hell no real time menus are annoying as hell

and why not it is a game plus is optional if you dont want to heal then dont.

Real time inventories might ruin the game for me, I really hope they are not, I absolutely hated Resident evil 5.

I wouldn't mind having an animation to pull out your bag though.

that the new favorite item menu which seem to be awesome ,hopefully we see it in action soon.

The only issue that comes along with the paused menu system for me can be avoided by simply ignoring to use the menus while in combat. I'll wear armor beforehand, and use hotkeys to swap for what I need.

Was there not a limit on how many potions you could drink at one time in oblivion? Or maybe its another game i'm thinking about. With any healing potion that could make it so it regenerates over time rather than an instant heal therefore taking that quick benefit away regardless of pausing.

HI'm 100% sure you can pause the game while playing any infinity engine game.

Edit: Yeah, I remember now. Opening the menu in the BG disable pausing.

In a real battle you should be prepared with your weapon at hand and know how to accomplish your goals. Not rummaging through your pack to see if you have the right mace or axe.

I'm all for realtime menus.

I just think it adds a bit to the game. Instead of being able to just run around anywhere, willy-nilly and be in the middle of battle and decide " Oh hey that axe doesnt work let me just swap it out real fast! "

Real time menus would make it so you at least kind of have to plan ahead.

Your right, there was a small amount of items that were shown. However, why would you scroll from the top to the bottom looking for what you needed. Not to mention, that's not pages, it's all one page, you just scrolled. Mainly, if you needed an item, you hit the tab the item was under and usually only had to scroll a few items down to get to it. If people would think about it, it was a lot faster finding items in Oblivion than it was Morrowind. Morrowind had them all on one page in the PC version but there was so much crammed in one screen that you could spend overly large amounts of time trying to find the item. Organized tabs>one page crammed with a hundred items.

It worked really well in System Shock 2, but that one had a very easy to use UI that still allowed you to walk around and see most of the screen while you were using it. In Skyrim you won't be able to see anything and have to flip through all sorts of tabs and such.

I just want books to be realtime, or the option of realtime, in Morrowind I could carry a book or two around with me, and if I need to pass some time I could read.. I don't think I ever had to use the wait function.

I don't. I could never find anything.

But I agree with the people saying this wouldn't work. Not only us the inventory too slow, but in games like this I don't want to be under pressure to drink potions or select spells. It works in Stalker, but it wouldn't in Oblivion or Morrowind, and I don't expect Skyrim to be any different.

In real life, there are no menus...

My phone would beg to differ. :tongue:

Indeed, not to mention in the real world, you can't readily tell how much damage a weapon will do or how much it weighs by glancing over it either. Nor are all your skills asigned a number which you can view at any time to see how good you are at them. Also, in real life, you can't save and reload if something bad happdens, but you can do all those things in the game. Sometimes, games do things that aren't realistic, because not doing so would make them not entertaining or outright unplayable, at the very least, trying to be too realistic may prove detrimental to gameplay, even if it doesn't outright ruin it.

Also, in real life, you'd probably have each of the weapons you want to use holstered in places where they'd be easy to draw during combat, which is not something you could do in past Elder Scrolls games, where there was only one

Over all, I agree, the interface in Skyrim probably won't be one you can access and find things on quick enough to make real time menus viable, though even if it were, I wouldn't want them. They just annoy me in games where you're likely to be carrying a large amount of different items at one time. I LIKE being able to take my time to look through my items and choose what I need, and I take no pleasure in being pressed to do it quickly. It's not so bad in a game designed so that you'll have only a few items you need to switch between and they're all easily accessable, but the Elder Scrolls isn't like that.



Were books in real time in Morrowind? I didn't even know that if they were. But I wouldn't mind that. Then I could have my character read to pass the time, which is something I might do in real life. And it's not like I generally take out a book to read in combat.



That depends on how many items you carry. Since I'm generally in the habit of carrying a lot of items with me and generally never store items with no weight or little weight, finding anything in my inventory tends to always involve a fair amount of scrolling, even though I use interface mods.

The main thing I like about Morrowind's inventory was that it had a sort of spread-sheet like arrangement with each item occupying a specific square within the window, allowing the game to show more items in the same amount of pixels. You could also redize it, as with all the windows, to suit you're needs. Mostly, though, what I liked about Morrowind's interface was that the map, character stats, inventory and magic menu were all displayed at one time, making accessing different menus quicker than in Oblivion, where I needed to click on different icons at the bottom of the screen to access my character information, inventory, spells and such. The only menu in Morrowind that couldn't be brought up by right clicking

Though Oblivion's's interface did have some good ideas, like the inventory tabs, at least under the alchemy and misc. pages (And, by the way, giving alchemy related items their own page instead of just throwing potions into a page that also included enchanted items and having apparatus and ingredients be under misc. items was also a nice decision, it made performing alchemy and using the results of it much more convenient.) the way the journal was set up

This is a pretty important point. THE most important point, actually.

Menus, in entirety, are implemented because there is no good way of working without them. The controls cannot be made complex enough to facilitate working without menus while retaining usability.

The very concept of a "real time" menu is silly. It works in a few instances - Dead Space, for example - but even then it's a little clunky and it has to show vastly less information than an RPG.
Menus will not be real time, and menus *should* not be real time. It is not realistic, for example, for swapping arrow types to involve being helpless while you scroll through a vision-blocking menu. You just pick a different kind of arrow out of your quiver.

Because it's entirely realistic that a UI pops up and blocks your screen while you stand there to go through your inventory? No thanks, I like pausing inventory screens.

In fact some RPGs let you pause the action to decide what to do next, or even aim your next ability, then unpause and execute. I don't support moving it more towards being an action game by incorporating more and more twitch elements.

I bloody well hope the menus stop time! How else am I supposed to hit the bathroom!!!???

Erm, but I'm plotter and strategist, so I like the pause. If they keep it real time, it just makes it even more like an arcade game that doesn't require thinking.

How would they determine when one is in combat? When the music changes? When detected by an aggressor?
When would that aspect stop? We all know how animals (and guards) trigger the erm..no fast travel because enemies are close option when you can't even see them.

Also, if the menus are real time throught the entirity of the game, at a game scale or what was it...1:30? A couple minutes of anolyzing my character blows and entire sunset! Gads, just think of how much time would be lost for alchemy? :rofl:

The menu system how it is, is a requirement. Full immersion takes some roleplaying of your own to achieve. Some people, myself included, only use items that are hotkeyed at the start of the battle. That way it takes away the "paused menu" system and adds to the immesion. There are a couple of good threads in the Oblivion section that suggest ideas for added role playing and immersion you should check out, but it takes some willpower of your own.

I think a lot could be alleviated with an advanced enough hotkey system: A hotkey to swap arrow types. A potion/quick belt with hotkeys (a la Diablo) etc. etc. etc.

There are a lot of keys available on the keyboard. Oblivion really fell short in only allowing 8 of them to be mapped as hotkeys.

Not really.....and why can a real time menu not have vast information. This is very flawed. What would you really be checking your map during a fight? Or shifting through your back pack for the right arrows?

Also you could just hotkey those arrows. Just need to think around things. Remember FONV's bullet quick switch hotkey? You could shift through ammo types easily enough than go to a menu. Just make the arrow switch and other like items the same while adding limitations to the system.

Its all about thinking of new mechanics.

The only thing that should pause is when looking at stats.

I for one, would never want real time menus, nor real time books either. However, a lower ? inventory sack would be alright ( and be so called realtime). This would allow for being surprised while digging for equipment. I don't understand the root interest in real time sacks; Nor why no one who wants them hasn't asked for a character's 'rummaging animation'.

Opening the menu had better pause the game. This is one of those instances where you can have too much realism, IMO.

I was under the impression that Skyrim is intended as RPG, not FPS. The menu's should stay in pause mode, unless a new skill (Fast-Clicking, governed by ehh.. agility ??) is introduced.

I really hope that it does stop when I open the menu or "pause".