Fast travel in continuous gameworld

[naossano]

This message was already written before, but for another website. Don't think i mentioned it there. I thought i could use it to avoid listing again the flaws i feel were caused by designing continuous gameworld games with the Fast-travel concept, mostly Fo3 and FoNV, but it could include other games. (if i am not wrong, Fo4 uses it as welll)

Also, i am convinced that the fast-travel involves many more things than just a player convenience, and i think it deserves proper thoughts and discussions on the matter.
I will share my opinion about it, and i admit there is a possibility that i might be totally wrong and misguided. If that so, i would be glad if someone have enough arguments to prove me wrong. If not, i don't see a problem in sharing opposite opinions. We don't have to agree on everything.


My opinion is that the fast-travel, or the teleport, which describes better what i think it does, is currently completely broken from a design/immersion stand-point. I think It was only designed from a convenience stand-point, a convenience for the player, but first and foremost, a convenience for the devellopers.



Many solutions could exist to solve this crippling issue.

But i feel the need to point out issues the current system provide : (non hexaustive list)

- I hear that teleport is optional. But what are the alternatives ? Currently, the only option to speed up travelling without teleporting are the train between McCarran & the Strip and the boat between Cottonwood & the Fort. These provides alternatives for like 1% of FoNV. (And those two options are Lore-friendly teleports.)There are no alternatives to it in Fo3.

- About other world-space like DLC, there is the fact they are mostly DLC, not present in the Vanilla game. A multi-region game would offer more diversity of locations/climate/cities. I can't wait to try The Witcher 3 and see what they do with that. (still waiting. My computer is not strong enough)
These have a "door" between world-space, you just don't go toward any point of any world-space instantly. But there is no danger during the travel, and you can teleport to the world-space entry-point. Anyway, Beth love continuous gameworld, so Multi-region system is not something we could expect with them. But hoping doesn't hurt.

- About alternatives traveling system, since the current teleport system as no cost/drawback/penalty, the devellopper simply assume that they don't need to bother implementing proper travel-system/caravans/cars/train/boat/whatever.
If you can be anywhere in a second, without any cost, why bother with alternatives that won't bring you everywhere or cost something ? Simply put, the current teleport system prevent far better and more immersive systems to simply exist, not even mentioning thrive.

- No matter where you are, you are always a button away from you stronghold, safe house, favourite town. You are always safe/comfortable. Sure, you will have to survive the current fight to be able to teleport. But once you did, even if you have 1 HP left, zero stimpack, zero ammo, and high level of radiation poisoning, you are one button away from the doctor, your stash, the necessary trader.
It removes a feeling of danger, the need to watch if you have enough stuff in your inventory to travel, if the ammo/healing you bring will be enough for the upcoming danger. You won't have to be in panic to reach the next chest, hoping to find a stimpack or two. You never consider doing local quest first, because you don't have enough stuff to afford traveling.

- No matter where you are, you are always a button away from every trader, and then, a button away from the point you came, ready to come back. Even with the lowest carry weight possible, you will still be able to loot every dead body you come across (or helped dying), loot it, sell the stuff to the trader, come back, loot the next body etc...
You don't have to care about your carry weigh, you never hesitate about what you should loot, or hesitate between looting and leaving. You won't have to throw away on the ground a valuable item, in order to pick a potentially better item, or a same value item than serve another purpose. It remove you the need of many choices.

- Also, most of the local safehouse are never actually used more than once. If you are a button away from the best safehouse, why bother with the others ?

- You don't have to consider an exploration that is consistent with the locations you are currently in. For instance, you are in Freeside. It would make more sense to go to Westside, from there, as those location are quite close and may offer a nice comparison. But with the teleport system, you can be instantly in Goodspring and choose to explore Sloane.
Sure, it doesn't mean that the develloper will necessary put locations close to each other that wouldn't make sense so close, or location far from each other, that would make more sense if they were closer. But if you can teleport and explore locations at random, instead of going for the most logical way, you are less likely to notice if those locations are consistent, put in the right place near the right locations.
So you could miss some great worldbuilding work, or won't notice some poor or completly broken worldbuilding, which would make some develloper believe that they don't need to think about worldbuilding. That feeling is not all over the place, but quite there in Fo3, when you have a shack of two people, near a raider stronghold, a village complaining about their security, but making no mention of the secure city two miles away, people starving, two steps away from an unlooted food store, some ennemies too far away from their stronghold, and unable to cope with the others ennemies, but still there, a faction building surrounded by locations full of feral ghoul, that can't breed, but are still there, despite being in the way of people that do travel and are hostile to them.
Sure, teleport doesn't force develloper to drop those stuff. But players that teleport with no logical path are less likely to notice when if it is badly done. If they were more likely to notice it, develloper would be more likely to think twice about the world they build, where are the locations, how they fit with the closer ones.

- On a lesser note, the same could be said about quests. It makes sense that the NCR ask you to reach other bases that are quite far, to provide informations or ask for stuff, as they are aknowledged as far, and they are unable to travel there.
But going the other end of the global map, to plant a bug near a Mirelurk nest, it doesn't seem very logical, as there could be nest far closer. If there were no teleport, if would be likely that Moira's tutorial quest would have been closer to Megaton. If you don't teleport, you would be likely to have more local quests, that don't involve going too far, and are directly related to the place, and other quests that involve travelling, because those who send you simply couldn't go that far or because they involve other factions that have their own local areas.Moving too far from the questgiver would be more justified.

- If you don't teleport, you are more likely to come back in some place you wouldn't if there was teleportation. If you didn't like these place would be more likely to complain about them, or to lose interest. Which mean that develloper would be more carefull about the location they add, making sure they are interesting enough to be glad to come back, or at least not bored by them.
There would be less generic locations, less unimaginative locations, less locations that lose any purpose once you seen them once. Maybe not all the locations, but the locations you are the most likely to go more than once would be greatly improved. The remote locations or those that are sideway could still be generic dungeon crawler, but dev would think twice about where to put them. Then again, it would improve the worldbuilding.

- As a side note, for those who consider that manual savegame are OP, having to think more carefully about the location you explore would counter the desire of removing it. A manual savegame won't save you from earlier poor choices. But this is a side note, i am fine with manual savegame. I don't want the game to choose when to save instead of me.

- Last, but not the least, the current teleport system have no lore reason to be here. If there was, it would be likely to be inconsistent. Every time you use it, it feel like you are breaking the immersion.


In my opinion, the current teleport system is convenient for the player, but is even more convenient for the develloper.
It encourages the lazyness, reduce the need for many better features or deeper thought. Sure it doesn't forbid using them, but remove the need of some of them or reduce the chance of casual noticing the lack of them, or their bad handling.
If you are professionnal enough, you could still try to put them. If you are too lazy, the teleport system help you to hide it.

Finally, I need to mention that i actually do use the current teleport system. As i mentioned before, it is convenient, and i don't think there are real alternative to it.
I also think that many of Fo3-FoNV stuff, especially F3, are designed knowing exactly that they would allow teleport system. So they are designed around the idea that the distance is something non-existant or not that much relevant.
If the current teleport system would be removed early in devellopement, i have absolutly no doubt that it would introduces many welcomed design change, that many would enjoy, including those who support the current teleport system. Sure, they could put in back with an optional free DLC, but balancing and designing the whole gameworld with that feature out of the picture would necessary means that most of its worldbuilding would be given additionnal thoughts.



So, yes i find fast-travel convenient, but i feel i lose many, many great things in a process of having this little button that makes no sense in context.

Balancing the two, i feel that i lose more than what i am gaining in the process.

Whether the teleport system is removed or tweaked, it absolutly need to change.
In short, the current system is hurting the design as a whole. It is not just an unconsequential side feature.

 

[cratchety ol joe]

Here's how I see things; If you sit at a table, with character sheet infront of you, some dice and your chosen snacks... You turn to the Games Master and say; "Okay, I think we should get back to town now to sell this sweet loot we have"

In almost every game... the GM will most likely roll a random encounter for your travels.

FO1, FO2 and FO:T all did this, when you opted to travel from point A to point B you were shown the map and the unseen GM would 'test' your random encounter chance.

IMHO: This is how any and ALL fast travel option should be implemented.

Why?
It gives the player a visual break from the game norm as you observe your travel (albeit this is actually utterly redundant and merely visual feedback) the game engine plots the best/likely travel route, checks that it passes likely enemy types and checks to see if you come across any of them.

Just as in any table top game, the scenario is then generated and the players are drawn back into to game world to enact whatever may come of the encounter.

I Wish there were more games that handled travel like this, to me it gives the player the mobility of fast travel while maintaining in-world immersion.

 

[joevonzombie]

Here's how I see things; If you sit at a table, with character sheet infront of you, some dice and your chosen snacks... You turn to the Games Master and say; "Okay, I think we should get back to town now to sell this sweet loot we have"

In almost every game... the GM will most likely roll a random encounter for your travels.

FO1, FO2 and FO:T all did this, when you opted to travel from point A to point B you were shown the map and the unseen GM would 'test' your random encounter chance.

IMHO: This is how any and ALL fast travel option should be implemented.

Why?
It gives the player a visual break from the game norm as you observe your travel (albeit this is actually utterly redundant and merely visual feedback) the game engine plots the best/likely travel route, checks that it passes likely enemy types and checks to see if you come across any of them.

Just as in any table top game, the scenario is then generated and the players are drawn back into to game world to enact whatever may come of the encounter.

I Wish there were more games that handled travel like this, to me it gives the player the mobility of fast travel while maintaining in-world immersion.

I love this idea, it would be nice to see it implemented in a modern game.

The new Zelda is interesting in that fast travel isn't optional in certain situations. There are places you can reach in that game that you cannot get out of any other way.

 

[Hassknecht]

As I've said before, I think the gameworlds should become large again. Yeah, they'd be empty, but that's the point. It's part of the atmosphere.
Fast travel should be done in the classic PnP style, with accelerated automatic travel and rolls for random encounters depending on creature density in a certain area. In fact, with modern computers the wildlife population could probably be partially simulated in real time over the whole game world, or at least the relevant parts.
I'd like to see a map using real proportions. The major and minor locations are detailed and fixed, but the area in between is procedurally generated along height- and creature-density-maps. It would be interesting to make the map travel a bit more involved, too. For example, instead of going along a straight line to the finish it would be great if one could actually set waypoints and paths (also with options like "stick to roads" and so on). This would be especially important for vehicles, because depending on the type of your vehicle it's just not possible to use all roads. Using roads and paths would make the travel safer, but potentially longer, although travelling would also be faster. Map travel would then involve a bit more planning and maybe even resource management. It shouldn't be too complicated, but I think a nice balance can be found.
Basically, take Fallout 1/2's world map, add a network of "established roads" and so on, and have two modes of travel:

1. Free/Waypoint mode, where the player sets waypoints enabling travel off-road and to remote locations
2. Road/Safe mode, where the character sticks to established roads, which are not necessarily the most direct route, but are usually safe and easy to travel on.

The second would be prefered in the beginning of the game and for certain types of vehicles that can't travel off-road, but a vertibird or dirtbike also allows following off-road waypoints using a vehicle, being potentially the quickest way of getting around.

 

[naossano]

The travel in worldmaps is more involving with Wasteland 1 & 2 maps, with different conditions affecting your characters depending on if you walk on greenland, desert, radiated area or try to go across water.

 

[lolpop109]

Mostly in game I don't use fast travel especially games with fast travel it is almost a joy just to travel.

In NV I love to just walk from say novac up to new vegas with the pip boy radio on. It actually quite run. however I would say doing that alot would get boring and I would fast travel. If fast travel was never there in the frist I guess I would just have to deal with it. It would make trips to vegas for example feel more special and improve roleplay. However alot of people would moan it would be a walking simulator so yeah. If there was more NPC's walking the road with more reasson to travel then it would defintly be ingrossing (Like drop of letter or working for a carvan company) would defiantly be a good game-play feature.

For my NV mod it does't have fast travel and I will probably leave it that way. It does have map markers (Gives xp when frist discovered). So you can see it from the pip boy but you can't fast travel. Hopefully as it gets more finished there will plently of NPCs walking on routes so you always have a reason to travel.