dma

I'm not a UI Designer but if they implemented your change it would make the UI look uneven. The portrait area would be taller than the centre menu and the combat log default size, so the art for the center menu would have to be altered to be uniform (combat log size is an easy fix). Also, is there anything that occupies the bottom UI space, such as summons or animal companions? Because that functionality would also have to be moved/removed. Also if it was a toggle, they would need to jigger it so that it changed the entire UI back to it's current size from your proposed new size. That to me seems like a lot of work that could be spent elsewhere, YMMV. as long as you keep symetry, it's not an issue if the areas are not the exact same heigth. Look at the following simple text examples to clarify: 1) x x x 2) X x X

Well.. I tried the beta first time today. Set the difficulty to easy as this was my first time in a new game with a new system. Did some wandering around and got myself into 2 fights. First fight was at the bridge you start with, against the people there. I had zero idea what I was doing, and suceeded only by blasting the entre combat zone with AoE spells (both positive and negative). The spell that 'creates blights' for a wizard I had zero understanding of at this time as it felt like it did nothing when I tried using it. (although I got afterwards that it appearantly swapped out my weapon with a magically created one). Second fight was against some bettles in a second area. I got decimated. Truly and utterly decimated. I didn't manage to down a single beetle, and half the time I felt like my people did jack all. Either because I had no idea what they were doing, or because I got a message telling me that the DT of the target was too high... I played all the old games of the baldurs series, icewind dales, planescape:; torment, never winter nights, Dragon age (only the first one in that series, though) and so on. Never did I feel combat was as unresponsive as in this beta. When I tried setting it to "pause on all", it was a frustrating mess of not feeling like anything happened at all between each pause. Trying to activate/deactivate different pauses didn't help me much in getting a clear picture of what was actually happening on screen, and I never felt like I was actually in control of what happened. The interface needs a hefty upgrade to tell the user about what goes on, cause right now I feel lost during combat as to what is happening or when I can do something. The gamemaps looks pretty, but that means nothing when the combat feels as unsatisfying to me as it does right now.

Right now, combat is a mess for me. I have zero idea when my characters are ready to do 'new' stuff or sometimes when they used an ability. A pause for each characters "turn" would certainly help a little with that.

Minor issue, but annoying none the less. When starting up the game for the first time, my firewall kicks in and wants to be assured that the game has access priviliges. However, the game just freezes and prevent me from alt-tabbing to see the pop-up window, forcing me to ctrl-alt-delete to get access to the system again and THEN allow it through the firewall. So basicly, don't lock the system at startup so people with firewalls can alt-tab out easy to allow the game to get through.

This update really made my day. Looks very good from my viewpoint, as someone that both likes to fight it out or explore noncombat ways of doing stuff, depending on the circumstance. Especially that either way should be equally beneficial, so as not to make players feel they are forced into playing certain ways.