(Poll) Do you like the new hotbar?

I do not regret never learning this skill.

 

Sometimes it is. Say your main offhand is a sheild, and you are currently grappled to a ceiling above a large section of the lava core of a planet and you now need to have a weapon in your off hand to deal with an enemy that shoots or flies. If you can't swap the off hand item, you essentially have to risk falling to a molten death, or the critter killing you before get to a spot where can swap the grapple to kill it. Granted this is not a common situation, but it is a great example of why that advanced feature matters to some. I have no idea how the new bar would handle that situation, as not sure if would stay grappled or not when switch slots.

 

In the post you quoted I explained: put the shield in the other hand to begin with. Cool that both scenarios explaining the shift+click thing involve dangling helplessly from a ceiling and differ only in whether it's important to have a shield, or not have a shield.

Really though the more I think about this whole hotbar issue, the more it seems like left-hand/right-hand is a clumsy attempt to do something, anything other than Terraria's context key, quick-heal key, and grappling hook key. But what do I know? I'm two-handed weapon using scum.

 

I played some more with it.. trying.. really trying.. but still its so bad.

I find myself only using 6 slots overall, and just changing those.

I feel like someone took away my swiss army knife and gave me a binky :/

 

Even if the shield was in the other hand originally, a dagger or other 1H melee weapon, flare, a flashlight would be just as bad, even a pistol could be needed to be swapped out in a hurry. I have to ask, did you even understand why the examples both used a grappling hook to a ceiling, instead of something else like the Shockhopper fight? If not, the main reason is that it is a very clear example of a situation where for whatever reason the item in one hand can not be swapped without disastrous consequences, it doesn't matter if the item needed to be swapped out is in either the right hand or the left hand.

It's not just a matter of having a shield or not in that situation. It could just as easily be a matter of having a 1h melee, 1h pistol, flare, bandage, flashlight, a stimpack, or a capture ball vs any other 1h item. And just in those mentioned here, with the new hotbar pairing each of those I mentioned by name with say a grappling hook would take up 8 total hotbar slots alone and not counting any pairing of them with the other likely combinations could want between them.

 

I've never encountered a situation where I needed to dangle from the ceiling. In fact, I pretty much stopped using the grappling hook at all.

Am I thinking of a different game? Starbound is the one where mobs die in 1-3 hits right? Ah, but that requires a two-handed weapon. That's my problem. I've never considered the convoluted things I'll need to do once they get phased out.

 

You missed the point of the examples entirely. It has nothing to do with actually using the grappling hook at all. The point is there are times when one could be using whatever items one wants at the time, and encounter a situation where you need something else that you didn't expect but swapping one specific item out for another would end in disaster.

Since you favor two handed weapons, lets use the old 2h swords that could parry in an example just for you. While in combat with who knows what your health gets low enough that an incoming attack will kill you if you get hit at all. And said incoming attack or attacks are in such a window where you can not parry them fully and will also break any shield you have before out of danger. There are only a couple of ways you can get out of that kind of situation, and well tough cookies if you never prepared in advance for being in that kind of situation as with the new hot bar if you did not prepare for it in advance you have no recourse. With the old hot bar, for those who used its full features, they could adapt their equipment on the fly to better fit whatever situation the game throws their way instead of being SOL immediately upon being put into a bad spot where don't have the time to mess around in the inventory screen to manage the encounter. And yes, even then they could still end up dying in the situation, the difference is having the ability to navigate it without having to prepare specifically for it. Shockhopper is a good example of an encounter with something one may not be fully prepared to deal with on the first time fighting it and also won't die in 1-3 hits like you claim mobs die in to 2h weapons.

On the whole mobs die in 1-3 hits, not everything does. Have you been in some of the higher tier micro dungeons like a Dark Glitch castle on a scorched planet? I use a lot of different weapons across varied characters, even the big nasty 2h weapons don't kill things like the Dark Glitch that fast, and consider that you may not always be able to isolate them to fight one on one in a spot advantageous to you every single time.

 

The Z key already does this, even with the new hotbar.

 

Definitely a different game than the one I played. Oh well. I'm the odd guy out I guess.

 

Not really, same game. I have not been in those kind of spots either, but because you or I have not had to deal with that does not mean others have not been in those kind of situations. When looking at the development of a game, a person has to consider many different types of players, from those who love the challenge of Bullet Hell games and the really punishing and hard ones like the Dark Souls franchise, all the way to the other end of the spectrum to those who have a hard time playing things more complicated than Candy Crush and Angry Birds, and those who will do crazy things like try and beat the entire story of Starbound with nothing but what they can find and craft from their initial starting planet.

Just because we may have never experienced those kind of situations where would need things like that does not mean they are bad to have in a game, as even though I have not had to use them extensively I see them as valuable to have around as you never know when will come across something where will need it. There is an old saying about it being better to have something and not need it, then needing it and not having it. A lot of useful features in games often stem from considering things that a novice gamer might need, but an experienced gamer may never need during normal play, but make crazy challenges possible.

 

If the game was as crazy a combat scenario as is being used as an example, I could see how the old hotbar would be preferable. Without mods, I doubt the hotbar will ever require that sort of "adaptability". I've played for over 100 hours and never ran into a scenario where I had to grapple hook over lava while defending against enemies. Not even once. The only time you would have to do such thing would be in a dungeon that you could not alter with your MM. Outside of that, you could just gather the lava or cover it in blocks.

The new hotbar works for the game as is because it's not that hectic. You really only need a few slots to do everything you'll ever need to do.

 

Ok. Finally got the unstable branch updated to play test....

It's not the hot bar I dislike, it's the HOT SWAPPABLE key. That little x shortcut, that takes me back to my default set is now the key that swaps toolbars.... And I simply HATE it!

I'm going to have to reteach the muscle memory of combat now.
Died 3 times from that sh.. And just doing it in /admin mode now.

Screw it.

 

You can rebind that key to something else... I did that to the TAB key, because that is what I preferred. I agree with not liking it being x. I did keep the default and added TAB to it. I don't use x for anything anyway.

 

I like the new bar and swappable bar concept but I admit I am starting to consider rebinding the key. Just pondering which might be the better fit.

(also, thanks devs for controls we can rebind. Sooo many games out there lack this feature)

 

Well, I finally tried this new hotbar thing.

Long story short. I don't like it as much as the old bar.
Whoever made the poll only gives me two options for not liking it HATING IT!!!!!! or "mixed feelings" which... doesn't really Make much sense to me when there is also an "i don't care" option.

Anyway. I'm okay with some aspects of the bar... But some things just went really making sense here.
So they went to all this trouble to make this new bar right? They made absolutely sure that dual wielding was a definite thing. While this is not a bad thing really they way the decided to do it was to cut the hotbar in half and make a toggle switch to access each half.... ...okay? Not the craziest thing I've ever seen but kind of strange.
Now we get to the dual weilding.... wait blocks are 2 hand? Bandages? Matter manipulator? Starting weapon? (Mine was 2handed dont know if its possible to start with a 1handed) Arnt there supposed to be things to dual wield? Isn't that the whole point of butchering the hotbar that for at least the last couple years has remained completely unchanged?

I'm sure I'll find things out there that are one handed so I can actually try out the dual wielding part. But starting out it just felt like you guys cut our hotbar space by 2/3rds for basically no reason as I have almost nothing that's actually 1handed.

Don't know why this change had to be made right as we are rounding the last corner of the last lap of a marathon. Guess that's why you guys are in charge of your game not me.

I'm not impressed by your new hotbar. But I'm sure I can learn to live with it.

 

Bandages are one handed, blocks are 2H for obvious reasons. Hopefully someone can find a way to make furniture 1H, but otherwise using the MM 2H makes sense due to the foreground-background of the game. I think you're looking through a bit of a narrow window here, as pretty much the first planet you find is bound to have some sort of one handed weapon. I have yet to not stumble across an axe, machine pistol, shorts word, or something first planet... And dual wielding I find to be very useful. This new hotbar, while not quite as free as the old hotbar, is definitely easier for me to use. (I'm a fan of swappable hotbars, but I still like the idea of having both available to access)

 

There's a difference between "I don't care" and "I have mixed feelings".

I don't care means you literally don't care about the bar one way or the other. You like both equally or you're OK with either, whatever. "Mixed Feelings" means you dislike the bar as it is currently, however, if they made a few tweaks to it, then you'd be happy.

Basically, the "Mixed Feelings" is "It needs Tweaks".

As I've said in a bunch of different places, the only thing I have against this new bar, is that there's only 6 buttons displayed at once, and I hate swapping. If they'd put all 12 pairs on-screen at once with no swapping, I'd be 90% satisfied with the new bar. The remaining 10% is stuff like having a default hotkey to quickly switch back to, but meh, I can do without and/or it'd be nice to have a "builder's bar" on the right edge of the screen with 1 row of 12 buttons (not pairs of buttons, because it's intended for 2H objects), etc misc stuff that I'd like to have but could do without.

 

O great chucklefish, hear our pleas! Honestly, that is my only gripe too... I can get used to only 6 at a time, but it'd still be nice having access without switching, even if I do use it a lot.

 

I've been using the switching mechanic some, but I've made lots of mistakes (I really need to move the watering can so I can stop using it instead of bandaids lol) and it still feels clunky so yeah, 12 button pairs prz.

 

Huh I could have sworn that when I equipped a bandaid it took up both slots. Oops.

Either way the devs seem dead set on it so crying about it really can't amount to much.

I do still have an issue with only being able to hold blocks with 2 hands. I mean we get a backpack that protects us from the environment on planets like mercury and Venus. We have a small handheld device capable of removing tons of dirt and rock from anywhere, not to mention collecting said dirt and rocks... But if you have a block you need to make sure you always have 2 hands on it.

Again, I can live with this, it just seems a tad strange in such a building driven game to limit it that way.