fallout 4 survival mode, it doenst have fast travel BUT has the vertibirds that are usless in other difficulties so you have to stay in good relations with brotherhood of steel or later into the game when you reach the institute you can teleport from anywhere back to the institute wich is near hanged mans alley wich in other difficulties is the worst settlement in the game but in survival its the best due to its proximity with diamond city and the institute
I agree with Lautaro Perez. I also think that Gothic did it very well with the teleportation runes that the player can obtain later in the game after exploring the compact map.
Far Cry 2 had my favoure bus stops, allowing you to get to a specific place only if you grab a bus passing by with a clear map on it, showing where it leads
Old School World of Warcraft sort of did it the best honestly. From purchasing trips on a gryphon/wyvern from a local flightmaster or a portal from a high level mage player, to learning a specific type of Goblin/Gnomish engineering to use their respective teleportation pads, or even just hopping onto a boat.. the sheer variety and uniqueness of the fast travel systems always sort of blended into the world, got you from one place to another without feeling too gimmicky.
Another good point of the Morrowind fast travel system: it's a money sink. In the early game it forces you to either be very careful about planning your routes, or take the cheaper option of traveling on foot. Both of these immerse you deeper into the game. Later in the game when you get so rich you no longer care about the costs it rewards you with that sense of privilege, the ability to just go anywhere on a whim. Hard-earned freedom. And it keeps money at least somewhat relevant for the whole game, even when you're kitted out in the best enchanted gear you can possibly own.
It's like the RPGs in the 90s. They weren't open world, but traveling around the map still required effort. I especially liked the games that ultimately gave the player some kind of airship. It still wasn't FAST travel, but it was the fastest, and still had a trade off if the player wen to the wrong place and had to double back.
"In the early game jt forces you to either be very careful about planning your routes, or take the cheaper option of traveling on foot" *laughs in limeware platter*
I like to slowly make friends with all the drivers over the course of the game to lower the cost! By the end I usually have them at 100% and it’s very satisfying to be saving money from something I worked on all game!
2 роки тому+15
When you know the game, money isn't an issue. I have over 10k gold within the first hour or so.
Morrowind's "fast travel" system could have been great, if not for the fact that the movement speed is *so* slow. I have to resort to cheats to be able to move at a remotely reasonable speed so I don't get bored out of my mind just running to the nearest Silt Strider.
As a long-time Morrowind player, when I play Skyrim I only allow myself to fast travel using carriages and boats. Although I did install a mod that adds departing carriages to four cities that don't have them in the vanilla game.
The Wildlander modlist implements this well. There are *carriages in all major cities, but they can also drop you off (but not pick you up) from smaller towns. The carriages are also relatively expensive so it encourages lower level players to not use them.
I play only lightly modded oblivion quite a lot and I only allow fast travel from stable to stable to act like my character took a carriage, and even them I only "unlock" for it once I've walked to that city once
Kingdom Come: Deliverance had a great fast travel mechanic too: Firstly, you can only travel between certain locations (in this case towns, one castle, one monastery, and a camp added with one of the DLCs). Secondly, you had to watch your map icon psychically move across the map (with the speed depending on whether or not you were mounted on a horse). And while the icon was travelling the map, you might happen upon random encounters on the road as if you were travelling normally: Bandits might be lying in ambush, or a beggar might ask you for food. You weren’t not subject to these encounters when fast travelling. Lastly, time flies by when you’re travelling; by the time you arrive at your destination in this game, it might be evening nighttime. That’s on top of the tiredness and hunger mechanics naturally in this game, meaning you have to pack some jerky for your travels if you’re worried about finding food wherever you’re going. If you’re tired when you arrive, then you have to try and find a tavern that offers such a service, or hope there’s a simple, uncomfortable bed somewhere outside the town. I loved the fast travelling of Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s normal mode (hardcore mode had no fast travel), so it’s a shame that I haven’t seen a mechanic such as this one in other games.
For most players this is more of a nuisance than something they would enjoy. Good game design always rewards the player for effort and has balanced trade offs. I personally find a system like this not rewarding enough to invest my time into. I'd rather play euro truck simulator. While I don't like the modern fast travel system either, it keeps me playing the game more than the Kingdom Come system would. I did however recently make a comment about my wants from normal in game traveling (not fast travel) which would make me play the game more. Perhaps you can find it in the "newest first" comments
9:11 It should be mentioned that the morrowind makes a real effort to teach you the travelling network through the quest the mage guild and the fighters guild offer to you. Many of them will send you to locations far away, but the questgiver will give you real directions on usind the network to get there. Through the mainquest the game will also push you towards these guilds. The task of learning the network really isn´t all that difficult and happens pretty organicaly through normal play.
On a side note, I love how Morrowind's main story encouraged you to do all this other stuff. In Oblivion and Skyrim the main quests basically tell you to forget about all that other stuff going on, because time is of the essence.
Kingdom Come Deliverance had a pretty solid compromise of the two, where travel happens on a real map and requires time, planning, and caution. It's very easy to get caught by a group of bandits or enemy soldiers and robbed or even killed. It still keeps you pretty mobile - nothing is unreachable due to geographic conditions or what-have-you and I think they could have gone further with the system, but I think it addresses much of the issue with fast travel while not requiring such attentive forward-thinking.
Plus it isn't just a load screen. You actually see Henry's icon moving on the roads and see the exact path he took to get to your destination. So if you travel just from a tavern in a city to the castle of the same city, the trip takes literal seconds. But if you travel between the farthest points of the map, you can actually have to wait for several minutes before you actually arrive at your destination. Plus you continue to need food and sleep as you travel so when you arrive, you may need to find food and a place to sleep right away if the distance was really far away.
Well, you beat me to it. It's a great system, and it gives you a reason to not fast travel. You have more risk because you can't visually see and avoid enemies on the road. Which, when you're very early, can be costly.
Lol, "planning and caution" Or get yourself a horse and if you do get unlucky enough to get an encounter just ride through it and continue fast traveling. Those random encounters are such a non-threat if you're not on foot.
It’s a lot simpler, but I really enjoyed the fast travel in Hollow Knight. Not only is the travel well-explained in universe, the cutscene that plays gives it weight, and makes you feel like you’re actually covering ground. Plus, the stag stations are just sparse enough that it doesn’t completely negate the need for physical exploration.
Yep, even to get to the nearest station you gotta _platform_ there, probably need to get past a few hazards... It doesn't get rid or the platforming in the platforming game and that's why it's good, if you could pull out the map and go to any station it would be way less friendly to the game design
I feel like there's one aspect that also ought to be mentioned here: Sometimes, there's the possibility to sidestep the issue and make moving around the world *fun* . That's what the recent PC port of Spider-Man does for me. It *has* a fast-travel system, but I almost never use it, because swinging around NY feels so much better (and isn't that slow, anyway).
This. In RDR2 I never used any fast traveling because the journey on the horse was so much cooler. And in the Arkham games, swooping and zipping through the city as Batman was so much more fun that clicking on a map. Valheim is actually one of the more recent games that kinda has fast travel unlocked later in the game (portals) but they are crafted items that you must venture to and actually construct and label. They become necessary after you explore this giant procedurally generated world. But often in the early half of the game, the adventure of sailing around and the danger of the journey just to mine ore or chop down trees is worth experiencing in itself. The journey is the entire point, and makes one NOT want to use portals unless absolutely necessary.
One of the major issues is that with these open world games, the areas between the cities are often times not particularly interesting and if there is anything to do at all, it's repetitive encounters with bandits and raiders. I do think that as developers get better at using machine learning to generate scenery and locales within a map, that this might change a bit, but honestly, having a complicated system for fast travel doesn't really contribute much to a game.
On the subject of Elder Scrolls fast travel, the Skyrim Special Edition has a survival mode built in that you can turn on after Helgen that requires you to deal with sleep, warmth, and food in addition to turning off that standard fast travel, so all you have access to is the cart network. Travelling via cart isn't very expensive, but it does take time, and therefore will result in your character needing food and sleep when you arrive, so you still have to have some idea of how far away a place is in terms of how much you'll need (particularly since making a large dent in hunger requires cooked food, and cooked food typically requires salt, which can be a pain to get hold of). Given the limited number of places you can get a cart to or from, you end up having to do a lot of walking, which has its benefits because there are a lot of cool things you can come across when doing things that way.
I only wish they had made the carts got to the smaller cities. I tried survival but turned it off when i started needing to go up and down the throat of the world every other quest from Riften
@@Shaweweweeewah There's a mod on Nexus called "Carriage and Ferry Travel Overhaul" that adds boats and carriages in some of the smaller settlements and makes the pricetag more reliant on how far in the middle of nowhere your destination is rather than just the distance.
@@ithidt I use apocalypse spells, and ordinator perks of Skyrim. With these you get spells and perks that let you run really fast while concentrating, and also teleport between 5 fixed points you can choose, finally you can also have an option to always return to a single point. You need master level alteration to use the teleports but it's worth it, so with all these I have teleports to cities that don't have carts and whiterun, and my return home is white run. Ends up with a similar set up to morrowind I guess but with just 2 different forms of fast travels
This is how I am playing sse now. I like it a lot more than straight fast travel…. Especially when I went to one of the further out strongholds and realized they didn’t have a cart back so I had to walk clear across the entire map at a low level… it was amazing. And that’s not sarcasm, it was an epic and intense journey back home at times.
When Fallout 3 came out, me and my friend had no idea you could fast travel on our first play through, which really made the game immersive. It was a pretty intense experience trying to fight our way through the DC ruins trying to get to Rivet City, only to stumble across Super Mutants in The Mall and have to turn around and go back home to Megaton for supplies because we were low on ammo and stims.
I would argue Fallout 3 and 4 get a lot better if you avoid fast travel, since the exploration and incidental activities is where those games really sing. I actually had a lot of fun having to legitimately figure out how to traverse the DC metro in Fallout 3 once I made it my only option. That being said, it really could have used more directional markers, similar to the waypoints they had to get to the National Mall. But it's still not too bad, and the dense and interesting world design usually keeps you pretty interested. Especially with F4's addition of the wonderful junk economy, making pretty much every location worth exploring on some level. Interestingly, in my experience, New Vegas actually gets a lot worse without fast travel, especially if you're trying to do a Legion playthrough. While the map design in NV does do some things well in terms of guiding player focus (something I think Bethesda could improve on), subsequent trips through an area just usually end up being kinda tedious, with little in the way of emergent gameplay or interesting new sights. And when a lot of the quests involve you being a literal Courier, transporting messages or items between different locations, it really drags the game to a halt and you lose the satisfying steady stream of endorphins from regularly cashing in quest objectives and other RPG goodness that New Vegas delivers so well.
@@Descriptor413 My experience with NV is opposite lol. After Goodsprings fight with Powdergangers I made up my mind that the whole place has no sense, everyone was just fighting for their own ideals, so I just roamed around as a lone ranger. Not taking any faction, just talking to everyone. Eventually I needed to fight the Legion(not because I liked NCR or villagers) but because I think that not siding with them will give me more freedom to talk and empathize with everyone else. This led to me being put on a bounty and Legionnaires being on my ass the whole time(and me being a dumbass didn't understand how armor worked so they are extremely hard to kill). So between the interesting locations I get to fight Legion minibosses with my explosives. So it was basically a Courier gameplay with me roaming and making sure I have enough resources to fight Legion while I walked everywhere Honestly I didnt find the fast travel option interesting. I think I exclusively used fast travel to go back to the Strip coz I'm directionally challenged and I cant find the entrance XD.
Kind of reminds me of a statement by the team at Rocksteady when they were talking about the size of Gotham for Arkham Knight. In response to the question of would the game have fast travel they said something along the lines of “We do, it’s called the Batmobile”.
which is hilarious since that is also the biggest complaint(outside the shoddy QC). the even funnier thing is, they could just implement fast travel from high points in the map like top of buildings, or even open areas, and say batman just calls in the batwing, and uses that to FT instead. makes alot more sense and would be better implemented. kinda like how mgsv will have drop points in the map where you can call your chopper in to pick you up.
@@marcosdheleno im pretty confident the next game will refine that system and maybe even add the batwing. Also the batmobil itself was implemented pretty well, only problem being the forced tank/boss fights
@@meisterproper8304 I’m some of the few that loved the bat mobile combat and interactions. However I disliked slade/deathstroke being limited to a simple tank battle. I mean it’s fine as a multistage battle like he at first fights you in a tank, then after scuffling about for a bit you win but is forced out of the car and have to fight 1-on-1. Anyways that is my only complaint of the batmobile, poor deathstroke, reduced to a tank battle.
The GTA series has a great fast-travel system in that it can take you anywhere within moments, but the driving and flying mechanics are so much fun that you rarely use the fast-travel service. Some players may even be unaware of its very existence.
This is the real solution to fast travel woes. Most open world games that implement a fast travel system do so because traveling through their world is boring. The solution is to make traveling part of the game. GTA is a good example, also the Insomniac Spider-Man games, and Just Cause. World of Warcraft is also about to introduce a system with their new expansion pack called Dragon Riding that turns flight travel into a fun system to use, instead of something boring you have to do between quest content.
Yep. GTA San Andreas allows you to use airports and trains to travel to unlocked cities. However, I think the main issue is that you never really have a reason to move to a city other than the one the missions currently are at.
I didn't even know they have a fast travel system, and I've played through GTA 4 and 5 completely. Never bothered doing a second story playthrough for either, because I've never been able to get invested in any story more than once, except for with We Happy Few
Its a taxi ride. You can hail a taxi and you can select where it will take you. From mission point, shops to random map location you have placed your marker. And I love it, as it gives you options how you want to travel. You can just leave it to the driver to follow traffic laws and all. You can pay him extra to hurry up, that would make him break some laws. Or you can just teleport. It's a fun system, but at the same time, not as useful because driving yourself is just fun in GTA games.
The boots of blinding speed were another very useful item in Morrowind that I remember fondly! They increased my running speed dramatically, but at the cost of blindness! I played as an Orc, who are slightly resistant to magicka so I could still see just enough for them to be useful.
Maybe they were better in Morrowind. I found those boots in Skyrim and it's literally useless in it, since the landscape is so mountainous and rocky with steep falls and you can't see anything.
Before Morrowind I played "Might and Magic 8", and there they used something similar to Vvardenfell silt strider network, but they took it one step further: there were stables in different towns, and you could pay for traveling, BUT the routes were scheduled for different days of the week. For example, the trip to a certain town could be accessible on Tuesday and Frideay, on Wednesday the stables were closed, on Thursday the caravan could bring you to another place. So, if you wanted to use fast and safe travel, sometimes you needed to pay for the inn for a day or two, and only then go to the stables, pay again and then travel to the needed destination. :) I think it's a bit too far in realism, but I really liked Morrowind system, where one had to rely on his ability to determine landmarks and directions.
The M&M games had one of the best fast travel systems in my opinion. It felt so natural and integrated in the world. It required a little bit of planning to get where you wanted as every location only allowed for a few destinations and at times you had to walk to get where you wanted instead of just fast traveling everywhere as in some modern RPGs.
You could always use "Town Portal" to skip this. Personally I find Mm6-8 have very interesting worlds (not samey) and are worth exploring via levitation or other means.
@@bitshiftbandit True! Although you still need to learn it first, and in order to do so you need to find tutors of the needed magic school, which is a task of its own without online guides (however, at that time I was lucky to have a paper magazine with complete guide to M&M8).
For their time, MM6-8 were amazing (though I hear the earlier games were also good, they were a bit before my time). I would love to see them remade with more development based on the lore.
MM1 and 2 had a way to travel from town to town, but only if you had been to both towns. These were extensions of the Wizardry style emulated 3d with full color (on supported systems) MM3 was a transitional game leading to 4&5, and I believe all had the town to town travel. 4 and 5 also had world to world travel if you had both games. MM6+ had the day of week fast travel option, plus high rank spells to take you directly to a town. These had an interesting semi-3D system (the world was 3d, but characters and monsters were 2d sprites. The system worked reasonable well on Non-3d video cards, but had occasional clipping problems in dungeons (resulting in dropping through the floor to a lower passage) The lore was an interesting mix of fantasy (early to midgame) plus Science Fiction (late game)
So as a fellow kid of morrowind (my third video game ever played) what do you think of Starfields jump distance mechanic when going from star to star? Me personally I think it’ll bring back the ramming into something unexpected on a journey somewhere else that morrowind did flawlessly for me. Also I believe it’ll bring back some of the personal planning of journeys as well. (Idk the extent yet but I think it’ll bring back the baseline)
One of my favorite fast travel systems comes from Hollow Knight. First being that riding a stag is so fucking cool and adorable in the setting. The fact that there is lore with each station unlocked and that the stag itself shares its memory of each and has its own personality. At the base of stag stations you still must know the entrance point to each on the portions of the map that have one requiring you to remember roads/ routes. Outside of the stag stations the gated elevators and crystal leap provide immersive fast movement within the game.
There was also the tram on the very bottom of the map that provided transportation. I liked Hollow Knight's since it not only provided transportation but it also was a place of refuge from the chaos. It was a mixture of fast travel and a save spot.
@@Mr___f I totally forgot about the tram stations!! Yeah they were well implemented into the game. Everything felt like it belonged and provided its own unique atmosphere.
I was also going to comment Hollow Knight. Probably my biggest issue with the modern fast travel systems is the lack of immersion in being able to teleport instantly (as mentioned in the video), and the stag is such a perfect counterexample. Spaced out enough that you have to learn the map well (but not so much that it’s annoying to find one), tied perfectly to the in-game world & lore, no weird UI interruptions in gameplay. I’d also throw in the tram system, which fits all the same descriptions. The dream gate is great too. By end game you have several options when traveling around, all of which are cool and fit the vibe of the world. Masterpiece
I like fast travel. But I think alternatives should always exist, because options are a beautiful thing. If I don't have time, or am making a 2nd (or 263rd) playthrough of a game like Skyrim 10 + years on, I don't really want to travel the same roads 6000 times. BUT, having horses, or carts that carry you, trains whatever depending on the game, is great for immersion.
Personally, the system I dream of seeing in a game is one where you only gain a map by actually buying one, and that the maps you can buy can be flawed. The fast travel system is then limited to plotting routes on your map and the fast travel stops when you reach a point where the map you bought is inaccurate or has insufficient details. This allows a natural progression of fast travel as you earn more money and gain status in the world and thus access to more detailed maps.
@@aldiascholarofthefirstsin1051 Could you elaborate? If maps are the only way to interact with the fast travel and unexplored areas of the map are by default uninteractable, fast travel to those areas wouldn't be possible. Wouldn't take any extra dev effort since they are via proxy regulated by the map. Lot of game have had similar system, ex: elden ring
@@Ak-yw9kf You misunderstood his explanation, he is not saying that he wants a map with pieces missing, he wants the game to have an inaccurate map, with fast travel stops that are based on routes not being normally reachable, to make a map that determines such a thing automatically would require some deep programing.
i really like the part of rdr2's fast travel where you see the landscapes you pass through when you're fast traveling. i also like the part of fallout 1 where random encounters can occur between destinations. and, as you noted, the subway system of morrowind is great too. i think you could incorporate all three of these elements and get a great system. and it wouldn't be very hard. maybe add waypoints to the strider/boat network for new players though.
RDR2's is just a fancy loading screen showing distinct places on the way as the place you're going to is loading. I still like it. Once you play over a couple hundred hours into a game, you don't want to travel everywhere every time, especially with RDR2. I would like to enjoy a game a lot more by fast traveling than spending half of it just getting to where I want to be. Only at the beginning where world exploration matters is when fast travel should be limited. It does in Bethesda games anyway because you can only fast travel to places you've been.
Not to mention that with the amazing spell modification system you can create a jump spell that lets you literally leap from town to town. I've never seen any other game with such creative options and potential when it comes to travel via your own spell craft.
Noita is the only game I've seen that comes close, I think. The parallel world traveling wand build especially seems to have been made by actual wizards!
The main issue I have with the fast travel system is you don't actually experience the journey like with skyrim if you walk down the road you might be forced to fight bandits or wolves or you might find a deserted camp that gives you a quest to find out what happened those things are some of the most fun and imersive things I've experienced in any game
This is why I like the WoW original fast travel system where you fly over the map on a fast mount on a fixed route. It shows off the world they built and you can see other players battling on the ground which really helps with immersion, and it's still quite fast.
There's a fallout mod that tries to get around this by adding a chance that every time you fast travel, you get stopped enroute by a random event that can occur any place on the map between where you are and where you're going.
I understand why you didn't mention the Propylon system as it wasn't really implemented well I'm the base game. But with the Propylon Index expansion that Bethesda released, the Stronghold system is reworked and become yet another worthwhile network. I actually use the Strongholds quite a bit. Seeing as they're further out in the wilderness, they tend to get you even closer to any caves or ruins you might need to get to
Morrowind could be improved upon in some ways, you learn some travel connections after playing long enough but having an in game glossary for the various connections would have helped greatly.
I placed my mark anchor in my home in Hlormaren and made a recipe card with a diagram of the Propylon network and the intervention destinations from each. It even had the chained sequences from Telasero: you can cast divine intervention to go to Ebonheart and then Almsivi to Vivec, or you can use Almsivi to go to Molag Mar and then divine to Wolverine Hall.
@@mmorkinism it's a rather tedious lategame travel option. Basically, ancient Vvardenfel was protected by a chain of fortresses around the island. Those are now in disrepair and inhabited by smugglers, bandits and cultists. You can use a gateway to an adjacent fortress if you have the correct key but those keys are usually hard to get hold of. The reason I called it a late game option is that some of the keys are protected by very powerful dungeon bosses.
@@naphackDT I feel the greatest problem is how randomly located some of the indices are. With the DLC, you get a kinda clunky questline where what's-his-face in Caldera just gives you the location of all of the indices are. A potentially better system would be to have maps of old Resdayn in books or similar, which would include the locations of the ancient fortresses on them, and to have the indices for each fortress relatively close to that fortress. I like the adjacency rule though, as more limits to the fast travel system seem better.
Your grocery store analogy really makes me appreciate European urban planning. In Europe, life is far more similar to a modern fast travel system thanks to essential services being in walking distance and public transport being simple and reliable. While travelling in Europe is not quite as simple as pointing at a map, it's a close as you're going to get!
To my knowledge the best iteration on fast travel was done on *Kingdom Come: Deliverance* In KCD you could only fast travel to very specific points of settlements, or towns. But here's the catch. First, you had to be on a proper road, or near one. If you were in the middle of the woods, it would just be rejected until you at least reached a beaten path. Secondly, if you DID fast travel, you weren't just going to "teleport" from point A to point B. Your character was going to traverse a specific path and take the main roads to get there, and he would take time to get there, so if you were in a hurry, it could bite you in the ass. Finally (and this is the best part), when travelling you risk getting a random event, from weird encounters, to traders, to ambushes with either bandits or raiders. You had a lot skills and perks to better engage and spot or sense what was happening, but sometimes you could get a guy selling you a treasure map, or whom you could kill and rob for nice loot, or you would be the target of a robbery.
@@XzaroX Oh yeah, I didn't play either of the first Fallouts, but I recall that there was a similar method of fast travel. What were the main differences with KCD's fast travel, if you don't mind me asking? :)
@@KRIMZONMEKANISM The main difference is that in Fallout 1 and 2 the fast travel was "Mandatory". There was no continuous world, only many smaller levels. That being said, you still moved on the map and there was always a chance for a random encounter. Many of those encounters are quite memorable and whacky. Additionally, there was no need to eat food, so that part was irrelevant, but time still passed and was more significant. KCD does have some time-limited quest, but in Fallout 1, the main quest was limited to 150 days. There is a story reason for it, so it makes sense. In many games the story may say that something is urgent, but the gameplay does not reflect that. Well in Fallout 1 it does. You really are in a hurry. If you run out, the game is over. You do get some nice time-related game over cutscenes though. There is a way to extend that time a bit via some quests that also make sense story-wise. As a result you may want to plan your game a bit, as going back and forth willy-nilly will end up wasting that precious time.
@@XzaroX Ah, I see. I didn't know the fast travel was mandatory, but I do recall the game being on a timer, and I did know that there were some neat interactions with the story being that you want to retrieve a water ship for your own vault. :)
When I was playing Skyrim I naturally found myself avoiding the fast travel because I felt so immersed in the world. After having played the game for hundreds of hours I had never fast traveled once and I enjoyed every minute of my adventures on foot. And trying to get Lydia home safely to boot. :)
Same. Although, after a bit, I made use of the wagon occasionally. And installed some mods that made it possible to fast travel from Dragon's Reach down to the front gate of Whiterun and to the Whiterun stables just to skip Nazeem asking me if I get to the Cloud District.
On the consoles I have to fast travel because of silly invisible walls and the complete lack of paths on the map but on pc I have a mod to show the paths on the map and I can plan my route
But this is why Skyrim's system is fine, you don't HAVE to use the Fast Travel anywhere. In fact it's brilliant for players to implement all kinds of self imposed challenges.
@@mattandrews2594 Exactly. Just because you have a fast travel system doesn’t mean you have to use it. There have been times when I’ve had to go to a location I had unlocked and I just decided “you know what, I’m gonna walk.” The same thing is true in every open world game I’ve played with fast travel.
I like to play Skyrim without fast travels and even without the map, to find myself I mostly use the environment, the direction boards and the compass, it's a really fun way to play
Teleportation is somewhat passion of mine in games. Most notably in World of Warcraft where I played mage and spent most of my time collecting items that could teleport me somewhere. Finding the optimal route, combining certain items or just using something that would send me to random place I could explore again was so much fun.
The best testbed for this theory I found is in the Enderal standalone mod for skyrim. There you cannot fast travel either and have to use a combination of teleportation spells and riding Wyvern taxis, so very morrowind inspired. It worked surprisingly well and made the world feel bigger and more believable somehow
I walked all the way between Markath and Riften more than once and even then was astonished to learn that fast travel wasn't simply using carriages which I found I could do much later, but something that made even carriages obsolete. At least I experienced the magic of climbing that mountain I could see and being genuinely glad for it, no loading, no skipping a single step of it.
I think this is one reason why I really liked some aspects of Death Stranding. Moving through the world felt very meaningful, as you could not bring stuff with you when you fast travelled. It meant that I was queueing up deliveries that all went to the same place so that I could optimize my travel time. I think that gave a really good feeling of immersion to the game.
Meanwhile me setting up a continental wide zipline and road system. Granted you had to work for those which I enjoyed a lot. Taking extra ziplines made the jorney harder but made getring back a lot easier
True but I feel like DS took it too far, to the extent of the gameplay just being cumbersome and tedious. It's one of the games I much rather watch someone else play than play myself
Similar in Kingdom Come on hardcore, no FT so I'd do multiple quests over a span of time, doing parts I can while I'm in the right area. It made the immersion skyrocket.
@@Jrock420blam so funny because I think the amount of depth that went into traversal is why I was hooked the whole time. Its one of the few AAA games that tries to put as much depth into its movement as most games do their combat. It really is a super divisive game like that.
I actually did a video on the different types of fast travel in Morrowind: ua-cam.com/video/IBB6NBrKCkQ/v-deo.html Btw, at 5:00 when you say "crossing it is out of the question": you can actually find Silt Strider corpses in the Ashlands above Red Mountain. So, lore-wise they probably did try to use them, but it didn't work out. xD
There's a couple of cool spots, with the big shells. There's beautiful fan art of Siltstriders being ridden towards Red Mountain, I bet the artist(s) were at least partly inspired by that area. Learning enough about the game world to confidently roam that place is like eating sweet in-game, and end-game, candy. And I''m not talking about Cliffracers, which are only a problem for new players, we're talkin' Golden Saints, Daedroths, and Dremoras too, and above lvl 20, Dremora Lords, these bad boys nearly always have Daedric weaponry, worth 20,000-60,000 gold. Of course no merchant has that kind of money, but now you can afford to plunk down 30,000 gold on a sweet enchant, like a Telvanni Guard Helm with constant Invisible, and then get that money right back by selling a Daedric Dai-Katana to them. (You'll get more, don't even sweat it, they're too heavy anyway.) But make sure you buy/sell something from/to them BEFORE you buy the enchantment, or your enchanting fee gold will vanish from the world forever.
I really loved how the fast travel system worked in dark souls. You weren't able to fast travel without completing the majority of the game. It was a late game reward. By that time you had already ran all over the map a dozen time. At that point, you can fast travel, but you are aware of the scale of the map.
I recall a mod for skyrim that made fast travel better. Made time go by now realistically. Also had a chance to load you in somewhere randomly along the way attacked by bandits or something. As if you were just riding along in the wagon and got attacked.
Am I the only one who really enjoyed the Vertibird fast travel in Fallout 4? It made sense within the world, you had limited uses before you had to re-up on Flares, and the door gun was an interesting mechanic. I would regularly find myself making a flight plan over a behemoth or raider settlement so I could rain fire down on them from relative safety, thinning the numbers before I go in
But why are there still skeletons wearing pre war clothing scattered everywhere across places people have inhabited for 100s of years since the nukes fell?
@@willisverynice Because the game takes place right before Halloween, and the people of the wasteland have a morbid sense of holiday decor. And they're too lazy to take their decorations down before Christmas.
I think that WoW also has a great fast travel option, the game has a few ways to travel from A to B, when traveling from one world to another you usually are limited to portals but traveling inside the continents you can use the flying options that each faction has, the flying mounts that you pay have a pre determined route that was chosen by the developers so this way, you fly in a relatively fast speed but also apreciate the scenario bcs of the route chosen, and also flying from different points can result in different routes, wich is great!
Agreed, I love WoW’s system. It requires planning through long cool-downs on your hearthstone, knowing where different portals are located, and there are plenty of immersive travel options like boats/zeppelins and gold+time-sink flight paths.
It has been great up to WotLK (before patch introducing Dungeon and Raid finder). That move makes everyone to teleports into dungeons from city, to fast level up and make game world empty and abandoned. Also it destroys group quests, world PvP etc.
SWTOR has a similar system with pre defined routes that you can enjoy the scenery, see other players fighting and stuff. I love that, it brings a lot more life to the game and keeps you immersed.
Technically… Morrowind is the only main entry Elder Scrolls game that doesn’t have point to point fast travel. It’s predecessors, Arena and Daggerfall, had full fast travel…. But probably because a significant amount of those game worlds were procedurally generated. I have no doubt in my mind the movement away from this type of fast travel was done in favour of simplifying and streamlining the experience for casual newcomers to the franchise. Morrowind is great, and it’s dialogue based directions are extremely clever, but it isn’t exactly accommodating to new casual players, who might spend an eternity searching for an obscure cave in a mountain region. I like to think of it like this… Daggerfall would be to first time Morrowind players what Morrowind would be to a first time Oblivion players. The first 3 games in this franchise are full on role playing games, and the balancing act of combat and fast travel befit a player anticipating such things. People rant about not being able to hit any monsters in Morrowind, but they neglect to notice they designed a character who favoured axes and spears… not the short blade skill necessary to use the very weapon the game first gives you (a dagger in a table).
When I first played this game I was all of 8 years old and I had no issues, I don't think you can get much more "casual newcomer" than a 3rd grader, other than maybe my kindergartener sister (whose reading skills were greatly enhanced by the text-based dialogue system! Hooked On Phonics eat your heart out). I shudder to think how many adults can't handle following directions as well as a 5-year-old... How do they find their cars in parking lots?
@@titaniumvulpes That's a rather condescending take. You're just wired to think in a way that makes understanding the fast travel system easier. Not everyone's brain works that way. Some people are abstract thinkers, others are logical. Some people need a visual to fully understand something while others can mentally map it out in their head. Some people can't even visualize objects or sounds in their head while others get unique sensations just from seeing specific shapes. All this to say, I think that this system is certainly 1 good way of doing things. But it's not the only way. The watered down version we have now is certainly NOT an improvement, but it's understandable when you care more about appealing to a wider base to get money than making a tightly designed experience that challenges the player. Personally I've always had trouble with the fast travel system in Morrowind, I have trouble remembering the exact names of places, their location and distance from each other and waste gobs of money getting turned around constantly. My brain just ain't built that way. Doesn't make me stupid or lesser, just means I'm not as good at navigation as other people might be. Same could be said of RPG characters, it's why they have stats after all. You can't be good at everything.
@@titaniumvulpes I'm inclined to agree. I first played Morrowind when I was maybe 10 years old - and found the entire thing, including navigation, terribly confusing, obscure and weird and didn't get very far. BUT, the general impression with the game stuck so I got back to it a couple years later and then it really clicked. Everytime a network falls into place, you realize you can have a shortcut where two transport nodes meet or just figuring out how ridiculously overpowered enchanting and alchemy are is one of these wonderfully gratifying aha! moments. And I don't think I'd be as fond of the game as I am if I would have been accommodated the first time instead of failing and ultimately finding my way into the game by myself. ... which is probably the same reason I like Dark Souls including successors and offspring.
@Titanium Vulpes I think we find our cars better than you guys actually lol. For me anyways I have had no trouble finding my car in even large parking lots so far haha But main point: Getting directions requires a brain connection that people like me don't naturally use. As I was born in 2000, directions were given by my parents, then Garmin, then Google maps. Nowhere did I need to remember directions like "follow the river, cross the second bridge and take a right at the first signpost." It just never came up. Until Morrowind. As I played it the first time a year ago I can tell you that it only takes your brain a day or three, in a setting where you're expected to remember those directions, for your brain to understand what it needs to do. Even though my brain figured it out, because I first encountered and fell in love with open worlds that have fast travel, I just can't enjoy walking in Morrowind, though I love everything else about the game (that doesn't prevent me from playing it though haha). Fortunately for me on my first playthrough, on my first fighter's guild mission fighting an actual npc, I got the dark brotherhood called upon me. So after a struggle I obtained nice armor and, after a couple of dark brotherhood sets I sold, I had funds to fast travel :D
I remember playing arena for the first time (this year; big Skyrim fan) and trying to get from one city to another (they were very close in the map) on foot. I don't know how much time I wasted on that but I was so disappointed. For those who don't know, the wilderness in Arena is (almost) randomly generated, and you actually can't reach other cities (the manual states that it would take you 10-12 real hours, but it's actually impossible). The only places of interest in the wilderness are random dungeons and inns, but they're not worth it. Basically, Arena was actually quite small when it came to content and hand-crafted places, but it was meant to _feel_ big. And the distance/travel time was very prominent when fast-traveling (if only for show). But I liked the in-town directions. You would ask "Where is the dancing dagger?" and the answer would be something like "Idk, go east for a while and ask again" or "That's a bit northeast of here". Also the fact that when you were too close to the building they just gave up and inscribed the place in your map (sorry to that lady who had to put up with me asking her about a store that was literally behind me). For my second playthrough I played an altmer bard who lived in the town of Sea Keep and had nothing to do with the main quest. After some hours of running errands to and from every named building in town I knew my way around that place better than I do my actual neighborhood, it was fun.
I played Morrowind and both it's expansions when I was around 10-12 years old. I remember using the mages guild teleports and especially the silt striders quite often. The amazing thing about your video: I NEVER noticed there was a ship network too xD whenever I was doing quests in the east and northern part of the land I walked/swam for hours, it didn't even come to my mind to talk with the NPCs standing on the boats. Child me was stupid, but being stupid helped to master athletics and acrobatics in no time haha
...not to mention, learning how to exploit the Enchant Item ingame mechanic meant that U could craft some damn useful magic artifacts of your own, such as - The Ring of Light Stepping (Exquisite Ring, Constant Effect: Water Walking) -- wear this item to walk on water indefinitely, then simply take off the ring before swimming. Never fear the Slaughterfish again! - Shoes of Gentle Falling (Exquisite Shoes, Constant Effect: Slowfall +1) -- wear these shoes & you'll never take fall damage, even when jumping off of tall buildings or mountains! - Amulet of Skywalking (Exquisite Amulet, Constant Effect: Levitation +1) -- Why deal w/ the time limits imposed by levitation spells & Cast On Use enchanted items? Fashion & use this amulet instead, & make gravity your bitch! - Soul Taker Blade (Daedric Dagger, Cast On Strike: Soul Trap, Damage Health -1) -- An upgraded version of the Soul Stealer, this weapon has greater durability & deals more damage. Combining this w/ the reusable Azura's Star is optional but *highly* recommended! Of course, this only scratches the surface of what's possible by making full use of the magic systems available in Morrowind; combining the Enchant system w/ the Alchemy system easily had the potential to elevate your Player Character to God-Tier levels of power long before taking on the endgame boss (Dagoth Ur) & his 6th House minions....
I appreciate you referencing Gothic visually if not by name. The reason it's version of fast travel works is not just the fact it's written into the magic system (aka more immersive than dealing with a separate menu) but first and foremost the perfect timing of when it's delivered in one's playthrough: right around the point when you've already explored most of the main roads on foot and would start to get bored with them. This way preserves all the joy of exploration but releases the player from tedious retracing later in the game
I think this is a very important point, I fully agree with. Fast travel should cut in, when travelling starts getting boring. I'd rather make a tripe two - three times with different, unexpected, encounters than zip through the game, but when travelling gets stale, I want some literal shortcuts.
Gothic (and Gothic 2) also did have fast travel, but it was with use of teleport runes (and portals in Night of Raven). It wasn't early game though (well it was introduced in perfect moment - when you were strong enough that traveling wasn't a challange anymore and you saw most of overworld anyway). EDIT: Also,, the more I learn about Morrowind, the more I am willing to give it a chance (having played Bethesda's Fallout 3 and watching few of my friends play Skyrim... I really didn't want to play any Bethesda-made RPG).
I agree. After playing Gothic, Gothic 2 and Risen Iam somewhat turned off by Fallout 3, 4, Oblivion and Skyrim. Theres more love in each game than in all the Bethesda games I enumerated. Of course theres also love in them too. But I feel like that the priorities where set wrong. They should have invested more time in fixing the obvious bugs than designing execution scenes.
Morrowind is old as shit and it has its issues, but it did so many things SO WELL! It really sells you on this absolutely alien world. Dunmer culture is unlike anything else. The only thing keeping me away from playing it more often is all the jank, especially the combat system. It took Skyrim modding community, the largest modding community besides Minecraft, 10 years to finally fix MOST™ of the jank and actually make things like combat fun. Morrowind is even more janky and has a much smaller modding community with like 12 new mods on Nexus in the last week... Play it all the way through at least once and definitely try to explore as much as you can. There is always something new and interesting to be found.
I think another thing that people never talk about when discussing fast travel is how the actual game should be built around it and built around distance. I limited fast travel system is fine but if the game is constantly expecting for you to go pinging around the map doing short objectives then it feels very tedious. By the end of my time with Morrowind I was just using a spell that let me jump so far that I could clear mountains which made travelling a joke. I did this because I was enjoying the story of the game but was sick of one NPC in one town telling me to go speak breifly with an NCP in another town just to then be sent back, especially the story mission where you need to get all of the houses and ashlander tribes to accept you as the Nerevarine. That mission is just walking back and forth between places and talking to people. Games need to give a sense of scale by making each region of the game world slightly seperated from each other in terms of missions so that when you are sent to region A you get to stay there for a while doing quests in a more local area and it feels more significant when you are eventually need to move to region B even if region B isn't actually that far away. This would make major quests where you do need to travel back and forth around the work feel more meaningful because you are usually not required to go as far. A good example of why games need to be built around there systems is when a game shoehorns in a hunger system. Since most games have very short day and night cycles you character is constantly getting hungry and keeping up with the hunger system feels like a chore. If the game hasn't taken into account how long objectives or quests in the game are going to take and how often the character will need to eat then it begins to feel less realistic because nobody in real like is stopping mid activity to eat five wheels of cheese, in real life we built our schedules around our need to eat and therefore eat in a few set meals. Travel should be considered in the same way. A game in which travel is important should take travel into account when planning out quest lines and other mechanics so that travelling actually feels like a part of the gameplay and not just something you are forced to do to get from one story beat to another.
people really seem to forget about the time wasting aspect. One quest that comes to mind, is one of the first ones in New Vegas. Nipton, and telling that ranger station what the Legion have done. You're really expecting a player to walk back and forth between these two areas because they told me to? no fam, i'm teleporting. Same as when you need to get the Khans to work with Caesars legion. There's NO travel in Fallout outside of fast travel. Like fuck am I going to walk from one end of the map and back again after finding the Khans. As I write this the more I think Fallout is never intended as a travel game because SO many quests are "go to this place over HERE, miles and miles away and then come back and MAYBE you will have to return again"
The thing is by the game is designed so that by the time you make the hortator mission and have to dart around the map you have access to all the jumpy spell and speed potions that make travelling a breeze (and make you feel like a badass). But the first few times you venture into ashlands for the Urshilaku quest it makes it feel like an actual adventure, where you need to prepare for the long march outside of civilization
@@thewhitefalcon8539 If you think the hunger system in Minecraft is the best example of an annoying and useless system you have ADHD worse than I do. Either that or you just wish you could tank any enemy with a hotbar full of steaks again, which is about the only way you could make Minecraft combat MORE mindless and boring.
This so much. People always talk about the highs of planning out journeys to fulfill lots of quests at once, but ignore the lows of those times when you can't do that and you really do just have to journey halfway across the game world and back because you're tired of waiting to finish that one quest and nothing else is sending you over there. Plus in most of these games, not fast traveling isn't actually more interesting. Most games don't let you fast travel the first time you find something, it's just about skipping the part where you repeat the same steps you've already taken before where the content will never be different at all.
Another thing that makes Morrowind's fast-travel system so interesting is how it mirrors the politics of the main factions, and how it makes quests more challenging by the simple fact that you must sometimes travel outside the main fast travel routes. The south-west is ruled by the business oriented and open Hlaalu faction. The area is safe, well populated, and has multiple interconnected systems that makes it easy and fast to travel anywhere you want. The north-west is ruled by the traditionalist Redoran faction. The area is more sparsely populated and are multiple stops away from the larger towns where you will spend most of your time (such as the capital Vivec). This makes everything feel a bit more distant and isolated. To the east you have the isolationist Telvanni faction. All its faction towns are connected by fast-travel routes, but the only way to get there directly from the other main faction towns is through the mages guild. Anything else will require a long trip by boat. And finally, later in the game your quests will start taking you further in towards the hostile center of the map where fast-travel is limited. Each trip must be planned out in advance and there are physical obstacles that you must find ways around. It isn't the danger that sets the central areas apart, it is how challenging and time consuming it is to even get there.
You didn't mention the propylon tele-fort-ers, although they were on the map While difficult to start using, they are one of the best methods for fast travel that is not limited to towns. You also failed to mention levitate and fortify speed, which allows you to skip mountains and travel as the bird flies. Icarian flight super jumping was limited, if very useful. Morrowind had more options to travel across the map at speed that felt good than a lot of games. Loved it.
Propylons were unpractical. You have to find a key for it and you get from specific old khimer fort to another specific old khimer fort both of which are in the middle of nowhere and full of enemies. I played Morrowind for years back days and I never used those propylons.
Dragon’s Dogma had an interesting fast travel mechanics, you had to put a beacon to fast travel and it was really expensive. It really gave you a sense of “travelling” you had to plan ahead and be careful of the night. I think it was immersive
I loved that fast travel, there was only 4 or 5 fast travel stones built into the world and then you could spend a small fortune on a beacon that you can put down anywhere in the overworld. Ofcourse, then you have to buy fast travel stones just to teleport to said beacons and those stones are used up per teleport.
Morrowind fast travel reminds me of the STALKER fast travel system. It has "guides" in safe bases that take you to different bases for an (expensive) price, new players cant afford the guide to travel yet. This also means that new players have to explore the starting regions first and keeps them from higher dangerous areas. However, as missions go to further places and you start having to backtrack more they become great ways to travel.
Daggerfall also is a good example of fastravel done well. Similar to Skyrim fastravel, but takes a little research of where a town is and locating it, calculating distance, price, time, safety, mode of transportation, and makes you actually figure out how much time you have to do said quest and return before your time to complete it is out. I love that level of realistic detail and immersion in older games. I think they had the same fast travel system in Arena, too, but I haven't properly played Arena yet, only Daggerfall and the other subsequent games in the elder scrolls series.
Honestly my favorite game of late has been Kingdom Come Deliverance which doesn't really have fast travel. Instead the game features auto travel which takes about just as long as doing it yourself, and you have to stay present as there are random events during the auto travel. It makes me want to travel places manually more as it's generally faster, and I'm already prepared for a battle if needed.
Agreed, but I think you're underestimating how quick the fast/auto travel in KCD is. It's still definitely much faster than going somewhere naturally, except the really short, open distances that you can just sprint across on your horse.
@GladWrap True but I’m pretty sure it usually takes more in-game time to auto-travel, and it seems like it takes more food and energy. I feel like it’s they’ve pulled off a really healthy balance between making important decisions but not having always manually travel everywhere
I really liked Morrowind's system. I also liked the old school Fallout systems where you "travel by map". It's fast, but you see yourself moving on the map and can have random encounters. It's fast, but it still cuts into your supplies and time sensitive quests.
Kingdom come deliverance actually had a great system. It follows you on the map and shows you how the travel affects you. Riding a horse makes it faster. You have random encounters that stop you as well. I quite enjoyed it.
Another thing that I like about Morrowind, and that is related to travel, is the lack of quest markers. You actually have to figure out where to go yourself by talking to people or reading signs. That plays very well into the "travel planning" you described. Great video! I'd recommend that you maybe add some music as otherwise we can always here some background noise from the microphone whenever you talk.
I was fine with Morrowind's fast travel system and having to follow directions to places. The issue was just that a number of times the directions weren't very good or they were poorly recorded in the journals if they were recorded at all, making it a feat just to find the place sometimes.
I liked the fast travel system in Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, in the game you have to reach a tower (one of five or six on the specific map you're on) activate the tower then you can fast travel to it whenever you want. The reason I like it however is that when you fast travel time still progresses, in a game where the orc captains are constantly moving and doing things, this makes you debate whether or not it pays to fast travel or if it would be better to go on foot. The captains also hold events that are only available for a time.
I love the RDR 2's approaches. Players could choose between fast travel and auto-travel. The fast travel itself for me still could give us the sense of distance by showing cinematic cutscenes on the route.
My favourite part about RDR2 fast travel is how little i want to do it. The world is so nice and theres just so much to see and do, i only FT if im really short on time.
@@capitanorotta9060 yeah I haven't fast traveled once because just riding around in the open world is fun, and it usually doesn't take more than a few minutes to ride wherever you're going anyway
I have to admit that you've raise some extremely valid points. Of course the counterpoint is time. The time I have to travel sometimes in the game impacts the real life world that I am in while I play the game and it takes too long to do something. So by fast travel I save real world time IRL time, and sometimes this is extremely important to me because as a nurse I work from waking up at 5:30 in the morning to getting back through the doors at the end of the day at 8 o'clock at night. Not complaining just stating. So I want to make it where I can get to the point where I can do something in the game to progress the game, so the modern fast travel is handy but I would like to have this alternative where you have to use the multiple methodologies to get from one place to another that would be very interesting. I would like to see that implemented in Skyrim six I think it is right? What the new one would be called.
@Steven Wilgus Absolutely my point, too! Compared to 10, 20 years ago, I don't have the same as before. The kids, the partner, the work and the other stuff you have to care. Also the aspect of immersion isn't destroyed for me, as I am used to take out my smart phone and use MAPS - can't remember when I had to ask a stranger for finding my destination.
Yeah I find the fast travel system proposed here as the same experience just more annoying. I forgot where it was said but I read an idea that gameplay doesn't improve with restrictions but rather by rewarding the action you want the person take. If I have to walk to the same place over and over again to fast skip to another location then it doesn't add anything to the experience except consuming time and forcing me to watch the same station over and over again. If in the other hand I would be rewarded by walking all the way, I had the full immersion plus the motivation that makes the way feel like part of the reason I'm playing. Of course this would be rather difficult to implement. For me the best solution to this so far has been gothic, a German game where you find teleportation runes that bring you to defined locations but you can use them from everywhere. It didn't feel like skipping as they only allow you to return, or skip between important places exclusively (and only if you have the specific rune). It's difficult to describe because in paper it looks very similar to the above system but it the game it feels very different. Much more immersive and natural.
Yeah this video misses the point. Developers are making games accessible to people. Morrowind is notorious for being somewhat inaccessible to players who aren’t willing to keep a journal, draw their own maps and such. I thought games like AC Odyssey do a great job of offering a choice. You can play with ease-of-use features or you can play in a bit more of an immersive way.
My adult philosophy on fast travel in these old games is that my spare time is too short. In Skyrim I walk to the first carriage point and make my grand tour to all the main cities before I set out on foot. Waypoints, done. In Witcher 3 I walk and swim from Velen to Oxenfurt then up to Novigrad where the only frigging bank exists. Waypoints, done. Then I explore the world at my leisure. Options to play the way you want are great.
I think Fallout 1 & 2 (and Arcanum, to some extent) had pretty good system. It gives you sense of distance, but isn't major pain in the a$$. It allows You to have some encounters between locations. And, unless You travel in area with high random encounter density, it was FAST, without being instant teleportation.
Are they even "fast travel" systems? Fast travel is basically skipping travel. Those games had an overworld you regular-travelled through with its own rules and hub locations where interesting things happen in, be it because they're a city or a bespoke dungeon. I think that basically makes this just travel in games which are not actually open world, which honestly might be what the real answer to this problem was all along.
The caravan system in Fallout 1 & 2 is kind of like fast travel, but with a sense of peril out there in the wasteland. And you still have to learn which places have caravans going where
Enderal (Skyrim mod overhaul) has a nice fast travel system, it's got teleport scrolls which are explained in-game and they repurposed Skyrim's dragon models to be these sort of flying creatures that can take you to various waypoints, and then there's the mark and return spells as well
I'm a fan of the Ballad of Gales from LoZ: Wind Waker. It has to be unlocked late in the game through a side quest that's hinted at if you don't find it on your own. It's a little clunky in that you have to play it like any other song, so it keeps you immersed in the game world. It uses the map as a menu, which you will already be using a lot to sail between islands. And it has a limited set of locations which unlock all at the same time, including the biggest islands and one key location that is not accessible any other way.
It's definitely nostalgia talking for me though. Wind Waker HD was the version I played first around 10 years ago. I had a gamecube but Wind Waker was not in my library. I still think the lighting looks great on it.
I loved sailing around in WW so much that I tended to skip the fast travel system altogether. The sense of freedom and adventure of you and your little sailboat against the world was fantastic and it made the game world feel much bigger than it actually was.
Gothic's 1 and 2 fast travel was great too.(having to earn or find teleportation runes but you still have to travel on foot and learn your surroundings) Public transit is nice too, GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption use it nicelly too
I loved Morrowind the moment I started playing. It was the first open world RPG I ever played. My favorite aspect of it was that it didn't hold your hand when telling you what your objectives were. If you had to go to a certain location, it gave you a general idea of where it was at and you had to go explore to find it. Most modern games automatically marking the location on your map. This drastically increased the exploration part of the game and added to the overall effect of "go anywhere and do anything."
I don’t think they should remove the easy fast travel altogether because sometimes you don’t have time or just don’t feel like being immersed or walking that long distance especially if it’s a back and forth trip. But they should also keep the immersive fast travel because it’s important for the game and it is pretty cool.
@@divinecomedian2 and? What's your point? Don't like it? Don't use it. I hate collectible card mini games, I think they are boring and lame. That said I just don't play them, I don't cry to CDPR that they should remove gwent.
@@evildeadedd The point is that its bad for the long term health of a franchise. The less immersed you get in a game, the less memorable it will become. A griffin flight is great as it gives you a break to go get food, or whatever needs to be done IRL. But ubiquitous insta travel remove the world and lore from most of the game.
@@chrismcaulay7805 but the problem with that is, by forcing people who don't want to take the slow, tedious, or just mind numbing way, they are less likely to be immersed since they are just more likely to quit
@@chrismcaulay7805 Let me tell you something, nothing will make me less interested in the world and lore than being bored to tears as it takes me 20 minutes to get across half the map. If you *really* hate fast travel, literally just don’t use it. Skyrim has fast travel and is still being played and discussed, so is Fallout, so is Elden Ring, so is Spider-Man PS4, so are…a metric fuck ton of other games with fast travel. Your concerns about fast travel ruining the lifespan of the game are unsupported and irrational. Again, if you don’t like fast travel, don’t use it. Don’t subject the majority of players who like it to inescapable boredom.
One thing I started doing in Skyrim as a compromise is to only allow fast travel back from dungeons to a major city or town. Otherwise I cart and hoof or foot travel to locations and use a camping mod to sleep the nights away
This gives me an idea for a concept these games could use: Close Quests Bubble. A shorter list of quests that are within a walking distance away from you, so that if you travel to a big city for a main quest, you can take a look at all the other small quests that are close to you. Thanks for making this video, you explained everything really well.
It also affects how the quest are done. When fast travel is easy and free you also get small local quest that send you all around the map rather then keeping it local.
I've said it previously and I'll say it again: I really like how WoW handles traveling (especially in the early versions). You have your two feet, later you'll get a mount, you can travel with gryphons/wyverns, which still take time but also force you to take in the landscape, zeppelins, boats, hearthstones, spells, etc. It's just really diverse and imitates the way a real public transport mesh functions (e.g. walk to bus station, take bus to train, take train to airport, take airplane, and so on). And none of them are free, they always cost money, time, or effort.
@@VirusHD yes, that's fair enough. I think there are some ways to game WoW's traveling methods and they should have fixed them. This flaw could've easily been fixed by making it more expensive in time or mana to teleport someone else. But still, you have to pay money and spend time finding someone to do this for you. It's not exactly point-and-click fast travel.
@@Qopzeep to be fair, I am completely for point and click fast travel. While some people might not mind spending 5 minutes on travel, I'd rather keep the travel as short as can be since I don't have much time to play games already. If having fast travel means I can do 3 quests instead of 2 for the day, I would definitely be bummed out if I couldn't use it. There has to be some restriction, like having visited the location you want to travel to beforehand, but beyond that, fast travel is an optional service. If someone doesn't want to use it, they don't have to
@@VirusHD I understand and agree with you. I also have time issues when gaming so having a shortcut is nice. I guess that game developers should prevent gamers from getting an unfair advantage in a competitive game but otherwise they should give players options for immersion vs convenience.
@@VirusHD Although my favourite option remains integrating the fast travel into the narrative/world-building of the game, so it doesn't cost you too much time and effort while also not removing you from the world.
I liked Kingdom Come Deliverance version. You could only fast travel to towns or a few other important location. During fast travel the map come up and shows you’re character walking across the map. Events and encounters can still happen and may snap you out of fast travel depending on the situation.
Best thing about Morrowind's map design is that quest locations have actually verbal descriptions on how to get there in your journal and from NPCs. No floating quest marker, only your wits.
Very good video! I personally haven't played Morrowind, but this looks like a very smart system. I also liked the Gothic 1 & 2 fast travel system. In those games you get fast travel runes but only later on in the game... At the beginning of those games, I never really felt like I needed a fast travel mechanic because I was so busy exploring the world, learning what's where and doing quests on the path. Later on, (once you gain the trust of certain factions) they hand you runes to be able to travel to critical points on the map, whether big settlements or critical areas.
You really have thought about and researched this topic. Thanks for covering this. I agree with your viewpoints. Glad that you shared this and educated people about fast travel drawbacks.
One of the best systems was in the Might and Magic 6-8 series. You had two standard motes of travel - by ship (coastal and islands) or by stables (inland). Not only that you had to pay and you were limited by the stables location, but they also had their own schedules, meaning that on Wednesday the stables from Harmondale went to Erathia but on Thursday to the Turalean Forest. This also meant that you sometimes had to wait, or you had to change the mote of travel (stables were often not far from ships). Also, there were opening and closing times. There were also two ways of magical transport - the "Town Portal" spell that allowed you to transport from anywhere to an already visited major city (e.g. MM7 has about 14 different zones but only 6 Town Portal areas) which means you still need to use the public transport or you have to fly and cross the border on your own. The second magical transport is "Lloyd's Beacon" which allows you to create a beacon and then return to it from anywhere. This beacon expires based on your skill. The Beacon spell is a Grandmaster level, so late-game, and the Town Portal is Master level, so mid-game. Town Portal also has a limitation at Master level - you cannot teleport with enemies nearby. This is bypassed at GM level. To add more options early in the game, you can hire a companion (non-combatant) who takes 20% of all gold found but allows you to cast Town Portal on Master level (no enemies around) once per day. This is however used rarely as the majority of players opt for different companions (extra XP or a little more XP and unlimited item identification, full heal once per day, gear repairs). This type of transport, even though at a point one click away, never breaks immersion. To get to the "modern" type of fast-travel, you need to progress in the game quite a bit. The Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos works in a similar manner.
Agreed. The MM games had the best travel system. I was about to write a comment on it as well before I saw yours. I'm currently replying MM VII atm, and these old RPGs did a lot of thing right that is sadly missing in many modern RPGs.
In the Lord of the Rings Online there is a hybrid system. The normal fast travel is through stables. You have to go to a stable, and depending on what stable you are at, it offers certain destinations (so everywhere doesn't link to everywhere, and you still get a sense that you are on a journey as you have to think about the "connecting stables" you will need to go to). Once at a stable, you can get a "slow horse", where the horse moves in autopilot, as is a little faster than your own mount. Or you can take a swift horse, which starts the same way, but you don't watch the entire journey, the screen fades to black shortly after starting, and fades back in as you are arriving to the destination. This keeps the immersion reasonable, while making travel fast. And yes, characters have teleport skills they have to earn, but for most classes those are usually skills with long cooldowns (think 1 hour). The only exception is the hunter. A class whose feature is how fast he can move around the map with travel skills, modelled on the rangers.
My favorite form of fast travel in Morrowind? Easy, it's Windform scrolls. (500 Levitation for 60 secs., + Invisible for 60 secs.) Expensive, but what's money in TES3. (Avoid Windwalker scrolls, exact same 2 effects, but 5 times the gold.) Flying over the landscape at high speed is cool af, and I can stop if I see something interesting. And I often do. 👍
Dude i love your videos and indepth analysis on given topic :) u made me try Morrowind for the first time, it seems like its one of those RPGs where you spend many hours learning about the world :)
I'll take convenience over immersion any day. Fast travel is often most useful later in a game when you've done plenty of exploring already such as Pokémon.
In Skyrim I completely missed a major storybeat that happens on your way back to town from a short trip outside. The fast travel was right there and it felt like it beckoned me to use it, but then I got to town and everyone talked about how basically the heavens themselves talked to me and I had not noticed any of that. I went back and loaded an older save to see it and since then I made a point out of not fast traveling at all and have discovered a lot of fun random encounters along the roads as a result. Not to mention getting familiar with the land itself.
The game specifically removes the fast travel to Dragonsreach (the palace in Whiterun where you need to go) so that you don't miss this story moment. So you were either distracted, or your game bugged, or you're lying.
@@SpaceApe020 Did the game always do this? Or was that something that was fixed in a patch later? This was close to release day back in 2011 when this happened to me.
@@ToastbackWhale It probably is the event you are thinking of. This was way back in 2011 and it's been a long while since I played the game so my recollection of names is a bit fuzzy.
@@Nails077 I don't know if it was always like this. First time I played Skyrim was 2012-2013 and it was already this way I'm pretry sure. Would be interesting to track down patch notes to see though.
I disagree, I can tune that out just fine. What bothers me is that there’s no opportunity cost, you can be everywhere and do everything at once, so you don’t feel any connection to the area you’re currently in AND you hit with dozens of things you can do in most open world games. Having an opportunity cost to go from place to place completely changes how your approach tasks in a game.
The quest system also causes a lot of back and forth between far cities for trival tasks, to lead to the player demand for fast travel. Even trying to plan by gathering all the same city travel quests, still runs into this problem.
There is one more fast travel option in Morrowind: Propylon chambers. They are good four out of reach places, but require you to find the key, the propylon index.
One thing that I feel makes it work is the fact that while the travel costs money, discouraging you from using it too much in the early game when you are still poor, it's cheap enough (and becomes even cheaper with good relations with operators) that using it isn't really an issue in a late game when you have accumulated lots of money. That wat game incetivises you to explore in the early stages, while letting you skip unnecessary legwork later when all the exploring is done.
I’ve always played BOTW this way, I thought I was the only one 😂 After my first playthrough, I realized how weird and unfun it is to teleport across this whole beautiful landscape, and on my second run (to 99%) I relied on an actual horse because the fact horses automatically followed paths meant I could relax and essentially watch a cutscene of Link crossing the world (with a few little taps to push the horse down the right roads). It VASTLY improved the experience.
Ultima has a long tradition of in-universe fast travel, most notably the moongates, which open and are directed according to the phases of the moons. Ultima VII and Ultima Online also have teleportation spells which require preparation using the Mark spell on a magic stone, followed by Recall (or Gate, in UO) to teleport to wherever the stone was marked.
It was a great shock to me when I first played Morrowind and realised I would actually have to pay attention when an NPC explains to you how to get to a certain place. No quest marks nor fast travel to help. It is very inconvenient, but on the other hand, the levels of immension are much higher than other games. You're not just playing to kill things and level up. You're meeting people and learning about the world. It really makes everything feel more alive in a way, and it requires much more dedication. Modern games are losing a lot by making everything easy and convenient.
The journal keeps track of what NPCs say, but it's still up to you to follow those directions properly. It's pretty fun and surprisingly good for first playthroughs, when you don't know the area.
I got so bent out of shape over the fast travel in Bethesda's later titles that I was using mods that removed it. Atmosphere and immersion is greatly improved and you can appreciate the worlds the devs created, plus you really consider preparation before venturing forth
A game that surprisingly has a very similar fast travel system is "The Ascent" At any time you can call a cab which can take you to key areas, you also have the metro, which can take you to any metro station on the same level of the Arcology. You also have a set of elevators that will take you to different levels of the arcology. It's a very good game with a very lived-in feeling world, a lot of love definitely went into crafting it.
Another thing I really liked about morrowind when playing it for the first time was that the game gives you specific, written directions on how to get to your destination. This adds even more to the immersion of navigating the game world because the game doesn't just point you directly to your objective. In Skyrim this is part of why players will often find themselves just walking up mountains, despite there being a perfectly good road to follow. The compass just tells you to go a certain direction so you tend to take it at face value if you aren't looking at the map.
It also is both proof and result of developers actually playing the game they made. There are anecdotes of them working in this basement and *taking walks* in-game instead of outside.
I remember playing this game where you could only teleport back to your house. It was absolute torture going anywhere. It didn’t help that you couldn’t jump either.
Morrowind is probably the most immersive RPG i've ever played, and I think that the fast travel system that they abandoned in their subsequent releases is a big part of that. Great video!
Abandoned in what way? You can still use carts, etc in all the other games. What they added was a fast travel system which Morrowind never had. This video is confusing fast travel with quick travel.
@@xe-wf5iv The design philosophy was abandoned I guess is what I'm trying to say. By adding the option for "quick travel" as you call it (we just called it fast travel back when Oblivion came out) they changed the "meta" if you will in that it was just more convenient to use it than walking or using whatever other forms of travel were available. It's fine, generally I guess because we're stuck with it for the most part, but it does take away from the immersion in some ways and definitely takes away all the random events that would happen when walking to and from your destination.
Days Gone has a great fast travel system in that it limits your range to the distance you could travel with the amount of fuel in your bike. So as you scavenge fuel and eventually buy larger tanks, your fast travel range also goes up. Very heavily underrated game IMHO.
I find it meets the criteria of this video really well because you are limited by your supplies, you are engaging with your map like an apocalyptic survivor plotting your route, as well as figuring our or remembering where you'll find fuel once there (or if you want to travel a shorter distance to ride the bike towards a source of fuel), and building up a knowledge of the roads/landmarks through play as you build up your gas tanks (and thus your fast travel range).
It's an action game with light survival elements, really only bike fuel and maintenance. You go around post-Apocalyptic Oregon's wilderness, shooting zombies and dodging hazards like fallen trees, car wrecks, bandit ambushes or hordes on the asphalt or in back country trails. If your bike breaks, you find scrap to fix it. If fuel runs dry, you go looking for a gas station, a tow truck with supplies, or a jerry can. The fuel economy is well balanced; in the 200 hours I've lovingly spent since August, I'm always thinking about my fuel use, but never feeling like if i do run out, I'll be stranded for a period that stops being fun. The game teaches you where to look and spaces itself out well. I've got a couple of demonstrations of this on my channel, but I do recommend it in general.
Very good video. I really like Morrowind's fast travel system. I have to say my favorite is in Dragon's Dogma. You can't fast travel at all, at first. Then as you do quests (some optional), you find "portcrystals", which you can pick up and place in different locations. Only then can you fast travel anywhere, and only to places with portcrystals. Only the major city and your starting town, as well as the DLC island, have static portcrystals. Not only that, but you need an item called a "ferrystone" to teleport to any portcrystal. You can find them in the world and as rewards for some quests, but up until the endgame, they're very limited. If you ran out or forgot to pack some, you're gonna have to walk. When you use one, it even has an animation of the player throwing the ferrystone into the air and opening a portal to their destination, so it's even immersive and explained by the lore ingame!
Both Morrowind and Dragon's Dogma did similar thing with their systems - they put a sizable cost on fast travel and also (in case of Morrowind) limit the destination to towns cities and major landmarks. In these games if you're in a rush you really can fast travel to any big city, but that'll cost you - so sometimes you'd just prefer to walk and that walk will get you unforgettable encounters and experiences. Also, they both integrate well into lore. Modern games fast travel just feels unrealistic and kills the feel of the world - when you can get anywhere you'vs already been in 1 click with no extra cost, and most importantly - with no real explanation from the lore side. In Genshin Impact for example the devs actually bothered to explain fast travel ("only vision users and mc cause he's special can use the monoliths, ordinary people have to walk"), and it already feel way better than Fallout 3-4, Skyrim, etc, because of that.
The best part is, if you remember to pick up all your portcrystals before new game plus, you can use those and find their dupes where they are in the new world, doubling your custom portal locations.
My favorite example of life before quest markers and fast travel was in the first few quests given at the mages guild in Balmorra. This is what your journal entry says on how to get to an NPC you need to find: "Ranis asked me to convince Llarar Bereloth to join the guild. If he cannot be convinced, I must kill him. To get to Sulipund, I should leave Balmora east and pass Fort Moonmoth. Then cross the bridge to Molag Amur and follow the trail east until I reach a lake. I should see a Dunmer stronghold to the south. If I head north on the path between the hills, Sulipund will be on my left, just before the path splits." It reads like an old-timer giving directions in the country. It's amazing. However, though quest markers are a different way to play, it is an accessible way to play, and I definitely appreciate increased accessibility in games. I think fast travel also falls into this category. As much as this kind of wandering was fun, not everyone has the time or energy to do that. I think that, in games like Skyrim, it would be best to make a network of travel infrastructure like this, but also have the option for fast travel for those that would like to use it. Best of both worlds.
The main problem is that developers opting for the more accessible system have no motivation to accommodate the few of us who prefer a richer experience. You can't turn off the quest compass in stock Skyrim because the quests are not written like they were in Morrowind. Some NPC gives you some trite voice line, and your objectives journal just says "Do this thing at this place", with no usable directions on how to get there. Those directions become flavor text, which is the easiest thing to cut out of development costs, especially when you're now adding the expense of voice-acted dialogue that Morrowind basically didn't have. It also saves you the trouble of having to create a world that is believable and lived-in, because your player will only cross a given area maybe a handful of times if it's particularly high-traffic. Even besides the cost, the easy access player doesn't want to dig through all that flavor text to check what their task is, so sticking to the point only makes sense. It might make sense on the surface to try to cater to both audiences, but the fact is that only a small fraction of your audience will actually use and appreciate the extra effort you put into the more realistic experience, while the rest will just consume regardless and shell out the same cash to do so... in much greater numbers. It would take a broader cultural shift away from ultimate convenience and short attention spans in order for that effort to be worthwhile in tandem with the easy system. I'd also submit that such a shift would possibly shrink the overall interest in games in favor of IRL engagement, but I could be wrong about that.
@@SepticFuddy I agree with your analysis (quest markers mean they can cut costs by removing in-game directions), however I disagree that this is necessarily a problem. Accessibility for everyone is going to trump the desires of the few of you who "prefer a richer experience." Fiscally, this obviously makes sense. But it also makes sense when you consider that the "richer experience" you're after can be generated in all kinds of ways, not only by this one specific system.
If someone's problem is "accessibility" then the game they're trying to play clearly isn't for them. Unless someone has an actual disability they don't need any accessibility. What, should we handy cap pro athletes now because the average joe doesn't have the time to compete on their level? Utter madness. It's a complete lack of self awareness of not only what makes a hand crafted world good, or any piece of art for that matter, but also a lack of self respect for the medium and every player or video game developer that ever picked up a controller or keyboard and mouse. I genuinely hope you think about this. Accessibility ruins the integrity of any work.
@@TheSpero42 as per my last post, think about why different games can't be made for everyone. It would be a sea of grey bland blobs with no personality. Why do you think there are different genres of media?
It gets particularly good with divine and almsivi intervention interactions. These teleport you to the nearest shrine of that type. And if you get used to it, this allows a lot. In some cases you learn that from one side of town almsivi takes you to say Balmora, but from the other side you get to Aldruun. From which you can divine your way to gnisis, I think, and so forth. Sometimes you can take a boat to get into almsivi/divine range of your destination. Key is, you have enormous options, but you have to figure it out. You can even get keys to the stronghold teleports - which generally aren't worth the effort of collecting them, but it does allow fast travel to some more rural areas. All in all, you have the options. But you have to think about it. You have to learn it. And importantly: it's only between hubs. You still have to walk through the world to get to the dungeons. Finally, of course, Morrowind deliciously screws with you by allowing a great fast travel option that leaves you mostly blind. Figuring out how to get around that is quite satisfying. Great game, among the goats. And if anyone disputes it, may the cliff racers find them! :)
The original Sacred from 2005 had a neat compromise: There was a network of about 20 portals scattered throughout the map and you could activate them one by one and then use them. On top of that there were scattered pairs of portals that coul donly get fom one half to the other and it took some time to figure out how these could be activated and where the other half was. Sometimes it was part of a quest, sometimes they were aparently broken... it gave a sense of athmosphere. And again, you had to walk/ride a long distance anyway as the portals were far apart and not evenly spread.
Nice points. I'd also like to give a shout out to the various incarnations of the Ultima series' moongates, which also needed study in order to understand and use correctly, and similar to your routes only allowed regional travel between fixed locations which maintained the need to "normal travel" from there to your destination. Also, I have totally noticed that, since a decent local market opened down the street from me, I totally shop more frequently for fewer things at a time.
Dragon's Dogma was one of my favorite systems. I remember going out into the night to travel, surrounded by hordes of lizardmen wondering when my lantern fuel would run out or I would die, it was genuinely tense. It was only later I learned about Portstones and even when you do have them there are a limited number you can place and you need a consumable item to activate it.
The issue isn't that fast travel exists, it's that in most games fast travel is largely a UI function and not an actual mechanic like it is in Morrowind. That and when UI fast travel is present, designers usually make quests assuming the player will use it, so trying to complete them without using it is a huge pain. Try completing the Oblivion Fighters Guild questline without fast travel, it's a nightmare.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but as a person who slowly has less and less time being able to play games, the ability to have fast travel with no frills attached is a godsend, regardless of how unimmersive it is. If I have to do A, B, and C in order to fast travel vs just fast traveling, and the only difference is that A, B, and C just makes a reason for fast traveling, I'd rather just fast travel with no other hassles. Granted, I don't play open world games as much anymore precisely due to the time sink they cause, but when I do I'd rather have my options open compared to making something a bit more immersive.
Fast travel on foot could also have resource cost. You'd need to gather rations, water and other necessities and depending how much you gather, that is how far you'll be able to travel before it kicks you back into normal movement mode.
Kingdom Come Deliverance has that style, with your journey shown on the map and risk of combat encounters depending on character skills (like classic Fallout). Resources are required to meet your needs, and you can stop if you want to. It's a shame the Bethesda Fallout games didn't use the classic Fallout overworld travel system as their fast travel option. It would have been a nice touch.
Y’all are forgetting that there are different degrees of immersion; it’s not just a choice between completely immersed or not at all. If you’re watching a movie in theatre and someone is talking at 100 decibels and their phone’s screen is super bright, it’s a lot more immersion-breaking than if someone is talking at 70 decibels without a bright phone. Sure, both are immersion breaking, but I’m sure you’d much prefer the latter if you were forced to choose.
Another example it's Death Stranding, where you only can fast travel from and to certain locations, and when you do, you can't bring anything with you, so it doesn't help to complete tasks.
What is your favorite fast travel system and why? Let us know in the comments section!
fallout 4 survival mode, it doenst have fast travel BUT has the vertibirds that are usless in other difficulties so you have to stay in good relations with brotherhood of steel or later into the game when you reach the institute you can teleport from anywhere back to the institute wich is near hanged mans alley wich in other difficulties is the worst settlement in the game but in survival its the best due to its proximity with diamond city and the institute
I agree with Lautaro Perez. I also think that Gothic did it very well with the teleportation runes that the player can obtain later in the game after exploring the compact map.
Far Cry 2 had my favoure bus stops, allowing you to get to a specific place only if you grab a bus passing by with a clear map on it, showing where it leads
Old School World of Warcraft sort of did it the best honestly. From purchasing trips on a gryphon/wyvern from a local flightmaster or a portal from a high level mage player, to learning a specific type of Goblin/Gnomish engineering to use their respective teleportation pads, or even just hopping onto a boat.. the sheer variety and uniqueness of the fast travel systems always sort of blended into the world, got you from one place to another without feeling too gimmicky.
kingdome come deliverance
Another good point of the Morrowind fast travel system: it's a money sink.
In the early game it forces you to either be very careful about planning your routes, or take the cheaper option of traveling on foot. Both of these immerse you deeper into the game.
Later in the game when you get so rich you no longer care about the costs it rewards you with that sense of privilege, the ability to just go anywhere on a whim. Hard-earned freedom.
And it keeps money at least somewhat relevant for the whole game, even when you're kitted out in the best enchanted gear you can possibly own.
It's like the RPGs in the 90s. They weren't open world, but traveling around the map still required effort. I especially liked the games that ultimately gave the player some kind of airship. It still wasn't FAST travel, but it was the fastest, and still had a trade off if the player wen to the wrong place and had to double back.
"In the early game jt forces you to either be very careful about planning your routes, or take the cheaper option of traveling on foot"
*laughs in limeware platter*
I like to slowly make friends with all the drivers over the course of the game to lower the cost! By the end I usually have them at 100% and it’s very satisfying to be saving money from something I worked on all game!
When you know the game, money isn't an issue.
I have over 10k gold within the first hour or so.
Morrowind's "fast travel" system could have been great, if not for the fact that the movement speed is *so* slow. I have to resort to cheats to be able to move at a remotely reasonable speed so I don't get bored out of my mind just running to the nearest Silt Strider.
As a long-time Morrowind player, when I play Skyrim I only allow myself to fast travel using carriages and boats. Although I did install a mod that adds departing carriages to four cities that don't have them in the vanilla game.
I played without fast travel and i was surprised how quickly you could traverse the map, and how "small" the map is in skyrim.
I did the same, though the college of winterhold mod I used added some teleportation, and I had a mod that added more boat and carriage options.
Try out Enderal, you'll love it.
The Wildlander modlist implements this well. There are *carriages in all major cities, but they can also drop you off (but not pick you up) from smaller towns. The carriages are also relatively expensive so it encourages lower level players to not use them.
I play only lightly modded oblivion quite a lot and I only allow fast travel from stable to stable to act like my character took a carriage, and even them I only "unlock" for it once I've walked to that city once
Kingdom Come: Deliverance had a great fast travel mechanic too: Firstly, you can only travel between certain locations (in this case towns, one castle, one monastery, and a camp added with one of the DLCs). Secondly, you had to watch your map icon psychically move across the map (with the speed depending on whether or not you were mounted on a horse). And while the icon was travelling the map, you might happen upon random encounters on the road as if you were travelling normally: Bandits might be lying in ambush, or a beggar might ask you for food. You weren’t not subject to these encounters when fast travelling. Lastly, time flies by when you’re travelling; by the time you arrive at your destination in this game, it might be evening nighttime. That’s on top of the tiredness and hunger mechanics naturally in this game, meaning you have to pack some jerky for your travels if you’re worried about finding food wherever you’re going. If you’re tired when you arrive, then you have to try and find a tavern that offers such a service, or hope there’s a simple, uncomfortable bed somewhere outside the town.
I loved the fast travelling of Kingdom Come: Deliverance’s normal mode (hardcore mode had no fast travel), so it’s a shame that I haven’t seen a mechanic such as this one in other games.
For most players this is more of a nuisance than something they would enjoy. Good game design always rewards the player for effort and has balanced trade offs. I personally find a system like this not rewarding enough to invest my time into. I'd rather play euro truck simulator.
While I don't like the modern fast travel system either, it keeps me playing the game more than the Kingdom Come system would.
I did however recently make a comment about my wants from normal in game traveling (not fast travel) which would make me play the game more. Perhaps you can find it in the "newest first" comments
No? Its so damn annoying and takes such a long time its one of the examples why sometimes realism in gaming is a bad fucking thing
@@Alan-xg4yr Agree to disagree.
@@freakoutu1.618 i guess
Was just going to say this. I loved KCD fast travel system and its uniqueness.
9:11 It should be mentioned that the morrowind makes a real effort to teach you the travelling network through the quest the mage guild and the fighters guild offer to you. Many of them will send you to locations far away, but the questgiver will give you real directions on usind the network to get there. Through the mainquest the game will also push you towards these guilds. The task of learning the network really isn´t all that difficult and happens pretty organicaly through normal play.
If feels like combining busses irl
@@GarkKahn Exactly that
On a side note, I love how Morrowind's main story encouraged you to do all this other stuff. In Oblivion and Skyrim the main quests basically tell you to forget about all that other stuff going on, because time is of the essence.
I never had a problem with this in Morrowind! Once you memorize routes, it's too easy to jump back an forth 3-4 towns apart easily
Dont forget you can even ask npcs directions if you dont know the way
Kingdom Come Deliverance had a pretty solid compromise of the two, where travel happens on a real map and requires time, planning, and caution. It's very easy to get caught by a group of bandits or enemy soldiers and robbed or even killed. It still keeps you pretty mobile - nothing is unreachable due to geographic conditions or what-have-you and I think they could have gone further with the system, but I think it addresses much of the issue with fast travel while not requiring such attentive forward-thinking.
Plus it isn't just a load screen. You actually see Henry's icon moving on the roads and see the exact path he took to get to your destination. So if you travel just from a tavern in a city to the castle of the same city, the trip takes literal seconds. But if you travel between the farthest points of the map, you can actually have to wait for several minutes before you actually arrive at your destination. Plus you continue to need food and sleep as you travel so when you arrive, you may need to find food and a place to sleep right away if the distance was really far away.
Only thing lacking is an option to cancel the fast travel if you forget to sleep/eat or forgot to do something
Yes. I love how it incorporates a lot of roleplaying aspects
Well, you beat me to it. It's a great system, and it gives you a reason to not fast travel. You have more risk because you can't visually see and avoid enemies on the road. Which, when you're very early, can be costly.
Lol, "planning and caution"
Or get yourself a horse and if you do get unlucky enough to get an encounter just ride through it and continue fast traveling. Those random encounters are such a non-threat if you're not on foot.
It’s a lot simpler, but I really enjoyed the fast travel in Hollow Knight. Not only is the travel well-explained in universe, the cutscene that plays gives it weight, and makes you feel like you’re actually covering ground. Plus, the stag stations are just sparse enough that it doesn’t completely negate the need for physical exploration.
It's a little annoying that there are no Stag Stations in the Royal Waterways, especially since the entrance to one of the content packs is there.
@@whirl3690 it wouldn’t make sense in the world, why would you put a train station in a sewer?
@@ieatmice751 It makes more sense when you realize the train is a creature just like the people using it. Where do you think THEY poop?
@@whirl3690 i understand your point about godseeker. i put my dreamnail fast travel point down there tho and had no issues
Yep, even to get to the nearest station you gotta _platform_ there, probably need to get past a few hazards... It doesn't get rid or the platforming in the platforming game and that's why it's good, if you could pull out the map and go to any station it would be way less friendly to the game design
I feel like there's one aspect that also ought to be mentioned here: Sometimes, there's the possibility to sidestep the issue and make moving around the world *fun* . That's what the recent PC port of Spider-Man does for me. It *has* a fast-travel system, but I almost never use it, because swinging around NY feels so much better (and isn't that slow, anyway).
Gta V has fast travel in the formof taxis, but it is rarely used because driving places is fun.
This. In RDR2 I never used any fast traveling because the journey on the horse was so much cooler. And in the Arkham games, swooping and zipping through the city as Batman was so much more fun that clicking on a map.
Valheim is actually one of the more recent games that kinda has fast travel unlocked later in the game (portals) but they are crafted items that you must venture to and actually construct and label. They become necessary after you explore this giant procedurally generated world. But often in the early half of the game, the adventure of sailing around and the danger of the journey just to mine ore or chop down trees is worth experiencing in itself. The journey is the entire point, and makes one NOT want to use portals unless absolutely necessary.
One of the major issues is that with these open world games, the areas between the cities are often times not particularly interesting and if there is anything to do at all, it's repetitive encounters with bandits and raiders. I do think that as developers get better at using machine learning to generate scenery and locales within a map, that this might change a bit, but honestly, having a complicated system for fast travel doesn't really contribute much to a game.
Ikr? Like if I can just fling myself to the other end of the map, I'd rather do that than use fast travel
@@juanordonezgalban2278 don't forget the classic swingset glitch
On the subject of Elder Scrolls fast travel, the Skyrim Special Edition has a survival mode built in that you can turn on after Helgen that requires you to deal with sleep, warmth, and food in addition to turning off that standard fast travel, so all you have access to is the cart network. Travelling via cart isn't very expensive, but it does take time, and therefore will result in your character needing food and sleep when you arrive, so you still have to have some idea of how far away a place is in terms of how much you'll need (particularly since making a large dent in hunger requires cooked food, and cooked food typically requires salt, which can be a pain to get hold of). Given the limited number of places you can get a cart to or from, you end up having to do a lot of walking, which has its benefits because there are a lot of cool things you can come across when doing things that way.
I only wish they had made the carts got to the smaller cities. I tried survival but turned it off when i started needing to go up and down the throat of the world every other quest from Riften
@@Shaweweweeewah There's a mod on Nexus called "Carriage and Ferry Travel Overhaul" that adds boats and carriages in some of the smaller settlements and makes the pricetag more reliant on how far in the middle of nowhere your destination is rather than just the distance.
@@ithidt There's also a mod that uses the intro animations and lets you actually sit in the carriage for the whole trip.
@@ithidt I use apocalypse spells, and ordinator perks of Skyrim. With these you get spells and perks that let you run really fast while concentrating, and also teleport between 5 fixed points you can choose, finally you can also have an option to always return to a single point.
You need master level alteration to use the teleports but it's worth it, so with all these I have teleports to cities that don't have carts and whiterun, and my return home is white run.
Ends up with a similar set up to morrowind I guess but with just 2 different forms of fast travels
This is how I am playing sse now. I like it a lot more than straight fast travel…. Especially when I went to one of the further out strongholds and realized they didn’t have a cart back so I had to walk clear across the entire map at a low level… it was amazing. And that’s not sarcasm, it was an epic and intense journey back home at times.
When Fallout 3 came out, me and my friend had no idea you could fast travel on our first play through, which really made the game immersive. It was a pretty intense experience trying to fight our way through the DC ruins trying to get to Rivet City, only to stumble across Super Mutants in The Mall and have to turn around and go back home to Megaton for supplies because we were low on ammo and stims.
I would argue Fallout 3 and 4 get a lot better if you avoid fast travel, since the exploration and incidental activities is where those games really sing. I actually had a lot of fun having to legitimately figure out how to traverse the DC metro in Fallout 3 once I made it my only option. That being said, it really could have used more directional markers, similar to the waypoints they had to get to the National Mall. But it's still not too bad, and the dense and interesting world design usually keeps you pretty interested. Especially with F4's addition of the wonderful junk economy, making pretty much every location worth exploring on some level.
Interestingly, in my experience, New Vegas actually gets a lot worse without fast travel, especially if you're trying to do a Legion playthrough. While the map design in NV does do some things well in terms of guiding player focus (something I think Bethesda could improve on), subsequent trips through an area just usually end up being kinda tedious, with little in the way of emergent gameplay or interesting new sights. And when a lot of the quests involve you being a literal Courier, transporting messages or items between different locations, it really drags the game to a halt and you lose the satisfying steady stream of endorphins from regularly cashing in quest objectives and other RPG goodness that New Vegas delivers so well.
Sounds like youd enjoy Stalker Gamma
@@Descriptor413 My experience with NV is opposite lol. After Goodsprings fight with Powdergangers I made up my mind that the whole place has no sense, everyone was just fighting for their own ideals, so I just roamed around as a lone ranger. Not taking any faction, just talking to everyone. Eventually I needed to fight the Legion(not because I liked NCR or villagers) but because I think that not siding with them will give me more freedom to talk and empathize with everyone else.
This led to me being put on a bounty and Legionnaires being on my ass the whole time(and me being a dumbass didn't understand how armor worked so they are extremely hard to kill). So between the interesting locations I get to fight Legion minibosses with my explosives. So it was basically a Courier gameplay with me roaming and making sure I have enough resources to fight Legion while I walked everywhere
Honestly I didnt find the fast travel option interesting. I think I exclusively used fast travel to go back to the Strip coz I'm directionally challenged and I cant find the entrance XD.
That is amazing! Great story
Yes! Fast traveling in the first half of any fallout game can basically kill the game for you. Late game, it's not as much of an impact imo
Kind of reminds me of a statement by the team at Rocksteady when they were talking about the size of Gotham for Arkham Knight. In response to the question of would the game have fast travel they said something along the lines of “We do, it’s called the Batmobile”.
which is hilarious since that is also the biggest complaint(outside the shoddy QC).
the even funnier thing is, they could just implement fast travel from high points in the map like top of buildings, or even open areas, and say batman just calls in the batwing, and uses that to FT instead. makes alot more sense and would be better implemented. kinda like how mgsv will have drop points in the map where you can call your chopper in to pick you up.
@@marcosdheleno im pretty confident the next game will refine that system and maybe even add the batwing. Also the batmobil itself was implemented pretty well, only problem being the forced tank/boss fights
It was faster to glide across the islands.
@@meisterproper8304 I’m some of the few that loved the bat mobile combat and interactions. However I disliked slade/deathstroke being limited to a simple tank battle. I mean it’s fine as a multistage battle like he at first fights you in a tank, then after scuffling about for a bit you win but is forced out of the car and have to fight 1-on-1. Anyways that is my only complaint of the batmobile, poor deathstroke, reduced to a tank battle.
@@meisterproper8304 Arkham Knight was the last Arkham game. Unless you just meant the next Batman game.
The GTA series has a great fast-travel system in that it can take you anywhere within moments, but the driving and flying mechanics are so much fun that you rarely use the fast-travel service. Some players may even be unaware of its very existence.
This is the real solution to fast travel woes. Most open world games that implement a fast travel system do so because traveling through their world is boring. The solution is to make traveling part of the game. GTA is a good example, also the Insomniac Spider-Man games, and Just Cause. World of Warcraft is also about to introduce a system with their new expansion pack called Dragon Riding that turns flight travel into a fun system to use, instead of something boring you have to do between quest content.
Yep. GTA San Andreas allows you to use airports and trains to travel to unlocked cities.
However, I think the main issue is that you never really have a reason to move to a city other than the one the missions currently are at.
I didn't even know they have a fast travel system, and I've played through GTA 4 and 5 completely. Never bothered doing a second story playthrough for either, because I've never been able to get invested in any story more than once, except for with We Happy Few
Its a taxi ride. You can hail a taxi and you can select where it will take you. From mission point, shops to random map location you have placed your marker.
And I love it, as it gives you options how you want to travel. You can just leave it to the driver to follow traffic laws and all. You can pay him extra to hurry up, that would make him break some laws. Or you can just teleport. It's a fun system, but at the same time, not as useful because driving yourself is just fun in GTA games.
The absolite zenith of world travel is Sunset Overdrive. It's so fun travelling around Sunset city that you'll forget about fast travelling existing.
The boots of blinding speed were another very useful item in Morrowind that I remember fondly! They increased my running speed dramatically, but at the cost of blindness! I played as an Orc, who are slightly resistant to magicka so I could still see just enough for them to be useful.
Haha I always used the super jump with the 1pt slowfall constant effect enchantment
Haha lol I'd just use the minimap 😂
I made a ring with resist magicka 100% for 1 second. It works great for the Boots of Blinding Speed. Well, pants in my playthrough.
Maybe they were better in Morrowind. I found those boots in Skyrim and it's literally useless in it, since the landscape is so mountainous and rocky with steep falls and you can't see anything.
@@speedymunchlax5733 theyre in skyrim? where?
Before Morrowind I played "Might and Magic 8", and there they used something similar to Vvardenfell silt strider network, but they took it one step further: there were stables in different towns, and you could pay for traveling, BUT the routes were scheduled for different days of the week. For example, the trip to a certain town could be accessible on Tuesday and Frideay, on Wednesday the stables were closed, on Thursday the caravan could bring you to another place. So, if you wanted to use fast and safe travel, sometimes you needed to pay for the inn for a day or two, and only then go to the stables, pay again and then travel to the needed destination. :) I think it's a bit too far in realism, but I really liked Morrowind system, where one had to rely on his ability to determine landmarks and directions.
The M&M games had one of the best fast travel systems in my opinion. It felt so natural and integrated in the world. It required a little bit of planning to get where you wanted as every location only allowed for a few destinations and at times you had to walk to get where you wanted instead of just fast traveling everywhere as in some modern RPGs.
You could always use "Town Portal" to skip this. Personally I find Mm6-8 have very interesting worlds (not samey) and are worth exploring via levitation or other means.
@@bitshiftbandit True! Although you still need to learn it first, and in order to do so you need to find tutors of the needed magic school, which is a task of its own without online guides (however, at that time I was lucky to have a paper magazine with complete guide to M&M8).
For their time, MM6-8 were amazing (though I hear the earlier games were also good, they were a bit before my time). I would love to see them remade with more development based on the lore.
MM1 and 2 had a way to travel from town to town, but only if you had been to both towns. These were extensions of the Wizardry style emulated 3d with full color (on supported systems)
MM3 was a transitional game leading to 4&5, and I believe all had the town to town travel. 4 and 5 also had world to world travel if you had both games.
MM6+ had the day of week fast travel option, plus high rank spells to take you directly to a town. These had an interesting semi-3D system (the world was 3d, but characters and monsters were 2d sprites. The system worked reasonable well on Non-3d video cards, but had occasional clipping problems in dungeons (resulting in dropping through the floor to a lower passage)
The lore was an interesting mix of fantasy (early to midgame) plus Science Fiction (late game)
As a kid I thought Morrowind's system was so cool, and I loved using the paper map the game came with.
So as a fellow kid of morrowind (my third video game ever played) what do you think of Starfields jump distance mechanic when going from star to star?
Me personally I think it’ll bring back the ramming into something unexpected on a journey somewhere else that morrowind did flawlessly for me. Also I believe it’ll bring back some of the personal planning of journeys as well. (Idk the extent yet but I think it’ll bring back the baseline)
I almost forgot the map lol. I wore that thing out
bro that map was so important, I probably could not have reached balmora without it as a kid
Over time the poster map that came with my version of Morrowind was riddled with penciled in notes and landmarks.
I used that map so much that I laminated it. Used wet erase markers on it and still have it today
One of my favorite fast travel systems comes from Hollow Knight. First being that riding a stag is so fucking cool and adorable in the setting. The fact that there is lore with each station unlocked and that the stag itself shares its memory of each and has its own personality. At the base of stag stations you still must know the entrance point to each on the portions of the map that have one requiring you to remember roads/ routes. Outside of the stag stations the gated elevators and crystal leap provide immersive fast movement within the game.
There was also the tram on the very bottom of the map that provided transportation. I liked Hollow Knight's since it not only provided transportation but it also was a place of refuge from the chaos. It was a mixture of fast travel and a save spot.
@@Mr___f I totally forgot about the tram stations!! Yeah they were well implemented into the game. Everything felt like it belonged and provided its own unique atmosphere.
While I agree with everything you said, I was still often frustrated with the inconvenient placement of fast travel locations.
I was also going to comment Hollow Knight. Probably my biggest issue with the modern fast travel systems is the lack of immersion in being able to teleport instantly (as mentioned in the video), and the stag is such a perfect counterexample. Spaced out enough that you have to learn the map well (but not so much that it’s annoying to find one), tied perfectly to the in-game world & lore, no weird UI interruptions in gameplay. I’d also throw in the tram system, which fits all the same descriptions. The dream gate is great too. By end game you have several options when traveling around, all of which are cool and fit the vibe of the world. Masterpiece
@@parrishowns1 Couldn't have said it better myself. Hollow Knight is a gem
I like fast travel. But I think alternatives should always exist, because options are a beautiful thing. If I don't have time, or am making a 2nd (or 263rd) playthrough of a game like Skyrim 10 + years on, I don't really want to travel the same roads 6000 times.
BUT, having horses, or carts that carry you, trains whatever depending on the game, is great for immersion.
Like RDR2's horses are fast af
Personally, the system I dream of seeing in a game is one where you only gain a map by actually buying one, and that the maps you can buy can be flawed. The fast travel system is then limited to plotting routes on your map and the fast travel stops when you reach a point where the map you bought is inaccurate or has insufficient details. This allows a natural progression of fast travel as you earn more money and gain status in the world and thus access to more detailed maps.
@@agilemind6241
As a person with knowledge of game programing, that seems like a very hard system to implement.
@@aldiascholarofthefirstsin1051 Could you elaborate? If maps are the only way to interact with the fast travel and unexplored areas of the map are by default uninteractable, fast travel to those areas wouldn't be possible. Wouldn't take any extra dev effort since they are via proxy regulated by the map. Lot of game have had similar system, ex: elden ring
@@Ak-yw9kf
You misunderstood his explanation, he is not saying that he wants a map with pieces missing, he wants the game to have an inaccurate map, with fast travel stops that are based on routes not being normally reachable, to make a map that determines such a thing automatically would require some deep programing.
i really like the part of rdr2's fast travel where you see the landscapes you pass through when you're fast traveling. i also like the part of fallout 1 where random encounters can occur between destinations. and, as you noted, the subway system of morrowind is great too. i think you could incorporate all three of these elements and get a great system. and it wouldn't be very hard. maybe add waypoints to the strider/boat network for new players though.
RDR2's is just a fancy loading screen showing distinct places on the way as the place you're going to is loading. I still like it. Once you play over a couple hundred hours into a game, you don't want to travel everywhere every time, especially with RDR2. I would like to enjoy a game a lot more by fast traveling than spending half of it just getting to where I want to be. Only at the beginning where world exploration matters is when fast travel should be limited. It does in Bethesda games anyway because you can only fast travel to places you've been.
And for the most part the fast travel is integrated into the game somewhat, via train or coach. So it feels like it makes sense. (Minus Arthur's map)
Red dead fast travel is also good cause you can't just teleport where ever you want whenever you want
Actually seeing part of the journey does seem very appealing...
One of my favourite things to do was set a waypoint, put cinematic mode on and let your horse automatically go there.
Not to mention that with the amazing spell modification system you can create a jump spell that lets you literally leap from town to town. I've never seen any other game with such creative options and potential when it comes to travel via your own spell craft.
Noita is the only game I've seen that comes close, I think. The parallel world traveling wand build especially seems to have been made by actual wizards!
The main issue I have with the fast travel system is you don't actually experience the journey like with skyrim if you walk down the road you might be forced to fight bandits or wolves or you might find a deserted camp that gives you a quest to find out what happened those things are some of the most fun and imersive things I've experienced in any game
I just imagine that it's an uneventful journey when your character is fast traveling
You're not forced to use fast travel. If you enjoy the game without it then just ignore it. Others do like it so let them have their fun too.
This is why I like the WoW original fast travel system where you fly over the map on a fast mount on a fixed route. It shows off the world they built and you can see other players battling on the ground which really helps with immersion, and it's still quite fast.
Well, you experience this the first time you get there, since you actually need to find the location to unlock the fast travel
There's a fallout mod that tries to get around this by adding a chance that every time you fast travel, you get stopped enroute by a random event that can occur any place on the map between where you are and where you're going.
I understand why you didn't mention the Propylon system as it wasn't really implemented well I'm the base game. But with the Propylon Index expansion that Bethesda released, the Stronghold system is reworked and become yet another worthwhile network. I actually use the Strongholds quite a bit. Seeing as they're further out in the wilderness, they tend to get you even closer to any caves or ruins you might need to get to
Morrowind could be improved upon in some ways, you learn some travel connections after playing long enough but having an in game glossary for the various connections would have helped greatly.
I placed my mark anchor in my home in Hlormaren and made a recipe card with a diagram of the Propylon network and the intervention destinations from each. It even had the chained sequences from Telasero: you can cast divine intervention to go to Ebonheart and then Almsivi to Vivec, or you can use Almsivi to go to Molag Mar and then divine to Wolverine Hall.
I was wondering what's that one, looking at the map.
@@mmorkinism it's a rather tedious lategame travel option.
Basically, ancient Vvardenfel was protected by a chain of fortresses around the island. Those are now in disrepair and inhabited by smugglers, bandits and cultists. You can use a gateway to an adjacent fortress if you have the correct key but those keys are usually hard to get hold of. The reason I called it a late game option is that some of the keys are protected by very powerful dungeon bosses.
@@naphackDT
I feel the greatest problem is how randomly located some of the indices are.
With the DLC, you get a kinda clunky questline where what's-his-face in Caldera just gives you the location of all of the indices are.
A potentially better system would be to have maps of old Resdayn in books or similar, which would include the locations of the ancient fortresses on them, and to have the indices for each fortress relatively close to that fortress.
I like the adjacency rule though, as more limits to the fast travel system seem better.
Your grocery store analogy really makes me appreciate European urban planning. In Europe, life is far more similar to a modern fast travel system thanks to essential services being in walking distance and public transport being simple and reliable. While travelling in Europe is not quite as simple as pointing at a map, it's a close as you're going to get!
yeah, in anything at least as big as a town pretty much everyone lives minutes walking distance from a small store.
You're Dutch arent you?
@@MrDingez not only Dutch have decent public transport and not only in Dutch cities there are plenty of small grocery stores nearby.
It's not a uniquely European thing. Anywhere besides North America and UAE, this is the case
@@singularityraptor4022 New Zealand and Australia uses the crappy American system
To my knowledge the best iteration on fast travel was done on *Kingdom Come: Deliverance*
In KCD you could only fast travel to very specific points of settlements, or towns. But here's the catch.
First, you had to be on a proper road, or near one. If you were in the middle of the woods, it would just be rejected until you at least reached a beaten path.
Secondly, if you DID fast travel, you weren't just going to "teleport" from point A to point B. Your character was going to traverse a specific path and take the main roads to get there, and he would take time to get there, so if you were in a hurry, it could bite you in the ass.
Finally (and this is the best part), when travelling you risk getting a random event, from weird encounters, to traders, to ambushes with either bandits or raiders.
You had a lot skills and perks to better engage and spot or sense what was happening, but sometimes you could get a guy selling you a treasure map, or whom you could kill and rob for nice loot, or you would be the target of a robbery.
This system was actually in Fallout 1 and 2, KCD just "rediscovered" it, but I agree. This system is way better, especially due to random encounters.
@@XzaroX Oh yeah, I didn't play either of the first Fallouts, but I recall that there was a similar method of fast travel.
What were the main differences with KCD's fast travel, if you don't mind me asking? :)
@@KRIMZONMEKANISM The main difference is that in Fallout 1 and 2 the fast travel was "Mandatory". There was no continuous world, only many smaller levels. That being said, you still moved on the map and there was always a chance for a random encounter. Many of those encounters are quite memorable and whacky.
Additionally, there was no need to eat food, so that part was irrelevant, but time still passed and was more significant. KCD does have some time-limited quest, but in Fallout 1, the main quest was limited to 150 days. There is a story reason for it, so it makes sense. In many games the story may say that something is urgent, but the gameplay does not reflect that. Well in Fallout 1 it does. You really are in a hurry. If you run out, the game is over. You do get some nice time-related game over cutscenes though.
There is a way to extend that time a bit via some quests that also make sense story-wise. As a result you may want to plan your game a bit, as going back and forth willy-nilly will end up wasting that precious time.
@@XzaroX Ah, I see.
I didn't know the fast travel was mandatory, but I do recall the game being on a timer, and I did know that there were some neat interactions with the story being that you want to retrieve a water ship for your own vault. :)
yess this
When I was playing Skyrim I naturally found myself avoiding the fast travel because I felt so immersed in the world. After having played the game for hundreds of hours I had never fast traveled once and I enjoyed every minute of my adventures on foot. And trying to get Lydia home safely to boot. :)
Same. Although, after a bit, I made use of the wagon occasionally. And installed some mods that made it possible to fast travel from Dragon's Reach down to the front gate of Whiterun and to the Whiterun stables just to skip Nazeem asking me if I get to the Cloud District.
On the consoles I have to fast travel because of silly invisible walls and the complete lack of paths on the map but on pc I have a mod to show the paths on the map and I can plan my route
But this is why Skyrim's system is fine, you don't HAVE to use the Fast Travel anywhere. In fact it's brilliant for players to implement all kinds of self imposed challenges.
@@mattandrews2594 Exactly. Just because you have a fast travel system doesn’t mean you have to use it. There have been times when I’ve had to go to a location I had unlocked and I just decided “you know what, I’m gonna walk.” The same thing is true in every open world game I’ve played with fast travel.
@@mattandrews2594
Every mechanic in a game is meant to be used, you are just torturing yourself.
I like to play Skyrim without fast travels and even without the map, to find myself I mostly use the environment, the direction boards and the compass, it's a really fun way to play
you should try the mod that changes the map with a 2d version like the oblivion one, it feels ten times more immersing and 'adventurous'
I had a lot of fun doing the same thing. It was relaxing to just ride around and familiarize myself with every location
I played Oblivion and Skyrim without fast traveling and it made it really immersive.
Except doing quests
Teleportation is somewhat passion of mine in games. Most notably in World of Warcraft where I played mage and spent most of my time collecting items that could teleport me somewhere. Finding the optimal route, combining certain items or just using something that would send me to random place I could explore again was so much fun.
The best testbed for this theory I found is in the Enderal standalone mod for skyrim. There you cannot fast travel either and have to use a combination of teleportation spells and riding Wyvern taxis, so very morrowind inspired. It worked surprisingly well and made the world feel bigger and more believable somehow
Just finished Enderal, and indeed the travel system was simplistic yet very well implemented.
or just yknow, running in a straight line to wherever the quest arrow points.
I walked all the way between Markath and Riften more than once and even then was astonished to learn that fast travel wasn't simply using carriages which I found I could do much later, but something that made even carriages obsolete.
At least I experienced the magic of climbing that mountain I could see and being genuinely glad for it, no loading, no skipping a single step of it.
I think this is one reason why I really liked some aspects of Death Stranding. Moving through the world felt very meaningful, as you could not bring stuff with you when you fast travelled. It meant that I was queueing up deliveries that all went to the same place so that I could optimize my travel time. I think that gave a really good feeling of immersion to the game.
Meanwhile me setting up a continental wide zipline and road system. Granted you had to work for those which I enjoyed a lot. Taking extra ziplines made the jorney harder but made getring back a lot easier
That game was interesting, a lot of cool concepts. i finished it but it was too much of a walking sim for me to get totally immersed into it.
True but I feel like DS took it too far, to the extent of the gameplay just being cumbersome and tedious. It's one of the games I much rather watch someone else play than play myself
Similar in Kingdom Come on hardcore, no FT so I'd do multiple quests over a span of time, doing parts I can while I'm in the right area. It made the immersion skyrocket.
@@Jrock420blam so funny because I think the amount of depth that went into traversal is why I was hooked the whole time. Its one of the few AAA games that tries to put as much depth into its movement as most games do their combat.
It really is a super divisive game like that.
I actually did a video on the different types of fast travel in Morrowind: ua-cam.com/video/IBB6NBrKCkQ/v-deo.html
Btw, at 5:00 when you say "crossing it is out of the question": you can actually find Silt Strider corpses in the Ashlands above Red Mountain.
So, lore-wise they probably did try to use them, but it didn't work out. xD
There's a couple of cool spots, with the big shells. There's beautiful fan art of Siltstriders being ridden towards Red Mountain, I bet the artist(s) were at least partly inspired by that area. Learning enough about the game world to confidently roam that place is like eating sweet in-game, and end-game, candy. And I''m not talking about Cliffracers, which are only a problem for new players, we're talkin' Golden Saints, Daedroths, and Dremoras too, and above lvl 20, Dremora Lords, these bad boys nearly always have Daedric weaponry, worth 20,000-60,000 gold.
Of course no merchant has that kind of money, but now you can afford to plunk down 30,000 gold on a sweet enchant, like a Telvanni Guard Helm with constant Invisible, and then get that money right back by selling a Daedric Dai-Katana to them. (You'll get more, don't even sweat it, they're too heavy anyway.) But make sure you buy/sell something from/to them BEFORE you buy the enchantment, or your enchanting fee gold will vanish from the world forever.
I really loved how the fast travel system worked in dark souls. You weren't able to fast travel without completing the majority of the game. It was a late game reward. By that time you had already ran all over the map a dozen time. At that point, you can fast travel, but you are aware of the scale of the map.
I recall a mod for skyrim that made fast travel better. Made time go by now realistically. Also had a chance to load you in somewhere randomly along the way attacked by bandits or something. As if you were just riding along in the wagon and got attacked.
in oblivion this was the case, you were never sure to arrive safe, especially if you fast travel through dangerous places
Am I the only one who really enjoyed the Vertibird fast travel in Fallout 4? It made sense within the world, you had limited uses before you had to re-up on Flares, and the door gun was an interesting mechanic. I would regularly find myself making a flight plan over a behemoth or raider settlement so I could rain fire down on them from relative safety, thinning the numbers before I go in
Was only fast travel for survival. Was awesome
But why are there still skeletons wearing pre war clothing scattered everywhere across places people have inhabited for 100s of years since the nukes fell?
@@willisverynice that is probably the most relevant thing to the comment ever
@@willisverynice Because the game takes place right before Halloween, and the people of the wasteland have a morbid sense of holiday decor.
And they're too lazy to take their decorations down before Christmas.
@@Descriptor413 now that’s what I call some Bethesda level immersion.
I think that WoW also has a great fast travel option, the game has a few ways to travel from A to B, when traveling from one world to another you usually are limited to portals but traveling inside the continents you can use the flying options that each faction has, the flying mounts that you pay have a pre determined route that was chosen by the developers so this way, you fly in a relatively fast speed but also apreciate the scenario bcs of the route chosen, and also flying from different points can result in different routes, wich is great!
Agreed, I love WoW’s system. It requires planning through long cool-downs on your hearthstone, knowing where different portals are located, and there are plenty of immersive travel options like boats/zeppelins and gold+time-sink flight paths.
Yes 100% I love the fast travel flights and hearthstones. Should definitely be a thing in ElderScrolls 6.
It has been great up to WotLK (before patch introducing Dungeon and Raid finder). That move makes everyone to teleports into dungeons from city, to fast level up and make game world empty and abandoned. Also it destroys group quests, world PvP etc.
SWTOR has a similar system with pre defined routes that you can enjoy the scenery, see other players fighting and stuff. I love that, it brings a lot more life to the game and keeps you immersed.
@@PaulinaStopa that still required multiple people to be at the meeting stone to work though, no?
Technically… Morrowind is the only main entry Elder Scrolls game that doesn’t have point to point fast travel. It’s predecessors, Arena and Daggerfall, had full fast travel…. But probably because a significant amount of those game worlds were procedurally generated.
I have no doubt in my mind the movement away from this type of fast travel was done in favour of simplifying and streamlining the experience for casual newcomers to the franchise. Morrowind is great, and it’s dialogue based directions are extremely clever, but it isn’t exactly accommodating to new casual players, who might spend an eternity searching for an obscure cave in a mountain region. I like to think of it like this… Daggerfall would be to first time Morrowind players what Morrowind would be to a first time Oblivion players.
The first 3 games in this franchise are full on role playing games, and the balancing act of combat and fast travel befit a player anticipating such things. People rant about not being able to hit any monsters in Morrowind, but they neglect to notice they designed a character who favoured axes and spears… not the short blade skill necessary to use the very weapon the game first gives you (a dagger in a table).
When I first played this game I was all of 8 years old and I had no issues, I don't think you can get much more "casual newcomer" than a 3rd grader, other than maybe my kindergartener sister (whose reading skills were greatly enhanced by the text-based dialogue system! Hooked On Phonics eat your heart out). I shudder to think how many adults can't handle following directions as well as a 5-year-old... How do they find their cars in parking lots?
@@titaniumvulpes That's a rather condescending take. You're just wired to think in a way that makes understanding the fast travel system easier. Not everyone's brain works that way. Some people are abstract thinkers, others are logical. Some people need a visual to fully understand something while others can mentally map it out in their head. Some people can't even visualize objects or sounds in their head while others get unique sensations just from seeing specific shapes.
All this to say, I think that this system is certainly 1 good way of doing things. But it's not the only way. The watered down version we have now is certainly NOT an improvement, but it's understandable when you care more about appealing to a wider base to get money than making a tightly designed experience that challenges the player. Personally I've always had trouble with the fast travel system in Morrowind, I have trouble remembering the exact names of places, their location and distance from each other and waste gobs of money getting turned around constantly. My brain just ain't built that way. Doesn't make me stupid or lesser, just means I'm not as good at navigation as other people might be. Same could be said of RPG characters, it's why they have stats after all. You can't be good at everything.
@@titaniumvulpes I'm inclined to agree. I first played Morrowind when I was maybe 10 years old - and found the entire thing, including navigation, terribly confusing, obscure and weird and didn't get very far.
BUT, the general impression with the game stuck so I got back to it a couple years later and then it really clicked. Everytime a network falls into place, you realize you can have a shortcut where two transport nodes meet or just figuring out how ridiculously overpowered enchanting and alchemy are is one of these wonderfully gratifying aha! moments.
And I don't think I'd be as fond of the game as I am if I would have been accommodated the first time instead of failing and ultimately finding my way into the game by myself.
... which is probably the same reason I like Dark Souls including successors and offspring.
@Titanium Vulpes I think we find our cars better than you guys actually lol. For me anyways I have had no trouble finding my car in even large parking lots so far haha
But main point: Getting directions requires a brain connection that people like me don't naturally use. As I was born in 2000, directions were given by my parents, then Garmin, then Google maps. Nowhere did I need to remember directions like "follow the river, cross the second bridge and take a right at the first signpost." It just never came up.
Until Morrowind. As I played it the first time a year ago I can tell you that it only takes your brain a day or three, in a setting where you're expected to remember those directions, for your brain to understand what it needs to do. Even though my brain figured it out, because I first encountered and fell in love with open worlds that have fast travel, I just can't enjoy walking in Morrowind, though I love everything else about the game (that doesn't prevent me from playing it though haha).
Fortunately for me on my first playthrough, on my first fighter's guild mission fighting an actual npc, I got the dark brotherhood called upon me. So after a struggle I obtained nice armor and, after a couple of dark brotherhood sets I sold, I had funds to fast travel :D
I remember playing arena for the first time (this year; big Skyrim fan) and trying to get from one city to another (they were very close in the map) on foot. I don't know how much time I wasted on that but I was so disappointed. For those who don't know, the wilderness in Arena is (almost) randomly generated, and you actually can't reach other cities (the manual states that it would take you 10-12 real hours, but it's actually impossible). The only places of interest in the wilderness are random dungeons and inns, but they're not worth it.
Basically, Arena was actually quite small when it came to content and hand-crafted places, but it was meant to _feel_ big. And the distance/travel time was very prominent when fast-traveling (if only for show).
But I liked the in-town directions. You would ask "Where is the dancing dagger?" and the answer would be something like "Idk, go east for a while and ask again" or "That's a bit northeast of here". Also the fact that when you were too close to the building they just gave up and inscribed the place in your map (sorry to that lady who had to put up with me asking her about a store that was literally behind me).
For my second playthrough I played an altmer bard who lived in the town of Sea Keep and had nothing to do with the main quest. After some hours of running errands to and from every named building in town I knew my way around that place better than I do my actual neighborhood, it was fun.
I played Morrowind and both it's expansions when I was around 10-12 years old. I remember using the mages guild teleports and especially the silt striders quite often. The amazing thing about your video: I NEVER noticed there was a ship network too xD whenever I was doing quests in the east and northern part of the land I walked/swam for hours, it didn't even come to my mind to talk with the NPCs standing on the boats. Child me was stupid, but being stupid helped to master athletics and acrobatics in no time haha
...not to mention, learning how to exploit the Enchant Item ingame mechanic meant that U could craft some damn useful magic artifacts of your own, such as
- The Ring of Light Stepping (Exquisite Ring, Constant Effect: Water Walking) -- wear this item to walk on water indefinitely, then simply take off the ring before swimming. Never fear the Slaughterfish again!
- Shoes of Gentle Falling (Exquisite Shoes, Constant Effect: Slowfall +1) -- wear these shoes & you'll never take fall damage, even when jumping off of tall buildings or mountains!
- Amulet of Skywalking (Exquisite Amulet, Constant Effect: Levitation +1) -- Why deal w/ the time limits imposed by levitation spells & Cast On Use enchanted items? Fashion & use this amulet instead, & make gravity your bitch!
- Soul Taker Blade (Daedric Dagger, Cast On Strike: Soul Trap, Damage Health -1) -- An upgraded version of the Soul Stealer, this weapon has greater durability & deals more damage. Combining this w/ the reusable Azura's Star is optional but *highly* recommended!
Of course, this only scratches the surface of what's possible by making full use of the magic systems available in Morrowind; combining the Enchant system w/ the Alchemy system easily had the potential to elevate your Player Character to God-Tier levels of power long before taking on the endgame boss (Dagoth Ur) & his 6th House minions....
I bet you had a deep hatred of Cliff Racers by the end of that lot!
How did you get around in vivec without the boats between cantons OMG?!
@@zenkim6709 The enchant and spellcrafting systems in Morrowing were epic
@@GerSanRiv I don't remember having trouble there o.O just ran and jumped like a crazy person and it somehow worked. It just worked
I appreciate you referencing Gothic visually if not by name. The reason it's version of fast travel works is not just the fact it's written into the magic system (aka more immersive than dealing with a separate menu) but first and foremost the perfect timing of when it's delivered in one's playthrough: right around the point when you've already explored most of the main roads on foot and would start to get bored with them. This way preserves all the joy of exploration but releases the player from tedious retracing later in the game
I think this is a very important point, I fully agree with. Fast travel should cut in, when travelling starts getting boring. I'd rather make a tripe two - three times with different, unexpected, encounters than zip through the game, but when travelling gets stale, I want some literal shortcuts.
Gothic (and Gothic 2) also did have fast travel, but it was with use of teleport runes (and portals in Night of Raven). It wasn't early game though (well it was introduced in perfect moment - when you were strong enough that traveling wasn't a challange anymore and you saw most of overworld anyway).
EDIT:
Also,, the more I learn about Morrowind, the more I am willing to give it a chance (having played Bethesda's Fallout 3 and watching few of my friends play Skyrim... I really didn't want to play any Bethesda-made RPG).
try it! its my favourite game of all time
I agree. After playing Gothic, Gothic 2 and Risen Iam somewhat turned off by Fallout 3, 4, Oblivion and Skyrim.
Theres more love in each game than in all the Bethesda games I enumerated. Of course theres also love in them too. But I feel like that the priorities where set wrong.
They should have invested more time in fixing the obvious bugs than designing execution scenes.
Morrowind is old as shit and it has its issues, but it did so many things SO WELL! It really sells you on this absolutely alien world. Dunmer culture is unlike anything else.
The only thing keeping me away from playing it more often is all the jank, especially the combat system.
It took Skyrim modding community, the largest modding community besides Minecraft, 10 years to finally fix MOST™ of the jank and actually make things like combat fun.
Morrowind is even more janky and has a much smaller modding community with like 12 new mods on Nexus in the last week...
Play it all the way through at least once and definitely try to explore as much as you can. There is always something new and interesting to be found.
yes i agree 100%, Dark Souls 1 was pretty good also
@@edim108 its smaller but if you dig into openmw its very flexible and theres been a lot more mods than we've seen in years
I think another thing that people never talk about when discussing fast travel is how the actual game should be built around it and built around distance. I limited fast travel system is fine but if the game is constantly expecting for you to go pinging around the map doing short objectives then it feels very tedious. By the end of my time with Morrowind I was just using a spell that let me jump so far that I could clear mountains which made travelling a joke. I did this because I was enjoying the story of the game but was sick of one NPC in one town telling me to go speak breifly with an NCP in another town just to then be sent back, especially the story mission where you need to get all of the houses and ashlander tribes to accept you as the Nerevarine. That mission is just walking back and forth between places and talking to people.
Games need to give a sense of scale by making each region of the game world slightly seperated from each other in terms of missions so that when you are sent to region A you get to stay there for a while doing quests in a more local area and it feels more significant when you are eventually need to move to region B even if region B isn't actually that far away. This would make major quests where you do need to travel back and forth around the work feel more meaningful because you are usually not required to go as far.
A good example of why games need to be built around there systems is when a game shoehorns in a hunger system. Since most games have very short day and night cycles you character is constantly getting hungry and keeping up with the hunger system feels like a chore. If the game hasn't taken into account how long objectives or quests in the game are going to take and how often the character will need to eat then it begins to feel less realistic because nobody in real like is stopping mid activity to eat five wheels of cheese, in real life we built our schedules around our need to eat and therefore eat in a few set meals. Travel should be considered in the same way. A game in which travel is important should take travel into account when planning out quest lines and other mechanics so that travelling actually feels like a part of the gameplay and not just something you are forced to do to get from one story beat to another.
Annoying useless hunger system *cough cough* Minecraft
people really seem to forget about the time wasting aspect. One quest that comes to mind, is one of the first ones in New Vegas. Nipton, and telling that ranger station what the Legion have done. You're really expecting a player to walk back and forth between these two areas because they told me to? no fam, i'm teleporting.
Same as when you need to get the Khans to work with Caesars legion. There's NO travel in Fallout outside of fast travel. Like fuck am I going to walk from one end of the map and back again after finding the Khans.
As I write this the more I think Fallout is never intended as a travel game because SO many quests are "go to this place over HERE, miles and miles away and then come back and MAYBE you will have to return again"
The thing is by the game is designed so that by the time you make the hortator mission and have to dart around the map you have access to all the jumpy spell and speed potions that make travelling a breeze (and make you feel like a badass). But the first few times you venture into ashlands for the Urshilaku quest it makes it feel like an actual adventure, where you need to prepare for the long march outside of civilization
@@thewhitefalcon8539 If you think the hunger system in Minecraft is the best example of an annoying and useless system you have ADHD worse than I do.
Either that or you just wish you could tank any enemy with a hotbar full of steaks again, which is about the only way you could make Minecraft combat MORE mindless and boring.
This so much.
People always talk about the highs of planning out journeys to fulfill lots of quests at once, but ignore the lows of those times when you can't do that and you really do just have to journey halfway across the game world and back because you're tired of waiting to finish that one quest and nothing else is sending you over there.
Plus in most of these games, not fast traveling isn't actually more interesting. Most games don't let you fast travel the first time you find something, it's just about skipping the part where you repeat the same steps you've already taken before where the content will never be different at all.
Another thing that makes Morrowind's fast-travel system so interesting is how it mirrors the politics of the main factions, and how it makes quests more challenging by the simple fact that you must sometimes travel outside the main fast travel routes.
The south-west is ruled by the business oriented and open Hlaalu faction. The area is safe, well populated, and has multiple interconnected systems that makes it easy and fast to travel anywhere you want.
The north-west is ruled by the traditionalist Redoran faction. The area is more sparsely populated and are multiple stops away from the larger towns where you will spend most of your time (such as the capital Vivec). This makes everything feel a bit more distant and isolated.
To the east you have the isolationist Telvanni faction. All its faction towns are connected by fast-travel routes, but the only way to get there directly from the other main faction towns is through the mages guild. Anything else will require a long trip by boat.
And finally, later in the game your quests will start taking you further in towards the hostile center of the map where fast-travel is limited. Each trip must be planned out in advance and there are physical obstacles that you must find ways around. It isn't the danger that sets the central areas apart, it is how challenging and time consuming it is to even get there.
You didn't mention the propylon tele-fort-ers, although they were on the map While difficult to start using, they are one of the best methods for fast travel that is not limited to towns. You also failed to mention levitate and fortify speed, which allows you to skip mountains and travel as the bird flies. Icarian flight super jumping was limited, if very useful. Morrowind had more options to travel across the map at speed that felt good than a lot of games. Loved it.
Propylons were unpractical. You have to find a key for it and you get from specific old khimer fort to another specific old khimer fort both of which are in the middle of nowhere and full of enemies. I played Morrowind for years back days and I never used those propylons.
Dragon’s Dogma had an interesting fast travel mechanics, you had to put a beacon to fast travel and it was really expensive. It really gave you a sense of “travelling” you had to plan ahead and be careful of the night. I think it was immersive
I loved that fast travel, there was only 4 or 5 fast travel stones built into the world and then you could spend a small fortune on a beacon that you can put down anywhere in the overworld. Ofcourse, then you have to buy fast travel stones just to teleport to said beacons and those stones are used up per teleport.
@@edwinfrerichs8674 you can actually pick up those 4 to 5 portcrystals and move them as you please
@@whitewolf262 I was meaning the the three(had to Google it) at Pawn guild, Cassarid, and Bitterblack Isles, those three are permanent port crystals.
One of my favourite games ever.
@@henrikaugustsson4041 it had so many flaws but at the same time the ambience and the gameplay was so peculiarly amazing 🤩
Morrowind fast travel reminds me of the STALKER fast travel system. It has "guides" in safe bases that take you to different bases for an (expensive) price, new players cant afford the guide to travel yet. This also means that new players have to explore the starting regions first and keeps them from higher dangerous areas. However, as missions go to further places and you start having to backtrack more they become great ways to travel.
Daggerfall also is a good example of fastravel done well. Similar to Skyrim fastravel, but takes a little research of where a town is and locating it, calculating distance, price, time, safety, mode of transportation, and makes you actually figure out how much time you have to do said quest and return before your time to complete it is out. I love that level of realistic detail and immersion in older games. I think they had the same fast travel system in Arena, too, but I haven't properly played Arena yet, only Daggerfall and the other subsequent games in the elder scrolls series.
Honestly my favorite game of late has been Kingdom Come Deliverance which doesn't really have fast travel. Instead the game features auto travel which takes about just as long as doing it yourself, and you have to stay present as there are random events during the auto travel. It makes me want to travel places manually more as it's generally faster, and I'm already prepared for a battle if needed.
Agree!
It also makes you wary of where and when you travel. At night or in the middle of a forest, an ambush could be deadly.
yeah assassins creed odyssey had auto travel for your horse and I really liked it. I’d love more games to implement things like that
Agreed, but I think you're underestimating how quick the fast/auto travel in KCD is. It's still definitely much faster than going somewhere naturally, except the really short, open distances that you can just sprint across on your horse.
@GladWrap True but I’m pretty sure it usually takes more in-game time to auto-travel, and it seems like it takes more food and energy. I feel like it’s they’ve pulled off a really healthy balance between making important decisions but not having always manually travel everywhere
This might just be the best video I've seen on this topic. Thank you. Eye opening.
I really liked Morrowind's system. I also liked the old school Fallout systems where you "travel by map". It's fast, but you see yourself moving on the map and can have random encounters. It's fast, but it still cuts into your supplies and time sensitive quests.
Kingdom come deliverance actually had a great system. It follows you on the map and shows you how the travel affects you. Riding a horse makes it faster. You have random encounters that stop you as well. I quite enjoyed it.
big agree. kingdom come has the best fast travel system ive interacted with
Came here to sing the praises of KC:D
Another thing that I like about Morrowind, and that is related to travel, is the lack of quest markers. You actually have to figure out where to go yourself by talking to people or reading signs. That plays very well into the "travel planning" you described.
Great video! I'd recommend that you maybe add some music as otherwise we can always here some background noise from the microphone whenever you talk.
I was fine with Morrowind's fast travel system and having to follow directions to places. The issue was just that a number of times the directions weren't very good or they were poorly recorded in the journals if they were recorded at all, making it a feat just to find the place sometimes.
exactly like when you ask for a location irl xD
I liked the fast travel system in Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor, in the game you have to reach a tower (one of five or six on the specific map you're on) activate the tower then you can fast travel to it whenever you want. The reason I like it however is that when you fast travel time still progresses, in a game where the orc captains are constantly moving and doing things, this makes you debate whether or not it pays to fast travel or if it would be better to go on foot. The captains also hold events that are only available for a time.
I love the RDR 2's approaches. Players could choose between fast travel and auto-travel. The fast travel itself for me still could give us the sense of distance by showing cinematic cutscenes on the route.
My favourite part about RDR2 fast travel is how little i want to do it. The world is so nice and theres just so much to see and do, i only FT if im really short on time.
@@capitanorotta9060 yeah I haven't fast traveled once because just riding around in the open world is fun, and it usually doesn't take more than a few minutes to ride wherever you're going anyway
I have to admit that you've raise some extremely valid points. Of course the counterpoint is time. The time I have to travel sometimes in the game impacts the real life world that I am in while I play the game and it takes too long to do something. So by fast travel I save real world time IRL time, and sometimes this is extremely important to me because as a nurse I work from waking up at 5:30 in the morning to getting back through the doors at the end of the day at 8 o'clock at night. Not complaining just stating. So I want to make it where I can get to the point where I can do something in the game to progress the game, so the modern fast travel is handy but I would like to have this alternative where you have to use the multiple methodologies to get from one place to another that would be very interesting. I would like to see that implemented in Skyrim six I think it is right? What the new one would be called.
The Elder Scrolls 6
I'd go back and play Oblivion, it's phenomenal. Skyrim's more famous but I'd argue it's better in a lot of ways
@Steven Wilgus
Absolutely my point, too! Compared to 10, 20 years ago, I don't have the same as before. The kids, the partner, the work and the other stuff you have to care.
Also the aspect of immersion isn't destroyed for me, as I am used to take out my smart phone and use MAPS - can't remember when I had to ask a stranger for finding my destination.
Yeah I find the fast travel system proposed here as the same experience just more annoying.
I forgot where it was said but I read an idea that gameplay doesn't improve with restrictions but rather by rewarding the action you want the person take.
If I have to walk to the same place over and over again to fast skip to another location then it doesn't add anything to the experience except consuming time and forcing me to watch the same station over and over again.
If in the other hand I would be rewarded by walking all the way, I had the full immersion plus the motivation that makes the way feel like part of the reason I'm playing.
Of course this would be rather difficult to implement. For me the best solution to this so far has been gothic, a German game where you find teleportation runes that bring you to defined locations but you can use them from everywhere.
It didn't feel like skipping as they only allow you to return, or skip between important places exclusively (and only if you have the specific rune).
It's difficult to describe because in paper it looks very similar to the above system but it the game it feels very different. Much more immersive and natural.
Yeah this video misses the point. Developers are making games accessible to people. Morrowind is notorious for being somewhat inaccessible to players who aren’t willing to keep a journal, draw their own maps and such. I thought games like AC Odyssey do a great job of offering a choice. You can play with ease-of-use features or you can play in a bit more of an immersive way.
My adult philosophy on fast travel in these old games is that my spare time is too short. In Skyrim I walk to the first carriage point and make my grand tour to all the main cities before I set out on foot. Waypoints, done. In Witcher 3 I walk and swim from Velen to Oxenfurt then up to Novigrad where the only frigging bank exists. Waypoints, done. Then I explore the world at my leisure. Options to play the way you want are great.
I think Fallout 1 & 2 (and Arcanum, to some extent) had pretty good system.
It gives you sense of distance, but isn't major pain in the a$$.
It allows You to have some encounters between locations.
And, unless You travel in area with high random encounter density, it was FAST, without being instant teleportation.
Yeah, I was thinking about Arcanum as well, that system was pretty good
Are they even "fast travel" systems? Fast travel is basically skipping travel. Those games had an overworld you regular-travelled through with its own rules and hub locations where interesting things happen in, be it because they're a city or a bespoke dungeon. I think that basically makes this just travel in games which are not actually open world, which honestly might be what the real answer to this problem was all along.
It's literally not fast travel in F1&2, mate.
The caravan system in Fallout 1 & 2 is kind of like fast travel, but with a sense of peril out there in the wasteland. And you still have to learn which places have caravans going where
Pretty silly to call it fast travel when it's literally the only method of traveling from setpiece to setpiece.
Enderal (Skyrim mod overhaul) has a nice fast travel system, it's got teleport scrolls which are explained in-game and they repurposed Skyrim's dragon models to be these sort of flying creatures that can take you to various waypoints, and then there's the mark and return spells as well
I'm a fan of the Ballad of Gales from LoZ: Wind Waker. It has to be unlocked late in the game through a side quest that's hinted at if you don't find it on your own. It's a little clunky in that you have to play it like any other song, so it keeps you immersed in the game world. It uses the map as a menu, which you will already be using a lot to sail between islands. And it has a limited set of locations which unlock all at the same time, including the biggest islands and one key location that is not accessible any other way.
Wow yea that sounds great! I never played wind waker, only twilight princess and ocarina. But now you've got me interested :)
It's definitely nostalgia talking for me though. Wind Waker HD was the version I played first around 10 years ago. I had a gamecube but Wind Waker was not in my library. I still think the lighting looks great on it.
I loved sailing around in WW so much that I tended to skip the fast travel system altogether. The sense of freedom and adventure of you and your little sailboat against the world was fantastic and it made the game world feel much bigger than it actually was.
Gothic's 1 and 2 fast travel was great too.(having to earn or find teleportation runes but you still have to travel on foot and learn your surroundings) Public transit is nice too, GTA IV and Red Dead Redemption use it nicelly too
I loved Morrowind the moment I started playing. It was the first open world RPG I ever played. My favorite aspect of it was that it didn't hold your hand when telling you what your objectives were. If you had to go to a certain location, it gave you a general idea of where it was at and you had to go explore to find it. Most modern games automatically marking the location on your map. This drastically increased the exploration part of the game and added to the overall effect of "go anywhere and do anything."
The time I fucked up directions and that mistake lead me to my fistt daedra quest 🤤
I don’t think they should remove the easy fast travel altogether because sometimes you don’t have time or just don’t feel like being immersed or walking that long distance especially if it’s a back and forth trip. But they should also keep the immersive fast travel because it’s important for the game and it is pretty cool.
But most people would choose the easy way if it's available
@@divinecomedian2 and? What's your point? Don't like it? Don't use it. I hate collectible card mini games, I think they are boring and lame. That said I just don't play them, I don't cry to CDPR that they should remove gwent.
@@evildeadedd The point is that its bad for the long term health of a franchise. The less immersed you get in a game, the less memorable it will become. A griffin flight is great as it gives you a break to go get food, or whatever needs to be done IRL. But ubiquitous insta travel remove the world and lore from most of the game.
@@chrismcaulay7805 but the problem with that is, by forcing people who don't want to take the slow, tedious, or just mind numbing way, they are less likely to be immersed since they are just more likely to quit
@@chrismcaulay7805 Let me tell you something, nothing will make me less interested in the world and lore than being bored to tears as it takes me 20 minutes to get across half the map. If you *really* hate fast travel, literally just don’t use it. Skyrim has fast travel and is still being played and discussed, so is Fallout, so is Elden Ring, so is Spider-Man PS4, so are…a metric fuck ton of other games with fast travel.
Your concerns about fast travel ruining the lifespan of the game are unsupported and irrational. Again, if you don’t like fast travel, don’t use it. Don’t subject the majority of players who like it to inescapable boredom.
One thing I started doing in Skyrim as a compromise is to only allow fast travel back from dungeons to a major city or town. Otherwise I cart and hoof or foot travel to locations and use a camping mod to sleep the nights away
This gives me an idea for a concept these games could use: Close Quests Bubble. A shorter list of quests that are within a walking distance away from you, so that if you travel to a big city for a main quest, you can take a look at all the other small quests that are close to you.
Thanks for making this video, you explained everything really well.
It also affects how the quest are done. When fast travel is easy and free you also get small local quest that send you all around the map rather then keeping it local.
I've said it previously and I'll say it again: I really like how WoW handles traveling (especially in the early versions). You have your two feet, later you'll get a mount, you can travel with gryphons/wyverns, which still take time but also force you to take in the landscape, zeppelins, boats, hearthstones, spells, etc. It's just really diverse and imitates the way a real public transport mesh functions (e.g. walk to bus station, take bus to train, take train to airport, take airplane, and so on). And none of them are free, they always cost money, time, or effort.
"mage portal to X pls 100g"
@@VirusHD yes, that's fair enough. I think there are some ways to game WoW's traveling methods and they should have fixed them. This flaw could've easily been fixed by making it more expensive in time or mana to teleport someone else. But still, you have to pay money and spend time finding someone to do this for you. It's not exactly point-and-click fast travel.
@@Qopzeep to be fair, I am completely for point and click fast travel. While some people might not mind spending 5 minutes on travel, I'd rather keep the travel as short as can be since I don't have much time to play games already. If having fast travel means I can do 3 quests instead of 2 for the day, I would definitely be bummed out if I couldn't use it.
There has to be some restriction, like having visited the location you want to travel to beforehand, but beyond that, fast travel is an optional service. If someone doesn't want to use it, they don't have to
@@VirusHD I understand and agree with you. I also have time issues when gaming so having a shortcut is nice. I guess that game developers should prevent gamers from getting an unfair advantage in a competitive game but otherwise they should give players options for immersion vs convenience.
@@VirusHD Although my favourite option remains integrating the fast travel into the narrative/world-building of the game, so it doesn't cost you too much time and effort while also not removing you from the world.
I liked Kingdom Come Deliverance version. You could only fast travel to towns or a few other important location. During fast travel the map come up and shows you’re character walking across the map. Events and encounters can still happen and may snap you out of fast travel depending on the situation.
Best thing about Morrowind's map design is that quest locations have actually verbal descriptions on how to get there in your journal and from NPCs.
No floating quest marker, only your wits.
Very good video!
I personally haven't played Morrowind, but this looks like a very smart system.
I also liked the Gothic 1 & 2 fast travel system.
In those games you get fast travel runes but only later on in the game...
At the beginning of those games, I never really felt like I needed a fast travel mechanic because I was so busy exploring the world, learning what's where and doing quests on the path.
Later on, (once you gain the trust of certain factions) they hand you runes to be able to travel to critical points on the map, whether big settlements or critical areas.
Yea for sure! I think that for the world size gothic is going for its system is perfect.
You really have thought about and researched this topic. Thanks for covering this. I agree with your viewpoints. Glad that you shared this and educated people about fast travel drawbacks.
Morrowind was such an amazing game on so many levels.
I'm finally playing through it now and i'm loving it
One of the best systems was in the Might and Magic 6-8 series. You had two standard motes of travel - by ship (coastal and islands) or by stables (inland). Not only that you had to pay and you were limited by the stables location, but they also had their own schedules, meaning that on Wednesday the stables from Harmondale went to Erathia but on Thursday to the Turalean Forest.
This also meant that you sometimes had to wait, or you had to change the mote of travel (stables were often not far from ships). Also, there were opening and closing times.
There were also two ways of magical transport - the "Town Portal" spell that allowed you to transport from anywhere to an already visited major city (e.g. MM7 has about 14 different zones but only 6 Town Portal areas) which means you still need to use the public transport or you have to fly and cross the border on your own. The second magical transport is "Lloyd's Beacon" which allows you to create a beacon and then return to it from anywhere. This beacon expires based on your skill. The Beacon spell is a Grandmaster level, so late-game, and the Town Portal is Master level, so mid-game. Town Portal also has a limitation at Master level - you cannot teleport with enemies nearby. This is bypassed at GM level.
To add more options early in the game, you can hire a companion (non-combatant) who takes 20% of all gold found but allows you to cast Town Portal on Master level (no enemies around) once per day. This is however used rarely as the majority of players opt for different companions (extra XP or a little more XP and unlimited item identification, full heal once per day, gear repairs).
This type of transport, even though at a point one click away, never breaks immersion. To get to the "modern" type of fast-travel, you need to progress in the game quite a bit.
The Chronicles of Myrtana: Archolos works in a similar manner.
Agreed. The MM games had the best travel system. I was about to write a comment on it as well before I saw yours. I'm currently replying MM VII atm, and these old RPGs did a lot of thing right that is sadly missing in many modern RPGs.
@@Tempus0 just to spread the word, there is a mod that combines MM6 7 & 8 into one single epic, using the mm8 engine
@@miklam229 That sounds fun. I didn't know something like that even existed. I have to try it out now. Thanks.
In the Lord of the Rings Online there is a hybrid system. The normal fast travel is through stables. You have to go to a stable, and depending on what stable you are at, it offers certain destinations (so everywhere doesn't link to everywhere, and you still get a sense that you are on a journey as you have to think about the "connecting stables" you will need to go to). Once at a stable, you can get a "slow horse", where the horse moves in autopilot, as is a little faster than your own mount. Or you can take a swift horse, which starts the same way, but you don't watch the entire journey, the screen fades to black shortly after starting, and fades back in as you are arriving to the destination. This keeps the immersion reasonable, while making travel fast.
And yes, characters have teleport skills they have to earn, but for most classes those are usually skills with long cooldowns (think 1 hour). The only exception is the hunter. A class whose feature is how fast he can move around the map with travel skills, modelled on the rangers.
Yea Lotro does it pretty well. Great game
My favorite form of fast travel in Morrowind? Easy, it's Windform scrolls. (500 Levitation for 60 secs., + Invisible for 60 secs.) Expensive, but what's money in TES3. (Avoid Windwalker scrolls, exact same 2 effects, but 5 times the gold.) Flying over the landscape at high speed is cool af, and I can stop if I see something interesting. And I often do. 👍
But what about the Icarian flight?
@@AnMComm There's only three, and tho fun, are practically useless.
Dude i love your videos and indepth analysis on given topic :) u made me try Morrowind for the first time, it seems like its one of those RPGs where you spend many hours learning about the world :)
That's so great to hear hope you love it!
I finally started Morrowinf this year too. Such a wonderfully immersive game.
I'll take convenience over immersion any day. Fast travel is often most useful later in a game when you've done plenty of exploring already such as Pokémon.
In Skyrim I completely missed a major storybeat that happens on your way back to town from a short trip outside. The fast travel was right there and it felt like it beckoned me to use it, but then I got to town and everyone talked about how basically the heavens themselves talked to me and I had not noticed any of that.
I went back and loaded an older save to see it and since then I made a point out of not fast traveling at all and have discovered a lot of fun random encounters along the roads as a result. Not to mention getting familiar with the land itself.
I can’t think of what this would be. When the Greybeards call to you? That happens even if you fast travel back to Whiterun.
The game specifically removes the fast travel to Dragonsreach (the palace in Whiterun where you need to go) so that you don't miss this story moment. So you were either distracted, or your game bugged, or you're lying.
@@SpaceApe020 Did the game always do this? Or was that something that was fixed in a patch later? This was close to release day back in 2011 when this happened to me.
@@ToastbackWhale It probably is the event you are thinking of. This was way back in 2011 and it's been a long while since I played the game so my recollection of names is a bit fuzzy.
@@Nails077 I don't know if it was always like this. First time I played Skyrim was 2012-2013 and it was already this way I'm pretry sure.
Would be interesting to track down patch notes to see though.
The most important problem is that you're out of the flow state and worse, into the long loading screens.
I disagree, I can tune that out just fine. What bothers me is that there’s no opportunity cost, you can be everywhere and do everything at once, so you don’t feel any connection to the area you’re currently in AND you hit with dozens of things you can do in most open world games. Having an opportunity cost to go from place to place completely changes how your approach tasks in a game.
@@cirkleobserver3217 flying, btch
The quest system also causes a lot of back and forth between far cities for trival tasks, to lead to the player demand for fast travel. Even trying to plan by gathering all the same city travel quests, still runs into this problem.
There is one more fast travel option in Morrowind: Propylon chambers. They are good four out of reach places, but require you to find the key, the propylon index.
One thing that I feel makes it work is the fact that while the travel costs money, discouraging you from using it too much in the early game when you are still poor, it's cheap enough (and becomes even cheaper with good relations with operators) that using it isn't really an issue in a late game when you have accumulated lots of money. That wat game incetivises you to explore in the early stages, while letting you skip unnecessary legwork later when all the exploring is done.
I’ve always played BOTW this way, I thought I was the only one 😂
After my first playthrough, I realized how weird and unfun it is to teleport across this whole beautiful landscape, and on my second run (to 99%) I relied on an actual horse because the fact horses automatically followed paths meant I could relax and essentially watch a cutscene of Link crossing the world (with a few little taps to push the horse down the right roads). It VASTLY improved the experience.
Ultima has a long tradition of in-universe fast travel, most notably the moongates, which open and are directed according to the phases of the moons. Ultima VII and Ultima Online also have teleportation spells which require preparation using the Mark spell on a magic stone, followed by Recall (or Gate, in UO) to teleport to wherever the stone was marked.
It was a great shock to me when I first played Morrowind and realised I would actually have to pay attention when an NPC explains to you how to get to a certain place. No quest marks nor fast travel to help. It is very inconvenient, but on the other hand, the levels of immension are much higher than other games. You're not just playing to kill things and level up. You're meeting people and learning about the world. It really makes everything feel more alive in a way, and it requires much more dedication. Modern games are losing a lot by making everything easy and convenient.
The journal keeps track of what NPCs say, but it's still up to you to follow those directions properly. It's pretty fun and surprisingly good for first playthroughs, when you don't know the area.
I got so bent out of shape over the fast travel in Bethesda's later titles that I was using mods that removed it.
Atmosphere and immersion is greatly improved and you can appreciate the worlds the devs created, plus you really consider preparation before venturing forth
A game that surprisingly has a very similar fast travel system is "The Ascent"
At any time you can call a cab which can take you to key areas, you also have the metro, which can take you to any metro station on the same level of the Arcology. You also have a set of elevators that will take you to different levels of the arcology.
It's a very good game with a very lived-in feeling world, a lot of love definitely went into crafting it.
I have play that game and I like the looks and feel of it, sadly my coop experience is unplayable so I didn't finished it with friends.
Another thing I really liked about morrowind when playing it for the first time was that the game gives you specific, written directions on how to get to your destination. This adds even more to the immersion of navigating the game world because the game doesn't just point you directly to your objective. In Skyrim this is part of why players will often find themselves just walking up mountains, despite there being a perfectly good road to follow. The compass just tells you to go a certain direction so you tend to take it at face value if you aren't looking at the map.
It also is both proof and result of developers actually playing the game they made.
There are anecdotes of them working in this basement and *taking walks* in-game instead of outside.
I remember playing this game where you could only teleport back to your house. It was absolute torture going anywhere. It didn’t help that you couldn’t jump either.
If you are talking about morrowind
You just messed up during charecter creation
L5 Acrobatics heavy armor low Endurance
Morrowind is probably the most immersive RPG i've ever played, and I think that the fast travel system that they abandoned in their subsequent releases is a big part of that. Great video!
Abandoned in what way? You can still use carts, etc in all the other games. What they added was a fast travel system which Morrowind never had. This video is confusing fast travel with quick travel.
@@xe-wf5iv The design philosophy was abandoned I guess is what I'm trying to say. By adding the option for "quick travel" as you call it (we just called it fast travel back when Oblivion came out) they changed the "meta" if you will in that it was just more convenient to use it than walking or using whatever other forms of travel were available. It's fine, generally I guess because we're stuck with it for the most part, but it does take away from the immersion in some ways and definitely takes away all the random events that would happen when walking to and from your destination.
Days Gone has a great fast travel system in that it limits your range to the distance you could travel with the amount of fuel in your bike. So as you scavenge fuel and eventually buy larger tanks, your fast travel range also goes up.
Very heavily underrated game IMHO.
I find it meets the criteria of this video really well because you are limited by your supplies, you are engaging with your map like an apocalyptic survivor plotting your route, as well as figuring our or remembering where you'll find fuel once there (or if you want to travel a shorter distance to ride the bike towards a source of fuel), and building up a knowledge of the roads/landmarks through play as you build up your gas tanks (and thus your fast travel range).
Yea that sounds cool. I'm not super familiar with that game, is it more survival or RPG?
It's an action game with light survival elements, really only bike fuel and maintenance. You go around post-Apocalyptic Oregon's wilderness, shooting zombies and dodging hazards like fallen trees, car wrecks, bandit ambushes or hordes on the asphalt or in back country trails.
If your bike breaks, you find scrap to fix it. If fuel runs dry, you go looking for a gas station, a tow truck with supplies, or a jerry can. The fuel economy is well balanced; in the 200 hours I've lovingly spent since August, I'm always thinking about my fuel use, but never feeling like if i do run out, I'll be stranded for a period that stops being fun. The game teaches you where to look and spaces itself out well.
I've got a couple of demonstrations of this on my channel, but I do recommend it in general.
@@ArmsOfAhriman Okay cool I'll check it out!
Very good video. I really like Morrowind's fast travel system. I have to say my favorite is in Dragon's Dogma.
You can't fast travel at all, at first. Then as you do quests (some optional), you find "portcrystals", which you can pick up and place in different locations. Only then can you fast travel anywhere, and only to places with portcrystals. Only the major city and your starting town, as well as the DLC island, have static portcrystals.
Not only that, but you need an item called a "ferrystone" to teleport to any portcrystal. You can find them in the world and as rewards for some quests, but up until the endgame, they're very limited. If you ran out or forgot to pack some, you're gonna have to walk. When you use one, it even has an animation of the player throwing the ferrystone into the air and opening a portal to their destination, so it's even immersive and explained by the lore ingame!
Both Morrowind and Dragon's Dogma did similar thing with their systems - they put a sizable cost on fast travel and also (in case of Morrowind) limit the destination to towns cities and major landmarks. In these games if you're in a rush you really can fast travel to any big city, but that'll cost you - so sometimes you'd just prefer to walk and that walk will get you unforgettable encounters and experiences.
Also, they both integrate well into lore.
Modern games fast travel just feels unrealistic and kills the feel of the world - when you can get anywhere you'vs already been in 1 click with no extra cost, and most importantly - with no real explanation from the lore side. In Genshin Impact for example the devs actually bothered to explain fast travel ("only vision users and mc cause he's special can use the monoliths, ordinary people have to walk"), and it already feel way better than Fallout 3-4, Skyrim, etc, because of that.
The best part is, if you remember to pick up all your portcrystals before new game plus, you can use those and find their dupes where they are in the new world, doubling your custom portal locations.
After a couple thousand hours of Skyrim, I got tired of fast traveling and just traveled by foot or by horse. It became so much more enjoyable
maybe you should do that in real life as well
@@Blox117 Ouch
@@Blox117 damn, didn't have to do him like that 💀
My favorite example of life before quest markers and fast travel was in the first few quests given at the mages guild in Balmorra. This is what your journal entry says on how to get to an NPC you need to find:
"Ranis asked me to convince Llarar Bereloth to join the guild. If he cannot be convinced, I must kill him. To get to Sulipund, I should leave Balmora east and pass Fort Moonmoth. Then cross the bridge to Molag Amur and follow the trail east until I reach a lake. I should see a Dunmer stronghold to the south. If I head north on the path between the hills, Sulipund will be on my left, just before the path splits."
It reads like an old-timer giving directions in the country. It's amazing.
However, though quest markers are a different way to play, it is an accessible way to play, and I definitely appreciate increased accessibility in games. I think fast travel also falls into this category. As much as this kind of wandering was fun, not everyone has the time or energy to do that. I think that, in games like Skyrim, it would be best to make a network of travel infrastructure like this, but also have the option for fast travel for those that would like to use it. Best of both worlds.
The main problem is that developers opting for the more accessible system have no motivation to accommodate the few of us who prefer a richer experience. You can't turn off the quest compass in stock Skyrim because the quests are not written like they were in Morrowind. Some NPC gives you some trite voice line, and your objectives journal just says "Do this thing at this place", with no usable directions on how to get there. Those directions become flavor text, which is the easiest thing to cut out of development costs, especially when you're now adding the expense of voice-acted dialogue that Morrowind basically didn't have. It also saves you the trouble of having to create a world that is believable and lived-in, because your player will only cross a given area maybe a handful of times if it's particularly high-traffic. Even besides the cost, the easy access player doesn't want to dig through all that flavor text to check what their task is, so sticking to the point only makes sense.
It might make sense on the surface to try to cater to both audiences, but the fact is that only a small fraction of your audience will actually use and appreciate the extra effort you put into the more realistic experience, while the rest will just consume regardless and shell out the same cash to do so... in much greater numbers. It would take a broader cultural shift away from ultimate convenience and short attention spans in order for that effort to be worthwhile in tandem with the easy system. I'd also submit that such a shift would possibly shrink the overall interest in games in favor of IRL engagement, but I could be wrong about that.
@@SepticFuddy I agree with your analysis (quest markers mean they can cut costs by removing in-game directions), however I disagree that this is necessarily a problem. Accessibility for everyone is going to trump the desires of the few of you who "prefer a richer experience." Fiscally, this obviously makes sense. But it also makes sense when you consider that the "richer experience" you're after can be generated in all kinds of ways, not only by this one specific system.
If someone's problem is "accessibility" then the game they're trying to play clearly isn't for them. Unless someone has an actual disability they don't need any accessibility.
What, should we handy cap pro athletes now because the average joe doesn't have the time to compete on their level? Utter madness. It's a complete lack of self awareness of not only what makes a hand crafted world good, or any piece of art for that matter, but also a lack of self respect for the medium and every player or video game developer that ever picked up a controller or keyboard and mouse. I genuinely hope you think about this.
Accessibility ruins the integrity of any work.
@@TheManeymon Hi, I have an actual disability (quadriplegia, if you care). Games should be for everyone.
@@TheSpero42 as per my last post, think about why different games can't be made for everyone. It would be a sea of grey bland blobs with no personality. Why do you think there are different genres of media?
It gets particularly good with divine and almsivi intervention interactions. These teleport you to the nearest shrine of that type. And if you get used to it, this allows a lot. In some cases you learn that from one side of town almsivi takes you to say Balmora, but from the other side you get to Aldruun. From which you can divine your way to gnisis, I think, and so forth. Sometimes you can take a boat to get into almsivi/divine range of your destination.
Key is, you have enormous options, but you have to figure it out. You can even get keys to the stronghold teleports - which generally aren't worth the effort of collecting them, but it does allow fast travel to some more rural areas.
All in all, you have the options. But you have to think about it. You have to learn it. And importantly: it's only between hubs. You still have to walk through the world to get to the dungeons.
Finally, of course, Morrowind deliciously screws with you by allowing a great fast travel option that leaves you mostly blind. Figuring out how to get around that is quite satisfying.
Great game, among the goats. And if anyone disputes it, may the cliff racers find them! :)
The original Sacred from 2005 had a neat compromise: There was a network of about 20 portals scattered throughout the map and you could activate them one by one and then use them. On top of that there were scattered pairs of portals that coul donly get fom one half to the other and it took some time to figure out how these could be activated and where the other half was. Sometimes it was part of a quest, sometimes they were aparently broken... it gave a sense of athmosphere. And again, you had to walk/ride a long distance anyway as the portals were far apart and not evenly spread.
In Morrowind you also have teleport locations, marked green on your map (Propylon Indices). Great addition where you need to get pass to use it
Nice points. I'd also like to give a shout out to the various incarnations of the Ultima series' moongates, which also needed study in order to understand and use correctly, and similar to your routes only allowed regional travel between fixed locations which maintained the need to "normal travel" from there to your destination.
Also, I have totally noticed that, since a decent local market opened down the street from me, I totally shop more frequently for fewer things at a time.
Dragon's Dogma was one of my favorite systems. I remember going out into the night to travel, surrounded by hordes of lizardmen wondering when my lantern fuel would run out or I would die, it was genuinely tense. It was only later I learned about Portstones and even when you do have them there are a limited number you can place and you need a consumable item to activate it.
I forgot about this system! I thought it was great! Loved that game.
For anyone complaining about those "fast travel issues" it feel like you could pretty easily fix those by just not using it... 🤷♂️
😂😂 bro stop being logical
Tried it, and let me tell you, most of these games are _not_ designed for avoiding fast-travel, and it _shows._
The issue isn't that fast travel exists, it's that in most games fast travel is largely a UI function and not an actual mechanic like it is in Morrowind.
That and when UI fast travel is present, designers usually make quests assuming the player will use it, so trying to complete them without using it is a huge pain. Try completing the Oblivion Fighters Guild questline without fast travel, it's a nightmare.
This may be an unpopular opinion, but as a person who slowly has less and less time being able to play games, the ability to have fast travel with no frills attached is a godsend, regardless of how unimmersive it is. If I have to do A, B, and C in order to fast travel vs just fast traveling, and the only difference is that A, B, and C just makes a reason for fast traveling, I'd rather just fast travel with no other hassles.
Granted, I don't play open world games as much anymore precisely due to the time sink they cause, but when I do I'd rather have my options open compared to making something a bit more immersive.
Fast travel on foot could also have resource cost. You'd need to gather rations, water and other necessities and depending how much you gather, that is how far you'll be able to travel before it kicks you back into normal movement mode.
New Vegas hard-core mode. You bring food and drink to a trip and you go anywhere.
Days Gone kinda did that, with the gas and time cost
There was a cost in Daggerfall. Not sure about Arena.
Kingdom Come Deliverance has that style, with your journey shown on the map and risk of combat encounters depending on character skills (like classic Fallout).
Resources are required to meet your needs, and you can stop if you want to.
It's a shame the Bethesda Fallout games didn't use the classic Fallout overworld travel system as their fast travel option. It would have been a nice touch.
@@1q34w Arena had no cost at all, time passed but that's it
Yes, using the UI to fast travel reminds you you're playing a game, unlike morrowind's dialogue system which is just like real life.
Yup, that's precisely the point
Not to mention, there's a controller in your hand
I mean when I wanna travel to another city I also use the real life UI (my smartphone).
Y’all are forgetting that there are different degrees of immersion; it’s not just a choice between completely immersed or not at all. If you’re watching a movie in theatre and someone is talking at 100 decibels and their phone’s screen is super bright, it’s a lot more immersion-breaking than if someone is talking at 70 decibels without a bright phone. Sure, both are immersion breaking, but I’m sure you’d much prefer the latter if you were forced to choose.
I mean it is in the game logic. While a separate fast travel system might sort of take you out of that logic too.
Another example it's Death Stranding, where you only can fast travel from and to certain locations, and when you do, you can't bring anything with you, so it doesn't help to complete tasks.