Obsidian's Pillars of Eternity [BETA RELEASED, GO TO THE NEW THREAD]

[Sensuki]

I played Icewind Dale 1 and 2 back-to-back months ago. 2's UI was quicker.

There's not that much difference.

The area between the portrait and the ability icons will only increase the time it takes to complete actions if you primarily click portraits to select characters and you do not use hotkeys. The importance is reduced by the fact that the games have pause, and most of the time when you are issuing orders you are paused (unless you don't need to pause).

This isn't a multiplayer or real time only game so the small difference in speed is a non-issue.

I play IE games pretty relaxed, I usually click the UI with the mouse to do things and the travel distance between the right and bottom of screen is a non-issue for me when playing them.

Just because you and Josh share the same affinity for the bottom bar, doesn't mean it is a superior design . It's just preference.

 

[Roguey]

I use BG:EE as a positive example

My point is that one can make a PC game and then later port it to tablets without compromising the PC version.

The area between the portrait and the ability icons will only increase the time it takes to complete actions if you primarily click portraits to select characters and you do not use hotkeys.

I shouldn't have to use hotkeys to deal with the inadequacies of a mouse-driven UI. As Josh said, the UI should be as comfortable as possible for people who want to use it and to hell with your form-over-function.

 

[Jim Cojones]

words words words

I played Icewind Dale 1 and 2 back-to-back months ago. 2's UI was quicker.

Me too. IWD1 was quicker.

 

[Roguey]

That makes no sense whatsoever. How was it quicker? Because I can tell you why IWD2 was quicker: the distance I had to travel from clicking on a portrait, clicking on a spell, and then clicking on another portrait was much shorter.

 

[Sensuki]

As Josh said, the UI should be as comfortable as possible for people who want to use it and to hell with your form-over-function.

Left-side L is also creates the most uncomfortable direction to move the mouse in (assuming you're right-handed): upper left to lower right. Given the choice between a left- or right-side L, I'd prefer a right-side L. But I'd rather not have an L for portraits/action icons at all.

Based on this false information - I find left side L more comfortable than right side L.

As an FPS gamer, everyone I know usually favors right movement turns (especially low sens players because it's easier to flick left to right and re-position the mouse).

 

[Roguey]

That's not false because, even doing it right now, making curves on the right side of the screen feels more natural than the left.

 

[Jim Cojones]

That makes no sense whatsoever. How was it quicker? Because I can tell you why IWD2 was quicker: the distance I had to travel from clicking on a portrait, clicking on a spell, and then clicking on another portrait was much shorter.

Because it uses little and barely recognisable icons for opening inventory, journal and spell pages. Because the placement of these icons is horrible. Instead of simply making a quick move to the edge of the screen and finding proper option instantly, I have to move mouse to the area where all icons are squished together and then find the option I want to use.

 

[Sensuki]

You don't make curves - he's talking about the position of the UI relevant to the mouse movement, which pretty much just means movement to the right or movement to the left. Most people move their mouse to the right because that's how Operating Systems and Web Browsers are designed and it's the same for right handed people turning in FPS.

Who on earth traverses a right side/left side L UI by moving their mouse in a curved motion.

That also has nothing to do with the UI, I was just using that as an example of false statements about ergonomics relative to muscle memory.

IE portrait to icon was left side movement anyway.

Also something he ignored that I brought up was that people pay more attention to the right side of things (to their left) so the readable information (IE. the Combat log) would be better off ergonomically placed on the left of the UI - if he were to follow ergonomics. Once again that is how OSes and Web Browsers are designed and that is usually how things are shot in film as well.

an example: Sandor Clegane's burned face was changed from the left to right side of his face for TV because of this rule.

It's not something I specifically care about because the IE Combat log was on the right, but it just goes to show when he talks about ergonomics, it's selective ergonomic or self-tailored ergonomic considerations, hahah.

 

[Roguey]

That makes no sense whatsoever. How was it quicker? Because I can tell you why IWD2 was quicker: the distance I had to travel from clicking on a portrait, clicking on a spell, and then clicking on another portrait was much shorter.

Because it uses little and barely recognisable icons for opening inventory, journal and spell pages. Because the placement of these icons is horrible. Instead of simply making a quick move to the edge of the screen and finding proper option instantly, I have to move mouse to the area where all icons are squished together and then find the option I want to use.

Oh, I see. Yes, that aspect is worse, and I never noticed it because using i, j, m, etc for those functions is second-nature to me. PE's mock up looked much better.

You don't make curves - he's talking about the position of the UI relevant to the mouse movement, which pretty much just means movement to the right or movement to the left. Most people move their mouse to the right because that's how Operating Systems and Web Browsers are designed and it's the same for right handed people turning in FPS.

Who on earth traverses a right side/left side L UI by moving their mouse in a curved motion.

That also has nothing to do with the UI, I was just using that as an example of false statements about ergonomics relative to muscle memory.

IE portrait to icon was left side movement anyway.

I see once again you're failing to understand what he's saying.

 

[Jagged Appliance]

This is what happens when we don't get updates.

 

[Sensuki]

Actually no I am not.

Original quote is in regards to left-sided UIs (portraits on the left side).

I don't think your mouse sensitivity is typical. Mouse travel is important not because of the distance it covers once, but because the distance it covers literally thousands of times over the course of the game. UIs intended for long-term use should have ergonomic considerations.

Left-side L is also creates the most uncomfortable direction to move the mouse in (assuming you're right-handed): upper left to lower right. Given the choice between a left- or right-side L, I'd prefer a right-side L. But I'd rather not have an L for portraits/action icons at all. The combat log is one of the most domineering elements of the UI but it's also one that could easily be separated from the rest. If we were to have some sort of an L layout, I think a right-side pane containing portraits and action icons with an adjustable combat log on the bottom could work well.

Red: Josh's idea of more comfortable mouse movement
Yellow: The direction I find more comfortable and right movement is the direction people move their mouse more often.

I do prefer right side portrait placement on the Infinity Engine games but most other games have them on the left side of the screen.

 

[sea]

I prefer Solid UI's like the Infinity Engine games, Warcraft 2 & 3, Starcraft, Diablo etc. NWN2 UI lacked any character whatsoever.

NWN2 was by and large opaque and minimalistic, the abundance of windows and boxes made the screen look like a nightmare at times and I wasn't a fan of the right click radial menus at all. The Character sheet and Inventory were serviceable but there's waaay more games that do the ARPG/MMO style Window Character/Inventory box better than NWN2 does.

Of Minimal UI's Titan Quest is probably my favourite.

I like solid UIs aesthetically as well, but basically you just admitted the only thing you actually liked in the UI was visual, while the functionality of the UI is, apparently, secondary for you. That's not really a good attitude to have when designing UIs in my opinion, otherwise you start to end up with monstrosities like Borderlands 2 where all the text is rendered at an awkward angle, only 40% of screen real estate is used, it's all done with the intent of looking flashy/gimmicky at the expense of ease of use, etc.

jesus

What's with this habit of people suddenly quoting me but not actually taking time to explain how or why they disagree, much less provide reasons and arguments? Or am I just that grotesquely idiotic?

Yes, Project Eternity is not a game about "not having tablet ports", that goes without saying.

Wasteland 2, on the other hand, we're talking about level design, combat grids and inventories, that are quite core systems... I do hope that in the end those games blow my mind and none of that really matters (although they COULD be better), but also remember that those are the thing we know.... there may be a lot of other changes being made in the background that it's just not something they want to publicly admit or discuss.

I.E., I wouldn't be that surprised if shortly after W2's release a console version is announced and quickly released "due gamers demands"... after all it's so easy to port things on Unity, even more if the UI is also console friendly... and obviously that would be just a lucky thing, never a intentional design. Obviously.

You may say that I'm being negative, that I've simply worked to much with advertising suits and all the business sludge in this world, and that might be true; but Fargo and Feargus are businessmen, and as I said, of all the contracts their companies had to make so far, the one with kickstarter backers is the easiest one to break... we've all seen enough of game releases to know that even major promised features can be missing from hyped games that the fans and media will still praise it if th rest is decent enough, so I can't really say that I don't understand the logic behind such decisions, but I do condemn them.

Nothing that they have said has indicated that they are developing a tablet version or console version.

Furthermore, once PC development is complete, how are you in any way harmed by the fact that they might port to other platforms?

Do you have any evidence for this at all other than a single forum post that says pretty much nothing specific, other than "we got this working on Microsoft Surface and it works fine" (which I should note is a Windows device)?

As for Wasteland 2, I could be wrong but I don't believe "hex grid combat" was ever a specific promise made, and the "linear" level design you're referring to was a demo made specifically to show off various features with some sort of narrative structure for the sake of the video, and not sprawling, open areas. You might as well say Fallout sucks because the fucking Vault 13 cave is linear.

 

[hiver]

jesus

What's with this habit of people suddenly quoting me but not actually taking time to explain how or why they disagree, much less provide reasons and arguments? Or am I just that grotesquely idiotic?

the opposite is true.

 

[Grunker]

sea: Did you consider that maybe I didn't want to spend 15 minutes writing up a list of reasons for the suckyness of a shitty UI when that UI has being pounded to dust multiple times on the Codex? You might as well complain "I am just a poor man asking "what is an RPG?" and nobody wants to answer!" Poor you, eh?

Well, because I respect you, I typed it up anyways:

NWN2 UI is the definition of floaty web-design UIs and the reasons they're shitty. It takes you through a million scrolling-screens, everything is hideously small, it is impossible to distinguish variable elements. The icons are fucking ugly and, more importantly, utterly useless. With three or four spells in the (once again floaty, stringy, web-design) spell menu for the same level, you need to hover over spells to differentiate them. You need to click multiple times between different metamagic menus instead of just right-clicking.

On top of this, you have the idiocy of radial-ish context menus infesting every layer of it, and there are TONS of useless multiplayer functionality smeared all over the single player experience, so every time I open a menu I'm presented with a bunch of options I'll never use. A good example of NWN2 UI's incompetence is that instead of simple party formations that don't require input, you have a random, shitty "broadcasted command system" in which I can direct my followers to shamble after me, for the least bit of control I have to go into another menu and scroll through a host of options OR iniate dialogue to get them to to stay within reach of me. But woe is fucking me if I think I can have any more control than that without microing each follower constantly. GOD FORBID if I want my main character to be in the background, then I have only 1 choice: take control of another party member and run along with him/her.

Every note is taken from MMO-country but implemented even more poorly. If I want to use manyshot, I have to activate manyshot and click on my intended target, or have right-clicked on the target then click manyshot. But if I left-click, then right-click, it cancels both actions instead of overwriting. Why do I need to use this MMO-interface in a singleplayer RPG where my character has a total of 1 active ability I need to activate repeatedly? Why does rapid shot or power attack become deactivated after I switch instances? Why are the even modes? Why aren't they just passive options in an option menu I click on/off?

On top of this, targeting is completely off. If I don't use tab to cycle through enemies, my mouse will flutter and have difficulty handling precision targeting of different monsters or objects. Loot always uses the same icon on the ground as well, unless you drop individual pieces from your pack. Health-bars are so small their only information-value is "half health/as good as dead", and spell icons look exactly the same. Even the shitty IE spell-icons had some modicum of usefullness, NWN2 is just a collection of identically-colored and formed icons, the only difference being the exact blurry drawing to help you differatiate. As shitty as IE spell icons were, at least their shape was radically different to help you. Pop-up text flies by and the combat log is small and stringy and impossible to derive information from "as you go" in combat, so you're pretty much forced to rely on the MMOish hell of pop-up text cluttering your screen.

A UI has one job: make sure I can execute orders easily and understand what is happening easily. It needs to be as simple as it can be for that purpose, while being aesthetically pleasing. NWN2 fails completely at every single part of this job. It requires multiple clicks to execute even the simplest of actions, it is utterly complex with multiple windows open just trade (what happened to just displaying one window with merchant inventory and your inventory?) or a large collection of tabs to cycle through abilities, and on top of this it is some of the ugliest piece of SP UI I've ever seen.

NWN2 UI is designed precisely as an MMO-UI. A shittier idea for an SP-UI I have never seen. Its only saving grace is that it is much, MUCH better than NWN1 UI, which is like saying a can of urine is better than a can of shit. Oh that, and the context menus for items with abilities are sort of neat. That's about it.

 

[Infinitron]

Grunker: I think the "multiplayer functionality" menu options only show up in fan-made modules, not in the main campaigns. Each campaign has its own directory with customized UI XMLs (installing a UI mod overrides these - that's another way you might get unwanted/unnecessary stuff in your menus)

 

[Sensuki]

I like solid UIs aesthetically as well, but basically you just admitted the only thing you actually liked in the UI was visual, while the functionality of the UI is, apparently, secondary for you. That's not really a good attitude to have when designing UIs in my opinion, otherwise you start to end up with monstrosities like Borderlands 2 where all the text is rendered at an awkward angle, only 40% of screen real estate is used, it's all done with the intent of looking flashy/gimmicky at the expense of ease of use, etc.

The only example I've given ITT of 'form over function' is regarding the border-style UI of Baldur's Gate 1/2 and IWD1 vs the bottom bar style of IWD2 and PS:T. The reason I like the portraits at the side is visual (style preference and gives opportunity for larger portraits, of which status icons can be used inside) and economical (because it gives more space on the action bar for other things and it keeps the screen in aspect, unlike the bottom bar which gives a skewed view).

The downsides to the border UI are that ability icons are further away from the portraits and it probably takes up more of the screen in pixels. It's merely a trade off and not necessarily worse. There's plenty of positives for the border-style UI it's just that Josh Sawyer seems to think that distance between portrait and icon and less pixels (minimalism) are more important.

In the UI threads over at Obsidian I demonstrated many things I thought would be functional improvements from the original IE, but I actually do not have a problem with the original IE style as a whole.

NWN2 UI is highly right-click focused which I do not like. Many people found the radial menus highly annoying.

My attitude to UI design would be to not change shit that already works.

Win

FTR this was my UI mockup for P:E, one of the only ones that used the same amount or less physical space than the original.

Josh Sawyer doesn't like the ability icons to the side though, he prefers them on top of the portrait like IWD2.

 

[uaciaut]

They haven't delivered anything yet.

So? You're acting as though it isn't valid criticism when the projects double back on their target group. During the kickstarter they're all "oh so pc, so for you", then suddenly tablets are even a part of the conversation? How? How is tablets even something worthy of mention?

With your "lol, so much butthurt" you're validating such bullshit.

Sawyer said from the start game will be low-spec so that most PC users, including people that own toasters (like me) can play it. A lot of tablets are actually reaching (if not passing) toaster-levels in terms of performance and as such i don't see Obisidian going out of its' way to port the game to tablet. So how the fuck does it fucking affect you, do you think that it's exactly the 20 or 200 $ you spent on P:E that's being thrown on this particular feature? Well tough luck, game wasn't fucking made with you as the messiah of players in mind and if Obsidian wants to expand their target players to get more cash without compromising controls (is that even possible? most ad&d titlers are controlled 99% with mouse anyway) or graphics (which i don't see happening) then they've got my fucking blessing, especially since they'll use most of it to make a sequel anyway.


I really didn't know the codex took drama as a fucking religion when i joined, good thing it has preachers like you to keep the flame alive.

 

[Grunker]

Grunker: I think the "multiplayer functionality" menu options only show up in fan-made modules, not in the main campaigns. Each campaign has its own directory with customized UI XMLs (installing a UI mod overrides these - that's another way you might get unwanted/unnecessary stuff in your menus)

Wrong. I'm playing Mask of the Betrayer right now in preparation for a P&P campaign in Rashemen, which is why I'm so pissed of about it currently, and I have multiplayer shit clocking up the menus.

 

[Shadenuat]

To Grunker's grunking, I'd add that it's a general problem in modern UI's to distinguish what is exactly the battlefield and what is happening, from meta information like HP, buffs, portraits and so on. The eye just zooms around the monitor trying to grab to any focusing point, but there is overlaying shit everywhere. For example. in BG buffs on characters go to the portraits and follow down. This means that buffs never will stick out from UI's geographical position. In NWN2, buffs pile up near each portrait and to the side. Meaning some portraits become visually bigger.

I got used to it after I played modern MMO's a bit (like KOTOR MMO), but when I played NWN2 for the first time, my head almost exploded. After a time I figured you can't play NWN2 without your spellbook being open all the time, because one bottom bar was just not enough for every character, and creating multiple ones for every party member also was frustrating. Meaning at all the time during play, I had on my screen simultaneously: character portraits (full of tetris buffs), a portrait of the target, some another portrait, summoing portraits, a map, a full spellbook, a hotbar, a main menu button, a general skills button, an action order slider and text window.
And all that lacked any kind of thematic approach, just random windows. Now compare that to BG2:

It pretty much has UI and gameplay segregated altogether. There are parts where happens control, and parts where happens the game.
I know 3.5 is more complicated, and BG spell bar could use another line of icons, but still.

The icons in NWN2 are also hideous and just too small, and when you add crafting to it, trying to distinguish mithril blade from mithril sword can be troublesome.

The jump from NWN1 which had 1 controllable character and sticky camera to NWN2 with it's multiple characters and free camera modes meant that UI just kinda crushed on itself, unable to bear all the info game had to give now.

 

[felipepepe]

Furthermore, once PC development is complete, how are you in any way harmed by the fact that they might port to other platforms?

IF they only started to think about a console port later, I wouldn't have any issues. But when suddenly W2 has a shitty console-friendly inventory just like Oblivion, Skyrim, F3 and New Vegas had due multi-platform release, one can't help but wonder the reasons behind that... reasons that were never addressed nor explained.

To me that's the exact same as suddenly seeing a W2 screenshot with a dialog-wheel system. This is a PC exclusive, sold as so. Making console-friendly choices without any good reason behind it is nothing but suspicious.

 

[Grunker]

I know 3.5 is more complicated

There's a reason I don't hit on NWN2's UI for not just being a 1:1 copy of the IE. The first is that the item ability menu in IE was outright terrible, while NWN2's is actually fairly good, and the second is that the wealth of spells and abilities wouldn't work with just a sigle bar at the bottom. This one fact isn't an excuse for the mess that is NWN2's UI, however.

 

[Sensuki]

I actually didn't have a problem with the IE spell selection - the problem was the limited space of screens at the time. Clicking on the spellbook and then having the entire action bar turn into spell icons would look good on a widescreen monitor.

 

[sea]

Well, because I respect you, I typed it up anyways:

Daw, thanks. :3

NWN2 UI is the definition of floaty web-design UIs and the reasons they're shitty. It takes you through a million scrolling-screens, everything is hideously small, it is impossible to distinguish variable elements. The icons are fucking ugly and, more importantly, utterly useless. With three or four spells in the (once again floaty, stringy, web-design) spell menu for the same level, you need to hover over spells to differentiate them. You need to click multiple times between different metamagic menus instead of just right-clicking.

Remember that the UI is pixel-scaled. The UI itself when played at "intended" resolution around the time of the game's release, i.e. about 1024x768, is actually a very comfortable size. But if you play at 1080p as the game allows you to, well, yeah, no wonder the UI gets hard to read - way more pixel density.

See here:

I think the icons are way easier to differentiate than the ones in Baldur's Gate, and a close match for the ones in Planescape and Icewind Dale II. They have a lot more colour and make it immediately clear what type of spell or item they are. And even if you can't differentiate them enough, experience and muscle memory get you by after a few minutes (after all, you would have put them in the quick slots yourself).

On top of this, you have the idiocy of radial-ish context menus infesting every layer of it, and there are TONS, and TONS of useless multiplayer functionality smeared all over the single player experience, so every time I open a menu I'm presented with a bunch of options I'll never use. A good example of NWN2 UI's incompetence is that instead of simple party formations that don't require input, you have a random, shitty "broadcasted command system" in which I can direct my followers to shamble after me, for the least bit of control I have to go into another menu and scroll through a host of options OR iniate dialogue to get them to to stay within reach of me. But woe is fucking me if I think I can have any more control than that without microing each follower constantly. GOD FORBID if I want my main character to be in the background, then I have only 1 choice: take control of another party member and run along with him/her.

Fair complaint, but the broadcast command system does have its function and I feel is implemented fairly well, UI-wise. In theory it gives you more control than the AI package system from the Infinity Engine games because you can customize behaviours far more deeply (specific orders can be given, and each character has a bunch of behaviour settings you can change in their character screen). But whether you like it more or less really has nothing to do with the UI.

Every note is taken from MMO-country but implemented even more poorly. If I want to use manyshot, I have to activate manyshot and click on my intended target, or have right-clicked on the target. But if I left-click, then right-click, it cancels both actions instead of overwriting.

I don't recall this at all. You could be right, but I never noticed such poor behaviour. In general I like the feature of being able to keep an enemy selected, so that the same or different characters can queue up spells and attacks much faster.

On top of this, targeting is completely off. If I don't use tab to cycle through enemies, my mouse will flutter and have difficulty handling precision targeting of different monsters or objects.

Welcome to 3D graphics. Again, not directly a UI issue, though obviously it relates to UI. Though I will say this issue is far from unique to 3D games. For example, I have this problem with Jeff Vogel's games. In the Infinity Engine games it was done pretty well by having the clickable zones actually be a small area around the character's feet rather than the entire sprite - since no character could occupy the same space as another, it removed ambiguity here. That's definitely something NWN2 could have done better, though with a fully rotatable camera it might not be so easy.

But either way, I never found targeting to be that bad, at most you might have to rotate or zoom the camera a bit in a few instances.

Loot always uses the same icon on the ground as well, unless you drop individual pieces from your pack.

I suppose you could have a "weapon" model, an "armor" model, etc., but personally I think the bag system is superior to just dumping it on the ground. It's not like the Infinity Engine method really saved time - the item graphics were impossible to read if they were overlaid, and you still had to open a special UI panel (either by looting something or opening the inventory) to see the specific item.

Health-bars are so small their only information-value is "half health/as good as dead"

Oh come on. If anything I felt there was more ambiguity in the Infinity Engine portraits because the health overlay colour was often hard to make out over the character's portrait, depending on the background. I would always have to mouse over to check the HP of a character to see if they were really in the danger zone or not.

Is that really so hard to read for you? I have no trouble whatsoever.

so you're pretty much forced to rely on the MMOish hell of pop-up text cluttering your screen.

I found I had to use the combat log way more often in Infinity Engine games to have an idea of what was going on, especially for things like protection spells the enemies had used. The issue isn't really the UI again, it's the overall poor combat system in NWN2 which in general turns everything into a massive clusterfuck due to its faster pace and more ambiguous character movement and positioning.

A UI has one job: make sure I can execute orders easily and understand what is happening easily. It needs to be as simple as it can be for that purpose, while being aesthetically pleasing. NWN2 fails completely at every single part of this job. It requires multiple clicks to execute even the simplest of actions, it is utterly complex with multiple windows open just trade (what happened to just displaying one window with merchant inventory and your inventory?) or a large collection of tabs to cycle through abilities, and on top of this it is some of the ugliest piece of SP UI I've ever seen.

I disagree. Typical functionality does not require extra clicks. For example, selecting a spell you need in the Infinity Engine games might take a dozen clicks - in NWN2 it requires you to open the quick spell menu or hotkey the spell, and then click once to select, once to use. You can even modify those same spells with a right-click (i.e. location vs. single enemy) instead of requiring an entirely new spell. I agree that a few things could have been streamlined, like letting you hotkey a specific type of the spell, but overall the UIs are very comparable in terms of required clicks for actions, and at its worst NWN2 is still nowhere near as bad as Baldur's Gate etc.

 

[Sensuki]

for example, selecting a spell you need in the Infinity Engine games might take a dozen clicks

Umm, what?

If you quickspell'd the spell it is 1 click (click on the action bar).

Otherwise it is generally two (click the spellbook, then select the spell).

On smaller screens when characters have a lot of levels & spells, there can be 3 'pages' of spells on Multi-Class characters such as Aerie, that is absolute worst case at which the total clicks is 4.

This would not be a problem if the UI scaled to screen size, but it doesn't. There's nothing wrong with the select spellbook style IMO.

 

[sea]

IF they only started to think about a console port later, I wouldn't have any issues. But when suddenly W2 has a shitty console-friendly inventory just like Oblivion, Skyrim, F3 and New Vegas had due multi-platform release, one can't help but wonder the reasons behind that... reasons that were never addressed nor explained.

To me that's the exact same as suddenly seeing a W2 screenshot with a dialog-wheel system. This is a PC exclusive, sold as so. Making console-friendly choices without any good reason behind it is nothing but suspicious.

Ask Brother None about it, but I think that the reason they went with a list has nothing to do with tablets or consoles. I'm pretty sure it was done because it is a lot easier to do than a grid-based inventory (less art requirements, mostly, as well as less complex logic for actually displaying the items, it scales better with resolution changes, and no cap on maximum items allowed). I recall talking with him about this a while back and those were the answers he gave.

Umm, what?

Okay, to be fair, that was hyperbole.