Welcome to TES V Ideas and Suggestions # 175

This thread is for ideas and suggestions for TES:V and to keep all the general discussion in one series of threads.

To discuss major issues, use a separate topic, such as the levelling topic.

Other general topics on this will either be closed or moved here.

Please at least try to read the previous few threads to avoid too much repetition: Note, there has been a lot of off topic and unnecessary discussion in past topics, please ensure that any posts you make in this thread are suitable to the subject being discussed. The moderators will be keeping a close eye on the content.

http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1085256-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-thread-%23160/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1086102-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-thread-%23161/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1087658-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-thread-no-162/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1089003-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-163/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1090035-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-164/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1090714-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-165/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1092018-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-166/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1094008-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-167/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1096483-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-168/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1099525-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-169/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1102208-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-170/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1104003-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-171/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1105916-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-172/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1107672-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-173/
http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1109526-tes-v-ideas-and-suggestions-174/

:yuck: That would be hideously annoying. Whats wrong with fast travel? Do you feel it's cheating? Don't use it if you don't want to! If we add other alternatives you wouldn't be tempted to use it. But there will be those who will still want to use it, and they should be able to.

Someone said before, you won't always get what you want, so you have to compromise. This is compromising! Fast travel PLUS alternatives, so you can use it if you want but you don't have to and it wont be tempting! Think, why was it added in the first place? Because there are those who don't want to take the time or have the patience to walk 55 miles to some random location because others wanted to. Seriously, someone tell me what they feel is wrong with fast travel.

Most hate it because there are no alternatives. BAM. Now there are alternatives. If you had them, would you still hate fast travel? If yes, then guess what? You don't have to use it because now there are alternatives! But there are those who still want it, and they shall get it.

You want to take a walk and see the scenery - I don't care and I want to fast travel to the action.
You want to be able to travel to only major places - I still have to walk to that faraway cave, and I don't want to do that, so I fast travel.

Can't you see? If you have both fast travel AND alternatives, then everyone wins, even if you don't want it.

About the fast travel argument that seems to have popped up yet again:

We need a comprimise. I can honestly say that I have never seen a fan of Oblivion's method EVER give a good comprimise. And no, "Make it optional" is not a comprimise. At all. Whatsoever. Untill you are ready to actually discuss this maturely without demanding that we implement your method, and totally ignore the various problems of fast travel, I believe that I'm out of this debate.

Here's the problems that need to be addressed (imo):
(pasted from a previous post of mine)

• Oblivion's fast travel causes no need to create interesting and unique landscapes
  
• Oblivion's fast travel causes no need to have random encounters, such as quests, along the roads
  
• Oblivion's fast travel reduces exploring
  
• Oblivion's fast travel is a hand holder
  
• Oblivion's fast travel eliminates the need to think about where you're going
  
• Making it optional isn't a solution. There is still various issues at hand if it is simply made optional. We would also likely have slack alternatives

I am not willing to debate any of these problems. These are the problems I, and I would imagine many others, have with Oblivion's method. Whether you chose to acknowledge them or not is up to you, just don't bother to debate it, because I'm just going to ignore you.

For example, I, personally, don't see anything wrong with Morrowind's system for those who have the problem of needing to get to where they want to be quickly. Yet, I'm willing to comprimise around the situation.

Any ignorance of problems helps no one.

Very clever there, taking words I say and using them out of context. Must have taken a lot of thought to come up with such a witty remark. Good job!

I was playing Daggerfall earlier and noticed how much I liked the method of communication from a distance. They sent a courier to find you when they needed something, but they only found you in towns. Once you get into the thieves guild for the next game, instead of automatically knowing where the guildhall is in town, they should contact you in a tavern or store to tell you where they are set up that week. If the fighter's guild in one town needs you specifically for a job, they should send messages to all the other guildhalls they can reach, so if you go to one of those guildhalls you'll get the note.

You may have a low standard of clever, I was just pointing out that you may be the antithesis of compromising.

1: If it had a better landscape then perhaps less people would use fast travel, as they could finally bear the long runs
2: If it had random encounters, see #1
3: Not everyone plays to explore
4: What you call a hand-holder I call a boring-skipper
5: You fast travel because you know where you're going, you just skip what's in #1
Let me ask a question. If there were good alternatives, would you still hate fast travel and why?
The main reason I use fast travel in the first place is because spending 55 minutes walking through drab terrain and 30,000 wolves is boring. Fast travel isn't a cause, it's an effect.
Cause: Boring
Effect: Fast travel
But it's not like I'm saying ONLY FAST TRAVEL, I'm just saying "Why not fast travel for those who want it and alternatives for those who don't?" Getting rid of fast travel and adding silt striders isn't an compromise. Just adding silt striders is.
I'd actually walk if the landscape wasn't so monotonous and traveling wasn't so time consuming. Perhaps if we had fast horses (think Assassin's Creed), then I'd ride. But even with a great landscape, I still wouldn't want to slowly trudge my way from point A to point B. What people are suggesting only goes from city to city. I can't use that to travel 5,000 miles to that cave and back. Landscape or not it just takes too long. That's why we have fast travel. You're punishing those who want to enjoy their game.

Here's a scenario:
You just get out of a cave after retrieving an artifact for a person. The quest giver is over 9,000 miles away. You only have 5 minutes before you need to go to work. The run would take 15 minutes.
You could either:
a) Fast travel there
or
b ) Save your game, and come back after work and go through the 15 minutes of nothingness and wolves.
Anywho, I'll make one last fast travel post once someone answers my first question. After that, I'm shooting this horse in the neck with a Tesla Cannon.

I never use fast travel... that's just me. Fast Travel made things even more boring. IMHO, you should be able to transport between major cities, major ports, and maybe some important settlements that would have a method of transport. I'd prefer it if it was a scenic traveling method that you actually see happen, but I know that's not happening 'cause nobody really cares except for me.

... Actually, I like that idea. I've only used fast travel to cut out the boring, but I guess if you did this, make it go a bit faster than a horse, and have a good landscape, this would work just as well. I don't think many would have any quarrels with this.

Really, I've only kept defending fast travel because it allows me to skip the landscape and wolves, and it gets me straight to the action. That's it. If we were to add a bit more pizazz to it, maybe people would like it a bit more? I know I've always been against the idea of adding negative effects to it, but I guess the more I think of it the better it could work out. How about this: A Dwemer cannon. It could be like a mini-game. When you activate it, it shows a picture of that province's map. I'll use Cyrodiil for an example. Say you activate the cannon from the Imperial City, and you want to go to Anvil. A map comes up with a moving target. When you press space/a/x the target will stop moving, the cannon will aim towards the target, you'd be launched thousands of feet into the air, and you will land where it was on the map (probably with a short demoralize or paralyze effect). So if you want to land in Anvil, you'd want to stop the target on the picture of Anvil. How about that? Now fast travel isn't as much of a "hand holder" and would require good timing, it's still fast, and you get to see the scenery! (of course it doesn't have to be a cannon, it could be a mage with some sort of unpredictable catapult spell)

My suggestions:

• Oblivion's fast travel causes no need to create interesting and unique landscapes - A cross between morrowind and oblivion, towns have stryders and boats, or you can set up a campsite/ call for a stryder like a taxi.
  
• Oblivion's fast travel causes no need to have random encounters, such as quests, along the roads - I believe this is moot, if you wanted an encounter then you wouldn't be fast travelling. This was one of my biggest annoyances with how Dragon Age dealt with travel (random encounters while travelling on the map).
  
• Oblivion's fast travel reduces exploring - I usually explore when I want to explore, however, I think a morrowind/oblivion hybrid style would still allow exploration for those of us who don't want to walk (I love to wander and explore)
  
• Oblivion's fast travel is a hand holder - I remember hearing a Bethesda employee state that if you don't want to use it then you don't have to. I agree with this.
  
• Oblivion's fast travel eliminates the need to think about where you're going. - Make it too hard and the game won't be accessible. A nice balance might be easily accessible options to turn off quest markers and fast travel. A "hardcoe" mode if you will.
  
• Making it optional isn't a solution. There is still various issues at hand if it is simply made optional. We would also likely have slack alternatives - Why must it be black and white? On the other hand, a mixture of flying mounts as well as horses might be a good solution. I personally would love to be able to take a hold of a stryder and fly from city to city.

the fact is if you put in fast travel as well as alternatives those alternatives are nerfed from the start its really an ether or scenario there is no point spending time developing alternatives if the original system is still there you cant really have both....

I like this, but, in the more than likely event that randomisation isn't used, it would be pretty irrelevant. Unless there's some way around it.


As I was pointing out, my problems are the problems I have. I didn't post them to bash Oblivion, at all. I posted them to tell everyone the problems I, and I believe many others need to get around. I'm not willing to debate about them, as that would just create more mindless arguments that we've all seen a million times and helps no one and gets nowhere. But I'm willing to discuss about any possible comprimises that may help to solve the problem for everyone. And making it optional ISN'T a solution.

You know, I kinda recall that I used fast travel lot in Oblivion mostly because the terrain wasn't that interesting to explore. In Fallout 3, however, I used fast travel a lot less (And that was when I even had the option. You couldn't fast-travel to places you had never been to before.) because there was a lot more to do out there in the Wasteland. Plus it's ironically beautiful when compared to Oblivion's forests-and-grasslands, especially ever since I downloaded a mod that simply got rid of the green tint - holy [censored], what a difference. I just love to simply run out into the wild all the time rather than use Fast Travel.

And really, the terrain itself even makes a difference. In Oblivion, I could stand on a mountain and clearly see my destination miles off, and the space in-between, and it was pretty bland. In Fallout 3, the terrain happened to conceal just about everything between me and Whats-That-Place, and it all had a history behind it.

Get rid of the compass arrow. I could use that thing to find my way out of a 10 acre maze in 5 minutes.

So true.

I like it, when the game's environment is beautiful and interesting. In Fallout 3, locations were actually interesting and finding them was pretty challenging (at some points).
I've only used fast-travel when I really needed to. For example, if I don't have much time to play, fast-travel comes in handy.

I just wish they could come up with methods of transport that are intrinsic to the game-world, and are less likely to break immersion. Morrowind's system was almost perfect. If you want to have a few other means as well to make it a bit more accessible to those who found no fault with Oblivions then so be it. I just don't want a fast-travel button, so to speak because it becomes insidious. Traveling around the world should be an adventure, so maybe they could have random encounters, and rewards for conquering bandits, and other obstacles.

How about the ability to make opponents surrender? You could have like a special submissive style with your weapons/fists, which drain fatigue and paralyze. Perhaps after so many paralyzes or so many points of fatigue are lost the opponent would just give up. Maybe if you're near a town you could call a guard to arrest them.

Not only get rid of the arrow, but make it so a player can discover how to find places without it through detective work, and elbow grease.

If you don't mind my saying so I think that some of those are imaginary problems. The problem for me was variation.
For instance, the first two. Devs did try to make those things. There were things to be done if you traveled the road and did not just port to a town. And while the Cyrodill landscape was similar it was not the same. Seti18 could vouch that there are things to be seen in spite of fast travel.
The third, I don't agree. The overabundance of similar forts and ruins reduces the desire to explore.
The forth, fast travel is fast travel. Morrowind had many types of hand holders, I can manipulate its fast travel to get most any place without much trouble. The difference is in the many different ways that MW holds your hand.
Finally I would use a basic city structure of Fast Travel over the current system if both were included in the next game. And not to preach about its greatness either.

Frankly I don't agree with all of it. I agree that you find issues with OB fast travel but the things that you stated are not a sole demonic force attached to the system. I could make the same argument that swords are bad because they crimp my players ability to use axes with more potential functionality and with better meshes. No, I don't want that. I want more and different options, and though fast travel was shocking in OB and FO3 I don't think that it is something that has to be cut. It is something that has to be supplemented.

I'd like TES V's main questline to be something that could've been seen in the Middle Ages. Nothing to do with gods or prophecies, but maybe just like a war between a couple of factions. You could choose one and stick with them, or eventually abandon one and switch to the other, perhaps stick with one but you dissolve them from the inside...

Agreed, I wouldn't mind being able to mark locations on my map (and erase them later, and maybe add notes to each marker). But I should have to open up my map to refer to these markers; there shouldn't be a magic compass telling me exactly where to go. Especially not when I'm supposed to be searching for something and not knowing where it actually is. It's AWFUL when you're told to find some artifact in a cave and the game tells you exactly how to get to it. I can understand guiding you to the cave itself, though even that is too much IMO, but once you get into the cave you should have to do things on your own.

They should get rid of that, and replace it with more conventional options:
- As said above, the ability to mark locations on your map and add notes to the markers
- Looking for information to help find things, by asking people or reading books
- When you are told to go somewhere, it should be explicitly stated in your journal

Basically as long as you know your destination and have a map, you should be able to get there easily enough without a magic marker. And if you don't know exactly where you're going, you should start poking around to find out (e.g. a quest giver asks you to find Wild Cave but you don't have it on your map, but you know an explorer who frequents the local tavern, and if you get his disposition high enough he will mark it on your map for you. In short, however much you are told / able to learn is what you get, and 99% of the time that ought to be more than enough to get what you need.

Sometimes you'll be told, "My friend was studying runes in the antichamber of ____ fort, but he hasn't sent word in weeks. I'll mark it on your map, and you should know that the cave contains daedra too." If you can't figure out what to do with that information you probably shouldn't be playing video games...

Other times the information may be more vague, like "I forget the name of the cave, but it's a short walk east of this village here [village marked on map]." Not the best information, but it shouldn't be too hard to find the cave by heading east from the village.

And sometimes it may be extremely vague, like "I think the name of the cave started with a C... But I don't know anything more, I'm afraid." In that situation, your best bet would be to ask around town for people who know who/what you're looking for, and might have a better idea of what the cave's name/location actually is. And any information you find would be noted in your journal in case you forget it or need to look back on anything.

Essentially this is not only more realistic, but it forces the player to pay more attention to the things he is told and the world around him, and by employing a bit of detective work at times, it gives you a chance to exercise your speechcraft/personality and feel like you actually had to do some preliminary research before beginning a quest.

I also hate the magic journal.
"You have found a clue. I should report to the Captain of the Guard that it was obvious that Whoyamacallit was the killer."

... Oh. Really? I thought it WAS the Captain of the Guard... Okay...

..... if you have a problem with fast travel just don't use it, they could make it like morrowind where you had to be in a city or town and you had to pay, how about you could go anywhere with the transportation unless it was on an island, in which you could switch to a boat if the current town was near the sea.

I don't think people are asking for fast travel to be scrapped, we just want there to be more viable alternatives. I hate the goto response of "if you don't like it, don't use it" because it's just not feasible to play Oblivion without using fast travel; there are no other decent ways of getting around. Bethesda's handcrafted worlds are one of the biggest selling points of their games, and fast travel completely undermines that. I think they should offer incentives to people who avoid fast travel and add some drawbacks to relying on it, and they should also implement some more viable alternative modes of travel. That way if YOU still want to fast travel you can, but people who don't want to be pigeon-holed into using that system can still play the game with equal efficiency and even receive some nice benefits for using other methods of travel. That way everyone gets what they want... I don't see how you can be against that.

in that case like i said before, fast travel only available between citys/town and costs money, more like morrowind's version, only allow it so that you can get from any town/city to any town/city unless say it was on an island in which case you would have to be using a coastal city's boat system.


and besides compromise only counts if both parties feel that they have been ripped off or that they pulled a wise one on the other party of course then again after rereading your post, it is a decent idea