dragon age offered very few skills with no way to swap between them, and even less items - meaning I never had to use a second hot bar
Wait what "second hot bar" ?
I play with all DLC, and thurst me ... when you reach certain levels, you use every space possible.
As to chaining, there was little to no reason to seperate/switch control to other characters.
We either played quite different Dragon Age games ... or you played only as a Rogue.
Since Rogue was the only one able to lockpick, there was a lot of reasons (actualy 1, but lot of cases) to switch characters.
They even improved this in Inquisition (not sure about II.) where every class have some unique ability, you need ... so have at least single caster, rogue and warrior is recommended, and you are switching between them quite often.
There is really no such thing as "skills I always use"
Try Warlock.
Eldrich Blast > Eldrich Blast > Eldrich Blast > Eldrich Blast > Eldrich Blast > Eldrich Blast > Eldrich Blast > Eldrich Blast > Eldrich Blast > Eldrich Blast > Eldrich Blast > ...
Both games work very differently then BG3 (see my post above) so that's not very relevant. You design UI for the game you are making now, not for the game you made or someone else made.
Well ... i mentioned them only as example for "not MMO" games that also uses hotbar, to show on practical example that claim "hotbar is MMO matter" is incorect.
That's much better, as while Pathfinder does offer a generous selection of hotbars, it also has a functional UI. I would prefer to have the balance scewed another direction (like in BG1&2 and Pillars of Eterniry) and I thihnk there are some major design issues with it (I should have to click and hide/unhide UI to access "proper" UI, some important buttons are far to small, while useless things you will never use take a big portion of the screen. Pathfinder overall like to propritise presentation over usibility IMO)
but at least I can get straight to playing without a need to waste organise the hotbar.
That is main problem in this topic ... as i also mentioned abowe, there are people who WANT to organise the hotbar.
That is also the reason why i believe that we should be easily able to do both.
Lets take casting system for example okey?
In some old patch (2? 3? not sure right now) popup window offering you all spell levels was implemented.
Many people cheered, bcs that was exactly what they wanted ...
Some and i admit i dunno how much, but i was one of them without a doubt ... cryed on the other hand, bcs this change bring a lot of problems for us:
- first of all, Icons no longer show minimum Spell Level you can use them ... so if you want to plan your moves in advance, you must either actualy learn all your spells, or check every tooltip you have ... otherwise you can easily end in situation where i personaly was a lot of time, when i used my last 2lvl spell slot to attack, thinking that since Misty Step dont have any "II." on icon, it can be casted with 1lvl spell slot ... but it cannot, so my caster died bcs my UI was playing against me. -_-
- second, it was the fact that casting everything was prolonged ... not by much, aproximately in matter of seconds, somethimes not even whole ... but it the end, combat laster longer, bcs you rarely cast only single spell.
But that is not the problem, problem was it was more tedious for no real reason.
Take it if you have party of 4 Wizards and you wish to buff them all with Mage Armor ... in old system you would just click on spell and target ... meaning 8 click top ... in "new and better" casting system its 12 ... and that is just single spell preparation, add False life to that and you have 24, instead of 16 add darkvision and you have 36 instead of 24 ... etc. you get the idea.
- third and that is my personal favourite, Larian didnt implement any kind of sorting since begining of EA ... so all those spells in those popup windows are ALLWAYS sorted randomly ... not so big deal, while you have only 2 spells there of wich one is level 1 and other one is level 2 ... much more anoying if you search for right HEX ... or, now witch patch 6 if you search for right Chromatic Orb
Why do i mention this?
Glad you asked, Ragnarok.
Well, its simple ...
Spell casting system is in some matters quite simmilar to UI debate ...
While Larian can easily do what some people (lets call them Group A) requests (just as they did with popup window) and ignore the other group (B), i believe its a misstake ... ESPECIALY!!! since the other party just want this new system they will implement for the Group A, to be aplicable for system we allready have.
And that is where we return to our spellcasting example:
What Larian did?Implement popup window, that opens all possible spell levels for certain spells, removed ALL spell levels indicators on icons, and saved lot of space on hotbar in the proces.
Not exactly bad work, but it have its own problems.
What were Larian supposed to do? (in my opinion ofcourse)
Simply add to our existing spellbook icons that would be dragable to our hotbar ... one icon for every spell that would open exactly this popup window with all possible levels for THIS specific spell ... and other icon, that would open exactly this popup window with all possible SPELLS for this specific spell level!
Why would it make difference you ask?
Bcs then everyone could be happy ...
people wanted to sort it by spell level > they can ...
people want to sort it by specific spells > they can ...
people want specific spell with specific spell level on Hotbar > they can ...
Now only one of theese three groups is happy, and that is simply not result they should be satisfied with, especialy since all they need to do is simply dont delete things they allready have ... simply add to them some new possibilities.
Another example is Chromatic Orb itself ...
https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=792836#Post792836The best Suggestion you find in this topic is to let people decide if they want to cast Chromatic Orb with big numbers, or sacrifice 1d8 for surface effect ...
You see the similarity here?
IF larian will delete hotbar and create litteraly anything else, it would be the same problem as with spellcasting, or with chromatic orb ... there allways will be someone who will be sad they destroyed system he liked (most likely it will be me
).
BUT if Larian will preserves curent system (hotbar in this case) but alterns it so even people who dislikes it can use it properly ... much more people would be happy, and since group i represent in this matter (even if some people around here presume its group of single person) wish them to preserve curent way ... it costs nothing, since that was allready implemented.
Now, when we explained why ... lets look at how.
That i was talking about abowe.
In my personal opinion dedicated icons & ability to make unused slots on hotbar semitransparent, or fully transparent is exactly what we need.
I have to mention that I did find overall Pathfinders hotbar to be rather useless for casters - the required management after every rest/change of spells was too much. But it was an optional tedium that I could ignore, not mandatory, as it is in BG3.
I cant judge, i didnt play it ... only watched videos and decided its not game for me.
