Your opinion on "fast travelling" in open-world RPGs

[DarkShadow144]

I use fast traveling, but only if I have to get from one side of the map to the other, or if I'm just not in the mood to walk somewhere.

 

[JochemDude]

Well you it's your own choice to use it. If you don't want it you don't use it, simple isn't it?

 

[Shia-Neko-Chan]

Fast travel is and will always be a good and necessary addition to games with huge worlds because there are people who don't like tedius mandatory tasks in what is supposed to be a fun game. Telling me I have to walk for 15 minutes to get to one place (not including whatever random encounters I may have), then telling me I have to walk back is sleep inducing and I will not waste my time playing a game that makes long gaps in between enjoyable portions mandatory.

Movies, not even books, make every little detail of the hero's travels apparent, because it's boring to the viewer. Games shouldn't be the exception.

 

[Continuity]

Personally I like the option but I rarely use it, in fallout 3 for example I didnt even realise there was fast travel until I was about 50 hours into the game, and when I did discover it my first reaction was disappointment, just being presented with the option was immersion breaking for me.

In oblivion I walked/rode everywhere unless it was an area I'd been through a dozen times and needed to do some back and forth for a quest... I think fetch quests are really the area where fast travel shines.. Other than that I prefer to do without.

 

[Continuity]

Fast travel is and will always be a good and necessary addition to games with huge worlds because there are people who don't like tedius mandatory tasks in what is supposed to be a fun game. Telling me I have to walk for 15 minutes to get to one place (not including whatever random encounters I may have), then telling me I have to walk back is sleep inducing and I will not waste my time playing a game that makes long gaps in between enjoyable portions mandatory.

Movies, not even books, make every little detail of the hero's travels apparent, because it's boring to the viewer. Games shouldn't be the exception.

I think there is a fundamental difference with games though, and especially open world RPGs: I.e. A big part of the enjoyment is the immersion in the game world, and having an open world is a big part of that. After all, why even have an open world if you're just going to skip it? Defeats the object of the genre. If you dont like trekking around then really what you're saying is that you'd rather play a ordinary RPG.

So I think games absolutly should be the exception, computer games are an exceptional medium after all... A book or a film will just tell you a story but a game, especially an open world game, let's you live a fantasy life... And that Is something quite different.

 

[T.D.]

Well I wasn't so bothered with Oblivion doing it because I wandered about for the first couple of hours before I realised the scenery didn't change that much. Mountain, Forest, Shore and that really was it. I don't blame them, the game was huge, just saying if you aren't going to have a fast travel system the world has to be interesting to look at, and not just the same kind of thing over and over.

 

[Bostur]

Great quote collage by efeat

I think the more poignant issue is:
Game designers need to stop relying on crutches like insta-travel to make up for how they designed the over-world to be way too damn boring to actually traverse.

I completely agree. I would add that some game designers needs to reconsider if every game needs a big 'open' world. The location based worlds as used in "Dragon Age", "The Witcher", "Baldurs Gate", "Fallout" just to name a few works very well in many cases.
I love really well made open worlds, but they are hard to make and the only really successful ones in single player games I have tried was in GTA.

 

[Treblaine]

Great quote collage by efeat

I think the more poignant issue is:
Game designers need to stop relying on crutches like insta-travel to make up for how they designed the over-world to be way too damn boring to actually traverse.

I completely agree. I would add that some game designers needs to reconsider if every game needs a big 'open' world. The location based worlds as used in "Dragon Age", "The Witcher", "Baldurs Gate", "Fallout" just to name a few works very well in many cases.
I love really well made open worlds, but they are hard to make and the only really successful ones in single player games I have tried was in GTA.

I think the key there is vehicles.

The problem is vehicle physics require either a very comprehensive engine, very smart coding, or some combination of both which can get quite expensive.

Look what happens when games scrimp on car-physics, you end up with the bouncing cars from the racing sequence of the game Enter the Matrix. The thing is GTA developers have always FOCUSED on the cars and by doing that they have been able to deliver the really good driving physics (of that time) that means they are ENJOYABLE to drive!

So what is a swift mode of transport that is easy to code for?

I think it is things like horses as unlike a car that has to respond in a mechanical predictable way, a horse has a layer of intelligence. With a horse you can have movement be quite scripted with an overlay script of the horse moving, so not that hard.

I find it interesting that id software are heavily implementing vehicles in their upcoming open world game; RAGE. Even though they have very little to no experience with vehicles before.

 

[FalloutJack]

One thing I believe Yahtzee and I can both agree on is that there should be perhaps a vehicle or mount to make the travel go faster. I could see it happening in Fallout, easily. You mean to tell me that with all those exploding cars, you can't find the parts to cobble together one working machine? I don't personally have a problem with fast-travel, but I would've liked one of those motorcycles lying around in Goodsprings.

 

[Hungry Donner]

I remember a large number of runs I had to do over and over and over again in Morrowind, and they quickly became tiring. While a clever use of the mark/recall and intervention spells were sometimes sufficient (such as getting to distant strongholds without yet another run through the wastes) overall I found this was exceptionally tedious. Even the fast travel system could be a real pain if you needed to run from the mage's guild to the silt strider platform or what not.

These runs had no chance for adventure, and after the fifth or sixth (let alone the fiftieth or sixtieth) time I was more than a little bored.

I think Oblivion and Fallout 3 went too far in the other direction. I generally stayed away from fast travel unless I'd done that run several times, or if I just wanted to get somewhere and finish something quickly. I'd prefer if only the towns, villages, and inns had fast travel points (and maybe a few other locations if you're expected to travel there quite frequently). This would not only increase the importance of small villages and inns, which were easy to entirely skip over in Oblivion, but it would heighten the distinction between civilization and the wilds.

 

[Conza]

One of the things I didn't like in Oblivion and Fallout 3 was the whole system of "fast travelling", i.e. click a point on the map that you've been to before and you will instantly be transported there, alive and well. It sort of destroys the whole epic scope the game is meant to convey with its large map, and it removes a lot of the potential for chance encounters.

I was reading an old Extra Punctuation [http://www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/columns/extra-punctuation/8329-Extra-Punctuation-Fallout-New-Vegas] a minute ago and I noticed that Yahtzee happens to agree with me. I figure you'd rather listen to him than me, so:

When you instant fast travel in games like Fallout 3 you miss out on the adventure. If you had to ride a horse or a motorbike to your destination you might have an exciting encounter with NPCs, or catch a glimpse of something so intriguing on the horizon that you decide to take a detour to investigate it on a whim. Surely the whole point of the sandbox or open-world model is to give the player the chance to fill the gaps between major events with adventures of their own.

This was a big reason I failed to get the most out of Fallout 3. I completed the game in about 15 hours and I barely saw any of the map at all because I was waiting for quests to actually send me around the place and all that happened was I fast travelled between a few locations and then the damn story ended. Admittedly, partly my fault.

As stupid as it sounds, I even liked Morrowind's system better because it at least forced you to find Silt Striders and boats that would take you where you wanted to go (and would at least force you to move around a bit in between). But what I really want is Morrowind's system but where they show you doing the travelling (significantly faster than running of course). Possibly in a custscene, but why take control away? Why not put me aboard one of these things in my normal view... still able to shoot Cliff Racers as I fly by? Oh, and let me say to the pilot or equivalent "on second thought, set me down here next to that interesting looking ruin".


So that's my opinion: abolish fast travelling and implement my system. Don't even give me the option for fast travelling or I might use it. Don't let people skip sections of your game like that.

What are you thoughts? Do you like it? Hate it? What would be your ideal "faster than walking" travelling system?

Aside: has it been confirmed what the system in Skyrim will be?

Well, where's the poll for 'yes I like it' and 'no I don't'.

If the poll was made, I would vote 'yes I like it' then go on to say this.

Fast travelling has no draw backs, other than potentially additional coding time it makes to create the mechanisms, which can be countered by a lack of open walk around environments.

Fast travelling enriches a game by condensing its gameplay, to essential actions and events, without the need for the player to waste any time in an open world environment simply travelling, and inflating gameplay time required.

*Reads OP*

Still not persuaded, you make a fair point, a fast travel system in a giant sandbox environment (Fallout 3, Morrowind, GTAs, Mount and Blade), if developed additionally I then conclude to be redundant (mostly), but good games often do this for you in certain ways.

An example that comes to mind, on a smaller scale, a Ratchet and Clank game I was playing, there were these tower puzzles, you had to complete, and once you navigated to the top and activated the tower, you were instantly transported to the bottom of the tower, to save you climbing all the way back down. That's effective, because you've already seen and used every mechanic the developer created, and don't have to waste time with it again.

The risk in sandbox doing that, is what happened to yourself, potentially not seeing enough of the landscape to make it worth while making the landscape.

Still, I would prefer to have it in almost every game, especially if its an 'on foot only game' and if its truely immersive, then a fast vehicle really won't cut enough time off to stop the irritation, I mean c'mon, even Pokemon let you learn Fly and fly between cities you'd been to. So ultimately, I'm for fast travelling.

 

[skywolfblue]

I think the more poignant issue is:

'Forced to chose between monotonous trudge through overworld, or cheap insta-travel that acts like a level-skip code'

it's not enough to just say "don't use insta-travel", the issue is how the PRESENCE OF THE MECHANIC ALONE is so bad that simply skipping it is no the solution.

Insta-Travel is the SYMPTOM, not the cause of bad level design.

OK, maybe not a symptom, more an indicative botch repair, like how a limp - trying to not put weight on a leg- indicates the leg is broken. A game that implements an insta-travel system indicates a game with a broken overworld.

You know why "sandbox" games like GTA are so popular? Because the overworld is quite fun to travel through! That's mainly due to the cars, it's like a lite-racing game.

Game designers need to stop relying on crutches like insta-travel to make up for how they designed the over-world to be way too damn boring to actually traverse.

Totally agree with this.

In a properly done open world, you shouldn't want to or feel encouraged to use fast travel at all. You should be running into all sorts of exciting things.

Oblivion is a bad way to go about the open world, there was basically nothing interesting off the beaten path. Read Dead Redemption/Assasin's Creed on the other hand are excellent examples of everything about an open world done right.

 

[jpoon]

I'm fine with it, I don't want to have to run everywhere I have to go when the maps are fucking 20 miles across. That's just lame shit to pad out the game. If there's something worth seeing, I'll take the time to go see it but I don't necessarily like being forced to do so.

There's a stupidly simple way to fix this, don't use the damn fast travel...problem solved!

 

[veloper]

Great idea, let's turn TES even more into a hiking simulator.

 

[Slash Dementia]

I think it takes a lot away from the games. Especially ones like Oblivion and Fallout because they have such a huge environment. I think Morrowind had a great system of fast travel because you had to pay to use it and it only took you to major towns.

This, and a reason why I like how Morrowind did fast-travel, is because there was always something new to find. Whether it was a new cave, dungeon, loot, crypt, daedric ruin, there was always something on your way to anywhere. The land was very amazing, and had "fantasy" written all over it, which made it not seem like much of a nuisance to walk from place to place, or to ride the silt strider or boat. And this is what I loved about Morrowind, and why it has more hours put into it (even after four years of not playing) than any other game that I own/owned.

I had a place to go in Morrowind, and I went, but I saw the other road, I'll call it, and there was something there for me. I was rewarded for exploring, whether it be just an amazing viewpoint, a uniquely placed item, or an NPC/quest.

All of that, to me, is what Fallout 3 and Oblivion were missing (won't say more games because they're two of the only open-world games that I've played). Fallout 3 had more of the same in every direction, and I won't blame it because it's supposed to feel empty, but there wasn't much variety at all, and the same goes to Oblivion--except changing the color pallet from brown to green--there was nothing to marvel at, and the sense of exploration and discovery was taken away.

The option to fast travel is hard to resist, because if you're playing and wanting to finish something quickly, you use it (most of the time), and then use it again and again. It gets easier to do it, and it's bringing to closer to the end of the game.

I prefer walking in games and finding new things, so I won't be using the fast-travel feature in Skyrim in my first playthrough of the game, but since I know the game will have it, I will use it in later ones.

 

[DracoSuave]

Fast Travel belongs in TES.

Or, are we pretending that it wasn't a feature in the game since the very beginning.

Moreover... slow travel is tedious and doesn't add a fucking thing. It's just walking for the sake of walking. Games should incorporate ability to speed travel in one way or another with large world maps... that way the player can spend more time exploring the game and less time doing pointless padding.

 

[JDB15]

I agree, really... and I would have loved a vehicle in the new Fallout games...
Oh wait...

I remember now, I had one!​

and for you fantasy junkies out there...

Never could stand the game, personally.​

First off... Awesome.

Second, I agree with most people. Yeah, it does ruin the game a bit, but I don't really mind. When I feel like doing the fast-travel, I'll do it, especially when I want to do something without walking there and probably forgetting about it after the encounters I might face. When I just want to roam and explore (and Fallout 3 to listen to GNR for a while in Fallout 3), then I don't use it.

...I would rather have the choice than none at all...

Exactly.