Well, it might seem like something no one noticed before, but actually this whole skill bar thing has been discussed a lot during beta at the Beta UI Wishlist thread. Many people noticed the hotbar is a little too small for all the things we'd like to use it for and some suggestions were made in order to improve it. If Larian didn't implement any of these suggestions I believe it's because they didn't have enough time or had more import things to worry about before release.

I made a suggestion myself that most people seemed to like and once again I ask your opinion on this. First, in order to make things clearer, I came up with the following thoughts:

Our problem:
- lots and lots of options to choose from (skills, scrolls, arrows, weapons, consumables and so on);
- limited hotbar and screen space;
- sorting through our options and doing what we want is somewhat harder and more time consuming than it should.

What we need:
- Some way to quickly view/sort through all ours options and easily select/activate them.

What could be done:
- Increasing the number of slots in the hotbar would be the most obvious solution, as most people seem to think. But is it really the best solution? Would it really be that great to have 15 to 30 or so slots appearing at once on screen all the time? To my eyes it would just make everything look cluttered and, honestly, quite a mess;
- Maybe having more than 3 rows of skills to cycle through? IMO it seems like a pain even if the buttons were larger or we had a hotkey to do that (though I agree it would help a little). Problem is it would take too many cycling to find what you want and too much trouble to organize all rows;
- But hey, what if we think about something different but still something Larian has already done before. What about having stacks appear when right clicking over a hotbar slot (sort of like the Divine Divinity UI)?

Well, that's not so easy to explain, but here's how it could work (with mockups and all):

1) When right clicking over any empty hotbar slot a stack of all learnt skills separated by type would show up. Left click over any skill shown to occupy that slot. E.g. right clicking over slot number 9 could open something like this:

[Linked Image]

2) A right click over any occupied slot would open a stack of all learnt skills of that category (or itens of that type). Left click to select and replace the selection for that slot. The same could be done with other skills and itens like potions, arrows, scrolls, weapons, consumables and so on. E.g. right clicking over a slot with Flare would open all learnt fire elemental skills. The same with air elemental skills and so forth...

[Linked Image]
[Linked Image]

3) By filling the hotbar with a choice of each skill category and a few item types you would have just about EVERYTHING beautifully sorted and just two clicks away.

That's it... Keyboard numbers would still work as usual and very little UI appearance changes would have to be made in order to accommodate for this functionality. But don't take me wrong... I'm not saying doing this is easy or that it has to be exactly like that. I'm not even demanding that Larian do it. That's just something I would like to see in this great game and so I decided to give away my two cents. So, what do you people think?

PS.: My thanks to Aramintai for coming up with the idea for presenting mockups and for providing one I could use as work material wave