(Poll) Do you like the new hotbar?

You can right-click something on the hotbar to remove it. Of course this won't help you transfer an item from one slot to another, but you CAN remove something by right-clicking it.

The problem with this, is that it makes it impossible to do what they want you to be able to do:

If you put a Sword&Shield in Hotbar #1, they want you to be able to put Bandaid and Shield in Hotbar #2.... but this is impossible without item shortcuts unless you got 2 separate shields.

 

I hadn't really thought about it before, but this item-in-each-hand thing itself is starting to look pretty inferior to Terraria's system. Like the only advantages to this are being able to dual wield (which has never seemed very useful to me), and shields which I just think are a boring game mechanic in their current state. Like you can offhand a grappling hook, but in Terraria you'd just hit E; you can offhand bandages, but in Terraria you'd just hit quickheal; offhand flashlight, but in Terraria you'd just hold shift.

I think something that could make it worthwhile would be one-handed "magic" items instead of staves (assuming they're still planning on having "magic" in the game for some reason) that do something other than damage. I.E. create temporary anti-projectile shields, self speed buff, push foes away or pull them toward you. If there was stuff like that you could have some reason to dual wield a variety of things.

I guess it wouldn't hurt to make shields interesting, but I can't even pie-in-the-sky imagine how to do it, myself. Maybe others could tho.

Hey sorry if this went a lil off topic.

 

I never really cared much about shields in Starbound, but after finding a ridiculously powerful 1H sword, and now that I've tested a shield... dude, shields are ridiculously overpowered if you can find an actually powerful 1H weapon.

Now of course you could just Nanoweave all the damage, but since NW bandaids are harder to make now, that's probably not as viable of a solution.

 

I agree that they're overpowered, which to me, only supports the argument that they should be changed/removed.

 

I've actually had surprising amount of success with dual daggers and dual pistols experimenting with this new hotbar actually. Seriously.

Before this experiment, I never used either because the individual weapons always felt like "poor man's version of [insert 2-handed equivalent]". After trying it out.... gods.... it would be hard to come back to just priorizing 2-handed weapons because that was the easiest to use with the old hotbar.

A dual dagger builds build upon the main strenght(attack speed) of daggers in such a way it's almost scary to see in action how quickly you can dispatch a monster, especially if you throw it into a corner where you're attacking so fast they will never deal you damage even with contact damage thanks to the "temporary immunity after damaging enemy" deal because you're dealing hits so fast they never have time to be able to reactivate their ability to dish damage. It's a -very- nasty close-contact build.

Sure, the range disadvantage remain but otherwise if you can get into the efficient range of those twin short blades you might as well have thrown your enemy into a lawnmower.

Dual pistols similarly make up for their attack rate such, I have a hard time to justify using an assault rifle when I can have dual pistols pouring lead almost just as fast for actually higher amount of damage. It's a matter of energy management, but experiments even just with novakid crafted revolvers had such results I'll have a hard time looking down on such a dual wield again.

And like said, there's something to be said about the durability of shields. A shield build especially make the 1-handed axes' slow attack rates much more viable since you can both blocks and deal hits that are sometimes as damaging than what is sometimes seen on 2-handed weapons. They are still able to be overpowered by massed damages though and the fact enemy NPCs uses shields as well now also help in balancing out how "overpowered" they make a player because they now have to take into account that enemy NPCs too can now start blocking their attacks so it's not anymore of a one-sided deal.

Dual shortsword was also a satisfying build, which actually help with their two-hits combos designs to dish damages more consistently. And obviously, shortswords also pair rather well with shields I feel. Shield+pistol also give me an interesting "riot gear soldier" feel that's not dislikable either but work best against other ranged enemies than it does against melee enemies(due to pistol's lower knockback compared to other weapons like melee weapons or snipers/shotguns).

The fact I(and others) are feeling such successes with the new hotbar would make me very really reluctant to competely go back to the old bar.
Making the old bar an option? Sure.
But I really want to keep the new one for myself, personally.

 

Again, I have not questioned the usefulness of shields at all. I think they make for poor gameplay, but I kind of regret bringing it up as this thread is not really the place for that discussion imo.

Anyway, I guess my main question about your points would be how do those "builds" stack up against a two-hander with reach or range that can 1- or 2-shot whatever you come across?

 

Dual machine pistols/lasers are actually even more effective. Sure it pretty much just pours your energy out, but after calculating DPS, dual machine pistols (versus equipment of the same level) are the top damage dealers for ranged, with daggers being the case for melee.

I still like the idea of the double bar compromise. It allows for more experimentation and is as intuitive as the classic hotbar, but is still as viable for dual wielding as the current one.

 

I don't know yet but then again I'm unsure how hard it may be to code in the first place.

This said of the new bar, especially with people ranting about how the shortcut mechanic felt it took away the "item in hand" feel of the old hotbar.... I feel like I'm one of the few people who feels like the new hotbar feels more like actually equipping equipping gear in a RPG than the quickswap of the new hotbar. It might be a case of "everyone's mileage may vary".

I do like the feel of setting up the very specfic combination I want and specifically thinking over -what- I would like to use for given future situations though. It feels like I have to "think" more about it than I used to in the past. Like a RPG adventurer pouring over his inventory pack to decide what to bring along before actually going on actual adventure. Like said, it may be feel more immersive in that sense but again that might just be only me/my personal preference.
If anything, it feels like it helps me develop more of a "preferred combination" than the old bar since I have to think in term of specific pairs rather than just quick hotswapping the content of each hands on the fly.

 

While I'm not defending the "shortcut system" I would like to point out, before you could hold a 3 swords as big as yourself, 5 assault rifles, a set of pistols and another of daggers, in your "hands"

 

I do not like it.
Maybe i will get used to some aspects of it, but swapping/rearranging items is more tedious now

It's also not a significant improvement over the old one, you can't switch hands now (comes in handy when using the two X slots) and "deselect hands" is utterly useless and uncalled for.

I think it's unnecessary, and i'd rather we keep both unless usability isn't the goal of these changes in the first place.


I don't think the second hotbar will be enough for when i get a shield, spear and hammer (like i usually do, with a spare slot for emergency dirt), and switching between pairs that do fit isn't much faster than before

 

X actually switch between hotbar while staying on the slot you were selected(so switching from first bar's 4 to second bar's 4). Personally I'm actually eager to experiment "quick switches" build for each of my slot with these.

The Z key actually allows you to deselect whatever's in your hands to empty them for when you're in guarded village than the like. I couldn't even figure out if there was a similar key with the old hotbar because I was unable to find such a function(or be aware it was there) until I actually began to experiment with the newer ones.

I could just be wrong, but I believe it might be better to at least have this new bar as an option in the long run because I think it might prove more easy to learn, or at least get some basic stuff like dual-wielding, done using this new bar for people who've never had the experience of similar games(that is, folks who've never played starbound and Terraria before).

I might not be representative, but it was only a few weeks ago that I even learned there were keyboard shortcuts to actually chose which hand you wanted to equip something in the old hotbar. And I'd been playing since the original early access release in 2013-2014 :/

That's a lot of time to even discover a feature existed. In that way, I believe the current dual slots of the newer hotbar will be much quicker to grasp for someone who is entirely new to this sort of game(to a degree it feels almost like an extension of the equipment screen... and thinking of it that way almost feel like it make it easier for me to grasp how I want to setup my stuff in it).

This said, while I love the new bar... maybe keeping/implementing an updated version o the old bar as an option the player could select in game setting would be a good compromise for those who are still having difficulties with or just dislike the new one.

 

I realy like this idea, but at the same time I think it would take a lot of space on screen.

 

Taking up one more row vertically is definitely the one downside. I don't think it'd be all that bad, but they could possibly tuck the offhand row halfway behind the top. Still drag and drop to those half-slots. A button you can hit to toggle into full-display. It could work.

 

This might be very much why devs decided to go with the layer systems. For all we know, they likely did experiment with "both layers showing" setup only to decide against purely for visibility's sake. There's a lot about development that's easy to miss and potentially hard to communicate when one is still busy working over other features or polishing other bugs.

 

I mean it's what, an extra 40 pixels off the top of the screen? I'm not saying it's nothing, but I could live with it.

 

Yes, I do mention somewhere in my wall of text and images that it's kind of bulky. Although if there were options to change the UI size (like in Minecraft for example: Normal, Large, Small, Auto...) then it would be less of a problem. I'd probably make a way to "minimize" the bar.

This was how I was thinking of doing it, but the few pixels gained from pushing the bottom slots up a little isn't really worth the extra code and spritework that would probably be needed imo. Another thing I'm considering is a button which will toggle it to a seperate view wherein the left and right hand bars, instead of being centered on the screen, become seperated. The left bar on the left of the Matter Manipulator, and the right bar on the right. It would trade the extra height for extreme length, I must admit, but I think having a long bar at the top being your blindspot is better than having a large chunky box in the top-center of your screen.

An alternative solution I was thinking of would be to lower the transparency of the bar, either hiding all but the slots, or making the whole thing invisible and slots semi-transparent, allowing better sight. They would become fully visible when hovered over, of course, or if the inventory was open, for easy viewing and useage. Not perfect, but you'd be able to see the area it's blocking partially. Maybe even add an option to make it fully transparent unless you change your selection, where it will fade in slightly, and then fade back out, for those who know their hotbar layout by memory or don't want it visible constantly.

Ah, but still, this thread is not about my suggestion. If you wish to discuss it, please do so in my thread. We don't want this one getting off-topic.

 

I do find it rather interesting that currently the opinion on this new hot bar is rather evenly split currently(25, 32.8,32.8, 9.4).

Makes me really think the best option would be a way to include both bars currently. As the old one is more intuitively set up for building and exploring, and this new one is more intuitive for combat and dual wielding. And I can easily see two points in the game to introduce the different bars to a player, the first being a certain room in the mining camps on starting planets, and the second being in the Erchius Mining Facility. And if did go the route of optimizing one for building and exploring, and the other for combat, could even attach slight character buffs to each after being active for a bit to further emphasis their roles. Such as maybe movement speed and manipulator buffs for the old, and armor, energy regen and possibly dash cooldowns for the new bar.

 

I saw an interesting suggestion on the reddit that was basically suggesting to use the layered nature of the new bar to actually combine BOTH the new bar structure and the older one within the same bar.

The first layer could be a "combat bar" using the new paired slots as-is.

The second layer however could basically be a "builders' bar" featuring the old 10 solo slots structure for builders who truly prefer placing building blocks and the likes right into their hotbar.

In a way, by freeing combat items and the like to be purely used into the "combat bar" using the new structure, the more retitled "builder's bar" would be free to hold more materials than ever before.

As currently already done, one would simply switch between both bars with a simple press of the X key.

 

Things that appear in the Nightly are not 'released'.

From our FAQ:

 

I'm aware, but what else am I supposed to say? "Added in"? I simply meant released for testing in the nightly, and am fully aware that changes are not final. I honesty think that it's great that it was changed because of all of the feedback that you've gotten.