Suggestion UI: Improved Action & Recovery Indicators

[IndiraLightfoot]

I have been in combat for the most part of my many hours in the PoE beta, and still now, at patch 301, I feel a bit overwhelmed by having an entire party clashing against X number of baddies: I don't feel I have the right amount of info on what's going on in that fray - I lack a general view of what's going on at any given moment at a glance.

 

I reckon one of the culprits is the so-called pips. You see them above the heads of your party members in green and above the heads of baddies in red.

These are action and recovery indicators. To the left, there is a teeny weeny circle with a few actions presented in it, when you take them. If you see two feet that means your character is on the move, if you see a sword, it means it is performing an attack, and then you see a thin vanilla-coloured bar beneath it. It usually zips by pretty fast, and this is the recovery time.

 

Another culprit is my choices of action being too far away from the in-game area where the fighting takes place OE has placed the action icons above the portraits down in the left corner. Like Sensuki suggested earlier, I'd love to have those actions form a bar above the centre hub instead, where it's closer to the action, and so your action choices will be quicker! This is, after all, a RTwP-game.

 

What I have done below is some simple mock-up. Please view it as a mere seed for further UI suggestions on action and recover indicators in PoE.

 

 

Personally, I reckon the pips are more confusing, than helping. In this mock-up, where I have shifted my paladin's action bar into the middle, I have deliberately kept the pips, just to show you what a mess it is. You see how they overlap, how their lit up in various degrees of brightness, how dark parts of the map etc more or less hide them, especially the red pips of the baddies. If they will remain in PoE, I will have them turned off, that's for sure.

 

My idea for action & recovery indicators is, I think, simpler, clearer and much more informative.

 

Whenever your characters have taken an action, we would see that action above their portraits, and it will use similar (or in my mockup the same) neat icons that OE has already made for all actions, and also, for what kind of weapon you're carrying.

 

So, in the mockup picture below, it is only my paladin that has taken action (please, again, ignore the pips above party members and baddies- I just left them there). And here she is using her sword, so that becomes the action to the left above her portrait, and also she uses her once-per-encounter skill with that burning sword damage, and that is the action to the right above her portrait. These two action icons will appear above the portrait until the action has been performed.

 

 

Then begins the recovery time. At that moment, the once-per-encounter icon disappears (since it won't recover again in this fight). But the paladin's weapon, which was involved in the attack is still in recovery. So it get's shaded/darker, and you see a red bar above it, doing the same thing as the thin vanilla bar did in OE's floating pip-thingie. Just for über-clarity, I did add a red "R" on the shaded sword icon as well.

 

 

So, for every encounter and for every party member, there will constantly be action I& recovery cons like those of the paladin in these two examples given above each portrait. This means that I get to see at a glance what's going on all the time, and I don't have to have a jumble of floating icons in the midst of combat. I view that as a piece of art, and I loathe to see it cluttered like that. I realize this is not what the classic IE games did. It's more a PoE-adapted BG:EE action icon-version, where I have added recovery to the info by the portraits. I really like it, and I think this would improve all combat immensely. You will never ever wonder any more what everybody is doing in combat.

 

As for the baddies' action and recovery info, I'd prefer to have that all invisible. I don't need that info. Make it a toggle, I guess, and then keep the red pips on those, for folks that appreciate them.

 

BIG DISCLAIMER: The size, brightness and design of my action and recovery icons above the paladin portrait are just ****e! It's a mock-up, after all.

Edited October 1, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[Sensuki]

I disagree with this idea, but I do agree with a few things:

 

The Combat HUDs in Pillars of Eternity were created to give better feedback to the player because combat is confusing. I understand that. However they actually increase the confusion of combat by their mere addition and they do not solve any of the problems inherent with combat confusion. 

In the Infinity Engine games, combat was pretty easy to follow. No combat HUDs were needed to tell what was going on. The action speed formula was pretty easy to understand once you got the hang of it and characters had a different stance for combat idle and "waiting to perform action". When a character is doing nothing in combat in the Infinity Engine games, they look like they're doing nothing. When they are waiting to perform an action they have a guarded stance and their model is "pulsing". This is very easy to understand visually without any UI Help.

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 absolutely murder Icewind Dale 1 and 2 in this regard because the Black Isle developers hackily removed the BG combat idle from their game. The creator of ToBEx was able to preserve the pulsing animation while removing the fake attacks - big success.

I personally think that showing party health bars are completely unnecessary because you already have a UI for that - the character portrait and health bar. So that is a superfluous addition to the screen. I do understand the need to show enemy health, but currently it is handled in a very unintuitive way. An actual health bar rather than five dots would be better, because then you get the exact granularity of their health state. This is not something I would use however as I prefer the IE style mouse over text.

I also understand the need to show unit actions and recovery times, although I think having them all on the screen at once is a huge clutter. I believe you should be able to control the granularity of when combat HUDS are to be shown, in the same manner that you should be able to for out of combat text HUDs and in the same manner that you could control selection circle visibility in the Infinity Engine games. 

I think the TAB function in Pillars of Eternity that shows every text HUD on the screen needs to be separated from the TAB key and combined with a function that also shows all of the Combat HUDs in combat. There should be a slider in the options that controls when the Combat HUDs are displayed a) all the time for party members, enemies and NPCs b) all the time for enemies, on mouseover for party members and NPCs c) on mouseover for everyone d) never show party member or NPC HUDs, show enemies on mouseover and e) disabled [like in expert mode]

 

Currently there isn't much point disabling them because they are required to tell what's going on. IF/WHEN a different animation is created for recovery time, then expert mode players and the like will be able to disable them and still understand combat.

I agree with the action bar being in the center of the screen, but they should still be above the portraits, which is why in my UI mockup I moved the portraits into the middle and the combat log onto the left so it's actually readable on the fly. I don't think having the current action over the portrait or above the portrait is a good idea.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

Combat is easier in the IE games. While reading some other forums with the problems of combat in this game, I came across a post that I fully agree with. To paraphrase another persons post from another forum: In the IE games, you micromanaged your casters while your fighters could hold their own and do their own thing in melee. Now every character in your party has powers and special abilities and you have to micromanaged all your characters in your party. And this becomes a pause spam fest. Because you have to select your Fighters abilities, your Paladins abilities, your Rogue's abilities and then go back to your casters and select their abilities. You're constantly going back to your melee characters every 2 seconds which you didn't have to do in the IE games. This would be great in a TB game, but it's making this game a pause spam fest.

 

Sensuki pretty summed it up perfectly.

 

I agree the pips over your characters are meaningless when you have your portraits telling you how much endurance/health you have. I'd also prefer the option to have the pips over the enemies taken off as well, and mouse over the enemies with their health status like it did in the IE games. I also agree the dialogue box should be on the left. However, Powers should be above the portraits. And other things like animations need to be updated. Recovery time over your characters is just more clutter that needs to go elsewhere.

Edited October 1, 2014 by Hiro Protagonist II

[IndiraLightfoot]

In the Infinity Engine games, combat was pretty easy to follow. No combat HUDs were needed to tell what was going on. The action speed formula was pretty easy to understand once you got the hang of it and characters had a different stance for combat idle and "waiting to perform action". When a character is doing nothing in combat in the Infinity Engine games, they look like they're doing nothing. When they are waiting to perform an action they have a guarded stance and their model is "pulsing". This is very easy to understand visually without any UI Help.

 

Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 absolutely murder Icewind Dale 1 and 2 in this regard because the Black Isle developers hackily removed the BG combat idle from their game. The creator of ToBEx was able to preserve the pulsing animation while removing the fake attacks - big success.

 

I personally think that showing party health bars are completely unnecessary because you already have a UI for that - the character portrait and health bar. So that is a superfluous addition to the screen. I do understand the need to show enemy health, but currently it is handled in a very unintuitive way. An actual health bar rather than five dots would be better, because then you get the exact granularity of their health state. This is not something I would use however as I prefer the IE style mouse over text.

 

I also understand the need to show unit actions and recovery times, although I think having them all on the screen at once is a huge clutter.

I agree with the action bar being in the center of the screen, but they should still be above the portraits, which is why in my UI mockup I moved the portraits into the middle and the combat log onto the left so it's actually readable on the fly. I don't think having the current action over the portrait or above the portrait is a good idea.

These are excellent points!

I still like the BG:EE-addition of action icons (but not on the portraits). However, what you sum up here about the importance of clearcut idle stances and the player intuitively noticing idle characters is what PoE sorely misses. I agree - and if done right, it could at least somewhat eradicate the need for near-portrait action icons.

A big yes to the pips/health dot bar over each party member and all the baddies being all wrong. For the enemies, an optional simple bar would be enough. I'd prefer just a simple number at mouse-over, like: (273/540).

 

 

Combat is easier in the IE games. While reading some other forums with the problems of combat in this game, I came across a post that I fully agree with. To paraphrase another persons post from another forum: In the IE games, you micromanaged your casters while your fighters could hold their own and do their own thing in melee. Now every character in your party has powers and special abilities and you have to micromanaged all your characters in your party. And this becomes a pause spam fest. Because you have to select your Fighters abilities, your Paladins abilities, your Rogue's abilities and then go back to your casters and select their abilities. You're constantly going back to your melee characters every 2 seconds which you didn't have to do in the IE games. This would be great in a TB game, but it's making this game a pause spam fest.

 

 

 

I agree the pips over your characters are meaningless when you have your portraits telling you how much endurance/health you have. I'd also prefer the option to have the pips over the enemies taken off as well, and mouse over the enemies with their health status like it did in the IE games.

Yep, I can't reiterate this enough: the pips are cluttering the screen and they don't help at all - also, the recovery of a character's action should be displayed elsewhere, preferably near-portrait. I really hope Josh & Co agrees with us on the pips needing to be redone/replaced-thing.

 

And indeed: The combat in PoE is indeed more difficult in the IE games, because of those reasons. I have played BG1+2 with all-caster parties and even all-fighter parties. The latter is so much easier and semi-automatic that it's not even funny.

Edited October 1, 2014 by IndiraLightfoot

[curryinahurry]

Combat feedback, action bar, recovery timer, combat; its all a bloody mess right now.  I agree with the sentiments Indira expressed in the OP, but all of these issues are related to the ad-hoc approach to organizing the play screen.  

 

The root cause?  The insistence on having all the main elements run along the bottom.  I know that I am beating a dead horse with this suggestion, and that there is absolutely no chance of these changes being made, but if Obsidian would reconsider the UI orientation, a lot of the problems we are dealing with could be solved while maintaining an orderly, easy to track UI.

 

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By having the UI elements Left Justified, we can keep the UI compact, without any odd gaps, Show the recovery timer next to each portrait (active highlighted), scroll out spells/ abilities that are easily identified with selected character, highlight characters that haven't been issued new commands (glowing action icon), and have a left side combat log, that has more room to expand.  All of this seems worlds more clear and efficient than what we have now.  

 

I'm not going to post any more suggestions about UI, but this really seems like the simplest way to solve a lot of problems with one fairly simple adjustment

Edited October 1, 2014 by curryinahurry

[Sensuki]

I agree that I hate the bottom only UI, but Josh Sawyer is the Project Lead and he likes bottom only UI, based on that alone I do not think it's going to change - otherwise I'd be doing mockups for it.

 

It's a shame that bottom UIs are an in thing right now, because there's so much space on the sides of the screen that could be used instead - you know, like how actual programs are designed.

Edited October 1, 2014 by Sensuki

[curryinahurry]

Indeed.  The thing is that it allows for such a more comfortable user experience.  I don't want to hijack this thread, but Indira's OP is really, in a way, the result of having to provide ad-hoc solutions driven by the fact that the horizontal UI can't accommodate the proper feedback necessary for a game this complicated. Meh

[Sensuki]

Serpent in the Staglands has an absolutely fantastic UI

 

 

 

[IndiraLightfoot]

curryinahurry: I really, really, really like your UI suggestion! On one hand, it feels rather fresh and widescreen-adapted for being a UI for a party-based RTwP CRPG. It also lets the game shine to its fullest, showing off the areas and the combat top-notch. On the other, it is classic, in that it uses the side, as well as being ambitious, of including everything near the portrait.

I can only dream that something like that is a toggable UI in the final game.

[Sensuki]

Well that particular side only mockup he did looks pretty bad IMO, but a portrait sidebar would be okayish.

 

Probably a waste of time putting any work into that though, shifting the elements around at the bottom would be a little bit better at least.

[IndiraLightfoot]

All I can say is that curryinahurry's column-like UI has a huge potential, with the combat log making it form a stumped L. This also lends the game that "fresh" space-y feel of having no real top or bottom UI clutter. Mind you, I like the old style too, but it has nothing on this kind of suggestion, IMHO.

[Fiebras]

@ Indiralightfoot:

I think having the skill icons in the center as oposed to next to their portrait feels wrong. Too much mouse movement distance between the two and on large monitors its gonna be distracting.

 

 

@curryinahurry:

Your suggestion looks good to give an "IE feel" but since we have so many skill icons and combined with skill submenus and tooltips you esentially ocupy 1/3 of the screen, comparable to draging the Combat log to its maximum height. I feel there would be many situations were I would have to move the camera to the side to see what was going on or be able to target something being blocked out in the menu. It works in that screenshot because its ocupying a dead zone of the map.

I like the idea of a combat action icon near the portraits in addition to the icon on top of the character model. If you remove the icon on the character model then you have to do the same for the enemies, which makes it much harder to see what they are doing and makes combat confusing if you arent paying close attention to the combat log.

[curryinahurry]

@ Fiebras

 

The various icons will take up about the same amount of room regardless of orientation...now, if you want a decent size combat log, and open up various actionicons, you'll wind up with losing about 1/3 of the screen along the bottom.  These kinds of games are ill suited for a purely minimalist approach; there is simply too much information that has to be displayed.  All I'm trying to do is get the clutter to be less like clutter and more systemic in its visual presentation.

 

As to your second point about removing the action icons above enemies...why?  Assymetrical is fine in this circumstance, and in fact, would make identification of enemy units that much simpler at a glance.

 

BTW, if you collapse the pretty much useless action HUD, you would get something like this:

 

 

In which you could keep the combat log to a comfortable dimension under the portraits.  

 

Also, please note, this isn't an aesthetics proposal...I'm purely looking at this from a functionality POV

[Quantics]

Either way, it would be really nice if we could position all the UI elements to our liking.

 

After all it's a pretty standard feature in most modern OS (windows, osx and linux) to reposition the Dock/Taskbar to our liking on the desktop (left, right or bottom). 

Edited October 1, 2014 by Quantics

[swordofthesith]

Combat feedback, action bar, recovery timer, combat; its all a bloody mess right now.  I agree with the sentiments Indira expressed in the OP, but all of these issues are related to the ad-hoc approach to organizing the play screen.  

 

The root cause?  The insistence on having all the main elements run along the bottom.  I know that I am beating a dead horse with this suggestion, and that there is absolutely no chance of these changes being made, but if Obsidian would reconsider the UI orientation, a lot of the problems we are dealing with could be solved while maintaining an orderly, easy to track UI.

 

[/url]">http://

 

By having the UI elements Left Justified, we can keep the UI compact, without any odd gaps, Show the recovery timer next to each portrait (active highlighted), scroll out spells/ abilities that are easily identified with selected character, highlight characters that haven't been issued new commands (glowing action icon), and have a left side combat log, that has more room to expand.  All of this seems worlds more clear and efficient than what we have now.  

 

I'm not going to post any more suggestions about UI, but this really seems like the simplest way to solve a lot of problems with one fairly simple adjustment

 

Voted up! Great suggestion Curry! 

[Fiebras]

@curryinahurry:

Yes, the icons will take up just as much space regardless of where they are placed but placing them that way ends up with a whole lot of dead space.

This:

I   Ï

I   I

I   I

I   I_________________________

I   I                                           |

I   I--------------------------------------

I   I

I   I

I   I

Is far more disruptive than this:

|  

|  

| 

|  

|  

|  

|  

_________________________________

                                                        |

-------------------------------------------------

I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I   I

You will not end up losing 1/3 of the screen at the bottom because the screen is rectangular ans as such the icon placement is far more stretched out. At most it ocupies 1/5 of the screen. Its also much more common for movement to be from right to left than from top to bottom and even then having all the icons at the bottom is better since you have one continuous rectangle instead of a square that is broken by horizontal bars to one side.

I disagree with you on the icons. I do not think asimetrical combat should apply on this. And if you want to bring a point about easier recognition its also easier to see which of the models on the field you just ordered to cast a fireball is with the current system. And its not particulary hard to see which models are the enemies, tis the ones with a red health bar and red selection circle. I dont think you can get any clearer than that besides painting them a shade of red when you highlight them, but we dont wnat that now do we?

 

Also, Colapssing the HUD makes it look even more broken up and while it means the combat log has more space which is nice it also means you have to find somewhere to put that HUD.

 

TL;DR: No, I still disagree.

[Sensuki]

Same.

 

I like sidebar UI's but you can't have stuff sticking out half way into the screen, and preserving symmetry is also ideal.

[gkathellar]

Indeed.  The thing is that it allows for such a more comfortable user experience.  I don't want to hijack this thread, but Indira's OP is really, in a way, the result of having to provide ad-hoc solutions driven by the fact that the horizontal UI can't accommodate the proper feedback necessary for a game this complicated. Meh

 

Aye. When I finally played PS:T, the ugliest, clunkiest, most unpleasant parts of my experience were (a) the bottom UI and (b) the radial menu auuuugh.

[Matt516]

Curry, your mock-up is gold. That said, there is no reason we shouldn't be able to move UI elements around as we wish. I know it probably won't happen, but it'd be nice. The side UI you mocked up is far superior to the current bottom UI though.

[illathid]

So... Is UI modding going to be possible? I imagine one of the first mods I'd want to get is a side screen (i.e. better) UI mod.

[Hiro Protagonist II]

I like the portraits on the side showing different things like health and recovery time, but I don't like things popping out from the side and taking up 1/3 of the screen. But as Sensuki said, the U.I. design is done and dusted and Obsidian isn't changing it.

[Lephys]

Okay, so a few thoughts...

 

What if the out-on-the-battlefield (floating above your peeps) indicators were streamlined down to JUST that little circle with an icon that indicates the current action? Then, recovery time could simply be the "rim" of that circle. It could "fill" with light in a radial fashion, until it came full circle, at which point you would know that your character is currently performing the action shown (whether it be a sword, or a spell icon, etc.)?

 

I know it's not strictly necessary to see what each person is doing and when, but it is pretty handy when you pause in the middle of some chaos. Especially since everyone isn't on round-timers in this game, so they could all be at any given frame of a given action/recovery duration. That, and it would still be toggleable, like pretty much anything. There's no reason you should HAVE to look at it if you don't want stuff floating above your characters at all.

 

Also... what if there was a button you could press-and-hold to simultaneously pause the game AND bring up an at-the-cursor quick-menu of the given character's spells? You're watching the action, and WHOA! "I need my Wizard to do something else because of what just happened!", you think to yourself. So you press, I dunno... Spacebar (just for example). You hold it down. The game pauses, and the selected character's abilities pop up around your mouse cursor (wherever it is on the screen). You simply pick a spell, pick a target, and let go of spacebar. There might even be some easy way to switch characters while in this pause-mode (mouse scroll, perhaps?).

 

Again, not necessary, but it could be pretty handy. *shrug*

 

Also also... regarding the little "current/currently-queued action" circle above characters, if the enemies had this, too, you could possibly use small lines between these indicators to indicate engagement. This is a VERY rough-draft idea, but it would be pretty intuitive at a glance who was engaged with who at any given moment.

 

These things and/or some kind of press-and-hold "show me extra info" button, like I think Sensuki was suggesting. Something like engagement lines could be only shown in that mode, perhaps.

 

Another possibility with recovery time is to have the selection circles show it. Same radial "fill" effect, but on the selection circles. Of course, that could get ugly, depending on what all other indicators they're used for (selected versus not-selected, engagement arrows currently, etc.)

 

Regarding the IE games being easier to know, at a glance, when people were waiting to perform another action, I think a big component of that was also the fact that everyone always acted at exactly the same time, due to rounds. It's one thing to see the guarded pulsing and know "Yeah, they're in recovery," but, it's entirely another thing to know exactly when someone's going to finish recovering and do something. Especially when Beetle A has .7 seconds left, Beetle B has 1.1 seconds left, Steve the Fighter has 1.4 seconds left, Sarah the Wizard has 1.7 seconds left, Susan the Rogue has 1.8 seconds left... etc.

 

Being able to see when people are going to get to act is infinitely more useful in this game than in "everyone goes every 3 seconds" IE combat.

[IndiraLightfoot]

Okay, so a few thoughts...

 

What if the out-on-the-battlefield (floating above your peeps) indicators were streamlined down to JUST that little circle with an icon that indicates the current action? Then, recovery time could simply be the "rim" of that circle. It could "fill" with light in a radial fashion, until it came full circle, at which point you would know that your character is currently performing the action shown (whether it be a sword, or a spell icon, etc.)?

 

I know it's not strictly necessary to see what each person is doing and when, but it is pretty handy when you pause in the middle of some chaos.

 

As long as it's not above the head of the party members, I'm good. It's not necessary to see what each person is doing and where. I reckon, it should be apparent via the graphics of the models themselves. I just can't get over how invasive it is for that precious fantasy combat immuh-shun. Some mouse-over, showing me the health, like "303/440", I can live with it, but not those pip bars (not even on enemies). They are blights on my fantasy combat screen. Therefore, at a bare minimum, move those indicators near-portrait instead. Then it's much easier to see at a glance which action each party member is taking at any given moment.

[IndiraLightfoot]

I like the portraits on the side showing different things like health and recovery time, but I don't like things popping out from the side and taking up 1/3 of the screen. But as Sensuki said, the U.I. design is done and dusted and Obsidian isn't changing it.

 

Good thing is: Josh said earlier, regarding the UI, that it's one of the easiest things to change and to have multiple options for. Here's me hoping that we get to tweak all these placement aspects of the UI ourselves:

 

[Sensuki]

I don't know about that, because they only have one 2D artist on the project atm. They have animators helping out with 2D art because of this.