ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

1) Current compare equipment feature is very welcome, but has some flaws that could be improved:
a) it's hard to distinguish between stuff that is added, and stuff that is the same - mostly, you have to look for (-) at the end of the stat, but that is not always the case - some stats on weapons do not have (-) even if the stat is the same
b) activated abilities are not listed, while "on crit" or similar abilities do get listed

This makes it a chore to compare items - you often have better results manually comparing them than using the feature.

I'd suggest, since this is obviously a feature taken from modern MMOs: just change it to the way it works in World of Warcraft. Display both item windows (the one you select and the one you compare to) and a third window, containing the full list of changes (like, if you compare 5Dex item to 2Dex one, it lists +3Dex, but if you compare 4Dex item to 4Dex one, it doesn't mention Dex at all). Active abilities (on both items) may just be mentioned by the name, without explanation (which takes a lot of space).

2) Current action bar interface has problems with abilities disappearing on drag. I suppose this happens because if you don't place the ability into the "slot", but on the edge or border, it doesn't get placed. This is quite irritating and quite easy to fix: just snap it to the closest slot! Or, at least highlight the slot it's going to go into (when hovering over a blank space) so that the user knows if the ability is going to poof or get placed.

3) Currently some animations are based on the FPS while some do not. I noticed that yellow portal "doors" and central sphere animations in the fortress are based on the fps (60 fps vs 30 fps makes the blobs of light fly twice as fast) and attack animations and floating combat text is not (if set to less fps it will just skip frames). I think it would be better if the latter approach would work in the whole game. I'd prefer 60fps UI responsiveness but I have to play on 30 because otherwise some animations just play unnaturally fast! Therefore, I suggest that all animations should play the same speed regardless of the fps. Possibly go even further and allow separate "target fps" numbers for drawn frames (and UI responsiveness to mouse and keyboard events) and for animations.

4) There is not enough feedback when a self-targeting ability that is off cooldown did not trigger. I know you can check the button on the action bar, but often in combat you just watch the screen, and press your heal hotkey and expect it to work, and then it doesn't, and you notice you had some effect on you like confusion that prevented it from going off. Some kind of obvious notification would be nice.

5) It's clunky to use levelup screen with keyboard. Moving around stats takes you TWO clicks of up/down for some reason, and the information displayed in the right part of the screen does not get updated as you select something new.

6) It's either unintuitive or not possible to select items in the inventory by letters, or switch between shop inventory list and player inventory list. Maybe add some hint, or enable this functionality if it's not present?

7) In numlock mode, movement works but attacking in place/running doesn't. This is very misleading for a newbie player (I was wondering why doesn't it work for like 10 minutes until I guessed it). Maybe disable it alltogether (meaning, allow movement only with numlock off)?

Inventory screen, opened for the first time, shows only weapons. There are mods to fix it but why not fix it in the main game?

9) Addons that do not influence game word at all (like, addon that fixes inventory hotkeys) could be allowed for already started games. Generally, all addons should be allowed when a game is already in progress, and leave it to the addon author to list wether or not his addon requires a clean restart to work proprtly (some obvioulsy would) - like in Skyrim.

10) Applying infusions/runes to your character on world map is not possible for no good reason. I know you can go to a town, but why disallow it in the first place? How does it hurt the game?

11) In character creation screen, it's very hard to scroll down race information - you have to move your cursor all around without hovering over the class in order to reach the window and scroll it...

1) Compare can use a revamp, I agree. There was a nice addon for a better compare, but I think it's outdated.

2) That's a good idea. In case it becomes an issue, pressing "m" in the meantime gives you a list of talents that you can drag in. Or even manually set the hotkey for.

3) I'm not the one to comment on graphical whatnot.

4) I think it often says in the combat log that "X fails to use Y". Often due to confusion, for me. If you're paying the proper amount of attention, though, it shouldn't be a big issue.

5) The levelup screen isn't horrible. It could use some tweaks too, but I doubt it's high on the priority list.

6) The Zomnibus addon gives you the ability to use inventory letters. Vanilla doesn't have this, as far as I can tell. But 99% of the community uses Zomnibus, so we don't tend to notice.

7) I didn't realize this. I always had numlock on while playing. Although a popup saying "Numlock on/off" when it doesn't work right would be nice.

I thought Darkgod set it to start in General inventory. Wierd.

9) That might be messy. In particular, any addon that overloads or superloads would NOT work, from what I understand. A clean restart isn't that big of a problem. If you get to level 30-something, you probably don't need the addon that you forgot anyway.

10) For the same reason no abilities work on the world map? Maybe...

11) If you think that's hard, try reading the Blighted Summoning prodigy.

Well, I'm not complaining, I'm just listing the things.

If all community uses an addon, why not include the addon's fixes into the game? (like Blizzard does with WoW, btw) And just generally, things like going from stat to stat requiring a double click - I understand there may be a "low priority" but that surely requires just several code lines to fix? Same for displaying stat/skill information when it's selected via keyboard - just run the same code that runs when mouse hovers over, right?

Istrebitel wrote:Well, I'm not complaining, I'm just listing the things.

If you were complaining, it'd be "Small list of miscellaneous complaints".

Istrebitel wrote:If all community uses an addon, why not include the addon's fixes into the game? (like Blizzard does with WoW, btw) And just generally, things like going from stat to stat requiring a double click - I understand there may be a "low priority" but that surely requires just several code lines to fix? Same for displaying stat/skill information when it's selected via keyboard - just run the same code that runs when mouse hovers over, right?

I won't pretend to understand how the Dark One improves this game. I'm slowly learning, but that's not important. If I recall correctly, which I may not, then changing something as "simple" as a utility would require multiple (obscure) changes to fix it.