[Andrea Pratt]

Well I would like a huge game world too, maybe not quite the size of england, but it should take me much longer than an hour to cross the map. Like maybe a couple of days. With interesting things to see along the way. Randomness is my best freind, I dont want to see the same things over and over every time I play.

I'd love a huge game world too, the bigger the better. But even if it takes an hour to walk between each big city, there can still be normal systems of travel. A big map doesn't instantly mean fast travel needs to be included. If it's an hour between big cities, they can add smaller cities in between that the horse and carriage can stop at, so walking to any area would only take a few minutes if you use the horse and carriage to get to the nearest area. There are many alternatives to fast travel Bethesda could come up with if they would just devote a brainstorming session to it.

[Travis]

I always wanted to light the fire in my fireplace at Bruma. (cold up there)

Stephen.

:rofl:

So did I. I actually tried casting a fireball at it once. I didnt' reallly think it would work, but thought it was worth a try. :blush:

[Dawn Porter]

Man, forget that. if I'm gonna' be a jerkass, I'm gonna' be a handsome jerkass.

I'd honestly love if Bethesda decided to go back to a lot of Daggerfall's design concepts; random/procedurally-generated dungeon generation, randomly/procedurally-generated pedestrians (just make sure that the age slider can't go past 0 - I swear, like 90% of Oblivion's random'd faces aren't too bad to look at if you drop age a few hundred points from complexion and age, and for the other 10%, well, some people are just born ugly), random basic guild quests with some kind of randomized branching system to make stuff less predictable) and a map system that makes Skyrim massive but requires the use of fast travel, just to annoy the heck out of all the whiners. Combine that with the usual schmorgasboard of detailed setpiecing and NPC and quest designing and all that jazz, and god dang it I might not even buy the one that comes after it it could be so good.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but it seems like you just said that you want randomized dungeans and NPCs, but you want them to be detailed too. I'm pretty sure you can't have both of those things in one game.

[adame]

Enchanting items should NOT require you to join the Mages Guild. If I'm roleplaying a thief who want's to get his bow enchanted, it makes no sense for him to to join the mages guild JUST to get the bow enchanted. Maybe a few merchants who sell spells and other magical items can have enchanting altars. Or maybe bring the enchanting skill back. Either way, enchanting should not be something exclusive to Mages Guild members.

I would definitily go for the enchant skill. It would also make more sense if enchanting would have a downside, like the item breaking and the soulgem destroyed upon failure. At higher levels it happens less. And when you really want an enchanted weapon you could go to a guildmember and pay for it (No downside nor membership required). This way fighters have access to enchanting too.

Man, forget that. if I'm gonna' be a jerkass, I'm gonna' be a handsome jerkass.

I'd honestly love if Bethesda decided to go back to a lot of Daggerfall's design concepts; random/procedurally-generated dungeon generation, randomly/procedurally-generated pedestrians (just make sure that the age slider can't go past 0 - I swear, like 90% of Oblivion's random'd faces aren't too bad to look at if you drop age a few hundred points from complexion and age, and for the other 10%, well, some people are just born ugly), random basic guild quests with some kind of randomized branching system to make stuff less predictable) and a map system that makes Skyrim massive but requires the use of fast travel, just to annoy the heck out of all the whiners. Combine that with the usual schmorgasboard of detailed setpiecing and NPC and quest designing and all that jazz, and god dang it I might not even buy the one that comes after it it could be so good.

I have played Daggerfall a lot. And the biggest disadvantage about randomized dungeons is that at a given time you will start to recognize how and with what parts it's put together. The authenticity of a dungeon will be gone. Furthermore, Daggerfall-dungeons were sometimes way too big to be fun anymore. Not to mention the bugs. Randomized quests have the same isue. Kill rats/bats/bears in house X/Y/Z in city A/B/C. Way too generic.

[Rude Gurl]

I would definitily go for the enchant skill. It would also make more sense if enchanting would have a downside, like the item breaking and the soulgem destroyed. At higher levels it happens less. Frustrating at times. But when you really want an enchanted weapon you could go to a guildmember and pay for it (No downside nor membership required). This way the fighters have the enchantingpossibility too.

So, pretty much just like it was in Morrowind, sans having the item that you're enchanting break upon failure.

[Steven Hardman]

I'd love a huge game world too, the bigger the better. But even if it takes an hour to walk between each big city, there can still be normal systems of travel. A big map doesn't instantly mean fast travel needs to be included. If it's an hour between big cities, they can add smaller cities in between that the horse and carriage can stop at, so walking to any area would only take a few minutes if you use the horse and carriage to get to the nearest area. There are many alternatives to fast travel Bethesda could come up with if they would just devote a brainstorming session to it.

You could also make the movementspeed a bit slower so it would take longer to get from city to city thus giving the idea the world is bigger. And it would mean that buying a horse (or using fast travel systems) would make sense, since a horse would be much faster than going on foot.

[Rex Help]

In TES, we could have horse-and-carriages, boats, and flying creatures. Just because you had to walk or use a slow horse in Oblivion doesn't mean it has to be like that for every game, and it certainly wasn't like that in Morrowind.

So that sort of stuff's acceptable? All right, then: let's suppose that, for the sake of having a reliable unit of measure, a TES game was set in the United Kingdom - a far cry from a map as large as Earth itself, as you suggested, but suitable enough for the purpose of this experiment. You need to make your way up from London to Glasgow for whatever reason; let's call the traversable distance between them at 650 kilometers, all of which is scaled 1:1 perfectly in game. Let's assume that teleportation isn't available, as the London end of the network is striking for whatever reason, so this leaves carriage as your only viable option, and for the sake of removing excess unnessecary factors such as the time it takes to swap out carriage horses at waypoints, let's say that the trip is nonstop and the driver's using magic to keep the horses from getting tired, so let's call the carriage speed a solid 45 kilometers an hour. And for the purpose of accurate measurements, Timescale has been set to 1.

A) How long should it take, in terms of the game's system of keeping time, should it take to get from London to Glasgow?
B) How long should it take, in terms of time spent by you sitting in front of the screen (assuming you don't just let the game run itself by whatever mechisms you choose) should it take to get from London to Glasgow?

And suddenly you're thrust into a conundrum, because there are only two possible combinations of answers for this situaation:

A) The answers to A and B are identical
B) The answers to A and B are not identical

If your answers lined up with situation A, you advocate that the player should have to experience this travel in realtime: in this case, just a smidge under fourteen and a half hours. If your answers line up with situation B, this means of course that there is some level of time compression taking place in game, accelerating the speed at which you travel in-game in relation to reality - fast travel.

"But that's not a reasonable scale to set the questions against!"

Asides from the mere existance of Daggerfall, you needn't look further than the last page: as you so said yourself,

The map could be the size of Earth and there would still be better and more realistic ways to travel than fast travel. Like... oh, I don't know, the ways we travel on Earth, for example.

Even if we were to shift the locale back to Oblivion-era Cyrodil as sculpted and scaled by Bethesda, by whose authority can it be said that the player must spend X amount of time in order to travel from location A to location B? That they must spend X amount of time to travel back to Location A from Location B, passing along the way whatever hurdles had to be faced during the first trip? And that they must always spend X amount of time during each trip, no matter how many times they've made it going to and fro? The answer is, of course, the player's authority, as it is the player's time that is consumed: it doesn't matter if X is five minutes or give hours, each trip costs them that increment of time - time that they have in limited quantities due to social and economic obligations.

"But the fast travel I mentioned is fair and legitimate!"

And how so? Because it has monetary values that must be paid to use the services? Pointless - the costs for travelling in Daggerfall and Morrowind were pittances compared to the average haul's worth, even with base mercantile and personality values. Because you might need to use multiple services to get to a location? Pointless - an overarching fast travel system could simply use the base costs for the various available methods of travel and give an overall cost based on criteria, exactly (if not moreso) as costly as if you had negotiated each leg of the journey manually. Because it has a risk of facing certain perils? Pointless - asides from there being no reason for an overarching fast travel system to deviate from the random encounter systems the lesser travel methods incur, the mere act of using any travel system instead of manually making the trip yourself reduces the risk factor.

No matter how you quibble over the details, no matter how you try to duck around the issue and abstract and distort the arguments, there is simply no viable and valid argument against fast travel. Not that this will stop you and the other like-minded denziens of this board from doing so, of course, and it's frankly hard to expect anything more after what I've seen the last few weeks.

[Makenna Nomad]

I have played Daggerfall a lot. And the biggest disadvantage about randomized dungeons is that at a given time you will start to recognize how and with what parts it's put together. The authenticity of a dungeon will be gone. Furthermore, Daggerfall-dungeons were sometimes way too big to be fun anymore. Not to mention the bugs. Randomized quests have the same isue. Kill rats/bats/bears in house X/Y/Z in city A/B/C. Way too generic.

Stuff's come a heck of a long way from 1996, though. I mean, look at frickin' Dwarf Fortress, especially with some of the changes in the new version, and that's just one dude and his idea-bot brother. Then you've got procedural generation so tha the game follows particular patterns and perameters, programming safeguards like pathfinding checks from dungeon enterences to quest targets, caps on the number of tiles that the game will use in a particular generation period. There's all sorts'a good stuff that's been done in the last 14-15 years that Beth could refer to to get random stuff that works without looking dopey.

[Sheila Esmailka]

i just hope they use either dunia or crytech. after seeing the video of imperial city demo in crytech i cried out to the heavens........"why why couldnt they do real time shadows and decent looking water"

[natalie mccormick]

You could also make the movementspeed a bit slower so it would take longer to get from city to city thus giving the idea the world is bigger. And it would mean that buying a horse (or using fast travel systems) would make sense, since a horse would be much faster than going on foot.

I have to disagree, that seems like the worst of both worlds. For instance, the maps in Battllefield Bad Company 2 are much much larger than Modern Warfare 2...but you can sprint infinitely. Normally, I would favor the realism of MW2's "getting winded" but then I'm stabbed by someone from 20 feet away AFTER I've put a few rounds in 'em.

By that same logic, you could shorten the in-game day. So even if it's 200 feet to the next town, it will take you 3 days to get there if you have the sun set every 7 minutes. Oblivion tried that I think, it just gets annoying.

Larger maps, with faster move speed. I want to be able to set out on a epic journey, from my couch, and spend 3 hours walking across the map. And I want it to be interesting in that there are different environments and creatures, people on the road, etc. Right now Red Dead Redemption is looking like the blueprint for sandbox games, but we'll have to see when it comes out. BUT, if I absolutely need to get across the map again, after my first epic journey, I will want some form of fast travel, boat, coach, horse. But it should still take 5-15 minutes to reach in between travel hubs.

What's important is that if the map is big, you don't NEED to use fast travel that much, such as Oblivion given fighter's guild quests from one city where the job is in another. How stupid was that? In Morrowind, the Balmora FG took care of stuff around Balmora. When you did all their quests, you went to the one in Vivec, etc. Make each city/region it's own unique sub set of the game. Maybe the biggest quests will involve cross country travel, but otherwise you hang around the 'hood till you want to move on.

[Stephanie I]

"But the fast travel I mentioned is fair and legitimate!"

And how so? Because it has monetary values that must be paid to use the services? Pointless - the costs for travelling in Daggerfall and Morrowind were pittances compared to the average haul's worth, even with base mercantile and personality values. Because you might need to use multiple services to get to a location? Pointless - an overarching fast travel system could simply use the base costs for the various available methods of travel and give an overall cost based on criteria, exactly (if not moreso) as costly as if you had negotiated each leg of the journey manually. Because it has a risk of facing certain perils? Pointless - asides from there being no reason for an overarching fast travel system to deviate from the random encounter systems the lesser travel methods incur, the mere act of using any travel system instead of manually making the trip yourself reduces the risk factor.

No matter how you quibble over the details, no matter how you try to duck around the issue and abstract and distort the arguments, there is simply no viable and valid argument against fast travel. Not that this will stop you and the other like-minded denziens of this board from doing so, of course, and it's frankly hard to expect anything more after what I've seen the last few weeks.

The first point. So...we have to scrap any kind of payment for travel because the cost < the average haul of loot? Rather than say...decreasing the average loot? Or increasing the need for gold in other aspects of the game?

I think the main arguments against fast travel are against the ability to instantly and without consequence TELEPORT to any single point on the map, without even such an explanation such as "A wizard did it" (AWDI)
Yes, in game time moves forward. But time means nothing to the game, everything is exactly as it was the moment you left, except the sun's position in the sky. That's time travel.

In Daggerfall (I hear) diseases could kill you in a matter of days. If you fast traveled, it took a set amount of time to reach a city, and you might not make the journey. You'd have to hoof it. Even in generated terrain, that's kind of an exciting trip. You gotta move move move or your dead. Now imagine if the terrain was crafted, and you had to dodge bandits and animals? Time should have real in game consequences. If you fast travel, it will take a certain amount of time (based on your speed, or the speed of your horse, heck, you could even estimate how long it would take to kill animals and bandits based on strength, skill, weapons, etc. But the estimate in game time should always be a liberal estimate. If you have to stop an assassination by midnight 10 miles away, its worth your time to jog to the local mule cart for a ride rather than just click on your map. You're still fast traveling, but there's an in game difference of time based on whether you are on foot or using some other transportation.

Also, using hubs spreads out the journey. It might take 1 RL hour to walk from city A to city B. Taking the silt strider will get you there in 30 secs. But you half to walk 1 min to get to the silt strider. You still save 58 mins and 30 secs, instead of 59 mins 30 secs, but you're also not just stuck looking at your map and a loading screen for the entirety of the "travel" time. The effect is increased if you have to take several forms of transportation.

[Sarah Evason]

Hmm, the way I imagine it, TESV should look a lot like a mix between Oblivion, Morrowind, and Mass Effect. Yes, Mass Effect. Sounds weird, but hear me out. I don't mean any specific features from it. I only mentioned it because it provides very good examples of RPG freedom and action physics. By RPG freedom, I simply mean more choices in quests. One of Oblivion's flaws (can't remember whether it was the same way with Morrowind) was that quests usually, save for very rare cases, only had one possible conclusion and I felt the game just too strongly pushed me to be a heroic type. Mass Effect let you play the MQ in whatever style you wanted, pretty much letting you be almost as much of a villain as the actual antagonist. However, Oblivion still beats Mass Effect by a longshot in the realm of freeforming. Mass Effect was just too confined I guess would be the right term. It's not very replayable at all. It'd take time, but as long as they give you more options in TESV while still being as freeform as it is, I'll be pleased.

On to my second Mass Effect example, action physics. Oblivion's combat style took a huge step in the right direction, but still can be improved upon. Whether or not you liked Morrowind more, and I'll admit it is better than Oblivion in some regards, Oblivion still had much better gameplay, as it felt just more intuitive. To improve upon that, there are some ideas shown well, although not pioneered by, Mass Effect. I only keep quoting this game because I've played it recently, but still... what I mean is it'd be much more fun with stuff like locational damage, as long as they keep some RPG elements. Headshots do more damage for example, but aren't necessarily lethal unless you're skill is high enough. Also, magic effects would be awesome. They are not impossible either. In ME2 you can actually freeze people and shatter them, or set them aflame and watch them panic. I've seen this happen in Oblivion to zombies but it can still improve. Anyways, it'd be nice to see burn marks on dead bodies if they aren't completely charred, or frost burns on those killed by frost spells that weren't frozen. Both this and locational damage can be taken even further. Elemental spells can work in different ways, like frost traveling than fire but slowing enemies down or freezing them eventually if they are strong enough or the enemy weak enough. Lightning spells can be faster, have a possibility of stunning an enemy for a very short time, and travel in one continuous bolt from your fingertips, but be more expensive.

As for locational damage, aside from headshots/hits being more damaging, there could be stuff like if you hit a guy in a leg and are skilled enough, they slow down for some time until they recover or are healed. If you successfully hit a guy in an arm with enough skill, his attacks or blocks, depending on which arm you hit, come slower until healed or recovered. This way, combat, both magical and physical, are much more fun and intuitive, yet you still don't completely lose that RPG feel. Which reminds me, it'd be important to tone level-scaling way the hell down. I was often wary of leveling up for fear of my better spells becoming pointless as the enemy got better.

My last idea was that enemies, in addition to being more varied, should feel more nuanced from eachother rather than generic monsters with different stats. For example, take trolls, which are vulnerable to fire, and perhaps make them actually fear fire if nothing else. While they'll charge you no matter how strong you are, if you're wielding a torch or are standing next to a campfire, they'll be more wary if they don't retreat into darkness immediately. A lot of stuff like that would leave a lasting impression, as long as it happened often enough. One thing that was bad about Oblivion was that the traps, while cool in their own right, eventually got boring because they got rarer and whatnot. In the first dungeon you get a cool load of traps you can even turn on the enemies, but from then on when you do see a trap, it's usually less interesting and they are often limited to one per dungeon. Though I'll admit I giggled like a little schoolgirl when last night I was fighting an epic duel with a flame atronach when it backed right into a "spike jutting from wall" trap and died.

[Alyna]

I think the main arguments against fast travel are against the ability to instantly and without consequence TELEPORT to any single point on the map, without even such an explanation such as "A wizard did it" (AWDI)
Yes, in game time moves forward. But time means nothing to the game, everything is exactly as it was the moment you left, except the sun's position in the sky. That's time travel.

Not true. Shops might open or close, spell effects wear off, NPC's on the road might arrive at their destinations, and new critters and NPC's might appear in various locations. If some affliction doesn't prevent it, you might recover some health and magika. In Oblivion, you're in the heart of the Cyrodillic empire; it's civilized with a huge population -- :rolleyes: -- the roads are patrolled; it makes sense that a character should be able to walk between cities without being molested. What wouldn't have made sense in Oblivion would be to tack on some additional charge or consequence for fast travelling between cities.

Also in Oblivion, you have wilderness travel. At least for my characters, there are times when I run into things I can't avoid fighting. Those times are limited though, and tend to be tied to my characters' levels. I would say that 75% or more of the time my characters are at levels that nothing touches them unless I choose to give it the chance to touch them. If they happen to have invisibility as a spell, then avoidance is as good as automatic. Heck, if I have a spell like flare -- which we all do -- my characters can even fight almost any creature without them ever touching me. So, what is the point of forcing a chance for encounters for overland foot-travel? Just to be a nuisance? Except for providing me skill-level increases and maybe some loot, except for some possible hurt -- and generally insignificant hurt -- during a mere handful of levels, outdoor encounters aren't going to have any impact on my character's condition.

If the world were more dangerous, or if hunger, thirst, and weariness were factors in our character's lives, then yeah, I'd say that hassle-free foot travel to anywhere shouldn't be allowed. In respect to Oblivion though, not having it makes far less sense than having it.

[Shiarra Curtis]

I have to disagree, that seems like the worst of both worlds. For instance, the maps in Battllefield Bad Company 2 are much much larger than Modern Warfare 2...but you can sprint infinitely. Normally, I would favor the realism of MW2's "getting winded" but then I'm stabbed by someone from 20 feet away AFTER I've put a few rounds in 'em.

By that same logic, you could shorten the in-game day. So even if it's 200 feet to the next town, it will take you 3 days to get there if you have the sun set every 7 minutes. Oblivion tried that I think, it just gets annoying.

Larger maps, with faster move speed. I want to be able to set out on a epic journey, from my couch, and spend 3 hours walking across the map. And I want it to be interesting in that there are different environments and creatures, people on the road, etc. Right now Red Dead Redemption is looking like the blueprint for sandbox games, but we'll have to see when it comes out. BUT, if I absolutely need to get across the map again, after my first epic journey, I will want some form of fast travel, boat, coach, horse. But it should still take 5-15 minutes to reach in between travel hubs.

What's important is that if the map is big, you don't NEED to use fast travel that much, such as Oblivion given fighter's guild quests from one city where the job is in another. How stupid was that? In Morrowind, the Balmora FG took care of stuff around Balmora. When you did all their quests, you went to the one in Vivec, etc. Make each city/region it's own unique sub set of the game. Maybe the biggest quests will involve cross country travel, but otherwise you hang around the 'hood till you want to move on.

You are right. In Oblivion the timescale is set to 1:30. Which means that 1 minute here is 30 minutes ingame. The speed you travel with is fairly high in Oblivion. But the rather high speed is ok because of the timescale setting. Would the timescale be set to 1:1 than the speed should have been downgraded to a level which would "seem" realistic.

You're right about the FG quests, i found it disturbing too. Making it regional only is a good idea and sounds more realistic too. And it makes global quests, if added, seem more important. (Much like it was done in Daggerfall.)

[Nathan Barker]

Timescale 1:5 works perfectly in oblivion.

[Kirsty Wood]

Stuff's come a heck of a long way from 1996, though. I mean, look at frickin' Dwarf Fortress, especially with some of the changes in the new version, and that's just one dude and his idea-bot brother. Then you've got procedural generation so tha the game follows particular patterns and perameters, programming safeguards like pathfinding checks from dungeon enterences to quest targets, caps on the number of tiles that the game will use in a particular generation period. There's all sorts'a good stuff that's been done in the last 14-15 years that Beth could refer to to get random stuff that works without looking dopey.

True, but what would be the reason to even use a randomized dungeon creator? Right, a grand landmass, as in Daggerfall. The sheer size would make a randomizer nessecary cause every once in a while you want a cave to dive into. So you make it randomized, let's say there are 4.000.000.000 combinations, built up out of 450 building blocks. After a while you start to recognize the blocks where the dungeon is made of. Thus making the dungeon look generic, not authentic. Still unique, just not authentic.

[Rich O'Brien]

i would like to these little things

-Be able to grave rob
-if there a ship for transport there a chance it get attacked by pirates
-more treasure items like Gold blocks,Siver Blocks ,ect
-more farm animals
-the return of Jewel of the Rumare and Eye Night Ring.
-Human enemies level whit you but not their equipment,Moster get replace by stronger ones but still a small chance to battle week ones,animal enemies do not level at all

[KU Fint]

I'd like to point the Bethesda Devs to the list I recently created in my sig. I thought it'd be better than flooding this page with text :shrug:

EDIT: Ooh! I just got a star

[Noraima Vega]

i would like to these little things

-Be able to grave rob
-if there a ship for transport there a chance it get attacked by pirates
-more treasure items like Gold blocks,Siver Blocks ,ect
-more farm animals
-the return of Jewel of the Rumare and Eye Night Ring.
-Human enemies level whit you but not their equipment,Moster get replace by stronger ones but still a small chance to battle week ones,animal enemies do not level at all

Grave robbery, nice, assuming we're talking about graveyards and not the tombs that are already loot-able, chance to unleash a ghost or wraith? Also would have to be very illegal and if caught, give you a hefty fine and jail-time. You'd need a shovel of course, and maybe a pickaxe to get through the coffin.

More treasure is always fun.

More docile wildlife in general would be great, most animals don't just attack you even if they are carnivores, I've seen suggestions for major wildlife faction overhauls like MMM which would be awesome.

[Tom Flanagan]

No matter how you quibble over the details, no matter how you try to duck around the issue and abstract and distort the arguments, there is simply no viable and valid argument against fast travel. Not that this will stop you and the other like-minded denziens of this board from doing so, of course, and it's frankly hard to expect anything more after what I've seen the last few weeks.

I have no argument against fast travel simply because you can't think of any? That makes no sense at all but hey, here's some ice cream. :icecream:

In the end it's pointless to argue over it because it's Bethesda's choice. And like I've said numerous times, if Bethesda makes the mistake of including fast travel again I'll just make a mod for it to fix it. After all it wouldn't be the first time modders had to fix a stupid mistake Bethesda made.

[cheryl wright]

I think there is a mod that allows the player to "hire" a scout escort to any particular place. I don't know its restrictions, but that medium would be fine for me. You could port to the cave for XXX gold, or fast travel for XX gold to a general region, then walk. Or travel on foot and pay X gold for an inn. Or go rouge and pay nothing to nobody.

Edit: and for economies sake, scout travel could be thousands, city fast travel at hundreds, inns from 10-90 and less than ten to restock / resupply / fix camping gear.

Freaking A... (not the dance)
We all can agree that OB insta-port was not the best system, and we all agree that walking across a ridiculously large landmass is not worth it. So why not find some common ground.

[Elina]

True, but what would be the reason to even use a randomized dungeon creator? Right, a grand landmass, as in Daggerfall. The sheer size would make a randomizer nessecary cause every once in a while you want a cave to dive into. So you make it randomized, let's say there are 4.000.000.000 combinations, built up out of 450 building blocks. After a while you start to recognize the blocks where the dungeon is made of. Thus making the dungeon look generic, not authentic. Still unique, just not authentic.

It's also the same baseline system that Bethesda uses for its interior designing system, though: the only alternative would be to carve out every interior as a unique entity ala Source or Unreal Engine or what-have-you, which asides from requiring a crapton more work to get anything near what the Elder Scrolls has been known for in terms of massiveness would put a serious blow in the moddability that's ALSO a part of the Elder Scrolls identity. The only problem of "authenticity" that a random system would have over the current manual design system's that the placement of some objects and critters and such might be a bit haphazard, but that can be curbed a bit with some solid placement perameters.

[Sara Johanna Scenariste]

Freaking A... (not the dance)
We all can agree that OB insta-port was not the best system, and we all agree that walking across a ridiculously large landmass is not worth it. So why not find some common ground.

How about a system where you have to blaze the trail to your target initially by whatever means, but once you've gotten there you can fast-travel back whenever you need to?

Oh, wait.

[..xX Vin Xx..]

Yeah, thats what I mean, I did not like that insta-port, regardless of prior visitation to the site.

If you want to return to a cave instantly, with no ill effects, you should have to hire a scout. Otherwise to do get the random attacks, or have to walk, or mark/recall, or...
...hmmm got your point. Have the Scout hang out by the entrance, have your armored escort join you, have your mark set at your home base, have an intervention spell ready, fast travel to another location with danger of a random attack. All of these things are better than insta-port

[Sara Lee]

Yaeah, thats what I mean, I did not like that insta-port, regardless of prior visitation to the site.

If you want to return to a cave instantly, with no ill effects, you should have to hire a scout. Otherwise to do get the random attacks, or have to walk, or mark/recall, or...

I think that a teleport system would solve it. If you have to find these 'Teleport Sites' then it would require you to explore the land; once you found them, you would still have to travel a little to actually get to THEM but it would eliminate
boring and pointless walking to the other side of the map without breaking immersion.