There is a bug in the game right now where if 1 team doesn’t want to oblige to a pause (which I think is a right, particularly given how some low elo players think they are playing a TheViper vs Hera showmatch where such pauses are more understandable, and pause to go AFK for an unknown # of minutes which I find very rude), the people who got their feelings hurt can grief the whole lobby and freeze it indefinitely. Basically, through some form of macro, or abuse I am not aware of, you can infinitely pause a game, instead of the allowed 10 total times. As soon as the people who want to play the game unpause, the griefer re-pauses, somehow skipping the 10 total pauses.
Please look into it as leaving this bug unchecked in TGs just leaves the door open for foul behavior.
I think pauses don’t show in replays, it’s a bit like when you go to sleep, that time is erased from the replay. I was hoping the devs would be aware of how you can circumvent the 10 pauses rule and tbh, AoE2 has grown a lot in recent years, maybe it’s time to remove pauses from ranked, just like every other RTS like Starcraft, after all, this is a ranked experience among strangers, pauses can kill the momentum, allow one time to think of a proper counter-strategy as opposed to on-the-spot decision-making and in general remove from the RTS aspect imo.
I think possibility to pause is a Greta thing, a huge benefit for the game. It remove a lot of stress when you play and know that if someone knock the door or have a little emergency you can pause it and still be in the game.
The problem is not the possibility to pause, It is people who pause for no good reason, which is not something that you should fix by removing a great feature
I think pausing is one of the worst features of the game, if you didn’t allocate time to play undisturbed, you probably should either leave the game or not be queueing ranked to begin with.
More importantly not everyone is willing to wait for a stranger and I can’t stress this concept enough how the enemy team isn’t your mother who will do as you ask, it is their right to also not oblige to the pause.
Is just plain leaving the game better when you have to open the door for someone?? Because thats whats going to happen if pauses are removed. Kinda annoying in TGs.
the idea of competitive RTS games is that you devote 100% of your attention, so probably you should plan in advance who/if a door will be opened. No other game has a feature where 1 user can force all others to wait for his pause, not CSGO, not Overwatch, not Total War Warhammer, not (to my knowledge), League of Legends. I get that people don’t like change and by now the idea of pausing 3x a day to you it seems normal, but really, AoE2 is the exception here.
More practically, if you are below, say, 1300 elo TGs, probably you can go afk 30s without anything important happening. Judging from RM, many people below 1300 have lots of TC idle time in Feudal, go for wrong units etc., I think at that point a pause doesn’t matter that much when you could be having 3-4 more villagers working, for example.
Regardless this goes OT because the main topic was the fact that there are people who ABUSE a coding bug and freeze the lobby if they for any reason become unhappy.
I think pause function is actually one of the best function in aoe2 that distingush from those game you mention. Aside from competitive player, most players in the player base are casual player and allowing pause can actually give back the choice to the players to choose and decide whether pause or unpause. And that is the reason why opponent team can simply unpause if it is not right.
First of all you’re just wrong, aoe2 is not the exception; sc2 has the option to pause too and its not just any, but THE rts. So if the market leader does it, it can’t be that bad.
Second, you act like pausing for a few sec is a big thing for the other players when it actually isn’t. What would you rather have, a game that ends because a player has to go to the door after 10min, or a 30min close and interesting match with a 1min pause at min 10?
Third, your standards are impossible to fulfill. Like, even pro players pause in showmatches and tournaments, that is, in settings where everything is catered to avoid distractions. Do you really suggest i need to be more dedicated than Viper just to play a game with friends and strangers?
At least your last point is correct, this sure is OT 11
I only very rarely pause so I am not a fan of the current system. I think you should get up to 45 seconds of pause time per game. Pause as many times as you want, but the clock starts ticking every time you pause. That’s more than enough time to hang up the phone or answer the door or whatever. After 45 seconds, your time bank runs out, the game automatically unpauses and you cannot pause again in that game. I think this is a good compromise which allows you chance to change the default zoom or a quick hotkey change etc. or deal with something domestic quickly without disrupting the game too much. In the meantime your opponent can gain an edge by checking the civ matchup and tech trees.
Well not everyone lives alone or has the blessing from the heavon of not ever being subjected to an unexpected event like you probably… To me is a great feature and the problem is just abusive users, cause sometines things happen outside of your desires and you might be forced afk for 1 minute because your dog is eating chocolate in the other room and for some weird reasons you value its life more than your ELO for example…
Emergency happens, situation happens, and a ility ti pause is a great thing. If your game-flow gets ruined by a slight pause then i guess it’s onto you because the other player is on the same boat if not worse if It had to do something unexpected
Problem is when people pause for no good reasons like grabbing a snack, but it’s a problem of sportmanship and manners. You don’t ban fauls from soccer just because someone abuse it to get a free kick sometimes, you give a yellow card to the abuser
Dude you can just unpause if you are not willing to wait that long. Many games have such mechanics.
You are talking about pause abuse where you cant unpause opponents pause. Then ofc its wrong.
Saying we should remove the whole pause system because some dude has hack for it is just dumb. Maybe we should have minimaps also removed because some guy can hack his whole minimap visible…
