Now that the game has been out for years and we’re on top of everything, may I request that for Single Player games we can finally customize our names to be whatever we want, instead of it using our Steam login name? For privacy, not everyone wants to use their Steam name. And not everyone can or wants to make multiple Steam user names JUST TO STREAM AOE2DE.
Is it really the end of the world if we were allowed to make a custom display name? Maybe one that matches a Twitch name or something? There are a million reasons why someone could want to edit the display name so they can stream AoE.
Single-player, unranked, vs. AI, non-competitive, casual gamers have no reason to be a part of the “let’s only allow the Steam name because we love the ‘one username’ ecosystem so very very much.”
I know you love the ecosystem to track users all across all platforms. Or love the security blanket that must come with using Steam names. But that doesn’t mean everyone watching an AoE player stream on Twitch needs to see someone’s Steam name. Why should they know the Steam name to go look at all the games we own, or see when we are online/offline, or send a friend request, or stalk, etc.
Microsoft can still have the Steam name be the parent profile name on the back-end for security reasons on the Microsoft servers, and for Ranked (for whatever reason). But there is no reason why a customized username couldn’t be a subset of that primary, unique, primary key Steam name, to be used for single player games so players can have some anonymity if they want while streaming.
No doubt. Especially fun when playing with friends vs. AI to come up with new names on occasion. I hate being locked into one single name for almost 7 years now.
It’s absolutely boring seeing your lame Steam name every time in AoE2:DE, especially when it has no parity whatsoever with medieval times, so it is not at all immersive. I used to love in HD making custom names that at least sounded like they were tied to the medieval era, and seeing friend names in MP vs. AI that were doing similar.
Imagine you’re playing vs. AI and their names are like, “CallOfDutyWarrior423” and “_YoSupDude_”. Lol. That does not happen because the developers realized doing so doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t fit the time/era. It is not immersive. So instead all the AI usernames are realistic and fitting of the game era and civs we’re playing.
If it doesn’t make sense to name the AI players that, why are humans forced to have anachronistic names in the game?
Database tables have primary keys. Just make the primary key for our user record on the back-end be our Steam name, but let a customized name be a record/row in that table under the primary key for display purposes to the public
This way Microsoft still has control over the account. They can see on the back-end that “JoeBlow” is actually tied to “SteamUserNameXYZ” for account security and policy compliance reasons, and everyone is happy.
In hindsight I find it quite weird how well-received DE was considering how many features of earlier versions of the game are missing. (Off the top of my head, there’s also full map screenshots, toggles for legacy data sets, and different UI art for each civilisation.) I guess most people just didn’t care much about those features.
Don’t get me started on full map screenshot thing I even made a bug report once, trying to suggest its lack of existence in DE was a bug, but they moved my bug report over to general discussion thread
Toggles for legacy data sets. That sounds vaguely familiar! I forgot about that! Different UI art doesn’t exist for each civ now? I mainly play just one civ so didn’t notice that
No, I mean like AoE2:HD, AoE2:FE, and probably AoE2:CE even. Maybe even AoK? What about AoE1? I’m not sure. If original AoM and AoE3 did it before AoE2, then my hat goes off to them.
Can’t you change your steam display name? You go to “edit profile.” My mates and I did this when we had a blind 2v2 tournament using LOTR names. We also changed our in-game icons so it wasn’t clear based on who previously always used those icons. Who knew that Frodo and Pippin were the best AoE2 players together?
Thanks, but see last two sentences in 1st paragraph of OP (Edit - I forgot to say what paragraph before)
Not only should I not have to do that for one single game, but Steam keeps track of your past user names and other people can see your username history. I shouldn’t have to purge that history just to because AoE2 insists upon displaying the Steam name.
Click your name in Steam and view it’s history, for example. It will probably show you your Frodo or Pippin escapades, and other names you have used
I even made a bug report once, trying to suggest its lack of existence in DE was a bug, but they moved my bug report over to general discussion thread 
