Character creation UI feedback

[IndiraLightfoot]

-When going through the various tabs in the Options menu, there are three that, when active/selected, makes the others totally invisible (the framed-in text plaques to the left): Game, Graphics, Sound.

-When you’ve picked a new game, a big, white, and airy Pillars of Eternity logo appears in the centre of the screen. It lacks any borders, and can be hard to see in among the smoke, fog, whatever. I’d prefer a slightly more elaborate logo, and something displaying more weight and solidity, given its name ”pillars of eternity”.

-Also, the otherwise nice cursor pointer, is not clear enough in among the UI

[Sensuki]

Music stops playing when you click new game and have to select a difficulty, then starts again once you're in CC.

[Avantre]

When you move to the second step, the gender Icon displays as male (circle and arrow) even when female was selected (it does say female in the text below). If this is intended rather than a bug, it should probably instead be a gender sign that combines male/female (circle with both the arrow and the cross), to avoid confusion to new players who think they selected the wrong gender.

[Balgin Stondraeg]

When you move to the second step, the gender Icon displays as male (circle and arrow) even when female was selected (it does say female in the text below). If this is intended rather than a bug, it should probably instead be a gender sign that combines male/female (circle with both the arrow and the cross), to avoid confusion to new players who think they selected the wrong gender.

 

You know I just logged in to report that myself.

[Fearabbit]

I'm not in the beta, but looking at the videos I noticed the following things. If this will change anyway, then ignore this post, but otherwise...

 

Order of menus:

It's confusing. It seems that when you select a race and click "Next", you can select the subrace. However, you don't have to click "Next" - it's possible to click on the next menu point in the bar at the top. It is not obvious that this way you're actually skipping the subrace menu. If you do the latter, the subrace menu does not come up until after you've selected your attributes - at least that's what it looked like in the videos, it was one of the submenus somewhere in "Culture" or "Appearance".

Problem 1: This is confusing as hell and simply bad UI design. You want it to be clear where certain menus appear and clicking "next" should lead to the next menu in the top bar, not to a hidden menu.

Problem 2: Don't have us select stat-changing stuff after selecting the attributes! That's such a bad design decision! It's confusing and makes me go back and forth, especially since the attribute screen does not show us the base numbers, but shows us the sum of the base and all modifiers (you only see the base once you select the attribute and look in the description - not intuitive and a bad place for an important number).

Gender -> Race -> Subrace -> Appearance -> Class - Subclass -> Culture -> Attributes -> Portrait -> Voice. It needs to be clear when you select a certain feature, and all stat-changing features need to come before the attributes. Yes, that messes with your nice little UI where the attributes are at the center. But it's also the intuitive way to do this. (Note that I put Appearance before Class because then you have ALL the menus that make up your overall appearance in direct order. You could put Portrait and Voice there as well, I guess, but personally I like to decide these two things last, so I don't know. What's important is that attributes need to come last.

 

The Attributes screen and the Skills screen:

"But there is no Skills screen". Yeah, exactly. That's my first point - your descriptions for classes talk a lot about the different skills and how they're affected, but you never see them in the UI. Even if I can't add points into them, I still want to see an overview of the various modifiers to them!

Okay, moving on - don't make me put 57 points into my attributes. For crying out loud, distribute the points so that each attribute has a base value of 9 or 10, then let me distribute the rest of the points and customize the attribute values.

And like I said before, show me the base numbers for the attributes without modifiers somewhere. Not in the description, but in the main UI. I want to have a grey "10" next to a grey "+2" and then a big fat "12" as the actual value. Something like that. Otherwise it's confusing and might lead to me distributing the points differently than I wanted, especially if I haven't decided which culture and subrace I want to have yet.

 

Final character overview:

Something like that would be nice. A screen where I can see my attributes, my skills, my race and subrace, my class and subclass, my background and my character, with the detailed descriptions as pop-up windows. Actually I'm not sure why the whole character gen isn't designed like that, I believe there would be enough space. And it would solve the first problem I mention above, eliminating the need to go back and forth and having everything there at a glance.

 

Intense Flames: +10000% Fire Damage

Doesn't have anything to do with chargen, but: This does not make any sense! First of all, the number is so big that using percentage here only confuses players. When I see a number like that, I instantly divide by 100 and say "okay so it's actually +100 Fire Damage, got it".

Or wait - is it? Or is it "100x Fire Damage"? Percentage of what? If you add 10000% to any value, then that value itself becomes meaningless - "100 times X plus X" is almost equal to "100 times X". So just make it easier to read and say "100x Fire Damage" or something.

 

 

And one last thing... I hope the Class selection won't stay like that. It's nobody's fault that there are 11 classes, but this screen looks like 5 classes are missing from it. At least center the lowest class button, and use more vertical space. In its current state it looks like there are 5 hidden classes waiting to be unlocked because there is exactly space for 5 additional classes and oh my God there are five hidden classes that weren't in the Kickstarter but were included anyway because you love us so much aren't there? You cunning rascals. We love you too. <3

[Fearabbit]

I hope nobody minds if I bump this because I think this topic is important in general, and also because it took me a while to write that post up there.

 

It might be good to try and keep all Character creation stuff in one thread. Right now it's spread out, people start their own general threads about various impressions... it's kinda confusing I believe.

Edited August 19, 2014 by Fearabbit

[InsaneCommander]

Okay, moving on - don't make me put 57 points into my attributes. For crying out loud, distribute the points so that each attribute has a base value of 9 or 10, then let me distribute the rest of the points and customize the attribute values.

And like I said before, show me the base numbers for the attributes without modifiers somewhere. Not in the description, but in the main UI. I want to have a grey "10" next to a grey "+2" and then a big fat "12" as the actual value. Something like that. Otherwise it's confusing and might lead to me distributing the points differently than I wanted, especially if I haven't decided which culture and subrace I want to have yet.

Nice post. Specially the part above.

 

I think they don't need to change the attributes position. Keep them in the middle, but jump from class to culture, then back to attributes and after that to appearance. It may sound confusing, but most people will only click in the "next" button below, so it doesn't really matter.

 

As for the "missing classes", let's hope they add it later!

[Kronos]

I was looking forward to spending an hour rolling for stats... One can only dream.

 

I like the idea that myself and various companions have a higher or lower stat pool based on dice rolls. I'm old fashioned that way and certainly don't believe that all are born equal.