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It would be great if you would (optionally?) return to (enter?) scouting mode after battle. Given how much scouting you do in this game, I often forget that I'm not still in scouting mode after battles and run off (in fast-mode, no less, because fast-mode turns back on automatically) into things I don't want to run into. I realize that determining whether you were in scouting mode before a fight might be slightly tricky, but if you don't want to bother with that just give us an "Enter Scouting Mode After Battles" option. Thanks!

It would be great if party member circles' colors were based on the character's primary color, like Baldur's Gate Enhanced Edition does, that would make combat a lot more readable. BGEE also makes party member circles look slightly different than other circles (double ring instead of single). That would also be very nice. Thanks!

Just started playing and I'm excited. But I'm getting hung up on something little at first, and looking for advice. To start with I see this for dialog. BUT I HEAR the voiceover start reading immediately starts talking and so I hear: ...while I'm trying to read the first part. So then I have to wait until the talking is done and re-read it from the start. I assume it will do this the whole game? I feel like this is going to take me out of the experience. I just wish it paused a little to let me read.

One of the issues I'm having with the current weapon sets is that you cannot reuse a weapon in a different set. For example, let's say you have a one-handed sword, a dagger, a shield, and an axe. From this, you can only create two weapon sets. Sword-dagger, and axe-shield. What if I want to use my axe-dagger in one fight, axe-sword in another, and sword-shield in a third? Currently I can't do this and I wouldn't have the opportunity to change my weapon sets unless I'm at a select site. This should be fixed to play more like TOEE's did where you can make mulitple weapon sets with the same set of weapons.

I know it is really early to talk about this aspect of the game, but I've been playing some of the older games and I wish that some of these shortcut keys were a little bit more logical and made playing real-time easier, not harder. One example is the quickcast in Baldur's Gate 2. It was not a logical approach, and I really doubt most people would use keyboard shortcuts for quick-cast. Anyway, I'll talk more about this when we have some engine mechanics fleshed out, but I really wish that the shortcut keys would be implemented in a way that allows for "RTS-like" play. Like I said, I can't give a good implementation of this right now, but when I see more of the mechanics, I think I can give a better layout. Also, please allow us to utilize Shift+click, Alt+click, and ctrl+click.

This could perhaps be considered a bug, but there's a critical design issue with the description boxes of... well pretty much everything. Mostly, things are confusing, inconsistent, and rarely give any sort of useful information. Let's take a few talents. It will be illustrative of a general trend, and devs should IMO pay attention to this. The main thing is whenever we're presented with a levelling choice, we're rarely told what exactly what it is we are choosing. Below, I'll use green to denote useful and precise information; blue for useful but incomplete information; red for useless/redundant information; yellow for low-value information that could be implicitely assumed without being stated. Consider the Weapon Focus family of talents. --------------- Weapon Focus Adventurer Trains the character in the use of the Pollaxe, Estoc, Flail, Wand and War Bow, gaining Accuracy with all weapons of those types. Grants Weapon Focus: Adventurer. Passive. ---------------- What does this tell the player? Well if you use a weapon from the group, you'll be a more accurate with them. By how much? Who knows. Likewise, consider Marksman. --------------- Marskman Increases the character's Accuracy with ranged weapons used on distant targets Grants Marksman Passive Effects: Self: +5 Accuracy against distant enemies --------------- This is a bit better, you know the exact bonus (+5 Accuracy), but you're fuzzy on what exactly "distant" means. Now let's take a class ability --------------- Strange Mercy When the paladin defeats an opponent, nearby allies gain Endurance Grants: Strange Mercy. Passive Area of Effect: 4.0m radius (base 4.0m) Effects: Allied AoE: +23 Endurance --------------- This one is fairly OK. Few problems, save maybe the layout isn't very effective. Now consider Deep Faith --------------- Deep Faith The intensity of the paladin's faith deepens, granting them increased defensive bonuses to Faith and Conviction Modifies Faith and Conviction. +2 Deflection, +5 Fortitude, +5 Reflex, +5 Will Faith and Conviction Passive Effects: Self: +5 Deflection, +10 Fortitude, +10 Reflex, +10 Will --------------- This one is confusing... Does it add +2/+5/+5/+5 to the previous +5/+10/+10/+10 bonus, for a total of +7/+12/+12/+12? Does it take the current +2/+5/+5/+5 and brings it to +5/+10/+10/+10? Does it modify F&C to +2/+5/+5/+5 from +5/+10/+10/+10 (i.e. an automatically generated message with the wrong values in because the balancing pass is incomplete)? And there are other problems, in all cases, you need to read everything, both flavour and non-flavour text to obtain all the available information (and still misses vital stuff that just isn't there). You're presented with completely redundant information (selecting Marskman grants you Markman... duh). Text is also wasted clarifying things that don't need clarification, and could just be assume by anyone with half a brain. If a character gets an ability, by default one assumes the bonuses apply to that character. Consider instead this style of talent description (with my guess for what the missing values are). All effects are fully stated in the effects section. Flavour text is unchanged, but now fulfill it's role as flavour text -- A general description meant to assist role-playing, which could be completely overlooked without any mechanical detriment. --------------- Weapon Focus: Adventurer Trains the character in the use of the Pollaxe, Estoc, Flail, Wand, and War Bow, gaining Accuracy with all weapons of those types. [Passive] +5 Accuracy with Pollaxe +5 Accuracy with Estoc +5 Accuracy with Flail +5 Accuracy with Wand +5 Accuracy with War Bow --------------- [Could also be +5 Accuracy with Weapon 1, Weapon 2, .... in inline format] -------------- Marskman Increases the character's Accuracy with ranged weapons used on distant targets [Passive] +5 Accuracy against enemies 10 or more meters away --------------- --------------- Strange Mercy When the paladin defeats an opponent, nearby allies gain Endurance [Passive] Area of Effect: 4.0 m radius (base 4.0 m) Allies gain 23 Endurance whenever the paladin defeats an enemy --------------- --------------- Deep Faith The intensity of the paladin's faith deepens, granting them increased defensive bonuses to Faith and Conviction [Passive] Faith and Conviction grants an additional +2 Deflection, +5 Fortitude, +5 Reflex, +5 Will to defenses. --------------- This redesigning of the descriptions of talents and abilities would go a long way into clarifying what it is they actually do without cluttering the description windows. Likewise, weapons could mention to which weapon group they belong. It's much easier to remember "I'm an Adventurer" then remember "Right, I have a Pollaxe... now I found this Mace... was I proficient with Flails or Maces or something else entirely?"

The beta is out, give us your first impressions!

Hi, just starting the backer beta again. I find it irritating that we still have this portrait selection. Clicking through and viewing one at a time is not a good design. By the time you get through all of them you forget what the earlier ones look like exactly, it makes it hard to compare and pick which one you like the most. Especially as they add more in, and you have a bunch of custom ones (which is quite popular with these games) A grid system would be much better. The ability to view them all at once, easily compare and then click what you like. Possibly even categorized into race in the grid. There is plenty of screen space on both sides on the character model to do this

It's a longer list, so I'll post it as a separate topic. Answering: No, they are not. It actually feels like the GUI designed for an old Infinity Engine games in some ways - we've really made a long way in improving GUI designs and as far as it is currently OKish... it's also needlessly tedious and doesn't always provide users with the info they need. That said though - PoE user interface is with no doubt much cleaner and more noob-friendly than say: BG, I don't want to see copying of old IE games interfaces, cause in many ways they were bad too, but I'd love if you'd take good things from them - like providing user with data he needs when he needs it, and most importantly: Good things from last 10 years of game development and design. Don't be afraid to embrace the awesome improvements and progress we've made in a last decade! If you are looking for some more detailed and constructive suggestions, here's the whole list, screen-by-screen for Inventory and Crafting, Character sheet, and finally: Journal. Inventory Search functionality in Stash (text input - you start type = you start search, similar to the way it's suppose to work on Google) Stash sorting functionality - should change depending on a tab - sort by value, sort by different damage types or damage resistances (depending if you're in Armors/Clothing or Weapons tab), etc. Ability to see ALL items in your stash (this preferably should be a default view) - I'm clueless why it's not in a game. o_O Button to move all items from my character inventory to stash (optionally: when clicked it should change to "restore", if I drag any new item to the character inventory - restore option should disappear) Search functionality for my character inventories (including items they got equipped) - when searching it should switch to the character that got this item equipped and highlight it (white border, or something like this) Ability to view a total sum of attribute changes to my character from all of the items equipped In character screen when hovering two numbers in End. Hlth. and Acc. it should show a tooltip saying "current" or "maximum" to make it clear why there are two numbers over these three characteristics (for our new players out there) When clicking attributes in the character or inventory screen it should show a popup screen explaining the attribute (how it affects combat or dialogs) and possibly also: display a break-down of how this attribute is affected by the equipment you have, for example: D.T. - Damage Treshold <<very long description here that currently appears as a tooltip which I can't even read whole cause it goes off beyond the screen>> Base: 0, Scale Armor: +7 ps. I added problem with tooltip as a bug report here. Inspect functionality in inventory screen - right now it allows you to inspect only the items. I'd expand it to explaining GUI elements:Clicking an empty slot should describe it - what kind of items fit there, tell that they can be added by drag & drop from the inventory or stash, etc. Clicking weapon sets should explain the whole functionality and how to swap between them in combat Clicking an empty spot in your character inventory should give you an explanation how it differs from Quick Items and Stash. Same with clicking on an empty slot in Quick Items or Stash icon - obviously Clicking on camping supplies should tell you stuff about using them and how to get new. ps. you already have most of these descriptions in the glossary - why you refuse to make use of them with Inspect functionality is beyond my comprehension. Inventory screen - 3D Character model - you can rotate him/her along just one axis. Please, make it possible to rotate him on both, to see character from above and in isometric perspective. And if we're on that: character model rotation should NOT reset when switching between characters. Inventory screen - Make it clear which weapon set is selected. In the UI, don't make me guess based on a looks of the weapons! Add a button to go directly from the Inventory screen to the character screen of a currently selected character. And back. and this: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Crafting screen (it's sub-screen of an Inventory) Text search Filter by types (healing potions, combat AoE potions, etc. - you get the picture) Possibly sorting (turn off grouping by categories, and just sort all of them) - sort by value, uses, speed, etc., a nice drop-down - these items that do not have a certain property should be at the bottom of the list, separated by a horizontal line, order doesn't matter. Option to show only these items that I can craft with my current items (hide everything that's grayed-out, remove categories if they are empty) Anyone can tell me why the heck crafting potions in a field consumes money? It makes zero sense. Option to compare two potions / items. When having one selected and hovering another - it should bring a tooltip with an information similar to these Hormalakh gave in a quote above. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Character sheet Statistics breakdown - let us choose if we want to see records or statistics breakdown on a right-side part of the GUI.This should give you a nice set of tables, when relevant: show current, standard and base statistics. Current = all of the effects, spells and wounds + items + character, Standard = items + character, Base = character alone. That should also include a table with detailed breakdown of attack from your weapons, including it's default properties and properties after applying character modifiers. Current information of "+27% action speed" is meaningless if you can't easily compare an attack speed of different characters with their current weapons. Statistics breakdown should be a default view. Records are nice and all, but they do not help you with anything ahead of you! Tooltips on the elements. Make them more consistent. Eg. in my resolve stats I got a popup explaining concentration, but there is none for Duration (that's a duration of what? Spells? I guess, but could be potions or something very negative: attacks, as in: making them take longer). In my Intellect stat I got popup for deflection but none of Area of Effect. In Dexterity there is no popup for Action Speed. And so on, and so on. Active effects got no descriptions for... well... anything. Why some of the properties are clickabe for popup windows and some are hover tooltips? Be consistent - either everything is a popup or everything is a tooltip. XP bar.... Is that even a bar? Below Experience there's brown horizontal rectangle - it looks like a progress bar to the next level, but I can't see anything progressing there. Make it a proper, clear, progress bar or if it's not suppose to be one - replace it to a thin horizontal line if you need some separator in there. In general on a character screen I would prefer to see something information-wise more in a style of that: Image that forum doesn't allow me to put here You see all of the information in the right window? Like the actual number for your open locks skill after all the effects, actual number for your reputation, etc. My idea with tables goes further than that and shows you even more info, but this thing here is what I consider to be a bare minimum of what you should see on a character screen. Sadly PoE does not provide that, though overall - PoE character screen is much clearer and newbie-friendly - so keep that, it's a good stuff, but show us more data More data makes life easier, not more difficult, even if it might be slightly overwhelming at first. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ Journal Text search - can be just in a titles, but still. It'd be especially useful with Glossary. Notes - this problem. Note the part about allowing users to select text there. Notes - allow us to remove them. Glossary - Equipment tab should contain descriptions of different types of equipment with their generic characteristics (eg. Armor tends to come in light, medium and heavy variety, describe their benefits and disadvantages, describe which types of characters should use which type of armor, etc.) Cyclopedia - after spotting a new type of enemy you at least should see it's name in a bestiary, just with no description. You know that they exist and what is the name - after all hovering them shows a tooltip with the name. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ I know this list is far from being complete as people gave some really decent suggestions here and there, but these are for me the most glaring issues - if anyone reading that post got anything more to add, feel free to do so.

I think that it would be helpful to have an option to choose to display the current action and the action time bar at the bottom of the screen along with the charterers health. This way if you want to know what action a character is preforming its always in the same place. this would also keep the map from being quite so cluttered. At the same time I can see why it would be nice to have a the ability to see what actions people are preforming in relation ship to there movement. What if you linked it to tab where holding tab would pop up the action bars over peoples heads or on mouse over it appears over there head. What do you all think.

Just a small thing - the variety of portraits is far too small for the number of races that are available. Something akin to Shadowrun Returns' system (race and gender-specific portraits, 3 or so base for each race/gender combo, and lots of variations on the base portraits) would fit very well for this game IMO.

Hello all, Only played a little bit of the new build, but from what I've seen it's vastly improved. Gives me a good deal of hope that they've made this much progress in 2 weeks. Combat and combat feedback have been improved... but something really has to be done about that log. Show less (especially regen), smaller font, better color coding, I dunno. But something really has to be done. It's far too chaotic at the moment to be useful. That's all. It's not really a bug, just an improvement that needs to be made.

Right now when you right click or mouse over a weapon, the damage range shown is with the bonus from MIG taken into account. This makes it difficult to compare weapons that different characters are using, because if these characters have different MIG values, the same weapon equipped by both will show different damage ranges. How it needs to be shown, instead of (for example) "Sword: 16-22 slashing damage", is something more along the lines of "Sword: 15-20 (+1-2) slashing damage". Then show the net damage elsewhere on the inventory screen as suggested in http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/67677-sensukis-suggestions-009-inventory-and-item-tooltips/?hl=%2Bdamage+%2Bdisplay. As it is, we really can't even know what the base damage of a weapon is without doing the math every time. Silly. It's a small thing, but important to making an intuitive inventory and UI system (which really needs work at the moment). If this is already listed somewhere as an intended feature, I apologize. Just shoot me a link and I'll be happy.

seems a little strange but is their no way to just drop an item that you don't want in your stash. Other wise youl just have to sort threw tons of stuff in the stash. :/

Throughout my time playing the Beta, one thing that has consistently bothered me aesthetically is how small certain Icons appear. Half of the motivation to experience this type of game is the wonderful art. I feel that cramming the ability and inventory icons down to less than their native size is a disservice both to the player and the artist that created them. You can easily see the actual size of the Inventory Icons while trading and when right clicking on an item. They appear to be 30-40% larger in that area of the interface than when in the Inventory proper. We have plenty of screen real-estate.. why not use it? The Ability Icons are another offender. The icons are so small above the character portrait that you can barely discern what they are supposed to be, and often have to go by Color alone. At the current size, they also give the impression of being trivial and unimportant.

As it stands right now in the bb 257 I find combat too cluttered/chaotic to be playable. Being able to rotate the camera view would be extremely helpful but so would making clicking or moving the cursor over a character/enemy's health bar select/give info on the object/character. The health bars seem to find a way to be seen unlike the actual character, and if you could highlight the selected character then combat would be considerably less chaotic.

Guys, I've come across a chasm in the Dyrsford Ruins and the wonderful artwork description mentions that my grappling hook and rope could be used to get across; however I have no idea how to use the grapple and hook, it won't go into any of the quick slots so how do I actually use the item? It is interesting in that the item description it mentions that the limits to how you employ tools are your imagination which filled me with hope; however, I am really stuck here, any advice would be great. Many thanks in advance.

They look to be the same icons used in NWN2. As such, I'm seriously hoping they are placeholder. The neon coloring is very abrasive to the eyes and I personally would raise an eyebrow, and perhaps sneer disgustedly, if I found that the devs are actually planning on having NW2 icons in the final release of this game.

It's hard to know what's worth buying unless you've memorized what each of your guys is wearing. Would be nice if you could view your toons' armor/weapons without closing out a complicated trade. Then you know whether that expensive sword really beats your equipped +12 Hackmaster. Since you don't know what the merchant will have to trade, you won't know whether he'll have a relevant upgrade until you've opened trade. This improvement would allow us to sell our equipped mace if the blacksmith has an enchanted warhammer we can afford.

When using skills, draw an arrow from caster to target. Like in this image from Dota 2. It can be improved upon from Dota - if cast target is so far away you need to move, make the target cursor or arrow yellow. If moving will provoke a disengagement attack or will move you into engagement range of an enemy when casting, make arrow or cursor red.

I like minimaps. It'd be nice if we could get an optional one on the hud. Disregard this if there's already a minimap feature that I missed.

First of all, I apologize for not having repro instructions. If I figure out how to repro this, I will update the post. After playing for about an hour, capital letters started appearing where they shouldn't. I wish I could tell you what precipitated this. A few screenshots: gAme pAused LoAding... CoNtiNue

When I kill Hendyna and Rumbald I'll get the top left corner alert Quest Failed for 'Nest Egg' and 'A Farmer's Plight' respectively. When I leave Dyrford, or go into a building, then zone back into the town, the alerts show up again.

It's one of those things that's not really a big deal, but one expects a double-click to select an item and perform the default action on it. This is true of Windows list boxes for example. So it seemed a little weird that when I went to load a game I couldn't just double-click the game to load it. PS Beta is awesome.

Clicking on Game, Graphics, or Sound categories in the options causes the category buttons to lose their captions. Clicking Auto-Pause or Controls category restores their captions. I noticed this on launching the backer beta for the first time, and clicking Options before starting a new game. In case this is display driver-related (odd since two out of five buttons work) I've attached DxDiag output. Looking forward to playing the game! Update: Started a game, went into options...all buttons worked correctly. Quit to main menu, brought up Options, bug recurs. Update 2: This is happening in Full Screen mode. DxDiag.txt