A handful of UI suggestions to the CDPR devs

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That's very useful tips and very well written too! You know your stuff and I think it's brilliant how you described it. What also helps in the UI is the naming and placing of menu's. It has to feel intuitive. You don't want to be searching all over the place for some option or menu. I tried playing the witcher 2 with a controller but I just couldn't get to grips with it. Even though I've been a console gamer for years up to the ps2. I find the UI in Final Fantasy games intuitive but when I would try the Witcher 2 with a controller, I found it pretty hard. Then again I just had an old cheap controller laying around.

This reminded me of an MMO I've played for 8 years. Maplestory. If any game has a shit load of key bindings that you have to choose where to put what, it's maplestory. Most people use the home, end, insert, etc keys. However, you control your characters with the arrow keys. This means that if you were to use those 6 buttons, your hands would somewhat get in the way of each other. So I put them from 1 to =. Placing the important attacks at 1 and ` and placing my potions at =, - and 0. It worked out well for me for that game but others don't understand why I did that.
 
That's very useful tips and very well written too! You know your stuff and I think it's brilliant how you described it. What also helps in the UI is the naming and placing of menu's. It has to feel intuitive. You don't want to be searching all over the place for some option or menu. I tried playing the witcher 2 with a controller but I just couldn't get to grips with it. Even though I've been a console gamer for years up to the ps2. I find the UI in Final Fantasy games intuitive but when I would try the Witcher 2 with a controller, I found it pretty hard. Then again I just had an old cheap controller laying around.

This reminded me of an MMO I've played for 8 years. Maplestory. If any game has a shit load of key bindings that you have to choose where to put what, it's maplestory. Most people use the home, end, insert, etc keys. However, you control your characters with the arrow keys. This means that if you were to use those 6 buttons, your hands would somewhat get in the way of each other. So I put them from 1 to =. Placing the important attacks at 1 and ` and placing my potions at =, - and 0. It worked out well for me for that game but others don't understand why I did that.

Imagine how bad it would be if the game didn't support key binding changes, or ways the user can help themselves acclimate to the control of the game... ugh. But you nailed it right on the head. Menu navigation is a part of information architecture; where you structure not only where your information is, but how users get to it. Making information readily available is great if it is vital. How much gold do I have? I shouldn't have to go more than 1 step to find out if it's not on the screen by default. Getting a list of these common tasks and then ensuring your UI prioritizes access to those functions is paramount to making the process feel intuitive.

This I've got to disagree with. Choices and consequences. You decide what you carry with you, you prioritize and deal with the consequences.

But how did you find the UI, @Aegis_Kleais ? It's ugly as Shrek.

In gameplay mechanics, we find that many tactically minded players enjoy the concept of "A pro for a con". A sense of balance derived from that fact that any time you give yourself a bonus, you are putting yourself at risk elsewhere. It's like handicap management, and something you need to be ever-mindful of. Traditionally, if the game is singleplayer, such as TW3, then supporting both preferences would accommodate the widest majority of players. It is as simple as default to one way or the other, and then allowing the user to modify that via the settings. This way, it does not affect your own game, and gives others who have interest in that feature, the ability to enable/disable it according to taste.

As for your question of how I found the UI, what are you talking about in particular? How did I find the UI for what?
 
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After scanning over this thread I would like to add my preferences: Please make it configurable as far as possible!
I use mouse and keyboard (and refuse to buy or use a controller). Three people usually have four opinions how to use keys and mouse. If the main controls (especially where it matters, i.e. in combat) are similar to TW2, I would like to do the following things:

+ Assign mouse buttons >2 to actions, i.e. Button 1 (left) is fixed at fast attack, Button 2 (right) is fixed at strong attack, and movement is fixed to looking around, but button 3 (middle) is configurable, likewise button 4 and button 5 and so on, if applicable. Important: Mouse wheel - I would have liked to assign the mouse wheel to select the signs, for example, TW2 could not support this
+ Keys should be freely configurable! (My brother for example insists on using the arrow keys for walking - its not optimal IMHO, but he wants it, so why not?), all other keys the game can recognize should be freely assignable to functions/actions. For example, using the user.ini (in TW2) I assigned TAB to selecting signs, since my fingers found it more easily than the original '3' key.

The problem is, every person is different. I am certainly no pianist, besides being tone deaf I am poor in 'uncoordinated using of more fingers', which a pianist should be able to. I also never learned blind typing - as I type this I am looking mainly at the keyboard, and only occasionally at the screen to check the text. (Many people who grew up without computers and never learned machine writing do this).
I must be able to find the correct keys (mouse is no problem) for important actions without looking at the keyboard, or I am at a disadvantage. So I like to configure it so, that the important keys are usable for me. Other persons may have very different ideas.

It is not very important to me if the inventory can be called by typing 'I' or by pressing F8 or something different, since I do not need to do this fast. I mainly need this for action keys relevant in combat.

So I would like to freely assing mouse buttons (except 1 und 2, i.e. left and right, and except mouse movement) and the mouse wheel to actions in combat, and I want to be able to freely remap all keys on the keyboard, especially the keys for combat actions (block, jump, evade, cast sign, ....)

M.
 
After scanning over this thread I would like to add my preferences: Please make it configurable as far as possible!
I use mouse and keyboard (and refuse to buy or use a controller). Three people usually have four opinions how to use keys and mouse. If the main controls (especially where it matters, i.e. in combat) are similar to TW2, I would like to do the following things:

+ Assign mouse buttons >2 to actions, i.e. Button 1 (left) is fixed at fast attack, Button 2 (right) is fixed at strong attack, and movement is fixed to looking around, but button 3 (middle) is configurable, likewise button 4 and button 5 and so on, if applicable. Important: Mouse wheel - I would have liked to assign the mouse wheel to select the signs, for example, TW2 could not support this
+ Keys should be freely configurable! (My brother for example insists on using the arrow keys for walking - its not optimal IMHO, but he wants it, so why not?), all other keys the game can recognize should be freely assignable to functions/actions. For example, using the user.ini (in TW2) I assigned TAB to selecting signs, since my fingers found it more easily than the original '3' key.

The problem is, every person is different. I am certainly no pianist, besides being tone deaf I am poor in 'uncoordinated using of more fingers', which a pianist should be able to. I also never learned blind typing - as I type this I am looking mainly at the keyboard, and only occasionally at the screen to check the text. (Many people who grew up without computers and never learned machine writing do this).
I must be able to find the correct keys (mouse is no problem) for important actions without looking at the keyboard, or I am at a disadvantage. So I like to configure it so, that the important keys are usable for me. Other persons may have very different ideas.

It is not very important to me if the inventory can be called by typing 'I' or by pressing F8 or something different, since I do not need to do this fast. I mainly need this for action keys relevant in combat.

So I would like to freely assing mouse buttons (except 1 und 2, i.e. left and right, and except mouse movement) and the mouse wheel to actions in combat, and I want to be able to freely remap all keys on the keyboard, especially the keys for combat actions (block, jump, evade, cast sign, ....)

M.

I would suggest allowing all mouse buttons to be configurable. If someone wanted a keyboard to be fast attack and the mouse button to be "Cast Sign", it would be better to allow this than to force LMB and RMB to set actions. You hit the nail on the head with the key mapping "Let them all be configurable" ; it should be so, as well as the mouse buttons. In fact, if they supported combination functions, it would be even better, as it would require less motor load (the hand has to move less often)

Though you prioritize combat keys to be important and easily accessible, I'm not sure that should mean that other non-combat related keys should not be. Forcing the inventory to I and not allowing it to be remapped would do the player a disservice. Any supported input action should be assignable to any game action in order to promote the widest acceptable solution to the player base.

All right i would like to throw in my two cents too... hope @Marcin Momot or someone from CDPR will see this.

or try this http://i.imgur.com/1KZSujY.png

View attachment 3924

This seems to be more of a gameplay mechanic than a user interface. This type of system is known as an affordance.

An affordance is a way of indicating to the user that a certain action can be taken on an object. For example, a door with a graspable handle indicates to the user that in order to open it, you should pull. A door with a flat hand-pad indicates the door should be pushed.

In this case, since the game world might blend too well, the game might want to enhance the "discoverability" (the ability for a user to discover additional functionality without the need for indicating this explicitly) with this overlay. I agree, the way in which this is done might not be to many people's liking, but if the developer felt that many people missed the ability to climb to get to a waypoint because people never knew the ledge was scalable, then they might have chosen to implement this gameplay mechanic to make it more easily understood, "Hey, I can be climbed upon".

That's very useful tips and very well written too! You know your stuff and I think it's brilliant how you described it. What also helps in the UI is the naming and placing of menu's. It has to feel intuitive. You don't want to be searching all over the place for some option or menu. I tried playing the witcher 2 with a controller but I just couldn't get to grips with it. Even though I've been a console gamer for years up to the ps2. I find the UI in Final Fantasy games intuitive but when I would try the Witcher 2 with a controller, I found it pretty hard. Then again I just had an old cheap controller laying around.

This reminded me of an MMO I've played for 8 years. Maplestory. If any game has a shit load of key bindings that you have to choose where to put what, it's maplestory. Most people use the home, end, insert, etc keys. However, you control your characters with the arrow keys. This means that if you were to use those 6 buttons, your hands would somewhat get in the way of each other. So I put them from 1 to =. Placing the important attacks at 1 and ` and placing my potions at =, - and 0. It worked out well for me for that game but others don't understand why I did that.

Well said. This is called "Association by proximity". If a part of the screen had to do with, say, blade oils, then it would not make sense to have another UI element regarding blade oils to be placed away from the first, because it makes the user feel their functionality is not similar.

In web pages, we sometimes use blocks of color, space, and borders to show that we are grouping things together in an "information hierarchy". When done well, this lets us know that all things which are grouped together are related to each other, and we have but 1 place to look for in order to perform all needed actions on that topic.
 
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Another UI suggestion - one of the annoyances in TW2 and TW1 are huge save files which slow down the save / load UI. Please use decent compression in the savegames! They are humongous while at the same time hugely compressible. Using uncompressed bitmaps for thumbnails? Come on, what is the reason? Most of the time is spent on I/O when directory with saves is scanned and they are red into memory. Their huge size makes this process much worse when their number grows beyond certain point.

Use compression, and expensive I/O time will be reduced multiple times! Modern systems have good CPUs which will handle decompression and compression fast. It will also reduce writing time (when the game needs to put the new save on the disk), improving responsiveness for the user.

And another optimization - there is no need to read in memory all saves at once (in order to show the thumbnails), especially if there are tons of them - read some amount around the current position in the UI. When user starts scrolling - read more. That would save time on reading tremendously and wouldn't waste resources.
 
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My to cents,
I always like to see my in game avatar in the pause menu etc.. I like to see it change and match the clothing and swords I'm useing in real time.
I really like what I saw in the E3 demo, I liked the image and stance of Geralt that they used. I hope they keep it like that and just add the extra animations of each thing we put on and use in real time at the click of a button. I like to see what he has on before I exit the pause menu screen and start playing again. It's even better if they add a toggle Pana-Rama-360- Full-3D- View of Geralt, so we can see the back and sides of him with his new gear on and off etc. but I can live without the panarama part, anyways TW2 did not have any of these cool features and I hope TW3 does. I still want to have the choice and freedom to play Geralt topless, that would be rad to see his scars just because I can and if devs want to take it to a whole new level. They can add the potion effects to the look of Geralt in the pause menue too. Like pale blue-ish gray skin, sunk-in, glowing, yellow & gold-ish eyes with dark shadows around them and a few black vains. But that is if that will even be in the game, but yeah I like to dress up my Geralt in the pause menu like a toy/doll and then go play. Anyone else know what I'm talking about here? :)
 
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I think you guys are moving into game functionality preferences rather than UI suggestions now, lol.

Most of the time, a UI suggestion helps improve getting information to the use, simplifying a process, or reducing the amount of noise and clutter in a task. Ultimately you want to make the UI feel like an extension of the user, so that its implementation is as seamless as possible.
 
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