Why oh why is no fast travel considered """hardcore"""

[Knavenformed]

So it has been a long time since I last played Skyrim, and now there's a survival mode a la New Vegas on offer

Sounds great, some additional micro management and making fluff items useful, sounds great.

Until I read "no fast travel"
I would never want to waste my time that badly, to do some of the fetchiest quests with absolutely horrendous downtimes of walking around doing jack-all.
Already having the necessity of food and sleep creates needs to prepare for a fast travel journey by eating, sleeping, buying food and planning shorter fast travels.
Walking for half an hour is not content, especially if you are a working adult, which most original Skyrim fans should at this point be.

Damn

[Knavenformed]

Originally posted by th:

No, it doesn't. He probably meant that there are not so much carriage starting points and there are mods which add more of them. Or may be even mods which allow to travel by carriage almost anywhere, same like using a horse but fast travel.

Aha, got it.
When restarting I kinda completely forgot carriages, if those are fair game in survival I might give it a shot someday
Dawnguard would be so bad without any kind of fast travel

[th]

Originally posted by Knavenformed:

Originally posted by th:

No, it doesn't. He probably meant that there are not so much carriage starting points and there are mods which add more of them. Or may be even mods which allow to travel by carriage almost anywhere, same like using a horse but fast travel.

Aha, got it.
When restarting I kinda completely forgot carriages, if those are fair game in survival I might give it a shot someday
Dawnguard would be so bad without any kind of fast travel

It's not just fair game, carriages become a lot more useful and actually become a huge help. Same with the inn system and food system. Both these game systems are basically just ornamental without Survival. But with Survival they become a must use. Adds a lot of immersion to the gameplay imo.

[theo]

It's too hardcore for you then.
Survival mode with default fast travel would mean you can cheat freezing to death by "teleporting" some warmer place. What's the point playing like that

[Insomniac Jack]

I agree with you and I'm someone who usually roleplays and avoids fast travel altogether.

If it fits my playthrough I'll take breaks to eat, sleep, wear certain clothing, and set other specific limitations for my character. The issue with a lot survival/hardcore mods (or modes) is that they turn roleplaying into an absolute chore, especially when they're poorly implemented. The best offender I can think of is Fallout 4's survival mode, which was fundamentally stupid by default.

[Neo]

You think you want fast travel but you don't really. Fast travel removes everything that is good about this game, you miss all the chance encounters and cool little things and places between your goals.

As a requiem player, survival mode is a gentle stroll in the park anyway. It hardly feels like any difficulty change at all.

[Neo]

Originally posted by Insomniac Jack:

I agree with you and I'm someone who usually roleplays and avoids fast travel altogether.

If it fits my playthrough I'll take breaks to eat, sleep, wear certain clothing, and set other specific limitations for my character. The issue with a lot survival/hardcore mods (or modes) is that they turn roleplaying into an absolute chore, especially when they're poorly implemented. The best offender I can think of is Fallout 4's survival mode, which was fundamentally stupid by default.

It turns out that roleplaying "needs" is a bit of work and takes planning to avoid running foul of hunger, tiredness, disease etc. I think fallout 4 survival is brilliant, I tried it thinking I would hate it, but it actually made the game 100% times more fun for me. It made using settlements actually very useful as they all became much needed stop off points to unload gear and rest etc.

The only downside is the rare occasion when the game crashes before you can sleep and save, which I admit is rage inducing. But that hardly ever happens if you learn locations of sleeping bags and beds.

Skrim's survival mode is far less harsh since you can save whenever you want. But I don't know, having that threat hanging over your head constantly of losing your progress because you might die at any street corner adds to the tension. Not everyone's cup o' tea for sure. But I love it.

[alexander_dougherty]

As so many people have said, the survival mode is about the challenge of getting from A to B while enduring the weather, animals, random NPCs and (although not mentioned) Dragons.

Fast travel, while very convenient, simply bypasses all this..... and more, you don't discover places or quests (that sometimes need to be started right away). With Skyrim's spawning system walking is never just walking..... and if time is that much of a constraint then maybe Hardcore or Survival needs to be put aside until the weekend (or whenever you get some more time)

[Knavenformed]

Originally posted by theo:

Survival mode with default fast travel would mean you can cheat freezing to death by "teleporting" some warmer place. What's the point playing like that

You can't fast travel to anywhere you haven't been yet
I would like to do a playthrough of the main story and DLC with survival mechanics, not just dilly-dally and grind for no reason, that already makes the mode that much easier not having to go to certain areas.

Now that I learned carriages are fair game then it makes it more fun, as you don't literally need to walk from the other side of the map to the other every time you do a quest in the Civil War/Dawnguard

[Neo]

Originally posted by Knavenformed:

Originally posted by theo:

Survival mode with default fast travel would mean you can cheat freezing to death by "teleporting" some warmer place. What's the point playing like that

You can't fast travel to anywhere you haven't been yet
I would like to do a playthrough of the main story and DLC with survival mechanics, not just dilly-dally and grind for no reason, that already makes the mode that much easier not having to go to certain areas.

Now that I learned carriages are fair game then it makes it more fun, as you don't literally need to walk from the other side of the map to the other every time you do a quest in the Civil War/Dawnguard

Beware though, fast travel with the carriage makes you very cold, tired and hungry. So you will need to do the usual inn/home visit.

And the "dilly-dally" is what some people like about skyrim. If you just want to fast travel about from quest to quest then sure just play the game without survival mode. But that is kind of boring in my opinion. But it's your single player game, do whatever you wish.

[Knavenformed]

Originally posted by Neo:

Beware though, fast travel with the carriage makes you very cold, tired and hungry. So you will need to do the usual inn/home visit.

Yeah that's fair, I would expect fast-travel to still have the expenses of normal travel
Also it's an opportunity punishment as you can't get anything to make gold from the trip

I'm not asking for a skip game button with no consequences
I just don't want to waste my time backtracking too much, some is fine and dandy but after that it's a death by thousand cuts.

[Knavenformed]

Originally posted by Neo:

And the "dilly-dally" is what some people like about skyrim. If you just want to fast travel about from quest to quest then sure just play the game without survival mode.

I'm not against those people by any means, but the mode didn't sound well balanced for the other group of people, but with carriages it's fine enough.

Also the game doesn't play like that and you know it, you can't fast travel to a quest dungeon only back from it, and while the random encounter system adds a lot to the travel it doesn't respawn the encounters fast enough to make the backtracking worth it outside of losing the degradation of survival bars, which you could just solve after traveling anyways.

[Neo]

Originally posted by Knavenformed:

Originally posted by Neo:

And the "dilly-dally" is what some people like about skyrim. If you just want to fast travel about from quest to quest then sure just play the game without survival mode.

I'm not against those people by any means, but the mode didn't sound well balanced for the other group of people, but with carriages it's fine enough.

Also the game doesn't play like that and you know it, you can't fast travel to a quest dungeon only back from it, and while the random encounter system adds a lot to the travel it doesn't respawn the encounters fast enough to make the backtracking worth it outside of losing the degradation of survival bars, which you could just solve after traveling anyways.

I'm used to playing Requiem mode, so fast travel are dirty words to me. The fun for me is in the hardship and over coming problems. But you do you though, there is no right or wrong. :)

[Knavenformed]

Originally posted by Neo:

The fun for me is in the hardship and over coming problems.

Backtracking isn't really a hardship even if you add a resource cost to it
Like yeah, I too play on Expert to make combat require some spacing and dodging heavy attacks and would love the micro-managing part of survival

[Neo]

Originally posted by Knavenformed:

Originally posted by Neo:

The fun for me is in the hardship and over coming problems.

Backtracking isn't really a hardship even if you add a resource cost to it
Like yeah, I too play on Expert to make combat require some spacing and dodging heavy attacks and would love the micro-managing part of survival

You see it as back tracking, I see it as a challenge. It's the enemies in my way from here to there which makes it fun.

Also, expert? Expert mode is laughably easy. Install Reqiuem and come talk about expert mode.

[Oktokolo]

There are multiple mods reenabling fast travel for vanilla survival mode and maybe one of them works for the game version you use (last mod-breaking patch was just right for the xmas holiday).
There are also multiple survival overhaul mods which can be used instead of vanilla survival mode and come with plenty of configuration options (including enabling/disabling fast travel).