First up, I want to thank Larian for making such a great game. I've enjoyed all of my many hours so far, and I know that I'll keep enjoying it right to the end. Overall, the game is well-made and thoughtfully implemented. The user interface, however, is pretty rough around the edges. I've compiled a list of problems, bugs, and suggestions to make it better.
GENERAL UI
1. let arrow keys/WASD move the map when map window is open
2. Let Q and E (remappable of course) swivel camera left and right. This would be very intuitive and quicker than having to hold MMB or V
3. BUG(?): some items (eg. magical armour potion) don't make any sound when consumed
4. when looting barrels etc., right click on "take all" button should bring up a menu that lets you "send all to...."
5. For self-targeted spells, It'd be convenient if we could target the portrait to the left of the skillbar
6. If I select a different companion while my party is moving, that companion will stop moving. Maybe there's a valid reason for this, but it's pretty annoying.
7. Drinking an invisibility potion while sneaking will break your sneaking and result in you getting caught. This seems silly.
8. include a way to pause without finishing game session
9. let RMB+drag move the camera. This would be a great shortcut that is more precise than WASD. And since we all use touch devices nowadays, we're used to this sort of UI where a click and a drag do different things
10. in the formation buttons, there should be one that automatically uncouples all 4 companions, and one that automatically attempts to couple them back up
11. add a "notes" section to the journal where players can type their own notes (thanks for letting us name our own markers on the map already - that's very helpful)
12. If I've died, and double-clicked a saved game, please don't ask me "are you sure - you will lose all unsaved progress?". That's just silly. Actually, please don't ask me that ever. If I've hit ESC, clicked on "load game", and double clicked a saved game, then yes - I'm sure!
13. ****SPOILER*****: If I steal Evelyn's reveal spell but not her diary, then kill Dietmar, the journal will explain the whereabouts of the beach hideout as if I knew about it, even though I didn't. This actually happened to me, and it was confusing, and felt like the game was holding my hand by giving me cheats.****end spoiler***
14. BUG: if I click and hold an item from the quickbar, then change skillbar with a hotkey while still holding down LMB, then drop the item to an empty spot, the item will not be removed from the first slot
15. BUG: in battle, if I choose, say, a fire arrow (6 action points), then hover over a target, it says "0 action points" and all the action point indicators turn green again. This surely makes no sense and is misleading.
16. Let us assign a hotkey to each member of the party. An obvious set of defaults would be F1, F2, F3, F4. this would also fix another problem, which is that at the moment there is no way to centre the screen on the currently selected hero with the keyboard (without having to hit 'previous party member' and then 'next party member' immediately afterwards)
INVENTORY UI
1. when hovering over an unequipped ring, it only tells you about one equipped ring. It should tell you about both, with both windows side by side.
2. when I hold shift while I right-click and "send to companion", it should allow me to split items
3. Some parchments (eg. one that I found in skull cave) say "use to read", but don't allow me to use them. Their descriptions should be altered.
4. if I'm too weak to hold an axe, I shouldn't be able to chop wood with it, but the game lets me do so (via crafting)
5. there should be a way to easily see if something is unidentified without having to hover over it (eg. add a little "?" to icon, or make it slightly darkened/hazy)
6. If player drags an item onto a backpack, it should automatically get placed inside that backpack
7. Please include a "label this as junk" button or similar, and then include a "sell all junk" button while in barter menus (failing that, make improvements to the backpack system to enable us to quickly dump stuff into it and then quickly sell its contents during barter)
8. During combat, I can look at only the current companion's inventory (eg. companion A). If I keep this open until it's the companion B's turn, the inventory remains locked on companion A (it doesn't allow me to change using the arrows. I think I can understand the set of dilemmas that led you to leaving it like this, but it feels pretty weird.
9. there should be a way to open the backpack while in the barter menu (a simple right click menu would do)
10. let us drag-click a group of items and then send them all to another companion
11. It's possible to drag an item from companion A's equip slot to companion B's inventory. It should also be possible to do the reverse (drag item from companion B's inventory into companion A's blank equip slot)
12. sorting items by value/weight etc. should be persistent (ie. when I close the menu, pick up some new stuff, and repopen the menu again, all items should be resorted according to my previous preference
CONTROL SETTINGS SCREEN
1. BUG: In Control menu, some keys - eg. apostrophe, minus key (but not numpad minus key) - get shown as blank
2. In Control menu, some keys (eg. alt, shift) are unable to be pressed. This is an especially big problem if I remove the "Shift" binding from something and then later want to rebind it back to "shift" - there's no way to do so.
3. In Control menu, there is an option called "toggle menu". This is a misnomer, because it doesn't actually allow you to toggle the menu if set to anything other than ESC. If you set it to, say, Q, then Q will let you bring the menu up, but ESC is still required to close it (Q won't close it). The simplest way to fix this is to simply not let this function be changed at all. No one ever expects ESC to be remappable.
4. If I choose a function to remap then change my mind and press ESC, the game thinks I want to map ESC, and gives me an annoying "this key is already in use" message. ESC should just cancel the remapping dialog without the error message. Again, no one ever expects ESC to be remappable, nor should they.
5. improve custom control menu to make it easier to assign keys that are currently assigned to something else (eg. automatically switch them, give the option of overwriting them, or automatically unassign them).
6. BUG: Arrow keys can currently be mapped to two things at once (eg. if I map left arrow to Journal, left arrow will open journal AND move camera left). There are three ways you can fix this that I can think of: (A) Don't allow arrows to be mapped to anything other than movement......this would take power away from player so isn't a desirable solution (B) Allow arrows to be UNmapped from movement once mapped to something else.......but then there's the question of how does one remap them? (c) Simply don't automatically link the arrow keys with camera movement......this is probably the simplest and most desirable option, as it gives control back to the user. Most people will use WASD anyway, and if they want to use arrows instead just let them remap them from WASD. Almost no one will want to use WASD and arrows at the same time. There are, however, some people who will want to use Arrows for something other than camera movement (eg. people using gaming keypads such as razer orbweaver, or people who want to to use arrows for map, journal, skills, inventory).
BARTERING
1. In barter menu, give player a way to order items (especially by value)
2. let [ and ] switch characters in barter menus as well
3. Selling a backpack should sell its contents and not the backpack
4. let scrollwheel move slider left/right when we are choosing quantity of items
5. let player right click and "send item to companion" during barter
6. BUG: if I initiate barter with Hero A, then switch to Hero B in the menu, then hover over a piece of equipment in the seller's menu, it will still show me the "Equipped" item of Hero A. It should show me Hero B's item.
7. right-clicking on an empty square closes the window. But rightclicking on an item, player's/npc's gold display, outside the window, or even on the close button, does not. This inconsistency seems arbitrary.
SOME OTHER COMMENTS
I want to applaud you for allowing us to unlock rotation, despite it causing artifacts. A lot of companies would have been too scared to do something like that. Yet the game feels much more natural and enjoyable with unlocked rotation, so I'm grateful I'm able to use it. And in several hours of using it, I've yet to see a single artifact.
I'm disappointed by the lack of proper AA in this game. The jaggies are pretty bad with SMAA. The game appears to be CPU bound, so utilising proper AA probably wouldn't even have much impact on performance. Is there any way you can at least allow the game's settings to be overridden by the AA settings in the nvidia/AMD control panel?
Also, I'd question your decision to lower Anisotropic Filtering for all presets other than Ultra. High anisotropic filtering would make a noticeable visual impact, but the performance hit would surely be negligible for any hardware from the past 6 years, if not even older. It probably makes sense to lower AF for the lowest preset, but having a "high" preset with only 8x AF seems funny.
Last edited by Volnaiskra; 24/07/14 01:14 AM.
