Noaloha

I wholly support the suggestion in the OP, but let's not kid ourselves and think that it is an inherent problem of the game design. It is a mistake that they, the player, are making. Well, that's something I can wholeheartedly disagree with. The player's making a mistake when they can't react to something that 's happened a tenth of a second before they chose to pause? The unfortunate double-pause thing is simply an unavoidable (unlucky) aspect of any player both using autopause and manual pause. It's just a timing thing that's going to happen every once in a while assuming some of the autopauses correlate with "oh crap" triggers, arguably where the autopauses are most useful. Pausing when you notice a character at low health is not a mistake the player is making. Using the low endurance trigger is not a mistake the player is making. Taking an unfortunate second hit that triggers the autopause threshold just as your thumb is moving toward the spacebar is not a mistake the player is making. EDIT: waaah, I dun messed up the quotes. hopefully fixed now. apologies.

That's not a solution to the problem. That's a removal of a perfectly legit gameplay option. You're saying "don't use these useful features because occasionally you'll pause a split-second after an auto-pause". How about, instead of denying features as you're suggesting, the game offers extra options in the keybinds that completely negate the problem? In addition to the current single keybind for toggle pause on/off, why not add an extra set of keybinds that correspond to always pause and always unpause? I believe Scouting Mode does this, with an available bind for Scout On/Off, plus two binds for Scout On and Scout Off. Is this not preferable? For a player to both be able to use whatever autopause features the game offers *and* avoid occasional incidents of unfortunate timing when a manual and auto-pause occur back to back?

Yeah, I want the low health autopause. If a character takes a big crit, I want all the reaction time the game will allow me. Or if my party is slightly splitup or otherwise handling a poorly controlled fight (shades/shadows spring to mind) and I'm concentrating on two fronts, I appreciate the assistance of the low endurance pause. Typically, it goes like this. My tank is engaged with multiple enemies and takes a big hit. I react by pausing the game. As I'm reacting, the tank takes a second big hit (not the tank's lucky day) and triggers autopause for low endurance. Game stops. My thumb then makes contact with the spacebar and the game's not paused anymore and I have a bloodied fighter and there's a brief moment where I have to process this and repause. That brief moment is unpleasant for me, like, on a fundamental user basis. I want my 'stop' button to *always* stop things. I don't think I should work around any instances of my spacebar not stopping the game (which is essentially the issue here, boiled down) by choosing to forego certain features of the combat system. Take a look at how the keybindings handle stealth. There's an option for Stealth on/off as a single toggle. Then there's additional binding options for having dedicated 'stealth on' and 'stealth off' buttons. I'd like that for pause/resume. Just as an extra option.

All too often there's an emergency - low health, character one-shotted, whatever - and I smack my spacebar to pause the game, only for the game to have auto-paused a split-second before I do so, resulting in me *unpausing* the game. This is a little frustrating, not to mention rather deadly, especially when it happens a few times in a row (stuff's going badly in a fight!). A feature of the RTwP system is that you always feel that you have some control over proceedings, at least in terms of being able to take a breath and study the situation. When the above accidental unpausing occurs, I lose that feeling and my enjoyment of the game suffers. I want a button that, no matter what, stops what's happening, no exceptions. 'Pause' is currently only available in the game as a toggle on/off. I'd like for there to be another option in the control settings, separate from the single pause toggle button -- a dedicated Pause/Stop keybind and corresponding Unpause/Resume keybind.