Where is the Tactical Pause for single player?

[zenstrata]

This game desperately needs a tactical pause button for the single player modes. I don't give 2 figs about multiplayer and will likely never play multiplayer, I only play these games for single player modes, and there were pauses available in every other Age of Empires, why is there no pause for this one?

Come on Microsoft. Get on the ball with this please.

(and no - pressing 'escape' is not an acceptable solution. The game should allow pausing the action so we can see what is going on, pan around, and assign orders to units while the action is paused.)

[zenstrata]

Honestly, I am very tempted to refund this game and go back to the older Age of Empires because of this. It's a huge oversight, and even a severely reduced price doesn't properly justify leaving it out.

[What's gay with Russia?]

No pause is No buy

[pacati]

Stopped by here hoping the "anniversary edition" would finally address this issue. Guess not.

The game is exclusively for kids these days. When I was a kid, I didn't mind a game where relaxation was impossible.

[FloosWorld]

Originally posted by pacati:

Stopped by here hoping the "anniversary edition" would finally address this issue. Guess not.

The game is exclusively for kids these days. When I was a kid, I didn't mind a game where relaxation was impossible.

So Stronghold and Stronghold Crusader are by your definition also games for kids as you weren't able to pause in MP there as well?

[Mclovin]

im curious why you need a pause button in a real time strategy game wich is about multitasking and micro?

[zenstrata]

Originally posted by Mclovin:

im curious why you need a pause button in a real time strategy game wich is about multitasking and micro?

I'm curious why you don't need a pause button in a real time strategy game that has always traditionally had one?

(anyone defending this design choice clearly does not know the history of the Age of Empires series.)

Because the old games had the option. Example, I just started up Age of Empires 3 - and it has a tactical pause button.

Age of Empires 3 uses the F8 key to do this and you can rebind that key to other buttons if you wish, older versions of Age of Empires used other keys, but also had the tactical pause option. There is no acceptable reason for it's removal in Age of Empires 4.

The removal of this feature is not acceptable imo.

[Mclovin]

pointless

[FloosWorld]

Originally posted by Mclovin:

pointless

Why? Because zenstrata brings up a valid point? I miss both SP and MP pause as they were present in AoE 1-3. And before you say 'Why pause in MP in an RTS?' - the numbers of pauses were limited and pause was completely passive, so no tactical advantage could be gained.
And before you say 'I didn't use this in the old games!' - fine, nice for you, it's a QOL feature nevertheless.

[dna]

Still not added? Even for Singleplayer?
Saves me some money at least...

[Bowdirk]

Don't Buy. The game developers hate those of us who enjoy and prefer a relaxing, challenging, in depth single player game. It is simply to difficult for the current generation of 'script kiddies' to code.

I have bought and played every earlier version of the game and I will never buy another or any of the expansions for this version.

They have killed the franchise, idiots...

[zenstrata]

It should be fairly easy for them to put the pause option back in. I hope they do.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by pacati:

Stopped by here hoping the "anniversary edition" would finally address this issue. Guess not.

The game is exclusively for kids these days. When I was a kid, I didn't mind a game where relaxation was impossible.

I think its the other way around. When I was a kid, I didn't mind being terrible at games, so I used cheats to beat the brood war ai. Now that I'm an adult, just by the fact that I have played games for a while, and maybe also that I'm not 8 years old, I do not find beating the easy ai (or the hardest ai for that matter) to be stressful in the slightest.

If there was a decision between having tactical pause and not having it, I see no reason not to have it. But I don't think its an important feature in comparison to other stuff they're missing (like pause in multiplayer). Most players aren't gonna be stressed out by easy difficulty campaign, and if you really find it that stressful, do the same thing I did as a kid. Just use cheat codes.

[zenstrata]

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

Originally posted by pacati:

Stopped by here hoping the "anniversary edition" would finally address this issue. Guess not.

The game is exclusively for kids these days. When I was a kid, I didn't mind a game where relaxation was impossible.

I think its the other way around. When I was a kid, I didn't mind being terrible at games, so I used cheats to beat the brood war ai. Now that I'm an adult, just by the fact that I have played games for a while, and maybe also that I'm not 8 years old, I do not find beating the easy ai (or the hardest ai for that matter) to be stressful in the slightest.

If there was a decision between having tactical pause and not having it, I see no reason not to have it. But I don't think its an important feature in comparison to other stuff they're missing (like pause in multiplayer). Most players aren't gonna be stressed out by easy difficulty campaign, and if you really find it that stressful, do the same thing I did as a kid. Just use cheat codes.

The pause feature is useful for enabling a relaxing yet still challenging experience. What pause allows you to do, is press pause anytime things are getting too crazy, and sit back and think strategically, without being rushed, on how to approach a particularly challenging situation.

It's not just about being better or worse at games, it's about how the overall experience of the game progresses. Games can still be incredibly challenging even with a pause feature, because there are many variables to consider.

Also - Many people play games to relax - Age of Empires was one of those games, you could build a city, and still have the combat angle, but the pause enables you to not be stressed the entire time you are playing, making the game more relaxing, yet still very challenging.

By removing the Tactical Pause feature, this has turned Age of Empires into just another real-time stress factory. And that turns a lot of people off.

[Cacomistle]

Originally posted by zenstrata:

Originally posted by Cacomistle:

I think its the other way around. When I was a kid, I didn't mind being terrible at games, so I used cheats to beat the brood war ai. Now that I'm an adult, just by the fact that I have played games for a while, and maybe also that I'm not 8 years old, I do not find beating the easy ai (or the hardest ai for that matter) to be stressful in the slightest.

If there was a decision between having tactical pause and not having it, I see no reason not to have it. But I don't think its an important feature in comparison to other stuff they're missing (like pause in multiplayer). Most players aren't gonna be stressed out by easy difficulty campaign, and if you really find it that stressful, do the same thing I did as a kid. Just use cheat codes.

The pause feature is useful for enabling a relaxing yet still challenging experience. What pause allows you to do, is press pause anytime things are getting too crazy, and sit back and think strategically, without being rushed, on how to approach a particularly challenging situation.

It's not just about being better or worse at games, it's about how the overall experience of the game progresses. Games can still be incredibly challenging even with a pause feature, because there are many variables to consider.

Also - Many people play games to relax - Age of Empires was one of those games, you could build a city, and still have the combat angle, but the pause enables you to not be stressed the entire time you are playing, making the game more relaxing, yet still very challenging.

By removing the Tactical Pause feature, this has turned Age of Empires into just another real-time stress factory. And that turns a lot of people off.

I don't think that playing turn based is a big appeal of rts games. I think a decent percentage of rts players, while they don't want the game to be some apm clickfest, they do at least want it to play out in real time. Aoe4 is not challenging in a way that forces you to click fast, you can win it entirely off strategy and slow play.

I understand there are going to still be people, like you, who want the ability to play it slower. But there are all sorts of people who want other things the game doesn't have. In a magical perfect world, it'd have everything. Its not a magic perfect world.

I think tactical pause is less significant than many of the other things the game lacks, and especially than things the game lacked on release and later added (for example color picker, I think that's more important to the average casual player than tactical pause is). Not to say it doesn't matter at all, but I think the type of player who wants the game to function similar to a challenging turn based game are less numerous than the people who just already find the campaign non stressful, or the people who will just lower the difficulty so they don't have to stress themselves out strategically either.

Honestly, I think that there's as many people who relax by cutting out strategy and thought than people who cut out action. That's part of why there's more people who play shooters and fast paced games than there are people who play turn based games

Oh plus I don't agree relaxation is a staple of aoe. In aoe2, there's like 40 civs to learn, the macro is probably the most challenging of any rts, and the micro is hard and its one of those games like brood war where some units work in strange unintuitive ways. Aside from the fact that its one of the few games with interesting ai to play against so you don't have to go pvp, I think its the least relaxing rts I've ever played (even sc2 was more relaxing till I got to high diamond and started encountering people with 200-300 apm). Oh actually command and conquer games are the least relaxing but I gave up on pvp in those pretty much immediately upon learning the meta (it basically seems to be both players rush each other with high micro units that are guaranteed to get damage if used properly because the defender's is non existent), but even then at least I didn't have to think hard it was just pure mechanics.

[zenstrata]

All the old games had it, the new game does not, and people are unhappy with that.
Just because you are not unhappy does not mean the game should not have the option at all.

You seemed to not understand why it was important. I told you, and then you spent quite a long time trying to explain why this new method is better some how.

Pause has zero effect on you, you just choose not to use it. But for many people who have played the other age of empires games, the tactical pause was important, and they are not happy about it being removed. Why are you trying to convince people it's a bad thing?

Also - what's this commentary about a perfect world? How does that even apply to anything?