Not trying to start a battle over whether you should or shouldn't.
Just cast your vote!

If by "Fast Travel" you mean "Use a common-sense paid travel service that is part of a fast travel network that only provides access to cities and large villages", then Yes, I will.

If by "Fast Travel" you mean "Use a magical map that teleports me to any destination that I have ever been to for free (time is not a cost since there are time contraints on anything)", then No, I will not.

You should clarify so that I can cast my vote...

Occasionally first playthrough, then all the time.

Haha yes I'm referring to the magical map

"Very infrequently" for me. I used it a lot when I first played Oblivion but realised it ruined the pacing of the game for me; felt a lot more immersive when I trudged the full distance between locations, and often found interesting things on the way too. I'm not going to be absolutist about it though; for example if I'm faced with another example of "that" quest from the Fighters Guild that involved constant trekking between Chorrol and Leyawiin you bet I'll be fast travelling after the first couple of journeys on foot! But in general it's something I'll avoid.

First time through I'll walk around a lot and explore the landscape and maybe I'll make very little use of fast travel. But I will definitely use it and the more of the landscape I explore, the more I'll use fast travel.

I've never had a problem justifying fast travel from a roleplaying perspective. Let's say you're at a city and you walk manually to a dungeon to discover it, then fast travel back to the city. All that happened is that your character retraced his/her steps and nothing eventful happened. I can't tell you how many times that exact situation has happened in Morrowind or in Oblivion without using fast travel. But I think the problem is that I typically roleplay from the perspective of a third-person subjective standpoint. I am not my character, I am watching and controlling my character and I am in his/her head, but I am not that character. I think a lot of people roleplay from a first-person perspective, and so it's harder to justify how they got from point A to point B so quickly because they did not actually do it themselves, whereas I view it as kind of a fade-to-black moment where nothing significant happens so I don't mind.

All the time.

Honestly, there's nothing wrong with it in Oblivion or FO3. In order to fast travel anywhere, you need to have walked there first. So the whole "but then you don't explore!" thing doesn't really fly with me.

All skipping fast travel does is make you waste extra time walking over empty ground that you've already searched/cleared of enemies/harvested of resources. :shrug:


(This is not to say I don't take the time to enjoy the scenery. But there's always new places to go, why keep trudging through the same old places? )



Edit: I would not mind if there was a chance of a "random encounter" interrupting your Fast Travel, like in Fallout 1.

before i start i want to say i do not fast travel as i enjoy the scenery and i role play by stopping at inns for the night. though i dont understand the hatered behind it. and for what ever reason if the epic scenery in skyrim is a lie then i will fast travel. The Elder Scrolls Morrowind is the greatest game in the history of the universe. because there really wasnt good scenery. every mountain looked the same.

I will only use the first one....

No, in oblivion I didn't use the fast travel and I walked EVERYWHERE! My athletic was unseemly high!! Besides, those random encounters you find out in the world of Elder Scrolls just make it even better!

Even in games where you have to use the map screen to go to different locations, I always stop in places between, mainly to see if I missed anything or hoping for some random encounters that might happen.

I always tend to walk everywhere normally both in Oblivion and Morrowind (or at least I would do that every time if Morrowind's walking speed wouldn't be so damn slow) and I only tend to fast travel in short distances like inside the cities.

I will occasionally, though if they have something like the silt strider from MW I will often. I will explore areas if I have never been to them, but if it is like a 50 feet walk back to a city, I will probably just fast travel.

Of course, (All the time).
Whether its FT (foot travel), or paid commercial travel (like a coach).

As soon as there is a mod that incorporates a good system of fast travel options that make sense and have some kind of advantages/disadvantages, I'll stop using the map travel. Until then, only occasionally.

Let's not forget that Morrowind had a lot of "fast travel" options: silt striders, boats, vivec gondolas, mage guild guides, propylon chambers, almsivi/divine intervention spells/scrolls/enchantments, mark/recall spells, special teleporting items, levitation, acrobatics fortification that's useful past 255, boots of blinding speed (obtained very early via an easy quest).

No one who dislikes Oblivion's fast travel system wants to get rid of fast travel completely, they just want the fast travel options to make sense in the game world, like those ^

I would be satisfied if they gave us some fast travel options that made sense, left in the map fast travel, and had the option to disable it.

Occasionally. I see nothing wrong with saving real life time in a video game when traveling to destinations I've already visited.

I'm gonna wait to play Skyrim until a travel service mod comes out. So no, I will not use fast travel a la magic map.

"Very infrequently" is my current position, provided the lame "click & appear" interface is still the only option to travel longer distances. But... We'll see...

If I've no other viable option or alternative to get me from one side of the province to the other, and clicking a magic map to reach there is my only means. then yeah I'll be using it alot.

In morrowind I had a Racist Dunmer who refused to use the Travel survices offered by the mages guild and rarely used up what coin he had for silt striders.


you could imagine is glee when he came across the propylon indexs

Never. I walk (and hopefully ride) everywhere. There's no hurry, I don't mind if it takes me longer to finish the quests. By the contrary...

Yes if it isn't a Roleplaying Character file. If it is then no or limited form.

I never really liked the Morrowind travel system, because it made it so hard to move stuff between houses. In Oblivion I just fast travel from one city to another city, so that I don't have to walk a huge distance just because I want to change the interior of my house

So well, I will use fast travel from time to time, but I will mostly just explore without using fast travel. For me it's just there for those moments when I'm not in the mood for a long repetitive walk.

I try not to use it too often, but sometimes it is more convenient if I'm trying to get through something faster. But I like to just walk much of the time, and enjoy my surroundings.

I limit myself only to using fast travel while in at the stables in OB anyway, if there is the point and click FT system in Skyrim I'll probably do something similar.

If I can't fly...

But only from city to city.

I want to never use it, but I can't promiss anything, it depends how immersive the game is, how much variation in the landscapes and how many random events can happen on the roads. If there are trader caravans, bandit attacks that are not scripted and could happen anytime anywhere, I swear I never use FT.