Anyway, here are my thoughts on some of the posts in this topic:
Themken: I can also see how people lose their concentration when a multi-player game pauses in the middle and then starts again without any warning. Think about the other(s) who have to wait for your pause to end with their whole body tense trying to be prepared to get back into action in milliseconds after time starts again. No thank you! Turn based better then. Personally I am starting to get too slow so need to use pause in single player or lower game speed or difficulty but that does not work in mp, does it now.
By all means, keep thinking up new game functions but sadly a lot of them will not be fun when tested.
I could see this being an issue. The time limit on pausing is intended to limit the amount of pausing and to ensure that one player doesn't stall the game forever. (I actually got the idea for the time limit from chess, which in some games (tournament play for example) gives players time limits.)
BlackMageJ: To make it less frustrating, I'd suggest changing it from fully pausing the game to going into slow-motion- enough to give players more time to react and activate abilities, but not bringing the game to a complete halt. Also, I'd have the limit timer be very short (maybe 10-20 seconds) and slowly refill while time is flowing. Again, enough time to fire off your strategy, but not to bog down the match.
The idea of having the time limit be short but regenerating is an interesting one. I would consider the possibility of having the time continue to refill while the other player has paused the game.
Martek: I don't care for the idea of '
if that time limit runs out, the game will unpause and that player loses the ability to pause for the rest of the game'. Something like that should be a configurable option. Maybe selectable options like 'loses pause for 0 turns / 1 turn / 5 turns / ...', etc.
What if someone had to go to the bathroom suddenly; or the baby spilled something? Seems a bit harse to punish the player 'for the rest of the game'. JMO.. :)
For one thing, I would make the time limit configurable; when playing with a friend, you might try playing with an infinite time limit. (It's not a good idea when playing strangers online.) The lose pause for X time is similar to BlackMageJ's suggestion of the regenerating time limit.
My understanding is that multiplayer games don't usually allow pause. For the bathroom situation, in single player the player could just save the game and reload. For multiplayer, if one wants to handle this case, perhaps pause time doesn't run out as long as both players have paused the game.
bevinator: It'd be far too easy to grief other players with the active pause, even with a time limit. If the timer resets when it's unpaused, just pause the game for 4m58s, unpause for 1s, repause for 4m58s, repeat. If the timer doesn't reset in a match, you'd just use smaller intermittent (but frequent) pauses to much the same effect... plus it could cause problems in longer matches if it's a 5m total pause cap per game.
Plus, getting randomly paused without warning is awful and shouldn't happen in multiplayer. I use the active pause in Dawn of War singleplayer CONSTANTLY, but I have no problems with its pauseless multiplayer, because it's the only way to keep the game both fair and quick.
One way to limit constant pausing is to make it so that, when you pause, you immediately lose a certain amount of pause time; hence, if you constantly pause and unpause, you would run out of pause time much faster than if you used just one longer pause.
The pause cap per game would be configurable, and the actual amount would be established through playtesting. Also, the regenerating pause time idea might also work for longer matches (though it might cause issues if a player has too many units to issue orders to before pause time runs out).
