This has probably come up before but I like different opinions and perspectives Do you prefer to fast travel or actually ridewalk to your intended destination

I prefer actually riding/walking to my destination. It yields richer experiences: discovery of unexpected encounters, environmental storytelling, skill/practice (navigation, attention), and a stronger sense of place and accomplishment. Fast travel is useful when time is scarce or the route is repetitive, but it trades away immersion and serendipity. References: - Game design discussion on exploration vs. convenience: Marc Laidlaw, “Why Traversal Matters” (various essays); see also academic work on player motivation and exploration (e.g., Przybylski et al., 2010 on autonomy and engagement).

I prefer actually riding or walking to my destination because the journey itself enriches the experience in ways fast travel cannot. Moving through a game world invites discovery: unexpected encounters, hidden details, and environmental storytelling that reveal character and history only when you take the time to look. The act of navigation and sustained attention becomes a form of practice—improving spatial awareness and giving small, repeated moments of decision-making meaning. Reaching a goal after a real journey creates a stronger sense of place and accomplishment; the destination is valued because you earned it. That said, fast travel has a legitimate place: it respects the player’s time, reduces tedium on repetitive routes, and can be a useful accessibility option. But it trades away immersion and serendipity. For those reasons, when the design and my schedule allow, I choose to ride or walk—favoring depth, discovery, and the lived feel of the world over mere convenience. References: - Marc Laidlaw, “Why Traversal Matters” (game-design discussions on how movement shapes player experience). - Przybylski, Rigby, & Ryan (2010), work on autonomy, competence, and player engagement.

Your preference for riding or walking rather than fast traveling taps into several interlocking philosophical and design considerations: how we experience time, the value of serendipity, the nature of skill and mastery, and what makes virtual worlds feel meaningful. Below I expand on those themes and give more specific mechanisms by which non-instantaneous traversal enriches experience. 1. Temporal experience and narrative pacing - Traversal imposes tempo. Moving through space creates a rhythm that shapes emotional and cognitive engagement: tension builds, curiosity accrues, and small events gain weight because they occur within a sustained flow. Philosopher Henri Bergson emphasized lived duration (la durée) — the qualitative, felt experience of time — which riding/walking preserves better than the discontinuity of fast travel. - Games can use travel time as narrative space. Encounters, dialogue, and environmental details encountered en route contribute to emergent micro-narratives that complement the main plot. Without that intermediate time, storytelling becomes more episodic and compressed. 2. Serendipity, discovery, and environmental storytelling - Slow traversal encourages incidental discovery. Players are more likely to notice abandoned camps, side-quests, or world details that contextualize lore and moral texture. This produces deeper world-building and a sense that the world exists independently of the player’s goals. - Environmental storytelling (designers place clues, objects, and traces that tell stories nonverbally). Those traces are most effective when players move through the space rather than skip it. Fast travel turns crafted spatial narrative into mere backdrop. 3. Skill acquisition and meaningful practice - Navigation, route planning, threat assessment, and attention are skills that develop through repeated traversal. Practicing them yields a sense of competence and agency (self-determination theory: autonomy, competence, relatedness — Ryan & Deci). - Mastery over traversal can shift playstyles: learning shortcuts, exploiting terrain, or anticipating NPC behavior feels rewarding. Fast travel short-circuits that learning curve. 4. Embodiment, presence, and immersion - Movement fosters embodied simulation: the player imagines being in the character’s position, feeling the distance, weather, fatigue, or landscape scale. Philosophers of mind and aesthetics (e.g., Merleau-Ponty on embodied perception) suggest bodily engagement deepens experiential richness. - Immersion is not simply graphic fidelity but continuity and the ability to attend to low-level details; traversal preserves continuity. 5. Risk, investment, and meaningful choices - Traversal introduces risk and opportunity cost. The possibility of ambushes, weather effects, or resource depletion gives choices weight: is the journey worth it? That weight translates into moral and strategic significance. - Fast travel eliminates risk and reduces the significance of selecting a route or deciding to explore — choices become binary instead of gradient. 6. When fast travel is justified - Time scarcity and repetitive transit: if content is identical each time and the repeat is monotonous, fast travel reduces tedium without harming narrative. Good design can mitigate loss by making repetitive routes richer (dynamic events, variance). - Quality-of-life and accessibility: fast travel can serve players with limited time, mobility constraints, or neurodivergent needs. The ethical design choice may be to offer both: preserve exploration for those who want it while enabling shortcuts for others. 7. Design implications and hybrid solutions - Dynamic traversal: populate routes with random or scheduled events so repetition stays engaging (see roguelike / open-world event systems). - Forced downtime as design: some games convert travel time into meaningful activities (e.g., camping, conversations, inventory management) so even necessary travel contributes to narrative or systems. - Conditional fast travel: require discovery of a route or payment of in-game cost to fast-travel, preserving exploration incentives while allowing convenience later. - Fast travel with consequences: make skipping risks reduce potential rewards (e.g., missed side-quests or collectibles), making the choice consequential. 8. Psychological and ethical dimensions - Valuing journey over destination echoes philosophical traditions (e.g., Stoic and Buddhist teachings about attention to process). The preference to slow down fosters mindfulness and curiosity rather than instrumentalizing the world as a set of tasks to be completed. - Conversely, insistence on slow traversal as a virtue can be elitist if it ignores players who need shortcuts. Ethical game design considers diversity of preferences and capacities. Further reading and sources - Marc Laidlaw, essays on traversal and level design (game designer reflections). - Przybylski, A. K., Rigby, C. S., & Ryan, R. M. (2010). "A motivational model of video game engagement" — on autonomy and engagement. - Ryan, R. M., & Deci, E. L. (2000). Self-Determination Theory — competence, autonomy, and relatedness. - Papers and talks on environmental storytelling (e.g., Chris Dahlen and others discussing emergent narrative in open worlds). - Philosophical background: Henri Bergson, Matter and Memory; Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception — on time, embodiment, and perception. Summary Riding or walking preserves temporal continuity, invites serendipitous discovery, supports skill development, and yields greater immersion and meaningful choices. Fast travel trades those qualities for convenience and efficiency — useful in certain contexts (time-limited players, repetitive routes), but it risks flattening the world into waypoints. Good design balances both: keep traversal rich and meaningful, but provide accessible options for different players. If you want, I can convert these ideas into specific game-design guidelines or give examples from particular games (e.g., The Elder Scrolls, The Witcher, Red Dead Redemption) showing how they handle travel.