I think the problem is if you press q accidentally when you want to hit :q and then hit q again (recording @q), at this point Esc won't work and you have to hit

I think the problem is if you press q accidentally when you want to hit :q and then hit q again (recording @q), at this point Esc won't work and you have to hit q a third time to exit. When taking a second to think about it it's quite obvious but in the spur of the moment I sometimes get stuck hitting Esc multiple times before realising I'm in macro-recording mode and hit q to exit. I've also seen many new vi-users get confused when they accidentally enter macro recording. This could probably be improved with some clever hinting (maybe change hint to "recording @{key}, hit q to exit/stop recording") and maybe some hint when hitting q only once indicating that you're about to start a macro sequence.