric Ruin with Flame or Frost Atronach's as well as Scamps walking around at level 1. They weren't scaled to you as well as some caves and dungeons. There were several dungeons and caves I had to go back to at higher level because I got my hat handed to me by the NPC's or monsters inside.

To the OP. wholeheartedly agree with you. I use fast travel in OB, but I much prefered Morrowinds methods of Mark/Recall, Mage's Guild Teleportation, Silt Striders, and Boats. You could get pretty close most destinations using them, but they still had limitations as they didn't go everywhere. And having quest givers give directions, though sometimes painfully vague, was much better than the compass marker. Kind of fealt that the designers had to pay better attention where they put things with some type of landmarks that could be used to keep your bearings than just throwing dungeons whereever since the compass would take you right to it.

It's not the argument of fast travel should be in or not, but be reworked to fit into a world sense. Carriages in Skyrim is definitly a step forward but an actual transport system costing the player money varying on the distance and location (cities being easiest to get to, wilderness locations being most dangerous so most expensive to get to). This way we still have fast travel to make sure we aren't hoofing it eveywhere but it fits more into the open world sense of the game.

It should feel like a journey even with fast travel. Example: you catch a carriage to Windhelm (be cool if this worked like red dead in that you could actually just sit back and watch the world go by, or skip straight to your destination), you get off and find a guide NPC, you choose one of the nearby locations you need to get to and pay him, he guides you to that place (not actually, you fast travel). Same results different process and it costs a bit of money. The money aspect also makes exploring in the beginning more vital since you won't want to spend all your money on travel costs, but will not hinder you later game when you've already explored a lot and just want to get around quickly because the travel cost is now low in ratio to how much your character gets.

Agreed.

He's not talking about the exact nitty-gritty "how it functions". He's talking about the overall FEEL to it.
Oblivion=magic button instant teleport
Morrowind= find the actual in game (as in a thing you can see. like a silt strider or boat) transportation method with interactions to instantaneously teleport (even though in-game time still goes by).

Fast Travel wasn't that bad. I think people get a little too dramatic on the subject...

Anyway, I think what they had for Fallout 3 was fine, since every area felt like it had something to offer to the game rather than "generic dungeon with generic enemies with generic loot". It was the little things that got me, the little backstories about people who used to be alive and what they were worrying about before the bombs fell, those tape recordings you would find where over the course of 5 tapes the person slowly became insane, the story of who a Ghoul was before they went feral, etc. They had this in Oblivion but it was very very minor, and I found it more often in the Shivering Isles than anything. There was something unique in a lot of SI dungeons, even when they weren't part of the main quest. If Skyrim can have these little things like in Fallout 3, then I wouldn't really care if there was a fast travel system or not, because I would actually have a reason not to use it constantly.

Also, is it really that bad if you can travel to a place that you've already discovered? To me, that just makes sense. It's basically as if you already know how to get there without having the player need to remember it. In fact, in the beginning of one of my playthroughs I went through the trouble of finding every location I could just so I wouldn't have to do so again during main quests and sidequests. Any adventurer worth their salt should know where to find places, after all. The only thing that kind of bugged me in Oblivion was that you could fast travel to any city right off the bat. If they take that out, I think I'll be happy.

As for cost, they could make it similar to Daggerfall's fast travel where you could choose between going on Foot/Horse or by Ship, then choosing whether you would sleep in the wilderness or stop at inns for the night. Sleeping in the wilderness would be free, but there was a chance you would be ambushed. Otherwise, I wouldn't mind a Red Dead Redemption style fast travel. I never used to Campfire thing unless I really didn't want to traverse the entire map, and I liked taking taxis because you could sit there and watch yourself go to the place, or fast travel if it's boring.

This.
Especially regarding compass markers.
I hate the compass markers used in Oblivion. I want my quest givers to describe to me how the dungeon / cave / building whatever looks like and how I can get there. I love things like: 'Take the boat to [name of town] then cross the sea due west until [...] the cave is located beneath a single tree.' Or something like that. That's rpg to me.

At last someone that actually read my posts.

The "Journey" can not be experienced by paying some fee, a couple gold coins out of your wallet does not magically increase immersion. If you really want that journey feeling you will have to get on a horse or just walk to the destination. Fast travel has the same amount of immersion as the boats in morrowind. Its not like you got a scenic view while on the boat, no it was a loading screen just like fast travel. But if you do get a scenic view then yes that would increase immersion.

Edit: Ok for the first time you find a boat or silt strider its a journey but for every subsequent one it is like fast travel.

My theory for fast travel is just they are teleporting there with magic, since there is no traditional teleporting spell in oblivion it makes perfect sense. As for the time difference, its just magic time lag or something.

I got a much more satisfying feeling of exploration from Oblivion than I did from Morrowind. IMO the fast travel networks and levitation ruined exploration in Morrowind... the most efficient way to get around in that game is to buy transportation to the place that's closest to your objective and then levitate in a straight line towards it. At least if I want to get somewhere quickly in Oblivion, it just... lets me, without making me do anything silly. When I explore Cyrodiil I actually feel motivated to do it, because I know that I'm going to be rewarded not only with whatever adventures I find, but also by being allowed to have quick access to the locations I might discover. There's some real gameplay incentive there, which Morrowind lacks. There's barely any incentive to explore Vvardenfell at all, considering the vast majority of locations you'll find won't even get added to your map, let alone give you the option to quickly return to them like in Oblivion.

Now I'd like to address two of your points specifically, OP



They took out a gameplay feature and replaced it with a more useful gameplay feature. I would agree though that we probably should have both of these options, not one or the other, which is fortunately what they seem to be doing with Skyrim



This is entirely subjective. I used fast travel a lot in Oblivion (it would probably make some Morrowind fans blush) and I never felt disconnected from my character, rather the contrary. Fast travel is a tool that allows me to do whatever my character wants to... if my character wants to do a quest I can just do it, or if my character wants to fight some monsters I can quickly find a place I know has monsters. It allows me the freedom to do whatever I want, rather than forcing me to play "the game's way", which might sometimes might not line up with my (or my character's) interests.

Yes, I think there is an art to making Elder Scrolls games, but I don't think making the game tedious and complicated to navigate contributes anything to it's artistic integrity.

Another "I havnt played the game, but they did somthing I didnt like and its not as good as Morrowind!" thread

Fast travel will forever be in, it will never be removed in the Elder Scrolls series. Not everyone is a hard hardcoe player, when Oblivion first came out most reviews included the fast traveling as a welcomed feature, and it is and will be optional.

Silt Rider esq travel exists in the game as well, so if you never want to use fast travel you dont have to.

I think Bethesda gets everything just fine.

So, basically you're saying that the game should be what YOU want it to be, and you should be able to play it how YOU want to, and everyone else can svck it and go play Call of Duty? Your logic makes no sense- get off your pedestal.

I just don't understand it when you Morrowind people say: Morrowind was TES. Oblivion did not feel like TES.

Oblivion felt a LOT more like the older TESs than Morrowind. Daggerfall was NOT art. Neither was Arena. If you say that Oblivion was not art then it is Morrowind that is not TES.

that's where i have a problem, i like the fast travel system just like it is (fallout 3's) and right now more than ever fast travel makes more sense than it ever did in skyrim...how? the Voice.

http://www.imperial-library.info/content/pocket-guide-empire-first-edition-skyrim

"Masters of the Voice are known as Tongues, and their power is legendary. They can call to specific people over hundreds of miles, and can move by casting a shout, appearing where it lands."

my guess is that we will meet someone proficient in the way of the Voice early on like a Nord Tongue, maybe even the Gray beards, making it the tutorial for the fast travel system.
any restrictions on the system itself is up to the developers to decide and right now i think they nailed it with fallout 3 where i used fast travel but also explored all around the wasteland because there was so much stuff to see and experience.
there's your penalty and limit for only fast travel users right there because they'd never experience this kind of content where as in oblivion the region was almost empty apart from dungeons and caves.

I feel that fast travel in Skyrim is a bit of a missed opportunity though. So far bethesda have talked a lot about making the world more immersive and making it more like the character is in the world rather than world revolving around them. The improvements, such as conversations and reading books not pausing the world, ecology system where most creatures have prey/predators they hunt/avoid, economic systems in the towns where destroying their export can alter prices of items and cause a sort of mini depression.

This is all great and I'm glad to see areas like this improving, it just seems weird that with all these 'world' systems that transport hasn't taken a return to morrowinds style which is more world like. I want fast travel to stay in definitely as trekking to previous locations all the time gets annoying. Saying yeah ok my character went there once he knows the way in fine in regards to cities as they have a load of roads and sign leading to them but take a high mountain dungeon far away from a town for example. Getting there the first time will likely require fighting through some creatures and navigating awkward terrain but now you've found it you can get back to it instantly any time you like ignoring the fact it was difficult the first time. I'm not saying you shouldn't be able to fast travel back there but having another mechanic like hiring a guide or buying supplies gives more reason for completely skipping the initial challenges to get back there.

The point is you would still be able to fast travel but with a more set in system which is a middle ground of the two. Right now it seems carriages are put in just to keep people unhappy with fast travel happy, even though they will be pointless once you've visited all the main cities once. It would be also more world like to see things like boats carrying NPCs to another location, wagons doing the same, bumping into guides escorting people in the wilderness.

@ OP: So, I hear you like Two Worlds more than Oblivion?

As most MW players will, I agree with the OP I've disliked one click travel for a while. Who remembers the COC console command? In OB I never used it because the MAP made it obsolete, I think thats nutty. I understand a bit about the vast lands part, giving that feeling of aloneness thats energizing, but I think it can be created without having immense distances between point A and B.

You're right this isnt really about fast travel. If traveling from point a to point b is boring then there isn't enough to do, end of story. Morrowind had unique and interesting things to explore everywhere you went, oblivion did not - removing OB fast travel would not have changed that!

This game series has a lot of potential but Red Dead Redemption felt more alive than Oblivion did and thats a freakin Rockstar game... I mean really?

Doesnt this have more to do with OB than Skyrim?

Ohhhh OP you were so close to hitting the nail right on the head however the hammer flew right out of your hands when you equated feeling an attachment to your character with being forced to suffer through a certain amount of tediousness. Using your example of Shadow of the Colossus I will agree that having to find your way through the world in order to reach your next objective added a lot more to the game than some people think but it wasnt because it was tedious. Its a hard one to explain since the game spoke to you on so many levels as if it allowed you to feel some of what your character might be feeling in that particular situation, I remember traveling through a world filled with the ruins of a civilization long since passed and while some of it was quite beautiful it did feel somewhat empty and lonely, and while I know some people might think that is a bad thing I actually think was one of the games strengths since it gave you a sense of the world and how your character might be feeling, yet dispite this the game also managed to make you want to keep going and reach your destination, its hard to explain but if you havent tried Shadow of the Colossus I suggest you give it a go. That being said I dont think "lonely" is the right feel for Skyrim however I do agree being forced to travel the land you do get a greater sense of the world around you and thus a sense of attachment to your character.

But that being said while I would rather see a travel system closer to what Morrowind had the fast travel issue doesnt really bother me that much.