Mayama

Its amazing how people go apesh*t when I say that the combatlog is only a band aid solution to hide the real problem. That you cant really tell what is going on on the screen. "IE experience" is not an argument, its like saying "i like cars bevor 1900 because none-pneumatic wheels give me the real car experience".

Looks like you have no argument beside "its my personal oppinion". I design UI's for years. Its my job, I might know a little bit more about it than you do. Ok I searched in your original post, why you want a solid UI. Thats all I found and seriously thats your argument. Dead space? Its not dead space it shows the game, you know the thing that you actually want to play. At least I thought so. You dont need it for functionality, every needed function is right their in the UI. You have the combat log that you need because the combat itself doesnt really show you everything that happens, you have your party hp/skills and you have your menu for people that dont like to use shortcuts. Never ever clusterf*uck the screen with stuff you dont really need. Making things commplicated for the sake of beeing complicated is the antichrist of UI design, never ever do it. The only logical reason for using a solid background would be UI elements that are hard to read without it but thats not the case. Do you know what happens when add every possible thing on a UI? You get ****ty 80ties VHS remote controls that nobody could use.

No it isnt its your oppinion based on nostalgica, you want a solid UI because you connect some positive memory with it. As I said the only reason why games had solid UI's was because it saved render time.

No. Edit: F*ck no. Care to argument instead of trolling?

Save up screen space. Yes that the most important thing. Some guys here seem to really forget that you dont play "UI the game" you use the UI as a crutch to help you with mechanics you cant deal with in any more elegant way. Personaly I would make it possible to switch out all parts of the guy. Hide the menu behind a tab that you can expand and make the ugly combat log transparent. All that talk about the omg important combat log makes people forget that their shouldnt be a combat log in the first place. Everything should be readable without the combat log. I OTOH would like pretty much the exact opposite, especially on the transparent combat log. I hate 'floaty' transparent UI elements, the solidity of the IE UI was wonderfull and something I very much want back in this game. Whats so good about a solid UI? I ask that because I personaly cant see any benefit. It removes space from the actual game. It produces extra noise and clutter. The only reason why games had those UI's in the past was because the grafik engine didnt need to render the whole screen.

Specifics would be nice. I think the combat log should only exist to give you an insight about what happened when everything went south and your party died. Imo you shouldnt be forced to look at it, even on very hard difficulty, in a "normal" game situation. You dont play scrolling spreadsheet the game.

Well it all depends on how precise you want the system to be. Its very hard to show hp (or the loss of it) without a UI element in a game like PoE. Most successfull attempts were made in games with one character because its easier to focus on one unit. A good example would be trespasser, the hero had a heart tattoo on his chest that lost blood and turned paler everytime you lost hp. OK the character had the UI on his body but it was a clever way to build it into the game.

Deus ex had that, its not a real rpg but the underlying system is the same. People sneaked around to get sneak xp, than used diplomacy or whatever to get another chunk xp for the same route and in the end killed all the npc's they talked with 2 min ago because it gave them extra xp.

Save up screen space. Yes that the most important thing. Some guys here seem to really forget that you dont play "UI the game" you use the UI as a crutch to help you with mechanics you cant deal with in any more elegant way. Personaly I would make it possible to switch out all parts of the guy. Hide the menu behind a tab that you can expand and make the ugly combat log transparent. All that talk about the omg important combat log makes people forget that their shouldnt be a combat log in the first place. Everything should be readable without the combat log.

So people talk NPC's out of the quest, lockpick their save and kill them anyway in the end. Thats what usually happens in every RPG that offers extra xp for every activity on the way to the main goal.

See that is something I completly disagree with, the whole fullscreen character menu. I completly understand that it might feel to small for some people but even on my 17" 1080p laptop I can easily read everything. On my 27" monitor it would be massive and way to big, at least for me.

Now let's not get in to that, if it was up to the devs we wouldn't even have a solid UI. What the devs think we want and what we want are often 2 different matters. You should replace "we" with "I" because people usually can speak for themself. Edit: no offense

Which kind of circus do you visit?! D:

Imo having the UI at one of the sides would result in horrible long and anoying mouse movement between your heros and the skill bar.

A nice addition would be adding a option to make the skills of your selected character appear at your mouse cursor. So you select a hero, hold down the hotkey and activate the ability. Would be way faster than constantly moving to a border of the screen.

Because its impossible to hide behind the frame right?

So three sword fighting style? (couldnt resist)

My personal opinion on WHY its better to have all UI elements at the bottom is immersion. I really dislike UI's that basicaly force me to view through a picture frame. It creates another layer of distance between the player and the action. UI's that let you always see through, means no blocks that completly hide the game make the UI feel lighter, less in your face. UI's are a crutch, a abstract layer that lets you interact and gather information that you would not be able to get in another way. The best UI is a UI that does not feel like a UI. The ring menu's of ToEE or dead space with its UI build into the armor of the protagonists are examples of really well done UI's.

Narrative is maybee the wrong word, grounded in the world discripes it better. The corpse + lurkers tell you something, the wolfs + tower ruins too. The player can fill in the holes himself. It does not need to be complicated, like the wolfs just searched a place to hide from the wind. The beetles are kinda blant they are just their which is imo boring.

Most people will have the screen centered around the action so having the skill buttons on the far out left tribles the mouse movement required (select hero, select skill, select target) compared to having them in the centre on your average wide screen monitor.

I dont I would prefer the hero icons in the middle, so why not let us all allow to arrange it the way we want. 3 sections, text, heros, menu and you can switch them around so it fits your personal preference.

I agree that combat log/text on the left and hero icon in the center feels way better. You always need to click abilites in combat so allowing access to it in a more central spot helps a lot.

Well even if everything else fails we are a free test audience.

I agree and I also agree that from a game play perspective their isnt much more to do or test right now, only leaves bug hunting.

The lichs in BG2 where one of the most anoying fights in the game because it was so easy to stumble upon their graves. Oh look a grave, BAM! "instant boss fight" with a high chance that your party is not strong enough to actually beat them without exploiting when you find them.