Yes. (About Ssenkrad's post... This is exactly how Fallout 1 & 2 worked).

About Books :shrug:, players would just learn that they have to skip to the back for the note; It really would become very annoying too.

In Fallout (1 & 2), if your PC was of very low IQ (which in this case means trouble reading) they would spend all day and into the night trying to absorb the contents of the book... (More than that, just means that you should not ever use the book, and have them sell the book-thing to anyone willing to buy it).

About 'automated fast travel'... I'm not sure I understand. To me its already automated... Unless you mean no positive encounters, which I'm against really; Though I'd not be against a lower % chance of them, as you are right IMO about the PC single-mindedly trekking the distance from point A to B.

What if you made "Riding" or "Taming" a skill, and had diferent mountable beasts in the game. As you raise this skill you can ride faster/stronger mounts. That sounds cool to me.

What else besides horses looks mountable in TES lore?

...Maybe giant rats. :biggrin:

Khajiit!

Sorry this took a bit, left my browser running.

I understand a ton of people might not like the book thing. Really want I want is the difference between picking up a book and reading it. Something we saw in FO3. And I can't speak for everyone, but I am sure there are others that would be able to appreciate the mechanic. That said, I'm not going to defend it much more as an absolutely necessary feature, and the meat of the topic is below me, so:

Fast travel has been automated. Control has been taken from the player, compressed in time and variables, then you get shot out at the final location. A system automated for travel should not add exploration automation (locations marked, though this restriction is on a short list), interaction automation (people talked to and quests received), or combat automation, unless you can choose to do those things as you are 'fast traveling'. I believe this is the system Daggerfall had. When you choose to fast travel and the variables spit out some random encounter (location, conflict, quest) it will ask you if you want to engage or avoid. This system I agree to. If we were to go with either the MW or OB fast travel system (neither of which were complete) I would not expect either system to add locations, quests, or random encounters. And they don't. However if there is a fast travel system ala OB or FO3 that does add locations, quests, and perks that would normally come from the work of traveling I would consider that system broken. That is because the system is no longer simply "fast travel" but "auto play". It does not separate the actions involved enough so that you, the player, can say otherwise.

Fast Travel should be like Daggerfall but modified. If you don't like it, don't use it. It would have random encounters, depending on how safe you chose to travel, how many times you camped etc. Do I like walking around? Of course, but when you make two dozen characters, it does get old.

So because people want Bethesda to improve their games, they're immature? Yeah, you're really sounding like a sensible advlt there.

I REALLY want to make a remark, but I don't want to risk getting another warning :cryvaultboy:

I know I most certainly made use of mark and recall spells. I'd overencumber myself with loot, warp home, dump it, fast travel back, get more loot, warp home, until I'd grinched everything I could. Never thought about using fast travel to avoid danger. Danger meant fighting, fighting leads to npc death, and death leads to more good loot.
If fast travel is cheating, then so is reloading to a previous save when you die.

Hi ho Bubonicus, awaaaay

The fact that people are wanting "realness" in a fantasy game that includes a bunch of mythical creatures, places, etc, and are making fast travel a huge focus of their unhappiness seems silly to me. It really is up to the individual player to use it or not, and I my self choose not to use it when I am first exploring, but after awhile going the same route over and over again gets monotonous, so I'll use it. And it doesn't make or break gameplay, but as others have said, if I only have 20 minutes to play, I don't want to spend that walking or riding a horse. There are times I DO enjoy riding my horse or walking, but I quite like having fast travel there if I so choose to use it. And quite frankly, there were times in Morrowind that I was quite annoyed at having to figure out a boat/siltrider/then walking route to get to a certain destination. But I'm not going to piss and moan about it, I'm just going to play the game and love it. :shrug:

The thing is, people use the term 'realism' in games as a disguised way of saying ' I want the game to be catered to MY demands by them doing ____'

Me, I'm in the same boat as you, I enjoy the 'real' things when I want to. But God forbid we have the OPTION to use something in a game, I mean, after all, they are the only one playing it, it's not like the developers are catering to the masses and thus a broader range of preferences. :laugh:

ExACTly. <_<

First question was kind of hard. I chose "immersion breaker" but it depends (in my view). In games like Oblivion I could say, a mage character has the ability to teleport him-/herself to a town they have visited before. On Fallout 3 I used to pretend my Pip-Boy had a teleporting device, but that doesn't really fit into the gameworld, so in that sense it can be an immersion breaker.

Not a bad thing though, also not cheating, obviously it's optional and you play how you enjoy the game. If I use it depends on how I play, sometimes I like to get into the roleplaying, sometimes I just play how I feel I want to at the time. For example, Fallout New Vegas - I have two characters, one is as much roleplay as I can (including no fast travel, hardcoe mode, and "whatever happens, happens", i.e. reload only on death and not if I mess something up or lose a companion etc.) The other is a little more "relaxed", I use fast travel if I don't want to run the distance and reload if I want to.

It's up to the player how he/she chooses to play, the point is to enjoy the game

My "solution" to fast travelling in Oblivion is to only fast-travel between known stable/inn locations (I don't consider major city locations to be "known" at the start). Sometimes I even "bribe" a nearby NPC to pay for taking care of the horse while I'm gone.

Today I was playing Magicka and I got a weapon that was very powerful and was taking away the fun in the game in my opinion. I decided to no logner use this weapon to get more of a challenge. I don't understand why people can't do the same with fast travel.

There's this thing called "suspension of disbelief". Meaning, when you're playing a game, reading a book, watching a movie, etc. you have to switch your mind from the real-world set of things that are real or not to the in-universe set of things that are or aren't real. In TES, Mer, Orcs, dragons, swords that set themselves on fire when they hit an enemy, and magic are all real things. That doesn't mean it makes sense to hit a button and suddenly be somewhere else, unless you're using a teleportation spell or paying for a service (i.e. silt striders).

I voted the worst possible against fast travel. As long as there are mods (like CTN for oblivion) I don't use fast travel.

For me fast travel is a way to finish the game as fast as possible, and get to the "important stuff" without losing time. But that way you're not enjoying the game completely, because there's so much more to TES than quests and be the master of your guild(s).

Whoa, there, that's a bit of a generalization.

Fast travel is necessary, not optional, for most people that play games. I can't always play every night, and I can't always play for more than a couple hours. Sure, if I'm doing a giant gaming session, where I stop only to go to the bathroom and eat for a day or two, I will not use fast travel, because I, personally, like the immersion of walking a long distance for some quests. If I'm just sitting down for an hour before class, or if I'm playing a couple hours before I know that I need to go to sleep or suffer the consequences, I don't want to have to spend more than half of my time in random encounters, walking through repetitive terrain, or dread having to go to a new location for more quests.I If I want to admire nature I'll go backpacking. When I want to play a game, it's nice to be able to walk around aimlessly and explore pretty scenery, but if I'm just playing for a bit, I don't want to waste it walking.

I don't walk ten miles to the nearest mall and carry my purchases home with me just because I can, I drive, because I want things. If I want to walk and carry heavy things, I'll, as I mentioned before, just go camping.

Of course, this argument takes into account the assumption that games are games, meant to be "played" by "casuals" rather than games as an artform.

The only issues I have with fast travel are the sloppy implementations thereof. I like travel in Dragon Age, though it's not an open world game, likewise I like Fallout 1+2, and other similar systems. A similar implementation in Oblivion could have been that fast travel draws an hypothetical path, which takes the long way, along roads, and stops, like Dragon Age, for some random encounters, if the travel is particularly long. This would create a sense of time passing: since the animation shown to the player in the loading screen could feature a map-drawing-montage a la Dragon Age (or Indiana Jones).

Another great implementation was the cabs in GTA IV, too expensive for early game, so exploration was encouraged, etc etc, however it removed the nuisance of having to drive across town every time your cousin wanted to have a cheeseburger.

I understand the mechanics of make believe. :facepalm: What I don't understand is people making a fuss over something so ridiculous as Fast travel. If they don't like it, then don't use it. You aren't forced to use it. But it shouldn't be discarded because some players want realism in a fantasy game. If they were to change anything about it, I'd say, they should just make it optional to turn it on or off, that way the whiners can just turn it off and go about being happy. At least about this issue.

Because there are other alternatives to that weapon in Magicka, there is no alternative travel methods in Oblivion besides running the whole distance.

I think there would have been a lot of shouting if, let's say, Oblivion didn't have fast travel. I don't know if that point has been made, but I think it's a valid point.
I love fast travel....then again, I have nothing against blatant cheating either....it's just that the 'cheats' that I use may not be the ones that you use.

This. Fast travelling combined with question arrow in Oblivion was made for spoiled players who like their games to be played by themselves, those who freak out when they realise they actually have to find or do something themselves.

It completely differs from what should open world RPG be. Why is there so much open world if you don't even walk around, but teleport all around? They could have made all the cities one by another otherwise.

You can't say "I'll only use Fast Travel in towns"? I don't see a problem with Oblivion making fast travel all encompassing and then letting players limit how much they want to use it. The other way wouldn't work, you can't have fast travel only in towns because then it would limit people who wanted to use it all the time. I don't see a problem with a system that lets players play exactly how they want to.

A generalization? Not sure I see it, or how the following paragraphs were relevant.

I also stated in my post that I'd have supported a system that quickly took you between towns, or somewhere along roads, which would be more than enough to handle the quests that send you back and forth across the continent and in most cases only puts you a few minutes away from any wilderness location, if you jump to the nearest point. All I said was that Cyrodiil didn't seem big enough to me for an anywhere-instantly system to be necessary, and as such putting one in anyway instead of a more refined system seemed like low-effort overkill.