Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Let's talk new UI.

+1

The UI is a tool for us to interract/understand with the game and hotbar is an awefull one.
I want to see the game more than the tools. Less UI is always better.

That is just matter of taste ...
Personaly i dislike those empty unuseable space ...

But yes, in ideal world you should have option to either stretch, or shrink the bar however you like.

Speaking of new UI... maybe this was designed on Valentine's Day, but really... this is an interesting design direction for Temporary HP

I know this may make a lot of people upset, but I actually kind of like the new UI. It took me a little bit to get used to it, but now that I am I certainly don't find myself playing around with it and managing it as much as I used to even with my level three wizard. I'm usually able to find things pretty easily.

And I do really think that the inventory is way better. So far there's nothing I haven't been able to find easily, and I like the ability to easily drag and drop things from one character to another into an equip spot. I like that I can type in Camp and all camping supplies pull up for all characters. The sort actually works the way I expected to. And I like that the inventory for a single character is up on the game screen so when I pick up books and notes I can read one right after the other right from my inventory without it constantly closing my inventory after every book I read.

I even let it auto fill, which is something I wasn't going to do because I hated it on the old hot bar. But it seems to be working pretty well on the new one.

Could it be better? Maybe. But I think it's definitely an improvement.

You should probably try mmorpg

Nice one ...
But not the worse i have ever seen ...

This is how my game looked like when i was 16:
(Look at your own risk)

Old times.

I would say of one looks a game and concludes that places not covered by UI are unusable spaces then it's quite a failure of the game! One would hope that the UI would be covering the game space, not be it.


I do to, but that's mostly because I don't use much hotbar.

Items being separate from skills already helps a lot. I think that if they improve organisations to automatically generated decks, and make hotbar act like hotbar, and remember what was and wasn't put on it, then it will be alright, even of rather overengineered.

I think we can now move on and focus on complaining about minimap and combat log

Dunno ... i gues it depends on extend of definition. :-/

Il try to rephrase ...
I like to have separate interface screen, and separate part of screen where scene is happening ... i have no uses for gaps of scenery in between of UI (with exception of that big one in the middle, obviously) ...
Especialy if UI is not big enough so i can get there everything im using. :-/

I dunno how many of you do that, but i dont search for enemies in the corners (wich seems like the only possible use of that space) ... i simply move the camera to see them properly in the middle. :-/

And then can't tell whether the vector it's projecting for you is including moving your character or not - because you can't see them both at once, and the game might or might not be auto-moving your character as part of targeting that enemy, with no way of knowing - because if you slide the camera back to check, you're no longer mousing the intended target! Thanks Larian! Professional design!

Well ... personaly i solve this by rotating the camera and adjusting the angle so i see both my character, and the enemy.
So far i didnt find any place where that would be impossible (except for spiders cave, when you are down and spider several levels abowe you ... that place was a horror in previous patches ... not sure how it works now since it is quite long when this situation happened to me last time)

But yes, this problem should certainly be Adressed ...
I believe i have seen some suggestion ... it was some kind of warning sign, either with alterning collor of your cursor ... or adding message "movement required" or something simmilar, to your cursor when you are aiming the spell.
I liked it both.

The camera is an issue for me in many places. As someone who pretty much only plays ranged characters and prefers tactical placement of AoE spells, it is a nightmare to do almost anything. Even in the ruins, where there aren't many levels it is an issue because if I have characters around the corner up by the button, I cannot see some of the enemies without moving my camera around, but due to the lack of Z axis I then cannot see my attacking character like I should be able to. Sure, I can walk down the stairs and be exposed from all sides like an idiot just so the camera can be used to see everything, but that is not fun for me at all. Not being able to see if your character needs to move to attack someone or if the attack is blocked by something is ridiculous.

As for the new hotbars, I have uninstalled the game (needed the space) until they allow us to arrange everything on all bars how we want it and hopefully bring back the option to make the bars bigger. I could tolerate it slightly on a non caster because there aren't that many things to click on, but with all the rest of the micromanaging (toilet chain especially) that has to be done, having to constantly search for stuff on the bar is too much. I want to play the game, not waste time memorizing some illogical layout of buttons.

There’s still room for improvement but I’ve found the hotbar much better than before. If you feel the size is too restrictive, I’ve found clicking on the Action, Bonus Action and spell slot icons is a quick and easy way to make sure you can see all your available options.

That was litteraly showed in Panel From Hell.

And yes those filters are there and personaly im aware of them, but sadly they dont solve my problem. :-/
I do feel the size of hotbar is too restrictive ... but if i would want to use those filters i could just the same keep switching between general, class, items and custom ... and that is litteraly and exactly what i DONT want to do ... that is why i keep asking since first UI change to give us back our big hotbar, where was enough space for everything (i mean come on, even spell levels was separated on first builds and i still easily managed to sort them all in my bar and still had enough space for items and other stuff.) ...

And while we actualy get biger hotbar in last patch, we also get so many new icons so effectively half space of our hotbar is allready taken so in the end we have even less space than we had before. :-/

Soooo.... As I find writing about UI awkard andwas misuderstood on couple occasions, I thought it will be simpler to record video with all the combined feedback that I have. It ended up being far longer then I expected so is hardly practical feedback that I wanted it to be, but hey. I spent time doing it, might as well share. Also a colleague of mine is right: my pronunciation of "work" sounds very much like "walk".



EDIt. Uuuuu, it is interesting to see what automatic subtitle generation can and cannot translate properly.

EDIT2. Ups, trimmed the video a bit too much. Noob mistake. Nothing of substance was lost.

Great video ... so far i agree with everything said!

I didnt even know you can click on your weapon to get all actions you can do with it.
Nice one!

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One (not so short as i intended) coment for spells tho ...

I believe the problem with Level 1 Witch Bolt you showed there is that Larian didnt listen my suggestion (yep smug as hell i know ) and didnt give us separate spell icons for upcasting ...
Right now game understands only two type of spell icons:
- basic one (wich leads to spell-level selection and its allways lowest possible ... meaning once we will get level 3 spellslots, all level 2 spells starts to behave just as level 1 spells do right now.
- and upcasted (curently level 2) wich works exactly as spell icons worked back then, when this suggestion was born ... they simply let you cast the spell imediatly after click with upcasted spell-level-slot. :-/

What i suggested back when popup menu was firstly introduced to us, was that Larian should keep that function so we can place Any level spells on our hotbar (my example was Mage Armor usualy, since there is really no reason to waste level 2 spellslot for that) ...
And to achieve that we would need separate category in our spellbook wich would be icons leading to pop-up menu.

I still believe this system would be the most pure way to achieve maximum versatility for every player, to set their bar just they way they want.
You click on level 1 > level 1 spells ONLY will show ...
You click on level 2 > level 2 spells ONLY will show ...
You give on your bar level 1 spell > you cast the spell as level 1 ONLY using THIS icon ...
You give on your bar level 2 spell > you cast the spell as level 2 ONLY using THIS icon ...
You give on your bar icon from that separate category i was just talking about > you shall pick your spell level pop-up menu (or bar in curent implementation) will show up and you pick the level you wish to use right now.

To make spellbook a little more clear, this "new" separate category could easily contain only prepared spells, we cant put on our hotbar unprepared spell anyway, so no harm done.

Thoughts?

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I like the idea with mouseover ...
But i would probably make it just for preview ...

You search for something > you mouseover > you dont see it > you mouseover next filter > preview of your sub-menu is imediatly replaced > you see what you were searching for > you click (yup this part is probably necesary) to confrim that you want to work with this menu > you continue as usualy.

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Just two more notes to hotbar ... wich are acutaly just repeating two wishes i expressed earlier:
(maybe even in this topic)

- Ability to adjust hotbar size is essential in my opinion ... there are people who wants hotbar over whole sceen (myself) there are people who wants hotbar to be nonexistent (dunno ... GM? Zellin? Really not sure)
So i believe we should be able to add (or reduce) amount of "places"(?)/"buttons"(?)/really dont know wich word to use, hope its undertandable ... however we want.

- When we click on spell icon without any filter aplied, and upcasting "pop-up" or "drop-down" menu shows ... i want besides upcasting levels ... also see other sources of the same spell aviable (scrolls, items, etc.) within that single "pop-up" or "drop-down" menu ...
Basicaly when i pick Level 1 spells ... and then click Magic Missile ... i want game to cast level 1 Magic missile.
When i pick Level 2 spells ... and then click Magic Missile ... i want game to cast level 2 Magic missile.
And when dont pick anything ... and just click on Magic Missile on my main Hotbar ... i want game to show me ALL possible sources of Magic Missile.

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Over and over, great video ... +1000! :3

Thanks for taking time to watch and respond!

If I understand you spell suggestion the problem you describe is that we can't assign "direct cast" spell icon of a "native spell". So when we assign level 1 spell to hotbar, it will always be the version that will require confirmation (same with other level once upcasted version of them is available).

That's not something I discussed as I use hotbar much more sparingly, but that is definitely an issue that needs to be solve. If the system from weapons was implimented for spells I think that issue would solve itself, though any solution is welcome/needed.

Yup ...
That is the problem.

But in fact it goes even one step futher.
And that is what you were talking about ...

Since the game is curently unable to asign "direct cast" for lowest possible spell level ... when you filter your spells to show only level 1 you would presume the game offers you "direct cast" icons ... instead you get those "native" that require confrimation.

So my suggestion would solve two problems at once.

Game would start to understand direct cast for lowest spell levels ... so level 1 filter would work properly ...
And people like myslef would finaly get the option to cast Mage Armor level 1 with just single click instead permanently confriming its level.

I see it as win win situation.

Please help, i'm noob
Please post OLD ui screen and new UI screen for comparison.
And, how is it possible to use old ui in current game ver?

Just YouTube early EA gameplay videos.


You can’t use old UI, in 1.0, unless someone mods it in. And I am not sure why one would.

Just use a controller, no more annoying UI blocking most of the screen. Amazing.