Meter-based and cooldown-based ability UI design are hard to differentiate

[lyric bay]

Hi, I will perfectly admit that I picked up the game... like 30 minutes ago but I've quite liked what I've seen so I wanted to mention this since it's the biggest "snag" I've hit so far.

To clarify how I'm using the terms in the title, "meter-based" refers to an ability like Glider's Wingsuit where you have a meter that you can spend mostly freely whether it's full or nearly empty. "Cooldown-based" refers to abilities like Glider's Rocket Salvo that have one or more discrete charges that can be spent before having to wait on a cooldown before using them again.

As it is right now, the Wingsuit and Rocket Salvo share the the same UI language despite the meaning being slightly different and it's caused a few hiccups so far playing Glider. What I mean in specific is that when quickly glancing at the abilities or looking at them in my periphery, the bright green color and partially filled gauge for the Rocket Salvo means it's completely unable to be used, whereas the Wingsuit it is able to be used (picture attached for demonstration), and may be even mostly full. Because the bright green color is what stands out the most and it's hard to read exactly how full the gauges are for the abilities, it's what I latch onto the most to tell me whether an ability is ready to use or not. This is a problem because I find myself either not using the Wingsuit when I have it available, or trying to use the Rocket Salvo but failing because it's still on cooldown. I think having slightly different UI language for these abilities would be helpful in distinguishing this. A very related aspect of this is that Glider's Wingsuit is unable to be used when below a certain threshold of meter, but there is no indication how much this is or when exactly it's able to be used.
(cont. in message under post)

My proposed solutions are:

• Keep the current design but change the colors slightly to imply more clearly when an ability is ready to be used. For example, the letting the Wingsuit stay its lilac color up until it is below that threshold mentioned before where you're unable to start wingsuiting, at which point it turns the bright green to indicate it's unable to be used.
• Adding a new UI element specifically for the Wingsuit (and abilities like it, I'm unsure if any exist in the game right now due to my low playtime) that more clearly delineates when it's able to be used. For example, many games use a "fuel" meter off to the side of the crosshair for jetpack-like abilities.

The former solution is simpler, while the latter solution provides better readability for just how much fuel you have in the middle of combat by centering the display.

Also, while I don't really know enough about the game to understand this, it is somewhat confusing that there's a weird middle ground in Wingsuit use where lightly tapping it drains a small amount (at the normal rate), holding it down drains it at the normal rate, holding it for just a moment drains a big extra chunk of the meter. This is very possibly a mechanic I've missed, but it's quite unintuitive to understand just starting out

Also I do recognize that this is something that will become far easier to manage the more I play as "exactly how much Wingsuit use do I have" and "when are my abilities ready to be used" become much closer to muscle memory than something I have to look at the HUD for, but I wanted to give the feedback now while it was still relevant to me personally ^-^