I was watching that 40 minute video again and even though this is for XB360, I found the constant game pausing just to change his loadout in hand to be rather annoying. If you want to be very dynamic in battle, you might need to change up between sets quickly. Either Todd did not showcase this well, or he did the best he could, and I just wasn't all that impressed with the setup.

I hope that in the end, they have a more optimized setup that does not require so much pausing in the game. Not sure how favoriting will work on PC, but we usually assign things to our numeric keys across the top.

1 - Dual Wield.
2 - Bow
3 - Shield and Spell 1 (offense)
4 - Shield and Spell 2 (healing)

Todd seemed like he had to assign items to hands on the fly rather than press a button and call them without pausing the action.

What do you mean by pausing? Was it opening a menu or something? Or did the game lag? Or is there just a delay before the weapons actually switch?

Its just like the hotkey menu from Oblivion.

I do not see any problems with it.

He brings up a menu, pausing the game world as he makes selections and assigns things to his hands, at which time the game world unpauses. This pause, for me, would get old quickly. So I'm hoping there's a better way.

Potions, shouts and more. There needs to be a quick way to assign these to readily-available hotkeys.

i suggest we wait until the game release and THEN we complain about it eh?

besides,not sure what u mean by pause,i dont have a prob with it

I don't really mind it. The way I think of it is that your character can pretty much instantly know what they want to equip, but for the player that "instantly" doesn't work so well with a long list of items in the inventory. So it pauses the game, essentially allowing you to select what you want, which would happen pretty much instantly in the mind of your character.

But what I'd like for PC is 10 separate favorites list, one for each number key. They could work like regular hotkeys if you only assign one item per hotkey (which wouldn't require a pause), or you could put long lists of items to have nice, organized favorites lists. I think that would pretty much satisfy everyone.

They didn't demonstrate the 'favourite' system in the 40 minute footage, he just showed us the menus and some items.

There have been hotkeys in the past. Maybe he didn't have any pre-assigned? That's what I would assume (and hope it's the case).

I'm going to ignore your comment/suggestion because, well, it's just not very intelligent of a gameplan.

Do you have to experience an icepick through the toenail to have a simple opinion on what you think the experience would be like?

@Alduiin & JCSpencer-
I'm hoping that's true. If he didn't showcase it, then we'll just have to wait to see how good the hotkeys are.

well think about it if you want to go from a fire ball spell after using a frost spell (just an example) it would be annoying to have to look through the favorite's menu while being cut into pieces. you shouldn't have to get attacked looking for another spell when you know what spell you want the switch should be instantaneous... but that can't happen because the game can't read your mind. so it stops the game while you look for what you want. it makes since to me

@BalisQit
I'm not upset with the fact that the game pauses the world if you wanted to manually assign something on the fly. This is the best method IMO.

But if you readily had preset items in hands, then I wouldn't want any pausing from going one to the other. As hinted, favoriting may not have been demoed; instead, just "on-the-fly" assignments.

Erm, what?Did you even use the hotkeys in Oblivion?It was radial, not a list like Skyrim's.It also didn't pause the game, it also only allowed for eight hotkeys.Not that I'm saying there's anything wrong with the Favorites menu, but to say it's just like Oblivion's hotkeys is just flat-out wrong.

That kinda brings up another concern I have, but it's focused on the fact that we just saw XB360 footage only. The menu kinda seemed rather intensive, but I'll see how that works out in game.

The favorites list is honestly one of the few things I was unimpressed by in the demos I've seen. It could just be because Todd seemed to have a million things in his faves, but it didn't look like an elegant way to quickly access items. In fact, I think they were forced to use a faves list because all the other controller buttons were occupied. This is going to be a nightmare on the PC.

I'm a big UI fan, so an optimized menu and organized information is really important to me. I think less people actively think about it, but it has a very noticeable impact on how smoothly a game "plays".

I'm hoping it will be similar to the past where you could use the function keys for your presets. If that's the case, it should be okay.

The PC will have ten hotkeys, the Xbox360 and PS3 only two. There's no real way around that. While we get a theoretically "Unlimited" amount of "Favorites" because of lolcontroller, the compromise for that was locking out more options for the sake of Navigation.

I don't mind it so-much, simply because the Dpad hotkeys always svcked, usually selecting something I had no intent of equipping at that time. MS's Dpad is a travesty though.

Just for the record too, Todd had Health Potions hotkeyed to at least one slot. Not sure what was in the other, I think the basic healing spell. It won't pause for the actual hotkeyed selection, but it's limited to your Left and Right hand (Or consumable). That will probably be the most annoying hurdle if you want to really switch loadouts on the fly. Limiting what you have to six (Three per hand) is a theoretical solution, but it's still just a panacea. Nothing permanent, just slightly less irritating.

It's a good fix for consols, and I believe computer players will still have their hotkeys - so I think it should all work fine.

Blame nintendo, they have a patent on the cross style dpad. Sony got away with a very similar design that's different enough to not have problems with the patent. Video game patents really don't help the industry, and it's a big pet peeve of mine.

The demo was done in xbox which lacks the keyboard number buttons.

I would be terribly surprised if hotkeys to switch between weapon/shield/magic sets are not available for PC.

he was doing that to show off the menu system lol. Switching setups in battle (on the PC) will be fine. Will probably still kinda svck on consoles tho

I already blame Nintendo for pretty much everything wrong with Gaming today. They should rename themselves "Stagnation Inc.", since all they do now is repackage a generation's childhood and shove it up their ass at 40-70$ USD, not including oddball slaps like the 3DS. Of course, by that logic it'd be our fault, since we keep buying that stuff, right?

Did you play Oblivion for 360? If you didnt, that would explain why you dont realize how better it is now.

And if you are on a PC...no dude, it wont pause, because the favorites in PC will probably be hotkeys...like in most games.

I'll be playing the game on a PS3 and I hope there will still be a hotkey system. 8 favorite items/favorite combinations that can be accessed in real-time are plenty, for me.

He paused it to show off all of the combinations. In battle I will only be pausing once or twice to switch from my healing spell to duel swords. Well besides a dragon fight.