Fast Travel?

[ZombiezuRFER]

Fast Travel should be optional.

Isn't it already, in Oblivion...?

Have fast travel like in Oblivion. You are never forced to use it, so why complain about it?

Thats what I said... If you want more travel options, its either vanilla or mods.

[Doctor Meaticus]

I would love a Red Dead Redemption/GTA IV means of getting around. A horse and cart ride that you can sit through and enjoy, or skip - kinda like fast travel.

So not necessarily fast travel, but certain travel stations where the option to travel somewhere quickly is presented.

[Duderino Abides]

Maybe the Nords will have a taxi service in the form of sleds pulled by packs of wolves.

[Rariow un Irskand]

I would like fast travel, but have some sort of impedement on it. Not really like Morrowind, where you can only travel to certain locations, which sometimes made it a pain to travel, but something that forbids you from travelling from one end of Skyrim to the other. You could kinda combine both systems. Say there's a river with still flowing but ice-cold water. This means that if you do the so to say "Fast Travel from anywhere" option, you have to stop at it's bank, and run around (Possibly for kilometres in each direction) until you find a bridge. However, if you're on, say a silt strider (If they put those in, which I doubt. I'd say bethesda'll put in a new creature), the strider can easily survive the cold water, and safely carries you across.

Basically, in a short description, there should be obstacles you can't pass on foot unless you are actually controlling your character, but which you can pass through on payed travel. Of course, the questions with this idea are: How can you make it so that a human player can pass the obstacle quickly if he travels "Manually", but not if he's travelling? How can you avoid him just going on foot through the obstacle and then continuing to travel? And I don't know the answers, but this is just a crazy idea I had.

[Jordy]

I'm in favor of fast travel. I make a point of manual travel whenever I start a new game in OB because I want to explore, see all the scenery and find all the ruins and forts etc. However, once you've clocked up a couple of hundred hours play time, it becomes pretty damn tedious manually travelling through places you've already traversed dozens of times, especially if you have to get from one end of the province to another.

I agree though that it would be good to have some form of public transportation. But in MW, where there were no rideable beasts AND no fast travel, and the teleport and silt strider routes were severely limited, you were forced to go vast distances on foot, over and over again, and I just resented that.

I also think that the 'fast travel is optional' argument remains a perfectly valid one. I'd rather be given as many options as possible.

[Cactus]

I think if they just implemented a really well done public transit system then both parties would be happy. Travel between all cities with carriages or something. Do what they did in Assassin's Creed II and have several stations in each large city, plus some in the country side. You'd be able to go most anywhere. Put back in maybe Mark and Recall and some sort of Nord version of the Interventions, and you should be able to get most anywhere without THAT much walking, and it'll be done in game terms. So you get fast travel, but it's in-game. You're right about Morrowind's being limited, so just take that system and amp it up several levels.

[Generalno1]

Or maybe make it like some MMOs and make it so that you can fast travel anywhere you've already been to.

[Spiney]

Or maybe make it like some MMOs and make it so that you can fast travel anywhere you've already been to.

Like the Flight Paths of WoW?

[Generalno1]

Yup, or the horse travel in Lotro

[Spiney]

Yup, or the horse travel in Lotro

Good idea. So long as they're immersive. I seriously wouldn't mind sitting in a cart ride for 10 minutes watching the scenery go by. Also, if there's greater diversity on the roads (travelling merchants, bandits, etc) they could be quite interesting.

[gamermanblue]

Well I grew up playing Dragon Warrior on the NES. I wouldn't mind if they made it similar to the 'return' spell from those games. You can fast travel to cities, towns, or villages but not caves or mines and such. 'Cause it's Elder Scrolls I also let myself travel to Daedric Shrines. With those limits to my Oblivion roleplaying, nowhere takes that long to reach once you've explored the map and I think it would work well with Skyrim as well. Or just bring back 'mark' and 'recall', but let us put down two or three or more marks.

[Spiney]

A thought here. Why would there have to be one system when there could be different methods for different specialisations.

Honest Warrior: Pays in full for the carriage ride or boat ride. Perhaps his reputation might net him a discount or express service in needy times.

Intellectual Mage: Based of the system used in Nehrim: At Fates Edge, you can learn spells to teleport you to each city. Though you need a "Crystal of Transportation" per use.

Sneaky Theif: Why pay in full when your nimble enough to stow yourself away for a free ride. Plus with your 'connection', you know shortcuts and hideouts along routes to quicken travel time or rest on trips.

[Cactus]

Well, that's not really multiple systems, just different methods of using the same system, really. And TES has always been about not limiting people, so I'd think those different methods would just be based on skill in general, such as teleporting based on Mysticism or perhaps Intelligence. Not that I'm against those ideas, they actually sound pretty interesting. Add a bit of zest to fast travel.

[TheoC]

I think fast travel was a good idea, but it didnt turn out that well in practice. It drastically cut down the potential playtime (not that I'm complaining, mind. There is a hell of a lot of hours to be spent on Oblivion). One complaint of mine about fast travel is that all the cities were available as fast travel destinations before you'd even been there. I think it would have been much cooler to have had to make the journey to the cities beforehand.

[bran]

even though it was optional in oblivion the problem there was no other method of transpertation like in morrowind, i liked the morrowind transportation

[Tulkas]

They definitely need to bring back some transport services, it makes the game that much more immersive.

Personally, I think Morrowind had a good balance in terms of traveling options - between the Silt Striders, Mages guild teleportation, boats and Intervention spells/scrolls, I've been on Easy Street every time I've needed to get from point A to B in Morrowind.

Even if you didn't know Mark/Recall, a little gold could get you pretty much anywhere on Vvardenfell (except for the northern part of the island and inside the Ghostfence) with relatively little walking.

[undead182]

why does it matter if it's there or not? i never understood why people complained about it...if you don't like it don't use it. i used it soemtimes, it depend on what i was doing.

[dennis]

why does it matter if it's there or not? i never understood why people complained about it...if you don't like it don't use it. i used it soemtimes, it depend on what i was doing.

Because of this:

even though it was optional in oblivion the problem there was no other method of transpertation like in morrowind, i liked the morrowind transportation

In Oblivion it was either use fast travel or walk. There was no in between for someone who wanted to get where they needed to go without breaking the suspension of disbelief.

[Korutsuru]

twitter info:

@DCDeacon Pete please answer, I beg you. Will fasttravel be optional and will there be a "hardcore mode". Please dude answer!
@MMAMIKEYMIKE When has fast travel ever not been optional? Don't want to use it, don't. Can't answer your 2nd question.

[Ratwar]

Honestly, I thought Oblivion's fast travel was really good. I personally got really tired of having to walk to Pelagiad again and again and again... It also would have been really useful in a place like Vivec a huge city which was basically dead with nothing to see (though the boatmen helped a little).

[Korutsuru]

the "No fast travel" only can works in the hardcore mode because thats an option that only hardcore players want, a regular player never could find this as an iteresting/chalenging idea.

pete hines botter me with his answer in twitter "if you dont want fast travel just dont use it" he just can see the regular players needs.

[The Tourist]

[screen dissolve effect, replete with shimmery sound.. ]
Wow.. time travel rocks!
Discussion over Fast Travel makes it feel like it was 2008 all over again! Back in my day, I was a loner - out on the edge with my 'Gaar!! Evil Fast Travel, I bite my thumb at you!!', and so on...

So what have these years taught me? Apathy, mostly!
Ok, I still think Fast Travel has a greater propensity to negatively impact a play experience rather than a positive, but a total lack of travel options can have the same effect (depending on size of the gameworld, amount of unavoidable fighting between locales etc).

Last time I played Morrowind, I quickly grew weary of seeing my fatigue bar drop as I traipsed around Vvardenfell. But that's partly because I've seen and done almost everything TES3 had to offer. If I'm coming to a game new, like Skyrim? I wouldn't mind so much. Then again, if a game constantly punishes you (via respawning beasties) for being forced to walk from one area to the next (i.e. S.T.A.L.K.E.R.), then it just becomes frustrating.

So my vote for Skyrim? I'm not bothered. Given the current trends of "accessibility" (i.e. streamlining), Bethesda certainly won't punish the gamer, whatever the method they choose. And even if Fast Travel usually does annoy me, I have bigger fish to fry in Skyrim (No1 on my hitlist is the compass/Green Arrow of Doom).

[theo1170]

they better not get rid of it!, I only get 8 hours on the PS3 to play on some days, and I'm always in a hurry to get a quest done, and I'm stupid when it comes to moving around, "go towards the arrow, see if you can go straight through" curse my thoughts.

[The Tourist]

they better not get rid of it!, I only get 8 hours on the PS3 to play on some days...

"Only" eight hours? Are you kidding? That's a massive chunk of one day for gaming.

[Lotet]

yeah, Morrowind gave me alot and it was easy to move from place to place, well, once I got an item that regenerated my fatigue. and I always had the scrolls of Icarian flight if I wan't to get somewhere to mess around in a war against the local law enforcment. it bothered me that the only way to get from place to place was by an unexplained mode of teleportation, I could feel the world shrinking around me. once I got a horse and tagged every location on the map I knew I wasn't going to find anything when I did some dungeon diving, only the towns had anything happen and each one had one mission that once found I knew that staying there was pointless.

I hope they get rid of the arrow that leads you to everywhere you need to be, but maybe, MAYBE a mini-map that has the objective icon when I get close. I couldn't NOT use the arrow be cause the NPCs usually didn't give me any instructions on where to go (e.g. go to the cave outside of town) or I'd just end up have the map-marker apear on my map so I knew where I was supposed to go once I opened the screen regardless of the green arrow.