Every couple months I try giving this game another chance and every time I’m turned away almost immediately by the lack of hotkey customization.
In the beginning of course there was forced grid hotkeys. Well they said fixing that was “a priority”, so I expected a fix fast. In the end it took like a year from when beta testers told how bad forced grid hotkeys were to the introduction of remappable hotkeys.
Still, every time I try the game I’m turned away after a couple minutes. Last time, first game I try the Rus. Turns out you can’t remap building scout from hunting cabin hotkey. Okay, whatever, change civs. Turns out you can’t even remap “cancel construction” hotkey…
Now I try the game again. Pick English. Again, after 5 minutes: Can’t remap train longbowmen from council hall. Like seriously, not even getting at more subtle hotkey problems how hard can it be to add these missing options. Quick googling shows there’s still a TON of similar problems:
Also a really bad thing is that for some reason I have to use FOUR different hotkeys to open the buildmenu(s)?? No reason for that whatsoever, it’s an ugly remnant of the grid system. Likewise, why do I have to use a “secondary mode” or whatever for mongol double production? Just give me an option to set its hotkey.
Sorry for the rant. Just wanted to get this message out: There’s people like me who’d like to try the game. But if a year after release I can’t even properly set my own hotkeys, it’s back to aoe2 for the moment.