With so many players having their eyes on the actual gameplay of the Demo that participated in the Steam Game Festival, I managed to collect useful feedback that sat down at the back of my brain and aged well.
My method of development is iterative, coming from my agile software development experience. I always try to plan a vertical slice of tasks for 2 weeks ahead and have a working prototype at the end of it. That way I have to re-do portions of the code when I figure out something can be or must be improved which costs time but makes me more flexible with changes, and at the end of the day, it delivers.
When I first implemented the character inventory, I did it under the form of an action bar at the bottom of the screen. I used right-click pop-up menu to let the players Equip items by highlighting them which worked for the time being and allowed me to transition fast to other functionality areas. However, in the Combat screen where I needed an actual action bar for the skills and actions the players can perform, I struggled where on the screen to put what. I implemented tabs to switch between items and actions, and I left that known issue for the time being to advance to other areas.
Later, I separated equipment from the inventory and placed that on the Character Sheet dialogue. I was quite happy how it looked but this deepened the other issue. Now you had to go to the Character Sheet to equip/unequip items which resulted in lots of useless clicks. Not to mention that some people struggled to figure out that they have a healing potion they could drink or how to do drink it even if they see it. Some also stated the obvious question: why do I need to always see my inventory while reading the story if the items are not needed on the spot?
Another area that showed usability issues was the merchants. Although players figured out how to buy or sell items, many expressed concerns with how it is presented.
With the development of the full Skill system (both active and passive skills) on the horizon for all professions, it was time to go back and revisit my UIs and make them better.
First, I had to rework the inventory management system. I refactored all code related to item slots to make the system extendable and modular. I quite enjoyed that as a programmer :D Refactoring meant that all the functionality must act the same as before while improving only the code. It is not a productive thing to do when meeting a deadline, but I needed a solid foundation to make changes, or it turns into a bug-fest quite quickly. Nothing like a bug to ruin any game experience.
Second, I removed the inventory action bar and implemented a backpack in the Character Sheet, House Stash and Shops.
Then I implemented weapon sets. Thus, you could equip a range weapon and switch between your weapon sets instead of constantly opening the inventory to swap weapons.
Lastly, I changed the combat action bar by adding 'Swap weapons' and 'Use Item'. 'Swap weapons' allows you to switch between your equipped weapon sets while 'Use Item' pops-up a mini-action bar containing all your consumable items such as potions. Voilà, you can now left-click to drink! In addition. both of those actions now cost 1 Action Point. That way they become more tactical and add some depth to the decision-making while slightly nerfing Ranged combat and Healing pots.
As for the merchants, I did several improvements. Separating the items in two tabs: Items in Stock and Searching to Buy, gets rid of the problem that new players see right away items that they not only can't afford but actually can't buy because those items are what the local merchants seek to obtain for themselves.
The whole point of the market system in the Fabled Lands is to roam the open-world freely and find the best places to sell your loot for the best price. Due to the small nature of the inventory and various interesting quest developments that lead to losing it, it's quite the inconvenience to carry your loot all over the place to price check items. House stashes are there to store your valuables until you need them. Hence, I reached the conclusion the player still needs the information what can be sold where and at what price, just presented differently.
To improve on that, I added sell price, cost price, or willing to buy price to item tooltips. Items that you cannot sell at the current market are disabled (but you can still drop them if you want to make room for new items). Lastly, you can sell an item by drag & dropping it onto a BIG visual area, right-clicking an item and choosing 'Sell' or by ctrl-clicking an item for faster shopping.
