I understand that you are referring to this specific thread.
Your feedback seems correct to me and well, what’s more, I would add the “select units of the same type”.
I invite you to develop it in the thread “What should Age of Empires IV improve?”.
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H for House would be a good start.
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and the worst thing is no one is calling out for that one
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AoE IV was not created for E-Sports. If so, the full remappable keyboard, ranked games (and their seasons), ranked mods, and more polished balance would have been available at launch.
When they started to focus on the competitive aspect it was, especially, after Genesis (it had a lot of expectations), because they needed to keep the flame alive based on tournaments (also thanks to EGCTV) while the game was being completed.
There is already a thread about improvements the game should have and we look forward to more content and QoL.
@AndyPXIII I don’t know about AoEO, but AoE3 has a direct build system for Qwerty since they don’t have more than 18 buildings per civ, AoE4 can’t do that (+20) (at best separate economic and military buildings).
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Well the solution here is very simple.
Let us have fully customizable hotkeys and let us CHOOSE the position of buildings in the UI.
This way the chosen hotkey would match the visual feedback in the UI.
So you can connect buildings to direct hotkeys, lets say q,w,e,r,t,a,s,d,f,g for example.
For buildings you have to spam like baracks, house, archery range.
Buildings you won’t build as often would be accessed on a 2nd “indirect” menu.
By pressing or holding an additional button, you can access the 2nd menu.
So basically, what now requires q and a button, would only require one button, what now requires w and a button would still go into that system.
That is only ONE possible solution.
Is this too much to ask for?
And it took me less than 5 seconds to come up with this solution when I read your post.
The DEVs are smart, I’m sure they have better ideas than me.
IF they just get the chance/allowance/budget to do ANYTHING.
It all comes down to money and the set budget that they are able to work with, seems nonexistent almost.
The only reason why there is not solution DONE is either no priority or tiny budget für the DEVs.
Both of it is no excuse, the game is still under the control of microsoft, one of the biggest companies on this planet, with the highest stockvalue and biggest cash-flow.
Let me repeat this, if there is no solution DONE, then the only reason is, it’s not WANTED to be coded.
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Why would you assume that this feature that you’re suggesting would be the top priority for the devs, vs. anything else they could be working on? Would it help if the devs gave us a roadmap, so you knew at least what they were working on instead?
I also don’t really care for “but MS is super rich” arguments, because MS aren’t going to devote more budget than is necessary to any of their projects. They’re a company; their goal is to turn a profit. I’m not praising this, it’s just the way it is. Thinking that just because MS own the devs / project / whatever, that therefore money is no excuse, is not the winning argument you (and historically, some others) have considered it to be.
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Sorry for short response, I deleted my whole text because this again triggered me pretty hard.
Advertising a game as 60€ triple AAA competitive in the legendary AOE series and releasing it in POOR state.
2 years almost have gone and it still is far from the standard it should have had AT RELEASE.
Most of my friends (all of them care about [ranked] multiplayer only) have tested the game in beta or at release and ditched it right away, only one plays it still with me.
We are also about to leave it, if the quality of it doesn’t improve DRASTICALLY very very soon.
Luckily I didn’t buy the game, someone gifted it to me on major discount.
TD;DR
Something has to happen about the building menues and hotkeys in general.
It is one of the TOP wishes of the multiplayer fans, which again are the customers that stay longterm and would pay again for future titles or dlcs if the product is up to the quality being expected.
Not, if the quality is poor, which is currently quite the case IMO in almost every regard.
Technically as well as aesthetically the game is lacking BIG TIME.
Instead of creating more content like map monsters and similar weird unneccesary time-waste, issues such as units gettign stuck on attacking buildings should be adressed and not IGNORED.
I literally posted it in the bug section and got a response that the system works as it’s intenteded.
Are you kidding me?
This game doesn’t seem to have much future, player numbers are speaking for themselves.
DRASTICALLY gone down since release.
That’s all I have to say about this, peace out.
It would help if one Dev or Community Personal is answering in their own OFFICIAL forum to users which care about their game (btw they are the potential future buyers of expansions etc.)
There is absolutly zero communication about their game which has/had undoubtly many construction sites.
Did anyone EVER requested voice chat? Is that really a priority to waste precious dev time?
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Thank you for putting this into nice words.
I wouldn’t be able to manage to do so anymore, just sheet frustrated with the situation.
Aoe is the childhood game of many fans and as you said, aoe4 drove MANY off the series.
They won’t invest money and time into it again after this hit in the face.
Which again slims the chances of another GOOD aoe after aoe1,2 and 3.
And you are right.
Since their budget is so limited, they should focus on what CUSTOMERS WISH FOR instead of some random things like map monsters and voice chat. Noone asked for that.
When you produce a car and in the first 500 metres the engine breaks down and the customer wants it repaired on warranty, do you offer him a seatbelt of a new colour and think things are alright without fixing the car?
I don’t think so.
Also “It’s your own fault your expect the car to function, you should lower your standards” wouldn’t lead to keeping this customer.
But it’s exactly what the dev team and mods are communicating.
We are told that we should shut up about zoom out because they know better.
I reported units prioritizing buildings instead of units and the mod repsonded the game works as intented and most likely there will be no further investigation.
My god, I just could not believe my eyes reading the response.
This is really 0/10.
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try to sell “we fixed hotleys afer 2 years”
and “Guys, we have VOICE CHAT, do you need it? No? But it’s NEW FEATURE, even aoe2 does not have it”
that’s why they doing new features - cause their PM out of touch and try to sell game with smth BUG… u meant BIG.
I wasn’t talking about this at all.
I agree the remappable hotkeys have omissions and stuff that needs looking at. But I don’t think “here’s my suggestion to completely rework hotkeys that the developers should do or the game will die” is reasonable, sorry.
You seem to think your ideas are THE ideas the game needs, nomatter what anyone else says, wants or believes. Fine. I don’t really see the point in discussing it then.
I mean, this is why I asked if it would help if the devs gave us a roadmap. I think it’d help if the devs gave us a roadmap.
I also think it would help if the devs communicated more in general (outside of the fantastic work Savage does with all the bug report threads).
As for what the community requested, this forum is not the community. The devs regularly send out surveys (at least one per Season) to get player feedback. I don’t get everything I want in the game. Does that mean that what I want is the thing that the devs should be prioritising to the exclusion of all else?
I get wanting something. The devs implemented rebindable hotkeys because people wanted it. There are still bugs. They still need to work on it. I just don’t get on with these giant CAPSLOCK rants about what the devs NEED to do or the game will DIE. I’ve been reading these kinds of comments since before the game came out.
Again, a roadmap would probably help. The devs can’t help folks who don’t want to be reasonable in the first place. But the devs can help people who are frustrated with a lack of communication.
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your words, not his. Or provide quote.
first thing, I had thought before I saw THE grid in the settings. I had thought. they go next level to allow people change positions of building in the UI. Just drag & drop buildings, if you want House not at [Q] ### ## ############
At that time, i was young and did not know which disappointment had been prepared, But i’m quick learner, i found out, that it was ability to change A to P or A to K? Why?? Just why?
the game happened to be not ready for E-sport, but it was created as E-sport one. But very poorly.
Genesis was planed beforehand.
They called top aoe2 players to play the game even before beta.
It was created for E-sport, but executed poorly.
Give me the statement from a single developer where they wanted to prioritize more E-Sport gameplay over casual content. Another thing is that they wanted to have the game well for the casual and competitive side.
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give me otherwise statement? Except general worlds as they want game to be successful.
I at least provided their doings and potential motivations of these events (invide pro players etc) , which better illustrate the approach to the game.
What’s unclear for you, if they did 4 campaigns on 8 civs? Non E-sport game, with less campaigns than civs?
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I think they were spend more on those campaigns than on anything else. They also invited content creators. It was logical that the game had to release a bit balanced (it could have come out better balanced), but the problem was that it released incomplete.
They made HUGE weapons for units to boost esports-capabilities by increasing readibility.
That was their literal explanation.
It just looked super retarded and didn’t improve readibility at all…
Want more proof?
After receiving tons of criticism for a year (?!?), they FINALLY admitted their mistake and reduced the weapon and arrow size.
Oh yeah, as I and others have said:
They got BIG streamers into the boat in the beta and around release to boost the popularity of the game and presented it as a BIG esports-title, which the pros go crazy for.
There were tournements being advertized right in the beginning when HRE got so much gold from Ragnitz that you could not possibly spend it in 3 matches together.
Does a bell ring for you my friend?
Forgotten all of that?
Need more reminders?
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Readability is for all players.
I’m not saying that they haven’t focused anything on E-Sports, but it wasn’t something exclusive, especially when the balance was bad, there were no rankeds, there was no good Hotkeys customization, a UI was and still is poor (especially the minimalist style), no map mods for tournaments…
If the game had still launched well in what I have mentioned, I would agree.
The issue is that it came out incomplete for the casual/competitive scene and with many bugs that took time to fix, there’s no more.
Feel free to find your own interpretation. My posts are nothing more than my opinion, as always.
Amusing that you demand quotes but can’t provide them yourself 
I know you’re frustrated (and you’re not the only one), but spouting toxicity on the forum and disrespect on the official forum is not the best behavior.
Criticize yes, disrespect, no.
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Well sorry for my radical choice of words.
I’m indeed super frustrated, because this game as HUGE potential and I see our publisher $€$soft kicking it with their feet and punching it in the stomach.
The Devs only follow orders I believe and the head of the snake is giving RETARDED orders.
Probably, if people stop taking M$crosoft behaviour and start verbalizing their frustration more, they’ll eventually learn from it.
Only thing that helps this game is super bad reputation, as counterintuitive as it sounds.
Some people (and M$crosoft is like that in their games) only treat their wounds, when their life is in danger and the infected wound is about to kill them.
M$crosoft have to be CALLED OUT for their way of treating this game.
Not the Devs, they are only doing their job.
But the team that does the DECISIONS.
Like making the game cartoonish and not adding personell to siege weapons.
“WE dId MArKEt REsaErCh, PeoOPle dONT WanT THis WE sO ssmARrtttt”
Just freaking CARE about the millions of tons of beta feedback god damn.
People WANTED siege troops for the siege weapons.
People did NOT want a cartoon mobile game.
This happens when people (in high positions) make decisions, not having an idea about the material and don’t listen to the people who DO have an idea, which are the ones that write the code and have made worked on rts games a lot and actually PLAY the games.
Same thing happened in my previous work place.
High positions don’t listen to the people who are actually the experts and then run into big failure over and over.
But they THINK they have an amazing knowledge because of some market research.
This makes me so freaking angry.
Just LISTEN to the fans and give the DEVS a good budget.
Game would have sold 10 times as good, due to amazing reputation and ratings.
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