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What MMOs lack is a pause button.
centkin
Member RarePosts: 1,527
In a single player game, when you hear something fall over in another room, the phone rings, your cancer ridden mother asks for help, the fire alarm goes off, you pause the game and address the problem. Even in MMOs where the vast majority of people are playing solo -- except for something like an everquest monk where you had some chance of feigning death, if you have to do something IRL, it takes a good deal of time to get your character safe or you have to make the conscious decision to DIE to address what is happening IRL.
Some people would even ignore the fire alarm going off to make their character safe before leaving.
Thing is RL is more important than a game, and the inability to pause the action around you does stop a lot of people from playing these games, and at least is something most people have suffered from at least occasionally. (I've had some games where all my deaths fell into two categories -- 1)There was a net problem/lost connection/bug that killed the character and 2) I had to answer the phone or do something else in real life leaving my character to sit there and do nothing while the monsters ground him to a pulp.
This gets even worse if you are a key person in a group. If you are the healer and you need to go to the bathroom bad, you would pretty much be expected to poop your pants before getting up from the keyboard. Phone calls are expected to go to the answering machine -- etc. If you have a situation where you do find something IRL more important, you have just ruined the experience of the whole group as well as your reputation.
I mean I just spilled a can of soda across my desk. I wasn't in an MMO but I jumped for the tissue box and threw tissues on it before it caused a real issue. I'd be moving my mouse through the pool of soda if I were the healer in a group.
If you could pause the game -- it would pause an area around your character that you would have to deal with when you returned including other players. In the case of other players they could unpause things after a period of time (say 3 minutes) if they wanted to leave you to your fate. A paused person could still chat, look at inventory etc but not move or fight.
This of course assumes PVE. PVP players could burst the bubble, but even in a PVP game, this could work(of course finding a static area where time was stopped could invite some PVP players to come have a look).
Some people would even ignore the fire alarm going off to make their character safe before leaving.
Thing is RL is more important than a game, and the inability to pause the action around you does stop a lot of people from playing these games, and at least is something most people have suffered from at least occasionally. (I've had some games where all my deaths fell into two categories -- 1)There was a net problem/lost connection/bug that killed the character and 2) I had to answer the phone or do something else in real life leaving my character to sit there and do nothing while the monsters ground him to a pulp.
This gets even worse if you are a key person in a group. If you are the healer and you need to go to the bathroom bad, you would pretty much be expected to poop your pants before getting up from the keyboard. Phone calls are expected to go to the answering machine -- etc. If you have a situation where you do find something IRL more important, you have just ruined the experience of the whole group as well as your reputation.
I mean I just spilled a can of soda across my desk. I wasn't in an MMO but I jumped for the tissue box and threw tissues on it before it caused a real issue. I'd be moving my mouse through the pool of soda if I were the healer in a group.
If you could pause the game -- it would pause an area around your character that you would have to deal with when you returned including other players. In the case of other players they could unpause things after a period of time (say 3 minutes) if they wanted to leave you to your fate. A paused person could still chat, look at inventory etc but not move or fight.
This of course assumes PVE. PVP players could burst the bubble, but even in a PVP game, this could work(of course finding a static area where time was stopped could invite some PVP players to come have a look).
![[Deleted User]](http://w6.vanillicon.com/v2/6b5da5a72b39acc7c0957178efa21ccc.svg)
and 2 others.
Comments
*grabs pitchfork* Stop killing the MMO genre!
On response, in group content at max is ways to a sort of pause-vote so any timer or constant action can pause, but as far the normal MMO open world and such goes it conflicts with what this type of game is meant to be.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
I am saying that the game design is WRONG. Your character wasn't distracted by the disaster IRL -- he shouldn't suffer. A game shouldn't DEMAND that level of detachment from real life to be able to play it.
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This is the reason why I can't play a group based game. They do not happen all that often, but I have things in real life where I can NOT simply ignore them and that would make me a liability to a group.
I decided to drop even a solo MMO I was playing primarily over this.
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I don't see how it would harm MMOs to have the ability to pause the game for a short time period.
People wonder why players are avoiding group-based games // they aren't more popular -- this is a primary reason. A pause feature would make group games more popular.
If you are on a FPS shooter MP match, if you are forced attend to something else, you have to. It's not possible to stop an entire thing because of that one player.
It's not just MMOs it's the type of gameplay, and by that nature there isn't a realistic game design that can attend to that, especially when PvP is involved.
That tends not to work as well for group content. But a game like Spiral Knights or Elsword can scale things up or down as the number of party members changes, so that losing a party member isn't devastating. Having short group content like Elsword's five minute dungeons with one minute queues means that even if you have to abandon a dungeon run entirely, you don't lose very much. In games where it takes half an hour to get a group for a two-hour dungeon, having to drop out near the end is far more of a problem.
In a lot of games, if you want pausing functionality, you can effectively get it by just finishing the battle you're in, then sitting and waiting in a safe area. That doesn't work for timed runs where you're penalized or fail for taking too long. But the lack of ability to split up content is one of the reasons why I don't like long chunks of content that must be done all at once, whether it's two-hour dungeons that reset when you leave or ten-minute bosses that will kill you if you go AFK for 30 seconds.
- Al
Personally the only modern MMORPG trend that annoys me is the idea that MMOs need to be designed in a way to attract people who don't actually like MMOs. Which to me makes about as much sense as someone trying to figure out a way to get vegetarians to eat at their steakhouse.- FARGIN_WAR
You have to know your priorities.
When Ol' Joe at the Sunny Foggy Nursing Home died, did he stop running his script?
Hell No!
When my grandma fell and broke her hip, The only help she called for was to get her back in her chair so she could finish a spawn.
And I'll never forget Uncle Benny's last words, as he grabbed his chest and crumpled to the floor.
"God, country, and guildies; and NOT IN THAT ORDER!"
Youngsters these days! They don't know what's important anymore.
Once upon a time....
Other than that part of your post, it would be interesting if you hit pause in a PVE only game and it basically disappeared your character from the game world until you un-pause.
BUT, this could only work in the open world. That mechanic would be crazy abusable in raids.
Also as mentioned,a pause button makes it way too easy to abuse a game,the integrity of the game is lost,although many developers do a good job at ruining that themselves.
Never forget 3 mile Island and never trust a government official or company spokesman.
I'd see it as projecting a bubble around your character that stopped the world in that area of effect. That is the way it would look if someone saw it from a distance, a shimmering bubble.
I'd implement it as a time bank -- give someone say 12 minutes total and used time would replenish by 3 minutes each day.
As for it being unbalanced // helping in raids -- not really -- I mean there is human response time which the game has none. It takes time to hit the button in the first place, then everyone has to be essentially ready when time continues forward from a cold start. Your character's states didn't change. It isn't like you can heal or anything during the frozen time. One could also limit the time/uses a raid group could use this feature during a raid if one were that concerned about it.
You could also put in the ToS that any abuse of this feature would result in it being removed for your character. People are smart enough to know what constitutes an abuse.
Logic, my dear, merely enables one to be wrong with great authority.
If you want a new idea, go read an old book.
In order to be insulted, I must first value your opinion.