Small (G)UI change big effect?

[Bogeyfox]

Dear developers, dear community,

 

after the first early beta ingame footage is online available (e.g. here: http://www.pcgamer.com/2014/07/30/pillars-of-eternity-video-josh-sawyer-on-character-creation-and-infinity-rpgs/), I noticed a small detail from the UI I'd like to discuss here. But before I'd like to thank the dev-team for the great work - what I've seen so far that’s the game I begged and backed for.

So what is this post about? In the footage you can see, that on a selected hero the abilities/feats appear in a row above the hero pictures of the GUI. If more than one hero is selected no abilities/feats are shown.

 

What do you think about having at least a set of 4 or 6 abilities/feats presented above each hero for quick selection (see the picture) if more than 1 hero is selected?

 

Of course it’s possible to quick keyboard and mouse select hero and feat in a combat situation but I think it’ll improve handling for most players - including me. I don’t know how much work it would be to change – if possible and where users could drag and drop the abilities (inventory/character sheet) for the multiselect quick-slots or if it could be used for potions etc. too.

 

Please note: This post is not about UI-style per se, how much I like it or how much BG-style it is and I’m not a native speaker so I apologize for the English.

 

[salo]

It would be cool if this sort of thing could be toggled in the options. I mean, I'm not even sure this is a problem when you're actually playing the game but in general I just like UI-options.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Agreed. More UI toggles is always nice to have. Nice suggestion!

[mstark]

Something about keybinds:

 

Allow me to bind a key to closing the "sub menu" of a quickbar ability. For example, I may assign ESC.

 

Then allow me to assign keybinds freely to quickbar items, that way I could assign character selection to keys 1-6, first level quick bar items to keys F1-F12, second level quick bar items to F1-F12 again, because ESC allows me to "close" the second level.

 

That way I can hit 1 to select my first party member, F3 to select, say, Spells III, then F3 again to select Fireball--or I can hit ESC to jump back--hit F2 for Spells II instead, then F3 again for Magic Missiles.

 

Finally, it might be a good suggestion to allow us to add a keybind by right clicking any ability. Right click -> hit key - warn me if it overwrites a different keybind (not with a popup, mind you) -> hit OK -> done.

[Falkon Swiftblade]

I actually like how ToEE did their ui, so it branched out from the selected character instead of the portrait. In this way, you could be like 2-3 inches from your target and you click your party member, his ui popped up very close to him, you select, then click the target which is inches away. Then the ui disappeared and you were right back into the action. I feel like the current method would be great for party based selections. in that way, lets say there's a spell that blesses the whole party, then you click the appropriate icon on the bar and the whole party is blessed. Hopefully, you can pick and choose what goes in those slots to assist in that type of play style.