Fast travel in games like Oblivion or the newer Fallouts

[Platypusbill101]

Sorry if the thread is lacking in discussion value, this is mostly a gameplay suggestion.

People often complain that the fast travel system of the aforementioned games removes the immersion and fun of exploring the map. What if players were only able to go to hubs like towns, and a set "camp" that the player can set up anywhere in the wilderness uninhabited by enemies? That way it would not be massively annoying to walk back to a town or the safehouse to pick up/drop off equipment, or to turn back just before arriving at the intended destination, while still encouraging the player to explore the world.

The camp would be a bedroll or campfire (similar to the one in RDR) but the player would have to move it by travelling to it and carrying it to a new location

 

[Bags159]

You do realize you don't have to use fast travel, right? It's purely optional. And Oblivion isn't an online RPG, so there's no pressure to use fast travel to remain competitive. I paid $50 for Oblivion, I don't need artificial "encouragement to explore the world" created by Bethesda. If I want to explore the world, I will. If I want to fast travel, I will.

This reminds me of something I post frequently on the WoW forums; "oh noes, someone is flying over the content instead of running through it; nerf!" People on the WoW forums request that Blizzard removes LFD and flying mounts because they "make the world smaller" and "ruin immersion". You can walk around if you'd like to, no one is making you use a flying mount or teleport to the dungeon. It's silly to try to get a game company to change something simply because people play the game differently than you think they should.

 

[darth.pixie]

What, like DA:O? Only go to certain places and camps.

I'd rather explore, thanks. Especially if the surroundings are beautiful. I rarely like to do that due to random encounters. Except in Oblivion since I had a horse and liked the horse riding. It looked awesome and it was fast so I could avoid anything that came at me.

I tried to go around the combat system in both Fallout and Oblivion because I didn't really like it. (The way you swing that sword in Oblivion makes me think I'll chop my own head off)

 

[BENZOOKA]

Fallout: New Vegas has excellent system. You have to visit the places before you can fast travel there, and it's completely optional. It's great when you don't feel like walking a long long way to a place where you have just a small thing to do, or forgot something and have to go back. It works great.

 

[razelas]

Isn't that the way system works? Granted, the locations you can fast travel to are more general landmarks that actual "towns or camps." I personally wouldn't mind the number of locations you could fast travel was narrowed down. I actually think it would be better and make much more sense to only fast travel to areas/towns that have established roads.

 

[bartholen_v1legacy]

You do realize you don't have to use fast travel, right? It's purely optional. And Oblivion isn't an online RPG, so there's no pressure to use fast travel to remain competitive. I paid $50 for Oblivion, I don't need artificial "encouragement to explore the world" created by Bethesda. If I want to explore the world, I will. If I want to fast travel, I will.

This reminds me of something I post frequently on the WoW forums; "oh noes, someone is flying over the content instead of running through it; nerf!" People on the WoW forums request that Blizzard removes LFD and flying mounts because they "make the world smaller" and "ruin immersion". You can walk around if you'd like to, no one is making you use a flying mount or teleport to the dungeon. It's silly to try to get a game company to change something simply because people play the game differently than you think they should.

At least until you get some quest which makes you walk to the other side of the map and back. Using fast travel suddenly becomes very tempting.

Yes, I would totally like to see the system changed. Hopefully Skyrim will do something about it. Being able to instantly teleport basically anywhere in the world in Oblivion was one of the biggest immersion breakers of that game. And since the game world was just one giant forest with exactly one mountain location and one beach location and every dungeon, castle, temple and whatever was exactly the same, I couldn't have wanted to explore it less.

Fallout: New Vegas has excellent system. You have to visit the places before you can fast travel there, and it's completely optional. It's great when you don't feel like walking a long long way to a place where you have just a small thing to do, or forgot something and have to go back. It works great.

You do realize that that's exactly the same system as in Oblivion and Fallout 3? At least by yout description it would seem.

 

[MetalDooley]

What's wrong with the current system?In Oblivion,Fallout 3 and New Vegas you can only fast travel to places you've already discovered so you still have to explore the map.Plus as has been pointed out it's completely optional.

Although i can see why Oblivion system worked, especially for dumb fetch quests where you dont want to spend 30 minutes walking to a place, collect an object, an walk back.

Agree with this.A lot of the quests in Oblivion and the Fallout games would have been a pain in the arse if you were forced to walk everywhere

 

[Bags159]

At least until you get some quest which makes you walk to the other side of the map and back. Using fast travel suddenly becomes very tempting.

Yes, I would totally like to see the system changed. Hopefully Skyrim will do something about it. Being able to instantly teleport basically anywhere in the world in Oblivion was one of the biggest immersion breakers of that game.

It's an optional system, thus it is only an immersion breaker if you allow it to be. Don't blame the game makers if you can't resist the urge to use a OPTIONAL system that you know will break your immersion.

I fully support the choice of fast travel vs. completely immersive travel experience. I can choose to fast travel, you can choose to run around. Win-win.

And you're completely ignoring the fact that you could only fast travel to towns without exploring them. Anything else needed to be traveled to at least once.

 

[Treeinthewoods]

I love the fast travel, they'd be foolish to take it out. I said it before, I'll say it again these games are about freedom to choose. Using fast travel allows me to go through the game at a speed I like, deciding not to use fast travel gives me a chance to explore around the world and take my time. I get to choose, you get to choose, we can both be happy.

Why is it so important to some that I not be allowed to play a game the way I like because it breaks immersion? You don't want to fast travel so freaking don't, enjoy wandering the world and leave me the hell alone!

Game nazis man, game nazis. *sigh*

 

[Exterminas]

You do realize you don't have to use fast travel, right? It's purely optional. And Oblivion isn't an online RPG, so there's no pressure to use fast travel to remain competitive. I paid $50 for Oblivion, I don't need artificial "encouragement to explore the world" created by Bethesda. If I want to explore the world, I will. If I want to fast travel, I will.

This reminds me of something I post frequently on the WoW forums; "oh noes, someone is flying over the content instead of running through it; nerf!" People on the WoW forums request that Blizzard removes LFD and flying mounts because they "make the world smaller" and "ruin immersion". You can walk around if you'd like to, no one is making you use a flying mount or teleport to the dungeon. It's silly to try to get a game company to change something simply because people play the game differently than you think they should.

This argument is flawed and has been since release.
Compare the quests in Morrowind and Oblivion and the way Landscape is designed.

In Morrowind every quest had a desription of how to get to the dungeon in question. Oblivion hasn't. It just has that big arrow showing you the direction. Making the quests without using the compass is like looking for a needle in a haystack. That is different from exploring.

Then the landscape itself. In Morrowind there were paths and ravines, or other clues to connect the dungeons with the world. This made them locateable on close proximity, once the quest had gotten you into the rough neighborhood of your target. In Oblivion the dungeons seem to be spread with a salt shaker and have not connection whatsoever to the surrunding world.

 

[Onyx Oblivion]

Just...don't...use...it...

Don't make us suffer for your precious immersion.

Is there a fast travel mod for Morrowind, btw?

 

[Canadamus Prime]

I don't know about you, but I loved the fast travel system. One thing that annoyed me about Morrowind was having to hike everywhere. If I want to explore the game world, I'll explore the game world, but if I want to get to my destination quickly, I want to be able to do that. And for me it doesn't really ruin immersion, I just pretend I'm using Instant Transmission (a la DBZ).

 

[baddude1337]

Like has been said, it is optional, don't use it if you don't want to. I think it is a great feature, and has opened up the genre to those who don't exactly want to spend all day walking to a fucking fetch quest.

 

[Dragonborne88]

I like the option of having it. I tend to get tempted by it if it's there though, I promised I would walk everywhere in New Vegas, but that quickly disappeared when I started discovering locations everywhere.

I do think the Morrowind system was probably the best though. There IS fast travel, but it's either the striders or the Mage teleports. You can get pretty much everywhere, but you will have to travel a bit to get to specfic locations, or throw a Mark and Recall.

 

[Atmos Duality]

Fast Travel wasn't nearly as immersive, certainly, but I used it anyway because the game wasn't as immersive with its one-way-convenience-loop-dungeons (because back-tracking even a little apparently sends today's gamers into a murderous frenzy), Psychic-Hotline-Quest arrow and haphazardly dispersed dungeons.

There are HOW MANY abandoned imperial forts in Cyrodil?

"My house is burning down, might as well get the marshmallows".

 

[Frostbyte666]

Very simple answer to this as stated before:
Provide fast travel, don't like, don't use and everyone is happy.

 

[Vivace-Vivian]

You do realize you don't have to use fast travel, right? It's purely optional.

Exactly. If you don't want to use it just DON'T.

 

[minimacker]

I liked the Morrowind system. I tried playing without any sort of fast travelling in Oblivion, but eventually it turned very dull and boring. Mainly because there wasn't ANY way to travel than by horse or foot. Morrowind had these alternative transports that were fantastic for this sort of thing.

 

[Axolotl]

Personally I think one of the best solutions is ironically the way it's handled in Daggerfall. Fast travelling can take you to any location you know of but it costs you, you have to decide how fast you want to get there and that determines how much gold is spent travelling, you can travel for free but this akes up time and since most mssions are time-sensitive it's a real choice. Perhaps for say Oblivion you could choose to stay at inns but if you do that you lose gold or you can camp rough but if you do that your items degrade and/or you run the risk of random encounters.

Now for the people saying "but it's optional!" then yes it is optional in the same way wearing clothes or trying to fight is optional, you can get through the game without it but the game will punish you heavily for it. Additionally it leads to retarded stuations, for example: Say you've just finished a quest or looted a dungeon or mugged an innocent man and you've just arrived at the gates of Bravil, now you want to buysome new spells so you decide to go to the mages guild to get them, so you go to the mages guild in the Imperial City because that's faster to get to than the one in Bravil and it's better equiped. Do you see why that's stupid? Choosing to go to the nearby place or the better place should be a choice you need to think about.

In addition it leads to some poor quest and world design, for example there are a few quests in Oblivion and New Vegas that literally just send the player halfway acroos a continent just to deliver a message and then come back. From an ingame perspective thet's not something that should be just aminor footnote it's something that shoukld take real effort and from an out of game perspective it's either 5 minutes of map clicking or 5 hours of watching your character run over generic hills. Also compare Oblivion with Morrowind, now Morrowind wasn't perfect in this regard but it's landscape was far more fun to traverse.

I will note that if you don't include fast travel then the following things need to be true:
1)The character should move quickly, faster than any of the TES engine's guys do.
2)The world needs to be a) varied and b) consistently interesting.
3)The game should reconise that travelling between cities is serious buisness and not just include it willy-nilly for random quests.
4)If fantasy, then horses should exist.