Crush wrote:It would be a nice nostalgia nod but I think there are more comfortable interface solutions you can have when you have a mouse and a keyboard.
* For the mouse:
You right click on a player/NPC/Monster and you get a ring menu with icons instead of the current drop down menu. The mouse would be in the center of the menu so that you can reach one of the icons and click it even easier than with the current menus, and our visual memory understands colorful image icons better than text.
If you right click over yourself another ring menu is displayed showing options like equipment, inventory, creating/leaving a party, status, etc
* For the keyboard:
You target the player/NPC/Monster and then press a key to display the ring. Below the icons there's text describing the action and one of the letters is underlined (like in GTK or QT menus) then you can press the underlined letter in the keyboard and the action is performed (you only needed 3 keypresses in total! faster than typing "/invite Crush", and for talking to an NPC it's only 1 keypress more, with the advantage of using a menu that can hold more options without needing to remember the key for every option, since you can always look at the ring). When you have nothing targeted then the stautus ring will be over yourself.
Oh! There could be 2 keys: one for poping up the ring menu and another one for performing the default action without the need of the menu (attack for monsters, talk for NPC...) the same way as left click does a default action and right click pops up the ring menu. This way you can still talk to NPCs or attack Monsters in 2 keystrokes (target and action).
I think it's not very uncomfortable
(specially for keyboard it's better than current one, I think)
Heh... but anyway the current magic system, the flexibility of commands, etc are well done as they are done now (for keyboard you can see this for another idea that's probably easier to implement:
http://forums.themanaworld.org/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=7401).
After all, you can't chat nor type magic words with a gamepad, and I think that chatting is an important part of the game.