Age of Empires IV has a Hotkey Problem.

Unfortunately, most players were puzzled by the Hotkey approach that Age of Empires IV took in the Open Beta or Technical Stress Test. Here's a breakdown of why the new system is problematic, and what should be done before the launch.

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#AgeofEmpires4 #Hotkeys #Keybind

0:00 - 0:19 - Intro
0:20 - 1:57 - Part I: The New Grid System Explained
1:58 - 9:14 - Part II: Why the Grid System is Dysfunctional
9:15 - 10:52 - Part III: Why the Devs Implemented the Grid
10:53 - 13:20 - Part IV: Proposed Solution
13:21 - 14:36 - Conclusion

[AgeofNoob]

EDIT: After months of patches, the Hotkey system is significantly better than what's covered on this video, as many of the concerns have finally been addressed. The devs also mentioned that they will introduce a "Legacy" system as well in the future, so, with time, AoE4 will resolve all hotkey problems.

There are more positive things in AoE4 than negative ones, and positive coverage is in the works as well! In the meantime, what do you folks think about the Hotkeys? Do you think that players will be dissuaded to play until this is fixed, or is it not such a big deal?

[Static-EN-]

I was first introduced to the Grid hotkeys in Starcraft 2 and I have always used it since then, until Age of Empires 2 DE where I did have to change things like selecting all or cycling through idle villagers and selecting all of one type of military building. I won't be affected too much if they don't add your suggestions on release but I do fear for all the hundreds of thousands of people who will be very disappointed

[jjforcebreaker]

The most soul-crushing thing from the get-go was not being able to bind (for me- 'stop' and 'attack move') actions to MouseButton 4 and 5. And that's a much easier thing to implement than redesigning and improving the entire hotkey system.

[yc]

Isgreen said in a podcast early on that having completely customizable hotkeys was very important to them, but that he wasn't sure it would be complete by launch.

[pbsoccer]

This channel has become the Age of AOE4 criticism 11

[octapusxft]

The modern game devs fashion themselves too much of great artists to listen to feedback from us the peasant players...
I see it so often in recent entries in established game brands

[jonasklose]

Thank you for mentioning it. When I played the Age of Empires IV, I was also confused by the key bindings. I searched the menu and was very confused that I could not bind specific actions to specific keys. I shrugged it off and mostly used the mouse to play. But I was certain that this would simply be a pre-release issue, a missing feature that would be completed until release. So thank you for shedding some light on this issue. Please continue with these important videos! :)

[okkytv]

Imo the building grid isn't that bad. The real problem is that it's linked to unit commands such as attack move, repair, garrison etc.

Also the missing patrol, auto repair and camera location hotkeys (can't remember the proper term, you know, ctrl-F1 to save a location then F1 for camera to jump there)

Also hardbinds for hotkeys should be illegal 😅 if you don't have a left arm for example you might wanna bind most stuff on the right side of the keyboard.

[annaairahala]

This was one of the first things I noticed during the beta. Personally, it's almost perfect as I've always preferred the visual grid way of aligning hotkeys, but I know most people are not like me in that area. But even then, the splitting by age makes some things strange such as the university, which you have to first press a dedicated age 4 button for and then the university hotkey? Despite it being the only thing in age 4 and looking kinda strange as its own box in the UI.

I wish more game developers realize that more options are _always_ better
I've heard some argue that it makes things more complicated, but it's not complicated if you split it up so the casual player doesn't have to view it such as adding an "advanced options" choice that it seems any competent business now employs.

[julesjacobs]

The military/economic division instead of ages division is a good point. For switching between them I would steal the system from supreme commander, and switch between military and economic buildings by pressing the key twice. So pressing A once may build a house, and pressing it again toggles to barracks, and pressing it again switches back to the house.
So in practice, for economic you would tap the key once, and for military you would double tap the key.
Another option, since there would be only two categories, is A versus shift-A.

[FacundoTupac]

I agree 1000% with everything exposed here. I was talking about this yesterday in a AoE Facebook group and we all agreed that it's ridiculous that there's no advanced choice. I mean, why even have the key to cycle between working villagers which is so situational and don't think will even be that used, and not have cycling for military buildings nor select all of a kind? It's ridiculous that AoE2:DE is still ahead about these things. Will we have to wait for AoE4:DE for it to actually be complete?

[Zmr]

I played RTS my whole life (i consider myself a casual tho), and i didnt have problems adjusting to hotkeys. I will, most likely keep playing with this control scheme. Starcraft has a simmilar thing with buildings.
Now, i get why people have a problem with it, and i support having more options. Everyone has their own way of playing, and this seems like they didnt want to bother coding all of that in.
The missing stances puzzled me tho, i was looking at it for a minute and talking to my friend, asking him if he also doesnt have unit stances.
To me, again, it seems they just didnt want to bother with it, or they postponed doing it because they had bigger problems.
We'll see.
Great video, keep em coming! :)

[leonardosternberg]

Heya, I really like you video cause you go in depth and speak your mind about the problems you think are important. Not only that but you also propose a solution and that's constructive criticism! Keep up the good work! One suggestion of a video topic I would love to watch (if you feel confortable in making) is talking about the things aoe4 made right, even compared to other RTS/Strategy games (other aoe's, StarCraft, even TotalWar and Mount and Blade). I think knowing the bad things are as important as knowing the good things. Cheers mate!

[aragornii]

The developers never fixed soundbug on dawn of war 2. That’s what worried me

[pawntorn]

While I was playing I didn't even understand what those grid key boxes meant, so I didn't touch them. There were just empty boxes on the settings with no explanation what to do with them, so I didn't do anything. So I'm not so sure new players think this is somehow easier to understand compared to other games.

Hotkeys were tough to use for me. I played Beta for 7 hours total and only hotkey I managed to use for buildings was to build a house. 😩 I hope we get the possibility to have AOE2 hotkeys back.

[ateium]

I like the default AoE3 approach of having no build icon categoriesation whatsoever .

[ThePahvinkeitin]

I think people are being slightly thoughtless when they say that it's not a big deal. Sure, you can absolutely learn the new bindings. Sure, I think this might be better for some players, because they prefer this either way. But that doesn't mean that there is no problem.

Let's make an analogy of an FPS game that gave you the option to select between WASD and ESDF, with ESDF being the default. That's pretty cool, right?
But then comes the part where selecting the WASD option also does all sort of unnecessary things like mirrors your mouse buttons and moves your crouch key to R and reload key to V.
You might have an easy time adjusting to the ESDF setting, but the existence of the WASD option rightly makes you wonder why is it necessary to shuffle the keys all over the place. You'd be much happier if you could just set the keys individually.

That's the crux of the issue here.
The way that this is not analogous is that there's no reason to make such bindings in the FPS, but in both in the AoE IV beta and in the FPS analogy the player has a similar issue.

[grafsamuel]

I am very happy that you raised your voice on this because it is annoying me big time. But I am missing one point. For me the subcategories in general are a problem. In AoE II i click a villager and press one key and build a building. In AoE IV in the worst case i click a villager and the wrong subcategorie is selected, so I have to press ESC and then a hotkey for the correct subcategory and then a hotkey for the building. So in the worst case its three key actions vs one. Why is it not possible to build a building with a single key press? What do you think?

[oxenford]

my top issue with the game, beyond this, is that when you set a unit to a command group they remain as part of their previous command group. i can definitely see uses for this change, but coming from previous AoE games it's a nightmare. i end up with all my units in multiple command groups and the only way to ensure they're only set to 1 group is to clear the command groups entirely and start over. that one thing alone makes the game a hard pass for me (unless they give the *option* to use the old command group system).

[SSJIgor]

Diablo III had the exact same issue and their fix was exactly what you proposed here.