But that's overkill. Difficulty and death are forced upon the gamer by the developer. Travelling across the map, however, is not. Fast travel is just a smart move by Beth. There are times when I do decide to ignore fast travel and just enjoy the journey through the mountains, discovering random caves and forts along the way. And it's fun! But then there are also times when I want to get things done, where I don't feel like plodding across a path I've explored countless times.

Fast travel isn't cheating. If it went against Bethesda's intentions, they wouldn't have implemented it in the first place. You could argue that it's only there to assuage candy-hyped 12 year olds, but the truth is that some of us find it to be quite useful. It comes down to immersion, and your style regarding it.

Game's way too big to not use fast travel. It allows me to do quests that I would otherwise not do, cause they all send you so far away, sometimes literally to the other side of skyrim.

Nah.

Ummmm.....the game designers obviously intended for us to be able to fast travel which is why it's in the game. So, yea.....if anyone is trying to force their playstyle against the designers intentions, it's the "no fast travel allowed" cry babies.

The fact that anybody here complains about fast travel is just stupid, and shows that people will complain about anything. If you don't like it, then don't do it...how many times does that have to be said?

If you think fast travel ruins exploration in the game, then sorry, but I don't think that word means what you think it does. having to run from one town to another when you've already cleared out eveything between them is not "exploration".

This is simple. Fast travel is for people with jobs.

Immersion.

Feeling like the game is your life.

I "fast travel" (sleep on the train) to work everyday as the houses shops and people along my route to work will be the same every day nothing new just coz 24hrs have past!!!!!

This. I actively resist the urge to use fast travel to simply bang out a quest. Some of my most memorable moments in Skyrim so far have been when actually exploring on foot while traveling towards my active quest location. I only ever use it when I need to transfer loot as I like to consolidate all my gear in my Whiterun home.

You really miss out a LOT if you keep using fast travel. Every time I have to get from point A to Point B, I look at my map, and figure out an alternate course to get from A to B, that I haven't yet explored. It is tons of fun and I've gotten some great loot and enjoyment out of it. My most memorable one was stumbling across a dragon priest temple in the mountains and having a great battle.

Heck, right now, my problem is that I've spent 50+ game hours in Skyrim (Level 22) and only completed a few quests from the MQ and College of Winterhold. There are so many more quests still out there, but I keep getting sidetracked by dungeons, caves and forts on my journey to quest locations. My only complaint is that sometimes I end up in places that are tied in to future quests, so while I can still clear them off the bad guys, I don't get any major reward at the end for clearing the location out.

I am still glad they left it in. Sometimes if I have an hour to game, I might prefer to do a quest in a location I've already been to, and I know I have explored the parts between very well. I must say though, that if you play without fast travel, it will be a more immersive experience, and I also think that a lot of the OP complaints on the forums would go away. I'm pretty sure most of the people leveling up enchantment, alchemy and smithing, are finding materials and then fast traveling back...using them, then rinsing and repeating. I've been guilty of it too at times because I've found ingredients and gear that I don't wanna drop and abandon....but if you were playing without fast travel...you'd have to decide if spending 20+ minutes hiking from one end of the map to another is worth it, just so you can stash your loot and then go back to where you were.

I don't use FT too much because it makes me feel dirty and cheap! On my last character I FT to a location and before I knew it I was FT'ing everywhere did like 5 quests in the span of an hour! I felt so guilty that i found a save before this all happened and started over! Cheat not at all, to each there own! For me though the only time I will fast travel is if I'm getting tired and doing a quest which sends me back from where I just came! If it gets to the point where i say to myself "oh come on!" i'll likely fast travel without guilt!

It can't be cheating, so this poll doesn't make sense.

The way they spread the quests out, I wouldn't play without it. Had they designed things without fast travel assumed as a given, with less backtracking long distance for so many quests, I'd prefer that but fast travel is not terribly game breaking nor is it cheating.

If you can somehow make traveling entertaining 100% of the time than no, fast traveling is better.

I don't consider it cheating. I only use it in extreme circumstances. For example: I just cleared a tough dungeon, and only have a sliver of health left. Or if I forgot to stock up on potions before entering a dungeon.

When did using a feature in a game that is not activated through console commands need to be considered a "cheat"?

I think it's a good feature but I myself don't use it. Nice bias pool.

Without the fast travel feature, I wouldn't be able to play this game. Those of us with jobs just simply would NOT have enough time to enjoy the game.

I wouldn't call it cheating but I never use it

I would use fast travel a lot less if interesting encounters actually occured fairly often while traveling on foot... This happens sometimes but it's very rare; more often traveling by foot means nothing more than encounter wolves, bears, bandits, dragons and trolls. Scripted encounters, interesting NPC's or events maybe occur 10% of the time I travel long distances by foot; other then that it's pretty tedious despite the scenery.

I usually walk to my destination, then fast travel back since iv just made the same journey and won't see that much new stuff. If there's a carriage I'll use that instead of fast travel.

No, because often quests in Skyrim and Oblivion before it would make you jump from one side of the map to the other, like the game expects you to use it. Fallout 3 was better about this, though, and there was more reason to explore. However I still used it and wasn't guilty about that, but I could see how a 'no-fasttravel' playthrough would be more possible. It was annoying that it wasn't present in Morrowind, coming from Oblivion, at first, but I got used to it and began to not care.

Save/Load is cheating

Pausing at any point on menus is cheating

Potions are cheating.

Pseudo-hardcoe opinions.

I don't think its cheating and quite frankly if you do, don't use it & don't worry about others who do. Its good to at least have the option.

That said, I prefer traveling myself as I get to see more.

I certainly don't think it is a cheat. I'll probably use it more often once I've completely explored an area. I do think that it takes away quite a bit of enjoyment if you use it from the beginning of the game because it robs you off finding some cool places and experiencing cool things. At this point I've pretty much explored everything around Dragonsreach/Whiterun, so I use fast travel within those areas. But I'm always trying to get to higher ground to look for interesting places to explore, that I haven't come across yet. I do agree that traveling in the same area can be fairly tedious as there really isn't a whole lot of new things to explore. Also, with the way quests are laid out and the fact that you aren't forced to progress along a fixed path of quest lines, you really do need fast travel in this game.

PS - Gotta love all the biased polls here on the forums. Most polls on these forums could be re-labeled to:

1. Vote for my point of view because it is awesome and you're an awesome person if you vote for the same
2. Vote for the opposite point of view even though it svcks and means that you're seriously unkewl *Cartman voice*

Erm no...you can't fast travel while over encumbered.

It is about as cheat as not forcing your character to consume food or take a dump every 3 hours. It is meant to save you time. Not everyone wishes to walk the exact same path for the 99999th time.

It's not cheating at all. Quite the opposite. The only thing you gain is time by not having to travel from markarth to riften all the time. You do lose out on things like 6 golds on a bandits corpse along the way, and maybe even a dragon attack, but that's it. Not cheating at all.

It's not like you can fast-travel to the boss room in a dungeon, now is it