Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Skills and items quickbar upgrade suggestion

I want to make a suggestion to upgrade the current quickbar for items and skills into something similar looking to Neverwinter Nights 2 quickbar. Quoting from NWN Wiki:
"This user interface element allows you to place anything you use, including items, spells, skills, weapons, and party commands, on a bar that goes across the bottom screen. By pressing the number keys or hyphen (-) and equal (=) signs, you can quickly use any of these actions.
Pressing the square brackets ([, ]) allow you to cycle through all your quick bars. You can also press shift and a number key to access the corresponding quickbar.
You can have 10 quick bars total, each with 12 actions."

So as you can see here the quick bar is:
1. Longer
2. Is multi-layered - has up to 10 quickbars.
3. It has hotkeys to switch between bars and buttons as well (the up down buttons on the left)

When I was playing D:OS alpha I've got so many skills and items per character that I could no longer fit them all in one bar. So I think this NWN2 quickbar model would be of much help in D:OS as well, especially later in the game as you hoard skills and items. Wouldn't it be great to to easily switch between skills like these, instead of micromanaging them or using them from inventory or Skills bar?

I kinda agree but at this point I'm not sure which part of the UI is "by design" and which part is "alpha".
For instance, a limited quickbar can lead to make important choices of which skills you'll use during fights (like in Guild Wars 1), and thus also prevent the cooldown bypass by having too many skills at your disposal.

On the other hand, I agree being able to access each and every item and ability without always having to open your inventory or skillbook is pretty convenient. Well I should probably say, not being able to do so is tedious.

Maybe an "hybrid" solution could be the solution: We could have as many quickbars as we want for when exploring and questing but when the game enters combat mode, we'd be limited to a "combat quickbar" with maybe 8 skills and 2 items slots maximum.
So that way we'd have the practical UI and also the "I have to choose my skills carefully" part for combat.

I'm not sure what limiting qucikbar in combat would accomplish. Yuu can still use skills and items from inventory and skills bar any time. It's just more tedious. Your hybrid solution would require disabling inventory and skills bar when in combat. I'm not sure it's a good option.
What I'm trying to suggest here is that everything in the game should be easily accessible without micromanaging and tedious rummaging and therefore quickbar should accomodate more space.

I'm not against the idea of a larger quickbar/more quickbars in theory, but Grokalibre has a good point about this possibly being a balance issue.

Mana has been removed, and so the limits on what a mage can do are now only cooldown and AP. Giving them access to double or triple the skills for free can neuter cooldown, and then what? Yes, right now you can switch skills on the skill bar for free, but I'm not so sure that's a good idea either (I'm thinking that switching skills should cost 3 AP per skill).

Unlimited freedom is not always the best policy of game design.

To be fair, it's David Walgrave himself who said during a twitch recording that the removal of mana was problematic as characters get more skills through the course of the game and thus cooldown are not an issue anymore.
I'm not a big fan of mana because it usually just cost golds and inventory in rpg with people having bazillions of mana pots in their bags. Or sometimes it costs "virtual time" (fight, sleep, fight, sleep, etc), so meh.

Honestly, I'm a big advocate of locked, limited skillbars during fights (and during fights only, I too want tons of quickbars the rest of the time). They would force us to make choices, and thus prepare some sort of tactics: Do I want high mobility for my warrior, with several rush and blink skills? or tons of Aoe? Or should he be a tanky beast with party buffs? Should my healing wizard favor single target, high heal spells? Or aoe, but less powerful heals? Burst heals or heal over time, etc.?

If we can access everything all the time, well all that decision taking disappear, we'll all make "tankninjamagehealers" and I fear it may make all the combats much less interesting than they could be, and turn into: Spam the big nukes first, spam the rest while they're on cooldown, repeat.

While I understand the argument for limited skill bar usage for balance, I think I would personally dislike that approach quite a bit over time. I have no problems if they want to constrain the number of available spells at any point, I just don't want it to come via a mechanism of dragging and dropping spells to and from slots all the time. It's like reverting to inventory management using physical icon arrangement rather than a weight or a number of item limit. It's a tedious way to implement it.

Yeah, I can't think of a smooth way to have multiple skill bars an issue. The closest I can think of is switching your skillbar costs you 100% of your AP, which brings its own issues: what if you only wanted to peek at it and then decide you prefer something on your first skill bar? Should there be a confirmation box you have to click OK on each time you switch skill bars? That would also break the flow.

Hmmm seems I'm not clear enough, sorry English is not my native language.
So, what I propose is that we could have multiple quickbars, on top of each others, on the sides, etc, just like in any modern mmo, to get rid of all the item micro managing that makes a game tedious. I like my shortcuts as much as the next guy, I don't want cheap limitations that we bypass by constantly and tediously dragging and dropping, etc.

Now, among these quickbar, there would be a UNIQUE COMBAT BAR, which would be the LOCKED DURING FIGHTS, and the ONLY ONE WE COULD USE DURING FIGHTS.
The idea is to have us make build choices for fights, not have us do ton of drag and drops during fights.
This UNIQUE, LIMITED COMBAT BAR could have something like 6 skills and 2 items slots, I don't know this would have to be tested and yeah obviously I'm no game designer, but again the idea is that we don't end running Mageninjatanksofdoom that run into the middle of a group of ennemy, explode everything on their way and self heal while summoning pets and barely getting scratched.

I'm not proposing this for the sake of having a tedious interface or anything silly of that sort, no.

Why I'm proposing this is because I want tactic fights, with meaningful choices, and being able to do everything all the time will just prevent that.

So please, before you answer "nooooo we'll just drag and drop and it's tedious etc", please understand that it's not what I'm proposing, that I'm sorry for not being able to express myself in a cleared and more understandable way, and that I'm only proposing this because I firmly believe it would make fights -which should be a substantial portion of the game- more tactic and thus more enjoyable.

I understood what you were saying the first time. I don't think strictly locking down the skill bar is the best either. If your mage has 6 fire spells on his belt, and 6 ice skills which he has in his spellbook (but not on the bar), he's not going to be pleased if he wanders into an encounter with fire elementals and can't switch out anything.

I don't want a tedious interface either, but I'd take it in a heartbeat over too-easy combat. I am okay with swapping out skills, and having multiple skillbars but it can't for free in combat.

I debate how tedious it would be to change out the inventory. You shouldn't need to put scrolls and potions on your skillbar anyway: this is not an action RPG, there's no difference using those things from the inventory and skillbar.

I understand where you are coming from but I kind of like the small footprint that the current interface has, so instead of having additional visible quickbars, I would prefer scrolling through multiple quickbar mappings via the up/down arrow approach.

Merging some of the ideas together so far, perhaps a simple compromise would be to have these multiple quickbar slots available via scrolling and increase the AP as you go down each level. So if they gave us 3 quickbars available via scroll, there would be no additional cost for level 1, but if you scroll down to level 2, it costs you 2 AP in addition to whatever the ability requires. If you scroll to level 3, it costs 3 additional AP. That way your skills are still available even if you didn't happen to put them on your first level, but it will cost you extra to use them. It is similar to charging action points for moving abilities to your quickbar, but more flexible and requiring less constant manipulation.

The game's combat is tactical enough in itself. There's so much fun already in different strategies using environment and the elements, it doesn't need the limitation you speak of to be a fun game. I really don't see why there should be limitations in using quickbar. Take same NWN2 for example, sure it's RTwP not Turn Based, but it has plenty of ways to strategize by choosing what to use among all the spells and abilities that you have. That choice in itself is a stretgy, not a workaround of some artificial quickbar limitation. You can see this quickbar approach in many games, and if it works well there why not in D:OS as well?
Also, I'm not sure at all that having only 9 skills in a fixed bar will be enough in late game combat encounters. I think, like in all RPG games in late stages, we will also be pressed to use all our arsenal to succeed. I cannot see that happening with only 9 slots.

Merry Christmas.
To be honest, I suppose it's safe there's going to be a lot of changes implemented to skills, stats and spells so it's hard to figure out how the balance will be in the end.
Currently, all I have to do to win fights is spam my AoEs of Doom so I can't really judge the tactical potential of this game. Maybe charge times and some shared cooldown will be the solution to it all, I don't know.

Aramintia, why I think infinite skill slots work in other games and may not in D:OS is simply because D:OS doesn't use classes but a freeform system.
While I enjoy the ability to build my heroes as much as anyone else, I've also played in the past too many games where the freeform would lead to have "tankmages with healing factor" trivialising the content. Believe it or not, limiting the amount of spells/abilities available at once is more than an "artificial quickbar limitation".
I suppose we can say it's more a core gameplay mechanic similar to how, in card games (either recents one like Munchkin, Bang!, Magic or traditionnal ones, I don't know if you play any of these : p), you have a limitation on how many cards you can keep in your hand.

Are you trying to say here that because this game has freeform character progression there should be a limit to what that character can use in the quickbar? What's the point of freeform then, if I can't use in battle both my spells and my bow skills, and maybe even my fighting skills if that's how I like to play? By trying artificially limit skills you will only gimp the character you're developing. And besides, even though NWN2 does have classes, you can multiclass there like crazy and have all sorts of combinations of spells and abilities. It too has a different window for spellbook and inventory, yet the quickbar is still the fastest way to use everything in and out of combat.

I very much doubt that D:OS devs will suddenly limit what we can use in and out of combat - we're very much free to do as we please in this game and play however we want. This is not a card game, this is an rpg, where you hoard stuff and become more powerful. And to easily use all that hoarded stuff this game's quickbar needs to be expanded, simple as that. If it's not implemented, then, I said before, a tedious rummaging through all that hoarded stuff will await us later in the game.

I think making a combat bar and an "other" bar will mostly just confuse and frustrate players. Adding a multi-layered skill bar with an extra AP cost to spells for scrolling farther down will only lead to players dragging and dropping everything onto the top bar. I know that I would.

I disagree that combat in the game as it is now is tactical "enough". NWN2 isn't the best example either. Its magic mechanic is that you only have x slots per spell level per day... but its definition of a day is so flexible that you can switch, rest and recharge after every encounter. The restriction it imposes is that you can't change during an encounter, and you don't even want that restriction in D:OS.

Aramintai: It's fine that you want to be able to use all the skills at your disposal. If you want to swap your bow for a sword, it will cost you action points to do that. Spells are your weapons as well, and I think there should also be a cost for changing them in combat, even if it just a cheap 3 AP per swap cost.

The best interface solution I can think of to prevent having to drag and drop skills (which could definitely get clunky if you're doing 3 or more) is in the spellbook, click a skill to select it, and press the 1-8 button to replace the skill in that spot on the skillbar.

I think that if you can use all skills and spells you have in your spellbook all the time, that the game will be difficult to balance. One aspect of RPGs like this for me was to prepare my group for certain encounters. If i can change around everything in mid combat this aspect is voided to a degree.

I think 8-16 Spell/skill slots + 4 other slots for items, usables should be enough.
We will get a third character the companion which will also bring skills to battle. I think this would be enough.

I never said this should be a card game, so please stop shoving words in my mouth it's not really healthy for the conversation. I understand you loved NWN2, I agree it was a great game, but I'm not flaming each and everyone of your arguments by saying "this is not NWN3 stop ur silly comparison herp derp".

There's a difference between having a character restricted so a single role (eg tank - dps - heal), having a character able to switch between different roles (which is what I'm proposing) and having a character able to do everything at once (state of the game right now, godmode).
Freeform progression should not be some excuse to ask for an absence of balancing and challenge.

I understand godmode is nice and being able to slaughter hordes of MegaDemons with a Berzerkosamuraininjacleric lvl80 is fun but it gets old pretty fast too, trivialize combat and thus negate a large part of the gameplay: Basically at this point combat is no more than a time sink that players go through to progress through the story, instead of being an enjoyable component of the game.

I also doubt the game will have much replay value if there's an obvious overpowered hybrid build that let player steamroll through combats, like it is in the current alpha. It also somewhat ruins the different approaches to a problem when brute force is the easiest and fastest way to get what you want.

The game in the current state is godmode only because it is not balanced yet, and some skills are OP.
However, in release version everything will be appropriately nerfed or un-nerfed and then stategy will consist of what skill is more suitable in the current situation, not which OP skill to spam. Therefore there are so many skills and a freeform progression. Furthermore, you won't be able to level your abilities high enough to have ALL of your skills at a super high level anyway, only some - and here's your limit. You won't be able to steamroll anything later in the game with a low level skill. I really don't see the logic of implementing any more limitations, especially if it concerns such a simple thing as a quickbar.

You oppose ideas considering the game will be balanced at some point.
I propose my ideas considering they're a conditio sine qua non to have a chance to ever reach some balance.

Well at least I found the exact reason of our disagreeing! : )
Sorry for kinda derailing your thread.

That's ok. So, considering that the game will be more or less balanced in release version, do you think quickbar expansion is required?

Whatever is best for the users. I'm a big fan of costumizable UI, and would rather have quickbars all over my screen than have to open different windows and tabs everytime I want to lockpick, sneak, steal, use a rare spell, etc.