Here are some Quality of Life features that can be added by the devs in-game pertaining to User Interface.
1. May the AoE 2 DE devs @GMEvangelos can gives us the option to view Real Time Clock maybe on top center alongside the game time and game difficulty to monitor our gameplay instead of alt-tab to desktop mode or viewing our phones.
The image below shows real life clock (indicated with red box) in SC2
My suggestion is to have something similar to above picture for AoE 2 DE. Here’s how it should look like, kindly see the red box (prototype/position can be adjusted) in the image below.
Perhaps even partner the clock with a notification to warn us that we have been playing for long hours. There’ll be an ! mark if you are playing for more than an hour. (! mark to indicate the player take a 15 min break notification for each hour game time spent, when the player hovers over the exclamation mark).
2. This one might be more gimmicky but an APM (Action per Minute) or EPM (Effective actions per Minute) counter would be great to have in the UI as well.
TL:DR: EPM doesn’t count “redundant actions” like how fast you drag click. Might be useful for more advance statistics.
3.Hotkey Visuals for newer players so they can master their hotkeys. Yes there are mods for them but they usually don’t work and wouldn’t it better if we get an official one.
Not sure why we need a ingame clock. I dont think that would be very useful to me… Just take a small break between games, if you think that you otherwise play too much without any breaks.
APM or EAPM counter could be fun, but also seems to be some nice to have. I think this is more something for pros and some of them already use sometimes an seperate tool for this. Not really sure if we really really need such tool as part of the game.
Yes to you, it won’t prove useful as you stated but we is not you. One of the purpose of this QoL feature is to actually “kindly notify or soft poke” the player via hovering the ! mark when the player is playing the game for hours. Useful to parents who want to set/monitor ample game time for the younger audience or casual players who have real life to attend to.
Also having an in-game clock is more of QoL as the title of the thread intended so that players don’t have to alt tab to their desktop just to see the time or search for phone, etc which all hinders focus while in-game. Yes there are many games with real time clock inside and I hope AoE 2 DE will integrate one too.
P.S. There should also be an option to disable the clock for players like you who don’t require it.
AFAIK that clock in SC2 is not a real-time clock, but rather a clock indicating how long the game has been. I could be wrong.
This one would be great for Chinese parents (puns intended).
In reality though, it would be annoying for people who are in action near that 1 hour mark and sees that. If there is no pop up, it should be fine but I don’t really think this one is that necessary.
Probably near the bottom of priority chain.
There are third party apps such as your gpu driver that can tell you that, alt tab takes 1-2 seconds to verify the game session and the clock.
You sound to be completely overwhelmed by the game, just chill, this game is not only pressing buttons, you have free time during the creation time and uping to the next age.
As for the HK, it could help some players, but i would have it off as most players, newbies can see streams and get confused by others HK’s so i don’t know if this would help or would confuse players.
If you want this, then use another tool. Than you can use this while doing anything on the pc. You cant expect to have such things build in in every game.
I feel like this is a waste of develop resources. Even if it is an option that van be turned off. There are more important things to care about.
3.Hotkey Visuals for newer players so they can master their hotkeys. Yes there are mods for them but they usually don’t work and wouldn’t it better if we get an official one.
this needs to be in. a lot of newbies are giving up on the game when they are not able to memorize all hotkeys. for the spread of AOE2 and sustaining itself for many years, this needs to be done.
Only if it takes into account custom keys. And only with full character support. (f.e.; using additional mouse keys or characters on a keyboard that isn’t the default gives you a “blank” in the settings menu. Not much to go on if that’s on the UI.) And how do you suggest they add ctrl / alt / shift / … modifiers? This is going to be sooo messy.
Yes, thank you for both of your suggestions. Hopefully the devs get more insights from this thread about what QoL features the community needs for future updates.
