Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - Suggestions & Feedback Fast travel ok, Magic portal waypoints nok

I can understand the need for fast travel, ok add such a feature.

However bg is about being a long walking (mostly) journey, so I suggest that when you select for example a fast travel button in the menu, you switch to new location following for example a quick black screen and maybe mention something like "The party took ... to reach destination..." (and possibly encounter bandits like before)

Please get rid of DOS, Diablo like portals...

I think their goal is to eliminate trash fights filled with generic enemies. And portals exist in DnD.

Personaly i like Waypoints ...
What i dont like about then is fact that they are accesible from anywhere ... i would really like to alow players to use waypoints to travel between them, but just between them ...
You want to use portal? Get to it and you can use it.
Not like you are overloaded in middle of nowhere, but no problem, simply port away to nearest vendor.

I find the portals a bit too video-gamey, because the party seems to be the only group of people who uses them in the game, even though there are people around some portals. Might as well have a neon sign over them that says "teleport point, players only". The problem is really that they are canonically visible in the game world, and Gale has a little speech about them. I would have preferred that we simply have a reference point on each "map" (Druid Grove, Blighted Village, etc), and when going to the Map/Fast Travel menu, the party can "appear to teleport" there. Basically, we players skip the boring click-click-click of travel, but the characters have actually walked.

I'm fine with the idea of portals actually existing, but then they should be really part of the world, commented on and used by everyone.

Anyway, this is one point I really doubt Larian will change. It feels too established for them to want to revise that. (I'd be happy to be proven wrong though.)

Also that. Having portals not be accessible from anywhere would (a) be better for immersion in general and (b) possibly be a good start for a solution regarding the rest-anywhere-anytime issue in particular.

+1

Just make fast travel implied walking and don't overcomplicate things with detriment to worldbuilding and believability.

Copy TW3 system and call it a day. Would be perfectly fine and more immersive.

+1

Agreed. Fast travel is ok as a feature. Actual magical teleportation is not.

Don't mix player convenience features with the story. A powerful netheril teleportation system would attract a lot of attention. I can't overlook that it doesn't. It clearly exists only for the player so the game breaks the fourth wall here.

Yeah some people aren't bothered by details like this. But the point is the runes could just as well be non-magical waypoints for fast travel. Casually placing magical teleportation systems in the wilderness is not understanding Faerun as a setting.

+1 to portals not to be accessible from anywhere (im okay with that being a toggle/option though) and make exploration a little more challenging/interesting

My 2 cents is: I like when a game with such cool and immersive world has an exploration curve: at the beginning its challening to get from point A to point B and you need to think twice which route you take, which sideways you try etc. Then of course as you get more familiar with the map, you gain access to general travel solutions between hubs, meet certain npc-s or join guilds giving you access to special travel, learn teleport spells, possess unique items taking you to certain locations, there are many ways rewarding shortcuts can open up which are more interesting then teleport to any portal any time

The portal gates are related to the lore in forgotten realms, at least in 4e. A lot of them got trashed and we're unusable / unstable. Pretty sure lore wise in 5e they are fixed.

Oooooooh, I like that. Risk & Reward.
Maybe we are faster by fasttravel, maybe we are slower by having to fight.
And the further the destination, the higher the chance to be attacked at certain crossroads etc.


Whatever may come to us in the future, I just hope the Druidgrove waypoint will be put in front of the first vendor we encounter when we head in straight.
This waypoint on the outside is SO >BEEP< ANNOYING.
All I want is to sell my >beeeeep< trash!!!

+1

I like fast travel but I hate thpse cheap mmorpg portals.

I agree fast travel should only be possible from specific waypoints, its just to easy now, plus is would go a long way with solving spam resting after each fight if you actually had to travel to a waypoint to go back to camp.
I also loved Maximuuus idea from an older thread to use BG map for fast travel rather than portals.

I want some in game explanation about why they work. I has to be the case that the only work for us otherwise they would be transportation hubs. Or the goblins in the blighted village could transport their army to grove without problem.

Gale tells they are Netherese, perhaps they were tainted by shadow magic and they are responding to the shadow magic holding back the transformation? Perhaps the talkative skeleton could provide us with the Netherese phrase that activates them?

I am ok with the current system. I really don't need random encounters to interrupt fast travel, or messages saying how long the party travelled - I won't read that any way.

I don't care whether the waypoints are themed as portals, signposts, statues. As long as it is clearly communicated that I reached one.

The real problem is not how they are "themed". It's the fact that they are both made to be a thing which exists in-universe (not merely a quality-of-life feature) and at the same time they are a thing which nobody but the player can use. Hence the dissonance.

What Drath Malron said -- it's immersion breaking.

I'm fine with the PC being the only person able to use them -- walking everywhere gets dull -- but why are we able to do so? If the ability to use the portals was a reward for finding the skeleton that would solve the immersion breaking aspects of the camp and the portals.

"Use this phrase to open the portals. The first of the exit points will take you to an ideal place to set up camp -- it has access fresh water and its entry points are easily defended. I will meet you there."

This is also a good point. Kind of reminds me of Morrowind.

This dont even seem so hard ...

So far the only group that could want to use them, that i can think of, are Tieflings ... (can anyone find another?)
All Larian need to do is add some conversation option with Zevlor sugesting portal, where Zevlor answer something like:
"We have ox drawn carriage here, animals dont handle magic well ... they could get scared and cause a lot of problems, we don't want to change one danger for another."

And voila! Portals are here, everyone knows about them, yet they are useless for them.

I agree, and I don't understand how they can be immersion breaking. If you find fast travel immersion breaking . . . then just don't use it! I'd rather they leave it the way it is . . . trying to wright it into the actual lore is just going to cause more issues. It should remain a player convivence only (Gale just brings it up once, in a fun way, as a tutorial for the player).