A radial gesture combat interface to complement the combat bar

Proposal : A radial gesture combat interface to complement the combat bar

~ Introduction ~

As most folks reading this thread are aware, there has been quite a controversy about the new targeting system. Especially people using their mouse for manipulating glyphs or moving, have had issues of varying severity when trying to use the system. Many people feel overwhelmed, secretly wishing for an extra pair of hands.

This proposal describes an optional alternative/addition to the current straight combat hotbar. As such, it is not intended to replace the current hotbar, but to complement it. Its use is meant to be optional.

The primary purpose is to come up with a way by which glyph manipulation using the mouse would again become possible. The secondary purpose is to make keeping track of the glyphs and their states easier in the middle of combat.

I'm not even trying to describe any kind of complete working system that fixes everything in the game, achieves world peace, and feeds your cat.. It is probably grossly incomplete, a work in progress and is really meant to be mostly food for thought, a starting point for discussion. Please help make it better, by providing new ideas and constructive criticism.

Also, please read the entire proposal before providing criticism, to make sure it has not been addressed already. This is a huge wall of text about relatively complex issue - it's difficult to address all the issues in the exact order all people would prefer. But I've tried my best to address all the issues.

Spoiler: About spoilers

This text makes use of spoilers to improve readability. Think of them as footnotes, conveying extra information that might be relevant but possibly digressing from the main topic.

~~ Background - the issues ~~

In the new combat targeting system, there is no tab targeting, mouselook is turned on by default, and targeting is done by a reticule placed in the middle of the screen. There is no cursor, therefore manipulating glyphs using the mouse is not feasible in practice.
Theoretically it might be possible to use the "old way" glyph manipulation as follows:

1. Find a target using your mouse.
2. Press the key/button to toggle the cursor mode on.
3. Move the mouse to the glyph hotbar area and activate the glyph(s) you want.
4. Press the key/button to toggle the cursor mode back off.
5. Retarget using your mouse.
6. Rinse and repeat.

In practice, this is pretty far off from the relative convenience of the "old way" when all you needed to do is to click the glyph you want. The level of inconvenience in the new system is enough to warrant a conclusion that practically speaking, it is no longer feasible to do combat glyph manipulation with the mouse, not without some changes to the system.

In both systems, there is also certain UI level separation between the focus-friendly default attack and glyph attacks. Despite not being a dealbreaker, it does feel slightly inconsistent and confusing.

Finally, the straight form of the hotbar does not make it easy to keep track of glyphs and their states with peripheral vision, forcing the player to constantly shift focus/attention away from combat. There are many reasons for this, one of them is that most people have difficulties distinguishing individual elements (in this case glyphs) from groups larger than six or seven. The thin separator in the middle (the sword) is not enough to provide enough separation, especially when using peripheral vision.


~~~ The "easy as pie" solution -
glyphs as sectors, default attack at the center of action ~~

In this proposed solution, the player would be able to enable a "radial gesture combat interface" from the game options. The visual appearance of it should ideally be heavily customizable by the user, but it might, for example, look something like this:

​

The "+" in the middle indicates the location of the reticule, and the surrounding circles represent glyphs.

Spoiler: Possible visual and functional customizations of the interface

Possible visual and functional customizations available for the user might include:

Overall radius, glyph transparency and glyph size: The chosen tradeoff between how prominently visible the glyphs are, versus how much their presence in the field of view distracts the user. Some people would probably prefer a larger circle with larger glyphs, some might prefer small glyphs placed closer to the reticule. Optimal setup depends on many things; for example on how the individual's peripheral vision works, and how much the glyphs distract the player or disturb the feeling of immersion.

Size of the central area: Explained in more detail later. Basically, how far the mouse gesture must reach before a glyph attack is chosen instead of standard free attack.

Attack cursor style and visibility: Also explained later.

Sector assignments: In the proposed system there are 12 sectors. With 10 glyphs, that leaves 2 empty sectors that can be used for visual separation (in the above example picture, the empty sectors are placed at 6 and 12 o'clock). The placement of glyphs and separator sectors would be freely configurable by the user.

"Under the hood", invisible to the user, things would be set up as follows:

​

There are 13 distinct areas in here: Firstly there is the small central area (the red circle marked by letter A) and secondly there are twelve sectors for the glyphs.

You might ask, why twelve when there are only 10 glyphs? Two reasons: 1) the 12-sector division is quite familiar to ALL people because of analog clocks, and 2) the two "extra" sectors can be used as separators to improve visual distinction (most people have difficulties quickly distinguishing elements from groups larger than six or seven).


~~~~ Have your cake and eat it too -
how it works with both glyphs and default attacks ~~~~

How is it supposed to work then? Well, you point your reticule to your target and click to attack - then control is returned immediately to your aiming reticule. Point and click - that's basically it. At least if you just want to do a default attack.

Using one of your glyphs is very similar, but now you need to do a little gesture: move your mouse towards the glyph (so that it lights up when it reaches the glyph sector area) before you release the button. That's it.

Depending on user preferences, the system may show a visible attack cursor (configurable by the user) that is initially centered in the middle of the red area (at the reticule) when clicking down the button. This might help some people not so confident with their mousing skills to select the desired attack. Personally I would probably prefer to keep it invisible and just use the gesture, for better immersion.

The radial gesture system is self-adjusting: if you are skilled and accurate with your mouse, activating a glyph only needs a teeny-weeny little flick, reaching just outside the small red area in the center. If your skills are more ordinary, just move the mouse a little further towards the glyph, where the sector is wider.

Take your time, no need to panic: when you first clicked down the mouse, that locked your target, so you will still attack it even if it moved out of you reticule (within reasonable attack sector and distance limits of course). The system itself does not force you to hurry.

That said, my own tests show about 0.2 second activation time for the glyphs after a little practice (initially it was 0.3-0.4 seconds but improved pretty quickly). So it can be very quick too. YMMV. For default attacks, it is obviously just the time to click the mouse - practically immediate.

~~~~~ Special use cases with answers ~~~~~

I use my keyboard to manipulate glyphs, why would I want this? As said, its use would be completely optional. This is mostly meant to help mouse users. That said, many people will most likely find that the radial arrangement of the glyphs improves their visibility without disturbing focusing on combat as much.

How about discarding glyphs? For example, simply press a modifier key down and click the ones you want to discard. Because of pie menu structure, this can be very quick. This mode might optionally show the pie menu sector layout as semitransparent, to facilitate faster discarding.

How about combining/stacking glyphs? Same as discarding: hold a modifier key and weave away. Showing the semitransparent pie menu sector layout would be even more useful in here (you could do some dry runs with the above pic by dragging glyph sectors on top of one another).

Clickety...oh wait. I changed my mind, I don't want to attack just now, but I have my button pressed down - how do I cancel? Just move the "attack cursor" (invisible or not) outside the glyph sector areas, and release the button.

What about non-attack glyphs with a target, like blink? There are many ways to do it. I'd personally prefer just pointing directly to the ground and selecting blink. The reticule line of sight actually always points to a precise location, regardless of enemy targeting (unless, of course, you point it to the sky..)

I don't like this system! Then just don't use it, like said it's meant to be optional.

I love this, but I'm faithful to my old attack hotbar. You can use both at the same time if you like. This is not intended to replace the old bar, but to complement it (though it could optionally be used to also replace it).

I use auto attack. Can I still use this system? It depends on how auto attack is going to be implemented in the future. If it's "true" auto attack (=if you have it active, all you need is to find a target for it to do its job), then certainly. Only, the middle area does nothing then, but you can still use it to manipulate your glyphs by gesturing. On the other hand, if auto attack means "hold down a button to auto attack", then perhaps no. Also see below about "holding down a button" schemes.

~~~~~~ Caveats and compatibility with other mechamisms ~~~~~~

The current combat hotbar is totally compatible with this one, actually these can be used concurrently if so desired (for example, if you don't like the idea of glyphs in circular formation around the reticule, you could make them invisible, read information from the old combat bar and just use the gesture functionality by muscle memory - bit like keyboard hotkeys).

The current "hold down a button down to charge" control scheme is mostly incompatible with this, for the reason that in this system there is actual interactive use for the buttons. It could theoretically be done with a separate charging button, but this would most likely be overwhelming for most users. It is therefore better to just conclude that these two schemes are incompatible.

Spoiler: Another, probably crazy option

I mention this just for the sake of completeness:
Even more theoretically, it could also be done by making the radial gesture menu activate upon button release, you would then do your gesture and click it down again to attack, holding it down to recharge... The problem with this is that this kind of "reverse clicking" would probably feel insanely weird for most people.

Compatibility with upcoming new attack mechanisms, like "timed attack", is unknown, but on the other hand, the standard free attack works very much like (if not even identically to) the old system, practically speaking.


~~~~~~~ Comments, suggestions, ideas, criticism? ~~~~~~~


Thank you for listening! The stage is yours.


~

 

I like the concept. I think the center box needs to be quite a bit bigger than you are imagining, otherwise glyphs will get mis-clicked quite a lot. I'd consider making 12 o'clock the "spellweave" trigger and 6 o'clock the "discard" trigger, allowing all of that to be done without keyboard use (so you can spellweave completely by mouse, while moving).

This can easily be made into a drag-and-drop system, where you drag glyphs onto each other to spellweave (or discard).

Even if charging attacks is kept, I don't think this breaks the system; you can't spellweave and charge at the same time anyway. However, this does allow for "charging glyphs", if they want to pursue that option. Basically, hold the mouse button while pointint to a glyph, and it will charge just like a standard attack. This might even replace stacking (limiting your "charge" meter to how many of a glyph you have in your deck).

Actually, regardless of how well the new combat model works, I like this radial concept to enhance the spellweaving system. Great job! @RichardGarriott @DarkStarr @Chris You guys should take a look at this!

 

As long as this feature is completely optional, it sounds like a cool idea.

 

I've had some good experiences using radials to expand actions in fast paced games before - definitely worth a look.

 

Excellent suggestions! I've been also toying with some "glyph charging" ideas.

Your're quite right about the center area, I should have thought more of an average player, that size is more fitting for someone who likes sniping in in fps games..my bad. Anyway ideally that size would be user configurable.

 

Very good presentation and suggestion there @helm ... Even if this "system" wasn't adopted, I would like to at least have this as an alternate UI for the Hot Bar.

The current method of having a straight bar at the bottom of the screen is not conducive to paying attention to the actual battle (in particular where you are aiming). But, if the glyphs could be in the circular / pie chart pattern around the center of the screen instead, that would let us focus more on the action without having to bob our eyes up and down.

I can't say whether I would like your gesture style of choosing glyphs without actually trying it myself first. But I know I would prefer to have the mouse cursor free to click on glyphs in the circular pattern around the reticle over the straight/solid bar at the bottom.

I agree that it would be awesome if we could customize it too!

You could enter a setup mode for the UI panel and have options for transparency, size of round (or square) glyphs (perhaps even on an individual basis and make 1 or 2 of them larger than others?), and simply use the mouse scroll wheel to adjust the scale of the set and glyph distance from the center reticle.

Advanced setup could include rearranging the order of the numbers or perhaps even rotating the pattern clockwise or counterclockwise (to make the spaces on left/right instead of top/bottom). Maybe you could even include an option to separate the 2 halves horizontally or vertically to have a wider space in the middle for viewing (but not the same as scrolling to scale the whole set proportionately... this would keep them smaller and more compact but just off to the sides more).

To me, a good UI is one that lets people customize it to their preferences. Some, like me, prefer to have smaller objects and close together (so as to not take up the view and also to allow for faster mouse movement between them). Position/location is also important to me. I don't like to have distance between the things I click often and the closer I can get my clickables to the center of action the better. Others may prefer larger objects that are easier to see and click on and may be out of the view of the center of action. Others just want it to look cool/pretty and don't care much about functionality... so a fancy border may be what they are looking for.

But back to your topic... I think we will need to see what changes are made to the new targeting system before putting resources into a new gesture type of system. If they go back to having tab targeting as an option, then a new way to select glyphs might not be needed. If they stick with the reticle only targeting and click-holding to either free attack or auto attack, then something like this could really be a good option to help people adjust.

Either way though, I still would like to see this at least as an optional Hot Bar design!

 

Maybe something like this? Then you wouldn't have to look down all the time.



The dark ones are not available.

 

Yeah, something like that...excellent mockup!

And sure picked up a perfect location for that "not looking down" demonstration

 

I would actually love this concept. I created a lot of LUA mods for prior games which did exactly this. In combat it'd appear near where the camera was aimed at whilst it faded away when out of combat. Context sensitive interfaces are always good for immersion.

 

I'm not completely opposed to it, but it's taking up a lot of visual space on the screen. One of the things that the rectile does is it makes you focus more on your position and point of view. I think that's has a positive impact on combat. Here we would be focused on the glyphs. I know we're already doing that currently, but I find it likely that I'll begin using the number pad or a gaming mouse to activate my glyphs going forward.

When the example was given above about the clock, this resonated with me more so from a directional awareness standpoint. Like "Watch your six!" and "Coming in at 3 o'clock!". Not sure how this is helpful to the conversation, but I wanted to mention it just the same.

One suggestion I'd make is allowing the user to shrink this down over time. As people get used to it, they would be able to select these glyphs more by instinct, removing the need for such a large visual aid.

 

I think a user adjustable degree of transparency would help.

 

And distance. I'd want the glyphs much closer, and only fade in while pressing the mouse button.

 

There have been so many posts on combat changes and ideas to help improve it...yet...nothing ever changes...

 

Yes it might feel like that sometimes, even considering that we were just introduced with one of the biggest combat changes ever...

Have patience - the devs have more than enough on their plates (see the pre- and post-wipe schedules and content in here), there is still seven months to the latest estimated "launch" date (in December, at least according to one source), and frankly I can't think of this game as "mature" until after Ep2 or even Ep3. That said, I would really hope that the basic combat mechanisms and user interfaces would be good enough to make both mouse and keyboard "schools" happy, well before launch.

 

~If Anything, It Does Look Quite Interesting~
I enjoyed reading this suggestion as it has it's merits as an optional system.
It's ideas such as this that become something, become something better, or become a sounding board to other alternatives becoming envisioned by the reader.
If one does not search an entire room for all it's ideas, then one can never truly know the right idea...

Kudos @helm ! I like where you're going, though I'm getting use to the new combat design (but then again, a monkey can get use to anything as long as it's the only thing in the room of possibilities)... please continue...
I can see the merit in it! and am intrigued enough to never rule it out!

~You Get the Jeremiah Johnson Nod Reward~

~Time Lord~

 

Interesting ideas, but this would have to be optional with the current system the default as im sure would be the case. I realise I'd have to try it out, but I doubt I would use the radial option as it would clutter up way too much of my visual field.

I want to see mele 'ads' coming in towards me from all angles and what the ranged mobs and teammates are up to, as well as what another poster said, appreciate my relative position and where my reticle is pointing.

Eventually this could probably be developed as a player mod when the game matures, assuming it will support them.

 

It's aliiiive!