New action bar. w/ mockup pictures!

[ChiefCurrahee]

I posted in a thread before about making a 3x3 action bar to be more user friendly, responses seemed positive and suggestions of a "Ring UI" came up. It got me thinking lets combine the two!

let me set up the idea for you.

The straight 10 button bar is very tedious to navigate with a gamepad. If you have a UI that has a central default home point and buttons surrounding that "home point" in 360 degrees you can essentially have all your commands in 2 steps.
When there is no player input for attack selection the "cursor" is at the default "home point" in the center of the ring. This is where you're most commonly used attack is located. To select this attack you simply press the "X" button to select the skill.

shown here:
http://img691.imageshack.us/i/circleui.jpg/

how to select a different attack you simply press the direction of the skill with the D-pad when in battle mode.

In this case the desired action is up and to the left (UP/LEFT on the Dpad)

shown here:
http://img189.imageshack.us/i/circleui2.jpg/

For reactive abilities your default "home point" can be context sensitive. A small flashy animation (like a "magical" reveal ) plays along with an audio cue to alert the player that a reactive skill is available. You simply take no action on the Dpad (returning the "cursor" to the home point) and press "X" to select the reactive skill.

Palate switching can be done by assigning a keybind to a shoulder or face button and along with Left or right press during battle.
For instance: "Square + Left"

I wanted to make better examples especially for the reactive skill part. But I couldn't find my photoshop install CD. So i had to make due with a free online photo editor.

Anyways let me know your thoughts, ideas or tweaks.

[Zenaku]

Seem pretty good but i don't think they ever add this to the game. SE old team said they may be Addon like wow that you can change the UI so maybe someone can make a addon with this idea in mind but don't know if the new team would allow addon we have go see.

[Rhianu]

http://img691.imageshack.us/img691/7683/circleui.jpg

http://img189.imageshack.us/img189/7750/circleui2.jpg

Hmm, looks kind of interesting. Would definitely make things easier for PS3 players, once the PS3 version actually comes out.

[Dreamer]

While I'd definitely like to see a radial menu of some kind added, as shown we run the risk of gimping ourselves unless they change the default action bar size to 8 instead of 10.

[REDace0]

While I'd definitely like to see a radial menu of some kind added, as shown we run the risk of gimping ourselves unless they change the default action bar size to 8 instead of 10.

I don't really think reducing the number of actions per bar will affect players that much. Even mages rarely use all 10 abilities on their primary action bar during a fight, there's just not time and stamina to do so. The exception being NM fights, but for those the 10 slots on the primary action bar aren't sufficient anyways.

Then again, I play with a keyboard, but the sluggishness of the action bar compared with keyboard input is the main reason why.

[RyoFujo]

My only issue with this idea is the use of the d-pad for the corners (up/left, up/right, down/left, down/right). I always struggle to get my d-pad to properly recognize these as easily as up/down/left/right.

However, combine this with my idea for using Square and Circle to select actions from dual action bars, and you get 18 actions available at once.

Here is a version with a 3x3 grid on the left and a more open wheel on the right:


It just occurred to me that keyboard users could use the same interface with the numpad. They would just need to replace Square and Circle with other keys.

[StrangeDNA]

Reminds me a lot of the radial command wheels used in Mass Effect, and it actually works pretty well. Of course, this is skewed towards a gamepad's analog controls for optimal effectiveness. A keyboard could still be used for this, however. It would actually clean up the UI clutter a fair amount. In addition, extra commands like ALT+ and/or CTRL+ could be represented by additional concentric wheels on the same radial interface.

Definitely has promise.