20 réponses à ce sujet

[PsychoBlonde]

 One feature that I'm really hoping they'll have in DA3 (and I've been harping about all over the forums), is for them to include a "meta-bar", that is, a hotbar where you can place abilities from all of your current party members so you can activate them without switching characters.  

That's the *basic* idea.  I'd also like it if you can assign hotkeys to that bar.  I don't mind at all if it only works for single target abilities like Horror or untargeted ones like Taunt or Mind Blast.  It's just something I would really, really love to have.

So, I MADE A POLL!!  VOTE IN MY POLL PRETTY PLEASE THANK YOU.

[thats1evildude]

I prefer switching characters to activate abilities. I jump around a lot.

[PsychoBlonde]

thats1evildude wrote...

I prefer switching characters to activate abilities. I jump around a lot.

You can.  But you can also use this extra bar if you feel like it.

[MichaelStuart]

I support this idea

[Wulfram]

Not sure why it would be a seperate bar, rather than just allowing you to slot them onto your regular quickbar(s)

[Adugan]

Wulfram wrote...

Not sure why it would be a seperate bar, rather than just allowing you to slot them onto your regular quickbar(s)

My mage in DAO had like 5000 abilities, they wouldnt all fit

[PsychoBlonde]

Wulfram wrote...

Not sure why it would be a seperate bar, rather than just allowing you to slot them onto your regular quickbar(s)

Because it'd always be up on your screen instead of vanishing when you select a different companion.  Personally, I'd be happy if they just had all 4 companion hotbars on the screen at all times regardless of who you have selected.

[PsychoBlonde]

Adugan wrote...

My mage in DAO had like 5000 abilities, they wouldnt all fit

They wouldn't need to ALL fit.  You just put the ones you want to use frequently without having to switch to that character in order to target them.  Like, say, mind blast or horror.

[In Exile]

I think this is a great idea! It can either be something you cycle to or just a second bar of abilities underneath your PC's one.

You can get around this on PC by going F1-F4, but not having to do that except to move characters would IMO be much better!

[Swagger7]

Wouldn't work on consoles, but it sounds great for you PC folks.

[Fast Jimmy]

Swagger7 wrote...

Wouldn't work on consoles, but it sounds great for you PC folks.

My thoughts exactly. I'm not sure how much work would be involved in creating a more custom UI involved with just the PC version, but it may be too much work for Bioware to deem worth doing. 

[In Exile]

Fast Jimmy wrote...

My thoughts exactly. I'm not sure how much work would be involved in creating a more custom UI involved with just the PC version, but it may be too much work for Bioware to deem worth doing. 

I can't imagine it would cost more than the fact that they already have to design a custom UI. This is just a hotbar that lets more than one character ability be on it. I can't imagine what possible bug would show up!

[PsychoBlonde]

In Exile wrote...

Fast Jimmy wrote...

My thoughts exactly. I'm not sure how much work would be involved in creating a more custom UI involved with just the PC version, but it may be too much work for Bioware to deem worth doing. 

I can't imagine it would cost more than the fact that they already have to design a custom UI. This is just a hotbar that lets more than one character ability be on it. I can't imagine what possible bug would show up!

Additionally, this extra bar would let you monitor the cooldowns on abilities without having to bounce around constantly.  That alone would be a really nice feature to me.

[PsychoBlonde]

Filament wrote...

Sounds like ME1. Feels a little redundant to the task of body hopping and I fear they would be enticed to get rid of body hopping if they worked so hard to make this feature work.

I doubt they would, because they're radically different games.  You couldn't directly control companions in Mass Effect the way you can in Dragon Age, and there are a number of abilities that this wouldn't be particularly useful for, so you'd still want to use your character-specific hotbars.  Like I said, though, I'd be plenty happy if they just took all 4 companion hotbars and had them all visible on the 4 sides of the screen.  This might actually be MORE convenient, because you could do things like tell someone who is injured to use a poultice or other useful stuff.  That, and you wouldn't have to reassign abilities to the meta-bar when you swapped companions out.

There are really a number of ways they could implement this, all of which would have upsides and mild downsides.  For instance, if they have a single consolidation bar where you can put some abilities, you have to swap them in and out when you switch companions.  That might get kinda boring and make it so the feature sees less use.  Or, they could have two or three "quick slots" per companion where the abilities appear under their onscreen portrait, so you could just click on them there.  This would have the advantage that you wouldn't have to mess with it when switching characters, but you might have issues with accidentally clicking on the wrong thing with all those buttons and character portraits squooged together like that.  And some characters might be better off with more than 3 slots, stuff like that.  Or they could just have the quick bars all on screen, one on each edge.  But, this might make it difficult for you to tell who you currently have selected for moving purposes, so they'd have to take extra care to note "this is the active character".  One way to do that would be to have not just the character portrait but the hotbar itself be brighter/outlined, and the others show as slightly darker even though you can still click on them.  Or they could make it that clicking on the appropriate hotbar switches to that character so it's a one-click thing instead of being select--select ability--target ability.  There are TONS of options, some of which probably wouldn't be all that difficult to implement, and if it's a little dicey in some circumstances, you can just play without futzing with it.

I'd also like to hear ideas about how/whether to implement something like tihs on consoles, because I'm a PC-only gamer (I hate console controllers from long habit) and I have no idea how the console interface even WORKS.

Although, if you think about it (and correct me if I misapprehend how this might work), having all 4 bars on the screen at all times would probably work GREAT on consoles.  Then you could just hit, say, up, down, left, right buttons to select the hotbar and character you want, scroll rapidly through the abilities using another button or pair of buttons (shoulder buttons maybe?  I dunno), then target using the thumbsticks or whatever your personal targeting method is.  Plus, they could even use the quickslot thing so that hitting A activates the first ability on the bar and hitting B activates the second, something like that.  I think it'd probably be pretty quick and effective to pull up the ability you want without pausing all the time.  Plus, again, you could monitor all cooldowns simultaneously.

Modifié par PsychoBlonde, 16 décembre 2012 - 05:13 .

[Navasha]

Honestly, I wouldn't use it personally. I control every second of combat in my games hitting the pause button to issue new orders pretty much after every ability is activated and issuing new orders to each companion constantly.

However, I suppose if they have some sort of party system multiplayer aspect where you are controlling mulitple characters without a pause ability, then I could see this as a good thing.

[Sir JK]

This sounds kind of neat actually. Quite practical if it's made to work decently

[PsychoBlonde]

Navasha wrote...

Honestly, I wouldn't use it personally. I control every second of combat in my games hitting the pause button to issue new orders pretty much after every ability is activated and issuing new orders to each companion constantly.

However, I suppose if they have some sort of party system multiplayer aspect where you are controlling mulitple characters without a pause ability, then I could see this as a good thing.

I hate pausing and want to be able to run combat without using it except in dire emergency.  Combat with pause is too slow for me.  Unfortunately, the inconvenient way the interface is structured is to slow to keep up with the normal speed combat.  Personally, I think the pause feature just lets them get around designing a proper rapid-access interface.

[Cathrandir]

I love the idea of a metabar..that would be great addition to the game..especially for us pc players:-)

[XX-Pyro]

Though I prefer Dragon Age on consoles since they aren't as mod friendly, this is a wonderful idea for PC players.