(Edited post thanks to others' feedback!)
Now that we've moved to beta and Larian is going to start to "polish" the user interface, here's my wishlist of must-have improvements. I adapted this from my old thread "List of suggestions/issues/bugs - Alpha 1.0.167," but since others also agree with some of the ideas (like a key ring!), I'd be interested in everyone's other thoughts. Cheers!



USER INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS WISHLIST



INVENTORY/CHARACTER AND TRADING MENUS/CONTROLS

1) All items of an identical type (except equipment) should stack with each other in the inventory and trading menus
Items that should stack, but don't: all "junk" (i.e. (large) bottles, broken bottles, (flower) pots, globes, lab junk, plates, tubes, vials, vial racks), arrow shafts, arrows/arrowheads (identical types), books (including all identical recipe and blank skillbooks), bonedust, empty bottles, folded shirts, golden cups, golden spoons, nine inch nails, parchment, pillows, pixie dust, rope, soap, starfish, wooden figurines, apples/bottles of beer/cups of water/drudenae/hams/herrings/logs/minor healing potions/roasted pork dishes/skulls (only some items of these types currently stack with each other), "Cyseal Pie" and "Cyseal Fish Pie" (duplicates?), etc.

2) A "Sort By Type" inventory sorting option should be added

3) Items should be consistently arranged in the same item grid slot order in all NPC trading and current player inventory menus

4) Left-clicking (rather than left-clicking-and-holding/dragging) on an item within the inventory menu should allow you to pick it up

5) A key ring (functioning as an "openable" container) to automatically store all acquired keys should be added

6) Inventory container fixes (backpacks, pouches, barrels, crates, etc.)
Newly acquired items should automatically stack with identical items already within a container in player inventory; keys and quest items within a container in player inventory should be automatically "used"/recognized in-game just as they would be if they weren't in the container

7) Activating a character via its portrait or the "F1"-"F4" keys should also switch to that character's inventory or skills menu, if open

8) An option to tag/mark items as "junk" for later quick/one-click sale should be added

9) The price listed for a stack of items in the trading menu should be displayed both for one individual item and for the entire stack

10) An option to manually type the number of items to move/trade from within a stack should be added

11) Each NPC's Identify/Repair ability levels should be displayed in the NPC's trading menu

12) The effects of both the player's Barter ability and the NPC's attitude on price should be shown in each item's trading tooltip

13) The value of every stat/ability modified from its base value should be displayed in a different color in the inventory menu

14) Ability tooltips that still need to describe exact percentage/numerical effects
Armour Specialist, Body Building, Willpower, Charisma, Lucky Charm, Offense Rating (doesn't include +3/level effect of Lucky Charm)

15) After drinking from a container (bottle/cup/mug/flask/etc.), an empty container should generate in the player's inventory

16) After using a shovel, both your weapon and shield (if previously equipped) should be automatically re-equipped



CRAFTING/IDENTIFICATION/REPAIR MENUS/CONTROLS

1) Crafting overhaul
Anew dedicated crafting window in which items can be combined should be added; recipe information for at least those recipes the player has successfully crafted should be explicitly listed in the format "A = B + C" in the journal; for sample mockups, see: http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=34882&Number=494715#Post494715

2) Loremaster/Identify overhaul (current click-intensive system is extremely tedious, and adds no challenge)
If a player has an identifying glass and sufficient Loremaster ability, all items (items that are picked up, as well as items displayed in all trading menus) should be identified automatically (except those beyond the player's ability)

3) Blacksmithing/Repair overhaul (current click-intensive system is extremely tedious, and adds no challenge)
If a player has a repair hammer and sufficient Blacksmithing ability, a new "Repair All" icon/button usable only outside combat should repair all items equipped by the party with one click (except those too damaged for the player's ability)



COMBAT MENUS/CONTROLS

1) The ability to attack enemies with "regular" (non-skill) attacks by clicking their icon at the top of the screen should be added
I.e. similar to how attacking with skills works currently

2) A "facing" indicator should be added to the circle under each enemy's feet to aid with backstab positioning



DIALOGUE AND NPC INTERACTION MENUS/CONTROLS

1) The effects of a dialogue choice on a Trait should be displayed next to the choice

2) NPC dialogue options previously chosen by the player should be "dimmed"/"grayed"

3) A more convenient method of ending an NPC dialogue at any time is needed
E.g. by hitting "ESC" to exit the dialogue screen, and/or moving the "end dialogue" speech option to the top or side of the list from its current usual position at the bottom in situations where dialogue can't be skipped for quest reasons, the "end dialogue" option may then be disabled

4) The player should be able to attempt to pickpocket each NPC repeatedly
But there should be a higher chance of discovery on subsequent attempts, due to the NPC being aware he/she lost something earlier



GENERAL MENUS/CONTROLS

1) "ALT" should consistently highlight all items/containers within the player's sight range
Currently, most items as well as chests (but no other containers, like barrels/baskets/crates/vases) are highlighted; however, some useful items are never highlighted (e.g. pillows, soap, whetstones), and neither are any "junk" items ((large) bottles, broken bottles, (flower) pots, globes, lab junk, plates, tubes, vials, vial racks although the non-highlighting of junk may be intentional); also, probably due to errors in calculating the player's sight range, many items placed on certain wall shelving or bookshelves, tables, sloped ground, etc. aren't highlighted (e.g. the fishing rod in the tutorial dungeon, items on the table in front of Esmerelda's shop, items on shelving/bookshelves inside Esmerelda's shop/Aureus's office/the cook's house/at the back of Bellegar's cave, items around the forge/anvil area above Cyseal west gate, the plants in the End of Time living quarters garden, items on the sloped paths just outside the lighthouse/just west of the cultist church, etc.); finally, although this should be an optional toggle in the main menu to satisfy both those who enjoy and those who hate pixel-hunting, there should be an option to make item/container highlighting always automatically active

2) The "chest" action icon color for containers that are "not owned" but not yet opened should be changed from yellow to white
This would assist colorblind players, as the "chest/door/hand" action icons for all containers/doors/items would be orange if "owned," and white if "not owned," with the label "[Empty]" added but the icon color unchanged if a container is empty

3) All keyboard controls should be fully reassignable in the "Controls" menu
Especially camera movement, so as not to interfere with using WASD for other controls; also ALT for item highlighting, etc.

4) The camera "zoom out" height/range should be increased

5) A "pause" function should be added
The game should auto-pause when a popup appears, or when the game menu is opened

6) All custom map markers should be fully editable
Currently, you can add a marker by left-clicking on the map (sometimes it's glitchy), and can delete a marker by right-clicking it, but there should be an easy way to select and edit the description for each existing marker as well

7) Pathfinding enhancements
Party members should always automatically avoid damage floors/environments (not only traps); where a damage area can't be avoided (e.g. a tight corridor), the player should be required to manually control any party member who must walk through the damage area; a new formation "Follow the exact steps of the controlled character" could also help

8) Hotbar/skill menu enhancements
Add a tooltip to each skill stating the skill category to which it belongs (e.g. "Fire Magic"); add new assignable keyboard shortcuts to switch between hotbars and/or increase the size of the hotbar switching icons; add the ability to assign an entire skill category to one hotbar slot, such that right-clicking the "Fire Magic" slot (for example) would open the player's Fire Magic skillbook menu; for sample mockup, see http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=34882&Number=494624#Post494624

9) Character creation enhancements
Add 360-degree rotation of character models; add a true "classless" option (with no pre-assigned attributes/abilities/talents/skills, and with the option to name the class); allow editing of starting skills and equipment

Not agree with that, the left click is usefull for item you can left click, potions, scrolls, identify lens, picklock, etc..


Agree with that, but there's an issue, how do you do if you want to give a particular key to your companion that has a door to open at the north of the map, and you need to go open a chest at the south ? Key ring would be usefull, but would make us lose some freedom. Why not an extra tab instead where all the keys would go, and that won't appear on the "all" tab, only in this particular one ?


Totally agree with that, most of them have that in their name, but not all, and most of the time you have to guess with the AP cost.


Agree with that, but only at the merchants able to identify items. Some merchants can't identify, and I like the fact they sometimes don't really know what they are selling.


Why not, if it's only an option, don't want that by default XD


+1000, i love closing windows with the same key I used to open them.

I would add to this list a way to "lock/unlock" the chat log, so you can't move it when you try to move to the bottom right of your screen.

* Agreed.
* This is, infact, possible already. Sadly you need to hold left mouse while scrolling, not the most intuitive way.
* Agreed. My inventory piles over, and it's hard to find what I look for amongst the vendor thrash/ingredients. Other excluded items would be barrels.
* Yup. Increasing weight as it's been filled.
* Never really noticed. I suppose it's nice, but not too vital.
* Agreed if they don't already.
* Disagreeing here. Buying a strange item, and then seeing if it was good or not is all fun and games!
* Suppose that makes sense.
* While nice, I disagree with it from a balance standpoint.
* Yup. Also, options should close on escape (if the option is set), currently it doesn't, and you have to click back before getting the ingame options, which you can escape to get ingame again (hope that made sense)
* I think this would be unnecessary clutter. The current system works fine as is. Tooltips do display sources of bonusses.
* That's simply a bug. It also happens sometimes ingame without loading due to a questupdate
* Agreed.
* Can't say I noticed. Then again, the camera has been enough of a pain for me I might have blocked specifics from my mind...

* Agreed.
* No container, simply a possible tag, so it shows in a new tab called 'tagged'.
* ?
* I haven't bothered too much with these systems yet. The 'I cannot repair X' is too annoying. How about adding the repair skill of the NPC you talk to somewhere so it's not a shot in the dark wheter it can repair your item?
* Items that are owned have an orange hand/door icon hovering over them, compared to white if 'free-for-all'; already implented thus.
* Makes sense, good idea. Also, as others say, if you select another NPC through their portrait the opened tab (say, inventory) should switch to them... it's intuitive!

I like the ideas/feedback guys - editing my OP!



Actually, to use potions, scrolls, etc., you right-click, so it wouldn't be a conflict.



Good point - I was thinking to treat the key ring like an "openable" container, so you could still access/move individual keys from within the key ring, while still limiting the key clutter to only one grid slot in the main inventory screen.



Another good point.



+1.



EDIT: OK, that does work; I've removed this from the OP - the issue I was having was trying to scroll down to a "new" inventory grid row (below the 5 rows initially visible) when there was nothing yet placed in those lower rows, if that makes sense. But right, the requirement to hold the button is really my nitpick. It seems unnecessary, since simple left-clicking isn't reserved for any other function within the inventory AFAIK (you right-click to use an item).



Right, it definitely wouldn't be for everyone - just lazy people like me.



Yeah, I can see that viewpoint. More of a personal preference I guess.



Good to know!



Maybe my edit will make more sense - I meant expanding the number of inventory grid slots viewable on screen at once.



Derp, now I get it. Thanks!

No, that's dumb, unless the merchant is specifically a Diablo 2-ish "gambler" where buying potentially great unidentified items is the point. But even then, that does not work in this game where there are limited amounts of resources and no respawns.

There are plenty of ways to make more money... like buying an item, modifying it, then selling it back for profit (empty cup > cup of water). Also with stealing you can go quite a while.
Also, it wouldn't be unlikely for a loremaster to buy the item, identify it, and sell if back for proift. Especially combined with barter & affection.

I know for certain that there's very little profit to be made by paying a merchant to identify an item and then selling it. There's a little bit of profit, but most of that is eaten up by the cost to have the merchant identify it.

Since merchants tend to sell things at a higher price than they buy them, there's unlikely to be much profit in buying an unidentified item, identifying it (yourself) and selling it.

You're not obliged to pay the merchant to identify the item, you can identify it yourself (when it's not bugged).

I mean identifying it yourself... once that's fixed of course that is.

(Like Lynma already said... whoops).

That's why I mentioned 'Loremaster', it's the skill that identifies

I had no idea you could make money by filling and selling cups of water... sounds goofy, so now I gotta try.

And I edited the OP re: my "modified stat/ability value" idea: to avoid the interface cluttering which would be caused by displaying modified stat values in parentheses next to base stat values (or vice-versa), I now suggest a simple color-coding system. I just like to know at a glance how reliant my character is on boosts from equipment/talents/consumables vs. his "natural" base stats. Anyway, I think it would be a classy little addition.

I am well aware that you can identify items yourself. I was a bit unclear though, so that's my fault. Merchants sell things for more than they buy them, so even if you buy an unidentified item, identify it yourself, and then sell it back, I don't think you'll be making much money on the sale.

Sadly, until loremaster is fixed, can't really try. It rally depends if the value increases/decreases upon ID or it remains the same.
I'm assuming it will be replaced for another item (bit like crafting and such) and thus there will be a new price.
Actually, should test that ingame by paying people in a moment (was hoping to use loremaster :() Even if I lose money, it's valuable intel for post-"loremaster" fix

Adding pathfinding issues back to the OP, based on my original alpha suggestion list and another current thread, as well as my time with the beta so far.

A couple issues/questions:

1) I'm colorblind, and am having trouble telling the difference between the colors for the "owned" and "not owned" container "chest" action icons - is there a difference?

Either way, I'm thinking they should make the container action icons consistent with door and item action icons: yellow/orange if "owned," and white/gray if "not owned" - besides, even a colorblind person can differentiate between those. (I'm aware that currently, a white/gray "chest" icon is used to mark empty containers, but these are already labeled as "(Empty)," so there's no need to reserve that color just for that.)

2) There seems to be some weird stuff going on with the left-most column of the inventory grid. If you place an item in the left-most slot of the bottom-most row of the grid (if lower than the top five rows that are always visible), then close the inventory window, you can no longer access that item without first dragging something else down to that row to view it. Also, at least in the alpha (I still need to test the beta), items in the left-most column of the trading panel sometimes couldn't be interacted with, and displayed no tooltip info. Has anyone else noticed things like this?

1) No? Orange is owned, white is not owned. Empty stuff has no own color, it remains orange or white upon being owned or not. It only changes from orange to white if the owner dies (and as far as I can tell is slightly buggy in that regard in that it doesn't update till reload or interaction instead of after that NPC is dead).
Feel free to correct *me* though if I am wrong here, anyone...

2) Yup, though it seems opening and closing inventory will fix this 'stuck' behavior. I only notice one such item at the marketplace, and that's actually an item I sold, and shouldn't even *be* in my inventory in the first place!

EDIT: I've been told that "owned" containers are orange (same for empty), "not owned"/not yet opened containers are yellow, and "not owned"/empty containers are white. This seems overly complicated - I'm editing my OP to vote they just leave it to orange for owned, white for not - the same as doors and items - and if it's empty (owned or not), just note "[Empty]" in the label.



OK, good to know it's not just something with my system, thanks!

I think there isn't, but just in case - is there currently a way to manually type the number/amount of an item stack you want to trade? Or do you have to rely only on the slider?

I just wanted to let you know that I tried this: I bought an unidentified Staff from a guy for 187 gold, used Loremaster to identify it, and tried selling it back: I would only get 147 gold for the sale. So there is zero - no, negative profit to be made by purchasing unidentified things and selling the identified versions back.

Depends on the item... I've had some major increases in item worth from unidentified to identified.
Also, what was your bartering skill? (I did mention barter too ;))

Hassat Hunter (or anyone who might know) - could you provide some more specific info on the effects of Barter on purchase/sale prices at different ability levels? I also just saw you mentioned in another thread that the NPC's Attitude affects prices as well - which I hadn't realized, but which makes perfect sense - so this may be a bit more complicated than I expected.

Either way, although I still agree with Lynma that it would be interesting to have some "scavenger/gambler"-type traders who are willing to sell things that they haven't identified themselves (though these NPCs would be the exception rather than the rule), that would still raise the question of how the item was being valued in the first place, assuming neither the trader nor the player knew exactly what it was. Hmm...

Adding problems with highlighting/selecting enemies in combat to the OP as a "controls" issue.

"Sort inventory" option would be great.

I second this, I had to drag an item over my axe, axe was in the left most column of the inventory, before I could use the axe again.

Right on, Iain - a "sort inventory" function seems to be a popular request, and it's in the list.

Also editing the OP to add another repeated request from elsewhere: switching control to another character shouldn't interrupt the previous character's started action (walking/magic/etc.).

@ Mikus;
From what I can tell 1 rank in barter (all I got, from traits) lowers cost by 10% and increases selling price by 10%

Affection seems to increase/decrease gold cost of 1 per affection rating (tested this using -3/0 on a 100 gold item, might also be percentage based).

Thanks for the info, HH. So has anyone taken more ranks in Barter? I'm really curious what Barter 5 will get you, though that might be difficult to test in the beta (without cheating somehow).

Two more things:
-Does the "0" quickslot key work for anyone? Doesn't for me.
-Does item splitting work for anyone? When I shift-click on an item stack in the inventory, I get the slider interface, but when I set a number and hit the check mark, the stack doesn't actually get split.

OK, one more thing to try to confirm: can a party member ever actually equip an unidentified item?

Not sure if this has been mentioned but it would be great to be able to switch between characters in the barter menu.

Also it would be handy being able to mark items as junk so that when you come to barter you can one click all your junk items to sell.

1. Split character sheet and inventory tabs. Currently it takes too much space, while most of the time you need only one of them.
   Leave Gear with inventory, but put it to the left and make inventory be same height as gear tab. This will display more items and make enough space for few more filter buttons.
2. Add small checkbox to character sheet to filter-out 0 level skills. This will make it easier to see all relevant skills of a character, just like in character creation.
3. As mentioned many times - inventory sorting.
4. Left-click to pickup items instead of drag. It will allow for easier crafting of items that require ingredients from different tabs.
5. Junk bag will be awesome. Just allow players to tag items as junk. And add "take all to junk" near "take all" button in container. And then add inventory tab for junk.
6. Allow switching between characters in barter screen. Of course characters need to be close enough to trader. Or should they? We already have magic pockets, why don't use them for trading? Barter skill of player that initiated trade should be used.

SDP80 and EnderWiggin - great ideas. Unfortunately I guess I've tried to edit my OP way too many times, so I can't add to the original list anymore (LOL), but I know Larian is trying to read every post anyway.

So the whole "left-click to pickup items instead of drag" thing is at the very top of the OP, since I also think it would be a very simple and huge player convenience fix. As for my original suggestion of a junk bag, I now think your and others' idea to simply be able to "tag/mark" items for later quick sale would be a little easier for Larian to implement. That said, this should also be done in conjunction with my "Items should be consistently arranged/ordered in all inventory/trading grids/windows" suggestion - it may seem nitpicky to some, but the current implementation is incredibly annoying: I try to keep stuff I want to sell (or don't want to sell, like hotkeyed items) together in one part of the inventory grid, but the random resorting for the trading screen means I have to hunt through dozens of items and pick out each thing to sell one by one.

As to switching between characters in the barter screen, since the arrows are there, I assume it's already planned but just not working yet. But I agree we really need that in the final version.

Anyway, keep the ideas coming - these sorts of changes/fixes are relatively simple (compared to the other huge things Larian has been doing with gameplay), but really allow players to spend less time on the boring stuff - inventory management etc. - and more time enjoying the game.

For me the most confusing thing about inventory is how the windows display.
I only noticed by accident that I could drag the windows and place them next to each other.

With that sudden realisation using the inventory windows became a bit more intuitive. I think if you have two inv open they should tile automatically. Also the inventory of the current character needs to be highlighted (e.g. a gold border like the character button). The amount of times I've right clicked on an inventory item to use it only to get frustrated that it didn't work (because the other character was active!) is beyond counting now.

I'd also like more keyboard shortcuts.

The tutorial says something about CTRL-clicking on an enemy to see its effects. I never got that working. I'd like a way to select an enemy character (portrait) so I can then hover over the effects on it to see what they do.

I'd like F1-Fx to select a character in order from top. (Currently seems to try and cast my first spell)

I'd like SHIFT and CTRL modifiers to bring up the other 2 toolbars. So SHIFT-1 casts spell one on toolbar two. Maybe also have Shift-UP and Shift-Down cycle the toolbars.

I like that I can now cast spells using the character (and enemy) portraits. What's missing is some way of just hitting them. E.g. if I CTRL or ALT click on a portrait it just tries to whack that enemy with their weapon (It should show projected movement if I over over the portrait with the modifier pressed).

I'd like a quick way to move stuff between characters. Manually dragging gets really annoying quickly. Maybe allow multi-select or modifier like ALT-Left-Click to send to other character (get's trickier if you have more than 2, I know, will need some thought).

I'd like a visual indication if placing two thing over each other will do something. I like the experimenting to see what stuff does, but after dozens of items just swapping places in my inventory I got fed up with it and just sold everything.

I'd like more options for ALT. E.g. show containers, highlight NPCs (and their names), usable objects, items that can be picked up; it seems a bit inconsistent at the moment. I think this could all be done with a single outline, or with different colours maybe, and possibly options as to what's shown. (For Ironman mode, is there such a thing?, maybe disable ALT completely )

It's CTRL + mouse-over, and that's actually broken right now.



That's already in and working. You must be pressing the number keys, not the F-keys.



Agreed, as sometimes it's actually hard to click on enemies.

Probably a good thing, but not entirely. On one hand this may be implemented to expand the character stats and info, cause now it's incomplete. On the other hand, character menu (inventory, traits, talents, and attributes) is quite stylishly designed, i like it.

For the Wishlist: In combat I'd like some kind of "facing" indicator in the circle under an enemy's feet so I know where to stand for proper backstab positioning. It's not always clear from the enemy's stance, and even when you're being careful, you can be off by just enough to do normal damage.

Right, and I'd also like it if the inventory/skills windows "remembered" their locations on screen the next time you opened them.



Keyboard shortcut(s) to cycle through quickslot bars has my vote as a "would-be-nice-to-have" too.



This is another pet peeve of mine: ALT currently highlights most items that can be looted (but not all - see the OP for some of the bugged exceptions), as well as chests, but doesn't highlight any other type of container (which it probably should to be consistent, as other containers usually contain less valuable loot than the already highlighted chests anyway) or any usable non-lootable objects (like switches and levers). But I really like that ALT highlights keys, valuables/gems, etc., since it minimizes pixel-hunting (which I personally don't find fun). That said, I second your mention of an option in the difficulty/controls menu to enable/disable highlighting of at least things like keys for those who do enjoy that kind of thing.



This I also like.


Finally, I found a couple more things to add to the OP's list of "nonequippable items that should stack": some hams, some bottles of beer. Also, a couple items seem to have duplicates with slightly different names, though I'm not sure whether that's intentional: "Cyseal Pie" vs. "Cyseal Fish Pie"; "Eye" vs. "Creepy Eye." Anyway, I'm assuming Larian is still reviewing every single item for bugs/glitches, so hopefully making all identical nonequippable items stack with each other (like they successfully did with lockpicks in the recent update, and have already done with many other items) won't be too difficult.

Also nice would be "backstab angle" indicator too, like Dragon Age did.

I would really love to see this:
1. Any sort of pause. Especially in combat when someone distracts you and you may lose turns.
2. There are so many keys in my bag, it is all very confusing now. Some of them I don't need anymore, but I'm afraid to throw them away, because some definately were not used. It would be great if keys didn't take so much space in bags. My English fails me here, sorry, there is a word for a thing but I forgot it. Bunch of keys? hmm...
3. I wish bottles, cuttlery and crafting materials would stack.

In combat the games becomes turn based. You can't miss your own turn because nothing will happen and nobody will act until you end your turn (hour glass button, pressing enter or using all your action points). Or did I misunderstand your first point?

I have lost a few turns actually. I assumed there was time limit for everyone, not just enemies. Is it a bug then?

Oh sorry I didn't waited for so long. I assumpted when it's turn based you have an infinite amount of time to do your turn. If that is wrong and you get a force end turn that's strange. :-/

The whole "pause" idea in 1. got me thinking - I'd like to be able to interrupt/pause a character while he/she is moving during combat. This could be useful when you realize too late (i.e. after you've already clicked a location to move the PC) that the PC is going to path through damage tiles and/or waste action points moving to the wrong location because of the current problems targeting enemies. But better pathfinding/enemy targeting may make this suggestion unnecessary.

And 2. (a "key ring") and 3. are already in the OP - both changes have my and many others' votes, so here's hoping.



Ahhhh - so that's what that whole "Force End Turn!" message I've occasionally seen with enemies means. I guess I've been too quick choosing turn actions myself to see it happen to my party, but it seems like in the cases I've seen with enemies, about 30 seconds pass with the enemy doing nothing (AI/pathfinding glitch?) before their turn is forced to end. Maybe Larian intended this mechanic to move things along in co-op if one player isn't paying attention? But I wouldn't like to run into it in a single-player game - the whole point of turn-based combat is to allow the player to take his/her time planning/adjusting their battle strategy, right?

I second that. Can't remember how many times I have already dragged that inventory window.

This is probably just a bug/animation glitch, but has anyone had the issue where attempting to pick up an item immediately after having picked up another item causes your character to play the "picking something up" animation, without actually taking the second item?

I've had it too. It happens everytime there's many things to pick up and I'm too hasty on my clicking.

They should have done something against that with the latest patch I think. But I haven't really found too many close-cluttered items to really test that. It does seem to work quite a bit smoother atleast, if not fully effective.

Pitheco/HH, thanks for confirming I'm not the only one seeing this - it's not a big deal, but it is a small annoyance I hope they eventually fix.

Here are some things would be nice to be changed/added to UI:

- pls give the option to make the enemy level invisible, so that the game can be a bit extra fun. ;-)
- key-ring as a container, so that it can be opened and one can review his keys. but opening locks should work just like now automatically
- pls don't allow us to see the name of the stuff with 'alt' in a closed/unreachable location, it would be much surprise first to get in and than see what we find
- +1 vote for rotatable characters during char generation

Yeah, I've been hoping for this too. Also, though it'd really only be a cosmetic change (since in the final game you'll apparently be able to edit everything - including starting skills - for every preset "class"), I would like an additional "classless" option at character creation, which would not yet have any stat/ability/talent/skill points/options assigned. I'd choose that every time, as I find I never quite want to go with any of the 11-12 preset "class" loadouts precisely as configured.

Yeah, me too. It might be just a small thing but IMHO it's small things like these that makes the gameplay feel well polished and responsive.



Key ring is already in the list, but otherwise +1 for all that, specially for the "seeing things with 'alt' in closed locations". In fact, I think it would be nice if only the things your characters can see would be highlighted, but maybe it's a little too much trouble to implement right now.

I also wonder if the behavior of roofs vanishing when you get close to then is final or not... Currently it will disappear and let you see everything inside the house/building even if you're nowhere near a door or window. That is sort of immersion breaking to me.

ps. I have fond memories of Divine Divinity, where you *could* see inside buildings while being outside, but only if you used Wizard's Sight. I loved that spell by the way.

I might have missed it in one of the previous posts, but has it been mentioned yet that it would be helpful to see the text from pop up boxes and NPC floating text in the conversation history window? While I was doing the tutorial, I missed what one of the popup boxes said about a chest and couldn't find a way to find it again other than reloading. The same goes for any floating text given by NPCs. It just disappears too quickly sometimes and there is no way to see it from what I can tell.

I think I've read it somewhere, maybe in another topic, about the floating texts disappearing too quickly. But yeah, +1 for that again.

This is exactly what I would like to see, the totally classless character generation. However the system is very good already, but this one is still missing. Starting without any presets.



I can remember that spell, it was really cool! Now I can imagine to see through windows, when the character is next to it or clicks on it, and only see a part of the inner place.

I find it very annoying that roofs stay when moving the camera over there, forces you to do a lot of additional stuff if you just want to go indoors (say from the inn to the mayor's house for the catquest), and a camera full of roof isn't really interesting to watch.

I would've agreed with the floating, I even mentioned it in my own thread. But now that I met a few NPC's who do enter the log (say Katriana at the market)... and they say their line. Every. 10. Seconds, causing a big pile of the same line in the log, I would want that with the qualification that a line wont be duplciated (so if Katriana says her line 10 times it will log once, then neglect all 9 others till the line has been wiped from the log entirely.

Windemere - yeah, I missed a few of those quick floating NPC dialogues too. But it does seem some of these actually do get recorded in the combat log - which as HH mentioned, causes another problem, as the log becomes filled with them when they're repeated. So it looks like a little more work still needs to be done here in terms of consistency/convenience.

As for the pop-up tips/dialogues, many games have a "record text to journal"-type option for later reference, which would be nice. Unfortunately, it may be a little late to implement something like that (as you'd need a new text journal/diary system). I dunno.

I'd also like the font-size and alpha of the Log window to be configurable and editable. I find the font is too big and that that the log is mostly unreadable unless I hover over it and it darkens. It would also be nice if it remembered the position and size of the window when I move it.

I'd like NPC "floating text" to be recorded in the log as well. Sometimes I see half a sentence on the screen and think... "what did he say?" and I'd love to be able to glance at the log.

I don't remember who said it or where, but someone had a surprisingly simple, yet great idea:

The existing trading interface would be almost ideal for transferring things between party members.

• You could see what the other person has
• You could transfer items to them in bulk instead of dragging them over one at a time
• Possibly, you could even make use of the convenient Identify and Repair buttons there somehow, if one of your other party members has points in a skill that you don't.

I'm not sure how easy it would be to implement it, though AND have it work for both single player and co-op. You'd need two "Okay" buttons in co-op instead of the single one used for merchants.

***

New one for the list:

If a merchant has a stack of items for sale, the price listed should be for ONE of the items, not the entire flipping stack.

I also really liked this - but like you said, not sure if it'd be too much to bring in now. But at least the idea's out there, so we'll see.

They could remove the shadows of the characters when they sleep. Now they look levitating, without shadows they would look normal.

This is kind of a bug/glitch as well as a control issue, but moving containers over stairways and other inclines often results in the containers getting shifted to and even "stuck" at a vertical plane higher than the surrounding floor. I assume Larian is working on this, but just throwing it out there.

I second that. For the "junk" part, something like Kingdom of Amalur would be great

my 2 cents:
- add more hotkey bar. 3 is not enough for a mage. I'm level 7, I picked up a few "free skill points" in magic through dialogue. Even if I specialize in 1 or 2 skills, it costs nothing to buy at least level1 spells. With potions and scrolls, I'm out of space

I'm totally with you on this - I'd like all my spells to be readily available. Together with new keyboard hotkeys to switch between the bars, we'd be going places.

It might be too late to implement anything new, but still I'd like to suggest something concerning the slot shortage:

What about stacks for slots in the hotbar?

By that I mean something like right clicking over any slot to display above it a list of skills of the same type as the one currently equipped. For example, with Flare equipped in slot 1 a right click over it would display a stack of all my learnt fire elemental skills. Then I could choose any of them to replace it with a single click. The same would happen for skills from other schools of magic and could even work for scrolls, potions, consumables... Each item type appearing as stacks in a manner not so different from the interface of DD.

That way a wizard could have his/her hotbar equipped with all four elementals in slots 1-2-3-4, witchcraft in the fifth, have one slot for potions, one for scrolls, one for consumables and still have two free slots left for any personal preferences or even warrior/ranger skills.

Simple and easy as that! No dragging, no hotbar cycling or the like.
And of course it would be possible to do the same in the second and third bars for even more flexibility.

What do you guys think?

hmm, don't know if it's possible to do that for the deadline ( adding 2 more bars is simpler I think )

Pitheco, why didn't I think of that? This would be awesome. It would be a pretty significant change to the interface, but at least you've put the idea out there for Larian to consider - we'll see.

Or maybe a slightly simpler way to implement Pitheco's idea, at least for skills/spells, would be to make right-clicking on the "Fire" (for example) skills toolbar slot open the window showing the "Fire" page of the character's skillbook. Just a thought.

Nice and simple idea, Mikus! I would greatly appreciate that.

I realize Larian already has too many things to do, so I wonder if this is the kind of implementation that could be patched in later or added through mods. Anyone with better knowledge on the subject able to comment?

Pitheco - I'm no modder myself, but I wouldn't be surprised (if the editor is as powerful and user-friendly as promised) if this kind of thing is added later. Good point.

Still, I really hope at least the simple-ish UI fixes listed in this thread's OP that have been frequently requested on the forums (e.g. consistent item stacking, a key ring, inventory sorting, keyboard hotkey selection and toggling, etc.) are implemented by Larian before final release. Fingers crossed...

Yeah, me too! I believe eventually they will find a way to spare the time and effort to implement these little things as many of them will definitely improve the game and essentially none seems excessively complicated when compared to huge things like proper game balancing or discovering and eliminating every single crazy bug there could possibly be. I mean, how hard is it to include more keyboard shortcuts or a key ring, after all?

IMHO, good UI is of ultimate importance in a game where everybody is expecting to play for dozens of hours and has a tremendous effect on the enjoyment one could get from it. And personally, as long as the game feels right (must not be a chore to play), has good gameplay and is fun, I'm ok with a few crashes and a bit of unbalance (so, a highly intelligent-magic wielding-all four elements empowered wizard is capable of dealing more damage than an absent minded-body pumping-sword swinging warrior or a dexterous-master pickpocket-dagger stabbing rogue? Reeeeeeally? Who could conceive such nonsense! )

Well, don't get me wrong... I really hope the developers manage to do everything they need to do and deliver our dream RPG (hint: they're very very close).

Way to go, Larian!

So Swen just tweeted a note about their plans to fix the Repair/Blacksmithing mechanic... now I'm waiting for the tweet about item stacking, key rings, inventory sorting, keyboard hotkey fixes, etc. Give us another cryptic note, c'mon!

Personally, I would look more forward to the Steam newsmessage than a tweet... as that would also accompany the patch

Mikus, that post is too hard to read. Could you please add a space or two between each point, thanks.

Quite some time ago, someone suggested that in combat, as you move the mouse around to determine how far you can move, the skills on your skillbar dim or highlight to indicate if you can still use those skills if you were to walk to that point. A Larian dev did reply to that and said he thought that was a good idea. I wonder if that's on the to-do list or was scrapped.

That too is a great idea and would really help! You know, with that said I had a sudden realization that maybe I have counted and compared those remaining APs a little too many times.

Mikus, can you still edit the OP list to include these new suggested improvements? Oh, and by the way, I agree with Cutter about the spacing thing...

Yeah, the spacing in the OP does make it harder to read.

Some UI improvement suggestions for co-op:

• I should be able to use punctuation and dashes in the chat lot, to differentiate between questions and statements.
• I'd actually like the chat log to be present in the multiplayer character creation screen, so you can do things like ask what class your partner is going to be before the game starts, which is sort-of important for building a balanced party. Right now you still have to use the Steam Overlay for that, which works for Steam, but won't for the GoG version.
• For co-op, icons over the head of a player could help let their partner know what they're doing. Several times today my partner wondered what I was doing. Icons for "typing", "trading", "talking to NPC", "in menu" could help/
• A way to "ping" things in combat, so when you type things like "focus this one down" you know which one to refer to.
• Placing markers on the map could also "ping" for your partner's attention as well.

Cutter/Pitheco/Stabbey - I wish I could edit the OP to make it less wall-o'-text-y, and also to add several ideas from this thread to the main list, but apparently I edited the post way too many times already, and now I'm locked out of the "Edit" option (LOL). At least it seems Larian is making an effort to read through new forum posts, so as long as these interface/control ideas are somewhere in this thread, they should be aware of them. Great ideas BTW.

And Hassat - you're right about the Steam message... it would also probably be easier to read than Swen's handwriting.

There is a 48 hour limit on editing posts. If you want to quote it and edit / add to it, I can move the result to the original post.

hi,
don't know if it has been mentioned yet, (or if this is a bug) but a "true" pause button would be great. For the moment, using ESC tu display the game menu doesn't pause anything, at all. Charracters still walk in the backgroud, spells effects disapear ...

I'm not sure if this has been requested, but I'd like to see a way to scale the UI. I can change to a lower resolution to make the UI larger, but then text is blurry. My monitor looks best at 1920x1080 and the text is very sharp, but icons and text are a bit too small for these old eyes

Raze - thanks a lot for offering to fix the OP (and good to know about that 48-hour limit on editing posts); could you please replace the two lists currently in the OP with the below big list? Also, please remove the "1.0.231" from the thread title, since these issues seem to span several versions of the beta. Thanks again for your help!

Everyone else - hopefully the new OP will be a bit easier to read; I also tried to add new ideas from within the thread where there didn't seem to be disagreement. Sorry if I missed anything, but at least it seems Larian is making an effort to read new posts, so feel free to keep adding new UI suggestions to this thread. Cheers!


[updated list moved to original post.. Raze]

It was, but unfortunately isn't feasible (see the topic font).

There's one thing I'd love. I don't know if this has been mentioned before, but I always look for the possibility to remove the whole HUD for the purpose of taking screenshots.

I already love the graphics of this game and I hope there will be a way to capture it without the map/roster/skillbar.

I'll just piggyback on to this thread and ask again for some improvement in the ability to see conversation dialogues in co-op mode. So much of this game is invested in the conversations. It should not be a struggle to try and catch what is going on with the floating text and then all of a sudden be faced with a pop-up box asking me to react to a conversation I couldn't follow. While there have been nice improvements since the alpha, co-op is still not quite there yet with the conversations.

Please do something like putting the dialogue of your co-op partner into the conversation history text, or giving us the option to follow along with the full conversation interface popped up with the options greyed out. Something, anything beyond the floating text. Pretty please.

UI Improvement for opend chests, crates and barrels:
A sign with the container name on the top and a possibility to rename that container ([RENAME] button?) would be nice.

Just adding something Hassat Hunter mentioned in an unrelated thread: each NPC's Identify/Repair ability levels should be displayed in the NPC's trading menu.

Two more things I've seen/mentioned myself elsewhere on the forums:

--A more convenient option to end an NPC dialogue at any time - e.g. by hitting "ESC" to exit the dialogue screen, and/or moving the "end dialogue" speech option to the top or side of the list from its current position way at the bottom. The only potential problem I see with this are situations where dialogue "can't" be skipped for quest reasons, though maybe the "end dialogue" option could simply be disabled in those (relatively rare) situations.

--The option to zoom the camera out farther. This may be related to a common camera glitch I've noticed in areas with large differences in height, where the camera will suddenly zoom out very far, and then either zoom back in automatically after moving the party to another location, and/or zoom in somewhat but appear "fuzzy" if the player tries to zoom back in manually. Anyway, I'd really like the higher zoom level as a regular feature, though it might not be intended by Larian for balance reasons, so I might be in the minority here.

+1 To zooming out a bit further. The game visual and art design is gorgeous and it should be allowed to see more of it at a glance.

Besides, it would have uses as general navigational help.

No need to make the zoom allowance too distant, of course. I would leave it to the team to figure out how much is best or judge what other features this may impact. (i expect very little)
Enemies and architectural or environmental features are hidden by the fog of war anyway, and enemies do become invisible when camera is moved away so i dont see how that would be a problem.

+2 to the camera.

And I think the best solution the 'goodbye' I've heard was having it standard as 0. Escape would be annoying if you just want the options but don't want the convo to end, and 1 it the standard for next... and you might just end the dialogue expecting the next branch of conversation.

That would work but it would look quite ... inelegantly.
People are generally simply not used to having the "ill take my leave" or "goodbye" option as first, however you number it.
It would look weird.

So, thats why i suggested separating it to the side of the dialogue options. Maybe as a button you click - that makes your character "say" that dialogue line.
Its... more efficient and elegant.
More then enough space in that window.

Although any solution that avoids scrolling thousands of times to get it - in the course of the whole game, is better then current setup.


- edit -

havent seen this thread before, otherwise i would have written my suggestions here. Guess i could copy--paste some from my thread to make it all easier to follow. And write the future ones here.

FYI, 0 is the very last number
(Just check your keyboard)

yeah, yeah - ok.

I would still prefer something i can click with my mouse, since thats how i play the game mostly. Avoiding using keys if not absolutely necessary. Its just easier, especially in the dark.

if it was zero then i would have to take my eyes off the game every bloody time to correctly hit the zero key on the keyboard.

(though i wouldnt have anything against it being also tied to 0 for those who want it)
Just sayiinnn...

I don't really have an issue with the mouse (or ending dialogues in general). But if there's a key needed, the best bet would the be the very last of the keyboard, and simply giving what would now sometimes be 7 or 2 or 4 all that number (0).
Personally I find it very unneeded, but apparently people want it, and I think that's a better resolution than escape or an entirely different buttom than the 1-0 keys.

I agree with that.

But it would be more user friendly to have it as a separate "button" or sentence, positioned on the left side of usual dialogue sentences - so it is easily and quickly reachable with a click of a mouse.

So basically - both.

I just finished a playthrough with the latest update (version 1.1.30), and am impressed with everything that’s been fixed/added. I was really happy to see many fixes that I and others have requested here and elsewhere on the forums, some of which weren’t even listed in the complete change log (recipes learned from books are now tracked in the journal, the trade window now allows switching between players, NPCs (except the quartermaster?) now repair/identify items in their inventory, NPCs can now repair equipped items (via the "Equipped" trading inventory tab), unnecessary companion talents are now hidden, weapon tooltips now note "one-handed" or "two-handed", windows now "remember" their on-screen locations, "journal"/"map" keyboard shortcuts now act as proper open-close toggles, the order of scrolling through inventory/skill windows now follows the currently selected player portrait order, switching to a new player no longer interrupts the started action of the original player, left-clicking an unreachable location no longer recenters the camera on the player, the mouse pointer now "cuts through" walls/obstacles to allow interaction with adjacent items/containers/NPCs). It's really gratifying to see Larian yet again listening to player feedback.

But there are still many UI/control improvements that are hopefully in the works for future updates. If Raze wouldn't mind (again) copying the below revised set of lists (starting with "USER INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS WISHLIST") over the single list in the OP, I’d really appreciate it. Either way, the below lists include the fixes that are still requested as of beta version 1.1.30, and that haven't been explicitly referred to as unplanned elsewhere. (Of course, if someone from the dev team could confirm that more work in this area is still planned despite the June 20 release date, that'd be awesome…)

Finally, some UI-related bugs/oversights:

1) "Lucky Charm"'s effect on hit chance still isn't displayed within the "Offense Rating" tooltip
2) "Summon Wolf" is shown under "Survivalist" instead of "Earth Magic" in the skills window
3) Some items still can't be used/consumed despite tooltip information indicating they can (e.g. carrots, wheat, etc.), and/or are missing tooltip information (e.g. jellyrooms, etc.)
4) Ring/amulet problems: bonuses to the same ability (e.g. Loremaster) given by amulets and rings don't stack with each other when worn together; wearing two rings with bonuses results in losing the bonuses from one of the rings
5) Recipe book problems: there are duplicate copies of some recipe books which don't have special icons and aren't automatically added to the journal "Recipes" tab when read (e.g. "He Who Smelts It, Volume I", "Fun With Fluids, Volumes II and III", "Secrets of the Scroll, Volume V", etc.); in the journal "Recipes" tab, the volumes of "The Adventurer's Field Guide" are scattered throughout the list instead of listed together in one section
6) Map marker problems: the "secret" markers added by the treasure maps, as well as some location markers (e.g. for Esmerelda's shop, the cook’s house, Thelyron’s clinic, etc.), still disappear and reappear at random

Thanks for all your hard work, Larian – looking forward to the next big update!


USER INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS WISHLIST


INVENTORY AND TRADING MENUS/CONTROLS

1) All items of an identical type should stack with each other in the inventory window, excluding non-identical equippable items - items that should stack but currently don't: all "junk" items (i.e. (large) bottles, broken bottles, (flower) pots, globes, lab junk, plates, tubes, vials, vial racks), arrow shafts, arrowheads (identical types), books (including all identical recipe books and blank skillbooks), bonedust, cups of water, empty bottles, folded shirts, golden cups, golden spoons, nine inch nails, parchment, pillows, pixie dust, rope, soap, starfish, wooden figurines, apples/bottles of beer/drudenae/hams/herrings/logs/roasted pork dishes/skulls (only some items of these eight types currently stack with each other), "Cyseal Pie" and "Cyseal Fish Pie" (duplicates?), etc.

2) An "auto-sort" function for all inventory and trading windows should be added

3) Items should be consistently arranged in the same item grid slot order within all inventory and trading windows

4) A key ring (functioning as an "openable" container) to store all keys within a single inventory grid slot should be added

5) Left-clicking (rather than left-clicking-and-holding/dragging) on an item within the inventory window should allow you to pick it up

6) An option to tag/mark items as "junk" for later quick/one-click sale should be added

7) The value of every stat/ability currently modified from its base value should be displayed in a different color in the inventory window

8) Clicking on a character portrait or activating a character via the "F1"-"F4" keys should also switch to that character's inventory or skills window, if already open

9) The price listed for a stack of items in the trading window should be for one individual item instead of for the entire stack

10) An option to manually type the number of items to move/trade from within a stack should be added

11) Each NPC's Identify/Repair ability levels should be displayed in the NPC's trading menu

12) Loremaster/Identify overhaul (current click-intensive system is extremely time-consuming, and adds no challenge) – if a player has an identifying glass and sufficient Loremaster ability, all items (items that are picked up, as well as items displayed in all trading menus) should be identified automatically

13) Blacksmithing/Repair overhaul (current click-intensive system is extremely time-consuming, and adds no challenge) – if a player has a repair hammer and sufficient Blacksmithing ability, a new "Repair All" icon/button usable only outside combat should repair all items equipped by the party with one click (except those too damaged for the player's ability)


COMBAT MENUS/CONTROLS

1) Targeting/highlighting enemies should be easier, especially when enemies are near other enemies or party members

2) A "facing" indicator should be added to the circle under each enemy's feet to aid with backstab positioning

3) Skills should "dim/highlight" when plotting character combat movement to show whether sufficient AP for the skill would be available if the path is chosen


GENERAL MENUS/CONTROLS

1) "ALT" should consistently highlight all items, containers, and interactable objects within the player’s line of sight; there are also problems with the line of sight calculations as of beta 1.1.30 - currently, most items as well as chests (but no other containers) are highlighted; however, some items are never highlighted (e.g. mostly "junk" items - (large) bottles, broken bottles, (flower) pots, globes, lab junk, plates, tubes, vials, vial racks – but also some useful items - pillows, soap, whetstones), and neither are items placed on certain wall shelving, tables, sloped ground, etc. (e.g. inside and just outside Esmerelda's shop, inside the cook's house, inside Aureus's office, on top of the bookshelf at the back of Bellegar’s cave, plants in the garden of the End of Time living quarters, items on the sloped path just outside the lighthouse, items on the sloped exploskeleton path just west of the church, etc. – this seems to be a problem with the calculations for what is considered within the player’s "line of sight") - also, although this should be an optional toggle in the main menu to satisfy both those who enjoy and those who hate pixel-hunting, there should be an option to make item/container/object highlighting always automatically active

2) To assist colorblind players, the color of the "chest" action icon for containers that are "not owned" but not yet opened should be changed from yellow to white – this way, the "chest/door/hand" action icons for all containers/doors/items would be orange if "owned", and white if "not owned", with the label "[Empty]" added but the icon color unchanged if a container is empty

3) All keyboard controls (including WASD, ALT, etc.) should be fully reassignable in the "Controls" menu

4) The camera "zoom out" height/range should be increased

5) A true "pause" function should be added (even opening the game menu currently doesn’t pause the game)

6) A more convenient method of ending an NPC dialogue at any time is needed - e.g. by hitting "ESC" to exit the dialogue screen, and/or moving the "end dialogue" speech option to the top or side of the list from its current usual position at the bottom – in situations where dialogue can't be skipped for quest reasons, the "end dialogue" option may then be disabled

7) All custom map markers should be fully editable - currently, you can delete a custom marker by right-clicking it (sometimes - it's glitchy), but there should be an easy way to select and edit the description for each existing marker as well

8) Pathfinding should be improved such that party members will always avoid damage floors/environments (not only traps) - where a damage area can’t be avoided (e.g. a tight corridor), the player should be required to manually control any party member who must walk through the damage area

9) Hotkey toolbar enhancements – add a tooltip to each spell/skill stating the spell/skill category to which it belongs (e.g. "Fire Magic"); add more toolbars/slots; add new assignable keyboard shortcuts to switch between toolbars; add the ability to assign an entire spell/skill category to one toolbar slot, such that right-clicking the "Fire Magic" slot (for example) would open the player's Fire Magic spells skillbook window

10) Character creation enhancements – add 360-degree rotation of character models; add a true "classless" option (with no pre-assigned attributes/abilities/talents/skills); add the ability to change starting skills and equipment

Done.

Somewhat sad about the identification of vendors... as I said before, it was nice to have a bit of a gamble.

Aaaaanyway;
9) Why not both at once? And from what I hear, the newest version (which I haven't booted yet, shame on me I know) barter no longer shows, so that probably needs fixing. And I still stand behind my other suggestion that price alteration due to attitude should be displayed too.

12/13) Still don't disagree with this. If everything gets auto-identified, might as well get rid of identifications as a whole. Might as well unlock all doors if sufficient lockpick or remove durability with repair/blacksmithing 1.

general 1) Soap is good for something? That's news to me. But yeah, those should be highligted, but not all. No need to see each plate if their only use is... well, decoration.

general 2) Still not sure what you're asking with this. There are only 2 colors; white (not owned) and orange (owned). Currently most outside of the city are incorrectly marked as owned (and properly updated to unowned if interacted with), but that's not a different color to see if you looted it yet or not, it's the same color as owned. It's... as we say, a bug.

Talk to Anna, ALL her magic items are unidentified. I don't mind Gambling, but that is generally more suited to games which have respawning and are closer to Diablo than D:OS is.

Raze - thank you, sir!



Agree on both points.



Everything wouldn't get auto-identified; only those items for which the player currently has "sufficient Loremaster ability".

As to the whole idea that this and the similar requested change to the repair mechanic would somehow "dumb down" the game, the exact opposite would in fact be the case - it would remove some of the dumbest aspects of the game, and allow the player to spend more time doing things that are actually fun/challenging (combat, questing, etc.). What I mean is that there's absolutely no challenge or risk whatsoever to the current mind-numbing process of right-clicking on an identifying glass/repair hammer and left-clicking on (over the course of the game) thousands of individual pieces of equipment, just to do something that your ability calculations should enable organically. As long as you have a working mouse and a movable finger, you and I will get the exact same results, every single time - in contrast to the variables of combat, for example, where you need to consider where to move players, which weapons/skills to use and when, which enemies to attack first, etc. So, why not bypass the unnecessary identify/repair clickfest, while still keeping the underlying ability level requirements intact, and allow the player to move on to things that actually require brain cells?



Yeah, it looks like Larian is intending the nine (and possibly more after Cyseal) listed "junk" items not to be highlighted to avoid too much screen clutter, which I can understand. I'd just like to make sure that - if they're going to continue to highlight very important things like keys, which I very much appreciate - they also consistently highlight everything else that has a use. The real problem is that the new "line of sight" calculations for this purpose are often incorrect, as I noted above, but hopefully they can fix that.



There are actually three colors (which, as a colorblind player, I had to have someone explain to me): white for all "non-owned" containers that have already been opened by the player, as well as for all "non-owned" doors and items; yellow only for "non-owned" containers that haven't yet been opened by the player; and orange for all "owned" containers, doors, and items. So the change I'm suggesting above would actually make the color-coding consistent across containers, doors, and items (everything would either be white if "non-owned", or orange if "owned"), and would also eliminate the current unnecessary confusion between yellow and orange containers. I understand most people would think this is nitpicking, but for me, it's actually a big deal - pity the colorblind!

There is no yellow, someone's messing with you...
You can recognise most opened container by {Empty}

(I say most since in the last version quest-containers didn't get this addition. Not sure if the last patch fixed that)

No - people often do mess with me (I'm an easy target), but there is a yellow icon in addition to the orange ones. Check out the difference between an unopened container that's not owned (like the crates etc. just outside the harbor warehouse, before you open them) and one that is owned (like the crates etc. inside the warehouse). At least you should have an easier time telling the difference than I would.

Agreed with everything in the OP.
Also, i would like a "crafting" tab, where itens learned in the crafting log/Experimentation would be.
The ingredient list is useful, but when you have to use a knife/dagger to cut something, you have to be in the "ALL" tab, which is very cluttered.

Also, having to drag the item to forge/anvil is very annoying, i would prefer to click in it, open a new window where i can select what i want to use.

Also, i would add durability to the Repair Hammer, to add a little of challenge.And the Magnifing glass could have it own Loremaster level to stack with the player, so finding new ones would be actually satisfying.

This is probably already on Larian's to-do list, considering the most recent beta update included so many changes to attribute and ability effects, but the tooltips for STR/DEX/INT and the three "Way of..."/five "magic school" abilities don't seem to fully/correctly describe those stats' current effects. Specifically, there are five variables that these three attributes/eight abilities seem to affect:

1) STR/DEX/INT-based weapon damage
2) STR/DEX/INT-based weapon offense rating (i.e. to-hit chance)
3) STR/DEX/INT-based skill damage
4) STR/DEX/INT-based skill AP cost
5) STR/DEX/INT-based skill cooldown time

Trading now is improved greatly with ability to select inventory of other characters without exiting. But there is still room for improvement.
Currently tarding skills (barter+disposition) of character whose inventory is chosen are used to determine prices. But attributes/skills of trade initiator are used on tooltips to skill books (what skills required, whether he has this spell, etc.).
I believe it should be other way around. Trading skills of character that initiated trade should be used regardless of what char's inventory is currently chosen. And skill/stat/ability related info should be displayed for character who is currently selected.

I think this was requested before, but it'd be great if each dialogue choice that would affect a Trait displayed the corresponding Trait effect - e.g. "1. Money is everything. (Materialistic +1)". Players just reload and redo these dialogues to choose the option that boosts their preferred Trait anyway, so might as well be clear about it.

The Barter ability's effect on the purchase/sale price of each item should also be added back to item tooltips within the trading menu. This used to be a feature, but for some reason was removed as of beta version 1.1.28.

By the way, Raze has confirmed that proper item stacking will be completed (http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthr...mp;Words=todo&Search=true#Post491799), and "something similar to a keyring" will also be implemented (http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthr...ilar+to+a+key&Search=true#Post492229). It's a great start, Larian; now keep moving down the rest of the list in the OP - you've got plenty of time, right?

Not only does there need to be a proper pause function, but it needs to kick in automatically whenever a popup appears. One of the REALLY annoying things about damaging zones (whether caused by traps/spells or naturally appearing) is that they invariably kill someone due to the "helpful" popup about one of your characters being low on health... which yanks away your control while the character(s) stand there taking damage in real time.

Ha, that's happened to me at least once. Not exactly the kind of help I could've used...

And a good idea posted by LordCrash in another thread: "There should be a reassurance button/prompt when trading and there is no balance of goods." I've also accidentally "sold" stuff for free before - easy to do.

And more good news - apparently Swen mentioned on last night's chat that inventory sorting will be in. Can't wait to see the update that includes this, the key ring, proper item stacking... and everything else listed in the OP.

Indeed, indeed...

Awesome!! Can't wait XD!!

I just hope the inventory sorting will be available in trading windows as well, such that the item grid order/arrangement will be the same in both the "standard" player inventory and in trading windows (request #3 in the OP). It's currently a HUGE pain to have inventory rearranged at random in the trade screen grids, even when selling from the separate item category tabs like "equipment," "ingredients," etc.

And this has been mentioned elsewhere, but after using a shovel, both your weapon and shield (if previously equipped) should be automatically re-equipped.

And oh yeah - thanks Larian!

Here's another of LordCrash's great ideas for the list:

There should be two recipe tabs in the journal: the current one (listing the complete text of all recipe books the player has read), and a new one (listing specific recipe combinations in the format "A = B + C" for all items the player has actually successfully crafted).

I really would like to get this feature

Right clicking onto the empty place in the main Ui hotbar opens inventory?

Right click to attack something after you drew out the weapon by left clicking on the icon and have it ready?

Add key ring, for example ten keys in a bundle.

Right-clicking on a toolbar slot to open different pages of the skills/spells menu is in the OP, but I've also seen requests like this for the option to right-click and access player inventory as well. It'd be great if you had options to do both - this would make the toolbar a lot more flexible, and (unless the player decides to still use individual slots for individual spells/skills/items, which should still be allowed) less cluttered.


I was also reminded in another thread that many ability tooltips are still lacking in details. For abilities, the below especially could use more specifics (i.e. percentage/numerical effects on other stats should be included in the tooltips):

-Armor/weapon specialization abilities (Armour Specialist, Shield Specialist, Single-handed, Two-handed, Bow, Crossbow)
-Bodybuilding
-Willpower
-Charisma
-Leadership
-Lucky Charm

(I already mentioned elsewhere in this thread that the tooltips for STR/DEX/INT and the three "Way of..."/five "magic school" abilities don't yet fully/correctly describe those stats'/abilities' current effects. Also, the "Offense Rating" tooltip doesn't note the percentage effect of "Lucky Charm.")

Yeah, that's in the OP, and has been confirmed as planned by Larian.

Why don't keys get consumed after being used? Or am I missing something and they unlock more chests?

Because some keys can be used more than once.

I'm pretty sure leadership is simply broken.
Bodybuilding and willpower can sometimes be seen using spells and such, or to counter weapon-effects (although that looks a bug to me, 15% chance for X to get reduced to 5% since most enemies have willpower 1 is... well... sucky).

Well, since we are putting and using the spells and items from the hotbar, or toolbar - it would make more sense if we could open both of these lists, or inventories - by clicking right onto the spot we want to change or fill. Rather then having to move the mouse to the portraits, finding that small icon, clicking it and then moving back to inventory that opened and eventually back to the hotbar-toolbar.

Im only not sure how to differentiate between ordinary inventory and skills and spells lists...
using only the right click. Though right-clicking makes perfect sense for such a use.
(we already can open the inventory by right-clicking onto the portrait)

But generally, right-click is very underused.



Youre doing great work here Mikus, great work,
Im sure most of those suggestions in the OP will be considered.

OK, don't know why I didn't think of this before: the different skill and inventory "tab/section" icons (e.g. "Warrior," "Fire Magic," "All," "Consumables," etc.) should be things that you can move with the mouse into empty toolbar/hotbar slots. Left-click-and-drag would probably interfere with the standard single-left-click selection of the icons within their respective menus, so maybe single-right-click would be the best way to "pick up" and move an icon into an empty slot initially. Then, once the icon is in the toolbar slot, you could simply single-left-click it to open that player's related skill/inventory submenu, or left-click-and-drag it to remove it from the toolbar/hotbar (i.e. just like any other specific skill/item icon in the toolbar/hotbar currently).

On a related note, for specific skills and items, single-left-clicking should be the way to "pick up" and move the individual skill or item into an empty toolbar/hotbar slot. This would avoid interfering with using items by single-right-clicking, and would also be in line with another suggestion in the OP: Left-clicking (rather than left-clicking-and-holding/dragging) on an item within the inventory window should allow you to pick it up.

The short version:
1) For individual skills and items: single-right-click item to use (if applicable); single-left-click skill/item to pick up and to move into toolbar/hotbar.
2) For categories/"tabs" of skills and items: single-left-click icon to select/open; single-right-click icon to move into toolbar/hotbar.

Thoughts?

Also, collecting some ideas for Larian's kind consideration from this and other threads which are not yet in the OP, or are edits to the OP (sorry if I missed any!):

1) After drinking from a container (bottle/cup/mug/flask/etc.), an empty container should be left in the player's inventory (NEW - posted by Raind)

2) The price for a stack of items in the trading window should be displayed both for one individual item and for the entire stack (EDIT TO OP - posted by Hassat Hunter)

3) A reassurance button/prompt should appear when the player attempts a trade without a balance of goods (posted by LordCrash)

4) The effects of both the player's Barter ability and the NPC's attitude on the purchase/sale price of each item should be shown in the item's trading tooltip (posted by Hassat Hunter)

5) The effects of a dialogue choice on a Trait should be displayed next to the choice (posted by Mikus etc.)

6) New NPC dialogue options not yet chosen by the player should be marked/flagged (NEW - posted by Dragomist)

7) Tooltips that still need more/complete/accurate details (i.e. correct percentage/numerical effects): Armour Specialist, Shield Specialist, Single-handed, Two-handed, Bow, Crossbow, Bodybuilding, Willpower, Charisma, Leadership, Lucky Charm, STR/DEX/INT and the three "Way of..."/five "magic school" abilities, Offense Rating (doesn't include effect of "Lucky Charm") (posted by Mikus etc.)

8) There should be two recipe tabs in the journal: the current one (listing the complete text of all recipe books the player has read), and a new one (listing specific recipe combinations in the format "A = B + C" for all items the player has actually successfully crafted) (posted by LordCrash)

9) A new dedicated crafting window in which items can be combined should be added (NEW - posted by Psykk/Stabbey etc.)

10) Single-left-clicking on an anvil should open a new menu in which to place equipment (posted by Fidelfc)

11) The player should be able to attempt to pickpocket each NPC repeatedly - there should be a higher chance of discovery on subsequent attempts, due to the NPC being aware he/she lost something earlier (NEW - posted by Gnoster)

12) After using a shovel, both your weapon and shield (if previously equipped) should be automatically re-equipped (posted by Mikus etc.)

13) A true "pause" function should be added - even opening the game menu currently doesn稚 pause the game; the game should auto-pause when a popup message appears (EDIT TO OP - posted by NeutroniumDragon)

14) Pathfinding should be improved such that party members will always avoid damage floors/environments (not only traps) - where a damage area can稚 be avoided (e.g. a tight corridor), the player should be required to manually control any party member who must walk through the damage area; a new formation "Follow the exact steps of the controlled character" could also help (EDIT TO OP - posted by Aramintai)

15) Character creation enhancements add 360-degree rotation of character models; add a true "classless" option (with no pre-assigned attributes/abilities/talents/skills, and with the ability to name the "class"); add the ability to change starting skills and equipment (EDIT TO OP - posted by LordCrash)


And thanks Hiver - if Larian wasn't putting so much effort into considering and implementing forum feedback, I wouldn't bother. But as it is, the ideas in threads like this are allowing us to make a good game even better.

I have no idea what you're asking for here. It doesn't really seem like something necessary. I mean, you're asking the devs to put a whole bunch of effort in to save you one click. It just seems disproportionate. I think we'll be able to struggle through without that.

Pretty simple idea, really - as others have also requested, it's the option to access a category of skills or items via one toolbar slot, in addition to the currently available single skill/item per slot. This would do more than merely omit "one click." But feel free to struggle on.

You already can essentially do this. Hit I or K and then click the thing you want to click on. Honestly, asking for the coders to do a bunch of work so you can avoid that one measly click just strikes me as laziness. I think we can live without it.

Maybe we're playing different games. In the current beta, you can't use a skill in combat unless it's already in the toolbar, and this suggestion (or at least some other tweak to the way the skill menu works within combat) would be a nice way to fix that without requiring loads of toolbar slots to be used up - so I'm frankly not sure what you're ranting about.

I must agree with Mikus on this. I suggested something a lot similar some weeks ago and I still think it would be nice to have a toolbar that worked the way it does now but also having the option to use stacks of skills categories, weapons, potions, consumables, etc in a completely transparent way. Just right click over any slot and things similar to the one being clicked would show up in a stack.

You know, the idea isn't exactly original: Divinity 1 had it's toolbar interface based on stacks and I loved being able to select through numerous potions, weapons and skill with a single left click. Apple's OSX has had the stack feature incorporated to the Dock for many years and a lot of people love it and are used to this behavior already.

But we could ask: is it something absolutely necessary for OSX to have stacks? Hell, no! One could always open Finder, look for the folder they want and then look again for the specific app/doc needeed. Of course we can struggle through that. We could even drag and drop all our docs and apps to the Dock, making it utterly clutered. But hey, isn't it much more enjoyable to have a few folder stacks organizing and giving easy access to ours things? With that in mind, is it really so absurd to expect something like this in a game with dozens if not hundreds of skills, itens and consumables? If Divinity 1 had something like that, why can't Larian's latest and best have it too?

@ Stabbey: I'm no developer myself... I'm just an average gamer who loves Larian and the Divinity games just like many other people in this forum. I'm here willingly spending a bit of my free time to simply suggest - not ask, nor request - something that IMHO could improve the game's interface. And so is Mikus I believe, who by the way is doing a great work compiling and presenting all these suggestions.
I have no idea how much time and work the things we are suggesting here would need to be implemented, but even if that's a lot I believe it is up to the DEVELOPERS to decide what is necessary and what isn't. Not us, not YOU.
No offense meant, ok?

Hi, regarding the intro video:

I don't really see why it is good to make a pic in pic when the sailor and the captain are talking. I mean the speaker is always alone. If there would be more people on the monitor at the same time (maybe in later cinematics if exist) it would have more sense, but in that case I would set the speaker closer (bigger) or the other people watching him, or something similar.
This actual solution looks strange.

I would love to have the cursor icon to show moment when the your moving the character around and also please have better dialog system, why not just have done like the old fallout style where you see the character and voice acting and animation when speaking to certain characters...

I would also like to see a interface for crafting where you see the ingredients you have gathered and have place them in a certain order for the items being made that would be useful for Potions and cloth armor...

I would love to see a mini game when smelting or crafting Iron armor...that one right there could be fun or frustrating at the same time though...

If there's more things that I can think of I will post it down here in the future...

Cheers and have fun (that includes developers as well)

Please use witty jokes for pop-up messages because I was extremely annoyed when I was trying to disarm a pressure plate and a pop-up messages saying that is not a trap in the rudest matter...

ok?

Such a great list, i agree with nearly all of these, the alt to highlight, editable controls, true pause and sorting stuff is a must

Also a way to try to escape combat??

Still on my wishlist:

- In combat mode, moving the cursor to show distance to move will also grey out/highlight skills to indicate that walking that far will mean you can no longer use that skill.

- When wielding a dagger, a tiny chevron or some other indicator appears beneath enemies to indicate the direction they're facing, so you can know where to stand for proper backstabs.




Is that what he was asking for? It wasn't clear to me that he was asking for Divine Divinity skill stacks, it seemed like he was asking for a button which would pop up the skill window like K does now, which would then just be auto-open to one of the tabs there.

Another wish:

Please add the current location and the progression of the main quest to the save game descriptions. Right now it's very tedious if you want to find a savegame before certain fights/events/quests. Without any indication of location (like Black Cove or Cyseal North) and main quest progression (name of the quest would be enough) you have to remember the dates or guess where the screenshot could be taken....

First, since I've been spamming lists and edits to lists, here're the latest "collections" I've put together from this and other forum threads. Hopefully I haven't missed much - and Stabbey, your two combat ideas are in the first list linked below:

Original version 1.1.30 list:
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=34882&Number=485218#Post485218

Additions/edits to original list (posted May 4):
http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=34882&Number=492994#Post492994

Also, between this thread and the fact that every few hours someone posts a whole new thread asking for inventory stacking, sorting, and a key ring - all of which Larian's confirmed will be in - I think this feedback is really improving the game interface even more. Just a couple more comments for now:

-Pitheco, you took the words right out of my keyboard; thanks. Stabbey, what I think we're looking for toolbar-wise is some convenient way during combat to easily access not just the skills in the toolbar (which in the current system, has limited space, especially for players who have learned lots of skills - not to mention items), but any skill known by the player. Currently, you can't use skills in the skill menu during combat - again, they have to be selected from the toolbar. So adding the skill category icons to the toolbar, and more importantly, linking them to skills within the skill menu that can actually be used during combat, would be a huge improvement, and would eliminate the need for cluttering the limited toolbar with every single known skill the player would ever want to use in combat.

-Endre, you made me think about the intro movie, and though I know this has been mentioned elsewhere: the pop-up that overlays the movie after you choose "Lone Wolf" at character creation (something like "You've really done it now - your companion is waiting at the tavern") shouldn't be shown at that time, since it doesn't make any sense at the very beginning prior to even meeting your first companion.

-Everybody else, keep those ideas coming. I know we're down to only about 50 days before release, but even if Larian decides not to act on some ideas (because they either don't agree with them or don't have the resources), they won't know what we'd like to see if we don't tell them. Either way, they'll be the ones to decide which ideas to implement. Cheers!

Sounds to me they just need to allow you to use skills from the skills tab (you can't? Cant say I have had many skills during my beta testing).

You know... i would really, really love to see more of the slots in the hotbar - toolbar.

I dont really see any reason why we should see only one line of item-icon slots. Besides, the place where you click to move them up and down, those small icons on the side - are really, really too small. So i have to aim every time i try that.

Wouldn't it be much better if we could see at least two rows of item and skills at once?
Maybe not all three but... at least two?

That would be easier to achieve, without enlarging the hotbar too much.
You would just need to make icons a bit smaller and the hotbar (toolbar) a bit bigger.

So icons would still be visible and easily recognizable while the hotbar-toolbar would not become too big and inelegant.

I think the best solution to that would be to make a button (and key prompt) which causes the hotbar to enlarge to all three lines and back. That means that you would usually just see one line while walking around, just like it is now. But when you enter combat and need more than one line you could just enlarge the hotbar to have easy access to all skills, spells and potions.

Well no, thanks. Thats actually something basically completely different then what i suggested.

I would rather see more without the need to click anything to get it.
And it seems to me that seeing two rows in the hotbar would be a good compromise. It would also make it easier to click just once to bring up the third row - in the same way its done now. Only you would always have two rows visible - because thats just better then one. Easier, more functional, and more elegant.

Ahem, how is my suggestion completely different than what you suggested?

I suggeested one button to enlarge the hotbar to all three lines. That would need you to make ONE click in battle to have all your spells available without the need to have two lines (which is uglier than one imo) on the screen the whole time...

I can't think of anything more functional, easy and especially elegant that that tbh.

Or, encompassing both, a button to add rows, permanently.
So Hiver can have his 2 bars, I (who don't need that) just 1 taking space, and everyone can go 3 in combat if need be.

?

Wouldn't be a bad idea if the hotbar could just be resized (possibly on top of being able to create extra bars as per the previous posters' suggestions), lots of wasted screen real-estate on both ends of the hotbar right now (especially on smaller screens, where the chat windows don't reasonable fit next to the current hotbar). I mean, since we're stuck with widescreen we might as well use the width of the screen...

I thought DA:O did well in that respect.

Hmm, yea DA:O and 2 were quite alright on that front, screen wide quickbar allowed for a lot of skills to be put in there. The only problem is that so many slots are difficult to map with key shortcuts. But then again, it's not like we're talking about MMORPG or somesuch here, there's no real need for that.
Something like this then?:

This quuickbar needs to be scalable with resolution though, because you can only fit as many slots as resolution allows.

A hotbar (toolbar, quickbar - make up your minds already sheesh) that stretches across all of the screen is something rather obvious. But im presuming Larian really wanted to keep it smaller.

Thats why i mentioned having atleast two rows visible - at all times.

LordCrash, my suggestion is radically :P different then yours because yours requires constant clicking to expand and minimize (even if it minimizes automatically) while mine is always visible without clicking. Or, just one when you want to see the third row.
- Its better then the current setup.

That requires two clicks to see all three rows and two clicks more to return to the first. (if youre correct with each click)

Obviously, having three rows visible in the space as it is currently would make icons really, really small... which is another reason why i suggested two.

Its the best possible compromise between having the hotbar remain the same size as it is now and seeing more icons - all the time.


-edit-

I actually went and photoshoped this so i can see how it would really look. I just made a few layers out of the hotbar and the icons and adjusted the sizes and numbers.

If you minimize the icons a little, make two rows of them and increase the size of the hotbar only enough for all of it to fit, it is easy to actually see all the spaces in those two rows.

There is ten slots per one row in the hotbar currently.
If i reduce the icons sizes i can get 15 in a single row, so 30 alltogether, in two rows that are both visible.

And i dont like how it looks.
It makes the icons too small, too numerous and hotbar feels too cramped because of it.

If anything, it would be better if there was one row but with 15 icon slots instead of 10 as now, while flipping the rows up and down.

(not any ind of big thing - just thinking out loud)

The problem I have with this approach is that it wastes space. Screens are already less high than they used (1600x1200 vs 1920x1080...) to be before someone figured that nobody wants to do actual work on their computers so switching everything to widescreen was a great idea.

Effetively wasting the extra width (now that we're stuck with it anyway) seems like a rather bad idea to me, especially if you then go adding extra bars on top of eachother (wasting even more space to the sides *and* shrinking the visible gameplay area in one go).

One solution would be to allow extra hotbars to be freely placed, however, this would only work if they can be snapped to the "main" hotbar and/or resised (my laptop has a 1366x768 resolution, not enough space to place anything useful to the side of the default hotbar).

The ideal solution (as I see it) would be similar to how DA:O with the ability to map a keybinding to every hitbar slot (with as default 1-0 for the first 10, shift1-0 for the next 10, ctrl 1-0 for the 10 after or something)

It seems my edit and further explanations exist in some other dimension.

All my suggestions basically keep the Ui as it is - as it is designed by devs.
Thats the point. Because thats the most anyone can expect now - theoretically and realistically. Anything else is your misunderstanding.

and fantasies about completely changing Ui by throwing additional stuff all around the screen and then calling that a "better solution" - while all that work would be presumably done by Ui gnomes.
DA:O of all things... 1-0,then shift-0 to 10...and ctrl... what the...?
And that would be... ideal?


Not to mention that you come in, completely disregard what i wrote about it myself - just so you can grab onto some sort of counter "argument" - which completely misses the point and has nothing to do with what i wrote.

Which is just a general "thinking out loud" suggestion. An idea.
Not a demand or declaration of One and Holy truth.

/


- anyway,

it seems to me that the small portrait on the left side of the hotbar doesnt have any use, except showing you whose hotbar you are looking at. Which is pretty much clear by itself anyway.

Maybe some utility can be added to it?
right-click to open inventory?

something?

Maybe remove that and enlarge some of those utility icons or arrows/keys for listing the hotbar slots? So we dont have to pixel hunt them everytime?

Revisiting this whole hotbar (that's what I'm calling it from now on ) issue, the two basic things that bother me are:

1) Skills can't be used during combat unless they're in the hotbar, which forces the player to either clutter the hotbar with every skill, or do without (especially a problem for me during my Lone Wolf/Raistlin run, when I was using all my AP to spam several spells/skills every turn) - but this should be a very easy fix;

2) Changing between the three hotbars using those little icons is an annoying mini-pixel hunt, as others have said.

I'm not sure taking up more of the screen space with more hotbar slots is the best solution (just my opinion), but hopefully the devs will at least fix 1) by making the skills within the skill menu usable during combat, and fix 2) by making the hotbar switching icons bigger. Not groundbreaking ideas, but they would at least improve on the current system without requiring much extra work on Larian's part.

Well said Mikus. Agreed on all that.

But still on the hotbar issue, this whole thing is getting too confusing already. I'd like to try and think this straight. So here's my 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.

So, what Larian could do to solve that problem and provide what we need while consuming as few as possible of their precious resources?

Both Mikus's and Hiver's points seem plausible and helpful. But IMHO that's still not completely enough. Other than that, 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? I mean, stretching the hotbar, decreasing icon size, multiple hotbars... seriously guys?? Think about it... would it really be that great to have 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.

Well, while I respect all these suggestions, I can't help but think that doing this sort of UI redesign wouldn't be very elegant. More important than that, the original problem still wouldn't be solved completely. We don't simply need extra skill slots. What we need is a faster and easier way to sort through our options! Right?



That said, I'm really sorry to come up with this suggestion once again, but I can't help but think that I didn't make myself clear enough the other times. So, guys, what about something like this:



And this:




Please, don't get me wrong. I'm not asking for a complete UI rework. Just to leave everything absolutely clear my suggestion is:

1) Leave the current UI as is, appearance wise. It's beautiful like that!
&
2) Implement additional functionality over the existing UI, e.g. Divine Divinity style stacks.

Here's how it could work:

1) Right click over an empty hotbar slot. A stack of all learnt skills show up. Left click over any skill, e.g. Flare, to occupy that slot.

2) Right click over Flare in the hotbar. A stack of fire elemental skills show up. Left click to select. Do the same with other schools of magic or warrior/ranger/survivor skills.

3) Drag an arrow to the hotbar. Right click over it. A stack of all your arrows show up. Left click to select. Do the same with scrolls, weapons, armor, potions, consumables, whatever...

4) Fill the hotbar slots with a choice of each category. Have EVERYTHING beautifully sorted and just too clicks away. Enjoy!


So, other than the trouble to implement it, what else do you think is wrong with it? Any thoughts?

Pitheco: sorry, this didn't quite click with me when you first brought it up, but your DD-style hotbar idea would be great - and Larian's obviously had experience implementing it before. I was sort of going in that direction when I said a few posts earlier that clicking on a single hotbar slot should bring up the related skill category within the main skill menu, but your idea is less redundant with the existing skill menu, and also more elegant IMO. Nice one!

Hey, i was just brainstorming.

DD Stacks seem like they would be the best fit. Very functional, easy, fast. Solves all the currently smaller nagging issues with the hotbar in the best way, without changing how it actually looks on screen.

Great idea as far as im concerned.

I see a problem with skills stacking - unlike DD, there are more than 10 skills in each category, so stacking them up like that would cover most of the screen. DD UI is not really an option that way and stacking is done in skills menu anyway, there just gotta be an option to use them in combat as well, instead of dragging them into a hotbar.
I still believe that hotbar is the best way, but it needs to be elongated to fit more skills. And good call from Mikus for suggesting larger icons for hotbar switching.
As for the key mapping, I don't think that all skills are in need of mapping, just most frequently used. Meaning 1-0 keys should be manually mappable to the preferred skill.

Nobody meant that the stacks would be visible all the time.

Doesn't matter, it would still be too clunky - it will pop up through the roof with the amount of skills we have now in each school aka. stack.

Just saying something will be clunky isnt really enough to make it so. Especially when reality doesnt agree.

All this would require is one right-click and then one left click, until nest time you want to change any skill or item in the hotbar. While all of it would be categorized for ease of use, very much like it is now in the skill list, only you wouldnt be opening a whole separate window by clicking a very small icon well away from the hotbar, but instead have the categorized list pop-up available directly from the hotbar.

Of course you may still think this is "clunky" but thats as much same thing as i can think i can fly.


/

If this idea isnt acceptable to Larian for some reason, i would suggest to at least move the "open inventory" and "open skill list" away from the portraits on the left and move those two icons somewhere inside and on the side of the hotbar.

And also to make them a bit better then just simple white forms on black. And a bit bigger too.

Mikus and Hiver, thanks for your support and feedback. Aramintai, thanks for your considerations.




Well, the stacks would definitely pop through the roof if they were just a single vertical line. But this situation could easily be avoided by simply making horizontal stack lines. That way each row could easily fit about 30 skills with the current icon size in a 1920x1080 resolution monitor. Multiply that by a vertical limit of 10 lines, just like DD, and we would get a theoretical maximum of 300 skills showing up at once, and still it wouldn't cover much more than half the screen. Most of the the times though I believe there wouldn't be more than 20 or 30 icons for each category at once, even though I don't really know how many skills there will be in total for each school.

Besides, when we open the inventory or the skills window almost half the screen already gets covered up anyway. So... what are we worrying about again?

Ok, here's a mock-up of what you guys are suggesting with all stacks expanded, in whooping 2560x1440 resolution no less:


-Warrior skills went through the roof, I imagine others will as well in final release when we will get a full set of them
-Icons obscure the view, can be quite annoying in combat even with only one stack expanded

So, I dunno, looks clunky to me. I still think that hotbar expansion is better, but this mock-up is better than using those skills from skills window.

I'm going to weigh in and support "rotatable skillbars". shift-uparrow/shift-downarrow to rotate through skillbars.

Points in it's favor:
1. You get to choose what you put on which skillbar, so you can group skills in a fashion that makes sense to you
2. Low screen real-estate requirements- you can put some clickable arrows to change the active skillbar, and that's all the additional screen space you take.
3. It's very easy to demonstrate this to new players during the tutorial or whenever, and it's simple to understand.


This arrangement with per-skill family pop-ups is a massive over-design, solving a non-problem, because most/no characters are not going to have all or most of the skills from all the trees.

That's what hotbar is for. It just needs to be elongated and have more layers, 9 maybe.

A good thing is a good thing. Its just true.


Exactly.



Exactly. So they would not cover half of the screen or whatever.

The point is it would be quicker and easier to handle the skills and equipable items this way - and it would provide a better and clearer overview of these usable things.



I figured that this kind of concept would not show all of the available skills and items from all categories at once, but rather - only those that are in the category you clicked on. (after the first time)

So for example, once you put a fire spell in the hotbar - the next time you would right click on it - only the fire spells would appear above it, once you put a potion in the slot - only potions would appear above it. etc.

- this would require a more broad list of all skills and items for the first usage, but the inventory and skill list as they are can be used for that initial choices and placement -

After that initial setup when you right click on any specific spell or item - only spells and items of that specific category would show up stacked above. So you would see only fire spells, or only Air spells, or only potions, or only weapons... etc.

Arranged whichever way is better, of course.
At least, thats how i imagined it.


Well of course thats clunky, when you imagined it and designed it in that specific way.
But thats not what any of us were imagining it like. Besides, those icons would only pop up shortly, so you can choose one - its not like they would remain on the screen like that.

I think its safe to say that we dont want something actually worse then the current setup, you know.
We are trying to suggest something actually better - not just different for the sake of being different. And especially not something worse.

I'm not sure where you're going with this, but it sounds similar to what's going on on the screenshot only through hotbar. How's it gonna look like? Vertically all the way doesn't quite work as can be seen on screenshot, making several smaller columns of them would still unnessesarily obscure part of the screen. Horizontaly would be like a second hotbar, which is pointless because there are hotbar layers already.
I don't think any of this would be a good design, because the less UI gets in the way of gameplay the better. Meaning, there's gotta be a way to see and use as many of the skills as possible all at once, without UI's dangling ears all over the place. So the best candididate is still an elongated layered hotbar, which, unsurprisingly, is used in so many rpgs.

There is no obscuring the screen when these stacks only appear momentarily and then disappear once youve chosen a specific spell, item or a skill.
If only specific categories are shown then its even less icons on the screen at once.
- That simply isnt an argument that can be used as objection against this kind of setup.


Expanding the hotbar is an obvious way to go about this but im figuring that since it isnt already expanded, that Larian wants to keep it smaller. As it is. And im just trying to work with whats there now.


None of this means that a specific suggestion must be or that it will be accepted.
We are making different suggestions here and devs will look it over and eventually do something about it. Or not.
Thats all.

A 10-section hotbar is convenient in some ways because it lets you use the 0-9 number keys to select things instantly. Not as important in a turn-based game certainly, but it is a convenience.

I do think that at least that switching hotbars should be improved, I have the urge to use the mousewheel to do it, but that doesn't do anything. The tiny little arrows are not ideal.

The mouse wheel does scroll though the hotbars when the mouse cursor is above it.

Wow, Aramintai! Thanks a lot for doing this mockup! I really liked seeing nothing less than 75 skills stacked and sorted up like that!

Now, keep in mind that all those skills would only show up when you right click over an empty slot, something that probably would't happen so often after the hotbar is set. All the other times you'd right click over an occupied slot, only the category of that thing you just clicked would show up. Then left click over your choice to make the stack disappear and bring the selected thing to the slot you right clicked. That could be used not only with skills, but also with potions, arrows, weapons and just about anything you can put at the hotbar. Got it?

Still, IMO there's nothing preventing the stacks of each category to occupy two columns or even being positioned horizontally. There certainly are many ways around going "through the roof".



Ok. But imagine yourself cycling thought NINE layers of the hot bar, trying to decide what to do or to quickly review your options in a fight. And also having to look for some odd spell that you don't use that much but you know is there... somewhere. Cycle, cycle, cycle...

Call me lazy, but imagine all the work we'd have, dragging lots and lots of stuff to those 9 layers of elongated hotbars and organizing everything manually. Do we really want that? Aren't we asking for an inventory auto-sorting functionality because there's too many things and we're too lazy to sort them ourselves?

Also notice that an elongated hotbar other than occupying permanent screen real state, mess up with the hotkeys and look rather ugly, would also take space away from the chat and the log windows. Now tell me this isn't cluttering up the view.



You got that right, Hiver! That's exactly what I imagine too.



You just wrote down what I was thinking. Nice!



Cool! Would you mind sharing some of that privileged information with us, Stabbey?

Yea, that's true. I've got a feeling that they won't do much change to UI at this point due to time constraints, but who knows.
In any case, since you're not providing mock-ups for your suggestion I've made one for you:

Correct me if this is wrong.

Thanks. Now put one of those spell icons into the hotbar instead of that generic Air element magic one, arrange the icons above so the level one are closest to the hotbar, level two spells above them, level three spells above those and so on.

Make each line as long as necessary - horizontally. There doesnt need to be any space left for other types of spells since one element would replace the other.

That should be it.

Of course, you dont have to actually do it, this is just a description.
I didnt have time to make something like it.

maybe ill try something tomorrow.

I would love to have the Journal into more like a book than a scroll so you can flip through the pages and select tabs for quests, characters, lore, and other things making it more essential than the scroll UI that is currently been used...

Another thing I would love to see is able to modified the short cuts so you can be able to change it skill bar into the old skill system from the Divine Divinity vise versa...

Huh, yeah, it could be a book and the different tabs could be bookmarks sticking out.

On the other hand though, there could be a LOT of pages to flip through for some things, which would be inconvenient if looking for a specific thing.

Not really because it could be separated by different Tabs, like one for recipes, quests and rewards, Lore, characters that have simple facts about them, And trophies...

It could be really handy than a scroll o.o;;;

Also who would be writing detail information on a scroll and it will be extremely long and messy

I really hope that we get a new combat status system for the monsters because I just don't like to have the current battle system that shows the monster lvl and that pretty much downs the experience of random encounters because it pretty much just tell ya you need to be on that lvl to beat the monster.

Why not just hide that information and have talent or ability that you need to learn to tell how strong the monsters are...

And also have a feature in the journal where it tell the stats of the monster and what they drop but if you first encounter the monster it would just have the name and most of other information about this beast all not fill in and when you continue to run into those monsters and battling through them the item drops and stats gets filled in after the encounters...

I think with this feature it would increase the lore of the game and also adds in a collection of monster encounters in the game and also increase the game play value as well...

I agree Minchi. That should be also be dependent on Perception.


One thing i would like to see improved is responsiveness of icons in the hotbar.

Sometimes I use some low level spells to break down the doors, and i switch between Scarlet flare spell and Jahan lightning bolt, to do it quicker.

Yet, not only do spells have a short cooldown - which is not necessary outside of combat, but i cant really switch between those two quickly. I have to wait for a second or second and a half and then click onto another character portrait and then choose the spell.

The cooldown for spells is not that of a problem here, even though it isnt necessary but the fact that i cannot quickly switch between the characters.
In combat that sometimes really buggs me - and often prevents me from saving a character or a companion that wandered into some poison or burning surface - once the combat ends, or in cases of some sudden trap.


It would be really nice if this was made more responsive - quicker.

Yeah I agree with ya Hiver,

Because some of the spells in battle the cool down is way off and makes it even harder to just cast when your heat of battle and you need wait for the spell to cool down and you get killed by monster that moves extremely fast...

Some times when you click on the icon on the skill bar you need to be exact or the spell does not cast and your character just move closer to the monster and gets killed...

Oh yeah Hiver what do u think about the Journal does it need an upgrade because the Scroll approach looks kinda messy when you have more added in...

Just catching up on this thread. Great ideas folks!

Aramintai - I think you were kind of arguing against it, but that mock-up of Hiver's idea (http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=34882&Number=494624#Post494624) looks great to me. And I personally like the option to have the generic skill category icons (for "Warrior," "Fire Magic," etc.) in the hotbar, just as you have them pictured - that's exactly what I was originally imagining in the OP list. (Of course, this would be in addition to, not instead of, the existing option to place specific individual skills/items in the hotbar.) But again, if all this is too much at this late stage in development, at least making skills in the main skill menu usable during combat and the hotbar switching icons bigger would be an improvement.

Minchi1983 - your "bestiary" journal listing idea is something I'd suggested during the alpha, but now I'm thinking that - at least judging from the battles in Cyseal, and the fact that enemies never respawn - each individual enemy (e.g. a "Level 3 Exploskeleton") may only ever be encountered in the game once or twice, which may limit the usefulness of recording each enemy's stats in the bestiary for future reference. That said, it would still be a cool historical record. I also really like the idea of a talent that would allow the player to identify enemy stats. And the "book" (instead of the current "scroll") UI idea for the journal has my vote.

Hiver - I totally agree on the annoyance of the cooldown delay for skills outside battle; been thinking that myself for a while.

I would go with the book journal too, if it isnt too much of a trouble.
The current one is alright, i guess. But a book would be much nicer.


- And its not just cooldowns but the fact that you cannot quickly select another character.

Divine Divinity also used the "can't see the enemy's level without points into Know Creature" thing, including the journal stats. It's not an inherently terrible idea, but I'm not a fan of it, because for characters without the right points, it merely adds some guesswork and uncertainty.

If you fight something and lose, was it because your strategy was poor, or because you were severely outclassed?

You can see enemies before you engage them, and being able to see the enemy's level gives you a rough approximation of how tough they are. It lets you make an intelligent strategic decision on whether to engage them or not. In my opinion, replacing an informed decision with guesswork isn't the best idea.

Perhaps tie that to difficulty level or something?

It needs to be depend on the Perception.

The same way damage is tied to Strenght or Dexterity. Or Magic to Intelligence.
It isnt guesswork at all. and this would make it feel very natural and sensible. Plus it would add one more smaller nice feature to Perception.

Just letting players see exact enemy levels without any requirement whatsoever is cheap "making it easier" mechanic that results in metagming - "i wont take on those because i see they are this exact level and im this exact level".

If you get whooped in an overwhelming way - you can tell that easily without such spoilers.
You dont need to see enemy levels to know youve been destroyed without a chance to win.
You can tell that directly from being killed really fast and also from the fact that you are not dealing much damage to the enemy at all.

Those two effects are the direct feedback pointers.

Seeing enemy levels is just a small addition to it. Its not that important at all and therefore it could be easily made to depend on one of the main attributes as an additional ease of use feedback mechanic.

Yeah...It's true, for example Final Fantasy did not have a feature to see the monster lvl and see if you can match it but that system is nicely hidden away and it was revealed the monster stats and lvl through the use of scan magic and all that information was stored away in a bestiary.

If you see the level of the monster it just makes the game even easier to go past the area by just grinding and leveling up your characters. I think without having the monster lvl being shown it just makes the game much more harder and rewarding when you managed to have monster stats filled out used through perception.

I think in Ultima 7 that they don't even show you the lvls of the monsters within the game until you beat it or have some kinda spell or item that shows the monsters stats...

Boy its been a long time since I played it..

Here are some mock-ups of suggested ways to improve tedious crafting:
-Recipes in the log are filled in not as book entries but as actual combinations from those books. The ones you can craft have crafting button near them. In the ones you can't, red numbers show which ingridients you are lacking and there is no crafting button.


-Alternatively, recipies combinations which you can craft are shown in a separate window. Combination result is selectable, crafting is done with the crafting button:

Oooh Nice...Hey Aramintai can u make a mock-ups of the journal in book forum than in scroll forum to show the developers that it looks better in book forum than the scroll format?

Well, I'm not sure it really needs any changes, seems fine as it is. But anyway, here's my version of what can be improved - quest titles are shown to the left, quest entries are shown to the right:

Thanks it looks really good.It looks more organize than the scroll version though.

Hopefully the developers are looking in this topic and noticed how much better than the previous one and the tabs can be sticking out by the edge of the on the right and left so it looks like bookmarks so you can just click on it and the book will turn to that subject and makes it organized though...

Thanks Aramintai...

Nice looking mockups.

Would like to see a crafting system like that in the game. It's simple but fun. A separate small window like the one you provided would be great too, Key Binding it to C to bring up the small Crafting window.

Some ideas :

For the skill bars : give us some hotkeys ( like F1 F2 F3 ) to select the bar

For easier target selection : give us a hotkey to pause the animations. It could be automatic when a skill has been selected and it needs a target.

Concerning the formations :
- give us a button to link/unlink all ( plus hotkey +/- )

After a combat :
- don't end the combat as soon as the last ennemy is dead. Allow us to decide to do it when it is safe ( poison, burning ... ).

Wow, Aramintai, those are more awesome mockups that bring to life things requested earlier in this thread (better/clearer recipe journal section; new dedicated crafting interface) - good work!

And thorska, I believe for the "enemy targeting" issue - which has also been mentioned earlier in this thread - Larian has said they'll be allowing targeting by clicking on the enemy icons displayed along the top of the combat screen. And I think (and hope) they'll make significant improvements in upcoming updates to fix the whole "NPC pathfinding/control on damage areas/environments" issue, as was also discussed earlier. We'll see!

I dont know - i never had any problem with targeting enemies.
Because i dont rush to click around as if im playing a shooter. No need - in Turn Based.

I mean sure, some people may have ran into some problems there... fine. Im just saying it really isnt something created by the game itself.


that would be nice but i generally like to play with the mouse and i would still like that improved in addition to any key bindings.

just sayin...


That seems like a bit too much. The game is paused at that moment. Its Turn based. All you need is to make your twitching fingers do things in Turns.

- but fine, if you people really cant be just a bit more patient...
Its not like i actually need it.


That would be nice. Maybe even very nice.



Hmm... end combat key... that could be a relatively easy solution to those problems. Indeed.


- just very general comments about those suggestions -

Hiver - with enemy targeting, being "patient" has nothing to do with it - as has been often mentioned within this thread and elsewhere on the forums, sometimes when enemies are very close to a player character or to other enemies, it's almost impossible to "highlight"/target them - and even when you do, an imperceptible and involuntary slip of the mouse will lose the targeting. This obviously needs work. Just sayin'.

Oh, ive never had that happen to me. Sorry!

My quibble with the idea idea of hiding the enemy's level without points into Perception - "you'll know if you're outmatched when you get slaughtered" - is that it leads to trial-and-error gameplay, which leads to frustration.

:hiver spreads arms with a look of wonder on his face:

SOOO?


Are we playing True RPG (yes the distinction is necesary these days) games so we have everything easy? For the "experience" that should be force fed into us like a shot of heroin that never, ever ends?

(i hate heroin and what it does to people in ways you cannot imagine, btw)

Dont true RPGs require some effort, some sort of mastering the games rules and skills so we can overcome the challenges and obstacles? ISNT that whats actually fun?

And dont go into absurd extremes territory now. It isnt about being completely frustrated - but frustration, some measure of it - is a part of the gameplay of True RPGs.
Otherwise we can all just play on easiest setting by reading walkthroughs. Just to get the... "experience".
- Cue in last ten years of mass market devolution of the genre -

Besides, if you want to have a bit easier time in this sense - well just invest a few points into Perception. What is wrong with that?

You need it anyway, Its useful anyway. This would be just a small additional use for it.

One suggestion from Steam forum user:

Hiver, one post I keep seeing repeatedly crop up here, on the Steam Forums, elsewhere, is that they can't figure out how to leave Cyseal without getting killed. They're frustrated. I did not present some kind of absurd hypothetical, it is not ludicrous to claim that people will get frustrated - some already are.

How many MORE people will get even more frustrated and pissed off at the game if the level of combat encounters is hidden? How many reviewers will get frustrated?

I think that the combat encounters are challenging right now at the appropriate level. I don't think that adding guesswork and encouraging save scumming will improve the combat experience.

Yes, adding the functionality to Perception would improve Perception's appeal, but I think one of the larger obstacles to Perception's appeal is this: you have your primary attributes which are required for your equipment. You have CON which increases your health and AP, and SPD which increases your movement and turn AP, and those are often more appealing than Perception. Because the only guaranteed primary attributes come once every other level, there's pressure to spend them in the key stats first.

I believe that giving players the information about the level of the enemies up front gives them the information to make an educated decision about whether they can handle the encounter or not. I think that is better than having them guess each time.

People cant figure out a lot of things, especially in an environment that doesnt force them to figure out things in anyway and just lets them have it all easy.

Im pretty sure that if in school i didnt get ... what is it... Ds? (it was different where im from. Here you would get a Five for the best results and an Ace for the worst).
Oh, right, right - A`s. D is the worst, whatever.

Well, if i didnt get so many Aces ...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COvCPJGjaiE
I wouldnt become so smart as i am now. :P

Imagine if my professors were giving me high Fives for everything!? I would still be on kindergarden levels of knowledge and ability to think. As would you or anyone else.

As i was saying, some level of "frustration" is an indispensable part of the true RPGs and most of other games. Games cannot exist without it. Without it the games would be movies.
Which, you may have noticed is what AAA mass market industry has been trying to turn them into for along time now.

...


How many more? Whats that? A prophecy? Precognition?
Should games like this be designed because in the future there may be some people who will get frustrated about something? Design out of fear of something that doesnt exist now?

And may never exist at all?

How many users are actually "frustrated" about not even trying to figure out where they should go at the start?

One?

Two?

Maybe five all together?
Lets talk real numbers here, not paranoia.

Lets remember Fallout... gee how many people were frustrated if they went toward any more difficult area of the game?
Wow... lets just level scale the fuck, eh?


Or is this just a case where you think something should be done and then youre using fallacious arguments to make it seem like there is an actual need for something like that?


Yeah, that fine. I dont think adding guesswork and encouraging save scumming will improve the combat experience - either.
The problem with that statement is that it implies specific things but it doesnt explain them in any way at all.

The problem with your idea is that it gives something free and as a meta features - completely outside of game mechanics or character skills.

While my idea about it provides that information - through character skills.



You are not guessing. You are getting a very direct feedback from the game. And if you invest a few points in Perception you would get more of it.

Besides, we have been over this argument previously. If you know what is the exact level of the enemies - it directly leads into metagaming. Because then the players knows exactly with what kind of level they should approach any encounter - which makes the whole deal really boring.

It takes the player out of the game. - Breaks the fourth wall, buddy.


...


Now, personally... i wouldnt have this feature even for Perception. Especially because i like roguish and rangerish builds and this just spoils the game for me. Completely.

Its just an internally enabled huge spoiler and a cheat. As far as im concerned.

I only suggested it as a Perception feature because its the only way it would make sense enabled through game and character mechanics. And because i know some of you are that incompetent. And i feel sorry for you. So much so that i would ruin the game for myself to help you people.

If it was really up to me - you wouldnt get that at all.
Maybe...maybe i would allow it for the easy mode. At the most.


....



If Larian wants to, they can just adjust the warnings the guards are giving you when you try to exit north and east gates to be more direct warnings.

That would solve that problem completely. Even if i wouldn't like it and i would personally - move it into the easy mode.

But the game isnt made only for me. (Which is the Larians biggest mistake if you ask me :P - just joking ffs...)

Thanks for sharing, ZoddGuts - I don't follow the Steam forums. So that's another vote similar to the item from the OP of this thread, but focusing on the trading menu:



C'mon Larian, please?

I think if they did that then the price of having all the item is gonna be expensive...O.O;;;

Sorry Minchi, I don't quite follow you?

EDIT: Oh, now I see what you're saying - repairing everything at once would be expensive. But think about it - you'd only need to have the merchant repair what you couldn't repair yourself, and if you didn't want the merchant to repair at least those things, you probably aren't going to be using them much longer anyway (since they'll soon break/be useless).

That said, the "repair all" function is something I'd personally find more useful during regular non-combat exploration - not necessarily just within the trading menu.

I don't agree with hiding levels... I do think maybe there should be a tutorial popup when entering the city...

"You're now in a city... don't be a moron and leave it straight away to get killed, explore it dumbass. This isn't DIABLO!"

Probably more polite though XD

if there is a tarder (err... - trader, - pun not intended) "repair all" function then it really needs to be an addition to selecting what to repair specifically as it is now.

Maybe i dont want to repair everything? Maybe i dont have enough money or want to spend that much?
I would never use such a command even if it was there. Personally.


But as a ease of use feature when it comes to my character blacksmithing - that i could see as a good thing. Although it would be nice if it lasted as long as it would take to repair each item individually. So we dont loose the sense of that being a fairly difficult thing to do.

Actually hiding the lvl is the best way of doing it and also having a friendly but silly tutorial popup when entering the city..

"Hello, This is the narrator...you are entering the city...Please don't kill the npcs who live there...and please lvl up before leaving the town...and have fun exploring lol..."

My style of witty humor XD!!

Increase the texture resolution of the UI and especially the character portraits, please (or reduce their size).

All you've said is "Frustration is good" and "Players should guess". You never explained why players guessing at enemy levels should be considered a good or correct form of frustration.

A true game designer comes up with a solution that can achieve both the frustration while retaining the ability to have educated guesses, and using frustration in a positive way rather than a negative way. That solution is to make very lethal combinations of enemies that are more challenging compared to other monsters of their level. Not just "mage buffs everybody elses damage", but things that need to be actively thought about to avoid. Things that are extremely dangerous if you have no idea that they can happen, and require some prediction and preparation to handle.

Let's say regular level 4 zombies are easy at level 4, but there are level 4 zombies in a poison pool supported by a level 4 mage. If zombies could, for example, spread poison on the ground to heal them as they advance to you while you still take fire from the mages but also have to find a way to deal with both the poison and the regenerating zombies. Then you could combine it with mage AI that, if still alive, will detonate the final zombie corpse to create smoke. Mages could be given the ability to blindfire directly through smoke without a target that would create a potentially deadly blind zone that has magic spewing out of it in random blindfire based on your last known location. A good use for invisibility, as you can move outside of the smoke while visible to give the mage a Last Known Position, then travel to a zone that is not at risk of being hit with blindfire while invisible.

Level 4 zombie? Not too bad. Level 4 mage? Not too bad. Combined? You're going to get some surprises thrown at you and probably die horribly.

Another thing that makes this better is that you aren't just getting slaughtered by huge numbers, you are being shown new ways to fight by the enemies and learning from your battles. You learn new mechanics and start to think of tactical ways to avoid the deadly Zombie + Mage Combo. It would make you think about using environmental spells in battle to clear the smoke. Perhaps there could be a talent that clears the smoke around the character but increases the overall volume of the cloud. You would be thinking about how YOU could use the environmental combinations like poison + fire to your advantage, and thinking about using your enemies or teammates in non-traditional ways to accomplish your goal.

It also accomplishes the goal of making players more aware of their environments before choosing to enter a battle. The current mini oil tutorial is not particularly effective at creating a memorable experience that makes the player excited to use the mechanic. Not only does this simple two enemy combo promote environmental effects, but it also promotes the idea of needing to decide what enemies to deal with first. More enemies added into the mix with really interesting combinations that cannot all be prevented before one of them occurs, you have to start weighing risks of being hit with one of those combinations and how the effects of those may impact future turns. Then even further, more enemies brings in the aspect of learning the enemy AI in regards to which combinations it will prioritize when multiple are available.

You end the battle with "hey that was cool, i should think of ways to avoid it and use my own powerful combo" rather than "I'm not sure if this is the wrong way, if i have to grind, or if i've missed a dungeon".

The frustration generated from things like this encourages the player to overcome the challenge, whereas getting slaughtered by the same attacks with big numbers is just annoying and tedious.

Well, thats not really true. I did.

I was referring to the fact that frustration is integral part of gaming. Because the challenge is and there is no challenge without some measure of frustration.

Of course, if someone takes that as a crude blanket statement and tries to counter that by argument from absurdity, such as simplistic form of "oh well why dont we just make all game incredibly frustrating (in all the wrong ways), eh?" - he misses the point completely.


As to why exactly i consider "guessing" at enemy levels to be a correct form of challenge and frustration - i explained that.

First - you are not guessing at all. You have your direct feedback from enemy encounters - all the bloody time.

Second - knowing enemy levels directly causes metagaming.
Takes player out of the game itself and gets them thinking about this and adjusting how they play the game because of it.






True. Which is what i say about frustration in this sense.



One of the possible solutions. Not directly tied to the problem we are discussing here.


And how is that going to happen if you know the enemy levels before hand, exactly?

Arent you actually saying what im saying here, now?





there would be no surprises there. A player would know that would happen by knowing the exact levels the enemy have.


That only happens when you dont know the enemy levels beforehand.



Only if you dont know the enemy levels beforehand.

if you do know them then you know exactly for what the enemies are capable of and what combinations they will use. Especially since such combinations are of the limited quantity and easily learned.

Even more easily, if the player knows the exact enemy level.





It accomplishes only the opposite.



Nope. You dont.




Who exactly ever mentioned getting slaughtered by the same attacks? let alone imagined that as desirable mechanic?

Thats just a Strawman argument at the end. Based on completely false and incorrect basis.

Sorry.

Ok, so now that sorting within tabs has been added it has become easier to rummage through inventory. But why is there no obvious option to sort items By Type of the item?
Btw, radial menu is neat

Yeah, +1 to the radial menus! And I'm working on updating what's been changed (and what still "needs" to be done ) now. Anyway, the UI is definitely improving with every update.

OK, I've messed around for a couple hours in the latest update (1.0.59), and have now updated the lists to include only those requests that aren't yet implemented in-game. So Raze (man of infinite patience), if you could please copy the below set of lists (starting with "USER INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS WISHLIST") over the set of lists currently in the OP, I'd yet again really appreciate it.

So I know we're down to only 6 weeks before release, but Larian's been adding additional UI improvements from this and other forum threads with every update so far, so I'll keep asking for all the rest! Here are the requests that were originally posted in this thread which have been added to the game since this all started several weeks ago:

---(NEW) inventory sorting (but not yet "by type") has been added
---(NEW) skills can now be used in combat via the main skill menu
---(NEW) hotbar skill icons now display a colored triangle when plotting character combat movement if insufficient AP for the skill would be available if the path is chosen
---(NEW) a popup message ("Are you sure you want nothing in return for that?") now appears if the player attempts to trade items without selecting any items in the NPC's inventory
---(NEW?) Loremaster now identifies enemies
---recipes learned from books are now tracked in the journal
---the trade window now allows switching between players
---NPCs now repair/identify items in their inventory
---NPCs can now repair equipped items
---unnecessary companion talents are now hidden
---weapon tooltips now note "one-handed" or "two-handed"
---windows now "remember" their on-screen locations
---"journal"/"map" keyboard shortcuts now act as proper open-close toggles
---switching to a new player no longer interrupts the started action of the original player
---left-clicking an unreachable location no longer recenters the camera on the player
---the mouse pointer now "cuts through" walls/obstacles to allow interaction with adjacent items/containers/NPCs
---(UNCONFIRMED) the order of scrolling through inventory/skill windows using the left/right arrow icons now follows the currently selected player portrait order

Anyway, I'm getting burned out playing the beta (I've now played through Cyseal three and a half times), so I'll probably just check back here periodically until the next major version update. But thanks to all you hard-working beta testers, and to Larian for continuing to improve the UI before final release!



USER INTERFACE IMPROVEMENTS WISHLIST



INVENTORY/CHARACTER AND TRADING MENUS/CONTROLS

1) All items of an identical type (except equipment) should stack with each other in the inventory and trading menus
Items that should stack, but don't: all "junk" (i.e. (large) bottles, broken bottles, (flower) pots, globes, lab junk, plates, tubes, vials, vial racks), arrow shafts, arrows/arrowheads (identical types), books (including all identical recipe and blank skillbooks), bonedust, empty bottles, folded shirts, golden cups, golden spoons, nine inch nails, parchment, pillows, pixie dust, rope, soap, starfish, wooden figurines, apples/bottles of beer/cups of water/drudenae/hams/herrings/logs/minor healing potions/roasted pork dishes/skulls (only some items of these types currently stack with each other), "Cyseal Pie" and "Cyseal Fish Pie" (duplicates?), etc.

2) A "Sort By Type" inventory sorting option should be added

3) Items should be consistently arranged in the same item grid slot order in all NPC trading and current player inventory menus

4) Left-clicking (rather than left-clicking-and-holding/dragging) on an item within the inventory menu should allow you to pick it up

5) A key ring (functioning as an "openable" container) to automatically store all acquired keys should be added

6) Inventory container fixes (backpacks, pouches, barrels, crates, etc.)
Newly acquired items should automatically stack with identical items already within a container in player inventory; keys and quest items within a container in player inventory should be automatically "used"/recognized in-game just as they would be if they weren't in the container

7) Activating a character via its portrait or the "F1"-"F4" keys should also switch to that character's inventory or skills menu, if open

8) An option to tag/mark items as "junk" for later quick/one-click sale should be added

9) The price listed for a stack of items in the trading menu should be displayed both for one individual item and for the entire stack

10) An option to manually type the number of items to move/trade from within a stack should be added

11) Each NPC's Identify/Repair ability levels should be displayed in the NPC's trading menu

12) The effects of both the player's Barter ability and the NPC's attitude on price should be shown in each item's trading tooltip

13) The value of every stat/ability modified from its base value should be displayed in a different color in the inventory menu

14) Ability tooltips that still need to describe exact percentage/numerical effects
Armour Specialist, Body Building, Willpower, Charisma, Lucky Charm, Offense Rating (doesn't include +3/level effect of Lucky Charm)

15) After drinking from a container (bottle/cup/mug/flask/etc.), an empty container should generate in the player's inventory

16) After using a shovel, both your weapon and shield (if previously equipped) should be automatically re-equipped



CRAFTING/IDENTIFICATION/REPAIR MENUS/CONTROLS

1) Crafting overhaul
Anew dedicated crafting window in which items can be combined should be added; recipe information for at least those recipes the player has successfully crafted should be explicitly listed in the format "A = B + C" in the journal; for sample mockups, see: http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=34882&Number=494715#Post494715

2) Loremaster/Identify overhaul (current click-intensive system is extremely tedious, and adds no challenge)
If a player has an identifying glass and sufficient Loremaster ability, all items (items that are picked up, as well as items displayed in all trading menus) should be identified automatically (except those beyond the player's ability)

3) Blacksmithing/Repair overhaul (current click-intensive system is extremely tedious, and adds no challenge)
If a player has a repair hammer and sufficient Blacksmithing ability, a new "Repair All" icon/button usable only outside combat should repair all items equipped by the party with one click (except those too damaged for the player's ability)



COMBAT MENUS/CONTROLS

1) The ability to attack enemies with "regular" (non-skill) attacks by clicking their icon at the top of the screen should be added
I.e. similar to how attacking with skills works currently

2) A "facing" indicator should be added to the circle under each enemy's feet to aid with backstab positioning



DIALOGUE AND NPC INTERACTION MENUS/CONTROLS

1) The effects of a dialogue choice on a Trait should be displayed next to the choice

2) NPC dialogue options previously chosen by the player should be "dimmed"/"grayed"

3) A more convenient method of ending an NPC dialogue at any time is needed
E.g. by hitting "ESC" to exit the dialogue screen, and/or moving the "end dialogue" speech option to the top or side of the list from its current usual position at the bottom in situations where dialogue can't be skipped for quest reasons, the "end dialogue" option may then be disabled

4) The player should be able to attempt to pickpocket each NPC repeatedly
But there should be a higher chance of discovery on subsequent attempts, due to the NPC being aware he/she lost something earlier



GENERAL MENUS/CONTROLS

1) "ALT" should consistently highlight all items/containers within the player's sight range
Currently, most items as well as chests (but no other containers, like barrels/baskets/crates/vases) are highlighted; however, some useful items are never highlighted (e.g. pillows, soap, whetstones), and neither are any "junk" items ((large) bottles, broken bottles, (flower) pots, globes, lab junk, plates, tubes, vials, vial racks although the non-highlighting of junk may be intentional); also, probably due to errors in calculating the player's sight range, many items placed on certain wall shelving or bookshelves, tables, sloped ground, etc. aren't highlighted (e.g. the fishing rod in the tutorial dungeon, items on the table in front of Esmerelda's shop, items on shelving/bookshelves inside Esmerelda's shop/Aureus's office/the cook's house/at the back of Bellegar's cave, items around the forge/anvil area above Cyseal west gate, the plants in the End of Time living quarters garden, items on the sloped paths just outside the lighthouse/just west of the cultist church, etc.); finally, although this should be an optional toggle in the main menu to satisfy both those who enjoy and those who hate pixel-hunting, there should be an option to make item/container highlighting always automatically active

2) The "chest" action icon color for containers that are "not owned" but not yet opened should be changed from yellow to white
This would assist colorblind players, as the "chest/door/hand" action icons for all containers/doors/items would be orange if "owned," and white if "not owned," with the label "[Empty]" added but the icon color unchanged if a container is empty

3) All keyboard controls should be fully reassignable in the "Controls" menu
Especially camera movement, so as not to interfere with using WASD for other controls; also ALT for item highlighting, etc.

4) The camera "zoom out" height/range should be increased

5) A "pause" function should be added
The game should auto-pause when a popup appears, or when the game menu is opened

6) All custom map markers should be fully editable
Currently, you can add a marker by left-clicking on the map (sometimes it's glitchy), and can delete a marker by right-clicking it, but there should be an easy way to select and edit the description for each existing marker as well

7) Pathfinding enhancements
Party members should always automatically avoid damage floors/environments (not only traps); where a damage area can't be avoided (e.g. a tight corridor), the player should be required to manually control any party member who must walk through the damage area; a new formation "Follow the exact steps of the controlled character" could also help

8) Hotbar/skill menu enhancements
Add a tooltip to each skill stating the skill category to which it belongs (e.g. "Fire Magic"); add new assignable keyboard shortcuts to switch between hotbars and/or increase the size of the hotbar switching icons; add the ability to assign an entire skill category to one hotbar slot, such that right-clicking the "Fire Magic" slot (for example) would open the player's Fire Magic skillbook menu; for sample mockup, see http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=34882&Number=494624#Post494624

9) Character creation enhancements
Add 360-degree rotation of character models; add a true "classless" option (with no pre-assigned attributes/abilities/talents/skills, and with the option to name the class); allow editing of starting skills and equipment

Yeah, by item type is definitely something which should be added to the sort.

Guess that depends on how they're implemented. They sucked horribly in Neverwinter Nights and I can't think of any other games that had them. Got any names of games with good radial menus?

Poaches and backpacks should be a drop target while closed - dropping something on a poach should move it inside.

I saw they did improve the small icons for skill list and inventory, under the character portraits. Into golden on blue... just as i suggested.

They do look much better and visible now.

I'm not even going to respond to the points you made in response to my previous post because it was an absolute joke almost to the point of seeming like you're trolling because of the minuscule amount of effort put into disproving my points and strengthening yours (also the fact that you flat out lied in places). I trust larian enough to have good judgement in this situation after seeing what their recent updates have been like, so i'll assume they find a better way to do it than simply hiding enemy levels.

Done.

Raze, you're not gonna believe this, but I saw you just copied the lists to the OP while I was making one or two final edits just a second ago - could you please re-copy? I owe you man!

So I was 12 hours late, and a few seconds early...

Ha, they don't pay you enough! So I'm done now, really... until the next update.

One more thing on the tooltip descriptions for STR/DEX/INT, considering the overhaul to skills/abilities with update 1.0.59. Skills all share three basic variables: damage/power, AP cost, and cooldown (as far as I know, all skills have a 100% to-hit chance, so that's not a variable here). The new "skill" abilities only apparently affect how many skills you can learn at one time, so I assume the only stats that actually control the above three variables are STR, DEX, and INT (and maybe some talents - or possibly player level?). But the only tooltip that currently says anything about the stat's effects on related skills is INT. So, can anyone help fill in the blanks below, or show me where I'm wrong? Thanks!

Warrior, Rogue, and Ranger/Survivalist skills:
Damage/power affected by: ? (STR, DEX, and/or something else?)
AP cost affected by: ?
Cooldown affected by: ?

Magic (4 elemental categories plus Witchcraft) skills:
Damage/power affected by: INT (and something else?)
AP cost affected by: ?
Cooldown affected by: INT (and something else?)

Well done Aram. I completely agree!

Yeah, if you're talking about Aramintai's mockups, they are slick. I'd especially like to see that crafting system in the game.

Skill list - window


1. Instead of Survivalist how about simply - Ranger skills?


2. Not a biggie at all, just an idea:
Instead of earth, air and other - magic, why not
Geomancy, Aeromancy, Hydromancy, and Pyromancy?


3. Nasty deeds?

That seems a bit ... too ... moralizing? Besides, none of those listed there are nasty deeds.

How about just Deeds? Or at worst Naughty Deeds. Although i dont see whats naughty about lockpicking...



4. errmm... i see that my character still has Charm, Reason and Intimidate - when i try to play RPS.
Where is that in the new menu? Do they appear only after i get some points in them?



Inventory

I see now that when i change the characters in the inventory window, the hotbar doesnt change with it. WHY?
The hotbar changes depending on who is selected in the character portraits?

Why?
Why not have all three connected?

I see that when im trading that the character whose portrait is selected is still considered as a chose active character - despite of who i choose in the trading-invetory window.

Now, when im browsing inventories i have to separately select character portraits to change the hotbar... its just unwieldy.
And i dont see any purpose or use for it.


Connect all three?

per favor.



- edit -


Another thing that i just started noticing. Im not really sure if this particular feature was changed recently or was it the same as when i started playing, two version back...

but now it does sting my eye quite often so ... im guessing this was changed recently?


Anyway, the matter of displaying the pop-up Equiped vs. Selected or moused over item in the inventory:



versus:




I would propose that instead of this setup, the "Equipped weapon" is shown as the further away window, in each of these versions. So it practically changes sides, depending on which side the pop up window appears.

Because, if its locked to be shown on any particular side, either left or right, as it is now locked to be shown on the right side no matter on which side of the pointer these windows are displayed... it creates a confusing instinctive reaction.


At least to me.

In the first picture my brain,... "sees" the item i selected or pointed at displayed as a first window, right next to the selected item i want to compare.

The Equipped item in the first picture is displayed further away then that, as second, on the right.

While in the other picture, the both comparing windows are flipped over to the other side - only this time the Equipped item is first in line and the selected item is second - further away.

And that creates this small kind of instinctive reaction of confusing the two in that split second, - at least to me.


Im not sure if this is just my personal small problem of some kind but... this doesnt have a naturally, quickly understandable result - to me.
I am expecting that the item i selected or pointed at would be first one to be shown, right next to my pointer - and that it wouldnt change depending on how the comparing windows are flipped, to accommodate the screen position.

Im not sure if anyone else finds this a bit confusing (it isnt any big kind of a problem in any way), but it is little bit ... less then optimal?

If no one else sees this in the same way as i do - feel free to disregard. I`ll get use to it eventually.

But it would be easier to get and quickly relate to if my suggestion was taken. (i trust it wouldnt be too difficult to actually do?)

I do find the current item compare UI to be quite confusing, because it always shows the New/Equipped items in left to right order, and when the inventory is at the right side of the screen, that shows the equipped item closest to the thing you're mousing over, and the item you're hovering over on the far side.

It should ALWAYS show the item you're mousing over closest to the item, regardless of where the inventory screen is. It's just confusing otherwise.

Thank you. Then it isnt just a small problem for me only.


-edit-

not to double post... i would like to make another argument for allowing zoom out options.

Since pictures speak thousands of words...



This way... you get treated with extremely beautiful scenes you cannot get otherwise, such as this:





I rest my case!






- oh, of course, this isn't that useful for actual gameplay and especially combat or searching for traps. But its great for navigation through environment and just traveling around.

In combat you would automatically zoom back into the usual camera positions, or you could of course do it yourself to explore in more details.

It could be limited - zoomed in a bit more then this, but that tilt angle should stay.


- edit -

Moved most of the screenshots behind a spoiler tag for easier viewing.

100% behind the increased zoom level, also the fog/blurring is gorgeous at that level

I also would like to be able to target portraits, have a toggle for link all, separate all characters.

But the main wish is that when i have an inventory open, if i click a different portrait, it switches!

Because of the new "Sort by..." dropdown menu, there now is a gap between the inventory and the stats pages above. That gap would be the perfect place to drop in buttons like "Repair", "Identify", and "Craft".

Craft would pop up its own interface which has two slots for the items to combine and a button to craft it.

-Another good sort option would be "Sort by Items that need Identifying". (But by Item Grouping is the most needed)

-The ability to mark Items in inventory as Junk (aka quick sell) and then the ability when selling to sell all junk on one click. Great quality of life feature.

-Quests. When reloading all the quest details are closed but flashing as if they are new. No likey.

-Quests. When you get a new update to a quest, when going into the Quest Log, the Quest either title or Sub Part should be flashing. (By the way love the Dialog Tab!)

-ESC Closing - Any window, Any. If you press ESC it will close them all first before it shows the Main Menu. The most particular one is Dialogs that you have to scroll down to click "End Convo", this way pressing ESC also ends a conversation. Pretty Std.

-Also if you selected a Skill to Use and want to back off it, yes Right Click usually does the trick, but pressing ESC should also cancel selected skill back to "no skill selected".

-One Keybind to Cycle all controlled players.

-When trading you should be able to scroll through the players (using the arrows keys we have) and each character should be able to add to the "Sell List". Right now it can only be one at a time.

-When comparing items Buying and Selling it should should compare against the player in the Buy/Sell screen and if you change the player via the arrows it should change the comparison to that new players gear.

-The ability to show more than one power bar at a time. We can have up to 3 power bars but you have to toggle through them. Even early on, you can easily blow well past 10 items. Having the ability to stack and show all 3 at once simply makes a turn based game more elegant to play. I prefer this over a Radial Menu, but limiting to only 10 at once, I may prefer a radial menu to that. Have it as an option and I don't care if it looks good, I'm after functionality, like how many mmo's do it.

-If not multiple power bars, then please a keybind to quickly cycle. (Or am I missing seeing it?)

-Have like spell books in vendors stack.

-UPDATE: Dialog Window keeps creeping a little each time after a load. It has some memory but some math must be off a little.

-When comparing while buying. Equipped is on the Right and Potential buy is on the left, opposite of the orientation of the player is on the left side of the screen and the vendor the right. If the compare while buying was flip flopped it would be more logical.

-When dragging to place an Inventory Item from say the top to the bottom, you can't hold an item and scroll the inventory. So you move it a few blocks down, scroll, pick it drag a few more and drop, scroll, rinse and repeat until at bottom. UPDATE: It can be done you have to hold LMB down and use the scroll wheel, that's pretty hard to do as a no-brainer.

-Character Portraits on the left side are too big and when you have a full party it limits the Chat Screen size. Perhaps a Horizontal Portrait Layout Option? Or make them smaller? Or an option to scale them in size.

-Random NPC chatter should not show in the bottom right dialog window. Redundant and erases and clutters things I really want to see.

Added:
-Red Items at Vendors that you cannot equip.
-Gray Items X levels below your level.

I think there needs to be a sorting option in the barter menu as well, for convenience.

In barter screen I think more granular tabs are necessary - not just gear, but weapons and armor separated.

You can use the mouse scroll wheel to scroll through the inventory while dragging an item.

Thanks. That one actually takes some skill to hold LMB and use the scroll wheel.

I miss the ability to use summons to break doors and chests to save my durability ^_^ if that could make a come back please. thanks <3

(my spider was un-clickable to control outide battle ._.)

I'm pretty sure that was a deliberate changed to not allow that kind of thing. Too easily exploitable, I imagine. I'll always cherish my memories of having Wolfie rip the throat out of the Fabulous Five recruiter, though.

And that my friends is why we want Early Access.

In this version the ability to collect certain items like chests by dragging them over the character portrait has been removed. I don't see a reason for this and would like to see it back in the game because I don't see a reason why it was removed in the first place.

More good ideas, and I personally want to see Larian put every single one in the game. Get to work folks!

Seriously, it looks like the devs are still working on basic gameplay (especially skills/abilities/talents), despite the planned June 30 release date, so it might not be realistic to expect the level of UI polish I'd ideally like to see in time for release. But - at the risk of being trolled for suggesting I, as a non-game developer, know what the hell I'm talking about - my personal "must-have" sub-list of UI improvements which would seem to me to be relatively "easy" to fix (taken from the longer list in the OP) would be:

1) All items of an identical type (except equipment) should stack with each other in the inventory and trading menus - there are still some that don't, as stated in the OP

2) Items should be consistently arranged in the same item grid slot order in all NPC trading and current player inventory menus - being able to sort inventory as of beta 1.0.59 (thanks, by the way!), but still having a jumbled mess in the trading screen, is extreeeeeemely annoying

3) Left-clicking (rather than left-clicking-and-holding/dragging) on an item within the inventory menu should allow you to pick it up - this one at least I can confidently say would be very easy to fix

4) Inventory container fixes (backpacks, pouches, barrels, crates, etc.) - I think an admin posted that they're aware of these bugs, but not having keys and quest items "recognized" by the game if placed inside a container makes containers sort of useless

5) Activating a character via its portrait or the "F1"-"F4" keys should also switch to that character's inventory or skills menu, if open - again, really inconvenient not to have this

6) A "pause" function should be added - e.g., the game world should pause when accessing the game menu (via ESC) and when popup messages appear

7) All keyboard controls should be fully reassignable in the "Controls" menu - you still can't assign a function to the WASD keys without the keys also moving the camera

8) Repair/identification overhaul - one-click "repair all"; item auto-identification (keeping existing related ability requirements) - some people may find clicking thousands of times on hammers, identifying glasses, and equipment fun, but I humbly beg Larian to remove this "realism feature"; it's really become incredibly tedious, and for me at least, has started to ruin much of the fun of the game

9) A fully customizable (including skills and equipment) "classless" character creation option - 'nuff said.


Of course, what I'd really like to see is Larian devote time to implementing all 34 requests in the OP, as well as many other great UI ideas in this and other topics. I've said it before, but a great game like D:OS can be at least partially ruined by sloppy inventory systems and other clunky interface mechanics, as the players find themselves wasting time micromanaging the UI which could be better spent actually enjoying the game. But as I've also said before, I really appreciate the improvements Larian has implemented so far during the beta, and look forward to more in the next update. Cheers!

IMO out of everything, this one has to be done. Any game today will get baptized in flames for not having it. No reason to get the mass yappers uniting against thee. It will totally skew the perception of the game. If it was a first person game, I would say FOV has the same affect.



Agreed. If mmo's have done anything good for these types of RPG's is they have shown devs better UI's. So many old-school games died a death because they were tedious. Back then resolution and simply pioneering was the issue. Today we have the rez and have tons of UI's to draw from, the more elegant/clever the UI the more a pleasure it is to sit down and enjoy. For example being TB, having the ability to show many skill bars at the same time (I don't care if it is an option and it's a generic looking bar) is wonderful. Being able to one click your choice really up's the pleasure of TB games, to make the slow faster. In the distant past again Rez wouldn't allow it, but today we gots the room for it. M&M X, we pleaded over and over, nope one 10 bar, still beats nothing, but it would have just been so much more pleasurable with one clicking any and all options for a turn.

This isn't terrible, but an ongoing focus would be great.

I agree that those little things really do add up later on in the game when it doesn't have things like all repair, auto-identification and all item of identical type search. It needs to be in the game.

Two more ideas that have my vote (from R0hland/darkened/etc.):

1) Hotkey for character linking
I like darkened's example: ctrl+shift+# to set; ctrl+# to recall

2) Auto-pausing or auto-entering combat mode when damage taken
I'd personally add this to the "pause function" request already in this thread, so it'd be on my "must-have" shortlist. The whole "winning-a-long-battle-then-not-having-enough-time-to-heal-from-poison-before-dying" routine was getting really old.


EDIT: Hmm, I guess the below issue isn't a problem after all; don't know what happened earlier.
Also, anyone else having problems in 1.0.59 with scrolling up and down the inventory grid using the mouse wheel? It never used to be an issue for me in previous versions, but it sometimes didn't work during my brief testing late last week.

I've seen many more requests elsewhere for things in this thread (a "pause" function/button; NPC dialogue options previously chosen by the player should be "dimmed"/"grayed"; selecting a character should also switch to his/her inventory window, if open; etc.), so I'm glad I'm still not the only player nagging Larian for this stuff.

Speaking of which, any date estimate for the next update so we can confirm all these features have been added?

Next week at the earliest, although that doesn't mean that all things will be added. The next patch may just be mostly a balance one to respond to the feedback to the skill/ability changes.

Cool, thanks Stabbey. And yeah, it's unrealistic to expect more major progress on the UI with the next update when the devs are still spending time balancing other game features, but as there continue to be requests for these interface improvements, I hope they'll keep polishing these extremely important game aspects as well. At least most of the things requested in this thread (with a couple exceptions - looking at you, repair and identify... ) aren't controversial among the player community, as far as I can tell.

But again, beating a dead horse now - just looking forward to the next update. Later.

I see that the cursor, or mouse pointer still lingers in a state, after i already used a spell, which makes me wait a second more to be able to cast another.


For example, when im using magic to bash some treasure chest - i cast one spell with Scarlet, then another with Roderick so i cut down on cooldown waiting, yes?

But when i cast the first spell with Scarlet, the mouse pointer remains in that "mode" or state for about a second, second and a half longer , during which time i cannot select Roderick or do anything, really. and that of course happens when i cast a spell with Roderick...and so on.


There is always that delay between any two actions.

Its not a big problem out of combat, bashing chests and the like.
Just unwieldy. And it looks unnecessary.

But it is a bigger problem in that case when one of the characters walks into a deadly surface and i need to heal them quickly. or they are damaged with poison or fire in combat and the combat ends.

If that responsiveness could be enhanced, made faster - it would be great.

Agreed i see these UI elements to be right up there with the balancing honestly.
Skill system tweaking/balancing... fixes on the elemental aspect of the game.. how fire tends to insta kill you if your party memeber are in it in real time.. and UI polishing/quality of life additions.. thats my hope for the next update.

I didn't say that I thought there would be no more UI improvements ever, just that the next patch might be mostly about changing the skill system.

Ya thats a major point.. also wanna test those A.I personalities so badly....

My gut feeling is we will see the next update around the first of june.

Right, I hear you Stabbey... still holding out for a lot of the requests in this thread to be implemented eventually (please?). And the major beta updates have been coming about every 2-3 weeks, so yeah ynotndalton, hopefully by June 1 we'll see something new.

Larian implemented a couple more requests from the list in the OP with yesterday's update to version 1.0.80 (and they didn't even mention the first one in the change log - sneaky!). I don't plan to do detailed testing of what else might have been added until the next major update, but here's what we definitely got:

13) The value of every stat/ability modified from its base value should be displayed in a different color in the inventory menu
(Simple and awesome improvement. I can see the blue (purple? whatever) color-coding is now done when gear alters "basic" stats like movement/crit chance/resistances, but I'm not yet sure about abilities - I haven't played enough in the new version to test with a piece of equipment that raises an ability. But at least for the changes I can see right now, thank you!)

9) Character creation enhancements
Added 360-degree rotation of character models; allowed editing of starting skills
(Now if we can just get a true "classless" option, we'll be good!)

The change log also mentioned "Fixes to Item Descriptions, Stacking, Stats," but I'd need to test all the items that still didn't stack in the previous update to confirm, and I don't plan to this time. But if anyone else has the interest/patience to verify and post here about which of the non-stacking items listed in the OP have actually been fixed with this update, go nuts.

Anyway, more good stuff from the hard-working devs (not to mention all the additional bug-fixing and balance changes listed in the change log). But there's still a whole month to release, so don't stop improving the UI just yet!

They also changed on which side "compare tooltips" for equipped and item you are inspecting displayed. Now the description of the item you are inspecting is always first in order, next to the mouse pointer, regardless on which side the tooltips displays.

Havn't had time to really play yet.. did they make the npc dialoug thats already been read be dimmed and topics with new info highlighted in this update?

Not in this update.

If they don't do anything else i want this lol.. it drives me crazy im ocd and don't like missing any dialoug and to click it and it be a repeat sometimes and other times not sucks. i see that as a flaw

Can we have a check list on requests that are already added in? Pretty please...

First, some bad stuff: in a previous beta update, the devs had implemented the request to have all weapon tooltips note "one-handed" or "two-handed," but for some reason, the latest update has removed that feature. As with removing the tooltip showing the effect of barter/attitude on prices, this is another little step backwards for the UI. Why, Larian, why?

(EDIT: I just saw this in the 1.0.80 changelist, but I frankly don't see how it would be an improvement: "Removed to 1H 2H thing under title of item, should not be here, we will do it in description.")


But back to the good stuff: thanks for pointing out that other addition, Hiver. And Minchi, I've updated below the list of UI requests from this and other threads that Larian has implemented over the past several updates. Note there are a couple I still haven't confirmed (there have been a couple updates - including this one - where they said item stacking was completed when it actually wasn't, and I haven't tested the "exception" problem items listed in the OP under the current update), while a few I listed as "partial." As far as I can tell (based on very limited testing), none of the other requests in the OP have been implemented yet - but hopefully a lot more of those will be in with the next big update!

---(UNCONFIRMED) all non-equippable items of identical type stack with each other in inventory
---(UNCONFIRMED) the order of scrolling through inventory/skill windows using the left/right arrow icons now follows the currently selected player portrait order
---(PARTIAL) inventory sorting (but not yet "by type") has been added
---(PARTIAL) crafting enhancements: recipes learned from books are now tracked in the journal - but see the OP list for other requests related to crafting
---(PARTIAL) character creation enhancements: added 360-degree rotation of character models; allowed editing of starting skills - but still no "classless" option, or option to change starting equipment
---(PARTIAL) numerical values of stats/abilities positively modified from the character's "base" values by equipped gear/consumed food and potions are now displayed in blue - but stats/abilities modified by traits (which can be changed via dialogue) are still not color-coded; neither are any values that are currently suffering penalties (maybe these should be in red instead of blue - e.g. armor penalties on sight/hearing/movement)
---skills can now be used in combat via the main skill menu
---hotbar skill icons now display a colored triangle when plotting character combat movement if insufficient AP for the skill would be available if the path is chosen
---a popup message ("Are you sure you want nothing in return for that?") now appears if the player attempts to trade items without selecting any items in the NPC's inventory
---the trade window now allows switching between players
---NPCs now repair/identify items in their inventory
---NPCs can now repair equipped items
---unnecessary companion talents are now hidden
---windows now "remember" their on-screen locations
---"journal"/"map" keyboard shortcuts now act as proper open-close toggles
---switching to a new player no longer interrupts the started action of the original player
---left-clicking an unreachable location no longer recenters the camera on the player
---the mouse pointer now "cuts through" walls/obstacles to allow interaction with adjacent items/containers/NPCs
---equipped-vs.-new gear item comparison tooltip window locations changed so tooltip for equipped item is closest to that item

I definitely think it's better as description instead of in the name...

It not being there currently is simply a bug waiting to be fixed.

I doubt "dimming text" will ever be implemented simply because for most NPC's the response is a random pick from several options, done when asked... and it's impossible to do a 'did you get it' pass on something that's not generated yet.
Changing that would be a LOT of work, especially seeing the payback.

Log window still does not remember its position after loading save. Sometimes it even forgets its size.

I still don't understand why that's considered better, but if they do at least put the 1H/2H info in the description, I guess I'll live.



I'm no developer myself, but I'm thinking even if the "generic" dialogue options are randomly assigned to NPCs (though it doesn't seem they are from my playthroughs), couldn't they just attach the "dimming" to the global instance of the dialogue choice throughout the game, regardless of which individual NPCs it gets assigned to? Not sure if that makes sense to anyone but me.

Just found another enhancement in the patch which isn't listed in your notes:

When trying to drag "Hair" onto "Hair" it pops up a Craft or Stack UI, so you can choose whether to...

That's great, and it's one step closer to the goal of a Craft UI which lets you drag things from your inventory into it to perform a craft. It's not there yet, you can't drag things onto there, in part because there's only the one ingredient slot, and the second slot shows the result of the craft - also a good thing.

Thanks Stabbey; I didn't play enough in the latest update to see that - sounds promising!

But I saw you posted elsewhere that the beta will end on June 20 (which isn't surprising, if they're sticking to the June 30 release schedule), so we're really getting down to the wire with these requests - there are probably only one or two major version updates left. As I posted above a few days ago, I feel there are still many requests from this thread that would seem relatively simple, but would significantly improve the UI. Here's hoping they're still working on this stuff!

And as a side note, I've already mentioned how ridiculously tedious I personally find the current repair mechanic, but I noticed during my brief time with the latest update (I only played through the first two battles) that equipment durability loss, especially on weapons, seems to have been lessened quite a bit. (My fighter cut up about 6 enemies with his training sword, and the sword was still at 70/70 durability afterwards.) For those who have played more in the latest version: was this just a glitch, or has equipment durability loss really been toned down compared to earlier versions? If it has - assuming they won't give me my frickin' "repair all" button (and I'm afraid they won't) - this would be good news for me. Cheers!

1. vendors: we should have the possibility to show only usable items. also stuff that i have sold to the vendor should appear in another window. do it disappear at all? im level 9 and can still rebuy things i have sold at the beginning of the game.

2. map: wayshrines should have names when you mouseover them. sometimes i dont know what shrine i have to use to get where i want.

3. it would be cool if we could port by clicking on the waypoint on the map!

3. custom markers cant be removed.

4. more different armor/cloths! more colors, more variations (dyes?)

5. you cant compare to other characters while shopping. you have to quit the barter-window and reopen it with the character you want compare items.

6. recipes are not userfriendly. you have to open some recipes to find the one you search. also its too much text to read. they should be simpler, maybe with icons, like icon + icon = icon

7. i really miss "identify all"!

8. sometimes i dont know if i have found a 1 or 2handed weapon

9. we really need another solution for all those keys!

10. the functionality of traits is not clear enough: how can i push one trait? it feels its just luck.

11. tooltips are hard to read. maybe they could be a bit better designed, with some lines to separate some parts of text. also while bartering they are annoying.

12. a waypoint to the marketplace of cyseal would be really, really great!

Ive checked better today, the mouse pointer stays unchanging, when you cast any spell - for three full seconds. So you cannot select another spell or a skill during that time.

Im not sure what could be the reason for it, maybe... to prevent players to throw several spells too fast..? or something?

Seeing how its turn based combat and engine is performing really well otherwise... it doesnt seem it would need such delay. If that could be lowered down it would be great.

Personal preference mostly, but having it lengthen the item-name did get rather annoying giving more clutter when alting, or generally when hovering over weapons in your inventory... IMO.
It fits much better as the first description, all the way at the top. We'll see where they place it though.

They could... if it wasn't for, what I said before, you can't check for something that isn't generated yet.
Maybe an example makes this clearer. "Jake talk" has 3 nodes, and there's a 4th node on quest update.

You talk with NPC1. You select Jake. The RNG comes up with "2"... you have now heard option 2.
You talk with NPC2. It has the Jake option. Should it be greyed out or not? You've heard 2 before, but it doesn't generate 1,2 or 3 until you select that option. How does it figure out to grey it? Or should it simply grey it hearing 2, even if you haven't heard option 1 and 3?
Or should it grey out when you heard 1, 2 and 3? If so, people would still complain they might hear repeatals.
It should ungrey upon the opening of option 4. Of course, like 1,2,3 4 gets generated actually clicking the option, then it runs the requirement if 4 should show. How do you check that before generation?

Answer; You don't.
And that's the problem with the suggestion, technically-wise.

It works in other games since they simply don't randomly generate answers based on a PC's input, and for say, questupdates, give an entirely new node for the player to choice rather than re-giving the same, but altering the feedback given to the player.

Hope that makes the problem clear...

Critical everyday CONTROLS / HOTKEY


--- Add "T" as "Trade" activator in dialogue to NPC





















--- Add "Space" as "Accept" in little pop-up window

Yes. This is much needed. And also ability to disable tutorial pop-ups.

Suggestion regarding Waypoint Shrine markers on the map: label them on the map according to their names in the Rift Travel menu so we can more easily figure out which shrine to teleport to.

Space to override tutorial seems prone to making them misable for the people who need them most (especially since they currently aren't logged in the convo log).

The "disable tutorial pop-ups" seem the better solution for non-first time players.

@ riptide; Sounds good

i would like to see an improved multiplayer chatlog.

Now the problem is that you might have problems to follow the dialogues of your co-player, especially if you are in a crowded area (the marketplace for example), or if your co-player just clicks fast trough it.

What i would like is basically what other games did: if you are in a certain range, and your friend starts to talk to someone, you get a dialogue-popup too, but you can't click anything (except for multiplayer dialogues, ofc).

I have the feeling they wanted to create a multiplayer game, for two players with equally "important" main characters, and this is what i was really waiting for.

some stuff is still really hard to deal with in multiplayer. It starts with the book you find at the beginning: it is quest relevant and triggers a dialogue between the two main characters, but only one player has to pick it up and read it. Right after you did read it, the multiplayer dialogue starts, and basically you have to tell your co-player what the book was about, either in chat or skype, give him the book so that he can read it himself or tell him to read the quest-log for a quick summary, because the multiplayer dialogue implies that both characters know the book and have an opinion on the subject.
So eiter i would like to see the multiplayer dialogue as "oh hey lets read the book together" or that it starts only when both players read the book, and not just one.

see, i appreciate that both players can move freely and that you can split the party and then teleport back, this is why i want this dialogue-popup only if you are within a certain range - could be very close if you ask me. Either you should be able to directly overhear the conversation, or you are too far away. What i don't like is that you have to filter the chat-log for the relevant text, because you can't even adjust the chat-log in a way that you don't have to read all the chatter and npc spam too.

also, the game lacks a few multiplayer options such as "share gold" (this would just share the gold coins you or your friend picks up equally between both characters), while it has brilliant other stuff (such as friendly fire, teleport, the homestead.... ).

As my mouse scrolling is broken, I had to use the keyboard (page up/down) for the zoom; but it's a little uncomfortable, 'cause we need to press several times a key for this. It would not be better with a 'hold on' system, in addition?

I think there needs to be an option to disable tooltips and that ? icon for those players who already know how to play the game. I've played the beta alot of times, so tooltips for me now just stand in the way of gameplay.

It's coming but wasn't ready for this update yet.

Hey ForkTong - are there plans to implement any of the other requests in this thread (like the stuff in the list in the OP)? Thanks!

Thank you for the key to cycle through players. Very much appreciated. Would it be too much to ask for a hotkey to cycle the 3 Power Bars?

Another very nice to have if we aren't getting any more sorting features for the inventory. To have it auto-sort every time we open the inventory to the last Sort option we chosen.

Thanks for the additional Configurable Keys.

I know it wasn't this patch, but thanks for at the end of battle no one moves. That helps a lot.

Thanks for reduced ground damage it is feeling pretty right now.

Thanks for the Expand/Collapse all buttons in the Quest log. Helps considerably.

Keychain?

Inventory Slots Highlighting
Would it be possible to highlight the appropriate equipping slot when hovering over (or when picking up) an item in your inventory?
Since the items are pretty small (at least on high res) it's not always clear what exactly it is that I'm looking at, so highlighting the slot on my character would help a lot.

(Copied from my own post here http://www.larian.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=498570#Post498570 which I wouldn't have opened if I saw this one!)

The Rift Travel button should flash (and keep flashing until pressed) when it first appears after your conversation with Zix-Zax.

Many people don't even notice the button show up for the first time, myself included.

I would prefer the game tips in the Journal as well because the green button by the map is kinda dull looking and when the rift travel button feature is activated its just going to confuse the players when they are looking for that button o.o;;;

I think it would be a good idea to let the players know about global chat and to give them a fair warning that there be spoilers, so that they should use it with that in mind.

It would just be nice and professional like.

One of the hints while the game is loading.


You can also say the game was hacked by chinese spec ops.

A warning is a good idea, but in my opinion it should be hidden by default as people can get spoilers right after loading a savegame or starting a new game.

You could obscure the global chat with a dialogue box with the warning and information on what exactly the global chat is.

There are these two annoying comparison windows that show up every time I try to pick some wearable item using alt, they block the view of what else can be picked and just get in the way in general:

It's also annoying during barter.
Can this comparison be done only when the item is already in the inventory and only during browsing the inventory? And maybe show only whether the item is magical or not when it's still on the ground?

Though I love they have added that feature but I agree they should make a new transparent UI for picking up the items.

The crafting menu is a bit strange. If you combine 2 different items and both of which are consumed in the process, the menu only shows the item that you initiated the crafting with and the finished product. It does not show the other item used for crafting or additional crafting products.

e.g this:


should look like this:

If it did that, it would also be easier to craft things without being on the "All" tab, so I agree. Well, and you'd also have to make a button to bring the UI up, and code to let you drag things to it, but that's the direction I'd like to see it go.

On the character creation screen it would be awesome if there was a clear all button, so it removes any attributes, skills, abilities and talents leaving a blank slate to build on.

So... they actually made the crafting menu?

blargh...

Whatever.


Im noticing that the camera has started to center on each character that moves, enemy or ally during combat. It is extremely annoying.

I dont remember that happening that much in the first beta versions. Or it wasnt so frigging radical as now.

And as far as i see there is no option to disable it.

Can i please have that option because this is making me feel like im in some washing machine!?

It's not a bug deal for crafts only made on one tab, but quite a few recipes require you to use things from different tabs, which basically forces you to use the "All" tab, making dragging + dropping awkward.

They should have stuck with their own style of crafting and recipe books know how. And just make it clearer through tutorial.
Now im sorry i ever mentioned how other games do it. Certainly didnt want to see it used here too, again.

They added the window after drag and dropping to support crafting with stacks, rather than having to drag and drop multiple times. It also acts as a conformation, in case you are trying to organize your inventory, rather than craft.

Are there any news whether rock-paper-scissors game will be optional, especially in singleplayer? Previously suggested dialgoue option to just agree by saying: "Fine, we'll do it your way", without playing this stupid mini-game every time some argument comes up was quite good and simple to implement. Why not make it happen?

I would definitely support an option to disable RPS and just have the dice rolls decide things.

umm, ok. I was just trying to fill up a dozen bottles with water and i could do it just one by one.

----

The mouse pointer still has three seconds lag between every use.

----


Goof idea.

Yes, that's a nice idea it will defiantly help players knowing how crafting works and the item you just have created for them to look onto. The UI also should be opened with a short cut key also.

Some suggestions from Friendly Fire Co-op:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-sZJ9F0G_U


There really needs to be a "search by item type".

I was finally able to spend a few minutes in beta 1.0.93, enough to check some things against the requests listed in the OP and elsewhere in the thread:



THE GOOD:
Larian added the "one-handed/two-handed" descriptions back to weapon titles as I'd requested - awesome. I also really dig the new area map visual style - very classy. Finally, they (at least partially) fixed the below things requested in the OP list (the first four with the most recent update; the last two with the previous update, but included here since I still haven't updated the OP list to reflect the changes):

Inventory container fixes (backpacks, pouches, barrels, crates, etc.)
(fixed)

Ability tooltips that still need to describe exact percentage/numerical effects
(partially fixed: Armour Specialist tooltip fixed; Offense Rating tooltip still not fixed to include +3/level effect of Lucky Charm; Body Building/Willpower/Charisma/Lucky Charm tooltips still don't list numerical effects of abilities, but maybe that's intentional?)

After using a shovel, both your weapon and shield (if previously equipped) should be automatically re-equipped
(fixed)

All keyboard controls should be fully reassignable in the "Controls" menu
(partially fixed: still can't reassign ALT, but unlocking WASD was a huge improvement)

The value of every stat/ability modified from its base value should be displayed in a different color in the inventory menu
(partially fixed: stat/ability values still aren't color-coded in blue/purple when altered from their base values by traits - e.g. Reputation by the Altruistic trait, Crafting by the Pragmatic trait, etc.)

Character creation enhancements
(partially fixed: added 360-degree rotation of character models and allowed editing of starting skills - but we still need a true "classless" option!)



THE NOT-SO-GOOD::
I think this is a new bug with 1.0.93, but the game no longer saves character portrait order or formations upon loading. Also, I've been lowering my expectations for more of the things in the OP list to be fixed/added due to the June 30 release date, but for the love of all that's good, please at least give us the below.

Items should be consistently arranged in the same item grid slot order in all NPC trading and current player inventory menus

Left-clicking (rather than left-clicking-and-holding/dragging) on an item within the inventory menu should allow you to pick it up

Activating a character via its portrait or the "F1"-"F4" keys should also switch to that character's inventory or skills menu, if open


The UI is getting slightly better with each beta update; here's hoping for more with what will probably be the final update before release. Later!

I really wish alt or some other button would highlight containers. As is I found finding all of the stuff in the tutorial dungeon to be very annoying.

Unless I missed something, this would be neat to have in coop as in having an option to automatically follow your coop partner (I've had this a few times where my coop partner wanted to show me stuff and I followed him). An exact step-by-step following could eventually work here too.

+1 for the follow.

Another one for coop - an indication when the other player is in their inventory. An animation, or an icon, or even a status icon.

The OP's list is pretty good already (especially with the additional suggestions in this thread), but there is yet another thing one could add to the list:

Being able to see your coop partner's actionpoints/how much are left after each action would be nice. This could be simply indicated by a number under the portrait (not on it like it is with the left rounds for summoned beings) or small dots below it, maybe even a segmented bar - or a number/bar below the circle during a combat or alike. Not badly necessary, but a nice feature or option that one could enable at least. When playing solo, I know how much I have left for each of my own characters, but this would make the actions of the coop partner a bit more translucent such as making interaction and cooperation better e.g. if I know he has 3 points left and I just remember I could send him my potion to use in this round so he can survive longer. This would be very useful during hard fights at least.

Yeah, I think you should be able to see your party members stats when you CTRL + Mouseover (including current AP) even with 0 Loremaster.

Hi all! I would like to suggest a small improvement regarding the arrows indicating the positions of the characters on the map when they are on different floors. I was playing today in coop and for me was very confusing the fact that the arrow indicating my partner was put on the edge of the map. I had to ask to my friend where she was, because I was thinking she was somewhere very far in the world when she was just on the 2nd floor of the same building...
A better approach, maybe, could be just leave the arrow in the same position but with a different color

Fast Travel suggestions:

• End of Time should be called Homestead (either that or the Homestead should be called End of Time), and/or should probably be a bit different than the others (or maybe always first).
• Sometimes the Rift Device icon flashes green, and it's a bit unclear why. First time it happened I tried going to the city (thought it was a story quest update or something). I think that having a small flashing Rift icon next to the relevant waypoint that triggered the notification would make sense.
• Click on a discovered waypoint on the map to travel to it - or at least show its name when hovering over it. Personally I prefer just showing its name, as it makes it a bit "harder" to fast travel, which is fine.

I would like to see that too. It's slightly annoying always having to ask where your other half is.
Alternatively, one can make it an arrow that points upwards (or downwards, for lower levels).

Legendary Items "special" stats

In one of the latest Diablo 3 patches they introduced new special modifiers on items - basically things outside the normal "+X to Y" range. Think stuff like "1% chance to cast fire nova when hit" to even "% chance for fallen enemies to drop ingredients" and even non-mechanic stuff like "leave black footprints as you walk around" on boots, for example.

Obviously it's not really high priority or anything, but it can be very cool to find stuff like that.

How "1% chance to cast fire nova when hit" or "% chance for fallen enemies to drop ingredients" not "+X to Y"? It sounds same. What I would really like to see is equipment that grants skills. Like staff that lets you cast fireball or sword that grants whirlwind or boots that grant speedcreeper perk. Stats of the skills would be dependant on your attributes, so warrior without decent INT will take many AP to cast said fireball and it will be not very powerful.

I think I've heard that the random item generation does indeed have separate pools of affixes, so Legendary quality can get special things that magic and rare can't.



I've also heard that items granting skills like that has been added to the code, so I presume Larian will use it for something.

As I was writing that I realized it does sound a bit the same - but to me it's different enough. Randomly casting a spell when you attack/hit, is very different than +1 Speed. It's just more interesting.

And of course other special stuff can be added, I don't presume to know and list all of what's possible - I'm just talking about the general idea of having cool "special" stuff instead just attributes/abilities/res.

I just fired up version 1.0.115 to check on any UI improvements. I like the new bird's-eye "tactical camera" (which helps with targeting enemies, among other things), and pathfinding has continued to improve (particularly around traps/damage environments). There were also a few additional minor tweaks to tooltips etc., which are appreciated (although there are still some gaps - e.g. upon the first level-up, the popup message says you can level-up by using the "I" key, even if you changed the character sheet key in the controls menu).

So compared to the list in the OP of this thread, which was current as of three major updates ago, here's what's been changed (this is just what I know best, but there have been several other good ideas in this and other threads about the chat and coop UI, etc.):



COMPLETELY FIXED

Inventory container fixes (backpacks, pouches, barrels, crates, etc.)

After using a shovel, both your weapon and shield (if previously equipped) should be automatically re-equipped

The price listed for a stack of items in the trading menu should be displayed both for one individual item and for the entire stack



PARTIALLY FIXED

Ability tooltips that still need to describe exact percentage/numerical effects
(Armour Specialist tooltip fixed; Offense Rating tooltip still not fixed to include +3/level effect of Lucky Charm; Body Building/Willpower/Charisma/Lucky Charm tooltips still don't list numerical effects of abilities, but maybe that's intentional?)

All keyboard controls should be fully reassignable in the "Controls" menu
(still can't reassign ALT, but unlocking WASD was a huge improvement)

The value of every stat/ability modified from its base value should be displayed in a different color in the inventory menu
(stat/ability values still aren't color-coded in blue/purple when altered from their base values by traits - e.g. Reputation by the Altruistic trait, Crafting by the Pragmatic trait, etc.)

Pathfinding enhancements
(party pathfinding in relation to traps and damage environments has been significantly improved since the alpha; it could still be even better, but it's probably as good as it's going to get)

Character creation enhancements
(added 360-degree rotation of character models and allowed editing of starting skills - but we still need a true "classless" option!)



Finally, my personal sub-list of the stuff in the OP that desperately needs to be fixed is below (including one new bug - the first listed below - that was introduced in the 1.0.93 update). IMO, a "100% polished" UI would implement many more of the requests in the OP list and elsewhere in this thread, but Larian's made great strides since the alpha. And of course, there are now only 11 days until release... but I'm still hoping for at least some of those good "surprises" the devs promised to be related to the UI. Cheers!



REALLY, REALLY NEED TO BE FIXED

Character portrait order and formations should be retained when loading a save (i.e. not automatically defaulted to the original order/formation)

Activating a character via its portrait or the "F1"-"F4" keys should also switch to that character's inventory or skills menu, if open

Items should be consistently arranged in the same item grid slot order in all NPC trading and current player inventory menus

Left-clicking (rather than left-clicking-and-holding/dragging) on an item within the inventory menu should allow you to pick it up

Correction: All keyboard *and mouse* controls should be fully reassignable in the "Controls" menu. Currently you can not reassign "move to" which is hard coded to left mouse button. You can not assign mouse wheel up or mouse wheel down to any control and likewise you can not reassign zooming.

There are a number of RPGs that have these limitations and all of them are low budget and of poor quality.

Well, by all appearances we're about to see that trend broken, aren't we?

Or did I misread an implication into what you wrote?

I'm not so confident about the interface.

No word of keyboard movement, so for all practical purposes I won't be able to play the game. I remember Dragon Commander being sluggish in responding to mouse clicks and doesn't seem like I have reason to believe otherwise here. Then we have the inventory, the wonky targeting, and probably others. I don't understand why Larian is so anti-usability. But I'm also reasonably confident that in time we'll have all of this and more, when we just keep complaining.

Here are some suggestions I thought up. I don't know if these have already been suggested.

1. Ability to manually enter the item quantity when separating a stack of items. (E.g. 4 potions or 10 gold). The current slider becomes imprecise when dealing with large quantities.

2. Checkmark system to unlink characters instead of dragging them to the right.

3. Waypoint shrines with names on the map.

4. Multiple items of the same type should stack. (Copies of the same book).

After browsing skill book traders n-th time I've understood what I'm missing. We need ALT to show skill icons instead of skill book icons. This will make it much easier to find needed skill.

I think saying Larian is "anti-usability" is going a bit far, but I agree with your basic point. My take on the alpha/beta is the devs have focused almost entirely on balancing gameplay according to player feedback - and although you can't please all the people all the time, they ended up spending extra time flip-flopping (a bit) on some gameplay aspects. But although quests, combat, loot, etc. are the "core" entertainment drivers of any RPG, if they're packaged in an interface that's less than user-friendly, the entire game experience suffers.

Don't get me wrong - as I've posted elsewhere in this thread, Larian has clearly been listening to our UI feedback, as seen in the slight improvements made with each update. I'm just a little disappointed that - considering some critical inventory/character management fixes that have yet to be made, and that have been standard in other RPGs for many years - this area doesn't seem to be much of a priority for them. But these hard-working folks have pulled off great things before. Here's hoping for more progress on the UI with patches (or in some cases... mods).

I just briefly tested out today's patch. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be any additional UI fixes/improvements from this thread (at least not the ones I've been complaining about ), with one (partial) exception: the recently introduced bug where your character portrait order isn't saved upon reload was fixed, but there's still the related bug where the party formation isn't saved, and neither is the identity of the currently selected character.

At this point, I only hope Larian hasn't stopped trying to give the UI the polish it deserves post-launch through patches. Fingers crossed...

There are updated cursors (becomes wand when casting spell), and the stealing cursor is now red (or so I've heard).

Raze, you're right about the stealing cursor - it's definitely easier for me to distinguish the new dark red color from the pale yellow (?) icon used for non-owned containers. This does help with one of the requests I made in the OP (not exactly what I requested, but it mostly solves the underlying issue). Thanks!

I must have missed the discussion about how to divide stacks of items like healing potions. I was never able to figure it out while playing, even after clicking, right-clicking, double-clicking, etc. There's no tool tips about this, either. To me, inventory management is one of the most awkward features of D:OS.

Ability to remap controls to the numpad.

Jim - you need to shift-click to divide item stacks. I agree this isn't made clear, though.