Solution for Fast travel dilema : V - Skyrim

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:08 am

I wasn't bothered by fast travel in Fallout 3, because I didn't use it as much as in Oblivion. It also helped not having instant fast travel markers to every corner of the map from the start.

It's generic landscapes and dungeons with generic levelled loot that kills exploration, not fast travel. I just had no interest in walking around Cyrodiil, because there was nothing to find. In Fallout 3 you had random encounters, more NPCs travelling, and 'dungeons' that could actually have something unique in them. I wanted to explore the Capital Wasteland, so I did. In Cyrodiil I fast travelled all over the place.

This is probably the last fast travel thread I'm posting in though, the 'It's optional!!!!' argument is getting really old now.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 7:33 am

Some arguments against the FT system as it was implemented in Oblivion (excerpt from a previous thread discussing FT):

There are some things about Oblivion's fast travel system that simply bug me, and there are other things that do not make a whole lot of sense.

For example:

Is fast travel supposed to represent walking, running, or riding your horse?

If it is supposed to represent walking, then does it take into account all of the encounters you would normally have with wildlife and bandits while traversing the countryside by foot? Does it take into account the potions needed and/or the magicka used to heal oneself from any of the aforementioned encounters? If it is supposed to represent running, then assuming you are fast enough to outrun any and all enemies you would have inevitably come across had you not fast traveled, is there any cost to fatigue? Also, is the travel time calculated by drawing a straight line from the player's current position to the player's ending position (which is not always a possiblity), or is the travel time calculated assuming that the player is following established roads? Lastly, if fast travel is supposed to represent traveling by horseback, then why is it not entirely necessary to have your horse nearby in order to fast travel?

Assuming I can ignore some of the inconsistencies mentioned above and can suspend disbelief enough to pass fast travel off as walking/running/riding, then how is it possible for me to carry 1000+ weight units worth of loot from Bruma to the Imperial City whilst only having a few potions of feather and no other strength/feather spells? Wouldn't the potions wear off long before I even got close to my destination?

Finally, being that Cyrodiil is basically the political and mercantile center of the empire, and is supposed to be one of the largest provinces to boot, why wouldn't other travel services exist? Even though your character might not have a problem hoofing it all over the map, I highly doubt that everyone else in Cyrodiil would be inclined to do the same.

At any rate, these are just a few of the questions that nag at the back of my mind when fast traveling in Oblivion.

On a side note: Though I can see some similarities between Oblivion's fast travel system and Daggerfall's, I don't think you can really compare the two because the similarities are only superficial. They both had a map where you could click on a destination and fast travel to it. Time passed in-game. Besides that, there aren't any other similarities that I can think of. The thing is, Daggerfall's fast travel system was necessary because of the sheer size of the gameworld. You could literally spend days in real time walking from one place to another. The same is not true for Oblivion. Also, Daggerfall's system had costs and consequences associated with (fast) traveling. Quests had time limits. Traveling recklessly meant that you might arrive at your destination with lowered health and fatigue, whereas staying at inns would cost you money. Oblivion had absolutely none of that. I think that people, in general, don't have a problem with fast travel as a game mechanic in and of itself. But rather, many who had experience fast travel from previous games had a problem with the way fast travel was implemented in Oblivion.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 12:53 am

@ Rhemaius quote:
When you travel you can avoid bandits by staying of the road and the wildlife can be avoided by going back to the road, usually there won't be an aggressive bear near a bandit camp with bandits still alive, makes no sense. Thus, it doesn't really need to have random encounters just for the realism, because it's not realistic.
The feather potion exploration wasn't really part of the fast travel, it was just something that could be exploited in the game when fast travelling, should be easy enough to fix.
Other travel services should exist, as there is simply no explanation why Oblivion lacked them completely, but implementing them and fast travel at the same time, if keeping fast travel as it is, it would make the travel services useless anyway.

Thus, what I suggested could work as an solution.

We should have a limit of how much we fast travel. Travelling longer distances would take away a bigger part of the fast travel bar we have and it would be reach 0 if we fast travel from one side of Skyrim to the other. Sleeping in a safe bed would be a way of replenishing this meter, making beds more useful in the game world. There could still be implemented travel services, as we'd often run low on the fast travel meter.
___________________________________________________________________________________

Instead, sleeping should pay a bigger part of the game, enabling you to fast travel from point a to point b, but sleeping in point b wouldn't be enough, sleeping would simply trigger a slow regeneration rate where the fast travel meter would "recharge". So, travel from A to B, sleeping over at B, taking the carriage back to point A and then being able to fast travel back to B (or C, D, etc). It's IMO a good way to blend both the fast travel and carriage option together while at the same time giving sleeping more of a purpose in the game.

At the same time we could add more benefits of using the travel options, for example the possible "hardcoe/survival"-mode, we would get rested at the travel service and would make us less thirsty and hungry, compared to fast travelling, where our character is supposed to walk by himself, making him tired, hungry and thirsty.
The fast travel services would in general be faster at the destination than you would get when fast travelling there too.

Exploring should be encouraged by the game, finding ancient tombs at the depth of a dungeon should bring more reward/benefit that in morrowind for example, all I found was a flesh-rot disease and a few scrolls worth 100 each, unfun..

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:15 pm

Here's the deal on fast travel in Skyrim. The Nords travelling in the back country always carry "winds". So im guessing from a developers standpoint, winds would prolly be an expensive bag that you buy from Nordic merchants that enables a safe icaration flight to the selected point on the map. I think thats how fast travel might work. These "winds" as spoken about in the book Children From the sky, might be the system itself. You open the bag of wind and off you go. It keeps with the lore and at the same time costs money so its like a puzzle piece fitting right into the story itself and the mechanics...That or winds is a new elemental power youll be able to harness because after all different nations have unique spells to be learned.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 1:29 am

I have a quick question for the people talking about fast travel, if you were given at the start of the game a weapon that allowed you to one hit kill anything in the game at any time, would you use it? Now I think many people are going to knee-jerk reply no because of the context of this but think about it, how tempting does it get to use the item if you're, say having a hard time defeating a powerful enemy? You've tried a couple of times and you're getting frustrated and a bit annoyed with the boss and it's sitting there in your inventory looking inviting... Does using the item cheapen your gaming experience? Would you feel a greater satisfaction if you defeated the boss eventually by normal means?

This is one of the arguments against fast travel, it is often a pain to walk between places but the inconvenience and sometimes the difficulty involved if you're caught in the wilderness with low hp for instance is part of what makes exploration in the game rewarding for me. Having the option of fast travel present works in a very similar way to having the one hit kill weapon (no, it's not exactly alike and I fully expect replies that focus on pointless nit picking of my anology, rather than discussion of the underlying sentiment) because of the temptation of use, it takes away from my gameplay experience because there are times when I would use it to avoid doing something difficult. It's part of the reason why i think many people like old nintendo games, the ridiculous difficulty of some of those games posed a challenge that you don't get today because games are better designed and better tailored to produce smooth learning and difficulty curves that are less frustrating but for those who played the old games, the greater feeling of triumph at defeating something that was unreasonably difficult marks out many of the older games as something special.

That's about as close as I can come to articulating why I want fast travel out and why random loot chests doesn't solve the problem that I want fixed. I'm not going to whine and moan because it's in, I hope the world itself is interesting enough that I can just ignore it but there will be times that I miss out on gameplay moments that I'd have enjoyed in hind sight because of it.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 11:24 pm

Maybe an otion at the start of the game where you tick fast travel on or off and when it is on, it will still be optional

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 9:49 pm

@ Rhemaius quote:
When you travel you can avoid bandits by staying of the road and the wildlife can be avoided by going back to the road, usually there won't be an aggressive bear near a bandit camp with bandits still alive, makes no sense. Thus, it doesn't really need to have random encounters just for the realism, because it's not realistic.
The feather potion exploration wasn't really part of the fast travel, it was just something that could be exploited in the game when fast travelling, should be easy enough to fix.
Other travel services should exist, as there is simply no explanation why Oblivion lacked them completely, but implementing them and fast travel at the same time, if keeping fast travel as it is, it would make the travel services useless anyway. Thus, what I suggested could work as an solution.

Just a couple of points:

First, I've tried staying on the roads to avoid encounters with bandits and wildlife. I'll grant you that the number of encounters is reduced when you follow roads (as opposed to trekking through the wilderness), but by no means are encounters completely eliminated. That is to say that I have been attacked even when sticking strictly to the roads. But, let's assume for the sake of argument that you were right, and staying on the established roads prevented you from being attacked altogether. The next question is whether or not FT calculates your travel time based on a straight line from point A to point B, or does it calculate time based on the assumption that you followed roads? If the former is true (you traveled directly from point A to point B.), then the assertion that you wouldn't need random encounters to simulate the dangers you faced during your journey is false. Given the abundance and the aggressiveness of Oblivion's wildlife, you would most likely, at some point during your travels, be attacked. If the latter is true (you traveled strictly by road), then we can justify the rationale behind being able to arrive at your destination unscathed. However, I will add that we are making some pretty heavy-handed assumptions to arrive at that conclusion.

Second, the feather potion/spell exploit may not have been intentionally added as a part of FT, but it is one of the reasons why Oblivion's FT felt like a 'cheat'. To ignore the existence of this particular exploit, or to dismiss it as some kind of inconsequential problem overlooked by the developers, is to turn a blind eye to the shortcomings of a pretty substantial game mechanic. True, it can be fixed. So can Morrowind's system of implementing a travel services network. That is why we all debate this topic so fervently. Because, in the end, we all want a FT system that we can, at a minimum, 'live with'.

As for the point I highlighted in bold: That is essentially what the crux of the matter is. How to implement a system that people from both sides of the debate can accept? Your solution is a solution, but not necessarily the solution. Personally, I would have a hard time justifying from an RP perspective why my ability to FT would be limited in such a manner. How do I rationalize a 'FT meter' against real-world (or even fantasy-world) limitations? You see, it is not enough to simply impose limitations on a mechanic. The limitations should assimilate naturally into the culture, lore and (meta)physics of the game world. In other words, it should do a good job of suspending disbelief. Otherwise, it just seems like a gimmick.

Anyway, I had one other point to make about the arguments against a 'redundant' FT system, but I'm running out of time, so I will try to post some thoughts on the matter later.

Cheers :foodndrink:

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 8:11 pm

Dilemma? What dilemma?

Yes - there is no dilemma. In Oblivion I could fast travel and miss all dungeons, shirnes, bandits ect. I have effectively received a penalty already. There need not be an extra inticemement to not use fast travel.

» Sat Feb 19, 2011 2:20 am

Fast travel should have some type of meaning, such as if you don't want to go back all the way from point A to point B. But this is what mounts are effectively are for, so they'd have to involve the city's and their relationships.

Such as in Morrowind where'd you have to use silt striders, they should have a natural way of getting from point A to B at the start at the game without having you're but firmly handed to you by whatever lie behind the mountain. But it shouldn't also be like Oblivion where you can easily transport more than 20 miles within a few seconds without any harm or effect.

With fast travel there should be effects that may happen, and will most likely happen if you decide to travel on foot. Climate, sudden stop due to sudden calamity, ec cetera. There'd also have to be some relation between a few villages then, such as Gnaar Mok had a relationship with Hlaa Od and such. Ports, small farms that trade with cities to gain the efficent number of supplies, individual imperial interests or domestic interests of great powers and such.

» Fri Feb 18, 2011 11:04 pm

I'm not getting the angst here. As long as fast travel is mandatory; ie, the only way to get to a specific place, then don't use it. I know everyone gets in a huff about this response, but seriously - just walk past the fast travel merchant/guild guide, etc. In Morrowind, I walked right past strider ports all the time. I will admit that I took ships to Sadrith Mora, because swimming there was a total PITA, but beyond that, I generally walked.

However, having the option to get somewhere quickly was nice. If I was doing mage guild quests, and the quest involved going to another guild house, it was generally easier to use the guides. I also generally used striders on legs of a journey where I had walked it MANY times (like the section between Seyda Neen and Balmora for me.) It's always better to have the option and not need it, than to need it and not have it.

However, Morrowind also forced you to incur a time penalty when using fast travel. Only guild guides and Propylon chambers were instantaneous, and that is good. Fast travel should be faster than walking, but not light speed fast. Maybe faster by a factor of 2 or 3 over walking, depending on the mode.

I would like to see something else, though. Moderate travel. I would like to board a ship that actually sails to its destination. I want to wander around on board, talk to the other passengers and crew, or just spend time reading, while the ship is underway. THAT would be nice fast travel. Automated, but realistic. Carriages would be nice as well, but that would be much harder to script properly.