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bawk
Mar 31, 2013

kazil posted:

You can have the most beautiful hand crafted world ever but if I have to traverse it 5000 times I'd like fast travel please

I've gone for 30 hours walking around Kamurocho in Yakuza Kiwami, an area the size of maybe an average JRPG town, and the only time I ever used the fast travel/cab service was when a side quest heavily hinted that I needed to use it to progress the side quest.

If I need to walk 5000 times across the world, make it super small and regularly fill it with jerks to beat the crap out of :2monocle:

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CJacobs
Apr 17, 2011

Reach for the moon!
There also aren't portcrystal destinations in places where you really would want them to be like major towns, so for example if you want to frequently use the smithing services at the elf village you have to waste one. I finally got one from a quest in that village and then immediately felt compelled to stick it there. The village doesn't sell another one, so you're likely to walk away with no reward. It's a great, customizable fast travel system you're discouraged from using. Just poor game design all around.

Edit: if you doze off on an ox cart to attempt to travel fast, there's a chance a boss monster might appear and just knock it over as you wake up, so you have to walk the rest of the way. It's happened 3 of the 4 times I've taken one now. Once it was shorter to just walk back to town and summon another cart.

CJacobs has a new favorite as of 19:54 on Mar 28, 2024

Philippe
Aug 9, 2013

(she/her)

bawk posted:

I've gone for 30 hours walking around Kamurocho in Yakuza Kiwami, an area the size of maybe an average JRPG town, and the only time I ever used the fast travel/cab service was when a side quest heavily hinted that I needed to use it to progress the side quest.

If I need to walk 5000 times across the world, make it super small and regularly fill it with jerks to beat the crap out of :2monocle:

Density is how you save an open world game, really. The Cyberpunk DLC is the same way: it's a tiny area jampacked with stores and jerks to sneakhackshoot and quests.

Arrath
Apr 14, 2011


Philippe posted:

Density is how you save an open world game, really. The Cyberpunk DLC is the same way: it's a tiny area jampacked with stores and jerks to sneakhackshoot and quests.

Witcher 3 excelled at this and I never made it to a given objective in a straight line, I always got side tracked on other poo poo

Muscle Tracer
Feb 23, 2007

Medals only weigh one down.

Inspector Gesicht posted:

My problem with Bethesda is how half-hearted they are with their own ideas. The Institute is like the Underpant Gnomes. We never learn their goal or anything.

Yeah, not being lore purists is absolutely the last thing I'd complain about in a Bethesda game. It's less that they did things differently in F3, more that they did them very badly. I enjoyed F4 quite a bit but I also relied heavily on console commands to make my own fun.

Captain Hygiene
Sep 17, 2007

You mess with the crabbo...



bawk posted:

I've gone for 30 hours walking around Kamurocho in Yakuza Kiwami, an area the size of maybe an average JRPG town, and the only time I ever used the fast travel/cab service was when a side quest heavily hinted that I needed to use it to progress the side quest.

If I need to walk 5000 times across the world, make it super small and regularly fill it with jerks to beat the crap out of :2monocle:

Yeah, I think those games are about the least I've ever used fast travel, I'd just run around everywhere on foot. PS4 Spider-Man was another one that was on the low end of using it, since it's also relatively contained and fun traversal mechanics are a huge part of the game design. But even then, I'll start using it later in the game, when I'm tracking down all the collectibles and challenges.

credburn
Jun 22, 2016

John Murdoch posted:

Case in point not that long ago someone was getting mad in the TES thread about how Bethesda stomped all over the sacrosanct lore of Morrowind with some minor Skyrim sidequest only for it to turn out they were completely wrong and just looking for something to get mad about.

Or a classic one that I think has cropped up on this thread a few times, people claiming Bethesda tried to make the Brotherhood the good guys in Fallout 4. Of course, the Fallout thread also gets into monthly arguments about how according to Fallout 1 the Brotherhood works like this, but then Bethesda screwed everything up by having them act like that, but then NV says :words:

Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics do not take place in the same timeline or universe as any Bethesda Fallouts and New Vegas is the weird bridge between worlds. 76 exists in its own dimension also, where nothing matters and everything is bad.

edit: no wait there were Supermutants in Tactics also for some reason. HOW DID A DYING RACE OF MUTANTS WITH NO WAY TO MAKE MORE MUTANTS MAKE IT ALL THE WAY TO CHICAGO AND ESTABLISH ANYTHING THERE

Gaius Marius
Oct 9, 2012

Byzantine posted:

Yeah, basically. There's a lot of dumb stuff in Bethesda's Fallouts, sure, but "Bethesda bad" has hit the point where people will outright lie about things that happen in Bethout, and then other people who readily admit they didn't play/don't remember the games will nod along then go off and repeat it because obviously it's true, Bethesda Bad. Even when stuff is explicitly spelled out, it gets ignored, or doesn't matter, or Obsidian's version takes precedence even though the NCR-Brotherhood War is just as much of sequel invention as Scouring the Pitt, or or, etc.

I find it amusing how many people with strong opinions on Bethesda lore changes, or perceived changes, have clearly never played F1 or 2. You'd think if they were so invested they'd take the time to play them instead of trawling wikis and forum posts to get mad about.

Randalor
Sep 4, 2011



credburn posted:

Fallout 1, 2 and Tactics do not take place in the same timeline or universe as any Bethesda Fallouts and New Vegas is the weird bridge between worlds. 76 exists in its own dimension also, where nothing matters and everything is bad.

edit: no wait there were Supermutants in Tactics also for some reason. HOW DID A DYING RACE OF MUTANTS WITH NO WAY TO MAKE MORE MUTANTS MAKE IT ALL THE WAY TO CHICAGO AND ESTABLISH ANYTHING THERE

Whatever do you mean? We were even told in Fallout 2 that Super Mutants are able to reproduce, it just took some time for the juices to get flowing.

Arivia
Mar 17, 2011

Evilreaver posted:

Morrowind is the only game to do fast travel correctly that I'm aware of: multiple semi-interlocking modes of transportation, each with diegetic settings-appropriate reasons for existing, requiring game knowledge and experience to effectively use.

Honestly I think MMOs are probably cheating, but WoW has been pretty good for fast travel over the years. You have click button go to place, but at a time cost (flight masters), intercontinental modes of transportation that require switching onto a different network (zeppelins and boats), and a class that can help others get generally to the right place, but not specifically there (mages with portal and teleport spells, which go to "main cities" OR with work, optional lesser destinations that are possibly useful but complicated [one mage teleport is "this city, but where it used to be before it moved" so now it takes you to a pretty useful place but far enough off the ground it's a lethal fall unless you have some way to protect yourself]), and one other class that has "with teamwork we can get anyone from anywhere to right here" (warlock). Since it's an MMO, the time costs do matter, especially for coordinating with other players.

There's also a variety of other options that have sprouted up over the years. Some special items can send you to locations associated with them (so the legendary staff Atiesh can take you to its creator's tower.) Druids have a spell that lets them randomly end up in a nature-associated place. Later on in the game, most of those nature-associated places connected to the others through the "Dreamway," allowing druids pretty good mobility to various parts of the game through essentially fairy circles and elf magic wells. In the same expansion, warriors got to airdrop into the various parts of the continent from their flying Valhalla skyfortress just by being cool enough to make a jump that big.

Engineering, a profession (you get to have two of these), has a variety of "teleporters" that can take you to one place or another per expansion. Engineering's thing is that it's powerful but often with weird or dangerous drawbacks, so one early teleporter device sent you to a specific pad in an out of the way place that was very handy, but you'd often come through on fire or with your evil twin about to attack you. The even more fun option is when you can use other engineering tricks to turn these drawbacks into advantages. A later teleporter let you kind of pick where you were going, but one of the options was up in the air high above a mountain. (I think this was Mists?) If you wanted to get anywhere you could often get there faster than taking the local option by taking the in the air over the mountain option, then using an engineering device that let you glide down to glide to wherever you wanted. Everyone got to play with this kind of option later, when a magic bird gave you an item that rocketed you into the air as high up as you could go, then you could use a glider to fly down to wherever you wanted. Gliding is fast, but requires parachute-like controls, so it's fun and enjoyable to practice divebombing into just the right cave or whatever you're trying to get to.

If you've played WoW since Vanilla, you might wonder why I haven't mentioned flying mounts. If you don't know how flying mounts generally work in WoW, they eventually go very fast (about 300% your regular land running speed) and have perfect turning, can float in mid air, etc. It's really kind of a broken maneuverability system, and the devs admitted it years ago. That's why most recent expansions block off flying mounts for most of the expansion and let you do all the fun stuff I listed above instead, because fast travel with flying mounts is pretty much "point yourself at a mountain, press the autorun button, move yourself slightly if you hit a tree or something." In the most recent expansion, Dragonflight, the devs took an opposite tack. New dragon mounts go even faster, but have actual flying physics models and require active management, so you can't just point yourself somewhere to get there at the increased speed, you have to actually press buttons and keep an eye on your altitude and so on. Of course, if you've wanted to be lazy, the flying masters that get you to a specific town or whatever are still there.

So now there's a ton of options that have developed over the years and depend upon your class, race (some races have special fast travel powers), professions, or just gameplay preferences for how you get everywhere. Pretty drat cool.

I think the only really non-diagetic part is summoning stones/being teleported to dungeons through stuff like Dungeon Finder. It is kind of weird there's magic stones in front of all these incredibly dangerous, often totally forgotten areas that let you summon more invaders to explore them. It's especially funny when it's for a place that's like actively being defended in a warzone and the players are sneaking inside to take on the Big Bad. Did the Aldor or the Scryers send a crack team into the Black Temple environs just to slam a big stone with a spiral on it next to the hole into the sewers?

e:

credburn posted:

Fast travel ruined Daggerfall.

Fast travel made the original version of Daggerfall playable at all. There's nothing in the wilderness except for random monsters and maybe the needle in a haystack experience of stumbling on a witch coven or a dungeon. Most overland areas in the game are completely procedurally generated and contain absolutely nothing unique; the game is built around you pulling at quests (most of them randomly generated) and going to the random places it tells you to go to engage with again, the mostly randomized content there. (Even the main quest has large chunks of "meet this non-random NPC in a random tavern somewhere random.) Even your travel upgrades (buying a horse or a ship) are actually calculated into the fast travel system by reducing travel times, showing you how the game was built around it. (And travel times can matter a lot, because quests are often timed, or a monster in a dungeon can give you a terrible disease that you need to head to a temple to cure before you literally drop dead out of nowhere.)

This doesn't apply to Daggerfall Unity, which restored the height map and has tons of mods and stuff adding "wilderness" content, but it's a very different play experience from what it was like back in 1996 or whenever it came out.

Arivia has a new favorite as of 20:55 on Mar 28, 2024

Captain Lavender
Oct 21, 2010

verb the adjective noun

I love Dragon's Dogma and now the sequel.

But having only one file was dumb then and it's dumb now. You can't even choose "New Game" in this one, you have to turn off cloud saves and delete the save file.

I don't really want to try everything on my character - especially because your stats level differently depending on what job they are. I would love a 2nd slot to build new characters in the creator, and play around with different jobs a bit. It's not just trying to get the best stats on my main; it's more, I'd kind of like to find a niche for my character and generally stay within that. I'm sure there's some continuity reason in the story for it, but without having seen whatever that is - it's not worth the annoyance. Nier did that kind of thing and still deigned to give me a 2nd and 3rd file if I wanted.

Game's incredible though and I can't stop playing.

ZeusCannon
Nov 5, 2009

BLAAAAAARGH PLEASE KILL ME BLAAAAAAAARGH
Grimey Drawer

the_steve posted:

It's gonna sound dumb, but what really turned me off from FO4 was when I was trying to put together my first little base. I was putting down fencing, and it was bad enough that the area is asymmetrical, but there was this one section where the fence would NOT map to the ground. No matter what I did, the loving thing would decide to pop a wheelie and jut up into the air at a 45 degree angle. I got fed up and decided to ragequit for the night, and then never got around to picking it back up.

This means you never found out how much of the base building was annoyingly gated behind specific stats. So you did good.


Fallout 4 is fine but only because Far Harbor was good.

ZeusCannon
Nov 5, 2009

BLAAAAAARGH PLEASE KILL ME BLAAAAAAAARGH
Grimey Drawer

CJacobs posted:

There also aren't portcrystal destinations in places where you really would want them to be like major towns, so for example if you want to frequently use the smithing services at the elf village you have to waste one. I finally got one from a quest in that village and then immediately felt compelled to stick it there. The village doesn't sell another one, so you're likely to walk away with no reward. It's a great, customizable fast travel system you're discouraged from using. Just poor game design all around.

Edit: if you doze off on an ox cart to attempt to travel fast, there's a chance a boss monster might appear and just knock it over as you wake up, so you have to walk the rest of the way. It's happened 3 of the 4 times I've taken one now. Once it was shorter to just walk back to town and summon another cart.

Double post but cant you pay real money for fast travel. Someone told me that and i thought it was loving satire.

Lobok
Jul 13, 2006

Say Watt?

Rockman Reserve posted:

the only reason a game shouldn’t have fast travel is if the world is dynamic enough to mean you’ll see new things even walking the same route

games don’t really do this

Or if the game is confident enough in how fun the travelling itself is, which is extremely rare. Even Spider-Man, which would be near the top of the list, still gives the player fast travel options and then in #2 gives you a near-instant teleport to almost any spot in the game.

mycot
Oct 23, 2014

"It's okay. There are other Terminators! Just give us this one!"
Hell Gem

ZeusCannon posted:

Double post but cant you pay real money for fast travel. Someone told me that and i thought it was loving satire.
It sounds fake because it is. You can't buy infinite crystals and you can't use crystals to Fast Travel in the way most people think of it.

Why is this coming up multiple times in one page.

mycot has a new favorite as of 00:07 on Mar 29, 2024

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Waste of Breath
Dec 30, 2021

I only know🧠 one1️⃣ thing🪨: I😡 want😤 to 🔪kill☠️… 😈Chaos😱… I need🥵 to. [TIME⏰ TO DIE☠️]
:same:
No, you can definitely pay for a portcrystal with real money. There's no compelling reason to, but it's true.

Ahh you edited to infinite crystals. Yeah you can't travel solely by microtransaction.

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