Suggestions: Gear Wheel Improvements & Fishing Spears

[polarity]

The problems:

• Presently the gear wheel shares the screen with the emote wheel, which serious limits its functionality and ease of use.  A properly implemented gear wheel will:
  • Relocate the mouse cursor to the center of the wheel, so that it can be immediately moved a short distance in any direction to pick an item on the wheel.
  • Constrain the mouse within the confines of the wheel itself, so that it can be circled around the possible choices without ever leaving the wheel.
• Fishing spears take up a whole 3 slots on the gear wheel, meaning you have to swap gear in and out regularly depending on what content you're playing (PoE, or everything else).
• Spears are also clunky to swap between, because having a second gearwheel for fishing consumables while you have one equipped, prevents you from using any of the buttons you've got spears assigned to, to swap between them.

The solutions:

• Only show the gear wheel OR the emote wheel at any one time, so that the mouse behavior can be properly constrained, instead of having to keep it movable between the two.  Do this by having the gear wheel accessed by holding the button down, while the emote menu is accessed by tapping then holding the button.
• Combine the 3 spears into one gear wheel item (you'd need to create different icons showing every combination of spears a player could own), and when that is assigned to a location on the main gear-wheel, it is also placed there on the fishing gear-wheel, so that when the same button is pressed again it cycles between available spears.
• Alternately, fully implement assigning multiple similar items to a single gear-wheel slot, so that they can be cycled between, using the following modification while in the arsenal:
  
  
  • The arrows are clickable areas that allow additional options to be set or unset for a button (once the first item is placed, only related items will be available for the other options.  All items will need to be unset to put a different item type on the button).  On gamepads the arrows could be activated with the bumpers.  While in mission these arrows aren't available, as they're only needed provide a function other than bringing up the list of items to assign to a button.
  • The 1/3 on the spear button shows that 3 items are presently assigned to this button (all spears, as no other options are possible).  As an equipable item pressing the keybind for this button will cycle between your spears.  When calling up the gearwheel with its hotkey, clicking the mouse on that button will cycle between the options, with the choice being activated when the hotkey is released.
  • The 1/3 next to the energy restores shows that two other restore type items are available on that button.  As this item is consumable, pressing the keybind for that button will use whichever is currently selected in the gear-wheel.  Clicking the mouse on that button of the gear-wheel will cycle the choices, with whichever is active when the gearwheel hotkey is released being used, unless the center area of the gearwheel is clicked to deactivate its use, while keeping any changes to the active item (the same can be done on a gamepad by releasing the thumbstick/D-pad, so it recenters).
  • The classes of items that could be combined onto a single button could be: Squad Restores of any size or type; Fishing Spears; Ammo Boxes; Fireworks; Fosfors; Stims; Apothics; Specters (capping the number that can be assigned at once, including to multiple buttons, as taking all of them into a mission would be excessive); The catalyst and phylaxis for the present even.

By putting more items onto single buttons, that would free up enough other buttons that the need to swap gear in and out for different mission types could be significantly reduced.

 

Edited November 22, 2017 by polarity

[GnarlsDarkley]

but the spears are combined already. 

put one spear in your gear menu. select it on plains and you can then choose between als spears + lure + dye

[polarity]

29 minutes ago, GnarlsDarkley said:

but the spears are combined already. 

put one spear in your gear menu. select it on plains and you can then choose between als spears + lure + dye

Not onto one button though, so swapping requires more actions.

Either:

• Hold gearwheel hotkey, move mouse onto correct button in the fishing gearwheel (when the mouse was just moved to some arbitrary location), click mouse, release button.

Or:

• Press weapon select button,  Press one of the spear buttons (requiring you to use more buttons).

When the best possible UI would only require one of:

• Press spear hotkey to change spear.

Or:

• Press gearwheel hotkey, and move mouse any distance in an easily remembered direction to make a choice from it.

When you're fishing solidly for any length of time and having to swap over and over, those few extra actions can get pretty annoying (why I'm using the second method.  I don't have to work out where my mouse cursor has been moved to, and then move it somewhere else).  Never mind that you completely ignored all the more serious issues with the gearwheel to pick on a minor one.

The whole game is full of these little, easily dealt with annoyances, commonly referred to as friction, which means these actions require you to think more than you should need to.  They all add up to give the impression that the UI/UX of this game is sub-par.

Edited November 22, 2017 by polarity

[A-Midnight-Shanking]

My Suggestion:

Holding 'Q' will open the gear menu, 

Gear Wheel is the main layer, center screen, cursor is now centered in the gearwheel.

Clicking on the center of the Gear Wheel opens the Emote wheel, and vice versa

Cursor will highlight whatever 1/12th angle of the circle it resides in (can go outside the Radius and still highlight that portion).

Releasing Q at any time will use the highlighted item (don't need to click anymore, but click functionality still exists for non-sub-menu items)

Clicking on any item that has a sub-menu will open the sub-menu wheel if clicked.

Cursor is reset to the center anytime a wheel is opened.

Clicking on the center of a sub-wheel returns to the wheel above it.

Pressing 'E' at any time while in the Wheel Menu will Exit and not select anything.

Right-Clicking on the Center of a Wheel will have that "remembered" as the Main Wheel, holding Q will go to that wheel.

You can change the default Main Wheel in the Gameplay Setting Menu.