I only used the four absolute directions in Oblivion, but I usually had a sneak weapon, a ranged weapon, main combat weapon and healing potion.

I liked my friends idea of how he wish the dpad would have worked with the current left/right buttons on the dpad.

Basically he said whatever you equip in your left hand and tag on the left dpad button would swap out when you pressed it and the same for the right hand and right dpad button. For example say you have a dagger in your right hand and flames tagged on the right dpad button, when you press the right dpad button it would equip flames to the right hand, then press it again and it equips the dagger back into the right hand.

I put weapons and shield onto the 1-4 hotkeys, powers on 5-6 (got a couple of modded in ones), health restore on 7, shout on 8.

I use a nostromo pad, with a d-pad, so it's no real difference to a console controller in that respect, although with mods and the inbuilt nostromo profiling that d-pad arrangement is now out to 40 different hotkeyed funtions, more or less. But in combat I only use the 8 preset hotkeys, all the rest of the profiles are simply utility type things, such as hotkeyed clothing setups (warrior, smith, alchemist, etc), horse utilities (inventory, mounted talking, looting, etc) and a couple of others.

In all honesty, it's not that convenient for a lot of stuff...there's a certain amount of fiddling around, and to access each profile requires a press for each one.

As both a console controller user for some games, and a Kb&M user for others, and a nostromo user for some, I obviously tend to choose my method of control according to the game, and that is largely driven by the UI of the various games.

To be honest the favorite function becomes cumbersome. I would rather have the key pad so it doesn't always pause and kinda break the point of a hotkey.

I do archery without the crosshair and in 3rd person with a controller. Aiming's never been a problem with it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCn6tCiVCg8&feature=plcp That video also shows how little you have to go into the favourites menu on that build. This on the other hand is my necromancer going thru a dwemer ruin and doing an assassination http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivOkvvKmQ5U Too much menu diving can ruin a gameplay video

Sod it! I'm going to get kinect tomorrow..."Equip ward left"

A bit OT but is that Nightingale armor without the mask you're using in your first video? It's been a while since I've done the TG quest line.

i prefer the hotkeys to the favorites menu.

Yes it is.

I have also got kinect, set it up and have been playing around with it in Windstad Manor with my Breton necromancer. It's pretty awesome for mages and solves all the problems of combat fluidity. I've even tricked it into equipping Apprentice level elementa destruction spells by assigning them to the 2-handed weapon slots.

I would love to have a Kinect so I could play mage characters on the Xbox without all the interruption in gameplay. It is seriously annoying to scroll through the favorites list, especially when the spells you want to use are at opposite ends of the list.

I played my priestess character extensively on Xbox, and eventually got in the habit of changing the 2 hotkeys frequently, depending on what I was doing. In a draugr ruin, I'd hotkey Dawnbreaker and a healing spell, but when travelling the roads I'd switch to my trusty mace and Calm. But usually, switching spells is way more trouble than its worth.

I always set up my PC hotkeys the same way: 1-4 are offensive (weapons or spells depending on the character class), 5 is healing (potion or spell), 6-8 are shouts, powers, or more "strategic" and occasional things like runes or poisons.