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

[Jip]

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

I disagree with the suggestion. The data is in the replay, therefore you could extent the replay parsing to detect it that a (different) player immediately unpauses after a pause of another player. Therefore it would not even be difficult to confirm a report. However, I think this is an unhealthy direction. It's not clear that this is 'not okay' and I think therefore players will just get banned and perceive that as random.

The suggestions of @snoog may work, but that is not how the engine functions that we have available work. They work on a per-player basis, not on a per-team basis.

It may be possible to overwrite the global and force a delay before a (different) player can unpause the game after another player paused it. We could make that delay at least 10 seconds. This appears at the moment of writing like a small hook, without complicated logic: If you did not initiate the pause then you have a 10 seconds delay before you can unpause.

When there is a bad actor then you can keep the game 'paused' for 30 seconds on your own. And if you have team mates then you can keep it paused longer. This is not perfect, but neither is the fact that the player that pauses does so for a very long duration .

[FtXCommando]

A pause going for longer than 2-3 minutes with no update on ETA does bother me and I will begin telling the lobby I plan on unpausing the game. At that point you would have been better off telling us to rehost. I don't have the luxury to walk away and do whatever while randomly waiting for you to get back, I have to stare at my 1 or 2 engies (these pauses always seem to happen right at game start for whatever reason).

I imagine somebody is wondering how that applies to "immediate unpausing" and the answer is that if you do unpause, somebody is always bothered by it and pauses again and you go through the dance of using up their unpauses.

In later game situations, if the pause is THAT long the more responsible thing is to give your base and ask for it back when you are back. I have done this before and it's been fine without making everyone twiddle their thumbs.

[IndexLibrorum]

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

Is it possible to implement forced in-game pause with a time limit?
Meaning player can force 1 or 3 minute pause and no one can unpause the game for that duration of time.

Currently the only in-game lobby settings regarding something similar is “3 time breaks, 7 time breaks, unlimited”. And the 3/7 options are terrible cause if someone’s keep unpausing you are quickly out of limit

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

I suggest a possible solution to unpausing: make a system where every player (or team) has a set maximum pause time (like 2 mins per player or around 5-6 per team, idk), and make the unpause work on a majority vote or when time runs out. That way, i can pause and have a few minutes to deal with IRL and come back, if a single annoying guy tries to unpause due to bad manners, he can be blocked by the more civil users in the game.

If this is possible, that would be an elegant way to solve the issue too. Thanks for the suggestion.

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

it creates more of a backlog for mods to handle

Don't worry about the extra work for the mods; with the systems we currently have in place moderating this rule more strongly would not add significant amount of work to our plates. I wouldn't be suggesting this idea without considering the effect on our team, ofcourse!

[BlackYps]

I also think it is better to improve the situation by changing how the pause system works instead of changing the rules. The issue seems to be primarily one guy in a teamgame being a dick and unpausing immediately while the rest has no issue waiting. If we change pausing to requiring a vote we can strip this power from a singular player. I know that counterstrike has a vote for a timeout of a fixed length. (Or at least it did while I actively played it.)
If we think carefully how we design this system and how many votes we require, I believe we can come up with something that is pleasant for everyone involved. For example it could be a pause of a fixed length that could be resumed earlier with a vote.

[IndexLibrorum]

@BlackYps Perhaps a system where a person can request a pause for a minute, or two minutes, which has to be accepted by vote. Don't allow the pause to be cancelled before, except by the person who initially requested the pause?

[Jip]

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

The suggestions of @snoog may work, but that is not how the engine functions that we have available work. They work on a per-player basis, not on a per-team basis.

@BlackYps I'd personally suggest this solution:

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

It may be possible to overwrite the global and force a delay before a (different) player can unpause the game after another player paused it. We could make that delay at least 10 seconds. This appears at the moment of writing like a small hook, without complicated logic: If you did not initiate the pause then you have a 10 seconds delay before you can unpause.

That way we do not fight with how the engine functions work and the solution is simple to test and maintain.

[TheVVheelboy]

The only problem is the potential abuse. So unless you make it so there is definite pause limit per team, it can go wrong. Not per player, but per team. As otherwise it's possible for someone to go afk for a long time, and have his teammates/premades just prolong it as long as possible. Which imo is a no-go. And considering you can't have pause time allocated per team. I think it would be necessary to split say, 15 minutes of time on each team to it's players. So say, 2v2? Everyone get's 7.5 minutes, 3v3 5 minutes per player in team. 4v4 3.75 minutes. So that the possible wait time will never go above certain limit.

Why 15 minutes? Dunno, just shooting in the ballpark of what CS-2 offers with all it's possible timeouts being used. Obviously it up to debate how much time could be allocated in faf. But I think that 15 minutes is definitely the upper limit of time per team allowed. Though to be honest, I would Ctrl+k after just 5 minutes of waiting. I'm not here to look at my t1 mexes, but to play the game. Especially if it's global one. I guess ranked I could be inclined to wait lil bit more.

[maudlin27]

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)

[Razana]

A minimum duration for a pause is a good start IMO. I haven't touched Dota 2 in years but they had a similar system when I played it.

[Crofis]

I'm embarrassed to inform you that i quite often missclick on the pause button while microing units in intense fights :3 (and i've seen other people do the same), but if no other solution is better due to engine i guess that's still an improvement

[Jip]

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

The only problem is the potential abuse. So unless you make it so there is definite pause limit per team, it can go wrong. Not per player, but per team

The game does not work this way. It works on a per-player basis. There's a lobby option to limit the number of pauses. You can use that to prevent it from being infinite.

And if there are infinite timeouts and a party decides to do that then I think you can just report them. See also the rules and search for 'Ruining games'. It states:

Ruining games — Do not deliberately ruin games by abusing game mechanics, such as continuously pausing the game or spamming pings.

[Nuggets]

Oh boy, i can already see how this (if implemented) will get exploited, gg

[Sainse]

@Nuggets "don't pause the game to get game advantage" is already bannable

[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:

1. 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)
2. an official warning by a Mod with starting counter for repeated offences across matches
3. 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!
4. 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?