Talk to the Team: Abilities UI Tab

We're considering a change to the Abilities tab for later this year and looking for feedback. In considering feedback, please consider if this is a useful feature change or more "nice to have". Please indicate if you think this is a good feature for newer players vs. experienced players.

1) Change Abilities tab to have schools and race on left - we'll call these "Ability Categories"
2) Have a "General" Ability Category. This is any ability not tied to Race or School
3) Have a "Race" Ability Category. This is any ability specific to player's race.
4) Change the color (to gray perhaps) of "Ability Category" that aren't the active school(s)
5) When an "Ability Category" is chosen, display only those abilities that have been obtained from that school.
6) For each ability, in smaller text beneath it, display "Gained at level N"
7) Next to #5, if the ability is masterable and has not yet been mastered, display "Can be mastered at level N"
8) Next to #5, if the ability has already been mastered, display "Mastered at level N"
9) If the ability has been overwritten by other abilities, don't display it
10) Display abilities not yet received in the school?

Image showing //some// of the ideas described above.
https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/i...bility-tag.png

I don't personally have issues with the way it is now, but this certainly sounds like an improvement nonetheless.

There's a pretty good chance I've misunderstood some of your comments, so feel free to correct me please :)

Couple of suggestions/points to consider:

Do we really need a separate "Race" category/button? That seems a little overkill? Unless you're about to introduce a ton of awesome quested racial abilities ;) Perhaps this is more pertinent for dragons?

I'd prefer to have the "school list" as a text menu rather than those lovely, albeit enormous images (scrolling through 28 adventure schools and having to remember each image might be little tricky)... I'd also like it to be tick-able options (similar to the player search) so you can select multiple schools however, if this is not viable, then at least some way to still show ALL abilities please. I find it easy just scrolling up and down the complete list to add abilities to my hotbar, rather than having to remember which ability comes from which school (seeing as there is a bit of cross-over and trying to remember which school has the highest version of which ability...)

Pretty sure your Point 9 covers this so feel free to disregard...
Does this mean we may accidentally select lower-tiered abilities? I'm just pondering, if for example, I've mastered an ability from a non-active school and I hotkey that, instead of hotkeying a higher version from my active school? In which case, would the higher version still show if I selected the non-active school (e.g. it would have the "higher" version AND the correct school in brackets to indicate this?), or would it be "grey-ed out", or... some other option... :P

I'm just hoping I don't get confused when I select a school expecting to see an ability, only not realising that another school actually has a higher version, and how I should then find it? As long as there is still that "all schools" option, then there shouldn't be an issue.

TL;DR I guess my only concern is how to find the highest tier of masterable abilities if you have to select by school?

It's an interesting idea. Just a couple quick thoughts so far.

The race abilities will only ever be one maybe 2? Having its own big icon seems to waste a bit of space. Maybe the racial abilities can be at the top and not take up the big slots below?

So that very top portion where there's 4 icons in the example are the mastered abilities? Is that all schools? it says non-race and mastered. So that would likely be the majority of abilities.. if so I don't see the point of the school sections below, as most non-mastered abilities are not listed at all until you join back to the school. So is that the point of the schools section? to show other earned or available to be earned (the gray ones you were mentioning) abilities, but none of those are currently useable? Seems really confusing to me. Also, I'm not a fan of not seeing the ability name like we do in the list style.

In the example it looks like what, Mage has the combat stances? Are those just sorta randomly assigned to the first school that earns them? In my list I have Red assigned to warrior, Blue assigned to Mage, and Green assigned to healer.. That would be odd trying to find something like that if one stance winds up in one school, but the others are elsewhere.. Or are those something that would separate out into the top mastered section..

In all honesty after thinking more about it, it might end up just being more confusing... If you do implement this idea or something similar, could we be able to go back to the list style as it is now if we wanted? Pretty sure I would just use the list.

Some ideas that come to mind about the abilities page..

Can we get all titles moved to their own category, selectable by a new radio button up top, alongside the Adventure and Craft radio buttons? There's so many that they clutter both the adventure and craft abilities' listings. Separating them out would make them easier to find and at the same time clean up the adventure and craft abilities lists.

In both the list view and in the new style view you are proposing, can the passive abilities be separated out from the active ones? Perhaps 2 columns, and the left side is active abilities, the right side is passive abilities. With there own sort columns for school and level. Especially in the new proposed idea, if mastered passives are all just icons now up top that have no point in being hotkeyed, having them mixed in would be a big mess.

I definitely don't want this unless we can tick a box that lets us go back to the old list style... can't tell for sure if that's whats in the top right corner or not or the sample picture.

Loving this idea! especially the ability to display abilities that you don't already have in a greyed-out form, this way you'd be able to work towards a visible goal, and get a clear overview of what the school has to offer.

to quell some concerns, from what I can gather:
1) I think with Race it's only meant to display racial abilities, but in the way it's done in the preview image, a small collection of the racial abilities (the top row for those that don't seem to get it), without a school/race shield, no idea why you'd want that as a filter though..seeing as it's usually just 3-4, most of which are passive. And if they're just on top all the time you wouldn't have any trouble finding them anyway.

2) You can switch from list mode to grid mode, so you won't be tied down to this new style of you don't want to.

3) On stances, the image more of a mock-up, so I'd expect it to be like the current way the stances are displayed. That being said, it would be great if stances could instead be moved to racial abilities, that way they'd always be in the same catagory, and they wouldn't be annoying to find.

I'd love the idea of passives being in a seperate collumn or something, like Guaran suggests, they won't be anything you'll ever hotkey, but it's nice to have a clear overview of them too.

"General" ability catagory...that would mean all abilities that display "none" as school, correct? (not counting racials ofcourse), couldn't this (potentially) become annoying for dragons? this would mean their quested abilities would be thrown into there, allong with titles and other things one might pick up (Hero's Resolve, Primal Cast, etc.), Just wondering how that would unfold.

anyhow, it's way too early atm for me to give some clear feedback, but I definately see promise in this idea, I'll try to give it a better read later and give some proper feedback then.

1) This is good,but as somebody mentioned,make it possible to collapse/retrieve like quests
2) and 3) put them together,i don't think theres enough abilities to make it workth separating. Also quested abilities should go in here unless tied to school (DRAG). or display tied quested abilities in both.
4) if you mean grey out like when abilities are hotkeyed but not available then yes! but still make it able to collapse and hide.
5,7,8) very useful but it will be tricky to palce text. cant be too small but cant clutter too much. or hover over ability to show ability +second window: can be mastered/mastered at lv...
6) display just number
9) agreed if that means tier (II overwrites I etc)
10) those would need to be greyed out I think but its a good encouragement and gives you idea what school is like. if you join and decide you don't like it,you wont feel like you wasted time lvling.
I think this division into general/racial,mastered and all is a good addition and will be helpful to new players and old players alike.

I'm not happy about the grid view, it's useless in my eyes.
Noone is able to differ simple symbols and could be aware what ability hides behind it. The ability name as text is absolutely necessary. Also, I don't think that the usual 'hover-details-effect' makes any sense there as a replacement for the ability name. You can search the traditional, plain table much more effectively.

It's a waste of development time.

There is option to go back to list view. Upper right corner.

The idea of making diffrent categories for abilities basically i think can be useful.
Im prefering the name of ability beside icon view because it makes easier to find something if we know the name of the ability we are looking for.

About the categories i would like to sort the abilities filter in: Melee, Archer, Spell, Debuff, Buff (eventaually separate for Aura?), Healing, Passive, (eventually other for those which don't fit in)

- Chajanum, Chaba (Chaos)

I like the idea it gives it a fresh look. I agree with guran about racials. Instead of putting all mastered abilities maybe just give them a gold outline or something? If you pull up a specific school maybe show abilities you can get from that school in redout or somethin similar?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by Daewa

I like the idea it gives it a fresh look. I agree with guran about racials. Instead of putting all mastered abilities maybe just give them a gold outline or something? If you pull up a specific school maybe show abilities you can get from that school in redout or somethin similar?

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Actually I took a closer look at it and I like the way it is presented currently.