Pause button for Multiplayer (Private Sessions?)

[blaziE]

I and me mates all have kids, little ones that need attention here and there, and when nature calls and you need to check on the little fu... *cough* buggers, it would be nice to hit the pause button. Somehow allow for a 'button' that creates a Private session which gives the players the ability to pause, or even between spell choice, no timer, like in solo.

[lightcatcher]

Yeah this would be amazing. We (2 Players) ran into multiple sessions where we really needed a pause button and had to give up the run.

[ruark]

I agree. And if you decide to play with friends, you need to prepare well - eat in advance, visit the toilet in advance (with a reserve for the future). Because in case of inactivity, after a few minutes you are thrown out of the game session.

[ruark]

Originally posted by ruark:

Because in case of inactivity, after a few minutes you are thrown out of the game session.

Moreover, no points are awarded after this.

[Game kNight Plays]

Agree! We have kids and stuff... or small bladders :D

[FoxKey319]

yeah Vote TO Pause would be nice!

[rbnzdave]

+1

[SHPIMP]

Multiplayer pause should be easy enough. Give a countdown to the approaching pause and after someone resumes, like DotA2 has. Maybe limit the number of pauses non-hosts have to 3 per run, so they can't be abused.

I think adjacent to this is another general issue, which is giving the host more options to control their lobby. I have yet to run into any griefers but I can see the need for hosts to have a quick-kick tool in the escape menu.

Also adjacent to both issues is the need for calculating rewards accumulated from a disconnect/kicked-from-lobby situation. I have had two games where host decided they built wrong and were dying constantly before shutting down the lobby, and losing all progress.

I'm not sure how the spawns are scripted, but if waves spawn the same way every run on a timer, then it should be possible to transfer host and progress for the times when a host disconnects. Take a snapshot at every level up and resume with same incoming spawns, mission tracker, player builds.

Maybe take a vote for continuing with new host or scrapping the run and distributing what resources were accumulated. It's still very early in development, and hope some or all of this gets into the game at some point.

[wereduck]

Just throwing another comment of support behind this. The suggestions above to prevent griefing are good too (or have pausing only available in private lobbies rather than matchmaker ones).