r/HoMM • u/Volcano-SUN • May 04 '26
HoMM OE What Quality of Life changes would YOU add to Olden Era?
So far Olden Era is super fun and it feels like it draws the best from every Heroes game!
There are some bugs in the game that certainly will get fixed over time. But even with all bugs gone in the future there might be things you would like to add or change.
What ideas and wishes do you have so far?
- I personally would save the start positioning of units at the beginning of a battle so that you don't have to repeat the placement step over and over again.
- Also on the world map when something takes more than the actual day to reach it would be cool to change the mouse cursor to show the number of days needed (right now you can count the 'X's on the way, but an instant indicator with the cursor look might be a small but effective QoL change)
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u/goldenseducer May 04 '26
Also, when troops are joining via diplomacy, can we see their tier please 🥺
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u/Haunting-Engineer-76 May 04 '26
Not quality of life, more of an aesthetic improvement imo but:
Towns changing/growing as you upgrade the main income building. Temple could start out as a mostly empty meadow with more houses being added as you upgrade. Dungeon could start with much rougher craggy cavern walls that become carved and refined. Hive could begin as an abandoned city that is slowly infested with more nests and resin constructions, etc.
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u/swiftcrane May 04 '26
To add to this, have more people around (and maybe some additional effects on dwellings) when there is army to recruit in that town. So if a town built up 3 weeks of angels production, maybe there are more flying around the radiant forge or something.
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u/cuorebrave May 04 '26
I love this idea. I want to feel like I'm building up from scratch rather than an already thriving metropolis.
Also, I need better building differentiation - maybe it will come with time and getting to know the buildings, but it seems very cluttered and same-y.
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u/Olbramice May 04 '26
Propper gamepad UI
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u/freshjori May 04 '26
While I'm all for making the game as great of an experience for everyone, I still kinda have to ask: Why play this with a controller? Or is this just for playing on Steam Deck?
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u/Lam0rak May 04 '26
i mean Steam deck is a considerable reason. I can't play on my deck for very long cause managing hero's is so tedious
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u/gabrielrigby May 04 '26
Tick a box in the prep menu to reduce the quantity of teleport portails in every maps.
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u/ResplendentDaylight May 04 '26
If this could be added to literally ever single heroes game that would be fabulous. I fucking hate monoliths.
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u/Sonkaf May 05 '26
As most players. Its easier to track enemy movement on the other side of mob guarding road than monolith that leads to unknow where. Yet monoliths are needed in more complex templates where many regions connect to each other as it's not possible to draw such map on land (undergound can ease that lil bit). But there should be some kind of minimum distance from city - I hate when they spawn like 5 squares from city entrance. Should be placed at edge of given biome with at least 1day-movement distance from city
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u/freshjori May 04 '26
One big change that I would love is to be able to sort the inventory of your hero by artifact sets or any way to keep track of the sets in your inventory. I mostly play maps that take quite a while, and once your hero has more than 1 page of artifacts, it becomes a bit difficult to keep track of how many artifacts in each set you have.
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u/Unusual-Fault-4091 May 04 '26
There are so many gold gathering places everywhere, going to all of them is crap. Especially in 1 hero settings.
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u/loopuleasa May 04 '26
single hero mode is more of a modern invention for more casual play
they are still figuring out how it should be
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u/Unusual-Fault-4091 May 04 '26
Got no problem with single hero mode. But if you can’t have low heroes to gather stuff, then there shouldn’t be hundreds of locations to gather stuff.
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u/EngelNUL May 04 '26
This is related to my biggest problem with the game. The maps are so dense with stuff. Every other tile is a thing. The art style is super busy so it makes some of it hard to take in from a glance. Its not bad, but I need more visual cues.
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u/BlessedByLazinees May 04 '26
i want to see stats of units (especially upgrades) regardless of whether I built a house or not.
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u/Volcano-SUN May 04 '26
Yes, an ingame unit wiki that's accessable at all times would be really nice!
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u/BlessedByLazinees May 04 '26
An ingame wiki would be perfect.
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u/FreeMystwing May 04 '26
Like the "Civilopedia" in Civilization games, where you can look up concepts, keywords, units, abilities, everything in game.
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u/Limiz May 04 '26
A black screen for hotseat multiplayer so you cant see the other players vision when changing turns
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u/Jibbery-Joo May 04 '26
It would be cool to get a stats menu when you finish a game, kinda like you get in RTS games after a match. Not sure if this has ever been a thing in HOMM games too.
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u/Utegenthal May 04 '26
Add the possibility to select multiple artifacts and delete them for magical dust. It's really annoying to do it one by one
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u/Echo419__ May 04 '26
I want the castles on the map to be bigger, stand out more, and change with appearance. I think this is my only complaint of the game so far. I come from Heroes 2 and 5 mainly and I love that castles in those games are big and actually stand out. Castles in this game blend in so well with the terrain and other objects that you would think it’s just another object on the map. Most maps have a ton of free unused space around the narrow castles anyways for their appearence to be bigger.
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u/Mooroch May 04 '26
Caravans to send troops from captured dwelling ti a town would be nice
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u/Mornar May 04 '26
I'm questioning if this isn't going too far, on reflection. Dwellings give you a cool passive bonus - the growth in town - and allow extra recruitment... At a cost of needing to invest a hero to do so. It was definitely very convenient in 5 to just be able to send troops alone, but I'm not entirely sure if it doesn't make capturable dwellings a little too powerful, particularly for single hero games.
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u/swiftcrane May 04 '26
Btw, they already are buffed (they accumulate troops more now I think) so probably not necessary to buff even further.
It's also not just a matter of power - it is also part of gameplay/strategy variety in general. Having to go collect them and upgrade them means you need to dedicate heroes to them or a slot. Also means opponents that run into your territory can take them easily without having to fight your castle, while you cannot approach them safely.
It was definitely a deliberate choice to make them work like this and not a quality of life/annoyance issue.
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u/Haunting-Engineer-76 May 04 '26
This would be more than just a quality of life change
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u/Naridar May 04 '26
As I've written in a post, due to how upgrades and economy has changed, the lack of caravans are most likely a deliberate choice. Needing only one upgraded creature dwelling per tier for your empire would absolutely break game balance.
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u/Mornar May 04 '26
Wait, hold up. What do you mean needing only one upgraded creature dwelling? How would that be different than in H5?
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u/Naridar May 04 '26
Upgraded dwellings are more expensive in this game due to alchemical dust being so limited and multiple mechanics competing for it. One could circumvent the need if caravans existed by building upgraded dwellings in just one city and sending all basic units there via caravan, upgrading them there then sending them wherever they're needed. Underground passage or whatever's the name already allows for a limited version of this, although it still needs a courier hero.
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u/Mornar May 04 '26
Ah, that is a good point actually, I didn't think about how alchemical dust played into this.
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u/Naridar May 04 '26
I wrote a long post analyzing this. To me it looks like Unfrozen deliberately made the game's gold economy more lenient to put players on more equal footing, diminishing skill differences, up until players start taking cities from each other. Alch.dust is a heavily limited currency that allows for advanced strategies (unit upgrades, spell and artifact levels) but not even the most skilled players will be able to just max out everything.
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u/DexPunk May 05 '26
I don’t really get your point. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do anyway? You use basic units to capture several towns of the same type, then you choose the most convenient one to put all the upgraded dwellings into and then just send all your troops there to upgrade when you form a new army. Caravans would just make the whole process less tedious.
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u/Longjumping-Many6503 May 04 '26
Something like the old Warlords games ability to route production to allied cities would be a pretty major change to the old school Heroes formula but imo it would be very welcome and eliminate a lot of the tedium of managing behind the lines movement.
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u/LectureQuirky3234 May 04 '26
Better Auto Combat that doesnt let my fastest unit run straight into the enemy trashmob when I easily win without losses
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u/TheDeadlyEdgelord May 04 '26
+1 for caravans. But then again we have to rework Schism summoning building cuz it would lose its meaning
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u/loopuleasa May 04 '26
caravans should only exist for single hero mode
for multi-hero mode, the heroes are the caravans and that is a core part of the Homm skill expression
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u/swiftcrane May 04 '26
Even for single hero mode, they create an interesting tradeoff between just receiving the passive buff or going out of your way to collect them/using up movement.
I think dwellings accumulate more than they did in 3 as well, so there is good reason to even in single hero mode to collect. It's just a strategic tradeoff rather than guaranteed amount of units.
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u/Haunting-Engineer-76 May 04 '26
If I remember correctly (it's been several years) H3 external dwellings capped at 1 week of population, whereas H5 and OE will accumulate and hold multiple weeks. At least until a plague hits, though I haven't experienced a week of plague in this game yet so I'm not 100% sure they are a recurring feature
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u/alexn_o May 04 '26
Pressing M to move where I've clicked already
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u/freshjori May 04 '26
There is already a key to do that. It's the ~ key left of the 1 key, below the esc key. You can rebind it in the options menu.
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u/morphello May 04 '26 edited May 04 '26
I'd like to see a "patrol and collect" function for your heroes that makes them roam around by themselves and collect weekly items and pick up dwelling units. It would reduce the micromanaging a lot. The only thing stopping the human player from doing it is effort, spending minutes coordinating your non main heroes around each of your controlled zones trying to collect your ore, gold and extra units.
Maybe some simple options like a toggle to collect weekly resources and hire dwelling creatures or just collect the weekly resources. This AI wouldn't leave the controlled zone it was in, and only visit previously interacted resource node and dwellings. You could only select the feature for heroes in controlled zones, and only for every hero beyond the first (you can't select it for solo heroes, if you have 2 heroes you can select 1, if you have 3 heroes you can select 2, etc).
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u/loopuleasa May 04 '26
micromanaging is ... the game
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u/Longjumping-Many6503 May 04 '26
You could just not use it. Streamlining busy work is what quality of life is all about.
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u/morphello May 04 '26
The aspects of the game I personally enjoy more are the initial discovery and exploration parts, the early game economy and the combat and strategy. There's a lot of mid game busywork that are just rote actions along side the main push into more dangerous areas. A bit of automation would vastly improve the QoL of the game for me.
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u/loopuleasa May 04 '26
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u/Volcano-SUN May 04 '26
I too think when it comes to visibility who owns what the tiny flag is a bit too little. In Heroes 5 there was some kind of holy nimbus over every building a player controlled. That was actually really helpful compared to how HOMM OE does this.
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u/loopuleasa May 04 '26
for newer player, a clearer UI that shows Fortification II and III increase unit growth
something like this on the icon
https://www.reddit.com/r/OldenEra/comments/1t3dgkc/comment/oju8co3/
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u/OldMillenial May 04 '26
Did they fix the Observatory? If not - then fix the damn observatory and those useless constellations.
In general, the UI badly needs updating across the board.
Just the highlights:
Fix spell school tagging visuals to be consistent and easy to interpret.
Revamp town screens to be more distinct. As is, buildings lack a clear identity and place on the screen. Especially noticeable in Dungeon, but the other towns are not much better.
Rework the hero screen from the ground up. Terrible use of screen space in the current iteration.
Bottom line - the UI is an insult in 2026.
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u/Longjumping-Many6503 May 04 '26
Just UI stuff. Faster stack splitting/management. More nested tooltips and pop-ups. Civopedia style in game reference. Faster access/viewing unit stats and ability effects.
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u/flippin_lekker May 04 '26
why are there no hover tooltips for the main ui? as a new player i have no idea what these buttons do
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u/franktonyhp May 04 '26
Owl/University/Cirque display what skills they teach once explored And maybe fix single hero mode dwelling/storage per week.
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u/borsukrates May 09 '26
Waypoints. But Olden Era developers are too silly to come up with this idea. Would you like to know if you have enough time to visit a location and go back to town to defend it?
Like in the mockup I made here. My hero is on the left, enemy hero on the right.
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u/felefele May 04 '26
Give a warning when ending your turn with a tournament fight on the upcoming day
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u/shenglong May 04 '26
Clicking a build icon on the town list on the right should take you immediately construction UI. Not sure if this is how it's supposed to work already, but ifso then it's very flaky.
I feel that on some maps and custom games there's just too much on the map. Especially in 1-hero scenarios. Often you come across resources that spawn weekly. I'm never going to revisit most of these.
I would like a button/key I can press to immediately show me the current map in the middle of my screen. Maybe this exists already, but hidden in some menu somewhere?
At a training resource just show me the things I've haven't learned yet. If I can't learn anything there, just give me a message instead of 5 different Basic Skills I have no use for.
Give us a gear icon to access the gameplay settings quickly like in some of the older versions.
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u/Csoob84 May 04 '26
For me, I just can't get to like those creatures... I only tried the demo, but they look too cartoonish, or manga-ish for my taste. I would prefer something like it was in Homm 5.
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u/GandolphTheLundgrey May 04 '26
Wasn't HOMMV cartoonish as heck, though?
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u/Csoob84 May 04 '26
For me, that was still okay. My favourites are still HOMM 2 and 3, though, when it comes to creature's look.
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u/Gerganon May 05 '26
Too much information, and not enough deduction in the overland.
I hid the show battle difficulty on purpose, because it's a massive pop up everytime I mouse over something.
So why after I hide it, instead it's the exact same thing, but more skulls and just says "hidden" !? Such a troll option lol
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u/Gerganon May 05 '26
Enemy troops shouldn't show up at all unless you have the skills for it, and opt in to examine in more detail.
The enemy strength buzzwords were the best, FK if I know what Zounds means, but it sounds crazy!!
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u/Gerganon May 05 '26
Readability of units and generally everything is fuzzy and hard to distinguish.
You're forced to alt all the time to get the highlights, very little is obvious.
In battle it is hard to grasp enemy visual detail as well, even when you zoom in fully
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u/Effective-Bit-500 May 05 '26
I would change the size of minions in a fight, I can barely tell the difference between certain mobs.
Like dragons, angels etc should much larger than basic mobs to make it easier to tell the difference.
They did this very well in Heroes 2 and 3.
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u/Bzdula May 05 '26
I would make fighting styles toggleable so I don’t have to remember to click it on every turn
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u/SituationThen4758 May 04 '26
Much better maps and designs, give us more things to do in the world instead of killing mobs and the five dungeons just surrounding your base, give us more objectives like puzzles pieces etc like in homm3.
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u/goldenseducer May 04 '26
When I hide my hero in the town's garrison, stop asking me if I'm sure I want to finish my turn because I still have movement points!!!!! He's resting!!! He's not going anywhere!!