Still slower, lol. It requires two button presses to activate the 2nd set of hotbars instead of just 1 button press which is significantly slower. There's a reason why, back during the days when I played WoW and FFXIV, I never used Ctrl+ and Alt+ for anything other than out-of-combat buttons. Because it's just too slow. I didn't even like using Shift+ for anything but they eventually got so stinking many buttons that I had to. <----Former MMORPG gamer who has a 14+ button mouse. Who reaches for the 0 key? lol
I agree, so I would probably put things in my 2nd bar that are not essential for combat/exploration, and spend most my time with the combat bar out.
Well, we are the ones actually playing it, so we do kinda deserve a say here, no? I'm all for "giving it a try", but as-is the bar seems... broken. In a bad way. If you have two sets of bars, but can't tell at a glance what is where, you will typically be very confused a lot of the time. I understand the concept behind it, but it's a step back in versatility, to my eye. Being able to assign equipment combos to hot-slots is great for combat, but it will be very troublesome for the other big part of the game, building. Between all the block types, and decorations, and furniture that you would use to build a typical house, the ten slots you had before were barely enough to work with, without having to dive into the inventory (which takes up half the screen at high zoom). Not to mention trying to select the right support item in the middle of combat - six slots is enough for, what, two plus one default sets of weapons, torches, platforms, grapple, emergency terrain blocks. If you want healing, other boosters, flares, bombs, pet pods, anything else, you'll either have to take away from the exploration essentials, or pray you are able to select what you need from the other hotbar quickly enough in the middle of a fight. I think you need to consider using expanded icons instead of actual dual slots. There's a game that already does this, I just can't for the life of me remember which of the numerous Diablo-clones it is. But you can just put items into the same slot, and if you add two one-handed items together their icons are merged into one (with one offset from the other), letting both one-handed items occupy one slot. If the new system is made as a concession to the console players who (as they're using a controller) typically lack the ability to select from more than a few hotbar items at a time, then it is totally understandable, but you still need to keep in mind us KB&M players on the PC. We have that ten-button number row on the top of our keyboards, and we're rather used to using it.
I think the action bar looks great and offers a wide variety of options for combos that fits with the revamped weapon system. I don't think there is a need to lash out so violently about the design. This is all a beta. Enjoy the progress and all that the developers have done for us so far. I know I'm thankful. So thank you devs! Everything looks great and is on the up and up imho!
I'm not lashing out against it, I just think that they could go a step further, put all 12 on-screen at once, and have them all activated by 1 through =. In fact, we'd be gaining 1 hotkey slot by doing so and it would function exactly as it is right now for those people who don't do a lot of dual-wielding. For those who do, it should be even cooler. EDIT: I would arrange them like this: Code: 1 2 3 R T Y 7 8 9 4 5 6 0 - = Hopefully that comes out right.
Oh yeah. There DEFINITELY needs to be an indicator in the inventory that an item is in your action bar to reduce the possibility of accidental removal. I think this is an overall positive move, but the post needed to be more in-depth to explain the extent of what's going on (I say heeeeyyyyyy-yeeeeeeyyyyy-yeeey-yey-yey...)
tilde? no, that is not simple to press(that key is about as small as my arrow keys; I'm using a laptop. ><). Maybe the tab key.... hopefully though it will be something that can be changed to go along with other key bindings that already can. Just will take a bit to get use to it though...
This new hotbar will probably have some quirks about it ironed out in the future, oh, and before we make accusations at each other, there is a difference between lashing out and giving input. There's a fine line, but @Xylia is most definitely in the "giving input", and actually doing it so perfectly that I've never seen anything like it on any other forum. Good job.
I'll try to do a crude mockup later when I get home for some improvements. Also, another thing: Put little numbers beside the pairs.
Another thought - what about the combinatorial explosion? Say, you have a good one-handed sword and a good one-handed shield. Then you have a good one-handed gun. Then you have a medkit you might want to use while using either a shield or a gun. And you might want to have a flashlight you want to use while using any of the others. The previous system just let you put the items on the bar and select them however you wanted - this one will require you to make up pairs beforehand, manually change every instance of a particular item if you want to swap it out of the set because all items are now shortcuts, and you will be very SOL if a situation comes up where you need a pair of items you didn't think you'd need put together, like a flashlight and a medkit when you're forced to retreat from a fight on low health through a dark cave that might still have traps about.
Interesting, that is a possibility. I hope manually selecting combos out of items in the hotbar will still be possible. I didn't think about that, as I make a Xenon Pack ASAP, so I've never had light issues...
And now I remember that the Grapple Gun is also one-handed, and you might want to use that with a gun, or a shield, or a grenade launcher, or a sword, or a flashlight, or a wand, or a medkit, or another grapple gun, etc, etc.
Apologies for being a little off topic, but could some please inform me of what will happen with mechs once 1.0 is out?
This is an amazing update. There is so much potential with this new setup of the action bar. Thank, thank you! That is a pretty vague statement. Is it the look of the action bar or the functionality of it? what would you do differently to make it better? Constructive criticism will help the Devs.
I dunno, I feel like there's some tunnel vision going on in looking for shortcomings of the new action bar here. Even putting aside 14-button mouses (seriously, what? That's pretty niche), I kinda feel like there's some looking for action bar problems and not looking beyond the action bar for solutions. Like the flashlight-and-something-else thing. My immediate reaction is honestly "who uses a flashlight beyond the first planet?". I mean, one of my FIRST tasks with any new character is to make me a shitload of torches; I find placing torches a vastly better method of exploring caves than using the flashlight. (And then I replace them with Cheap Lights eventually.) And I admit I haven't played Nightly, but I can't imagine it's too long before you can add light packs to your environment packs or adding light collars to pets or etc, plus the light-throwing clothes as a possibility. This game's gotten really good at opening up your functionality options. And I know I raised the issue of "I like this weapon and wanna use it with more than one other 1-handed thing", but... I guess I'm a bit confused as to how many combinations one REALLY needs to set, how many one will actually use with any regularity. I kinda feel like six alone would cover the bases... dual-weapon, weapon/shield, weapon/heal... shield/heal, shield/2nd-weapon... and Clyde. I'll see how this pans out once it goes live. (Ad I don't have a problem with the `/~ key toggling between bars, if that is a possible toggle, but then I almost never use my left pinky to type and it tends to hover near there in normal AWSD play anyway.)
I kinda want the old and new hotbars to be switchable via settings. Just my opinion though. V( '-' )V
I was a little worried about losing the basic functionality of the old bar, but then I noticed the wood materials and "pick up to bar" lock. So I'm gonna do exactly the opposite of overreact, unlike some here... good night~
What about the people who like to do lots of building and want 4, 5, 6 different kinds of building blocks on their hotbar? RIght now, they can do that -- weapon for fending off the occasional baddie, a gun, bandaids, and then they got 8 more for building materials. With the new system, the weapon, gun, and bandaids have 3 of the 6 already taken up and they gotta keep swapping between bars with an extra button which IMO would get old after awhile.
It would be nice one set of actions bars be the first 3 "combos" be the new layout and the second half be individual slots like it is currently. I like how this new system is going to work for combat but it does seem annoying if you are building to be limited because one type of block takes up a pair. Just an idea that might be a decent compromise between the two.
