Why would you spend the extra money to implement those if you already have instant travel? Especially when the vast majority will just ask for it anyway because its essentially an industry standard at this point.

they always crashed my PC with all their effects

i re-voted and chose "other please explain below"
i have to agree this was perfect .. like i said 90% of the time i would walk or run to where i wanted to go .. but when i was in a hurry i would use the fast travel options you mention here .. was a perfect balance according to whatever situation i needed
exploring as you walk to a town or on a quest was most of what i enjoyed .. but sometimes you want that in a hurry .. and sometimes you just want to stroll along and pick flowers

Why not taxi and instant?

Taxi if you want to roleplay, or it's located conveniently near you.
Fast travel if you are in a hurry.

That works very well in Skyrim. I see no reason to be limited to only one type of travel.
Since it's an MMO, the destination would probably be limited to towns, not every cave and dungeon in the world.

I added a little "remember" section to the OP.

perfect .. i re-voted to "Others. Please explain below"
thanx for adding the option

i think fast travel " as in oblivion and skyrim you just click on the map anywhere and BOOM you load there" really ruins the game for me and makes a normally 200 hr game turn into a 30 hr game due to lack of traveling and exploring time ... just my opinion

I'm all for a big, lore friendly mix of options. I wanna see Silt Striders, Horse Carriages, Mage Guild Teleports, etc.

If I have to choose one from this list then i will go with Taxi though. I enjoyed seeing the world fly by in WoW, or riding the travel horses in LOTRO.

While I will be walking or riding most places I voted for taxi...and for any lore-friendly options possible like mages guild teleports, propylons, etc (as Zipperson says above)...HOWEVER!

Two small caveats:

1) Players should have the option of "sleeping through" the journey (similar to GTA 4's system). This will get them there nearly instantly BUT it will give them a bit of fatigue when they arrive (like a 60-90 second debuff called "groggy" as they wake up fully again).

2) Players should have the option to disembark at any time for a small extra fee (similar to LOTRO) in case they realize where they are going isn't where they are needed, or they just needed to go halfway somewhere.

Of course the taxi, whatever form it takes, should cost money as well.

I just do not like and will not use instant fast-travel in an MMO (unless its some kind of emergency), it cheapens the experience for me.

What do you guys think?

I think it should vary. The ebonheart pact, for example, should have some siltstrider taxis, but those wouldnt make sense for the other factions.

For the aldmeri, you could probably have some of their sunflyer airplane things as taxis between cities, and for the daggerfall you could use ships that move along the coast.

The wayshrines, however, should be near-instant, maybe a little teleportation/wormhole cutscene.

I say traveling should take its time so Taxi Modus, i dont really care if its on land or something flying.

How do you know that he's Polish?

Actually, maybe that would just be a very different game? In many legendary quests (think, quest for the holy grail, or frodo's quest in lotr) the challenge was not to slay a monster but simply to get there and back in one piece. Then the journey is not a mere annoyance but the challenge itself.

every time i play skyrim or morrowind i allways see something i did not see before.
i sure hope it will be the same thing in TESO

Oh man I remember venturing out in Mortal Online (a game with no fast travel and no map) trying to find a city where there was a pickpocket trainer. Good lord...what an epic journey. 4 hours of getting lost with my friend, almost eaten by every hostile creature under the sun, discovering crazy ruins, avoiding and hiding from player bandits, etc. Just amazing. Very few MMOs offer that kind of experience. Too bad Mortal is such a badly made game, they have some great ideas.

this is exactly what im trying to say right here in the above comment ^
we loose alot when we instant or fast travel that otherwise we would have had hours of gameplay added that makes the game alot more fun and really a lifetime memory experiance .. makes the game worth alot more then the money you spent to play it .. makes me a dedicated and addicted customer .. ill allways return cause i had alot of fun. the fast travel just ruins this experiance all together

Yeah, that seems to be very uncommon these days. The gaming industry and the mainstream consumer-base now'a'days seem to be very oblivious to such experiences, they only want actual game-rewards otherwise it's unecessary. It's something games lack these days. Even WoW had good elements of this at least in its vanilla form. Hopefuly games will become less "hand-holding" and more "experience the world and its challenges" with time as they used to be, the dumbing down of games has been going on for far too long.

The poll is making it seem like it's either taxi or instant. I'm fine with adding taxi options for those that want a tour-bus deal, but like it or not, wayshrines are *going* to be instant. End of. I mean, come on, it's a magical mode of transport, it's hard to conceive how it could be anything but. Do people want a bird-eye view as they fly through the air or something?

This

I'd like to have fast travel between the large cities with horse/carriage lines radiating to the smaller towns.

The problem being it quickly turns tedious. There is a reason why Swtor quickly earned the nickname "Star Wars: Tired of Running" and the pile of memes coming from LoTR about the moving being nothing but a whole bunch of walking. While there may be a market (not enough data to claim size) I would be surprised if it were very big.

Very much agreed. In Skyrim, I can remember numerous instances where if I'd fast travelled somewhere I would have missed out on some crazy dungeon I came across, or a radiant battle or another such experience that would have been lost in my teleportation.



Yeah, it is sad but I think those of us who like these kinds of experiences are the ones in the minority of gamers. Unfortunately I really thought (before the May 2012 announcement - yes I knew ESO was in development before it was announced, it was beyond obvious hehe) that ESO would be the game to bring a lot of that feeling back, and in fact they could afford to without being written off completely as an indie niche game. Sadly, that does not seem to be the case, unless some sweeping changes are made before launch. It will be good I have no doubt about that, but it is still not, IMO living up to what it could have been and what the legacy of TES deserved.


Now that you mention it, yes. I would much prefer wayshrines if you became ethereal and were flown on some kind of strange mist to your destination. Anything's better than instant teleport.

Also, read the last part of the OP. If there is instant travel from anywhere the more leisurely travel options are no longer a choice for most people. There are very few who can resist the temptation. I'm sure, even with my convictions against fast travel there will be times where I use it if absolutely necessary and it will, inevitably, cheapen the experience for me, just like it has with GW2.

WoW didn't get a lot of things right, but they almost had travel perfect (until they allowed flying mounts everywhere).

Yeah, and it seems to have changed along the way of gaming becoming "in" and not so nerdy as it was assumed to be before. So now people are flocking from everywhere, leaving the old school gamers as a minority. Which is sad, I can never get the same experience as I used to. There are a few exceptions, occasionally good games are released but rarely in MMO form.

I will say this however, I think if the new generation of gamers had an opportunity to see the true potential of those kinds of experiences, which they really do not have, they would find that they actually love it.

As much as I personally dislike Minecraft, I think it is an abject lesson in the way the game industry underestimates its younger audience. An open-ended, purely sandbox game with no actual objectives beyond surviving is one of the most popular games for the 5-18 demographic? It has sold more than Skyrim on PC btw, by a factor of 4! Who ever could have predicted that!?

With that in mind, ESO could have elevated their audience to a whole new level by taking a real leap of faith. But, with big investors and lots of money on the line, the safe bet is of course to stoop down to the level of what is expected rather than what is desired (not consciously mind you, since most people cannot consciously desire something they've never known of or at least tasted).

Sad, but at least it's not a full-on WoW clone, at least there's that. Anyway, I'm depressing myself, haha, moving on...

Yeah, as I've mentioned before on other threads I'm very impressed with how much TESO will stand out compared to other MMOs. It's not perfect of course- it could use a lot more sandbox/"player-shape-the-world" elements, but considering how MMOs tend to cater to the masses and what is expected of them Zenimax have been very innovative.

And it's true, if sandboxy games could get more "hype" I think more newer gamers would give it a try and like it. It seems that the hype and commercial drives such players which is why games like COD are so popular among the more casual gamers who don't know so much of what the gaming industry has to offer.

Minecraft did a great job of this, so many players played it and it's probably as sandboxy as a game can get, so thank Notch for that. I didn't play it much once it was released but I did try it out when it was still in its early alpha stages and it was great fun even then.

I like "taxis" if the destination can be reached in less than 30 seconds or 1 minute max if it's long distance. So that cannot realistically works for very long distance unless the character rides a rocket
I don't want to fall asleep on the keyboard waiting for my ride to reach its stop.