Right now you can hotkey just 2 items on consoles: one thing to left d-pad, one thing to the right d-pad. It's a bit of a drag always having to pause the action with this limitation in place. Wouldn't it be possible, and fairly easy, to change it so you can hotkey a series of items to the left and right d-pad buttons (items hotkeyed to the left d-pad will go in the left hand and likewise for the right hand/d-pad) and just cycle through them? For instance, you bring up your favorites menu and you select and press left d-pad on the following items: Shield, Torch, Flame Spell. These get assigned the tags L1, L2, and L3. So now in combat I press the left d-pad and I equip a shield, I press it again and I equip a Toch, press it yet again and I got my Flame spell in my left hand. Then, I could have a series weapons, staffs, or spells hotkeyed to the right d-pad for my right hand. Now I can adapt to multiple combat situations on the fly without having to pause the game. Ideally you wouldn't have to wait for each item to load into your hand before selecting the next in the series. So you could quickly press left d-pad twice and go from Shield to Flame Spell instantly, for example

Also, what's down d-pad being used for? I believe nothing at all. That's where your consumables could go. Hotkey your potions, poisons, potato soup, and your 99 cabbages there and now we're spending even less time out of the action.