Whats your opinion of Fast Travel?

I've found this game is best when you implement your own restrictions on your character and not use every exploit in the book.

That being said, I understand that Fast Travel gets where you were going regardless, as fast as possible similar to taxi cabs in GTA IV (I don't have GTA V, waiting for PC Release) but you can't really enjoy the world Bethesda made when you only use it.

I have never made a mod before, but if I did I would put carriages outside every village and major hold, so if you wanted to fast travel you at least had to make it to the next town and pay some septims before you could do it.

On the other hand, I play on Legendary Difficulty. At the low levels my character is as weak as a flea or gnat. EVERYTHING kills me without doing everything within my power to avoid taking a hit. 1-2 hits from anything higher than a bandit and I'm as good as dead. So traversing the tundra is near impossible until I get my endgame gear and invest more leveling up into health and such.

I like having it, yet I also dislike it. By the time I've equipped my endgame armor and enchanted weapons though, even 2 giants and 3 mammoths don't pose much of a problem, particularly when you have 2 dead thralls (I went with Orchendor and Krev the Skinner), Lydia, Thonnir from Morthal, Vigilance the dog and Barbas the dog, and Esbern and Delphine following me every where (It's incredibly foolish to pick a fight with me and my little posse).

THe only reason I can see not to do it in that circumstance is the pathing sucks on the dead thralls and they may not show up at the next hold you fast travel to.

Well fast travel in itself I don't much use or care for. But I do have a Bat Travel mod (since I'm always playing a vampire lord), it has 2 mods of travel the "Bat Travel" power which is much like the fast travel, I barely use that one either. I'll sometimes set custom destinations if I want ot use it, otherwise i use the "Cloud of Bats" power to just fly around to my destinations quicker. But that eats up mana, and I don't use it during daytime (for RP purposes a vampire's powers should be weakened, if not disabled, during the day) ^_^

I concur with your thoughts on fast travel. I don't fast travel to new locations. I hike it. I also will opt to hike it if I'm not going clear across the countryside. When I get to a new location, I hang out in the area to poke around. As a smithy, I gather a lot of pelts that way. Sometimes my character is tired, and fast travels because she's just too sleepy to walk.

I don't use fast travel really. I enjoy walking around the beautiful world we were given and wouldn't see it if I fast traveled. I feel like it just takes too much away from the game. If I don't want to walk, I'll take a cart.

Where possible, I try to avoid using fast travel. For me, travelling through the world is a large proportion of the game, and it really to adds to the immersion and roleplaying element. The only time I'll fast travel is if I'm following a repetitive path, or over encumbered with vital items.

I play on the Xbox at the moment, but when I get it on PC soon, I'll definitely be disabling fast travel and downloading the scenic carriages mod, as well as Frostfall and IMCN. Scenic carriages also includes expanded destinations, and the ability to get out at any time.

I still use it, but not as frequently as I used to. If I find I've accumulated a bunch of quests that are in the same area, then I'll do them all on foot. With one character, I've decided to use absolutely no fast travel except for wagons, and I rest at inns or in a friend's house instead of waiting all night for the shops to open. It does make the adventure feel much more alive than simply skipping everything.

When you travel on foot, you get to have surprise encounters with thieves and revelers, maybe the odd distressed traveler.

But I will say that one thing that puts me off traveling on foot is the way Skyrim's landscape has been designed. I'm sorry, but it is poorly made in some places. The mountains slopes really get on my nerves, especially all those cliffs up near Solitude where I can't tell if the cave I'm looking for is up on a high ledge or right down the bottom on the shore. There's a lot of awkward back and forth and trying to get around all these rocks that are passable in one area but not in others. I find myself taking unrealistic journeys because my character is walking along a rock face to get in a straight line somewhere, and it just kills the realism for me, and also causes me to become separated from my followers. Now I know it's more practical to stick to the roads, but taking shortcuts is kind of a force of habit for me, and i don't think the game designers did a good job of the map areas where the player might stray from the roads.

So when I do fast travel, the relief comes from avoiding the frustration of dodgy environment design, not from simply taking the easy, lazy route.

Vendettonator said:

Where possible, I try to avoid using fast travel. For me, travelling through the world is a large proportion of the game, and it really to adds to the immersion and roleplaying element. The only time I'll fast travel is if I'm following a repetitive path, or over encumbered with vital items.

I play on the Xbox at the moment, but when I get it on PC soon, I'll definitely be disabling fast travel and downloading the scenic carriages mod, as well as Frostfall and IMCN. Scenic carriages also includes expanded destinations, and the ability to get out at any time.

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unless you want to put up with protein and calories I suggest realistic needs and diseases plus it has more compatibility patches and last I checked there is a mod called touring carriages that I find is heaps better then scenic carriages

I used to use fast travel whenever possible, however lately I've only used it whenever the destination I need to go to is in the hold I'm currently in (IE: going from Silent Moons camp to Whiterun), as well as using the carriage whenever I need to go across the map.

However with that being said, I'm slowly warming up again to the idea of fast traveling whenever possible. The reason being that I can't take five steps without a pack of wolves spawning. Literally, every five steps a pack of wolves spawn, I deal with them, turn back to the direction I was heading, take five steps, and encounter...another pack of wolves. I just started a new character last night, and within two hours I had already collected over thirty wolf pelts, and no, I'm not exaggerating.

Skyrim is nice, and the real world is a bitch. That is the only reason of why i'd resent myself from doing something "optional" that takes more time in a game. If you have 1 hour before you go to work, or whatever, and you are playing skyrim and want to go to riften from Dragon's bridge, just to turn in a thief job, do you travel 30+ mins for just turning in a job and then being prepared to go. Whenever i got real-time i preffer walking over fast travel on anyday.

ColleenG said:

I concur with your thoughts on fast travel. I don't fast travel to new locations. I hike it. I also will opt to hike it if I'm not going clear across the countryside. When I get to a new location, I hang out in the area to poke around. As a smithy, I gather a lot of pelts that way. Sometimes my character is tired, and fast travels because she's just too sleepy to walk.

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You can't fast travel to new locations. (Unless you're on PC, which needs a command)

I'm cool with Fast Travel. It's not really a cheat or even an exploit as it is part of the vanilla game.

On a personal note, I can only play 3-4 hours max a day (with work and school and all) and I simply can't afford to play through one quest for a couple of hours just because I don't have a means to immediately get to my destination. Fast travel is ultimately a "convenience feature" for people who doesn't fancy spending loads of times walking/riding to and from places.

Regarding the subject of going to a place that you can't fast travel to (e.g. place you've never visited before), I usually check the environment if there's a river I could swim. Then I strip all my character's clothes and go bikini open. If that's not an option, then there's always the traditional hiking method of course.

I personally avoid using it as fast travelling for reasons people have already stated. However, I do make use of it often enough that I would be unhappy if the feature was removed.

Mostly I used it whenever I get stuck in the scenery or trapped somewhere, or fall of a mountain and can't get back up. I also sometimes use it to fast travel to the location I am already at just to make my vanished follower, horse and pet appear next to me. I've also used it to regain progress made when Skyrim crashes and dumps me at my last save several miles walk away.

I also lost patience with my no fast travel policy when I was playing Dawnguard for the first time. It's hard siding with the Dawnguard and not fast travelling.

I walked all the way to the Dawnguard headquarters in The Rift, and then got sent three quarters of the way across Skyrim to wake up Serana who then wanted me to take her to Volikhar which is the completely opposite end of Skyrim to the Dawnguard. After refusing Harkon's gift I walked all the way back to the Dawnguard, who promptly sent me near Markarth to recruit Sorine. Then I walked all the way back across Skyrim from The Reach to the Rift, to meet up with Serana and get sent to Dragon's Bridge to rescue the Moth Priest, who said: "Thanks, I'll meet you at Fort Dawnguard". Then after he read the bloody scroll Serana decided we had to walk all the way to Volkihar. Doing the Soul Cairn and Forgotten Vale I couldn't have fast travelled if I wanted to, and by that stage I did as my no fast travel policy meant I'd been trying to finish the Dawnguard questline for two weeks. When Serana announced that we would kill her father right after we walked all the way across Skyrim to visit the Dawnguard first I decided that fast travelling was the only way to go because I wanted to finish this questline today and not in four days time.

I'm trying to keep my fighter as realistic as possible so she has only fast traveled twice and that was to avoid a glitch that caused the game to lock up whenever I went from Whiterun to Riverwood. She used to use horses but they became such a pain (got killed or would just walk back to the stable whenever I got off them) that she doesn't use them any more. Although I may still by another.

My mage occasionally fast travels. Often when she's in a hurry she just transforms into a werewolf and runs. She makes a lot better time that way.

For my first play through I was big on fast traveling because I was just excited to get the quests done and see what happens. Now that I've done most the major quests I always walk with my new character.

I'm not a fan of using horses either, to me it just makes exploring and killing animals to much of a hassle with constantly getting on and off a horse.

Usually, I fast travel to the nearest location (or the nearest town or city) then just walk. Depending on what the quest is, I will sometimes just walk to whole way to the area I'm supposed to go. Sometimes, when I want to get through a quest as fast as possible, while still actually doing it, I use the coc command. I rarely use that, though.
I like travelling the world, but sometimes I just want to hurry and get where I'm going.

By the way, I'm pretty sure there's a mod that puts carriages in every hold capital and town.

Not used heavily traditionally, unless on those fetch quests that I really want to get past to get to another quest. I've used it a bit more as time has gone on though and the map is traversed over and over. But I spend a ton of time with my fair Dr. D'Irsei traveling on foot, the traditional way. No better way really to reach ALL of the inhabitants in Skyrim who are truly in need of invasive dental work at fire sale prices.

Alysa Roesch said:

For my first play through I was big on fast traveling because I was just excited to get the quests done and see what happens. Now that I've done most the major quests I always walk with my new character.

I'm not a fan of using horses either, to me it just makes exploring and killing animals to much of a hassle with constantly getting on and off a horse.

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Yeah I've definitely started avoiding the horse thing, after trying to fight animals shorter than the horse with the horse always attempting to fight them too. It's cool to ride Arovak because of his look, but because he does nothing any other horse can't do, ultimately he's as useless as the others for anything except exceeding running speed while falling far short of fast travel. Oh, and climbing ridiculous grades. There's that.

I use it all the time. I only get to play maybe 5 hours a week. Without fast travel, it would take me like two years to accomplish anything of note.

tx12001 said:

unless you want to put up with protein and calories I suggest realistic needs and diseases plus it has more compatibility patches and last I checked there is a mod called touring carriages that I find is heaps better then scenic carriages

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I've looked at a few alternatives, but I like the look of IMCN; it seems to have more depth, and it also offers a basic mode IIRC, so I will give it a go. If not, realistic needs and diseases it is! I probably missed touring carriages, as I only briefly looked over carriage mods, or it may not have been added, as it quite a while back. It looks much better than scenic, so I'll definitely be trying that if nothing else is released. This may all change by the time I get my pc anyway...

I know how big a game Skyrim is (graphics, AI, etc.), so don't hate me when I say that fast-travel should be faster. No offense intended, and I know how hard creating a game is, but I hope that it will be a lot quicker (if implemented) in TESO.

Again, I'm not disrespecting Bethesda in any way (You're my favourite game devs, btw).