I think in world fast travel points are the best way to do things. You wanna get to that city? Best take the strider. Wanna go to the town out in the middle of nowhere? Theres a bus that goes that direction. Makes it feel much better imo.
What am I supposed to explore when I am going back the way I came? The simplest way of doing fast travel still generally requires you find POIs by actually going to their location before you can travel to them instantly.
I’ve done my exploring, now I want to sell all the shit I found and get back to finding more!
In open world games that are actually open world, going back is also something notable.
But nowadays games are open world just as a side thing, and there’s actually nothing to do in the so called open world, besides the quests…
Best way of handling this is to load the environment with random events that can occur on various return trips. Sea of Thieves and Red Read Redemption 2 do this, though it doesn’t work for every game.
The other good way to handle it is a fun movement system, eg Insomniac games.
And those get pretty repetitive and aren’t rewarding enough that I wanna go through that every time. Especially RDR2’s fucking habit of spawning some kind of big animal right the fuck on top of me giving me zero chance to react and making me lose all the animal pelts I’d been collecting right as I am walking up to the motherfucker who buys 'em. 🤬
(I’ve been playing that one recently and it’s reminding me why I stopped)
I’ve always tried to avoid fast travel as much as possible simply because exploring and random encounters are the best way to l ensure you’re levelling up as necessary.
If you just fast travel between story beats, you can find yourself underpowered and having to “level farm” to get back on track.
Besides… Exploring is often more fun than the actual game.
I appreciate how Kingdom Come Deliverance handles fast travel.
The further you travel the more likely shits gonna get fucky on the way
I like KCD for hardcore’s fast travel. There isn’t any. You have to learn the map and move your horse the old fashioned way with no compass and no map marker for Henry. It really immerses you and forces you to learn the map.
what does “getting fucky” mean in that game?
harassed by bandits or something
like fast travel is interrupted by an encounter?
yeah, there are assorted encounter types you can be interrupted by, not all are bad but many are. some start unique quests.
The encounter often times is related to where you are, so if there is a bandits hideout in the woods near a place you’re fast traveling past they might hop out and try to rob you.
Or you might run into a weird person near a village.
Or you might just run into some dudes that wanna wrestle.
These people are in the world otherwise and you could run into them while not fast traveling too, but when fast traveling you’re not like to avoid “bad” situations
that’s good mechanics, I like it. not lazy coding that just does a flat chance per travel event. it’s a good look for the devs
Big reason why I just rode the horse the old fashion way and avoided obstacles myself
This was me with Horizon Zero Dawn. I finished my first playthrough without ever fast traveling. Then after the credits rolled I spammed it.
No ragrets. Was fun.Same.
But that’s why good fast travel is important. Once you’ve seen the world, you can skip the stuff you’ve already done.
But even more important is a world you want to see so you don’t want to fast travel at first.
Looking at you, Starfield.
And if you do have a shitty world, make sure the fast travel is actually fast.
Looking at you, Starfield.
Fast travel is a symptom of poor game design so don’t feel too bad
I’m currently playing The Outer Worlds on the hardest difficulty which, among other things, disallowes fast-travel. For the most part, the worlds have been small and it hadn’t been a problem, but yesterday I had to go back and forth to 3 locations several times in a row in different corners of the map. It only took a five minutes each time, but ugh. It got old.
I almost never fast traveled when I played Skyrim. To busy exploring every random cave and building along with climbing random mountains because why not.
I didn’t fast travel except all the treks to and from High Hrothgar. That got old quickly.
Pretty sure I went there once in all the time I played Skyrim.
Would be a great name for a dispensary
There is one in my area called Skooma.
From what I remember if you did all the Greybeard stuff you were up and down there many times.
First to meet the Greybeards
After the Horn of Jurgen Windcaller
The Civil War meeting
That’s just off the top of my head having not played Skyrim in yonks
I tried that and gave up after being attacked by five bears within the same quarter mile stretch of road.
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I’ve been hooked on Dragon’s Dogma 2 for a bit now.
I haven’t even used a fast-travel item because world traversal and exploration is so much fun. It’s a game that actually uses it’s open world as something other than an overworld to move to the next quest.
Depends on the game, is travelling fun and/or the world interesting to look at? I never used fast travel in Spider-Man.
I’m practically allergic to fast travel, no matter the game. I don’t play games to “get through them”. If I’m playing something where I’m that bored with traveling in an alternate universe, I should probably just pick another game.
I take transit in Cyberpunk and it makes the world feel way more alive. Downtime is something some games are entirely built around so the moments of action have that much more impact. I admit some games do this poorly, but those are ones I typically just avoid in the first place.
I like when my games feel more like roleplay and less like an action movie.
Wait, does this mean they got the train working?! I haven’t played since early on.
Yes! There is so much they’ve added since launch. You should absolutely replay.
Ok, I really should. It was a major disappointment when I played at launch and looked everywhere for how to board the train and couldn’t find it.
