Thats pretty ridiculous of you to unwilling to learn. No offense. So what if you start liking new RTS in future that is not AOE series? Are you going to forums there too “this doesn’t have AOE2 hotkeys, game sucks change it to AOE2 pls” xD
I had all important hotkeys memorized after 4-5 Hard AI games that I played when I first got AOE4. You really tell me that learning to use qwer+asdf+zxcv takes too long to learn? Those are all basic hotkeys and will carry you for very far. Top of that those hotkeys are essentially used in so many different games so if you have played games with similar layout then its even more easier.
I played the game in aoe4worlds which is supposed to help with muscle memory etc. When ever I saw building and had to press hotkey, my mind went blank and I started thinking “what is the hotkey for this”. Got everything so deep in muscle memory that if I have to think about them I just make mistakes.
I think you are extremely unusual in being able to not only memorise but become instinctive at using so many hotkeys so fast. I even saw pro players accidentally build the wrong one of mining camp / lumber camp because they’re reversed compared to 2, and that’s a tiny change compared to the difference in hotkeys for building monastery, university etc.
It just depends on the person. My brain works off of positionionality realy well, and I played a ton of League before AoE so my natural hand position was QWERT. This made the default build keys fairly intuitive for me. Old Startcraft hotkeys had my brain spinning trying to figure out which was mutalisk and which was overlord
Making a mistake is something that every human being does. No one is subject to perfect play.
For example SC2 GSL which is korean startcraft pro league and players have played the game years and tens of thousands of games and yet they still might make mistake with upgrades or buildings. I do mistakes too. Sometimes I accidentally put mining camp next to woodline or viceversa. Its just when doing everything as fast as possible it tend to happen.
I don’t think im special in anyway. Its just the layout is very similar to other games and grasping it was easy. Even if it was completely different from anything I had previously played I would still learn it. Because if I learn something new I might realize this suits me better than the old one.
But like I said. I think every game should’ve completely remappable keys as standard without players requesting it, but at the same time even if they’re not for reasons I don’t think its good enough reason to quit the game and if it is then its most likely that the player would’ve quit anyway because something else.
I play lot of different games where I find certain minor things that I don’t like, but I never feel its good enough reason to hate the game or quit. I usually quit game when I get bored with the game or if developers are clearly not doing good job making the game more fun and entertaining for me.
And sadly AOE4 has becoming more and more boring for me and most likely next patch it reaches the all time high with boredom. Every civ is so predictable, even before match starts and games follow same pattern. Most fun for months I had when in couple of days I had like tons of TR and weird strats thrown at me but then it returned normal standard play.
I still don’t think most people can rapidly memorise and become instinctive at tens of random combinations of keys. I’m talking about, for example, some of the basic buildings:
2:
QS Blacksmith
QD Market
QF Monastery
QG University
4:
WQ Blacksmith
WW Market
EQ Monastery
RQ University
When I’ve played with a friend, he struggles to even remember QQ for house and QA for farm, never mind seamlessly switching back and forth between the above and many more like them. And I’m talking about not just consciously memorising them but it becoming completely subconscious. It still seems very challenging to me to be able to switch back and forth between the two games and completely subconsciously use the right hotkeys for each one, and I don’t think any significant % of the population will be able to do that without a huge amount of practice.
Nah, I play a few RTS games and they have all different hotkeys. Sometimes in the first game switching over muscle memory can cause mistakes, but then I’m switched over.
Grid layouts help a lot because there is a visual image to associate with the hotkeys in my brain.
First thing that came to me was each key would represent age.
Q = dark age
W = feudal age
E = castle age
R = imperial age
Now from it was just about pressing right key to chose right building.
Everything depends on person. Reason why its important to get used to new stuff or learn new stuff which helps in future when getting used to new things or simply learning new things. For example place where I work we have to time to time paint stuff, but none of us is professional by any means and we’re just expected to do good enough job that there is some paint on objects that we’re painting, but time to time we get new guy who has no idea how to paint or barely can hold painbrush and ends up painting himself more than the object.
On UI i give aoe4 a 7/10, with issues being icons across the board and impractical 4 panel villager menu, also combined villager counter like DEs would be nice to see at some point (did some UI modding for aoe2 and 3 DEs so i’m not completely clueless on this), all else tho, other than maybe art of it, actually rock solid, especially age indicator, with dedicated age up ready look and impossible to mix up sound effect.
This is the UI with sacred site plastered in middle of your screen
This is the UI with hot keys that switch with age
This is the UI where you can’t check your units while they are in a building.
This is a UI that till 2 months ago didn’t have the option to show que units or techs
This is the 7/10 UI that every caster complains about once in each casted game.
Please there is a limit to sucking up.
Yes people who did UI for AOE 4 did not do a good job or a complete job. Moderate this…
7/10 for current state, not launch, that one was closer to 5, 4 if including the dynasty button
now per point
1.that one is not great true, but its not a massive game breaker
2.already mentioned that one as a problem
3.fair point, also taken into account
4.adressed
5.primary reason for above 7 to not be considered
i wouldn’t say devs did super poorly, but rather its still not in complete state, like the rest of the game
spectator UI issues meanwhile are a more specialized issue imo, relic should probably just hire capture age people for that one, or aizamk from aoe3, or yk, just make N4C UI official
ofc i should bring up that i give aoe3 DE UI a 9.2/10 and aoe2 DE UI a 9.5/10
so that 7 isn’t as glowing of a review if put in comparison
in aoe2, i’d like to see minimap resize like aoe3 DE, then its a 10, in aoe3 meanwhile the only thing i see as missing is aoe2 style selection panel with individual portraits with healthbars
There are a lot more I just didn’t want to waste time but here it is,
UI that changes colors for your civ vs your scout. (don’t believe me watch your replays)
UI that gives you 4 options for Army composition in 2022, oh wait we got patrol or did we.
UI that does not allow you to garrison a building if your towers are close together because the hit boxes are where?
This is the UI where the Win condition takes up quarter of your screen for no reason at all the entire game. Like people will just forget what the game is about half hour into a game?
This is the UI that has auto sounds that can’t be turned off or down. (want to talk with Drongo about this?)
This is the UI that doesn’t even allow you to click on a sheep if there are villagers around.
This is the UI where the units don’t even show you where they are tasked to go in 2022! Shift que… why not? where is a specific unit going when they are moving? who knows because it’s too hard apparently to have waypoints. I bet you the game has waypoints but guess what the UI is so ■■■■ they don’t show them.
This is the UI where you can’t pick colors, yet, a year on maybe on the 12th, or maybe that will completely break the game. Have you seen the disco lights in casted games? Yeah great finished product.
