Potions and the skill bar

I've mentioned this a while ago but with alchemy beginning to take form maybe it should be brought up again. I do not think that potions should be including in the skills deck and dedicating a branch in the focus tree to allow more consumables in your preexisting deck seems to be a waste of skill points. I think there should be a separate bar along the bottom of the screen with slots for potions / non-wearable items with special attributes. I think It would make alchemy a much more viable experience in that having potions ready for use instead of clogging up the already frustrating deck. I understand there is a concern for overuse of healing potions, particularly in the setting of PvP but limiting the number of potions that could be placed in the designated bar might be reasonable.

 

In Richard's overview, potions were also going to have alcohol so they would be self-limiting to a point.

 

That would be fine...just make them separate entities from the current skill bar

 

I agree with you from the following reasons:
- Healing skills in deck

And thats it - never used healing potion so far. Its much more effective to put healing spells in deck

 

I would like to use a separate"Belt bar", to actívate/use items and potions locked on it.

 

Yes,a belt bar would be a great idea. Limited space to place items/potions. Choose what u put there, limit the number of items or stackability of items in the slots. This makes for viable potion use and makes alchemy a viable profession

 

I'd like to be able to have the free inventory slots we had in early releases of the games that were right below the paperdoll, which you could stick bags and potions and whatever other loose items on. The character sheet could then minimize into a "belt bar" like that. It wouldn't just be useful for potion access, but also quick access to certain bags for collecting reagents and other harvesting materials.

Chris said recently that most people are using the list mode. Yea, one reason is because they aren't supporting bags very well; everything gets dumped into a large heap in your backpack. There are several other reasons I can think of. You can't even get a bag off an NPC, you have to craft it yourself or get someone to craft it for you. Then you have to look for rope ;>

 

I agree with Malcor in the OP.

 

Also I didn't agree with what was said on the hangout about bags not being as popular as list mode. What I have to say on that is; that many of us want to use bags but they don't work correctly. So we don't use them and of course there is no take all, which would be nice. You can not create a bunch of little different colored packs to organanize your bag and then just take one like for example your blue reagent bag and put it in a chest in your house, Since you cannot atm lift a bag that has anything in it. So they are not working as I would like them too right now. So I will use list mode. Sorry off topic, but the bags are a pet peeve of mine.

I also do not like the potions and consumables being on the combat bar and rotating. I agree with them having their own bar and a timer or as mentioned being alcohol based which will affect combat abilities negatively if over used.

 

I only used list mode when i needed to move around some items that couldn't be moved in bag mode (some arrows, couldn't remember which). Giving bags some love will increase the usage for sure.

It's logical to have consumables in a different bar (as Akro said, in the belt), because you can reach for them anytime. Alcohol and limited slots from the belt are good limitations, so i expect consumables to be in its own space eventually. There are ways to keep a "belt skill bar" linked to the combat system but none i can came up has a tiny bit of logic. So if we have a belt bar with item quickslots, alcohol based potions that will limit the amount of potions we can chug, and since most consumables usage is interrupted on hit, using them in combat is not wise so... those three limitations justify consumable permanent availability for me.

 

I was a little disappointed when I heard Chris say bag mode wasn't popular too. Bag mode is the way to go, it just needs to be a bit more efficent with some sorting options and the ability to move groups of things at once, a take all option while in bag mode, etc..

I agree with bringing back the 'free slots' for potions and bags and large items. And look forward to alcohol content limiting potion use.

 

I love the idea of giving potions a belt or some aux bar on screen so they are much more useable.

Also, with the bag inventory...I love it, but it's not useful as it is. You can't designate bags to sort, or take all...And the icons are too big on many items. I loved the UO bags.

 

Yea, both the U7 bags and the UO bags were much more usable than those in the current state of the game. So I don't think its a matter of people being 'spoiled' by the list view. If the devs think the free bag mode is simply not a development priority, that's one thing, and I completely understand. But I don't think how many people are using it currently is a good metric of how many people would like to use it.

In addition to everything else mentioned, the drag-and-drop in the game in general is very poor. The mouse sticks, its hard to get a drag lock on items reliably. Its something that I think needs to be fixed regardless. Because it makes the game painful even in places like selling items to merchants.

Personally, I might even prefer a grid mode inventory to either of the two implemented, but that's just me

 

The other problem with 'bag mode' as it is right now, is that containers are the only things that use the visual mode. trading screens and vendor windows are 'list mode' visuals, making bag mode look incomplete when in use! I often start in bag mode, but then when i need to do some trading, i get this jarring affect looking at two completely different interface styles on the screen together, that it's better to switch to list mode for consistency. I repeat, I prefer bag mode, but it's no where near complete, and almost unusable because of this!

*sorry for being slightly off topic, it's related, but not quite helpful for the OP's purpose.*

 

I haven't used a potion since R16. And that was just to see how effective it was. I probably never will so long as they take up space on my combat bar. Why waste that precious slot on a potion when healing spells are far superior? A separate 'belt' with 2 or 3 slots that were available in and out of combat would be amazing and help give alchemists an actual purpose.

 

Mulling over this a little, I came up with a potential design idea for this. If glyph icons were scaled down a bit--which I think aesthetically is more pleasing anyway-- there would be room for a few belt icons to the right even with a full combat bar. I've left my chat window and inventory up to see how it could potentially fit there as the default position. I decided to make the belt icons even smaller and use a different border color for a little variety and to differentiate between the combat bar.



For full size click here

 

I tried bag mode for five minutes. Never looked back in the remaining 600+ hours.