This morning I was able to lay my hands on a decent enough Windows PC, so I tried the beta a bit for the first time (v333). 

 

First off, I was blown away by the first screen. The detailed hand-painted pillar coupled with the intro music is a big win. The general vibe of the game is good; dialogue interaction is interesting and witty. If combat is still bad in the final release, at least I can fall back in Torment mode and just dialogue my way through most of the game.

 

That's why I'm just going to give some impressions about the UI. This is mostly nitpicking but I think this could help having a feeling of a more polished game. To those who will complain that most of these points have been mentioned a hundred times elsewhere: deal with it.   

 

Character creation

 

1. When rotating your 3D character, it looks like it's levitating. I feel like my guy is not really on the ground.

2. Maybe when selecting a race, you could be presented with a random character appearance. Would showcase the game better. I'm not sure this is a good idea but might be worth exploring.

3. I think the disabled "Done" button during most of the character creation process should be displayed only when enabled. I happened to hover my mouse on it a couple times after reading the right pane description, thinking it was the "next" button. The next button was actually at the other side of the screen (on the left).

4. The green button-like name placeholder should be displayed only when you have entered your character name. Because otherwise it looks like a next button of some sort, and it is a bit confusing when you are looking for the "next" button.

5. Maybe the next button should be easier to find in terms of muscle memory (like, always at the bottom right). If not, points 3 and 4 would mitigate this problem.

 

In-game

 

6. I don't like left-clicking to move. I'm okay with right-clicking, but not left clicking. Sometimes I wanna left-click-select a character but I misclick and my whole party moves to a new undesired position. Sometimes I wanna click a mid-bar button or a character portrait, and I misclick by 1 or 2 pixels, causing my mage to head straight into a group of 4 beetles.

7. I don't like left-clicking to engage in a discussion. I prefer right-clicking.

8. At any given point in time you always have 1 or more selected characters. Never zero. I would like to be able to have zero characters selected so that I am free to wander around safely left-clicking on random stuff with my mouse.

9. I would like to be able to clear my combat log before attacking enemies of interest, so that when I scroll back in the log, I will only see relevant/interesting information.

10. The loading screen image doesn't look very incrusted in the brick wall. It looks like it's levitating on the depth axis a bit.

11. Having a 10 seconds loading screen when entering and leaving even the tiniest of buildings is a bit annoying.

12. Shortcuts are good but it is a bit frustrating not to be able to assign any key we want. I know some keys are dedicated to game-wide features but I still get frustrated.

 

That's it! Oh by the way, I've only played for 40 minutes, so I may be wrong on some points.

Edited November 17, 201411 yr by Rumsteak

Left-click to move was how it was in the Infinity Engine games, it will not be changed but I think you can re-bind left click to right-click if you so wish. Same goes for left-clicking to interact with an enemy.

 

I am the same with #8, you can't unselect all of your characters which I find annoying. Something I have requested in my recent video as well.

 

The combat log doesn't scroll down properly at the moment, it's buggy.

 

Load times have apparently been largely improved in the upcoming patch

 

You can re-assign keys and you can set hotkeys to abilities.

Left-click to move was how it was in the Infinity Engine games

 

Yeah I know, what I mostly meant was that I don't like to have both left-click and right-click perform the same movement action. Feels weird. Hope that makes sense.

Edited November 17, 201411 yr by Rumsteak

I am the same with #8, you can't unselect all of your characters which I find annoying. Something I have requested in my recent video as well.

CTRL/Shift clicking/dragging to select and de-select isn't in yet!? Or does it just straight up prevent you from deselecting the last character? Either way, I agree we need this.

Edited November 17, 201411 yr by mstark

Left-click to move was how it was in the Infinity Engine games, it will not be changed but I think you can re-bind left click to right-click if you so wish. Same goes for left-clicking to interact with an enemy.

 

I am the same with #8, you can't unselect all of your characters which I find annoying. Something I have requested in my recent video as well.

 

The combat log doesn't scroll down properly at the moment, it's buggy.

 

Load times have apparently been largely improved in the upcoming patch

 

You can re-assign keys and you can set hotkeys to abilities.

 

The "way IE does it" doesn't mean we have to follow that. I don't see "let's follow the terrible UI of the IE-games" in this:

 

 

Eternity will take the central hero, memorable companions and the epic exploration of Baldur’s Gate, add in the fun, intense combat and dungeon diving of Icewind Dale, and tie it all together with the emotional writing and mature thematic exploration of Planescape: Torment.

 

In fact, there are plenty of other changes made to this game as compared to IE-likes. Creating a better and more modern UI should be one of those additions. Just because IE had terrible UI implementation, doesn't mean we need to recreate those mistakes.

 

I couldn't agree more with all of rumsteaks comments. good stuff.

Edited November 17, 201411 yr by Hormalakh

Yeah I know, what I mostly meant was that I don't like to have both left-click and right-click perform the same movement action. Feels weird. Hope that makes sense.

Their right-click function should include a cancel like it did in the IE games. Right click hold is formation rotate.

Edited November 17, 201411 yr by Sensuki

The "way IE does it" doesn't mean we have to follow that.

Yeah it does, actually. Who the hell makes an IE successor without left click move, what is that

 

Same with making a Ghost Recon game without right mouse run, that's blasphemy.

Edited November 17, 201411 yr by Sensuki

Steak, what do you think about the HUD UI, do you find it convenient, would you resize something, move some elements around, etc?

Edited November 17, 201411 yr by Gairnulf

Sometimes I don't know whether Sensuki is trolling us big time with all his "that's how it was in the IE games" 

 

 

Anyway, Rumsteak, I agree 100% with all your suggestions!

This was a game made for IE fans...Well at least funded by them.

Yeah it does, actually. Who the hell makes an IE successor without left click move, what is that

 

I agree. Using left-click move was one of the reasons I backed this project. How the hell can a game possibly complain to be a homage to a series of games over ten years old if every single feature isn't absolutely identical?

 

Obsidian need to be careful or they'll fall into the trap that InXile did with Wasteland 2 - failing completely to pay homage to the original by using a GUI that wasn't copy and pasted from 1988.

[Diplomatic - 16] I certainly did not want to spawn a religious war between left-click and right-click! Either way's fine for me. My point is mainly that having both left-click and right-click to move feels weird.

 

*waiting for the ogre's reaction*

Edited November 17, 201411 yr by Rumsteak

I know what you mean, I'm replaying BG and I find myself clicking with the right sometimes. Don't worry, enough playig hours and the habit will return. There are other things worrying me inthe UX and I'm afraid they may not be recognized by enough people until after the game ships.

Steak, what do you think about the HUD UI, do you find it convenient, would you resize something, move some elements around, etc?

 

I'm afraid I do not have any helpful insight to give you.

Thing is, I'm one of those weirdos that use the mouse as little as possible, because laziness.

I use keys from 1 to 6 to select party members, use arrows (soon wasd) to move the screen and use spells shortcuts as much as possible (by the way, is it possible to select and navigate I - II - III spells with the keyboard?). So my cursor is always at the center of the screen, mostly selecting a unit to attack or talk to. Thus I do not care where or how far the hero spells, hero portraits, and general buttons are. I was already doing that in BG1.

 

What I can only say about the HUD UI is that I like the old school skeuomorphism. I would not complain if they went more in that direction as I am not a big fan of the very thin window borders that look weird especially when the window content contains wood or parchment.

 

PS: it would also be nice to have bigger icons in general.

Edited November 17, 201411 yr by Rumsteak

 

Steak, what do you think about the HUD UI, do you find it convenient, would you resize something, move some elements around, etc?

 

I'm afraid I do not have any helpful insight to give you.

Thing is, I'm one of those weirdos that use the mouse as little as possible, because laziness.

I use keys from 1 to 6 to select party members, use arrows (soon wasd) to move the screen and use spells shortcuts as much as possible (by the way, is it possible to select and navigate I - II - III spells with the keyboard?). So my cursor is always at the center of the screen, mostly selecting a unit to attack or talk to. Thus I do not care where or how far the hero spells, hero portraits, and general buttons are. I was already doing that in BG1.

 

What I can only say about the HUD UI is that I like the old school skeuomorphism. I would not complain if they went more in that direction as I am not a big fan of the very thin window borders that look weird especially when the window content contains wood or parchment.

 

PS: it would also be nice to have bigger icons in general.

 

I'm a skeuomorphism fan as well. Talking about window borders, I think it looks really unneeded how the combat log's borders light up on hover. Wood doesn't light up when I hover my hand over it (unless I'm a Fallout ghoul), so why should the interface. How do you find the combat log btw?

How do you find the combat log btw?

 

I didn't look at it because it was quite bugged on my computer and it put me off. In the combat pane, the second-to-last and last lines were merged. In the dialog pane, I could not scroll completely to the bottom.

I just played less than one hour in total. My next play session will be when the next patch comes out.

I decided the same, due to memory leaks crashing my game after advancing a little. I know I could still play at being QA, but that would feel like work, and I prefer to be paid for work, not pay in order to do work

 

The "way IE does it" doesn't mean we have to follow that.

Yeah it does, actually. Who the hell makes an IE successor without left click move, what is that

 

Same with making a Ghost Recon game without right mouse run, that's blasphemy.

 

 

The same ones who add AoO, 3d models, dynamic maps, a different rule-set, etc etc etc etc

Changing the control scheme would have been bad from a UX perspective IMO. Some of the control stuff that they have changed isn't good anyway.

 

It's like removing the start bar from windows when people have been used to using it forever - horrible idea.

Edited November 18, 201411 yr by Sensuki

Except IE games have been out of style for decades. New control schemes have taken over and players have gotten used to that. IT's like what rumsteak was saying about the next button being on the bottom right.

 

Nowadays, everyone right clicks to move/action. Left clicks to select. All games do this. Who cares what a old system did when everyone else is now used to the new one.

Do you really think that people are incapable of performing actions under different control schemes?

 

I right click to move in DotA 2, I left click to move in the IE games, and I hold right mouse for Ghost Recon to run. It is a disgrace to just do the status quo because everyone else is.

I'm in the right-click move, left-click select camp too.  You can right-click hold for formation rotation.

 

Making the argument that we shouldn't use this scheme just because everyone else is is just about as pertinent as the argument that the control scheme shouldn't change because the old IE games were left-click move.  I have not played the beta myself, and spend less time lurking the forums of late, but Rumsteak already addressed some issues (s)he had with the current control scheme, such as misclicking an ability in the UI to send his wizard wandering off into nowhere.  I imagine it would be equaly as frustrating to try to move your character only to select another instead, and vice versa.  This sounds like a problem to me, and one that can easily be remedied with a simple button swap.  If this really is as it sounds, then nostaligia has nothing on ostensibly impractical controls in my opinion.

 

In my experience (looking at you, Xbox360 Mass Effect 2 'A' button), having a single control do multiple things within overlapping contexts is a bad idea, and should be avoided when more practical alternatives present themselves.

That problem is because they haven't designed the UI properly (solid HUD). In the IE games (yep, I'm using it again) if you misclicked on the UI, you just clicked on the UI and nothing happened, it didn't move your characters in the game world.

PE still has hotspots on the UI where the mouse interacts with the game world, and many of the keyboard shortcuts do as well.

 

You can change your key bindings to right click move instead, but both buttons are needed to facilitate move/select and formation rotate.

Edited November 18, 201411 yr by Sensuki

I don't know if it would be any more difficult for the programmers to give you like a 5 pixel padding around the character or selectable objects so you can't accidently click into objects. Maybe an easier solution would have movement need an extra click, so you double click to move to x spot.

Also, the text in the combat log could benefit from having tab's so you can filter out content that doesn't need to be there since it scrolls by so fast anyways. I almost feel like the combat log needs to be about 20% wider and include the content more unified. I think Sensuiki made a similar suggestion of how I imagined it would work. Right now it's a bit too much work to have it as is. I think middle bottom and about 50 pixels taller and about 20% wider would go a long way.

There is going to be a solid hud option apparently