Cant we have both; or pregame a selection for

1: Oblivion style fast travel
2: a fast travel network
3: both

To be honest, I do think the fast travel thing is a somewhat lazy thing but it's not really any harmful at all. Actually it's very useful when going from camp to camp killing bandits to get their gear for example. And by the way that some people talk about how it svcks to have it there, it sounds like they can't even moderate themself from using it. As if it's the greatest temptation in the whole game that could be compared to Satan's temptation of Christ or something.

I did read the trhead, I was only quoting the wise. But FT is not that much of a deal, you should just use it "naturally" and enjoy the rest of game.
PS: To avoid further discussions, should I say that by "using naturally", I mean using them without think so much about its implications on the game's immersiom, because, really, they are not that obvious.

I would like that system. Imagine your assassin and you have a mission in the next city over. You take the local transport to the other city in the morning (won't be available at night). Once your in the city you have to get to an inn and wait till night to perform your mission. Could add a lot to the RPG experience.

Oh wait, I did that in oblivion... (isn't role play grand)

Thank you, finally someone that accepts the fact that the compromise where we can have fast travel and a travel network while not making it some guy standing by a wagon 24/7 waiting for just the main character. When someone is always available 24/7 to take you to travel and stands there by the main gate of the city, that REALLY hurts immersion more than not being able to grasp the idea that your character is walking to the destination <_<

I believe that 'dont like it, dont use it' is applicable to some parts of the game.
A game as huge as an elder scrolls game, with its sheer number of options and possible playstyles, I find most people eventually settle in a style of play and from then on usually play a warrior/ assasin/ mage etc.

I myself like being a spellsword/battlemage kind of character and in Daggerfall, Morrwoind and Oblivion I have not used ranged weapons. Apart from trying them to see how they work.
I dont like it, I dont use it.
It does not make the game smaller for me, nor do I find it annoying its in. If anything, I like it that the game is massive enough to contain content I can ignore, without hindering gameplay.

The same goes for mechanics powergaming, such as 100% chameleon. If you know enough about how the mechanics of the game work, if you purposely evolve a character to use certain things, nothing wrong with that. They should also not be removed.
My current character on oblivion is level 32, I have 250 hours playtime and my acrobatics is 40 ish and my illusion 46.
It is possible to play Oblivion without 'super high jumping and one sec paralyze' I hear clamour to be removed so often.
Dont like it, dont use it, works for me there.

But, when it comes to fast travel its a different matter.
I dont think 'dont like it, dont use it' is valid there. Its such an integral part of how the game works, how quests are designed, that not using it is not like not using bows and arrows. Its like not using money, or clothing/ armour.
Apart from the points mentioned in the OP, it is very hard on Oblivion to not use fast travel and have any non essential travelling NPC's alive by level 15-20. They stay alive if you use fast travel.

Fast travel is in Skyrim, thats a given.
But how can it be made better?
Well, the points made in this thread could be adressed. NPC's could give better directions.
I would love it if only I, the player, could kill an NPC, so that a wolf will no longer kill a traveller, but move on when the silly Dunmer falls unconsious.
There could be cost and risk involved like in Daggerfall.

Fast travel does not have to be an odd teleporation thing, I quite liked Daggerfalls system with its choice between safe/ risky travel and monetary cost.

Edit: I guess ideally there would be both fast travel and a travel network. I find it entirely logical that a mages guild teleporter sleeps at night, or that a carriage can be unavailable at times.
I dont see any problem with conditional fast travel networks.

If you had read the thread then you would have noticed that someone already posted that same quote in an earlier post...

i like this topic. it has arguments instead of the usual "FAST TRAVEL IS STUPID LOLZ"

a few games that have better fast travel mechanics than oblivion

dragon age origins

mass effect

the witcher

two worlds 2

STALKER (my current favorite fast travel)

borderlands

risen and gothic games had map fast travel to major points but not to every cave and ruin like oblivion had

i havent played it but someone said that red dead redemptions was different

Ok.. I admit,I read it 'til the 5th page,and then jumped to the last...
But in my defence, the first 5 were all about he same things, and basically have the same arguments. =P

The only trouble i have with Fast travel ;is that it lead's to uninspired , lack of imagination quest design.. apart from that its fine

Which has shown to be not true. Oblivion had far better side quests than Morrowind did. Most of Morrowind's quests were fetch quests. Most of Oblivion's side quests had elaborate functions for the resolution of the quest. Oblivion's quests were far better quality than Morrowind's and were more enjoyable. Examples of these quests are like the Sheogorath quest where you have to trick the inhabitants of the Khajiit village that it was the apocalypse which was infinitely fun. Then all of the Dark Brotherhood quests had a myriad ways of finishing them in unique ways. Then you had the quest to find the painting thief and so on and so forth. So fast travel had no effect on the quality of quests and even if they did, it only showed that the quests got better.

How does the example you gave - that morrowind quest's 'svcked more than Ob's' , - make's my statment '' shown to be true or not'' ?

its a matter of opinion's and none are important

And that point should stut down the WHOLE debate!

Also, you know what was fun in Oblivion? get multiple quests in a town, and your problem is settled! Pretty much nothing was timed anyways, so talk to people, get your quests, do the ones you can do where you are, travel, and then deal with whatever you can where you are!
Doing it like this made me see the game in a very different way

Except what you said was questioning that fast travel in some way ruined the quality of quests and made them simple and uninspired when I gave examples of quests and there are tons more in Oblivion that were far more elaborate and inspired than those in Morrowind. I'm glad you read the first sentence of my post...

How can you not use fast travel in Oblivion? Getting around would take too long without it and theres no alternative.

However, Morrowinds Silt Strider and Mage Guild teleporters were far more immersive, and at least made a littly bit of (mythical) sense rather than just clicking on a map marker and being teleported there right away.

The oblivion fast travel system really was an immersion breaker to me, and the argument of 'dont like it, dont use it' is really lame when theres nothing like morrowind style travel as an alternative.

I read the whole post objectivly :read: and in accordance replied

edit - Im not arguing but just as a reference point idunno what morrowind had to do with it. its all :foodndrink:

Except that it's not an opinion of which quests were more elaborate, it's a quantifiable fact. You can actually measure quality of quests depending on what the content of said quests are. I mean, being sent into a dwemer ruin to find an object is not as elaborate as being sent to make a village think the apocalypse is coming by fulfilling the 3 signs such as rat infestation by finding out they have stinky cheese in their cheese collection, stealing it and putting it in the cooking pot so the smell spreads across the country side and calls in the rats. Then the second one is the death of livestock so you find out that they have poison around, so you steal it and put the poison in the feed trough so that the sheep die. Then Sheogorath puts the final phase into motion where it starts to rain flaming dogs from the sky and you can see the whole village go into panic. So which one was the better quest?

Mate - morrowind has nothing to do with what i said , all i said was '' lead's to unimaginative quest design'' .. meaning for example, take fast travel out of the equation altogether , and the dev's would had to think long and harder and in more imaginative ways to get you from A - B in an intresting way. all this was in my opinion only

But then you said it wasn't true ... as a statment of fact - a conclusion of which, i have no ideA how you arrived at .

EDIT: we've gone way off topic so let's just for sake of argument call it quit's.

How does "unimaginative quest design" equate to anything but the designs of quests? I'm still not seeing how fast travel affected anything about quests. It's not like they decided to send you all the way leyawiin from Bruma just because you had fast travel. I mean, I had quests in Morrowind to go from Balmora to Sheogorad, which is on the other side of the map and there was no fast travel. So the extreme distances you have to travel isn't because of the existence of Oblivion's fast travel, it's present in Morrowind as well. But I don't see how Morrowind had more interesting ways to get somewhere, it just seemed like more layovers like from an airline. Ask anyone that flies, multiple layovers isn't more interesting, it's annoying.

It's not really off topic, it was still under the fast travel issue. But I'm still behind what I've said here and in every other fast travel thread.

how? fast travel makes it easier for inspired quest designs. In Morrowind they would say go here and that would be a challenge, but in Oblivion when its go here, thats not a quest so they need to add something to make it more interesting.

I could argue my point - but it's easy to see without looking to far , that whatever i say wont make the slightest bit of differnce. So for the sake of going round in circles, ive finished with this thread.

So lets just say; we agree to disagree on this point, and lets leave it at that

Edit
@ the poster above i agree - that its all subjective. It's why in that statement - i wrote the word's ...( i have) , but some looked past or omitted that fact.

In other words, the fast travel system would be perfect if they:
1) Added some things like boats, wagons, etc, to the game. And added an NPC beside the ones you could use to fast travel with.
2) Deducted a small amount of gold from your character every time you use it.
3) Make it so you can fast travel (by bringing up your map and clicking somewhere) if you are within the general vicinity of a fast-travel NPC (so you don't have to walk to them a million and a half times) or by talking to the NPC directly if that is your fancy.
4) If you are not close to a fast-travel NPC, then you can still fast travel, but it takes much longer, and random encounters are common.

Sure, lets agree to disagree but fast travel still doesn't affect quest design negatively in any way except possibly positively. It's not disputable that the quality of quests got better with Oblivion who had fast travel.

Good debate :foodndrink:

But that had nothing to do with the quests either way I think. MW quests were not worse because of a lack of fast travel. Nor were OB better because of it.

Voice acting, npc schedules, better overall design,etc Were the reasons.