The Pause Dilemma

[ragen311]

I'm not sure why this is such a hot button issue. There are those that enjoy taking their time to make decisions, not be forced to fumble with the mouse, or remember the most efficient way to manipulate the hotkeys.

Then there are those that believe the challenge is part of the RTS genre. I have heard some refer to this side of the debate as the purest or RTS Purest.

It would seem logical to me to give any reasonable option to the player through options, and only apply the inability to pause (or severely restricted pause) to multiplayer...especially PVP. But in the end I am a firm believer in allowing the dev to create the game they want to create. Everyone is free to give their input, but should never become hostile because of those decisions.

If you do not like the decision, then the game is not being designed with you as the target audience. Trust me I know how much it sucks to find a dream game, but there is one design choice that brings it from perfection to unplayable for you. I recommend politely letting the dev know that there is most likely a market for altering the game toward your liking...because if you want this change, others probably do to. In the end, it is what it is.

I don't think any gamers should take it past that by injecting toxic attitudes into the discussion mediums. I think it is blantantly wrong of people to purchase the game to only refund it and leave a negative review. If the dev is clear about the design choice up front, then you are messing with people's wallets over being butt hurt about a game being designed for a demographic that almost included you.

--------------------
Now to the pause issue. Like I said, I don't see too much draw back in introducing it as an option. Some of the "purest" statements are just plain wrong. There are several high profile RTS games that have had all variations of the pause mechanics...even during my beloved RTS golden era.

1) Why do the non-pausers care if other gamers have that option in single player? I has no affect on your gaming experience at all?

2) One part of this debate that I don't see a lot, is I am an extremely slow reader. The inability to pause the game and read objectives, unit descriptions, abilities.......has a direct impact on my enjoyment. I'm still going to get the game most likely, but it would be nice to be able to read this stuff in game. Is the ability to pause, but not give commands still insulting to the "purest" views? I genuinely don't know if this is also looked down upon, but it seems like a bit of a compromise.

[Joe Coffee]

^^ I like playing on my own speed, which is to say, if I want to pause, the breather is appreciated.

If others don't want to pause, it's also ok.

To each their own. It's a game to be enjoyed how anyone wants it. :)

[Alamo Jack]

its simply one of the fundamental concepts of an rts game. if it had a pause that allowed you to queue actions, then that would be a real time with pause and the game would need to be balanced around that. In addition to being balanced around no pause.

it's not as simple as adding an option, because the game balance is significantly affected to the point you effectively have two different games that you need to allocate resources for. From a design perspective, that doesn't make much sense.

There's also the case of game identity. Does it want to be an RTS game or a RTwP game? Trying to play both fields is pretty ambitious, and probably a waste of time from their point of view. Especially when there's more important things that they should be working on, like another faction, more maps, and larger maps with more player capacity. Stuff like that would benefit every player, which is more attractive to the developers than something pretty niche.

I think the best kind of middle ground would be to add an easier difficulty that slowed down the pace of the game significantly more than the current difficulties.

[lethminite]

So first of all I don't think it's been made clear if you are talking about generally pausing, or about being able to issue commands while paused.
I think in a single player game, you 100% be able to pause when ever you like no matter the genre, real life takes precedence. But that can just be locking the game up with a big "paused" banner on top.
For multiplayer, that's obviously abusable, and the other player has to suffer, so no pauses, or very limited pauses should be the norm.

Now, as for issuing commands while paused, or an "active pause", which is what I think you are talking about... I think it depends on the game.
It works great in total war, which is also an RTS, but it is a very single player focused RTS, and the campaign is TBS, so it appeals to the 4x community too.

For in the campaign, I don't think it matters if it's available or not, though if it is available, I think it should be removable, and only able to be changed at what ever time you can change the campaign difficulty, and maybe have higher difficulties be incompatible with it.
So if it's a thing on easy/normal, that's fine, but being available on hard/harder/harderer would detract from the game, because it would muddy as to if you 'really' beat the game on the hardest difficulty if it was enabled.

Now to be clear, I use active pause a LOT in TW, and often fight battles at half speed, because I don't have the APM needed, I am not someone who is ever going to play an RTS game more than the campaign (though I do like them, and do watch pro's play).

I think end of the day, more accessibility means more sales, and more money for the game, meaning more dev support. So everyone who plays the game regularly benefits from more sales to casuals who will just play the campaign, but if it takes too much development time to enable an active pause, (since it's not something that all engines can automatically support) then I don't think it's something that is needed to be provided. Especially if the same effect can be created by adding an "easier" difficulty, using much less dev time.

[yevgeniy.lushtak]

As an old-timer who hasn't played RTSes since C&C 3 and does not like multiplayer, I think this game is sorely lacking an active pause function in the campaign. I've played mostly turn-based stuff in the recent decades and I haven't learned the TR keyboard shortcuts yet; I don't know that I really care to do so either.

Back in 1990s and 2000s, I'd probably feel strongly about playing at the "intended" difficultly level but I was (barely) in school at the time and had all the free time in the world; also probably too much pride about what is for most of us just something we do for fun.

Now, I'd rather have the damage balanced the way it is in "normal" or "hard" but not have to worry about fumbling with the interface. Between all the software (CAD, FEA, vacuum simulation, project management) shortcuts already occupying space in my muscle memory, age/exhaustion related slowing of reaction time, and, not to mention, with real life stuff to do, limited free time, and a variety of games on offer, sadly, not having active pause may keep me from playing this game through as awesome as it seems on paper. Then again, I guess I bought it and I won't give it a bad review over lacking active pause, so mission accomplished as far as the publisher is concerned...

[DB]

Curious but am I to believe you can't even pause the game in Single player? why oh why? in the old days if you paused you couldn't do or see anything, just a big menu screen, but if you want a piss or a snack, sorted. Why does it matter in single player? obviously in multiplayer NOOOOO

[Lotor13]

In short -it is not very clear, but the OP speaks about the active pause. It measn to pause the game and issue the orders to the units, not just pause the game.

Originally posted by Alamo Jack:

its simply one of the fundamental concepts of an rts game. if it had a pause that allowed you to queue actions, then that would be a real time with pause and the game would need to be balanced around that. In addition to being balanced around no pause.

it's not as simple as adding an option, because the game balance is significantly affected to the point you effectively have two different games that you need to allocate resources for. From a design perspective, that doesn't make much sense.

This.

It is not just "optional" QoL option or "accessibility feature", it has essential impact on the RTS gameplay.

Originally posted by ragen311:

It would seem logical to me to give any reasonable option to the player through options.

The reasonable option is to play on easy difficulty, it is pretty much chill - so You can read and learn about objectives, unit descriptions, abilities etc.

[Lotor13]

Originally posted by lethminite:

.....
It works great in total war, which is also an RTS, but it is a very single player focused RTS, and the campaign is TBS, so it appeals to the 4x community too.
.....
Now to be clear, I use active pause a LOT in TW, and often fight battles at half speed, because I don't have the APM needed, I am not someone who is ever going to play an RTS game more than the campaign (though I do like them, and do watch pro's play).
...

I am also Total War player and I am pausing/slowing tactical battles in TW...

But Total War is not "classic RTS" like Tempest Rising and TW is completely different type of game...

As before, I would like to ask...

Do You think, that You can not play this game without active pause?
How about the easy difficulty?

[Vovin]

Pausing time was never a feature in C&C and that's because this is traditional RTS.

We're not talking about some 4X grand strategy game where you literally don't have time to mentally compute everything. You're supposed to be under pressure, that's the point.

[Gin Kenshin98]

Originally posted by Lotor13:

Originally posted by lethminite:

.....
It works great in total war, which is also an RTS, but it is a very single player focused RTS, and the campaign is TBS, so it appeals to the 4x community too.
.....
Now to be clear, I use active pause a LOT in TW, and often fight battles at half speed, because I don't have the APM needed, I am not someone who is ever going to play an RTS game more than the campaign (though I do like them, and do watch pro's play).
...

I am also Total War player and I am pausing/slowing tactical battles in TW...

But Total War is not "classic RTS" like Tempest Rising and TW is completely different type of game...

As before, I would like to ask...

Do You think, that You can not play this game without active pause?
How about the easy difficulty?

The battles in TW are also more of a tactics game, since there’s no resources to worry about in battle.

At least that’s the difference between a tactics game and a strategy (or specifically rts) game, according to the TR design head.

So the other person using TW as an example isn’t actually the best example, since the genres are different.

[Cat]

Yeah, people don't understand when we were discussing the pause, we were talking about pause while giving commands and a lot of people were complaining about "what if we need to go to take a leak" lmao pause the entire game for singleplayer is fine, pause while having the ability to issue commands is the issue. It's a big gameplay mechanic that can be abused.

[PsychoticSoul]

As a player who has thousands upon thousands of hours in total war games ...no I still dont want it in a pure rts like this game.

TW is a hybrid game 4x/RTS, and thats why it has active pause. An rts with active pause does not feel like a full rts.

If you want the game to appeal to casuals, then just make a casual difficulty easier than easy

[lethminite]

Originally posted by Lotor13:

Originally posted by lethminite:

.....
It works great in total war, which is also an RTS, but it is a very single player focused RTS, and the campaign is TBS, so it appeals to the 4x community too.
.....
Now to be clear, I use active pause a LOT in TW, and often fight battles at half speed, because I don't have the APM needed, I am not someone who is ever going to play an RTS game more than the campaign (though I do like them, and do watch pro's play).
...

I am also Total War player and I am pausing/slowing tactical battles in TW...

But Total War is not "classic RTS" like Tempest Rising and TW is completely different type of game...

As before, I would like to ask...

Do You think, that You can not play this game without active pause?
How about the easy difficulty?

First, i'm not actually advocating for an active pause. I was just pointing out it's not really a problem if the devs can implement it for the easier difficulties with minimal effort. And that anyone wanting to use active pause was never going to be on ladder anyway.

I don't think how good (or bad) at RTSs I am is particularly relevant, I brought it up to show my natural biases. But I'll answer it anyway since you asked.
I've played plenty of RTSs, and finished campaigns in many, as a kid I loved them, though i was never any good.
SC1/SC2/WC2/WC3/AoE3/GreyGoo/Ashes of singularity/C&C Generals/C&CRA3/planetary annihilation, probably some others that I've forgotten, all completed

I've tried to play, and failed to finish a bunch of the early C&C games, C&C/C&CRA/C&CTS as well as AoE2 (which now has a LOT of campaigns, so not finishing them all isn't that surprising), as well as some obscure ones people might have never heard of like Z steel soldiers.

I "can" play them... but I almost always end up having to play a long macro game on every map, or abuse how bad AI generally is at dealing with artillery slow rolling through, even though I know with better micro you 'should' be able to beat the level much faster with much fewer units.

Some times when I've been excited for a game I've tried to get into skirmish maps to see if there is any chance of doing anything multiplayer, the closest I came was with Ashes of singularity, which I really liked to fact that battles have minimal micro, and infinite unit queues, but even that game had too much micro in the economy, and i'd end up losing track of stuff, and not being able to expand fast enough to be considered remotely competent and just falling apart completely once pressured.

Also, the moment I have to start "training" for a game, i lose interest.
So i'm very unlikely to ever play multiplayer in this game.

Slower paced strategy games like 4x, TDs, or Tactics games are what I generally stick with.

[XenoxXx]

Well actually most AAA game switch to 4x like warhammer galdius , dune also 4x.

[TankHunter678]

For traditional RTS games where they do want people to compete in multiplayer Active Pause is a non-viable option to implement. Once people get used to using Active Pause when they enter multiplayer where it would be completely disabled due to the requirement of online play they become unable to properly play the game. Things happen too fast for them and they cannot adapt to changes on the battlefield.

The closest one can get to active pause in a traditional RTS is something like what Tiberium Wars/Kane's Wrath did where you can pause specifically command inputs so you can set up your waypoints to then resume, with the battlefield still changing while you do that as it only keeps your inputs from being instantly carried out.

[Lotor13]

Originally posted by lethminite:

I was just pointing out it's not really a problem if the devs can implement it for the easier difficulties with minimal effort.
.....
I've tried to play, and failed to finish a bunch of the early C&C games, C&C/C&CRA/C&CTS as well as AoE2 (which now has a LOT of campaigns, so not finishing them all isn't that surprising).
...........
Slower paced strategy games like 4x, TDs, or Tactics games are what I generally stick with.

To be honest, I am not sure, what exactly related to Tempest Rising (this game) do You want to tell here...

About the Tempest Rising - it has easy difficulty option, and I finished GDF campaign on normal - it is quite easy and chill (but not boring) on normal.

So do not "fear" to try this game, because it does not have an active pause - it is not "micromanagment hell" and "full of stress"

If You finished C&C Tiberian Sun or Starcraft, You would be definitely fine (enjoy) Tempest Rising on normal and there is always easy option.

Just skirmish AI is very effective on normal, so play on easy first

BTW: AoE2 has many campaigns, but very unbalanced, many people do not like them