it's still your choice to fast travel or not, it's not that the game "makes" you do that.

If you have a horse it doesn't take very long to travel across the map. In fact, Its best to grab several quests at once and hit them up as you go. For instance, my character is a career criminal and he works for both the thieves guild and the Dark Brotherhood. I usually take a side quest from the thieves guild and an assassination mission plus the main quest and then I make a circle around the map while I accomplish all of this. If you only do one quest at a time then you're making it harder on yourself but even still its not that bad.

I have never used fast travel in Skyrim . And I never will. I run or steal a horse.

It's not forced in this game... ever.

OP... you are the one making the choice to use fast travel.

Nobody is forcing you... or anyone... to do ANYTHING in this game once you leave Helgen Castle.

ANYTHING.

These fast travel threads are always amusing, I feel as though the non-fast travelers look down on us who use it as lesser human beings undeserving of owning the game. I spent just over 200 hours on my first character using fast travel all the time yet I still explored the entire land looking for every dungeon and clearing every one I found along the way. Fast travel aka 'noob teleport' saves on a lot of time when selling loot, picking up potions or simply not traversing the same path several times in a short timeframe.

Several other games have suffered from a lack of fast travel options and been widely panned by the fans for having no such features, the most important thing to remember is that fast travel is an option which most players appreciate very much. Stop turning your noses up at us who use this option.

Fast travel was made for those type of players that panic if the game doesn't tell them where to go next (ie. the questers). When they are given a quest, their brain demands that they complete it before doing anything else, and then they move on to the next quest. Fast travel makes sense here. However, seasoned TES lovers are often intrepid explorers, who prefer to make their own path through the game. They run into random encounters, and explore new dungeons as they find them, and to them that is the whole game; with no future goals in mind, fast travel is all but useless. Because gold isn't very important in the game, you don't have to grab everything that isn't nailed down. Only pick up valuable things that weigh 1 or less so you can travel for long periods of time without needing to sell stuff.

In short, if you don't want to fast travel, stop being slaves to those mind-numbing fetch quests which only award pitiful amounts of gold. Most quests that are actually fun can be obtained inside the dungeon itself or close by. And if you want to join a guild, do that asap, and explore the map on the way to each objective.

Way to stereotype everyone who uses fast travel as mindless drones...there are actually plenty of us that use fast travel, simply for the reason that I have already seen the road between Whiterun and Windhelm at least 25 times, I won't discover any new dungeons, locations or quests, the only thing I get from snail-traveling between these locations is a few wolves, an ice-wraith and some traveller who has no business with me whatsoever...

And the OP isn't saying he likes fast travel, he is saying that the quests are designed in such a way that not doing it will eventually become very tedious and boring because you are going between the same two places across the map back and forth again.

Interesting. You made me ask myself if I ever fast traveled when I wasn't on a quest. I have (usually, I think, when I am in a hurry to dump a load of loot so I can start picking up more). Usually, though, my fast traveling is quest related.

Those mind-numbing fetch quests have you doing the exact same thing you do when you aren't pursuing mind-numbing fetch quests. You explore an area, fight or avoid the bad guys, and collect loot. Why it is considered mind-numbing when an NPC asks you to do it, but is considered recreation when you take it upon yourself to do it, is a bit of a mystery.

I drive the same way to work every day, has done for 12 years soon. It's quite tedious and boring, but the reality is that it's needed for me to finish my daily quest aka work.

If people appraoch the games with a mind they will be entertained every second then a open world game like Skyrim isn't the right one. However a game like Dragon Age might suit them better as DA does offer things that happens all the time. In Skyrim going betweent Riften and Whiterun is kind of like driving to work, once you have done it x amounts of times it will be tedious and boring, and then is when you can choose to fast travel instead. It would be close to an impossible task to create unique and thrilling content that happens all the time. And this bit I feel skyrim refletcs ina good way. Sure the 15. time I walk to Riften I don't expect a thrilling experience, but what if I meet something new and possibly a quest? I prefer it this way because then I don't expect to be entertained all the time, but the times I emcounter something I haven't seen before I geta pleasant surprise.

I didn't say they were mindless drones. They're just doing what they're used to from playing linear RPGs: follow the quests. What I'm saying is, ignore the fetch quests (ie. retrieve my weapon|armor from such and such cave|dungeon|fort); they are dull, add no value to the game whatsoever, and are only there to get non-explorers to new areas on the map. All you'll miss out on is a pitiful sum of gold and maybe a skill increase in a skill you're not even using.

...and story, and roleplaying and everything else that makes my character feel as part of a social world, and not just a dungeon-raider who does things 'just because they are there'.

And you did say they were mindless drones:

I covered the obsessive looting in my post. That's another trap. You don't need to grab everything that isn't nailed down.

The fetch quests are mind-numbing because most players will enter the dungeon BECAUSE there is an associated objective.They run in, kill stuff, grab the objective, and teleport back to hand it in. Rinse repeat. A veritable skinner box approach to gaming. This is diametrically opposed to entering a dungeon you've just discovered yourself on your travels, and going in solely with the spirit of exploration.

The problem with this approach for me is that I role play my characters. Neither of my characters' personalities are compatible with this play style. One is kinda trying to prevent a dragon apocalypse, and the other is a no-nonsense scholar of dwemer architecture that would only randomly explore a dungeon if it is a dwemer ruin (but even then, she would usually just mark it on her map to explore later, as she is usually writing historical papers about specific ruins that she has read about or heard from, and deadlines prevent her from exploring any old ruin she comes across.

This is just a personal limitation, though. Playing in the style you advocate would greatly detract from my experience. I rarely play a character whose sole motivation is exploring.

This game is designed and built for traveling, no doubt about that.

You won't get much story from those quests. Stick to guild quests for that.

And how is that saying they are mindless. As I explained, they do what they're used to doing in other RPGs. TES is very different from almost anything out there, and it takes time to learn what it's all about.


I roleplay too. And because this is my style of TESing, I have to work an excuse into every character's background story to justify exploring every dungeon they come across. One character is a tomb raider in it for the plunder, another seeks to find worthy challengers so he can perfect his combat abilities, and another seeks long lost lore.

Your dwemer scholar has a very specific roleplay that is incompatible with this style, but as there are a quite limited number of dwemer ruins, you won't waste much time running to each one, and you won't be going back and forth over already explored terrain either.

I tend to fast travel when I'm trying to complete specific quests, but when I'm not focusing on one in particular I tend to just wander the land.

And about the DB thing ... it woudnt be very realistic if all of the assassinations happened just down the road from the sanctuary, now would it?

This has probably been mentioned like a million times - but I wish the carts didn't take you everywhere. I used to travel by Stiltstrider and boat a lot in Morrowind, and part of the fun was planning your route, where you needed to stop off, and so on. But in Skyrim it seems that the prices are fixed, and the carts go anywhere. It maybe makes sense in terms of the gameworld - there's no reason a cart wouldn't be able to go to every city - but I would love to see a more complex network of carts, that take you to the smaller settlements as well.

I think that fast travel is an admittance by the developers to a problem created by the size of their ambitions. And that they put in fast travel and then ignored alternatives. Which would be horses, they aren't really working, they run out of stamina, you can't pick up herbs and you end up leading a parade of you, some wolfes a bear and a vampire across the land. It's not really well implemented.

So if there was carriages around town, and horses were working well and could be used to go to nearest carriage, then that could work instead of metagame fast travel. So ok, fast travel for those who end up not playing if it wasn't there, but they could have put more effort into an alternative for those who want's to keep a "true" feel to the game.

Not fast traveling will distract you.
Did little fast traveling on my first characters and was never able to finish other quest chains than the companions.

That's because of the pretty [censored] quest setup. You go to one side of the map, pick up a quest and then it's on the other side of the map. Makes no sense. If you ask any RPG player, they'll tell you they prefer to stay in one area until that area is cleared of quests and whatever else. I understand Bethesda trying to encourage traveling, exploring etc. but this is so not the way to do it. At all. Coupled with the fact that exploring will break a numeruous amount of quests, it makes it even harder to figure out why they made cross map quests.

Baffles the mind.

I use fast travel simply because its human nature to make it easier for yourselves.

I can't FT anymore, having never done so on this character. I get this werid glitch now if I do FT anywhere, I spawn with around ten marauding bandits, a troll, maybe a wolf or some spriggans. Last time I tried it I FT'd to Riverwood to buy something I desperately needed, the entire town were slaughtered by this mob. Neeless to say I instead decided to travel by horse.

As for "Oh it's all the way over there!" argument. Get on a horse. Pick a destination. Arrive there in 4 minutes.

There isn't a single location, except maybe Throat of the World that takes no longer than five-ten mminutes tops to get to, FT'ing is for pu$$ies.

Nah, I don't think so. I use carriages, and then walk from the nearest town to the objective. That way I can even explore a little bit on the way.

I compromise; I never fast travel except by carriage, and even then I it isn't a mundane fetch quest I'll walk. Seriously, I'm not walking back and forth from Riften to Markarth to get the special quest so I can be Guildmaster.

Sometimes I fast travel but mostly I don't as it reduces the immersion there are a few things I can think of that might be an improvement.1 Horses.These make travel a bit faster but there doesn't seem to be a way to make my dunce of a follower get on one and follow me.2 Carts These would work better if the journey could get interrupted by a random attack by something nasty e.g. bandits or spiders.

Personally I don't mind it taking a long time to get from A to B I don't need to complete the game instantly enjoy the fact that its a big place it gives it a real feel. If you cant stand going on foot and the time it takes you might be playing the wrong game. As far as I'm concerned I hope the map in the next game in the series is even bigger. In an industry dominated by games that are over in a day and don't let you move more than two feet to left of right ,and stick enemy's right in front of you so you don't have to bother finding them Bethesda should be applauded. They made a brave choice in making skyrim so big the amount of games sold and its popularity says it was the right choice.

What's great about this game is that you can choose. Sometimes I like to fast travel as I really want to move on with a certain quest line but walking around in the world usually gives me most satisfaction. Fast travelling is interesting if you want to avoid yet another dragon when you have a lot of spare dragon souls left and cannot afford to carry more dragon bones or scales.