Mom, I can’t pause the game! … wait, I can?
Hey Unreal devs,
Today’s Behind the Design will be a short one about the pause function in Smelogs Playground.
First of all: Should a competitive multiplayer game be pausable?
Some are, some aren’t. Dota 2 for example is, whereas League of Legends isn’t (except for professional leagues). But in most real-time strategy games there are pause systems.
We think pausing the game should be possible, but only for a limited amount of time. We don’t want a pause system that can be abused for toxic behavior or to gain an unfair advantage.
What can be done during a pause?
- Chatting
- Change settings
- Surrender
How our Pause works
Any player can pause the game at any time. In the Pause window, the player can toggle if they are ready to continue the game or not.
The game is unpaused when all players are ready, or when a player runs out of pause tokens.
When a player is not ready when the timer hits 0, a Pause token is consumed and the 30-second countdown starts anew. Every player has 3 Pause tokens. This means every player can pause the game for a maximum of 1 minute and 30 seconds.
We might adjust the token amount or countdown timer based on player feedback.
Endnotes
If the Pause system gets abused, we will explore some other options:
- request Pause (instead of immediate Pause)
- report Pause abuse which could result in a Pause Ban (so that a player is unable to pause games)