[Spoiler?] Is teleportation just a player convenience and not a real thing?

[ManaKing]

Oh no how will we escape Ul'dah? Teleport?

No we need to plot-twist sacrifice people. Which is fine....I just would have preferred if there was an explanation, probably involving magic, as to why people didn't just poof away with teleportation.

I'm just having difficulty with the concept that people don't actually teleport with the prevalence of Aetheryte in every major outpost and an Aethernet in every major city.

[OdynKorsai]

Theyve explained that the gold spent on teleports goes towards the cost of creating and maintaining the aetherytes so its not a player convenience only. But that was my first thought as well. No teleporting during combat? Maybe they didnt run far enough away from their pursuers haha

[lilirulu]

I can think of variety of reasons.

1) You need to be attuned to Aetherytes to teleport to them. While it is possible to teleport to unattuned aetheryte it is very taxing and you need an outside source to help (see: Titan and Shiva/2.4 Story). Which leaves one (or more) scion(s) behind.

2) Even if they could teleport they didn't know at the time that time if it was safe. All aetherytes have guards they didn't know who was on their side. For all they knew they could have been teleporting into a trap.

3) Teleporting takes time to cast so in the time it takes they could have ended up getting subdued. Running was the better option.

[Wolfandre]

Keep in mind, also, that the idea from 1.0 called 'anima' still exists. 'Anima' is a person's well of aether (in a way) and not everyone has a strong one. The pure-blooded Garleans have none, and therefore cannot teleport OR cast magic. Some people can use theirs to cast Teleport and Return (which ARE magic spells, though tied to mechanics instead of classes) and some cannot.

We've never seen Yda or Thancred cast magic or do anything related to aether, so they might not even be ABLE to cast Teleport and Return. We've seen Y'shtola cast Teleport before, so we know she is capable. I'm unsure about Papalymo, but given the nature of Return and Teleport, I'd wager it may be closer to thaumaturgy than conjury, so I'd assume he is able to as well. It may have been that Y'shtola and Papalymo just did not want to leave their companions and instead chose to stay behind.

[BubblyBoar]

You cant teleport when you have aggro. Brass Blade were like monsters in dungeons. Just because you were far away didn't mean you lost aggro.

[jomoru]

You cant teleport when you have aggro. Brass Blade were like monsters in dungeons. Just because you were far away didn't mean you lost aggro.

Sort of this. I mean not litterally this but it seems like Teleportation in setting requires a significant amount of effort so much so they assume its only used rarely. Clearly there wasn't enough time to properly concentrate and the 4 seconds in game time represents longer in universe.

[Icecylee]

Also, if there's anything I learned from 1.x, it's that people can't manage their anima properly and no one other than me ever had any

[RobinRethiel]

Oh no how will we escape Ul'dah? Teleport?

No we need to plot-twist sacrifice people. Which is fine....I just would have preferred if there was an explanation, probably involving magic, as to why people didn't just poof away with teleportation.

I'm just having difficulty with the concept that people don't actually teleport with the prevalence of Aetheryte in every major outpost and an Aethernet in every major city.

We did not need any teleport. Just running, not chatting would have solved everything quite fine. Also all the Scions are well trained soldiers. It would be easy to at least delay and followers who may catch up (even though it's pretty impossible from the start, that those guys catch up anyway).

Just running, not chatting, everything would be fine. No need for teleports.

[Risvertasashi]

This did strike me as a bit of a parallel with Tolkien and the Eagles. And (SPOILER) Cid needs to pick us up in his airship? If we had time to wait around... why not just teleport to Camp Dragonhead?

I'd be willing to give them a pass for storytelling, but then Aetherytes and teleporting have been a part of the story except now... when it's convenient (for storytelling) to suddenly not have access... it seems a bit dissonant. Maybe they should have just left it as a player convenience thing and excluded it from the storyline.

[Conradus]

Oh no how will we escape Ul'dah? Teleport?

No we need to plot-twist sacrifice people. Which is fine....I just would have preferred if there was an explanation, probably involving magic, as to why people didn't just poof away with teleportation.

I'm just having difficulty with the concept that people don't actually teleport with the prevalence of Aetheryte in every major outpost and an Aethernet in every major city.

And why didn't they just use a Phoenix Down on Aerith?