I think fast traveling in oblivion got it right. You could only fast travel after you had been to the destination first on foot. This encourages exploration and gives a the world a bigger scale.
Your opinion on "fast travelling" in open-world RPGs
- Thread starter LookingGlass
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I prefer the fast-travel method they used in Gothic: you didn't get it until late game when you started getting quests that took you from one far side of the map to another. Prior to that, quests tended to be fairly localized. Exploring the nooks and crannies was part of the fun of the game and led to some great rewards. So it never felt like, oh, god, I gotta run all the way back to turn this stupid thing in . . .
Also, you had to do some pretty hefty quests to get the fast-travel abilities, so they felt like a reward.
Oblivion I thought was okay--you had to actually go somewhere before you could fast-travel there. (Except for the "civilized" locations). There wasn't a lot of random neat stuff to discover in the wilderness and the terrain got a bit boring after a while, so I was willing to skip it.
Fallout 3 I thought was horrible because of the way downtown was set up. You never learned your way through that horrible maze and it could be really annoying when you DID have to go find a location for a quest. Convoluted many-loading-screen-filled area with no effective map that you teleport through? BAD DESIGN.
Also, you had to do some pretty hefty quests to get the fast-travel abilities, so they felt like a reward.
Oblivion I thought was okay--you had to actually go somewhere before you could fast-travel there. (Except for the "civilized" locations). There wasn't a lot of random neat stuff to discover in the wilderness and the terrain got a bit boring after a while, so I was willing to skip it.
Fallout 3 I thought was horrible because of the way downtown was set up. You never learned your way through that horrible maze and it could be really annoying when you DID have to go find a location for a quest. Convoluted many-loading-screen-filled area with no effective map that you teleport through? BAD DESIGN.
Fast travel is a convenience. There are times you want to explore every last square metre of Cyrodil, Azeroth, Wasteland or wherever. That's pretty much the game. Wander through our world and half the daft NPCs will ask for you to do something so you can, er do things. Other times you want to get somewhere quickly. You want to unload all the loot, you just want to finish the quest, you need to stop for dinner. Starting a new session in Megaton skips that entire 'where the hell am I' sequence. Enough existential dread already. You're in Megaton, now hurry, the wasteland won't explore itself you know.
I like Fallout/Oblivion's system. You find a location and you can fast travel to it later. However I think it should be changed up so that you have to use some form of service like a taxi on Grand Theft Auto.
JMeganSnow said:
I have to agree with you on the fun of exploring the nooks and crannies...I took a back trail in New Vegas the other day.....after getting through a bunch of cadzors - (thank you buggy ledges!) I ended up finding a mini-nuke launcher called the fat boy! It doesn't get much better than that for rewards and the enjoyment of exploring!
Open world games need fun modes of transportation to function. No one likes slow trudging through long environments. Give me a car, give me a horse, give me a pogostick, ANYTHING that speeds up travel. Grrr I hated when I found out I could fast travel in Red Dead Redemption. I try my best to not use it but it's just too convenient.
I do hate fast travel. It beats having to walk everywhere, but I'd much prefer something else.
I do hate fast travel. It beats having to walk everywhere, but I'd much prefer something else.
I actualy like having the ability to fast travel especialy when its my 10th time going to that same city knowing I will just have to make the return trip in 5 minutes after getting there. It gets old running across the same road or cross country and you end up just ignoring anything that pops up to attack you and let them follow you. the running from point A to B and back to A just becomes tedious and a huge time sink for no reward in doing it. Yay I got attacked by another bear or wolf or mountain lion... BORING!!! oh look I ran by that camp just 10 minutes ago...
If you enjoy running across the same plot of land repeatedly then you are not forced to use fast travel, there are many who just dont enjoy running across the same piece of land over and over again being attacked by the same mobs again and again. ive played RPG's where there was no form of fast travel but you had a vehicle.. it was 10-20 minutes of boredom and avoiding encounters when what you realy want is to get to where you are going. When i want to fuck about i will go exploring i dont want to be forced to do it everytime I need to get someplace that ive been to 10 times already.
but really the issue of fast travel you are having is a moot point because YOU CHOSE to use it. you completing Oblivion in 15 hours says to me you chose to do the main questline and not choose to just ignore it and look for other things to do. I just started the game again with a different character and I have over 100 hours in on it and i have not done any part of the main quest and i have tons of quests still to do. but I am the leader of all the guilds now! once i finish the knights of the nine questline i will then do the main questline then once thats complete then its off to the towns and villages seeking quests such as "Go Fish" and running about the world seeking dungeons to explore because when i was doing all the questlines i walked around anything that popped up on my compass that said theres something ahead that i was never at. So I have tons of exploring to do still.
If you enjoy running across the same plot of land repeatedly then you are not forced to use fast travel, there are many who just dont enjoy running across the same piece of land over and over again being attacked by the same mobs again and again. ive played RPG's where there was no form of fast travel but you had a vehicle.. it was 10-20 minutes of boredom and avoiding encounters when what you realy want is to get to where you are going. When i want to fuck about i will go exploring i dont want to be forced to do it everytime I need to get someplace that ive been to 10 times already.
but really the issue of fast travel you are having is a moot point because YOU CHOSE to use it. you completing Oblivion in 15 hours says to me you chose to do the main questline and not choose to just ignore it and look for other things to do. I just started the game again with a different character and I have over 100 hours in on it and i have not done any part of the main quest and i have tons of quests still to do. but I am the leader of all the guilds now! once i finish the knights of the nine questline i will then do the main questline then once thats complete then its off to the towns and villages seeking quests such as "Go Fish" and running about the world seeking dungeons to explore because when i was doing all the questlines i walked around anything that popped up on my compass that said theres something ahead that i was never at. So I have tons of exploring to do still.
What I assume from skyrim is kind of based off whatI heard in the gameplay video, I Heard that a "Shout" can teleport you to places... Ring a Bell?, I'm going to assume that "Shout" your going to get early in the game possibly in your first dungeon, And it will allow you to fast travel as it out co-side with the map. It makes a little more sense then in obilivions where I had a horse and it took me three days to get to one place vesus a few hours with fast travel.
I think that fast travel is a pretty bad idea IF the world is interesting to travel through. For example, I didn't mind fast travelling in Oblivion because Cyrodil comes off as a pretty boring place (interesting considering it's a fantasy game and that alone should fill me with wonder and curiosity). The only thing that kept me from fast travelling all the time is that I like the idea of just wandering and cut up any bandits that challenge me to a duel. They seemed like they tried to make travelling less monotonous by adding horses, but they felt clunky and slow and you had to pay for them so I didn't see the point. Then, pretty early in the story they made it more irritating by adding the Oblivion portals. For this game, fast-travel seemed to be the way to go.
Fallout 3, on the otherhand, had no replacement horse at all. Despite this, there were all these interesting subplots you had to discover on your own. Despite this, I don't want to walk all the time. There are only so many mirelurks I want to shoot in the face. Maybe the game could have benefitted from a Half-Life 2 style buggy or a train or something.
Ideally, the level design and writing is boring as crap so we want to explore but at the same time it shouldn't be a pain the ass to travel. Yahtzee said during his "Prototype review" that "a sandbox is only as good as the method by which you get around it". It takes away from the environment if it's too effortless, but it gets tedious if you have nothing. WoWs seems to work pretty well: you don't have to do it, you have to pay for it, teleportation is a limited option (last time I checked you at least need a mage to do it), you see the world your travelling over, you can only do it at specific parts of the map, and it rewards at later levels with abilities that make travel easier.
Fallout 3, on the otherhand, had no replacement horse at all. Despite this, there were all these interesting subplots you had to discover on your own. Despite this, I don't want to walk all the time. There are only so many mirelurks I want to shoot in the face. Maybe the game could have benefitted from a Half-Life 2 style buggy or a train or something.
Ideally, the level design and writing is boring as crap so we want to explore but at the same time it shouldn't be a pain the ass to travel. Yahtzee said during his "Prototype review" that "a sandbox is only as good as the method by which you get around it". It takes away from the environment if it's too effortless, but it gets tedious if you have nothing. WoWs seems to work pretty well: you don't have to do it, you have to pay for it, teleportation is a limited option (last time I checked you at least need a mage to do it), you see the world your travelling over, you can only do it at specific parts of the map, and it rewards at later levels with abilities that make travel easier.
I've personally never saw the reason people complain about it so much. It's an optional feature. I'm not a fan of it usually, but sometimes I just can't be bothered walking from one side of the map to the other, so it's nice to have the option. But you can easily just not use it if you don't like it so much. If the temptation to use it is so strong, you clearly can't loathe it as much as you claim.
Just don't tell me I can simulate the experience of a non-Fast Travel game or Morrowind style system by ignoring the feature. DON'T EVEN FUCKING TRY IT. It's like saying, "Don't like the user interface? Just don't use it." IT IS BUILT INTO THE GAME. EVERYTHING IS DESIGNED AROUND IT. THE GAME AS DESIGNED IS UNPLAYABLE WITHOUT IT.
It depends how it was intigrated. I don't like it on fallout and oblivion because as long as you're out of combat you just open your map and *poof* you pop up where you click essentially. I like things like on morrowind where you went to a silt strider master, and used it to travel between locations though. It's a way of getting around fast while still being absorbed into the game.
Or the system in Far Cry 2. I never made it far in that game due to the sheer annoyance that the travel brought me. I found Just Cause 2's system to be good. The planes made travel quick and fun, while if you really need to get somewhere you could get thekman123 said:
While fast travel takes away from the experience, having to repeatedly walk/run between waypoints gets old. Really. Fast.
There are other ways to avoid "hiking simulator" without resorting to magical insta-travel (easy to code but ineffective) or amazing vehicles (more effective but hard to code) and that is the very layout of the world itself.
I see the need for wide open spaces but why do you have to put them BETWEEN
Another is dimensionality, why limit yourself to a map in 2 Dimensions? You can fit more things into the same space and have to go less distance between each by STACKING them.
Sky city above you
Underground cities
But I think the worst part is Going through the same place over and over again that you've already looted for treasure.
"Passages" would benefit from having many different routes otherwise you'll quickly get bored passing through them on the 2nd or 3rd time. A desert with identical hills and troughs is one passage regardless of size, a good desert would be one with varying ridges, valleys and mesas.
But think about it, there is more of a reason to go through an area to TAKE things... what can you LEAVE there? What seeds can you plant in a hot climate to grow valuable fruits that keep giving? What Traps can you set? What positions can you fortify?
I see the need for wide open spaces but why do you have to put them BETWEEN
Another is dimensionality, why limit yourself to a map in 2 Dimensions? You can fit more things into the same space and have to go less distance between each by STACKING them.
Sky city above you
Underground cities
But I think the worst part is Going through the same place over and over again that you've already looted for treasure.
"Passages" would benefit from having many different routes otherwise you'll quickly get bored passing through them on the 2nd or 3rd time. A desert with identical hills and troughs is one passage regardless of size, a good desert would be one with varying ridges, valleys and mesas.
But think about it, there is more of a reason to go through an area to TAKE things... what can you LEAVE there? What seeds can you plant in a hot climate to grow valuable fruits that keep giving? What Traps can you set? What positions can you fortify?