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I think you glossed over the "spell" option a little too quickly. In Oblivion / diablo the spell switching hot keying, wile implemented awkwardly in both, is as big a part of combat as the player wants it to be. I think that that's the main goal if your really looking to optimize user experience: to have the depth and breath of options there to those who want them.

In addition, special abilities or "spells" are usually dolled out slowly over time, so as the player gets more accustomed to a game the more options they have.

Eh, I'm probably making probably obvious points. Some things to look at could be deeply nested menus of some strategy RPGs. It seems that keeping things in a logically organized/ assessable system helps the confusion a huge number of options brings.

I personally like having a large number of choices, and it seems that games are leaning that way too: the action bars of Wow and "depths of peril " for example. Even the 'space siege' demo showed that same sort of action bar for quick access to large number of options (well 10), but you get my point. But in all three of those examples the interfaces are customizable which allows the player to either focus on a hand full or the whole breadth of their character's ability's.
 

Maybe I am over-thinking these things. Comes with too little sleep, I guess.

Even though WoW has had some serious appeal to people who had never played an RPG before, I still consider it more of an "advanced" game. But you are right - as games progress, those "special abilities" become pretty key, primary abilities over time.
 

I actually TWICE yesterday started to post on the forums something related to the combat options I'm considering, and then decided not to bother people with my rambling... :)

The current plans look more like:

Attack
Cast
Tame
Spook
Flee

No use-item because under current plans, potions have been replaced by food, and trying to put a whole cake in your mouth in combat won't work very well. :)

As for keeping it limited, I find the menu-based systems in a lot of old-console-style RPGs to be very cumbersome. If on every turn I have to tab through five menus to get to the move I want to use and then tab around the battlefield to select my target... it gets old.

I'd at least like the option to repeat what I did last turn rather than have to cycle around through all the menus again (The Mario RPG on the DS does this, sort of. At least, certain menu settings remain where you left them, so you can more easily repeat an action.)
 

Removing the menus and going for little graphical icons linked to hotkeys and action bars make it easier to present a lot of options (especially on the PC where keyboards and mice make it easy to input them!), but they offer a different problem of being able to remember what all those icons MEAN.

Pickman was comparing City of Heroes, which practically has its own symbolic language so that you can understand roughly what a power in your action bar does even if you can't remember its name, to Age of Conan, where he complains that everything has some picture of fire and you can't remember which is which. :)
 

whiner said:
"I'd at least like the option to repeat what I did last turn rather than have to cycle around through all the menus again (The Mario RPG on the DS does this, sort of. At least, certain menu settings remain where you left them, so you can more easily repeat an action.)"

I plan to implement something like this into the project I'm working on, where if a character's last target is still alive and in range you'll be able to simply repeat what you did in the previous turn.

symbols vs text is another thing to think about when your doing a hot-bar sort of interface...thank god for mouse over text.

About tabbing through spell books. Thats one of the big advantages of the hot-bar system: you can have that huge spell book that has everything in it, but have instant access to your most commonly used skills.

Humm I was gonna go with cascading text only menus, but I seem to be pushing the hot-bar idea's strong points and don't really have anything for the menu system atm. Maybe some combination of the 2?

Or just scrap complexity all together and just have a massive HIT button with a big cartoon "pow" on it.
 

I think that standard weapons combat gets passed over too quickly, leaving all the choices to the smart ones. Realms of Arcania got me hooked to the idea of the combat gambling. For attack there were three options, Aggressive, Normal or Careful. Each one had its pros and cons (including hitting yourself), and it was up to the player which way he would roll the dice. It added a lot of intinsity to the fight.

Wizardry later refined this even more by making certain options available to certain weapons. I felt that this was a smart move and can be improved further.

Action RPGs have somewhat tinkered with this system, but it usually gets into an MP cost and a recharge. Why not have a swing effect that can hit multiple targets for less damage, lower accuracy, and drain more stamina? In this case you now have two or more toHit rolls and might waste a lot of stamina for nothing, that's the gamble.

So basically what I am saying is, add extra options to certain "good" weapons. It makes the weapons more desirable, and allows the player to mix it up and try new tactics.
 

Sorry, this post is all over the place, but I have a lot to say.

I don't think you can lump real-time and turn-based into the same discussion.

For turn-based, I tend to prefer the radial context menus that are appearing all over the place; the first level tends to be the basic set suggested here, with the ability to select one and have additional radial menus pop out from there. An example of this is Temple of Elemental Evil, where the inner ring was a set of 5 (or more) icons depending on what the character was able to do, with each of those leading to an additional set of textual options.

I tend to prefer text to icons because try as we might, generally icons aren't as iconic as they should be.

For real-time games, I prefer as few options as possible (maybe 3) with the ability to rapidly change what my three options do. Meaning, one set might be attack/block/fire spell, but a scroll of the mouse wheel changes it to big attack/block/ice spell. Unless I'm playing a first person shooter, I don't like to use the keyboard -- I'm lazy, don't make me.

Actually, I've been playing EVE Online lately, and they use context menus all over the place; I never have to use the mouse and I love it. Right-click in empty space and there's a handy menu, right-click on your ship and there's a different handy menu, right-click a baddie and there's another different handy menu.

So, in short: I'm in favor of lots of options with minimal number of inputs. Let me do it all with two mouse buttons and the scroll wheel.

Maybe this is a separate subject, but my philosophy is this: give a higher-level character access to more options with the tools they have, not access to different tools. Meaning (in a level-based system) let my first level character have a short sword and be able to stab with it -- but let my twentieth level character have the same short sword and be able to stab or block or impale or ... And I guess this translates to limiting the number of options in early game while increasing the number of options in late game.
 

To use Alternate Reality as an example again...

A.R. split the encounter menu up based on whether you were actually engaged in combat or not.

If engaged, there were options like Lunge, Attack, Parry, Block, Drink Potion, Give Up... and of course, Disengage.

If not engaged, there were options like Engage, Trick, Charm, Give, and Leave.

Typically the more bold and/or evil encounters would immediate engage in combat, while the more friendly encounters would remain disengaged unless the player did something to piss them off.

So -- one way to simplify is to base the available options simply on the current context of the encounter, i.e. the current threat level, the demeanor/alignment of the NPC(s), etc.
 

As long as gamers have to coordinate options with icons or keys, the number of options will have to be limited. But as motion-controlled and thought-controlled gaming becomes more sophisticated and prevalent, the number of options can expand.

It's the coordination of thought with action that necessitates strategic limitations.
 

Personally, I tend to prefer if I have more choices rather than less. I especially dislike the way that physical combat is almost always reduced to a choice of targets, even as spellcasting gets menus full of options. I have a bit of a soft spot for anyone who gives the fighters as many "special skills" as mages from the get-go.

One other thing I should note is that I, personally, am the type of guy who will almost never take the "drink a potion" option, no matter what, to the degree that I don't even consider it. It's a combination of making things too easy and simultaneously risking backing myself into a corner later (or at least not being able to afford the same cool items).