Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity - Original Sin - General The skill bar is flat out horrible

Woo so for each combat you use 20 skills and many items and potions, and for each characters?

Really?

Flat out horrible is a funny exaggeration but I agree it could have been better.

Now I don't think you use 20 skills and many items in any single combat, I could be wrong.

In my opinion the first fix to do is related to the arrows, have them bigger and provide custom shortcuts for next bar, prev bar, bar 1, bar 2, bar 3.

Then a custom option to customize its lenght because I bet it's a less difficult change than multiple bars.

Now I suggest look at the current system differently:
- Dedicate one bar to exploration mode, with 10 shortcuts it should be enough for each character.
- Design a half bar with 5 skills you really use in most combats and quite often.
- Design a third bar with skills you use in most combats but rarely.

Then during exploration you use the exploration bar. When a combats starts you design the second bar for the tactics you plan in this combat, there's 5 skills to add just for this combat. And when the rare use cases happen you use the 3rd bar.

It's a good approach because it makes you look at combats with design a analyze. It's not a combat "let see rush and put it in my back quickly" it's cool a combat let enjoy and plan and analyze before to rush in it.

I did used that approach with MMX single small bar and that's quite cool. But the context is different and it fits even better DoS.

Pokemon only had 4 abilities, and is mainly a game for children or very nostalgic adults. Regardless pointing out a simple or bad UI doesn't do anything for your argument. Are there worse UIs than D:OS? Yeah, certainly, but we point at the better ones to show how it could be done better.

Also what you're seeing in my pic is not all the skills it could cover, I could've stretched any of those bars out for more if I'd have needed it. It just shows how screen space could be used much more efficiently.

Not being able to cover everything is no excuse for covering so little. We have only 10 on screen, that's half of what I'm using even just in the early levels. Ideally, players would have some control over how many to display and how to display them. But even if they can't do customization for whatever reason, at the very least a more reasonable number should be available on screen at once, and with extra bars being more accessible.

I definitely WOULD NOT want 3 bars on screen at all times or 30 buttons at the bottom as some people have requested.
Moddable to preference would be nice, yes, but how feasible would that be? It can be pretty daunting on UI design, it's not that easy.

Personally I wouldn't mind having an option to display 3 bars at all times (or just flip them up pressing a button onscreen or hotkey). I just know I wouldn't use it.
The biggest problem so far STILL seems to simply that the next and previous buttons are too small. If that's changed, and for those really wanting it there are configurable hotkeys all issues would instantly vanish right?
Minor tweaks... no super-overhaul needed.


What keeps resetting? Please tell?
Once you pick a sort, it stays that way. However, new items do get added at the end (not at the location it should be for your sort). Is that what you mean, you want it automatically updated each item?
Also if you make a gap (sell items, use item etc.) you have to note the UI doesn't automatically update, and new items will fill those gaps.
I have never seen an inventory system with sort that automatically ordered each and every pickup or other mutation though, if there is any show me which.
If I misinterpretated what the problem was, let me know...

I do agree with this one.

Typical MMO-mechanic added to please lazy players of the new generation. Welcome to old-school. I definitely don't want any mysteriously shared container that is magically used in the middle of a warzone when crafting even if miles away as modern RPG's sometimes have.

Pokemon is world wide success and features deep turn based combat and is about as related to this game as your MMO. Its GUI is simple accessible and efficient, certainly better designed than your proposed ideal.

Let's discuss the problems

- clearly it's optimized for a 3xxxx by 2xxxx monitor. On a smaller screen those "buttons" on the bottom are essentially 20-30 pixel dots. If you have vision issues, this UI doesn't work for you. People are already complaining about pixel hunts.

- allowing you to create the hundreds of macros that you think everyone should train their muscles for requires complete rework of the key listener modules since the current system doesn't support anything like that. I already had an analogy about the feasibility of implementing a yachts control system on a car. Also I'm guessing you have use of all your faculties, good for you. There are gamers who do have mobility issues, with their hand/arm, and I think they are as deserving of playing this game as anyone else. A heavily keyboard dependent UI would cause issues for them

- ideally yes, we all should be able to tweak the hell out of the UI to meet our own individual requirements, but this game wasn't made with the budget of WoLK. A fluid UI requires you to devote a lot more of your develop cycle resources than a static one. The developers already made their choice.

- if your suggestion isn't practical, then all we are talking about are pipe dreams. Pipe dreams aren't useful when people genuinely want improvements to be made.

Why would you even need macro's at all.

It's TBS... the game will wait for your input... no constant clicking 1,2,5,4,3,1,2,4,5 blabla like MMORPG's...

Thank god.

Being a successful game doesn't mean it had a good UI. Hell, Skyrim was a successful game and it had one of the worst UIs I've ever experienced in a AAA game.

The bars I posted aren't necessarily the ideal static UI and I wasn't posting them to show an optimal UI but as proof that people can and do memorize and use many different keys.

However, they're still better than the static UI in D:OS. If they have to go static it should be making better use of screen space.

You also suggest the buttons are too small, but the buttons to swap between the 3 bars in D:OS are tiny. Also, even excluding the smaller buttons I've got at the bottom(which could be made larger and still fit there BTW) there are more available abilities than there are in D:OS that are a reasonable size. There are 40 in that picture that are easily click-able, D:OS has 10. I would be very happy with 40.

Hell, even with the same space and slot size, if you adjusted things a bit you could manage twice as many bars:



Yeah, I'm going over the decorative junk, but it's not the most attractive looking thing anyway.

We could easily increase those bars to 15 or 20 slots in length and get 30 or 40 skills available on screen too.

I think just letting players map a hotkey for 'next/previous hotbar page' would be enough.

I would personally map them to mouse4 and mouse5, but that's just me.

You mean like the magical send to homestead option?

Fellgnome, that mock up is pretty decent and makes a better starting point of a discussion than your screenshot of another game.

I know people can do many things, but there are also limitations. Some people can't physically do the things that you can and it rules out a lot of games for them. With turn based combat, the game can be more accessible for people of different circumstances.

Making the UI better for more people? Good

Making the UI unnecessarily complex so that you can save 2 seconds but f*cks over people who can't interact with the UI like you? Yeah, not a fan of that

@ Brian; I have that disabled XD
But yeah, that and then actually having the items there used for crafting from there aswell as MMO's allow, nah... rather not.

Adding more bars by default isn't going to make the UI any more complex, I don't comprehend such an argument. Is having two rows of abilities going to confuse and anger you? Now I'm not going to say they should make something like that the default because I'd rather the ability to expand it as much as I want or even to use floating hotbars.

Now for anyone who can't understand why we want so many spots, or who say we won't use all 30 or 40 spells in a single battle the reasoning is quite simple. If its not readily visible the player can forget they even have that ability available in a situation that fits it. When i was first playing and started getting skills added to my 2nd bar I forgot it was even there most of the time. I didn't get used to swapping between bars until hiberheim and forgetting spells my MC just learned. Meanwhile if I could have the bars visible all the time I wouldn't have had those problems. Now that I'm stuffing far more than 30 abilities into 30 slots I find myself forgetting about things on any of the bars at all, like burn my eyes when wandering around a trap infested area to the point where I'm casting from the skill menu.

FWIW in games that have a lot of available bars I tend to group skills I use in certain situations and then repeat them on more than one bar. For instance I might have a skill bar setup for ice base monsters, another to deal with poison etc. Its nice to have the option to set up more bars.

Since you seem to be quoting me, I'm going to assume you are addressing me...

Who said anything about being confused or angered by two rows of skills?! Maybe if you read the whole train of conversation instead of making assumptions out of context, we'd have a discussion.

You want to use 30 -40 skills per combat.... I average 2 skills per turn per character. Assuming you can never repeat skills, that's 20 skills in 10 turns. I've never had fights lasting longer 10 turns... Tell me again about the efficient use of screen estate, devoting it to skills that never get triggered in combat

Fellgnome is advocating for customizable macros. If you can't remember what skills you have, heaven help you because good luck remembering if 1221 is summon spider or if you set that to 1222.

Because not all two fights are the same. If I'm in a battle against fire elementals my main fire mage with 15 fire skills hotkeyed now use to use other spells she knows. She's had poison arrow since level 5 and I completely forgot she even had it until level 15. There's a myriad of responses you can take to what the enemy is doing which will change what you might use on a particular turn. So yeah, a fight might only last 6 turns, but if I remembered some spells I knew it could have lasted 5. I don't want to use 40 skills in a fight, I want to have my 40 skills on display so if the situation comes up where firefly might be an awesome choice to bottleneck the enemies I don't forget it exists because it's not actively on a skill bar.

I agree on macros, there's no point to them in this game.

So hard that most MMO since Lineage 2 did it. That was 10 years ago. I was still studying back then.

Very daunting? Liking the game is fine, but pointing out the flaw and recommending solution is met with irrational hostility.

Hey, try playing a Ranger and imagine all those consumable arrows in combat on top of your other skill sets. A

ll of you espousing the real estate protection against hotbar has not a single convincing argument besides 'I use less skills therefore I am right.'

If this game actually had a mechanical limiting feature like Guild Wars 2 where ability is limited to 6 at a time, then there is a point to a single hotbar.

As such, there is absolutely NONE.

You know what's also funny... there hasn't been a game as good as Deus Ex since then. It's been 14 years. What have developers been doing if it's so easy?

MMO's usually feature adjustable UI's yes. But now go about giving me a single single-player RPG who does that, while not requiring to mod it yourself. Suddenly, you can probably not think of any right. Right.

But maybe you only play MMO's since it's Lineage 2 and Guild Wars 2 and you're not listing a single actual RPG yet.

Also, you're reading that. Which is funny, since I clearly said "I would be fine with it, as long as we aren't forced to have all the bars visible all the time. But I just wonder how feasible that is"... how you suddenly got 'irritional hostility' or 'I am right, you are wrong' from there... well, I don't know.

Dragon age let you adjust your skill bar

Not that I recall (Talking about Origins here, right?)

Yes, found about it recently, if you click and drag on the ledge you can make the bar shorter/larger

All the games mentioned here that features fluid/adjustable UI are big budget titles backed by big distributors. This means they have a lot of resources for development. Customizable UI is ideal, but the more adjustable it is, the more time is needed to devote to interface creation. A lot of indie games do not feature wildly customizable UI for this reason.

For example, go look up liquid layout on Google and you will see some amazingly designed websites. Now go back to your regular websites and you will notice that most have fixed layout. Why? Liquid layout can exponentially increase your development time for each new range of resolution you want to support.

I don't think a fluid UI is ever going to happen, but if you think it's so easy to execute, please go ahead and show Larian how it's done. Create a mod for customizable UI.

In the meantime, I hope you all do realize the easiest "fix" is simply limiting your useable skills in combat to 30, like Guild Wars and Diablo and all those other big name games.