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Feedback & Suggestions
Extended hotbars/quickbars ++
2 replies · 91 views
Hello!
Even with qbinds, I find the hotbars/quickbars have some fundamental limitations I'm hoping you will consider doing something about on Blackthorn.
1. Extend the 10 slots on each bar to 12, which would allow players to explicitly include - and =, or F11 and F12.
This especially relevant for MMO mice with 12 keys, so having them all mapped visibly would be great. Mapping the last two keys to "hidden" slots on pages not visible on the UI is not great UX while it is technically possible to use those keys..
2. Extend the number of hotbars possible, and to be able to toggle them as visible or not (but still possible to use even if not visible).
I know there's pages, but they are tied in with specific modifiers on the hotbars/quickbars, so this one relates to the next one. And I'd like to have 4 hotbars showing for some busy classes, or having hotbars visible with different things like emotes, or whatever.
3. Allow users/players to configure keybinds (via UI) for the slots on the different hotbars/quickbars, getting rid of hard-coded constraints of being tied into Ctrl and Alt modifiers for the 2nd and 3rd hotbars/quickbars.
For example, I'm used to using Shift as a modifier as it's the easiest key for me to reach, but it's so embedded into the pages function currently, I'm considering swapping ctrl and shift in my keyboard config. Again, technically possible to do, but it's not user friendly and not all players are technical enough they'd do that sort of things.
A bit of context to my suggestions
I'm a returning DAoC player and was exciting to find the game was still alive after 25 years, and this initiative seems really great. I revived my characters several years ago, but the DAoC UI & UX was so unintuitive (and frustrating) I looked for other options within a day. The QoL changes already in place are amazing, and I think these kind of changes would make a big difference to new players in particular (perhaps current DAoC players don't consider it as important if you're used to it and found "work-arounds"). But, my suggestions are based on what I have experienced as being really intutive, straightforward, flexible and standard in games like WoW and ffxiv.
I don't remember WoW so well now as I didn't stick around due to a combination of a toxic community and harassment of women in the workplace at Blizzard, but I remember it was intuitive and things made sense from the moment I logged on (unlike DAoC on live). I played ffxiv for many years, and I have to say that ffxiv has some really great things to learn from when it comes to UI and hotbar management. These were just some suggestions about what I'd consider fundamental/basic things in modern MMORPGs, but it's just scratching the surface of what could be done. But if even #1 and #2 could be implemented, that's a significant QoL enhancement in my eyes!
Even with qbinds, I find the hotbars/quickbars have some fundamental limitations I'm hoping you will consider doing something about on Blackthorn.
1. Extend the 10 slots on each bar to 12, which would allow players to explicitly include - and =, or F11 and F12.
This especially relevant for MMO mice with 12 keys, so having them all mapped visibly would be great. Mapping the last two keys to "hidden" slots on pages not visible on the UI is not great UX while it is technically possible to use those keys..
2. Extend the number of hotbars possible, and to be able to toggle them as visible or not (but still possible to use even if not visible).
I know there's pages, but they are tied in with specific modifiers on the hotbars/quickbars, so this one relates to the next one. And I'd like to have 4 hotbars showing for some busy classes, or having hotbars visible with different things like emotes, or whatever.
3. Allow users/players to configure keybinds (via UI) for the slots on the different hotbars/quickbars, getting rid of hard-coded constraints of being tied into Ctrl and Alt modifiers for the 2nd and 3rd hotbars/quickbars.
For example, I'm used to using Shift as a modifier as it's the easiest key for me to reach, but it's so embedded into the pages function currently, I'm considering swapping ctrl and shift in my keyboard config. Again, technically possible to do, but it's not user friendly and not all players are technical enough they'd do that sort of things.
A bit of context to my suggestions
I'm a returning DAoC player and was exciting to find the game was still alive after 25 years, and this initiative seems really great. I revived my characters several years ago, but the DAoC UI & UX was so unintuitive (and frustrating) I looked for other options within a day. The QoL changes already in place are amazing, and I think these kind of changes would make a big difference to new players in particular (perhaps current DAoC players don't consider it as important if you're used to it and found "work-arounds"). But, my suggestions are based on what I have experienced as being really intutive, straightforward, flexible and standard in games like WoW and ffxiv.
I don't remember WoW so well now as I didn't stick around due to a combination of a toxic community and harassment of women in the workplace at Blizzard, but I remember it was intuitive and things made sense from the moment I logged on (unlike DAoC on live). I played ffxiv for many years, and I have to say that ffxiv has some really great things to learn from when it comes to UI and hotbar management. These were just some suggestions about what I'd consider fundamental/basic things in modern MMORPGs, but it's just scratching the surface of what could be done. But if even #1 and #2 could be implemented, that's a significant QoL enhancement in my eyes!
Thanks for the feedback. I am not replying on every suggestion because I can't give you a technical answer on the number of slot and quickbars available and whether this could be tuned, but your third suggestion makes me wonder if you are aware of the command /qbind, which can allow you to configure any keybind, including ones with modifiers involved. With these, you can also work around the limitation of the number of slots and quickbars, because you can place skills in some pages where you rarely go, but still assign them to keybinds.
Player wrote:For example, I'm used to using Shift as a modifier as it's the easiest key for me to reach, but it's so embedded into the pages function currently, I'm considering swapping ctrl and shift in my keyboard config. Again, technically possible to do, but it's not user friendly and not all players are technical enough they'd do that sort of things.
This is something I have also been frustrated by many times over the years. I like to use the keyboard number pad for a lot of my combat abilities, along with the shift modifier to expand the number of abilities I can access there. However, relatively few of those shift-modified number pad keybinds are actually allowed by the game interface. It's been a problem throughout the life of the game. I was hoping blackthorn would address it, since they have added some other very nice quality-of-life improvements, but there seems to be the same keybind limitations here as on the live servers.
For what it's worth, one time a few years back I did attempt to adjust my keyboard settings as a workaround in the way that you suggested and I still couldn't get it to work the way I wanted. There seems to be something going on in the coding of the game interface that is beyond my limited computer skills to understand.
Anyways, just adding my vote to open up all potential keybinds as a blackthorn QOL improvement, if such a thing is possible. Thanks!