Here is my reasoning for this Poll and subsequent ideas.... Teleportation is a very powerful ability, you can come and go wherever you want to, whenever you want to. In a real-world with magic such as this, I am sure it would have to one day become fully controlled in some way, meaning the comings and goings of the lesser mages would be a known quantity. Otherwise, there would be no such thing as defenses, borders, walls, gates, or any other thing regarded as a safety net against treachery, backstabbing, and espionage. If I look at it closely, I see there being some system in place to gaurd that magic.

What I see is that at one point it was a free magic, you could learn the spell and go about it however you liked. But then certain mages allied themselves against the Empire and caused havoc and were traitors in some way, seeking after power. And once the threat of this kind of freedom was exposed, that spell was restricted to only the greatest mages in the world, those who were not only powerful, but have proven themselves trustworthy. Those who receive the spell must undergo a ritual that marks them, so that if they ever go rogue against the Wizard's Enclave of Tamriel, they could be stripped of power and removed from service as a mage for punishment of their crimes.

In the meantime, you receive Runestones that you can use to go wherever (whatever city) you like as long as it is to a precise location in the city you've chosen. I want to impress upon the traveller who is using Fast Travel this way how dangerous this power is, and how restricted it is, by having all the concepts of fear surround the spell's use. What I mean is this ... when you go to Fast Travel, you need to visity a Travelling Sepulchre. It's a half-moon crescent of glowing stone on the backside with an open front. But standing in the other spaces to complete the circle are a number of high-level Mage Gaurdians who are there to ensure the safety of the operation. They will ask you where you are going and record it in a log. You cannot travel during certain high-magical times due to the dangers of such travel, and you cannot travel from 12midnight to the morning during the Witching Hours. You click on the floor and a list of cities comes up. When you cast the spell, the screen doesn't just pause, but energy forms around your character (essentially the game engine casts a special teleportation spell on you that is cool to watch) and the magic keeps animating while the next scene loads which is identical to the one you left so that there is never a pause and with some cool "swooshing" noises you will feel as if you've travelled. When you arrive, several of the mages will scan you with their magic before you can proceed. If you travelled illegally, such as on the wrong day or at the wrong time) you must pay a penance and face a week suspension from learning any magic skills etc....

Now when you use the rune, it's gone, you have to ask for another one. But whenever you go to ask a higher up for a rune, they assign you a quest first. So say you wanted to travel from A to B to complete your current quest .... but before you could go to B, you first had to go to some dungeon and acquire some book that was lost there. After your quest, you are given a Runestone allowing you to travel back to B and complete that quest also.

Now, once you are of a certain level, and have proven to be trustworthy, then as a reward for your progress, you could be given the spell that offers full unrestricted travel between gates, although your comings and goings are still noted and recorded, and the game can use those dates and times to throw monkey wrenches into the plot, such as indicating that you were in a certain location the day an artifact went missing, can you prove you didn't steal it? So you go on a quest to determine who actually did, and recover it, clearing your name. That could all be Radiant Story driven very easily under that system.....

Anyway, what are your thoughts, given my reasonings, on Fast Travel as I have explained it?

since when is fast travel teleportation?

Other than toggleability, and combined with "conventional" methods of transportation (a la Morrowind) there's not much that should be changed with how it works.

Certainly, your method of Fast Travel would have a place with a toggleable fast travel (since, like conventional methods of transportation, it has it's drawbacks.) But unless I'm mistaken, there's no such thing as the "Witching Hour" in TES, and unless the Dragons really fiddled with how Mundus works (or if there are several high-powered Mages Guilds randomly placed in Skyrim) there shouldn't be any reason for there to be any kind of "peak time of magical interference." Of course, simply having the Teleporters be the ones to operate the teleportation crecent, who would have daily schedules, throws out the magi-babble that you would otherwise need to explain why it's limited.

"Yeah, I can teleport you to City B. But not at night, because that's when I'm asleep. Nor a 9 AM, Noon, or 5 PM, because those are the times I eat."

Call me old fashioned, but I prefer how it was done in Morrowind. You had various travel options.

1) ships
2) Silt raider
3) Mages' guild teleporation
4) Mark and recall
5) Intervention spells

Now if we add

6) Horses

Thats quite a long list. Ofcourse since we are on skyrim there won't be Silt riders or ships, but I'm sure devs could think of alternatives replacements. The thing is that is just so dull to click a spot on a map. It destroyes the immersion.

I propose I did make a small error just now in comparing Teleportation to Fast Travel. I do remember now that Oblivion's Fast Travel system isn't actually teleporting but just speeding up time (and assuming you actually walked there when you didn't.) It's not entirely my fault, though, I've been playing Nehrim a lot lately (a Total Conversion Mod) and it has all new rules. They consider Fast Travel to actually be magical -- you always arrive on a glowing red stone sphere and you use Runes to do it, so I really liked that. I have to do a lot more actual wandering around in the world and I get to see so much more of the world than with Oblivion, because in that I alway Fast Travelled everywhere and didn't do any wandering about. And now I'm really enjoying the game more than ever, so I know it has a lot to do with restricting Fast Travel and forcing me to go out adventuring. And when I have a lot of money I don't mind buying a Rune and getting home faster, but I won't do it every 5 minutes either. It's a good balance. So I felt that by proposing this system, it would encourage new players to explore more, and older players wouldn't have to do that anymore, having earned the Spell. Plus I felt it would be cool to have a progression on it, going from very restricted to essentially free, meaning just another way to measure and experience your progress.

I didn't mean to step on anyone's toes. I hope you can understand why I asked this now. Thanks.

Well, with the existing technologies in place to stream the world in so that the game no longer freezes when loading new cells (see Nehrim's Launcher, it has dozens of features to speed up the game and now there is no longer any load screens), they could add some of these methods back in and for example, if you took a boat, they could show the boat leaving the port and the fade the screen and show your boat coming in to Port on the other side. That would add a lot to the immersion of Fast Travel, rather than just casting a spell that freezes your screen and then load you to the next location in such a game-breaking and boring way that robs all the coolness of such an experience. If you took the Mage's Guilt Teleportation (such as my Mages Sepulchre idea), that could have an awesome spell effect between load scenes. Mark and Recall could have an animation of your character laying out several stones, drawing a line in chalk, and casting a spell, before you actually teleport. If there were Silth Raiders, there could be a short animation of the creature giving its horrendous cry and actually start walking like some alien out of War of the Worlds before fading to black... If you flew on a Zeppelin in Skyrim, it could show the Zeppelin from a distance taking off.... etc....

Additionally, you could set an option in your Settings whether you wanted to see these "cutscenes" or not if you didn't want them, but I assure you I'd always want them.

Since it was done in Morrowind and Oblivion. Morrowind had plenty of restrictions on it, but it's underlying mechanic was similar to Oblivion's. Set where you want to go, and you instantly teleport there before time is pushed forward.

Personally, I would choose Other... It doesn't have to be restricted much more than Obliivon (but please, no FT targets before you first get to them), though it must have risks, and ideally cost (not necessarily monetary). Fast travelling should put you at a greater risk of encounters which can interrupt you, and actually take more game-time than walking manually. You could have the option of reckless travel (increasing encounter chance for faster travel time) or cautious (reducing encounter chances, but making travel slower). No automatic healing, and if some buffs wear off that make you over-encumbered, you automatically drop out of fast travel. I also hope quests are better designed to place an importance on time, which makes you have to think if fast travel would be worth it.

You should only be able to fast travel to towns and cities.

I like Fast Travel because it cuts out the tedium of a lot of stuff... especially when I have a "D'oh" moment and forgot I needed to do something important somewhere else (Though Fast-travel does cause more of those D'oh moments... go somewhere, realize I forgot to do something, then go back to where I was, then try again)

I think they may add horses as fast travel. This would solve some of there problems around having them in the world but not being able to use them.

Giving the Player freedom is a very powerful thing, yet that is what TES aims to do. Let me travel where I want, when I want, and skip the boring scenery I've seen 10 times in the last hour.

You do walk there.... It's not speeding up time, you are walking there. If you want to go that route, you pay for the siltstrider services and you magically teleport to your destination. See how that works, fast travel is just has viable as siltstriders, people just need to think about it instead of saying "Oh they didn't tell me what was going on so it must be teleporting" <_<



Indeed. It's not like it cuts down on exploration either, you still have to find the place, you just don't have to walk back the same way you came again, that gets annoying after the 100th quest.

In Morrowind, if we need to go at the other side of the map, it's painfull... Fast travel fix this, but no FT is ok...

I'd rather have Oblivion style fast travel(Which is confirmed) on a toggle, and Morrowind style fast travel. Everyone is pleased.

Anywhere you've already been (no more traveling to cities you haven't visited before), but random encounters should be possible.

I'll play with some house rules that I can only fast travel to places on the road.

I did not use fast travel in Oblivion because I actually liked going back and forth across the landscape. It made the game much more rewarding for me that quests were not just fast travel to some location, kill/find/rescue something, fast travel back. The journey itself made the world feel bigger and more real. So I spent a lot of time running back and forth across Cyrodiil, and I don't regret a single minute of it--especially when I got to see some of my favorite scenes in the game, like the sun setting over Anvil, or catching that first glimpse of White Gold Tower after a journey to one of the outlying cities.

That being said, I don't mind fast travel being in the game, I just won't use it. The same goes for any teleportation scheme. I will be walking/jogging everywhere I go in Skyrim no matter what. The only advantage I can see to teleportation would be as a means of getting out of danger rather than as a means of travel. But with the emphasis on sprinting we've seen so far, I'm guessing that they're trying to push the "he who fights and runs away lives to fight another day" philosophy. Which is fine with me.

Voted "no".

I want travel services, like Morrowind had. You must talk to one of the NPCs that offers travels, and travel to one of the places he/she offers.
This means you can only travel from places where such services are available, it costs money, and not all destinations will be available from one place, so the trip in many cases will go via several services in several cities.

Also, if teleport spells are brought back, you can actually travel when you want to, and it makes the system much less tedious than it might sound at first.

Basically, if I can have Morrowind's system with mounts and faster run speed I'll be very happy.

We should be able to fast travel from anywhere as long as we are not in combat or inside a dungeon, but not anywhere. Only places that are non-hostile should be able to be fast travelled to. Also, a fast travel meter that has to be refilled the more we fast travel, sleeping would be the only way of refilling this meter. This way, we could have transportation as well as fast travel, without making travel services unusable. We basiclly shouldn't be able to fast travel a million times all over the map for free, we'd have to sleep after 1-2 fast travels, depending on how far we travel.

I don't like fast travel. I think the travel options should be paying a boat captain or a silt strider to transport you somewhere.

Fast travel should have in-game facilities like what we had in Morrowind, but for the ones who like the convenient instant methods, there can be optional Oblivion method as well, but the quests should consider people that do not like the instant method and like the more immersive in-game facilities, and give adequate addresses and descriptions for quest targets.

As for the actual fast travel method, other than the Morrowind-like travel agencies, I hope that we can have the method which I sugegsted http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1162378-fast-travel, but if not, at least the system that was implemented in "Two Worlds II", which gave you a magical stone that you could carry with yourself, and use whenever you liked, as long as you were not in combat.

And when you used that stone, you could select one of the several destination points that were scattered through-out the entire game areas, and maybe some internal cells as well.

Those destinations were like gate-ways that were connected to each other, and you could step into one of them and select the destination from other gate-ways that we had found and empowered, and we had also a stone that could be used as a gate-way from any place that we liked.

This was a convenient way that helped us to teleport from any place to any of those gate-ways that we had previously found, but not to any place that had a mark on the map, and it kept our immersion in the game, because we were using in-game gate-ways, and the instant transportation was performed between two gate-ways.

This. And, at least for me, Fast Travel is less of an immersion breaker than point a direction, press Q and start reading the newspaper while my character run somewhere (Hello Morrowind).

Fast travel has a risk if it’s more than 3 days since you visited the location, always fun to arrive on top of a lich. Fast travleing to the deathclaw sanctuary in Fallout 3 is exiting. Even more fun is a gas station straight south-east of the nuke cola challenge: at high level it’s a spawn point of two albino radscorpions, to make sure you are careful then you shoot it’s a couple of cars next to you and if you are real lucky an enclave patrol joins the fun.

And yes to more time limited quests, Daggerfall had both teleportation for high level mage guild members and fast travel and you preferred teleportation if you was in a hurry.

One of the biggest problems with Oblivion's fast travel is, to me, that it actually has no explanation at all other than time passes (and so does Morrowind's, except for teleportation spells). So basically, what characterizes Oblivion's fast travel system is:
- It's called fast travel and asks you to "Do you want to fast travel to...?"
- Time passes.

There is no direct explanation that you're walking or riding a horse. This is a very weak explanation, if you want to call it an explanation. To fill in the blanks by yourself and imagine that you're riding a horse or walking is, according to me, an exaggeration.
A comparison is "Physhic guards": You committ a crime far out in the wilderness by killing a lonely guard. You could see or hear absolutely no one from miles. When you a few days later arrive in a town far away, you get caught by the guards, claiming you've killed a guard. By this logic, you would have to imagine that someone, despite your thorough search in "crime-scene" in the wilderness, was lying around in some bush, hiding for some reason, and was watching you committ that crime. That imaginary person then went to the same town you did, but faster, and reported to the guards.

My point is that you shouldn't (and sometimes just can't) imagine all things by yourself. This also goes for imagining that you walk or ride a horse when you fast travel.

Morrowind's transportation system at least got an actual explanation other than time; namely: travel services (Silt Striders, Mages Guild teleportation, boats; also mark/recall and intervention spells existe; To note is that the Silt Strider can possibly be replaced by a Mammoth).
That's a factual explanation. It's not perfect (i.e. loading screens), but it's fast travel in one step more immersive way.

I actually explore more in Oblivion than in Morrowind, many times in Morrowind I was sent on quests to remote locations and saw dungeons I never visited as I wanted to finish the quest and was filled up with loot or low on recourses like arrows, potions, lockpicks or repair, newer bother to walk 10 minutes back lose my teleportation target at stronghold.

I've always considered Oblivion fast travel a sort of cheat. It's meaningless to have that kind of feature. I want a fast transport,yes, but I have to pay for it, time has to pass etc. In substance, something like Morrowind's. No more that Obilvion crappy system.