Good point. Either have no pauses for ranked matches, or only allow them after the match exceeds 1.5 hours.
You guys seem to never be in a real world situation (simple example: opening the door)
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No, we are. But if you sit down to play a ranked game rather than a leisirely unranked or single-player game, you should be in for the long haul. When you go to a movie theater, you can usually sit and patiently watch for ~2.5 hrs to watch commercials, trailers, and the movie, no problem.
1.5 hrs for an AoE match when they probably don’t even usually last that long, isn’t too big of a stretch.
Okay, as a compromise, how about no pauses in AoE until the 60 minute mark? Surely an hour isn’t asking too much. And if life happens and you have to open the door, well, you lose 20-30 secs of gameplay. Everyone is subject to the same rule, so you might be impacted this game, but five games from now your competitor might have to open the door mid-match. It’d balance out.
If I sit down to play a ranked game of Battlefield with 20-30 players, the last thing I’d want is for the match to pause when someone has to use the bathroom or open the door 20 minutes in. Why should AoE be exception? No matter if it is 30 players, or 2, it’s inconveniencing your competitor to pause the game.
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It’s really a different thing to be inconveniencing 29 other people, than only 1. And there is currently even no limitation to unpausing, so you even can’t inconvenience anyone if they don’t like it.
Which can mean your whole eco can get smashed if it’s a rush / attack
Priorities. What’s more important, then… opening that door, or getting your eco hammered? 
So, 60 min pause lockout still ism’t agreeable? How about 45 mins?
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So, let whoever is waiting behind the door to just sit till you finish the game?
Are you being sarcastic?!
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Nooo, lol. You open the door! I would hope that would be the higher priority over ELO. Real life takes precedence over a game.
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Still, taking away the option to pause in a MP RTS game isn’t really that of a great idea
I think it’s brilliant. Okay, then allow one pause per hour. How is that?
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I have a better idea, (IMHO)
Allow pauses entirely
If the opponent/ally doesn’t unpause in 1 min, others can unpause.
If the same guy pauses before 20 mins after the initial pause, everyone can unpause ASAP
I think you’ll get a lot of people abusing the pause just to annoy, though… either because they are losing and just being salty about it, or are just having fun at someone else’s expense. There’s no place for that in a ranked match, imo
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That is why I said there should be at least 20 min between two pauses to allow 1 min without unpause.
Otherwise, anyone can unpause ASAP
I believe the general consesus for years has always been that the community has been grateful that pauses were allowed for unforseeable brief events. With the community growing as it has, the honor system way of pausing is becoming intolerable at times. Preventing pausing entirely removes a quality of life feature from the game. Implementing simple contstraints on how much pausing time/pauses can be made prevents abuse and quantifies what is fair. Even if you’re not the one pausing, taking breaks while playing is generally a good idea from a health perspective. The arguement in my mind is just how much we should be allowing.
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Thread bump. Had a game where I was streaming on Twitch and had sound issues and had to quickly adjust some sound settings as I was getting a huge raid. I paused and asked for a sec but the other player refused and immediately, like without any hesitation whatsoever, unpaused. I tried again and he unpaused. He was salty and griefing me for the rest of the game, refusing to gg and hiding vills when the game was clearly over, etc. This incredibly broken pausing system is outdated for the size the community has reached and the saltiness that naturally comes with a larger community.
In my mind, dev priority order should be:
- Pathing
- Fix disconnects, game crashes and bugs
- Make map pool playable
- Fix the pausing system
- Summer celebration event!!!
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Being able to pause is ridiculous IMO. People do hour long races in driving games with no ability to pause. If you’re expecting a delivery, for example, then you simply don’t start a race in a driving game, or accept that you might have to quit and lose the ranking points.
Having said that, the problem with AoE is there’s no upper limit to how long a game can potentially last. What if ranked games had a fixed time limit of 1hr 40 game time (just under 60 mins real world time), and are settled by the score if that time limit is reached? That way, you just don’t start a ranked game unless you aren’t expecting any interruptions for that period of time. If something genuinely important happens that you couldn’t possibly have foreseen, then you have to either resign or spend that time not doing anything in the game, but that should be rare.
I saw a live stream recently where a player paused the game to play a game of chess, which is absolutely ridiculous.
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I have had an enemy player not like how the match is going, and they continuously paused and unpaused until my entire team resigned out of sheer annoyance, thereby technically “winning” the match! This is ridiculous! Pausing should be banned entirely, or at the very least, limited to MAXIMUM 3 pauses per match. This game needs a LOT of work.
My proposed solution would be, that after you pause, you get 10 seconds to enter how many minutes you want your pause to last. if you dont enter anything, the game will resume after 10 seconds. The number of minutes you entered will be displayed and he will be able to decide whether they unpause or not (even though that would be a ■■■■ move to do if you entered 5 minutes or less) After the time you entered has run out, the game will automatically continue. So no more “sec” that last 15 minutes or more, you have to be transparent about it and i think thats the key thing that makes this annoying with the system we have right now.
There are legitimate reasons to pause though, and they aren’t as rare as some here think. . But It’s EXTREMELY rare for a legitimate pause to be longer than 3 minutes.
In 2-3 minutes You can urinate, tell someone you’ll call them back, dash to the door to let your wife in because she lost her keys, give a baby a binky or a bottle if they woke up, and a myriad of other things.
If someone was planning on a 30 minute game, 2-3 minutes doesn’t hurt them. Especially when a Normal game can run plus or minus ten EASILY.
So in my mind there is no excuse NOT to have at a 2 minute guaranteed pause window. But at 3 minutes your opponent should be able to choose either “claim win” or “unpause” if you want the satisfaction of erasing their army.
If I say “5 minutes” and my opponent wants to claim win? Sure. you do you.
If I say “sec” to put in a battery cause my mouse died… Sorry bud. You have to actually wait a WHOLE 45 seconds for me to switch it out…