Placement of the skill bar and mouse movement

[Mayama]

Their was one thing that really bothered me in combat and it was the placement of the skillbar. The combat in PoE is click heavy, you constantly need to use skills and it gets tedious very quickly because you have to move to your character, skill, enemy every time and on big screens the distance is quite long. My suggestion would be to either give us a hotkey that pops up a box with all skills of the selected character at the position of the mouse cursor or right clicking your character pops up a box with all skills of the character in it. It would make ordering stuff around way easier and thier is always the current implementation for people that prefer it.

[war:head]

Their was one thing that really bothered me in combat and it was the placement of the skillbar. The combat in PoE is click heavy, you constantly need to use skills and it gets tedious very quickly because you have to move to your character, skill, enemy every time and on big screens the distance is quite long. My suggestion would be to either give us a hotkey that pops up a box with all skills of the selected character at the position of the mouse cursor or right clicking your character pops up a box with all skills of the character in it. It would make ordering stuff around way easier and thier is always the current implementation for people that prefer it.

 

I do like the idea of a kind of radial menu around the cursor when holding a certain key. Combined with hot keys to select characters this would greatly reduce mouse distance and click amounts.

[Sensuki]

Radial menus are the root of all evil and should be burned out of everyone's minds forever.

[Mayama]

Radial menus are the root of all evil and should be burned out of everyone's minds forever.

Is it the same pile on which we throw space eating, blocky, UI's or do we have a seperate pyre for it?

[Sensuki]

Most people here will laugh at you for even mentioning radial menus. You have simply come to the wrong corner of the gaming world to promote them.

 

Never forget NWN guys, or ToEE ROFL.

 

This is an "Old School" RPG.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Sensuki

[war:head]

Radial menus are the root of all evil and should be burned out of everyone's minds forever.

You're probably thinking of those no-cursor console thingies we got in several games (f'ing Watch_Dogs...) - whoever brought those to PC deserves a special place in hell.

 

I was talking about a proper menu with a cursor that just happens to be placed around the cursor for fast access, though. Basically a hot-key enabled fancy context menu.

[Silent Winter]

Yeah, TOEE's radial menu was not fun to use.

[Mayama]

Most people here will laugh at you for even mentioning radial menus. You have simply come to the wrong corner of the gaming world to promote them.

 

This is an "Old School" RPG.

Dunno for me baldur's gate is crazy new school. Excluding options because of personal preference or nostalgica isnt the best way to approach things. Now that we get that out of the way, I agree that a radial menu would become way to bloated in PoE with classes like the wizard. It worked in ToEE because you had time to select things. I assume that playing in real time at normal speed with some pauses is the way the dev's intended the game to be played. Clicking skills takes way to much time right now, especially if you have some characters like the BB rogue in your group that does one action every 4 seconds.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Mayama

[Malekith]

 

Most people here will laugh at you for even mentioning radial menus. You have simply come to the wrong corner of the gaming world to promote them.

 

This is an "Old School" RPG.

 It worked in ToEE

 

Eh, what?   It didn't work. ToEE had the worst UI ever made, along with the 2 NWNs

[IndiraLightfoot]

I really liked the more minimalistic UIs for ToEE and the NWN series, except for the radial menu atrocities. That was really annoying.

[Sensuki]

Minimalistic UIs can work in games if the whole game is designed for it. Context sensitive much better suits a turn-based environment because you have the time in between rounds to navigate the menu(s).

 

Pillars of Eternity's mechanical complexity requires something different.

[Shadenuat]

NWN was actually okay because it had dozen of hot bars for any combination avaible, from shift- to even tab- and F1-F12 buttons I think. You could drag things around, even from radial menu to hotbar I believe. It also used icons.

 

Now ToEE UI... added many hours to what you did for sure. And no icons. The killer for me was spell memorisation - instead of making menu look like Fireball(2)/Haste, it made place for every slot possible... writing Fireball three times if you had it. Huh.

[farleybear]

On my first play through of ToEE atm, my party is currently stuck in the Earth Temple bit dying fighting that demon. So far I've found the radial menu's pretty convenient and easy to use tbh, as long as you take your time with them which suits my play style and them TB system. The biggest problem I've found is the poor item descriptions. Don't think that radials would work with the RTwP in PoE - I didn't get on with them in NWN. Don't even get me started on the mess of NWN2.   

[Ganrich]

No radial menus please. Sensuki covered this issue already. The icons just need to be moved toward the center of the screen just above the UI. Top picture on Sensuki's post here:

 

http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/68014-sensukis-suggestions-012-non-terrible-main-hud-mockup/

 

Arguments can be had about where the portraits and the dialogue box/chat window are located, but everything else is how I would prefer it.

[Zombra]

Radial menus are the worst, followed closely by dragging a mouse cursor around the screen clicking dozens of tiny buttons.

 

Luckily for us, most of us have a thing called a keyboard and two hands.

 

F1-F6 to select character

#1-0 (+shift for 11-20) to select ability

Click target

done.

[GreyFox]

Radial menus are the root of all evil and should be burned out of everyone's minds forever.

 

Agreed...a better UI could solve the major issues with what the OP was talking about.

[wolfstriked]

I posted this idea a few days ago and got one like. When you click on a character on the battlefield that characters spells/actions etc could pop up right over the character to allow you to forgo the crazy widescreen travel that will happen in current form.

[Uomoz]

Mhh, I still don't see a good argument against radial menus in this thread, honestly. I'm not an expert in ui design but, without using past bad implementations as an example, why is it considered bad? As far as i know it's just the arrangement of the ability/spells icons in a  circle instead of a bar.

[GreyFox]

I love it when people ask why something is bad before explaining how it's good first.

 

I guess you really answered your own question....given that there are numerous amounts of bad examples and like....0 good examples of a radial menu. 

 

Lets see:

1.) people tend to read/select things from left to right not around and around

2.) it's never done properly and when done not properly its annoying an aggravating

3.) it looks fugly

4.) screen clutter

5.) clearly takes more time to negotiate 

6.) never gets done properly

 

 

 

HOLY WTF WERE THEY THINKING BATMAN

[GreyFox]

I mean who doesn't like twisting their head around trying to read this ****?

 

 

Do it with me folks...tilt head left...tilt head right...

Edited August 28, 2014 by GreyFox

[GreyFox]

This one was OK

 

 

But probably only because you never had to really use it.

[Fiebras]

Well GreyFox just posted what I wanted to post.

Ah whatever:

 

 

But probably only because you never had to really use it.

 

I actually ONLY used that menu.

 

 

Though a radial mini-menu apearing at the click of a button was implemented it would need to be more responsive and less clutered than the Torment one.

Edited August 28, 2014 by Fiebras

[Uomoz]

 

I love it when people ask why something is bad before explaining how it's good first.

 

I guess you really answered your own question....given that there are numerous amounts of bad examples and like....0 good examples of a radial menu. 

 

Lets see:

1.) people tend to read/select things from left to right not around and around

2.) it's never done properly and when done not properly its annoying an aggravating

3.) it looks fugly

4.) screen clutter

5.) clearly takes more time to negotiate 

6.) never gets done properly

 

 

 

HOLY WTF WERE THEY THINKING BATMAN

 

 

 

Ok, you probably misread my post:

1) You didn't actually answer to my question, and most of your points were weird (why on earth would be the point 1 be relevant if the UI uses symbols).

2) You contradicted yourself posting an actually good radial UI, after saying there aren't any (and Torment radial Ui looks neat to me, now that I remember how it works)

3) You implied that I was pro radial menus, while I didn't state anything like that. How should I know if radial menus are bad/good if I asked exactly that?

 

[GreyFox]

Ok, you probably misread my post:

1) You didn't actually answer to my question, and most of your points were weird (why on earth would be the point 1 be relevant if the UI uses symbols).

2) You contradicted yourself posting an actually good radial UI, after saying there aren't any (and Torment radial Ui looks neat to me, now that I remember how it works)

3) You implied that I was pro radial menus, while I didn't state anything like that. How should I know if radial menus are bad/good if I asked exactly that?

 

 

Well you posted....

 

Mhh, I still don't see a good argument against radial menus in this thread, honestly. I'm not an expert in ui design but, without using past bad implementations as an example, why is it considered bad? As far as i know it's just the arrangement of the ability/spells icons in a  circle instead of a bar.

 

1.) Clearly answered the question...I can explain it to you but not understand if for you...sorry

      point 1 is relevant because regardless of what is used to express the items in the radial menu no one naturally reads or looks about for things in a circular way....

 

2.) More tongue n cheek than anything but most gamers hate radial menus and most games don't use them. I said PSTs menu was OK not good....as in it was tolerable because you

      mostly walk n talk in that game whereas in TOEE you have a lot more need of the menu.

     You could also do most of what the radial did from the bottom bar and the spells/abilities used in that game were less extensive than in other IE games.

     

3.) I did indeed as that IS the impression I get...if that isn't the case I apologize. Curious though that you say I posted a good radial UI but only offer that it "looks neat" 

     not that it functions well or why it's good....unfortunately looking neat doesn't make for a good UI.

[Falendor]

I always thought radial menus could be cool but have more often been disappointed by them. would like to see a simple 1 tear radial menu that was just loaded with hotkeys I set, though just using normal hotkeys would be just as usfull, at least untell I lose an arm or something.