Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.

Nuggets

Its not about getting advantage (didnt think of that, but maybe also relevant). What i see with this is: someone got pissed off, pauses and says "brb" and people literally have to wait even though everyone knows its not a serious pause. Not to mention "oh misclick"

Sainse

This post is deleted!

Sainse

The way to make it less abusable potentially is to make the pause on per-team voting. Like recall. But in this case "force pause".

The other problem it would introduce is in this case the whole team shouldn't make any orders on pause, which is not realistic and would interfere with the game rules about game advantage

xclkvnspoijfoisn

I encounter this issue like 1/100 games. It's a very minor issue and not something that happens regularly.

I'm against implementing new rules for fairly niche situations generally. I think a more free system with less restrictions is better for everyone.

More rules > more ways to get banned > more players banned > less players to play with > less games > less fun.

Nuggets

@Jip said in Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.:

Some people do not appear to understand that this topic is a suggestion. And you can disagree with the suggestion without ridiculing it.

I very well knew this is a discussion, thanks for your kind reminder. I could disagree without ridiculing it. Maybe we should create a rule for it

RudePlayer

Something to be said about this, and all moderation actions/rules, which I know may not be part of this discussion at hand but, can we please stop with manipulating the ban hammer for everything. Sure, some players will act out at times, sure things happen (ill admit ive acted out at times), but what I've been seeing more and more lately, is players being banned instantly. We've shied away from the idea of warning players, for their actions. Maybe ask, how is their track record from the offense they had before, and from now with the new offense they gained. Was the player warned about their actions, and how recent was it? Sometimes all it takes is a pat on the back, and a brief reminder , to say "Hey, if you keep doing this, you will be banned," according to whichever FAF regulation. That's what some games do, depending on the violation. And that is also how player base population is retained. And I know someone might argue, "Well this person so and so has been a bad player before so they deserve nothing but a ban," again, I think just because they've had offenses in the past, doesn't make it that they are immune to receiving warnings and of course this also depends on the violation. We are a small community as is, let us, as the player base, moderate it as well, with the foe feature. If we don't want to play with someone, let us handle it. Sometimes we find ourselves waiting in a lobby for hours because certain players are banned, which in turn ruins our gaming experience because we are stuck waiting for a player that will give us a quality game.

BlackRedDead

@IndexLibrorum Bannable? - at repeating offences across matches maybe, but not at one or even multiple offences in the same match!

The general procedure for such minor offences should be:

a note about it (yes, one should have read the rules, but unpausing a game can also be an honest mistake!) (executable by anyone, even within the game - non-punishable)
an official warning by a Mod with starting counter for repeated offences across matches
if it's repeated 3x in the same match, kicking that player out of said match, maybe noting such required actions aswell, that ruin all others match!
if someone continues to ignore fairplay in 3 matches, then you can takeout Bans

also the rules about game-pausing are pretty vague and should be clarified first!

Cited from https://www.faforever.com/rules

Teamplay and Fairness:
Game pausing - If another player pauses the game and requests a short break, allow it briefly, but don't feel obliged to wait too long. Abusing pauses to gain an in-game advantage is not allowed.

how long is a reasonable time? - should players state their expected afk time? - give a 1-3min wiggleroom in case something takes longer than expected? - what's a reasonable timelimit? - what about a cooldown for a new pause by any player of the same team?

BlackRedDead

@Crofis if that's a possibility, this is indeed a much better solution than writing and enforcing rules! - but yea, it shouldn't have a timer to unpause, simply unpause by majority vote (~75% - or simple, like 5/8 are enough to unpause), and having a cooldown timer for the next pause of the same player prevents it being abused (like, between 5-15min of (running) matchtime cooldown) - if said player does in fact have another issue within cooldown, a quick request that someone else pauses could be written in chat instead!

BlackRedDead

@Jip sorry, but your suggestion to add a delay between pause and unpause of whole 10s would make it very annoying to deal with the other offense - randomly pausing without reason, maybe even to gain some advantage or even just to annoy ppl - if a delay, 3s is already huge, but useless to address for the proposed usecase/issue! (with 10s delay also not helping at all)

also consider someone accidentally pausing - i don't get who came to the idea limiting pauses does any good, the only thing it prevents is pausing wars, but a cooldown would've been suffice to at least delay them! (tho, ofc prevents a player to pause again shortly after unpausing if RL steps back in again... - wich can definitively happen unpredictably if you have kids!)

BlackRedDead

@IndexLibrorum a vote could potentially take that amount of time if argues in chat have to be exchanged - i think a pause should be immediate, as ppl might have smaller emergencies to deal with right away, not being able to argue - unpause should be the thing to request and argue about, wich can be done in the meantime the person is away!

BlackRedDead

@maudlin27 ...i want to see how you sprint to the bathroom, even just peeing (and don't forget to wash your Hands!), in just 30s! xD - yet alone answer a doorbell or call, or looking after what you kid/pet did that made those loud noises!

BlackRedDead

There's also another potential fringe case issue with all of this - what if someone said he/she/them is away for ~10min, so everyone else is also doing something else in the meantime - but then the player that initiated the Pause comes back after 5min, unpauses and might get the advantage of others being absent from their PC for another 5min - huge advantage, and doesn't even need to be by malicious intend! - so if possible, a general unpause vote, would be the "ideal" solution IMHO (if someone abuses the system by repeatedly pause without good reason, that falls under the rules already! - ofc, an accidental pause would be much more annoying, but maybe it's possible to print votes into chat? - so if the person who pauses immediatly unpauses, ppl know that it's a mistake and just vote unpause aswell and continue playing^^)

maudlin27

@BlackRedDead said in Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.:

@maudlin27 ...i want to see how you sprint to the bathroom, even just peeing (and don't forget to wash your Hands!), in just 30s! xD - yet alone answer a doorbell or call, or looking after what you kid/pet did that made those loud noises!

I already explained in my post how 30s per pause would mean 3.5m in a 3v3, in the same sentence as mentioning 30s so it's not hard to miss...
If you need the game paused more than 3.5m then it doesn't seem fair to force one team to have to wait that long (even if half the players in the game think you should), and 3.5m is plenty of time to do things like answer the doorbell.

BlackRedDead

@maudlin27 said in Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.:

I like the idea of a pause with a fixed length before a player can resume, providing it's relatively short. Around 30s feels reasonable to me, since the default is 3 pauses, so in a 3v3 with 30s that'd mean your teammates could pause for 3m (in addition to the 30s from when you pause and have to go afk) with no further pauses then permitted by them.

Avoids any need for moderation, and strikes a balance between competing interests (since resuming the game while one player is afk likely ruins the game, but it's also no fun to be forced to wait for ages because of one player)

well, it seems i somehow read the first sentence wrong, i assumed you mean a fixed pause of 30s, wich would be ridiculous - i should have read twice there! xP

But, you also did an error - according to your calculations, it's 4:30min total, not 3! (tho, idk why you made that calculation in the first place? - other than maybe to show how much time your proposal could waste in the worst case, when everyone uses all their pauses?)
math = 3 pauses x 3 players in a team x 30s
(wich is the theoretical MINIMUM time a team could waste, if everyone uses all their pauses - wich is arguably WORSE than the current state, in wich you don't have (much) of a delay between pause and unpause/resume)

But that's still just a delay! (like already proposed earlyer, with 10s) - wich, regardless the lenght, only makes things worse.
Having to wait 30s just because someone accidentally paused (worst case) - while on the other hand you go away, assuming you have time, but after 30s someone unpauses = same issue as before, just with a 30s delay. - that proposal solves nothing.

@maudlin27 said in Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.:

@BlackRedDead said in Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.:

@maudlin27 ...i want to see how you sprint to the bathroom, even just peeing (and don't forget to wash your Hands!), in just 30s! xD - yet alone answer a doorbell or call, or looking after what you kid/pet did that made those loud noises!

I already explained in my post how 30s per pause would mean 3.5m in a 3v3, in the same sentence as mentioning 30s so it's not hard to miss...
If you need the game paused more than 3.5m then it doesn't seem fair to force one team to have to wait that long (even if half the players in the game think you should), and 3.5m is plenty of time to do things like answer the doorbell.

And here you state 3.5m(in?, or meters?) now, where do you take that from out of a sudden??? - could you get your thoughts together first and check your math?

That argument (to NOT force ppl waiting longer than necessary, like with a delay) is exactly why i'm against your proposal.

Even if you would've added a point about making pauses only unpausable by the player who started them, this makes no sense back or forth thought - just adding delays solves nothing - even my cooldown (between pauses initiated by the same player*) idea only delays abusement of the pause function! (but only makes sense when the player that initialized is the only person who can resume the game, or by vote!)
*wich doesn't prevent a team initiating pause after pause, but at that point, you ofc meet a team of trolls!

BlackRedDead

I think a vote system could be possible - as to actually pause/unpause the game for other players, the game has to send the (pause/unpause) signals across clients (or rather to the Host), wich can be intercepted and put trough a AND logic until enough signals have been received, with some code to make it work with a majority vote, before sending the actual "resume game" signal to the clients - while printing in chat who's (resume) signal got received to make it transparent to players
tho, i'm by no means a programmer, just an experienced modder!^^ - but someone has to like spending the hours to find out the correct signals (with potentially someone required to help finding them!), write the code and test it! ¯_(ツ)_/¯

maudlin27

@BlackRedDead said in Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.:

But, you also did an error - according to your calculations, it's 4:30min total, not 3!
And here you state 3.5m(in?, or meters?) now, where do you take that from out of a sudden??? - could you get your thoughts together first and check your math?

If you're going to make such comments you should be really sure that you've calculated things correctly. Which you haven't. Despite quoting me where I spell out the calculation for you. 3.5m means 3 and a half minutes, or 3 minutes 30 seconds (something that is obvious from the context). That is made up of 30s (that's seconds...) for the first person pausing when they go afk, and 3 minutes for their teammates who maintain the pause when the enemy team decides to ignore the request and resumes. Since you come up with a 4.5m figure as a 'correction' that suggests you are assuming an afk player is always able to pause the game while afk - in which case they're not actually afk.

In terms of the more coherent argument you make that the problem with this is the risk of accidental pauses, if it's possible to allow either the pauser or anyone on their team to resume the game that would solve the problem. If that's not possible then a shorter delay such as 20s could be done to balance the risk of an accidental pause against the risk of someone ruining the game by resuming.

Jip

@RudePlayer said in Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.:

Something to be said about this, and all moderation actions/rules, which I know may not be part of this discussion at hand but, can we please stop with manipulating the ban hammer for everything. (...)

All of your suggestions already happen. They're just not transparent to the average user. Moderators have a backlog of everything a user did that is relevant to the moderators. There's a lot of thought that go into some reports, up to the point that there's even a Discord channel between the moderators and some game team members to discuss whether something is a bug that is being (intentionally) (ab)used or not.

If anything, try to become a moderator. You'll see (and help maintain) the nuance that you request.

@Nuggets said in Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.:

Not to mention "oh misclick"

You can unpause your own pause just fine. I mentioned this - the delay only applies when you try to unpause a pause that is initiated by another user. Unrelated, the other quote of me is in my opinion a little bit of a clown reaction. That's okay, but to what purpose?

All the discussions about turning pausing into a vote - it is fundamentally not how the game works with pauses. Every user can pause the game. And every user can unpause it. The comparison with Recall is not correct - Recall fundamentally works different. They're not comparable.

It feels to me a lot of people are just thinking in problems. We won't ever get to a solution like that, even if the solution means that the original problem is not perceived as much as a problem and therefore does not require any changes.

IndexLibrorum

@Jip said in Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.:

They're just not transparent to the average user.

We've recently released a webpage that explains this whole system in quite some detail. To be found on the main FAF website at https://faforever.com/moderation.

It should help, thought I doubt more than a few people will take the time to read it.

BlackRedDead

@maudlin27 said in Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.:

@BlackRedDead said in Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.:

But, you also did an error - according to your calculations, it's 4:30min total, not 3!
And here you state 3.5m(in?, or meters?) now, where do you take that from out of a sudden??? - could you get your thoughts together first and check your math?

If you're going to make such comments you should be really sure that you've calculated things correctly. Which you haven't. Despite quoting me where I spell out the calculation for you. 3.5m means 3 and a half minutes, or 3 minutes 30 seconds (something that is obvious from the context). That is made up of 30s (that's seconds...) for the first person pausing when they go afk, and 3 minutes for their teammates who maintain the pause when the enemy team decides to ignore the request and resumes. Since you come up with a 4.5m figure as a 'correction' that suggests you are assuming an afk player is always able to pause the game while afk - in which case they're not actually afk.

In terms of the more coherent argument you make that the problem with this is the risk of accidental pauses, if it's possible to allow either the pauser or anyone on their team to resume the game that would solve the problem. If that's not possible then a shorter delay such as 20s could be done to balance the risk of an accidental pause against the risk of someone ruining the game by resuming.

Oh great, now you're trying to gaslight me instead using a calculator, how adult from you xP sarcasm - this is exactly what you stated:
@maudlin27 said in Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.:

I like the idea of a pause with a fixed length before a player can resume, providing it's relatively short. Around 30s feels reasonable to me, since the default is 3 pauses, so in a 3v3 with 30s that'd mean your teammates could pause for 3m (in addition to the 30s from when you pause and have to go afk) with no further pauses then permitted by them.

Avoids any need for moderation, and strikes a balance between competing interests (since resuming the game while one player is afk likely ruins the game, but it's also no fun to be forced to wait for ages because of one player)

3pauses x 3players/team x 30s = 270s / 60s = 4,5min

but doesn't matter, your proposal doesn't address the underlying issue of ppl breaking or abusing pauses (unless you add a delay of 2-4min, wich is indeed enough to check/take care of most IRL distractions, wich is absurd, as you could be back much sooner - especially if it was accidental!) - not to mention if adding such a delay is possible, a vote system is too, and the much better alternative - that might indeed also waste time (as n of players are required to click unpause, to actually unpause the game, wich takes a few seconds longer...) in case of accidental pauses (...still less than a static delay!), but given everyone should be ingame anyway (unless someone told/asked for longer afk times, and others might use that time afk too), not all to much and much less than 30s! (propably even less than 10s.)
While also addressing the issue that the person that initiated the pause, could gain an unfair advantage by being able to singlehandedly unpause again, while others might be still afk too - wich is why a simply majority vote is needed at least (51% or 5/8p), or clear majority vote (75%), or make it require each and everyone to unpause (100%) - given the importance of player active time in this game, i now think that's not only the codewise simpler (as a simple AND logic), but also overall better option - as annoying it can get or potentially be abused by a single troll to not unpause... xP
but you could change that afterwards if that becomes a widespread issue. (but afterall, the issue were disgussing here, is ppl unpause, not ppl refusing to unpause, tho currently simply not possible - but given most ppl are here to play the game, i think that won't be as much of a problem than currently ppl unpausing because they wanna play - but i do see ppl not understanding they have to unpause, so some chatprint would be really necessary to explain the need to unpause, and tell who already unpaused!)

BlackRedDead

@Jip well, the question is how pauses are executed - clicking un-/pause needs to send a signal to the host and eighter to all other clients, or the host to all other clients to do so - if it is possible to only add a delay for everyone else but the person that initiated the Pause, that means you already have(to)/know a way to identify that specific client that send the signal - thus it's possible to write some more code for a simple voting system, and for the chat printouts - yes, it's lots more than a simple delay, but still not all to much - testing it potentially requires more time.

Ofc it's much trickier if the person that clicks un-/pause does send the signal to all others and thus un-/pauses their game directly too, clients&host, but you could still use that system to have an AND vote, that requires everyone to unpause everyones game, before it actually resumes
(just at every client, than just the host)
Tho in that case, it needs an exception procedure for players being dropped out in the meantime! (to not await their unpause signals anymore!)

Suggesting rule change: make immediately unpausing after a player asked for a pause against the rules.

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