If you fast travel everywhere you are missing out on soooo much, probably 50% of what the game has to offer. I think most players recognise this now but here lies the problem.

I don't have hours and hours spare to play this game and you NEED hours and hours to play it properly. Fast travel is the only option if you don't want to spend a week of real time going somewhere, I for one get distracted and forget what it was I set off to do because of the time between plays.

So I would suggest this, do away with fast travel altogether, don''t even give us the choice and instead quests/tasks should lead you somewhere incrementally rather than say "You are in Riften, go and steal something from a house in Markarth and then bring it back here."

There should be several stages to a task like that so although you have to walk there, you have quest related tasks to do on the way, making the whole action of doing a specific thing flow and force the player to experience all the other things you miss out on by fast travelling.

So..

"You are in Riften, go and steal something from a house in Markarth and then bring it back here."

would become...

"You are in Riften, go to this cave and find out from this person's son where their father is, then go to Whitrun and pickpocket the note from the father which tells you where his brother is. Find their brother half way between Whiterun and Riften and get the combination to their safe from him. Then go to Markarth and get the object. Then you have one days headstart on a pose of Markarth guards who will persue you back to Riften. If you make it here alive we will pay the bounty on your head and the task will be complete."

Horse combat and armour would also be a good option, if you didn't have to get off the horse to fight you might feel more inclided to ride somewhere.

I think fast travel is an essential feature for some but it also kind of ruins the game too, an alternaive MUST be sought for future games.

Grand Theft Auto was big but there was no option to fast travel the map, granted you had Ferraris and helicopters to get you there but can't something similar be done in TES? Boats or horses are the answer I think.

Thoughts?

Part of the reason why I hate fast-travel even though it's technically optional, is I think it gives the developers an excuse to be a bit lazy with quest design. They rely on the assumption that most players will fast-travel a lot, and come up with too many simple fetch quests that send you from one end of the map to the other and back again.

The alternative is simple.

Horse, cart fast travel for a fee and mage teleportation for a fee like in Morrowind. And what happened to those mark and recall spell scrolls?

And if they must have Fast travel, have wandering monsters interceptions, the further you FT the more interceptions with bandits, monsters, etc.

The main point is everything should have a reason and a fee. If you somehow manage to get half a country away to somewhere else , there should be some kind of cost or reason why.

Because I don`t like things that don`t make sense.

I suppose it would help to know in advance that Elder Scrolls games are time sinks, and you shouldn't expect to be able to complete anything significant unless you have a few hours to spare at a given time. This isn't your typical rpg franchise, where you can expect to finish it in 50 hours or less. Many people will spend 500 hours on a single playthrough.

I'd like less quests that send my character back and forth across the province, though I've never been tempted to use fast travel. The journey from location to location is part of the experience, and I like the scenery, along with any assassin and dragon encounters along the way.

If fast travel was removed, the number of people playing the game would plummet due to laziness.

I agree. I don't understand why quests must send you from one side of the country to the other? Its completely arbitrary.

That said, it doesn't take a week to run from one side to the other. MAYBE an hour, if you dawdle.

Fast travel...don't like it, don't use it. Why make everyone else suffer because a few despise it.

FYI: I walk everywhere, and rarely use fast travel. Never use carts, and it doesn't take me a week to get from one end of the map to another.

I don`t know. I still believe that Bethesda think that Fast travel is a good idea when it isn`t. All it`s done is make people really lazy now.

For instance how many new purchasers of Oblivion or Skyrim knew about Fast travel? How many would have been put off if they had NEVER known of it and just jumped on a Cart or horse instead.

The graphics are immersive and good enough and the game simple enough that I truly doubt FT would really have made such a difference.

But now they`re spoilt. They`d probably have a coronary if Bethesda removed it.

p.s. Oh wait- You`re right!

Exactly.

People simply shouldn't buy TES if they expect it to be a game they can finish in 30-50 hrs. It's possible, but that's just not how the game should be played at all. The experience should last hundreds of hours. And that doesn't mean you need to spend a ridiculous amount of time each day to try and finish it within a week or two. If you have a busy life, pace yourself and spend months completing it.
Indeed. The map is actually rather small. But it's just the tediousness of going back and forth for such simple fetch/kill quests.

This and +1 for Kaiden.

Well, a lot of fetch quests would have to be removed, horse combat added, more effort put into open-world formula, teleportation spells, etc. Would have to happen.

Heres what i do: A quest directs me to whiterun and i am in windhelm. I then plot a path of other objetives! You can also wait till you got a bunch of quests in a hold and do them all at the same time when you are there. Or just use a carriage.
'
Remember that when you are riding, you dont HAVE to kill everything. There seems to be a widespread "kill everything" attitude around here. Just outrun your foes.

I can walk?

I am going to time a marathon run from Riften to Solitude, using the most direct route, main roads only. Just to see how long it actually takes in real time, and how long in game-time. (Depending on your timescale, the result will differ).

Anyone care to place any bets on how long it takes?
I reckon, 25 minutes real time. If that. Maybe I am underestimating how big it is, but I doubt it.

The problem (once again) lays within the writing. If the location of items were suggested, rather then marked on a map and fitted with a GPS tracking beacon. Then we would have to search for it.
As it stands we know where it is, so the trek is totally arbitrary (I seem to use that word allot with reference to this game...)

It would be nice of the radiant (a.k.a. fetch) quests didn't send you to any random location within Skyrim, but somewhere within the hold where it was received.

It was always annoying when I'd get a companion quest that sent me to go kill some Forsworn, or when someone from the mage's college sent me to Markath.

My favorite part would probably have to be the three seperate times I had to go to Ysgramor's Tomb to cure others of lycanthropy, when it would have been nice to do that all at once.

You exagerate... it takes less than 15 minutes to jog across the entire map. You know there are different speeds? You can walk, jog or sprint. Sprint takes up stamina. You can have stealth on or off. Armor can slow you down.

I don`t have a problem with distance and I don`t FT.

Things can be far away, and you have to go get them, that`s life. I usually take such jobs and put them hold while I do what i want to do in the area, then when I find myself in the place for the item pick up I`ll pick it up. Y`know, manage your time like a postman. I often end up in an area eventually with 5 or 6 fetch jobs and do them all at the same time, then when I eventually get back I`ll deliver the stuff.

It`s only a pain if you insist on dropping everything to rush halfway across the map to pick up some fruit and rush back!

A no HUD game will remedy all complaints about lack of immersion. No HUD is absolutely the way to go.

One problem I have with the game world is the lack of anything in it after a while.

I don't claim to have found all the ruins and dungeons, but I've found allot. Now it just seems as if I'm stumbling over the same ones over and over again.
This is where I feel in game content could really shine. If I could read a book that described a location with and a brief run down of its history, So that I could go and find it based on the description and rough location then "exploring" might be more then blindly wandering around hoping to fall down an interesting hole.

Now, this is a critique more then a criticism. So don't take it the wrong way.

I realise that a game is limited by reality, that meaning while everything is possible, the fact that Humans are mortal fallible beings all possibilities cannot be met. Still.... one could wish.

http://skyrim.nexusmods.com/downloads/file.php?id=8434#

This mod makes it like Morrowind. Each large city like Solitude, each small village like Dawnstare and Riverwood, and several hamlets like Ivarsted, get cart service. Yeah, running around long distances does not reward you numerically because there is no athletics skill to improve.

Well, i always find farmers, soldiers, mercenaries, drug-sellers (sleeping tree sap!) and other cool people traveling. Many trips i find more of these than enemies

look at it this way, if you really were in that situation, would you accept a quest you didn't have to if it involved days of travel and had no real importance?

I do too, trillions of them. All of whom I pimp slap and keep moving. They bring nothing on interest. They're basically just a big fleshy lump of XP.
Because it makes no difference if I decapitate them or let them live. Except for the fact that I'll miss out on a tiny bit of XP towards my next level if I don't kill them.

I think part of the problem is the, not journal, checklist. A simple fetch quest on the other side of the map could be treated as an epic endeavour, requiring balancing supplies with inventory space needed for treasure found, the chance to find new hitherto hidden ruins on the way, the chance to find a new alchemy supply area, and a journey there and back fraught with danger and opportunity.
Instead, the quest is given in a completely impersonal manner, just one of fifty things on the 'to do today' list. The game encourages you to do as much as possible as quickly as possible, a proper journal would go some way toward making each of those fifty things something worth doing, something worth investing effort into, and possibly providing role play potential more substantial than the 'let's pretend' variety.