Yes, that's what I'm thinking too.

they should just put real time transportation of horse drawn carriages and have that as the "fast-travel" method...that way the player can get a feel for the world just like how the same method is used in Red Dead Redemption (not trying to copy something good about the game; using concept of gameplay to provide for a better experience in TESV Skyrim)

I agree with you. Morrowind's travel system I think IS expertly done. It makes it more realistic. Even though Oblivion is a bigger game in square footage I always found myself feeling like the game world was rather small because of the fast travel. Therefore I tried to use it less and less. There's always been times though when I've been tempted. And I think it saves a lot of time to just if you're someone like me who doesn't save as often as they should. Like...taking all this time to go somewhere on foot only to die getting there or something. With that then to save all the lost time I can just fast travel and get there to do whatever it was that I was going to do. So...huh...I started this post thinking that I was just going to commend Morrowind's fast travel and say that Skyrim should use that but now...I dunno...I think maybe...both? Even if it is a little weird.

I'd like it to be awarded to the player, and after made available, keep a bit dynamic to keep things interesting throughout the rest of the game.
* You start the game knowing your surrounding (if it's suitable for the start). Your knowledge about the world is same as current, but you can't fast travel yet.
* You can still auto-travel (like in Daggerfall), using inns for a cost, select speeds, how to camp etc. But this can also be interrupted. It's you traveling, not you using a service.
* In order for Morrowind like routes/services to open up, you have to undertake quests to clear the route from bandits. After that, the available route is highlighted.
* Later in the game, when Morrowind based travel becomes tedious, you do other quests to start up new services that allows you to go from a settlement to anywhere.
* The current uber lazy mode is removed, but recall and divine intervention like spells are brought back from MW to compensate.

Well, it's my dream anyways...

I want either the Daggerfall system (for a larger map) or Morrowind's.

IMO The only difference between using Morrowind's fast travel and Oblivion's to other cities, is a couple loadings screens and a few more minutes. Also going out to a dungeon and back takes the same amount of time. (If you prepared a mark, learned the intervention spells or brought an intervention item.) Though unlike Morrowind, you can again hop between previously found dungeons. But in Oblivion with its unrewarding loot level scaling, why would you? Just the same crap you found in the other dungeon or on a bandit wearing it on the way there. So I don't think it was really needed in Oblivion considering.

If the quests didn't have you going to random places all over the map (maybe 1/10 of them or just for the main quest) and just within walking distance from each quest giver (or a town you can get to), you really wouldn't need it.

Perhaps give us the option at startup to implement the fast travel system or not. Those that want to play without it, won't be tempted and will be unable to use it during their game play. Those who want it, can use it by selecting that option at character creation.

Of course it should. It's perfectly optional. They should simply add more rewards to exploring the wilderness. Things that are out of the way and cannot be seen on a map.

Add some negatives, like possibility of losing health or money. A system like Morrowinds would be ideal, though.

"If you don't like it, don't use it" isn't really a valid response to this. Every feature included in the game will have an influence on its tone and feel, and as a result any of them can detract from it if they don't fit in well or aren't implemented properly. Case in point: if Skyrim starts you with a fully loaded M16 and an infinite supply of weightless magazines for it, you could technically just not use it if you don't like it. That wouldn't make the decision to include it stop being a bad one.

All that said, I don't think anybody except the developers (and maybe the handful of people from the few media outlets that might have seen the game and gotten some details on it now) knows enough about the game to answer this question in any meaningful way.

Definitely want a return to Morrowinds system. I know a lot of people see it as this great game that was perfect in every way, and thus anything chosen towards Morrowind seems biased, but this is an area where I feel Morrowind really succeeded. It made the world more believable, and made deep country exploration treacherous, which it should be! It meant planning, packing, and thinking. All in all it's the perfect system to create an immersive world.

Like it or not, Oblivion-style fast travel will be in. It's just the way games are made these days, people want to get somewhere quickly and get into the action and don't want to travel too much.

I greatly prefer Morrowind's way of fast travelling, it just did so much more for immersion and made it more of an adventure to travel around the game world. That being said, I can live with the Oblivion style. There's one major adjustment they have to make and that's that you shouldn't be able to travel to all cities from the get-go. Other than that I'll be able to live with it, even though I really hope they go back to Morrowind's style.

If Skyrim is significantly larger than Morrowind and Oblivion, a system like Morrowind's wouldn't work at all. If you don't understand why, try walking from any major city in Daggerfall to pretty much any dungeon, and... well, if you picked one of the pairs with a shorter distance attached, I'll see you in half an hour.

Morrowind's system was appropriate because Morrowind's map was relatively small. We can't assume that'll remain the case.

I wouldn't assume Skyrim is much bigger than Morrowind and Oblivion. Oblivion was only slightly bigger than Morrowind and it's sort of the limit of what you can produce at high quality of the time of a games development. The development team has grown in size since Oblivion so I expect a slightly larger game, but nothing in terms of Daggerfall or even Just Cause 2 for that matter (Just Cause 2 is about 400mi2 but only exterior). And let's not mention Daggerfall which was actually 65,000 mi2 but can't be compared to modern day games. Look at http://www.giantbomb.com/forums/general-discussion/30/a-relative-size-comparison-of-game-world-maps-fascinating/414833/ for a nice reference to game world size.

On top of that, the issue you bring up can be adressed in a lot of different ways. If you'd add enough ways to teleport and plenty of travel paths, it shouldn't be a problem no matter what the size is.

Two important comparisons missing from that... Flight Simulator (full Earth) and Frontier Elite (full galaxy)

I wouldn't either. I also wouldn't assume that it isn't. Bethesda tends to majorly rework things with their games between iterations, and in this case they've created a new engine specifically for the new game. It's entirely possible that wanting to provide a significantly larger landmass was part of the decision for creating that engine. Also possible that it wasn't. Again, I don't think anyone really knows enough to say for sure either way.


Neither of those statements is really true. Oblivion is nearly double the size of Morrowind (Morrowind is 9 square miles, Oblivion is 16), and you can produce considerably larger and far higher-quality environments than that (Red Dead Redemption has a map that's supposedly 28 square miles, and the world itself is considerably more organic, tends to have considerably more complex geometry, is far more natural both in design and appearance, and - yes - has interiors). Even Just Cause 2's map is actually significantly more complex and detailed than Oblivion's (the terrain isn't shaped like it was generated from a low-res heightmap, for one), regardless of the lack of interiors.

I'm not entirely sure why so many people think this, but Bethesda most certainly is not near the limit of what can be achieved, even if we limit it to the current higher-end console hardware.


Again, not really true. Lots of ways to teleport does absolutely nothing to help any non-magic class (which would consist of... most of them) aside from getting from town to town - there's a reason I specifically used town-to-dungeon travel in my example, since boats generally don't run that way. And more paths don't help at all when those paths are obscenely long.

Also Elite 1 with 8 galaxies

I appreciate what you're saying. Given much larger distances between things then the system wouldn't work. However, even if the world was twice or maybe three times the size of Oblivion, it would be fairly full of small settlements and villages which would probably allow access via teleportation or carriages. There would be ways to get fairly near your objective without needing a 'go anywhere free' system. Say there are much deeper areas where it would take up to half an hour to get to an objective, then make it worthwhile. I don't have much time to play these days, but for an Elder Scrolls game I'd be happy to chip away at that mission for week or two if it is immersive and fun enough. I know I'm probably in the minority in that respect, but it's my opinion on the system. I'd much rather have the immersion than get things done quicker.

Make it an option, and dont make the game revolving around it. Let there be the Skyrim version of Silt Striders in the game (caravans?)!

Morrowind's 9 square miles include the surrounding "continental shelf", that is - parts which are underwater (though as opposed to Oblivion, there is actual stuff to discover there); landspace is closer to 6 square miles. Oblivion's 16 square miles though include the half of the map which is behind invisible borders and which isn't very well defined either; the walkable surface is closer to 8 square miles.