The Daily Grind: Should all games have fast travel?

Slow travel has its charms, but when it takes 30 minutes to get to a camp, and the tank you are waiting for dies on the way and has to restart the trip, you tend not to miss it much if it's gone. A lot of things that may contribute to immersion may be harmful or unwanted in gameplay.

I think the main point of relatively slow travel in both of these games has been missed. Both Aion and Fallen Earth have world PvP elements, and in order to keep those healthy traveling becomes slower.

It's not as if you Need fast travel, in Aion anyway, but I'm assuming Fallen Earth has this aspect as well. When you're doing quests, level designers situate you into a zone with like minded quests, so even if you're overall movement is slow in comparison to the world at large, you aren't spending excessive amounts of time going from place you need to be, to place you need to be.

Anyway, travel speed depends on the type of game the developers are making, and has nothing to do with the plausibilities set forth by the article.

Also, you Can teleport from town to town rapidly in Aion, not sure where you got the idea you couldn't.

All games should have the option of fast travel once an area has been explored.


Alot of people do not want to look at, nor do they care about all the hard work a dev put into the MMO they are playing, personaly i could care less how hard a dev worked unless they give me the choice to. Being force fed limited travel abilities so one is forced to see all the "neat" things the devs made is a waste of my time and money.

In short:

Long travels only for go to adventure zones, PvP instances, and dungeons - Bad implementation

Long travels with a sense: exploration quests, dangerous trade routes, hunting evasive and misterious mobs, search resources, etc. - Good implementation

If the only purpose for long travels is go to one place to another at the end that become always boring, but if I have a reason for travel (in example find resources spots) that can be a very good part of the game.

For the only purpose of give a sense of travel a few minutes is sufficient for the most long travels, not 30 or more, that is excesive. Travel must have a sense.

I want huge maps in MMOs with realistic proportions, without fast travel have huge maps becomes impractical and boring, but with teleports, travel maps or very fast transports can be possible build these game worlds. If you game dont have all these travel systems the game world always must be small.

Mobile teleports in vehicles or ships can be a solution, you can travel great distances inside then but if you want go to dungeons, PvP or hubs only need use the vehicle teleporting system, and after playing in these zones return to your exploration vehicle. That can facilitate big maps and really long exploration travels (days or a week inclusive), capital guild spaceships traveling in deep space how in Battlestar Galactica or Star Trek can be possible with that system. Separating huge exploration/trade zones and more small and easy to travel leveling or adventure zones near hubs connected with teleports can facilitate the creation of more huge and realistic worlds without harm any playing style.

Fast travel works well for extremely casual games like free realms. You go into more complex games like the standard AAA titles (EQ, EQ2, WoW, Lotro, DDO(maybe), etc.), I think there should be no fast travel.

I miss the days of waiting in butcher block mountains for the boat, then finding out I got on the wrong boat then waiting another 20 minutes for the next boat. I'd spend all night just trying to get to the right continent. Annoying as hell, but there is something very charming and appealing about it.

I would take the hassle of no fast travel, over the convenience of fast travel any day.

If a game is not going to have some form of fast travel, then it needs to limit the amount of "busywork" travel. For instance, in LOTRO, a major quest chain starts in Rivendell, but then you spend most of your time working in Evendim. Thankfully you don't have to shift between them too often, but that's a pretty stiff trip.

Aion has teleports but still today I saw a thread where someone thought traveling was still too slow. It makes me wonder how fast people are used to be going.

In Eq2 I play a fury who basically is so fast I don't really need a mount, perhaps it's because some older games have introduced increased speed traveling over time that now when we start a new game we miss that fast feeling.

Personally I don't think teleports belong in a game like Fallen Earth so I hope they keep out of that one.

LotrO is another one where there's long traveling time, but I liked that you could have up to 3 teleports, one home, one to your hometown, and one where you bind. Don't know if that's changed but that's a good comprise between forced travel and teleporting.

I think traveling adds a sense of adventure.
Playing a fresh new MMO and discovering the new lands is an amazing feeling. But this feeling only happens once or twice.
I don't know about fast traveling to every single place, like in GW, but fast traveling to key points might be nice.

I thought Tabual Rasa was a bit ruined for me because it wasn't a instance game, yet I can fast travel to pretty much anywhere.
They should of limited to a few out posts instead of all of them.

Fast Travel might make the MMO feel like a game, but thats an easy fix. Just err pay a mage to portal you or something. Or some sort of demention gate people can go through.
It's the "Would you like to travel here? Yes No" menu that kinda gets me ruined.

I don't object to slowish travel when you are self-propelled (questing or whatever). But, in WoW, having to take a flying taxi that takes 15-18 minutes to get from one end of the world to the other is a waste of my time. It is great if I want to tab out and do look-ups or answer email... but it doesn't have anything to do with the game and often I'll just get engrossed in something else and leave my toon afk at the ending flight point. I really don't get the benefit to Blizz in this.

Long walks across landscapes are not a bad thing at all. Everyone I'm sure enjoys walking through a location they've never explored before. However, when you receive quest after quest that has you shuffling down the same road, and running back to that NPC just to turn in the quest becomes very repetitive quickly.

What ruined Oblivion for me personally was that there were to many travel locations. I think in any game that uses massive environments there should be evenly spaced out travel locations. From the ground up, quests should be designed to pattern out from these travel locations.

Or really, Do simply what Ultima Online did. Allow the player to make their own fast teleport options. If you want to make a teleport rune that takes you to a particular dungeon, go right ahead. Get another and make a rune that takes you out into the middle of no where.

Honestly, I think Ultima Online is the best way because it allows players the freedom to make there own choice.