Wait.. what? The fast travel in Skyrim has many more options when you consider that you can fast travel to ANY location. Granted Morrowind had more options for how you fast traveled, but that was basically because each option was limited to where you could fast travel.

I don't see how many options that are all limited in where you can travel would be a better, more fleshed out option than a single option that allows for fast travel to any location.

There's nothing wrong with fast travel. If you don't like it don't use it. Nobody is forcing you to do so.

I look at it like this. I'm 30yr old, don't own a car, never had the need to get my licence and it translates into my game play.I'm not saying you shouldn't use fast travel but you do miss out on alot of stuff by not walken the wild,or by takeing a wagon ride.That being said I look at people who fast travel as people who own a car, and they are just in a rush to get to where they are goen, where as I'm walking to where I gotta go and I get to see what you missed by driving instead of walken. Every day on my way to work in the morn. I cut through the park and I get to enjoy the leaves changing in the spring/autumn, I get to walk with the ducks in the morn., get to great the new chicks walken wit mom to the pond, I have even bumped into some scary stuff like coyotes but you get what I'm sayen. It's not you should walk/run the map only, it's just that you miss out on soooooo mmmmmuuucchhh, the bird sounds in game alone are awsome, I can tell of at least 4 or 5 diff. types of birds in-game but by fast traveling you miss out on the simple beauty, be it large or small is what I read when I read a thread like this one.

I like walking around the country when I'm on a quest. It feels like I'm on an epic voyage. I also sleep at inns even though it doesn't really do anything (save skill learning bonus) just because I feel like roleplaying @_@
However, I like having the option to fast travel because sometimes I just can't be bothered to walk across the entire map.

All in all I like how fast traveling is handled. You can't fast travel to locations you've already visited, so at first you're kind of forced to explore.

LOL Wut?

many people DO have hours and hours to spend on the game, so your point is invalid.

And at the same time many people don't. O.o

I have tons of time and I still fast travel. Why? Because driving to work 4-5 times a week svcks toe beauty out of my drive, driving to school svcks the beauty out of my drive because I've seen the exact same thing 4-5 times a week. Fast traveling has allowed for the world to stay fresher than it would because I fast travel. Sometimes I enjoy just wandering through the world and when I do I find new places, or new landscapes I've never seen before... because I fast travel.

Seeing the same thing becomes redundant and boring to me, especially if I am forced to do it.

I always used to fast travel, but on my most recent player decided to try and not fast travel. Anyway I was doing a quest where you have to go from winter hold to falkreath, now usually I would fast travel, but I decided that I had enough time and that I wanted to enjoy the scenery. It was then that I met my favorite db character on the road and did a quest for him. I promised myself never to fast travel ever again

i have hours to spend playing, and i do not fast travel. different strokes for different folks..

I fast travel because most quests require you to walk halfway across the map to deliver something and walk alllllll the way back.

quest have no time limit. you don't have a time where you just GOTTA turn it in, so who cares if you get sidetracked with a couple of dungeons and an entire new questline..?

How exactly?

Indeed... and I'm sure some see nothing wrong with that at all.
Myself, I'd not mind a few of those... But if I did not want to take the time (either in FPP/realtime, or via Map-Travel), then I would not do that quest.

I disagree. I see plenty wrong with [so called] Fast Travel. The main flaw is that without taking encounters into account ~it really does imply 'instant' (by-pass) teleportation ~despite the implied intent that it's an unattended forced march to the destination. In practice it's an exploit... They need to properly account for the implied travel time and apply this to any spell effects... So if you 'Fast Travel' with effected abilities (and are hauling 25 magic warhammers for sale in the city)... the spells should expire just minutes into the trip instead of after you arrive (days later) on the other side of the realm.

** Bonus points for implementing an 'in-between' encounter system that loads an area somewhere [appropriately] between points A & B ~to represent where an encounter occurred along the way.

On my first playthrough, the only places I fast-travel to are the ones I've already found. On subsequent playthroughs, however, I fast-travel like crazy. Also, I should mention that I didn't realize on my first playthrough that you can use a carriage to travel to cities you haven't "discovered" yet. Kinda glad I didn't.

it hinders quest and game design because it allows the devs to take shortcuts. if there was no fast travel, the world would be MUCH more diverse and so would the quest dialogue, ala morrowind. remember those great quest directions that morrowind gave you? why did they do that? because you HAD to do it yourself..you HAD to find it yourself..you had to freaking compass and fast travel making question a literal world of warcraft style joke..in oblivoin and skyrim the quest directions are literally "go here. follow this huge arrow in front of your body and you'll find it". yeah, that's real shallow, and actual directions like "ok, first you'll get to balmora. then you'll to into the ravine and follow the canyon until you get to the split tree at the forked trail..." etc are much more entertaining.

That's an argument against quest markers, not fast travel. You can't fast travel to a dungeon you haven't found yet, the only problem is how you find it.

IMO that should be changed... but I accept that it would go against the general TES design; but its a shame IMO.

That is writer preference IMO. If they really enjoyed it they would flesh it out ~or perhaps they were pressed for time.

*My honest guess would be that they were convinced that most of the players just click past all the 'ranting & word walls' and preferred to just find it on their own while hacking & burning stuff; (or worse: expect to be pointed the way ~or "the game is just lame".)

I do not think FT has anything seriously to do with it that would be alleviated by not having it.

Fast Travel would only make sense if there were 18 million fetch quests that span the entirety of the map. I get that sometimes, it's good to have one or two but the fact that almost all the radiant quests in the Thieves Guild and Dark Brotherhood are like that are just ridiculous. There comes a time when you need to use fast travel and I do, just for the sake of not being able to handle that.

So yeah, I really wish that there were more lore-friendly alternative methods. The carriages were great but there should be something Guild specific. The Companions may have convoys or something that leads to any already discovered ruins in exchange for double the gold. Maybe the Mages have a Mark-Recall spell that can be used to mark six locations and recall to any one of them.

Exactly, the compass and quest markers don't require fast travel and fast travel don't require compass and quest markers, the two are in no way connected.

except that they are 100% connected. you don't understand game development if you can't see how they are connected.

No they aren't...

You could instantly remove fast travel from the game, and still do nothing about the compass, quest markers or directions, keeping them exactly the same without having to change them at all. Likewise you could re-write the directions, remove the compass and all the quest markers and still keep fast travel exactly the way it is without having to change it at all. One is not dependant on the other - no connection!

You are the one who don't understand basic principles of logic, if you have two functions (A and B ) and you can remove, change or alter A without it having any effect on B and reversely change, remove or alter B without any effect on A, then there is no casuality between the two.

This talk of `I don`t have time so I Fast travel` actually makes no sense (now ya`ll must really concentrate here)...

People say `I don`t have time`, but then they spend time in the game anyway. Or they speed through the game F\Ting to finish it and jump right on the next game to finish it in the `time they don`t have`.

And people who work, hey, I work, but guess what I do? I SAVE my game after getting somewhere and continue later. I MAKE time later.

F\T doesn`t save me time; it don`t save you time. You just spend that same time wasting the same time playing the game. You might as well take your time and see the sights and get immersed while doing it, rather than teleporting everywhere like a rabbit on speed.

It`s a false logic to say `I don`t have time`.

Because I don`t like false logic.

i miss mark and recall that was the best.

my biggest gripe is mostly journals, and quest markers IMO. i used to love in morrowind when the quest giver told me to go to a place it always felt like an adventure, kind of like on a nice summer day just going for a drive(gas prices hurts this big time lol) and just driving its always fun sometimes i would wind up by a pond and sit their and look at the water and the birds or sometimes i would wind up on a back road in the middle of nowhere in the woods, it is always fun its always adventurous. in the recent elder scrolls games its like doing that summer drive with a gps, you know where youre going you know where exactly the item is you need it just kills all the sense of adventure. fast travel just hurts that even more i got to go to such and such cave wow its right near such and such fort let me fast travel and boom adventure over. the carts help but it really svcks when you got a bunch of loot in winterhold and some place and you cant use a cart. thats why mark and recall were so helpful they were a fast travel system that was disguised as a spell and it didnt send you everywhere just the place you marked.

I like to not use fast travel, even if I don't have much time, but there's some occasions when I use it, for example my 2nd char is a khajiit thief and lives in riften, unfortunately there's no smelter, so if I need to make ingots I fast travel to the nearby smelter, or when I need to sell lot of stuff and all merchants in riften finished their money I fast travel to another city to sell there too.

I only fast travel so I dont have to deal with all the 230947813905872309587394582395847 annoying creatures in the rift