Fast travel ruins Starfield immersion

[Jeronimo Collares]

Sincerely

'Fast travel' to and fro - literally - ruins Starfield. FPS isn't Starfield's biggest problem, but 'fast travel' is. The vast majority of opinions in specialized magazines say the same thing about it.

I hope Bethesda listens to its community and changes this in future patches.

[Priappe]

Originally posted by dustin1280:

You know something I have learned over years of gaming...
The word "immersion" when describing gaming means COMPLETELY different things to different people.
While it has a objective definition I find that absolutely EVERY SINGLE GAMER has their own definition of what they feel "immersion" actually is.

(...)

In my case, immersion for me is the ability to be absorbed enough in the game that I don't get distracted by outside influences... As such fast travel doesn't impact my immersion at all...

Fast travel is actually a good thing as far as I am concerned, it would be FAR more annoying to me if it didn't exist...

Yeah but think of this, when doing a quest i m speaking to a guy somewhere who tells me to get him back a thing from across the universe, because it is too hard for him, and in about 1 minute and a half i made the travel a brought the item back. Like delivery missions or such, it really brokes the immersion IMO. They should have put some boundary to those TP, i do belive some are welcome but for everything and nothing ?
I mean, when going across the city doing a quest in a building for exemple, I m litteraly tping from stairs to the bottom to meet the next quest point, it's ridiculous. And of course i m doing it, it gets me faster through the game, yet i feel a lack of immersion.
U can also TP from everywhere to anywhere. It's the main transport system, making it less FPS and less space simulation.

[PsychoPsyops]

Mainly because they were too lazy and cheap to do what No Mans Sky and Elite Dangerous was already able to do years ago.

[Mister Burkes]

This isn't something that can be just patched.

It's an engine limitation that's been present from Morrowind until now.

And now it's been fully exposed in 2023 due to this star map UI point & click exploration instead of making proper space exploration.

[Josephus]

Originally posted by jclosed:

Hmmm... A lot of people are complaining you cannot land manually. But just imagine this would be possible. What if you just crash your ship down anywhere in the city? Would all buildings have to show damage? What if you do not want to fight, but just hover above the enemy and blast your engines to burn them away?

I think that possibility to abuse that kind of mechanic was part of the choice to make fixed landing sites and start and land animations. Even if they would let you land the ship by hand, they would have to restrict where you can land your ship. So I think this system works best.

You can also land ships by hand in X4: Foundations. You know what the first thing I bought was? Yep the auto pilot for landing, because landing is nice a few times, but gets very boring after a few times. Frankly - I am glad I do not have to do that in Starfield...

This person gets it. Exactly right. People would be strafing the cities and landing in stupid places. Totally not worth it. I have the other games too. I am playing Starfield and not them.

[Priappe]

Originally posted by Josephus:

Originally posted by jclosed:

Hmmm... A lot of people are complaining you cannot land manually. But just imagine this would be possible. What if you just crash your ship down anywhere in the city? Would all buildings have to show damage? What if you do not want to fight, but just hover above the enemy and blast your engines to burn them away?

I think that possibility to abuse that kind of mechanic was part of the choice to make fixed landing sites and start and land animations. Even if they would let you land the ship by hand, they would have to restrict where you can land your ship. So I think this system works best.

You can also land ships by hand in X4: Foundations. You know what the first thing I bought was? Yep the auto pilot for landing, because landing is nice a few times, but gets very boring after a few times. Frankly - I am glad I do not have to do that in Starfield...

This person gets it. Exactly right. People would be strafing the cities and landing in stupid places. Totally not worth it. I have the other games too. I am playing Starfield and not them.

They can do whatever they want, for cities an arbitrary restriction and boom, that's what all games do.

[Teemo]

Originally posted by Jeronimo Collares:

Sincerely

'Fast travel' to and fro - literally - ruins Starfield. FPS isn't Starfield's biggest problem, but 'fast travel' is. The vast majority of opinions in specialized magazines say the same thing about it.

I hope Bethesda listens to its community and changes this in future patches.

You do realize that you never need to fast travel right? This is an optional tool for those that like it. Just don't do it if you don't enjoy it.

[tetsu_maru]

@ToddH - Just add survival / hardcore setting with no fast travel already.

[Dave]

Originally posted by Jeronimo Collares:

Sincerely

'Fast travel' to and fro - literally - ruins Starfield. FPS isn't Starfield's biggest problem, but 'fast travel' is. The vast majority of opinions in specialized magazines say the same thing about it.

I hope Bethesda listens to its community and changes this in future patches.

You should have researched the game. It's a Space RPG and NOT a Space Sim. The devs were clear about this throughout the development process.

If you want manual flying, play No Man's Sky or Elite Dangerous. Even Mass Effect didn't really have manual flying either, and people loved it.

and no, they probably won't change it.

[Tiasmoon]

Originally posted by dustin1280:

You know something I have learned over years of gaming...
The word "immersion" when describing gaming means COMPLETELY different things to different people.

Forgetting the real world around you = immersion. An experience can be immersive in different ways, but ultimately the result is the same, and that result is what we call ''immersion''

When it comes to a game like Starfield, having realistic enviroments helps a lot with immersion. Its easy to forget (to an extent) that your playing a game. In contrast the fast travel ui reminds us we are playing a game, thus its immersion breaking.

With that said, the amount of immersion breaking it gives depends on how frequently someone uses fast travel. I've spend hours on a planet without using it, and thus my immersion is higher.

[moody]

What's so F'cked up about

walking back to your ship
going into the airlock and walking through your ship and taking off
then while in space confirm with the galactic map and plot a course
Grav jump to that destination
Scan the planet and decide where to land

?

Seems perfectly fine to me....

[WeirdWizardDave]

Originally posted by Mister Burkes:

This isn't something that can be just patched.

It's an engine limitation that's been present from Morrowind until now.

And now it's been fully exposed in 2023 due to this star map UI point & click exploration instead of making proper space exploration.

Yes and no, they control the source for this engine so they could in theory engineer pretty much anything they want into it. But they clearly didn't want to invest the time needed to get such tech in and working, which to be fair would very likely have made launching Starfield now impossible. Ideally what they should have done is set an engineering team to work on it and then made a more traditional Bethesda game in a single map in mean time. But we are where we are.

Even given the limitations of the engine I still think they could have faked it much more convincingly with better transitions, a hyperspace environment that you travel through in your ship (on autopilot so you can do other things aboard ship), and a better space scene in general, you always start way to high above the planets for example.

But instead they've basically taken all the wonder out space travel and made it nothing but a hard cut between scenes.

[naomha]

Originally posted by Jeronimo Collares:

Sincerely

'Fast travel' to and fro - literally - ruins Starfield. FPS isn't Starfield's biggest problem, but 'fast travel' is. The vast majority of opinions in specialized magazines say the same thing about it.

I hope Bethesda listens to its community and changes this in future patches.

Bruh, it's NOT Elite or NMS or any other space game like X4 or Star Citizen. It's an RPG with enough systems in it already that it would probably break the game. Actually, it would. The Creation Engine can NOT sustain that kind of experience due to the cell structure of the engine and how it is coded and made. Sucks and I feel you but I didn't expect that kind of behavior in this game.

[Priappe]

Originally posted by naomha:

Originally posted by Jeronimo Collares:

Sincerely

'Fast travel' to and fro - literally - ruins Starfield. FPS isn't Starfield's biggest problem, but 'fast travel' is. The vast majority of opinions in specialized magazines say the same thing about it.

I hope Bethesda listens to its community and changes this in future patches.

Bruh, it's NOT Elite or NMS or any other space game like X4 or Star Citizen. It's an RPG with enough systems in it already that it would probably break the game. Actually, it would. The Creation Engine can NOT sustain that kind of experience due to the cell structure of the engine and how it is coded and made. Sucks and I feel you but I didn't expect that kind of behavior in this game.

I do not recall myself being able to TP that easily absolutely everywhere, even in the cities, in any RPG game and certainly not the fallout. It will broke the immersion of ...well being where u are.
In some extent yes TP is a welcome thing, can t lose too much time in some non sense flying or running. But still ... everywhere and nowhere ? As i said it makes it less an fps and space game and more a story telling game. TP is the main transportation in the game, what's the point ?

[Coldhands]

Originally posted by moody:

What's so F'cked up about

walking back to your ship
going into the airlock and walking through your ship and taking off
then while in space confirm with the galactic map and plot a course
Grav jump to that destination
Scan the planet and decide where to land

?

Seems perfectly fine to me....

The problem is that, when it comes to space travel in Starfield, there's no opportunity to discover things organically while traveling somewhere, and that's always been a major draw of Bethesda's games.
"On my way to X I stumbled upon this cool thing I didn't know existed." You can't do that in Starfield because you're never on the way to anywhere; you're always either there or you haven't left.

[Arma Pilot YT]

No, its great. Srarfield is so huge that it would be so annoying if we could not use it. i not walk 685577 mins all day sry