PC skyrims interface : The only factual critique

[M-E-D The Poet]

For the love of.... it's been a day and already we have people whining and fighting on this forum in a disgracious manner
Before that I think we should lay down rules.
1. Don't argue about stuff you can not possibly know about, for example the xbox360 fanboy laughing at the pc gamer cause he heard the interface of skyrim was rubbish
2.State a factual problem when calling SHIT on something, otherwise it's your personal opinion and that's fine cause this a forum, but it bothers some how many people think opinions are facts

On to the point I was trying to make

The only factual issue one can have with skyrim's interface is this :
You can only click 3 things in the menu (log,settings menu,map) everything else is handled with the keys
That I think and want to voice the opinion that everything goes easy as kiss my hand in the way the interface is handled is my opinion but not virtual fact
A fact would then again be :
Everything from character summary to casting shouts or choosing spells is mapped on the keys in one way or another

[strong] On to the discussion :[/strong]
Do you like the way the interface was handled on say the pc version of skyrim?

 

[Duffeknol]

What I can't stand is the conversation and shop system. I lost count of how many times I clicked the highlighted thing only to say the thing above it, cause apparently you need to scroll down til it's in the middle of the list, highlighted or not doesn't matter. It's just annoying.

Also fuck the animations, I cannot stress this enough. After the abuse I suffered on this forum after making a thread about that I have a pathological need to point that out wherever I can.

Haven't had a problem with the interface itself, though. I miss hotkeys, I don't want to have to pause the game to quickly switch between weapons. EDIT: I just checked the manual, apparently I CAN use 1-8 as quick keys, but for the life of me I can't figure out how. EDIT 2: wow, finally figured it out. I don't even feel dumb because you can only set quick keys from your favorites menu, not any other menu... right.

 

[TheHecatomb]

Every time I click and drag my mouse to make my character face another direction during character creation my keys stop working so I can't adjust any of the sliders. Shit is broken.

 

[ZeroMachine]

I can tell it's perfect for console, but it's pretty fucking terrible on PC. I mean, everything else is just fucking AMAZING, so it's not like I'm going around saying "PC SKRIM SUKS", but clicking through those menus is such a pain in the ass. I miss the Oblivion inventory system.

YO, MODDERS! Help a brother out?

 

[ZeroMachine]

What I can't stand is the conversation and shop system. I lost count of how many times I clicked the highlighted thing only to say the thing above it, cause apparently you need to scroll down til it's in the middle of the list, highlighted or not doesn't matter. It's just annoying.

Also fuck the animations, I cannot stress this enough. After the abuse I suffered on this forum after making a thread about that I cannot stress that enough.

Haven't had a problem with the interface itself, though. I miss hotkeys, I don't want to have to pause the game to quickly switch between weapons.

Bring up your favorites menu, put the mouse cursor over an item, and press the number hotkey you want to map it to. BUT, be warned, any normal weapon you have more than one of will lose it's mapping for... some fucking reason.

But, it makes equipping magic easy as pie. Hitting a hotkeyed spell once will equip it to your left hand. Hitting it again will map it to both hands. Then you just hit the hotkey for a weapon and it's in your right hand.

EDIT: Oh, you figured it out. Weird, right? But useful once it's there.

 

[RADlTZ]

Its ok guys, it'll be fixed when the mods start rolling in. Im really hating the interface. Not so much the layout itself, but the fact that clicking things is broken, keys are unresponsive and inconsistent across different 'menus' (inventory, conversation etc), and rebinding in-game keys also rebinds menu keys (the interface dosnt update to show the new key).

Some things ive noticed:

-If im in a shop menu, half the time clicking a highlited option (e.g 'books') will actually take me out of the shop list and back into conversation. Then I have to mash through the shopkeepers few dialog lines to get back to where i was. (Many shop keepers have died by my hand due to this)

-The 'TAB' key works as a back button in some ,menu lists, but not others.

-Clicking the 'Exit' button to get out of a conversation also triggers whatever convo-option was highlighted, so NPC's babble on about crap ive already heard them say, instead of just saying goodbye.

-I CANNOT DROP ITEMS UNLESS IM PLACING THEM IN A DEAD BODY OR A CONTAINER. Rebinding the Draw/Sheath weapon key changes the 'drop' key in your inventory. The interface still says R to drop however. The real problem is that the new button i have for Draw/Sheath dosnt drop items, nothing does, but R still works if im dumping items into a chest ect. Maybe ill just switch back to R (R for Retarded).

-The interface is extremely fussy about what is actually highlighted and if its going to let you click it or not.

 

[Samurai Silhouette]

Saw you in another thread with your soapbox and megaphone telling another user what he should believe in. You're too anal. If someone's opinion of the game's mechanics breaks the experience for them, they have right to complain about it, especially if previous games of the series catered better. I've started Oblivion on 360 and the interface was smooth, then bought it for PC and still found the interface unhindering. Skyrim was a step backwards in my opinion. Graphics are lame even on max settings 60fps, interface is lame, customization is lame. Everything has been dumbed down it seems. And don't say it's just personal experience for me, there's many others that came to the same conclusions.

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

Saw you in another thread with your soapbox and megaphone telling another user what he should believe in. You're too anal. If someone's opinion of the game's mechanics breaks the experience for them, they have right to complain about it, especially if previous games of the series catered better. I've started Oblivion on 360 and the interface was smooth, then bought it for PC and still found the interface unhindering. Skyrim was a step backwards in my opinion. Graphics are lame even on max settings 60fps, interface is lame, customization is lame. Everything has been dumbed down it seems. And don't say it's just personal experience for me, there's many others that came to the same conclusions.

I like my soapbox

 

[Nimbus]

All those mouse-not-working problems with the interface were ALREADY FIXED! Seriously, update 1 took care of them. Why are people still complaining?

 

[Vicarious Reality]

You can only click 3 things in the menu (log,settings menu,map) everything else is handled with the keys
That I think and wan?

Wait, are you telling me the settings are now in the in game menu?
Or the in game menu is now the Escape menu?

 

[M-E-D The Poet]

All those mouse-not-working problems with the interface were ALREADY FIXED! Seriously, update 1 took care of them. Why are people still complaining?

I'm not complaining I was stating that it was the only factual issue that was there at the moment

 

[Stammer]

Yeah the interface kinda sucks. I was pretty pissed off at how the keys on the keyboard were assigned. How many times I've hit Tab instead of Q, Q instead of Tab, E instead of R, or R instead of E. I know I can remap them, but I think it would have worked out better if they'd combined some of the buttons. (eg: all the Tab-menu things in ESC)

The most disappointing thing for me is just how easily and obviously the game is broken. With the way Mana regenerates, channelling spells will never stop casting even if you hit rock-bottom Mana. So if you've got one hand assigned as a flamethrower and the other hand assigned as a self-healing battery you're virtually indestructible.

 

[isometry]

I'm a PC gamer, but I play most games (aside from RTS/TBS) with the Xbox controller. I started Skyrim with the default controls for the Xbox controller, and they are excellent.

Unfortunately, Xbox players have no way to do simple things like toggle-run, or use shift keys to bind multiple actions to the main controller buttons, and the d-pad keys are underused. Therefore after I finished the introduction section I turned off the Xbox controls, n favor of keyboard + mouse + pinnacle profiler + xbox controller. This is how I recommend to play the game, since the controller sends keyboard presses it works well for the menus, and not using the built-in Xbox support gives me more customization, and lets me move my mouse when that is most convenient.

Steps to having the best-of-all-worlds on the PC:

1. Buy an Xbox 360 controller for windows ($50). If you already have a controller you just need the wireless adapter for windows ($20). You'll probably also want a charging pack ($20).

2. Buy pinnacle profiler (30 day free trial, $20 using google checkout). For many reasons pinnacle is the best controller mapping software out there. It uses mouse-analog stick smoothing so you don't get jerkiness like with joyToKey or xpadder (those are free though). Pinnacle also supports lots of things like making any key into a toggle (tap the sprint key to hold it down until I tap it again), multiple commands on a single button (e.g. I press Y to interact with something, and I hold Y to dragon shout).

3. Spend half an hour configuring the controls for a game that you'll play for dozens of hours.