A pause seems great at first, but I don't think it's necessary. It would allow you to get some sleep if you are really addicted, but it should be something optional. You can turn it on and off for set periods of time (such as overnight, weekend, certain days, etc). If it was added, faster gameplay would be nice. That could be automatically turned on when you turn off certain time periods.
I think that the 4 future actions solves the issue of stuff happening while you are asleep pretty nicely though, and it is nice to get on the next day and actually see some progress.

TopKilla, I’m sure that point resonates with some, but I’m not playing to experience the stress of war, I’m playing to experience the strategy of it. Besides, I’m sure that none of the top strategists in the military are also working another full-time job with its own demands.

Well said Elija, I didn’t mention it because it was already mentioned elsewhere, but I agree that pausing and speeding up the game come hand in hand, and should definitely be optional; I wouldn’t dream of having the 24/7 game taken away from players who enjoy it and can handle the interruptions. But the 4 future actions limit only helps when your opponents are the ones with the limit, which is out of your control, and even then, people still schedule their actions to happen during the night.

Sure it’s nice to see some progress in the morning, but it’s not worth the exhaustion, and besides, you’ll get that same progress if you speed up the pausing games. If you want that satisfaction of seeing a lot of progress after not checking for a while, you might actually get more of that with the sped up games, in your regular checks throughout the day.

No, no, no. Please don't make this happen. The game becomes almost unplayable when this feature his added. Instead of out thinking and out timing your allies the game is reduced to using brute force to overcome enemies. Timing strategies are no longer any good. Serious players who want a continuous game will have to wait hours to keep playing because some less intense players want to freeze time. It takes away from much of the games greatest aspects. I would definitely quit playing if this happens. Like what has been said previous the game would be monotonously long with time pause. It's virtually impossible to take someone out when they're sleeping anyway. The game is long and I love that because you can strategize and scheme to help yourself. But pausing the game so someone has time to log on and see your plans happening is just lame. I'm sorry if you don't like to time you have to put into this game, but changing the play style to become slower ruins the game and just turns it into another basic strategy game. only the game is stretched out over many weeks and becomes a chore to play not enjoyable.

Judging from your post, I don’t think you understand at all what I’m proposing here. Perhaps I should have been more clear.

First of all, what I’m suggesting is an *option*. You said that you would quit the game if this was implemented, which makes me think that you thought i was suggesting we make this happen for every game. Not the case, I’m only suggesting adding an option.

The idea here is that when we start up a game, we can specify what times it’s playable, and we can specify a speed. For example, instead of the current “24/7” game, I might specify my game to only be playable from 10am to 10pm, and be 2x the speed (a “12/7” game). In this way, the game lasts exactly the same amount of days, and the exact same stuff happens in the game. Or perhaps someone could do a “8/7” game: 3x as fast, and have it be 1-9pm.

Either way, there’s just as much strategy involved, and timing attacks are still a completely valid strategy: you could still time your attacks to land just before their reinforcements get there, or whatever you want.

You say that it’s virtually impossible to take someone out while they’re sleeping. I have no idea why people keep saying that this doesn’t happen. The last night I was playing, I destroyed half of an opponent’s neptunium by letting them take my mine and having my navigator retake it three times in rapid succession, inbetween their subs landing. This was at 3am, and they didn’t see it because they were asleep, like I knew they would be. There was a 30 minute window in which he could have reacted. It is most definitely possible to destroy someone at night time, I can make a video of my time machine for anyone who can’t fathom this happening. The poor guy then quit the game, I’m sad to say. Needless to say, he supports the idea of a 12/7 game.

The idea that serious players who want continuous games will have to wait hours more to play a continuous game is not necessarily true:

• First, let's be clear on the scale of the supposed problem: people who can spend a week on a game are a lot more able to wait a few hours for one to start up compared to other games like Starcraft.
• How many of today’s players are these “serious players who want a continuous game” as opposed to a 12/7 game? We don’t know, because there have been no polls, and it doesn’t exist yet.
• How many players are actively being pushed away because of the demanding nature of the game? That's probably hurting your ability to find games much more than adding this option might.
• Some players might just need to ease into subterfuge with the 12/7, and then later on want to try a 24/7 game, or perhaps try it over spring/winter breaks. I would be in that category: 12/7 games normally, and a few 24/7 games over the breaks. So by not pushing those players away, we’re actually *gaining* players who might play in the 24/7 pool.
• By making this game more accessible, it will spread faster, which will indirectly bring in more 24/7 players. For example, let’s say this option existed. I’d be playing this game year round, and undoubtedly be talking about it with my friends and trying to get them to play, instead of what I’m doing now, which is saying “Best not play this game, it’s freakin’ amazing, the best I've ever played, but it will destroy your life.” Some of the friends I might have gotten to play might even be the 24/7 type, who knows.
• There might be some international players who might have a harder time finding 12/7 games that lines up with their sleep patterns, but this problem is mitigated by the aforementioned faster spread, and there will always be people who prefer 24/7 games, such as yourself, which is why it would be an option.

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by someone logging on to see your plans. Why else do we even have vision of the space around our bases? It’s so we can see what they’re doing right now. The speedup compensates enough for this, but if you want to compensate more, then we can reduce the base sight radius, or, not that I think this next idea is necessary, add “day”/“night” cycles for vision, similar to how WC3 does it. There are much better ways to do this than what’s being done now, which is giving a considerable disadvantage the vast majority of the population who needs their sleep to function, such as software engineers, or especially surgeons like ucross.

Hopefully this clarifies for you what’s being proposed here.

When the exhibition game was happening we paused the game on the weekends in order to give a break from filming. (That's why this thread started, actually)
So being one of only 7 people in the world who have experienced an in-game pause (I believe), I think I can speak with some authority on this topic. So here are the pros and cons of my experience, and keep in mind this was a weekend, not overnight, pause.

Pros:

1. That weekend was actually fairly relaxing. It sounds odd to say that a break from a game was "relaxing," but, as many have already said, this game is stressful. It was nice to be able to step back, catch up on some work without checking every hour, and just hang out with friends without notifications to distract me.
2. Stepping back from the game gave me the ability to think about my next moves with more clarity than I would otherwise have had. I believe I made about 3 large changes in my immediate plans over the weekend.
3. When the game finally did start up again, I was excited. It was kind of like going for a run after a couple days of slacking off. I remembered why I enjoyed the game.
4. This may or may not be me, but the chat was pretty "friendly" across the break. Some of the tension eased off.

Cons:
1. I forgot a lot over the weekend. This may not be the case with overnight pauses, though.
2. It broke the game pace significantly. There's a definitely strange feeling to jumping back into a game after a pause.
3. I kept compulsively checking Subterfuge anyways. That might just be my addiction, but I can't be the only one.
4. I'm sure everyone else in the game was studying the map as much as me, because nobody was taken off guard for the next couple of days. That dry period from days 5-6? That was right around the pause. I found myself just trying to defend against the 100 different possible attacks instead of playing aggressively, as I should have been.

Anyways, I don't think I'd play with a pause if it were an option. But that might just be because I'm used to the game as is.
One other thing I want to point out:
It was easy for me to make the jump from a game with no breaks to a game with breaks. However, I don't think the opposite would be true. It's not easy to play around your sleep schedule, and I think that's an obvious fact. So I think a lot of players who might actually enjoy continuous play might never try it because non-continuous play is easier. Perhaps make it exclusive for L2 clearance, so noobs get a taste of the "real" game.

Also, I'd be interested to hear if any of the other exhibition players had similar thoughts?

I am personally very much against this idea. I play late into the night and also on the weekends and I love it. It adds an aspect of the game to have people gone for 6-10 hours while they are a sleep. You also can't coordinate such a time. When is night in a game? A game starts after all the players have joined; so would that be 12 hours after that? If this was implemented it would have to be an option for the game set by the game starter.
Also if you can turn the game off for sleep way wouldn't people insist it could be turned off while they are at work or school?
Not a very logical idea.

completely against the idea. I dont see the point. if you take advantage of a player sleeping, most likely he will take advantage of your sleep/offline time. The game is fine and i love it the way it is.

verdagon wrote:Judging from your post, I don’t think you understand at all what I’m proposing here. Perhaps I should have been more clear.

First of all, what I’m suggesting is an *option*. You said that you would quit the game if this was implemented, which makes me think that you thought i was suggesting we make this happen for every game. Not the case, I’m only suggesting adding an option.

The idea here is that when we start up a game, we can specify what times it’s playable, and we can specify a speed. For example, instead of the current “24/7” game, I might specify my game to only be playable from 10am to 10pm, and be 2x the speed (a “12/7” game). In this way, the game lasts exactly the same amount of days, and the exact same stuff happens in the game. Or perhaps someone could do a “8/7” game: 3x as fast, and have it be 1-9pm.

Either way, there’s just as much strategy involved, and timing attacks are still a completely valid strategy: you could still time your attacks to land just before their reinforcements get there, or whatever you want.

You say that it’s virtually impossible to take someone out while they’re sleeping. I have no idea why people keep saying that this doesn’t happen. The last night I was playing, I destroyed half of an opponent’s neptunium by letting them take my mine and having my navigator retake it three times in rapid succession, inbetween their subs landing. This was at 3am, and they didn’t see it because they were asleep, like I knew they would be. There was a 30 minute window in which he could have reacted. It is most definitely possible to destroy someone at night time, I can make a video of my time machine for anyone who can’t fathom this happening. The poor guy then quit the game, I’m sad to say. Needless to say, he supports the idea of a 12/7 game.

The idea that serious players who want continuous games will have to wait hours more to play a continuous game is not necessarily true:

• First, let's be clear on the scale of the supposed problem: people who can spend a week on a game are a lot more able to wait a few hours for one to start up compared to other games like Starcraft.
• How many of today’s players are these “serious players who want a continuous game” as opposed to a 12/7 game? We don’t know, because there have been no polls, and it doesn’t exist yet.
• How many players are actively being pushed away because of the demanding nature of the game? That's probably hurting your ability to find games much more than adding this option might.
• Some players might just need to ease into subterfuge with the 12/7, and then later on want to try a 24/7 game, or perhaps try it over spring/winter breaks. I would be in that category: 12/7 games normally, and a few 24/7 games over the breaks. So by not pushing those players away, we’re actually *gaining* players who might play in the 24/7 pool.
• By making this game more accessible, it will spread faster, which will indirectly bring in more 24/7 players. For example, let’s say this option existed. I’d be playing this game year round, and undoubtedly be talking about it with my friends and trying to get them to play, instead of what I’m doing now, which is saying “Best not play this game, it’s freakin’ amazing, the best I've ever played, but it will destroy your life.” Some of the friends I might have gotten to play might even be the 24/7 type, who knows.
• There might be some international players who might have a harder time finding 12/7 games that lines up with their sleep patterns, but this problem is mitigated by the aforementioned faster spread, and there will always be people who prefer 24/7 games, such as yourself, which is why it would be an option.

I’m not entirely sure what you mean by someone logging on to see your plans. Why else do we even have vision of the space around our bases? It’s so we can see what they’re doing right now. The speedup compensates enough for this, but if you want to compensate more, then we can reduce the base sight radius, or, not that I think this next idea is necessary, add “day”/“night” cycles for vision, similar to how WC3 does it. There are much better ways to do this than what’s being done now, which is giving a considerable disadvantage the vast majority of the population who needs their sleep to function, such as software engineers, or especially surgeons like ucross.

Hopefully this clarifies for you what’s being proposed here.

You do that if you want to but keep me out of it. I definitely think it takes out a key aspect of the game. There are so many other time-based games that run on this kind of system without a problem. I don't think this game should be any exception with its use of time.

telemitry: indeed, the way I imagine it, it would be an option set by the starter. Also, if the players want to have the game off while theyre at work or school, and they all agree beforehand which times they want the game to auto-pause, then why not let them? It's a perfectly logical idea.

thunder: indeed, if everyone has the freedom to stay up at night to check on the game and modify their orders, that would seem fair at first glance, but you're missing the point. The problem here is that while they have this freedom, a vast number of players can't use it. Do you want a game to be decided by who can stay up the latest, or who has the most skill?

Roadkiehl, those are some great points. I didn't think of how the chat would become friendlier during the pause, or the excitement of coming back to it, it makes some sense. I'm glad to hear you felt much more relaxed when the game was paused, that's exactly what I'm hoping a pause feature would accomplish. And those cons of weekend-pauses don't sound like they'd apply to a 12/7 game, which is good, though that last one might apply to an 8/7 game a little more.

I feel like you struck gold with that idea of making it an L2-only feature, it's the best of all worlds. It makes moot aclonicy's concerns that there will be a drop in players playing 24/7; new players who havent yet bought the game will enter into 24/7 games. And once they experience the stress and demands, then instead of them leaving the game for good, they'd be buying L2 instead, which is awesome. This could greatly help the devs' financial situation, while at the same time giving players the flexibility they need to keep playing the game. Good stuff!

roadkiehl wrote: Also, I'd be interested to hear if any of the other exhibition players had similar thoughts?

i LOVED the break. the game makes me anxious sometimes and having the weekend to relax was really nice. also at the time i was only able to see my GF on weekends and it annoys her if i check often, so it worked out really well for me.

honestly, if given the option to schedule breaks i would probably start hosting games that pause on the weekends.

personally i don't think i'd pause at night though, i like waking up and finding the game has jumped forward. its not often i feel like i can't play optimally without waking up early though there are definitely occasions. i would probably try it once to see how it goes though.