thank you stannie, this was not known to me. - however i still believe it should be available directly, without using the console commands. Unfortunately though, due to how the achievements are controlled though, opening the console will disable achievements (personally i feel that this is a strange convention. in a singleplay environment there's not really such a thing as 'cheating' per say, as you're not hurting anyone else to play the game in the way which you prefer). - i'm not personally too worried about achievements, but at the same time it's annoying (and a bad design decision) that to get the functionality you want you have to knowing disable functionality that shouldn't be related to it at all.
of course i've never had exposure to "gamerscore" type systems so i don't know how important it is for people to know that comparing their gamerscore to another persons is accurately showing the effort both people needed to achieve their achievements.



I admit that I've not actually gotten far enough into the game yet to encounter these issues, but such information should be clearly available on screen (e.g. a temporary flashing icon when an effect is due to expire). I've heard that there are similar problems with debuffs/diseases too (which i recall in oblivion I would have trouble identifying why a skill was drained)
- i'd strongly suggest that icons be used in the lower right of the screen (colour coded so red = debuff and light blue = buff). - basically reusing the morrowind system.



i tried this, but when using a 2-handed weapon or a shield+weapon, you end up with an inverted control schema to what fallout3 and oblivion set as precedent.
unfortunately it's a case of left-mouse= main hand and right-mouse = offhand - the problem is that when a given item can be used in either hand, this schema breaks down somewhat
the solution for me has been to basically ignore dual wielding entirely, so that i don't end up having to re-wire my brain pathways everytime i switch from dual wielding to shield+other or 2-handed items.



at the end of the day they're a company. what this means is that primarily they are trying to please the share holders and/or publisher, and time=money.
they'll make a mint on this in its current form, even on the PC alone. - think about spore, despite all the negative reviews and warnings from reviewers immediately prior to release people still ignored them and bought the game only to be let down by it. sometimes you need to see it for yourself to dispell the rose-tinted glasses that are built up off of the trickles of press release info.
my personal opinion is that games were a lot stronger when people didn't worry about making PAX / E3 demos and PCgamer / other special press release media (to name a few)
off the top of my head i'd case in point reference the likes of valve: you rarely see what they're working on until they're ready to show you it.

Very nice post, be good to hear a response from Beth but they seem to very quiet.

That may be so, but its a sign that they didn't really adjust the menu system for PC..... the reason adding a mouse to computers (back in the 80s) was such a big deal was that it incredibly improved the number of ways and methods we had to do things. So to design a PC interface that people say "It's better if you just ignore the mouse and use the direction keys" is a clear sign of design methodology problems.



Yeah, that part doesn't control well with a mouse, either. I get the feeling that it was made to work with a thumbstick - you know, smoothly pushing around the starfield with an anolog stick.

The only issue I have is sometimes when you are talking to a merchant and you click a catagory, it comes out of sell/buy mode.

Otherwise, I like the UI to be honest.

I don't have the game yet, so can someone tell me if 'Q' still toggles movement? If you have to hold down 'W' to run around the vast world I can imagine that getting annoying quickly.

autorun is bound to C by default (crouch/sneak is ctrl)
Q opens up the favourites list to select something to equip

(you add to the favourites list by highlighting an item in your inventory and pressing R)

- i don't recommend remapping Q or R as currently if you do so, it'll break the favourites list functionality completely

OK, thanks for the info. I guess I'll hold out for a patch before I buy (I learned my lesson after New Vegas).

Wonderful thread - I hope desperately that Bethesda takes note of this and addresses everything mentioned here. Soon.

Please stop holding the button :thumbsup:

Agree with the points of the OP and I truly hope Bethesda makes an effort to fix these issues. I use ESDF for movememnt and I've discovered a few quirks involving "hard bound" keys, like being unable to drop items if I set R to "activate."

I would also really like to be able to assign sets of mainhand/offhand items and skills to 1-8.

whilst i am surprised you prefer ESDF to WASD, the fact is that this is a very good example of the flexibility of keyboard and mouse interface. a good UI should be able to accommodate a persons preferences so that they are comfortable.

whilst the other issues probably will not be addressed at the very least i strongly expect to see key re-mapping be fixed as it is currently a broken feature that requires relatively little work to address

I honestly don't understand. Did none of the playtesters dual-wield? It is impossible to dual-wield two weapons with the same name from the favourites menu and also impossible to equip dual-wield with hotkeys.

I don't understand how this is in retail.

Another one to add:

The UI for the PC is the one aspect of the game that I've really got a problem with. It's also pretty much the only part of the game that makes me think, "damn you Bethesda and your lazy console porting".

It's pathetic really. The game is so nice, and yet PC users are PLAGUED (I mean it, my first playthrough is at ~30 hours, and I'm *constantly* struggling with the UI) with this horrible UI that noone took the time to really flesh out for the PC. I don't mean to sound rude or arrogant but...

Whoever was responsible for the PC UI at Bethesda should either be let go or severely reprimanded. It's obvious that the individual (or group of individuals) who was tasked with creating an intuitive and functional UI for the PC version was asleep at the wheel.

Lets just hope that Bethesda gets some sort of patch out (or a community made UI revamp) before too terribly long.

I can't even tell you how many times I've tried to trade with my companion and ended up telling her to piss off instead.

UI's a freakin' joke...

And the User Reviews on Metacritic are starting to show...

Started at 9.6 for PC hours after release when the "rabid delusional fan boys" made their "reviews"...

Now down to 8.4... And I'm willing to bet the game gets to 7.9-8.0...

You can't make a game like this for the PC with this [censored] UI and expect people to [censored] take it... Minus the delusional "fan boys".

Game has one of the worst if not the worst "console ported" UI's that I can remember in the last 5-8 years... I mean it's up there with [censored] Borderlands' [censored] ass console ported UI.

Game is gonna eventually average out around what DA2 got from user reviews... EA never took notice, and I highly doubt Bethesda will either.

Sadly... I'm done with this company, I knew better before hand, but gave them one last shot. They [censored] "phoned it in" and now I'm done.

I'll stick with Blizzard... They still make [censored] PC games, where I can actually bind keys and use my mother [censored] mouse correctly.

I'll play D3 beta til it's release, because this game just [censored] pisses me off with it's horrid "console ported" UI.

perhaps. personally though, despite being a big fan of the diablo series, I've seen too many things relating to D3 to put me off wanting to play it. However, I won't get into that here.



on topic though, I've added a couple more points to the initial list of issues i've encountered

Link to blog blasting the UI http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/EricSchwarz/20111111/8866/Skyrim_or_How_Not_to_Make_a_PC_Game.php

Yeah, after two days of playing I'm pretty disappointed with the UI, and think the OP has made some great points. I've seen plenty of people say they think it's fine, and others say that you just have to "get used to it," but now I'm just sorely hoping that modders can do something with it, because I thought I was buying the PC version of the game, and am reminded that it's a port from console every time I use a menu. I'd be curious to see what it looks like on a console. Did Bethesda just change all the console options to match a few keys on the keyboard, or is there any difference?

Anyway, I miss being able to see things in my chest by category or by damage/armor rating. It's all just listed alphabetically, which is completely inconvenient.

The favorites system is a bit wonky. I can set things up the way I like, but if I decide to hotkey a different sword, or bow, I have to favorite the new one, unfavorite the old one, and then go into favorites and select the hotkey for the new one... woe is me if I forget that last step in a hairy situation.

Anyway, these are the early days. I'm just desperately praying that Bethesda built in enough leeway for modders to do some serious work. I was absolutely determined to love this game, but I find that what I'm really banking on now is its potential. Still enjoying it, but some of the bugs and UI issues have chipped away at my excitement and the immersion factor.

I switched LMB and RMB bindings around and it still feels natural, even though blocking is now LMB rather than the RMB.

it goes a lil hairy though if you try using a 2-hander after switching it around, otherwise i would be playing that way.

good point there, i've had issue with that too (especially when you get amulets and necklaces at either end of the apparel list)
(added to the list)


i sometimes end up rebinding the numbers accidently because i forget i don't need to open the favourites menu to access the quick-bound item and instead end up pausing the game and needing to rebind the quick-binds.


one of my worries is that some of the issues are not likely to be moddable (such as how R and F have secondary functions that will also be silently rebound if you rebind these keys)
the shape and form of the menu (i.e. a branching list that has only 1 line of listed items) is almost certainly something that cannot be changed with mods

Ok so I downloaded it from Steam just to see what everyone was talking about with the UI.

Yeeeeeeeeeeeeeep. This was designed with consoles in mind. The controls are perfect when I use my 360 controller lol...but it took time doing everything with the keyboard...trying to find the right keys O_o.

Ah great, there's a thread about this all ready. I made one earlier and tried looking for similar thread but found none. Here's a copy/paste of my complaints about the UI.


Hey, I've been playing Skyrim for a few days now (steam shows 23h which is kinda scary) and so far I've been loving the game apart from the menus which gives me some serious headache at times.
First of all the mouse cursor is really picky on where you're pointing it when you're stashing items in a container or simply just looting stuff, especially when you try to click on the "misc" tab you can't always just simply click on it... there's a specific spot where you have to click (like next to the text instead of on top of it) for it to work.
Also the conversation screen on PC is really just completely broken. At times it works fine while most of the time your mouse cursor is again trying its best to make everything as hard as possible for you, at times it does not properly highlight the dialogue options even though you're waving the mouse cursor on top of them but it simply gets stuck in one of the options, you try using WASD or the arrow keys and those don't help so you will try to exit the conversation which introduces yet another problem.

The TAB button to exit a conversation... it doesn't work half the time, it really doesn't. No matter how many times I press that button during the end of some conversations it just doesn't want to work. Also if I have that bug which I explained earlier about the game just getting stuck in one of the dialogue options, you try to click on the exit conversation button which is on the lower right corner of the screen and it just chooses the dialogue option that it was stuck on and leaves the conversation afterwards.

But the biggest problem I've had is that there has been times when I've got stuck in a conversation. This happened during one of the early companion quests, I had only 2 dialogue options with the NPC and the exit conversation button which should be located at the lower right of the screen is simply gone. I try pressing TAB and nothing happens so I'm stuck in the conversation and there's no way to exit. I had this problem just a moment ago again in Dawnstar with a NPC called Madena and each time I spoke to her I got stuck in the conversation with her since the exit button disappeared and TAB, as always does nothing... And when this happens you can't simply load since saving and loading functions are disabled during conversations, you have to exit to main menu and then load the game.

Please Bethesda, do something about these problem as they're driving me nuts.

i've not encountered the missing tab button yet, but i did once get locked out of all key inputs when i tried to interrupt my character when he was chopping wood.
it is odd that they make it so you can't save/load when in conversation though. i've run into that myself as well when something goes wrong and i end up grabbing the wrong item or hitting the wrong person and have to wait on the guard to finish talking before i can reload

added a couple more feedback points based on further play