Just found this screenshot of the old hotbar and it’s beautiful, kind of like an intricate elvish vibe. Would much prefer it to the current one! I’m just talking about the little details around the icons, not the layout or practicality, as it’s super outdated ofcourse.
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Skinnable/Configurable UI would be really cool! Choices!
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Ohhhh I have some Dev-lore to share on this one!
So, we did a LOT of exploration on the HUD early on. Part of that exploration was figuring out weather or not we wanted to show left-click and right-click icons per item. Turns out, the left click icons really didn’t matter that much and were getting in the way of clarity. People didn’t understand how the icons mapped to the skills because the in-world and out of world icons were different (pickups were icons at the time!).
We also noticed that the consumables and anchor abilities were a little too far from the left and right of where you were looking for your cooldowns and we wanted to move those items in closer to your ability icons. So we ended up removing the left click icon and generally just squishing it all a little closer together so that at a glance you could see everything happening. Most people keep their eye on the reticle rather than the hot bar, so this quick glance read was important to us.
Moving the weapons to be side by side rather than on either side of your Eternal Ability really helped with understanding weapon swapping and generally just seeing what you have equipped. Mentally it made more sense for us to have crown and ammy on the left and weapons on the right. The Crown and Amulet both always have cooldowns as well, so now the bar was full of just the important information.
So stylistically, this put is in to a functionality over form state. The current HUD was designed to be quickly readable and easy to use. We do, however, want to bring some style back. As the HUD settles and we get closer to launch, we’ll be digging in to adding more flair in to the UI where we can.
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Oh my god this is tea, let me get a cuppa to read this 
Thats so awesome! Yeah functionally I have no complaints. I used to missread if I was empowered, but that was visually updated and looks/feels improved. But coming across that old pic I thought it was so intricate and would love to see more. Intricate designs age the UI and adds to the “eternal” aesthetic imo.
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