The “don’t like it, don’t use it” argument is total flapjack
It is. It’s invalid for everything. If someone doesn’t like something about a game, then they have a right as a customer to offer constructive feedback on how it can be improved. Ignoring the parts of the game that they don’t like won’t make the game any better for them.
That argument being flapjack depends on what it is argued against. Nonetheless, it is not wrong because of the reasons you present.
Leaving that aside, for gameplay features as integral as fast travel, ignoring it is impossible to do while preserving a coherent and enjoyable gameplay experience. It’s like telling someone to ignore the combat - you cannot do it and continue to play the game the way it was intended by BGS to be enjoyed.
But I have done it.
This is because of the way that Oblivion was designed. There are three primary factors that severely discourage people from ignoring Oblivion’s fast travel system:
[*]Trivial quests will regularly send you to the other side of the overworld because quest designers are - rightly - expecting players to utilise the fast travel system that they have been given.
Were they rightly Expecting me to use Oblivion fast travel in morrowind too? Because those same kind of quests exists in Morrowind as well.
[*]There are no alternatives to teleportation fast travel except for walking, which takes ages, or riding, which is often even slower.
Fast Travel isn't teleportation, and walking isn't often faster than riding a horse, first there are different horses with different speeds. Secondly, you need to specifically build your character around speed to be faster than the fastest horse in Oblivion.
[*]The landscape is boring. Much of Oblivion’s landscape is randomly generated and thus featureless. There is no aesthetic incentive to take the scenic route.
Subjective, and I disagree. It would also be pretty hard for http://www.gamesas.com/index.php?/topic/1169831-i-have-been-converted/ guy to have the experience he did, had Oblivion landscape been all boring. That right there is your incentive to take the scenic route.
So we have a game that frequently makes players choose between instant teleportation to their destination or a long slog across a boring and repetitive game world that, by level twenty, is filled with minotaur lords. There might technically be a choice there, but gee, BGS really aren’t making it easy on us roleplayers now are they? Which leads nicely onto point 2:
Strawman, you have dressed it up to be something it isn't, in order for you to rip it down for being something it isn't, it OB FT isn't Teleportation, it is as much Teleportation as Waiting is Time Traveling.
Fast forward thirty years or so, and now DMs have been widely replaced by videogames. The purpose of the videogame is to set up a believable world for us to play in and then - in the case of BGS games - let us do whatever the hell we want. The game must be believable to be enjoyable, and to be believable it has to be consistent and it has to have certain restrictions that reflect the behaviour of familiar things. For instance, you can’t kill Mrs X outside in a crowd of people without becoming a criminal; it takes ages to kill a heavily armoured person with your untrained fists; and you can’t teleport across the world by clicking on a map. Wait, what?
Nope you still can't teleport across the world by clicking on a map, because OB FT isn't Teleportation, we can't go further here, unless this is realized.
Precisely. There is the key difference between Morrowind’s and Oblivion’s respective systems: Morrowind’s requires you to go to an appropriate vendor of fast travel services - a boatman, Mages’ Guild teleporter or silt strider driver - and pay them a negligible but nevertheless present fee for the service of instant travel. Oblivion’s requires you to be outside (which doesn’t make much sense in the game world - only as a balancing mechanic) and open your map and click on where you would like to go. The former gives a believable and lore-consistent explanation of how you suddenly find yourself on the other side of map, the latter is just lazy.
You walk there, you don't suddenly appear there. That is why it doesn't cost you anything.
Another word for Morrowind’s fast travel system is ‘intradiegetic’ - “contained within the narrative”. The game is doing its job as DM by giving the player a reason for the feature being there that makes sense within the game world, and levying a believable fee for such a feature. The player uses it without having to suspend their disbelief, and all is well.
Fast Travel is a mechanic for the player not the character, Morrowinds portrayal of a travelling system is great for explaining how people got around, but it isn't necessary for Fast Travel, which is only a service for the player.
The aim of this thread was never to put forward a solution to Oblivion’s system, as this has been done countless times before only to fall on deaf ears. No, the purpose of this thread was to make those deaf ears more receptive. However, do feel free to discuss it at length now we all know that “don’t like it, don’t use it” is a silly argument that only silly people use.
It falls on deaf ears, because it continues to be either a matter of opinion, or a misrepresentation of the actual situation. You cannot have a debate, when you start it by distorting the situation, so that the rest of the debate will be about correcting how the actual situation is, before people can even start to discus changing it.
» Sat May 28, 2011 5:06 pm 
it's a video game, doesn't need to make sense 
