Hardcore Ironman & "Pause"

[Osvir]

Some difficulty thoughts, specifically on "Pausing". Could it be time-limited with a cooldown? "You've got 30 seconds to make your decisions" in "Pause-Mode" on Hardcore, or maybe as an "Option"?

 

Personally I think it could be fun, a slider that you can decide for yourself how long of a pause you want. Perhaps you can turn "Pause" off entirely and go "Real Time" entirely.

 

Don't get me wrong, I love the "Pause" function. Just discussing various ways to make a "Sh-- that's difficult!" difficulty

 

Thoughts?

[Valsuelm]

Um...

 

I want to be able to go to the bathroom, grab a sandwich, answer the door, answer the phone, etc, and not have to worry about my Ironman game coming to an end because of some pause limit. Pause should be indefinite.

[Osvir]

Don't misunderstand. I agree with you.

 

What are your thoughts on "How difficult can difficult be"?

 

EDIT: Come out, come out, all of you "Hardcore" children who want a challenge and not some petty attempt at a psuedo-challenge pretending to be a challenge!

Edited January 4, 2013 by Osvir

[Tale]

Challenge should come from the enemies, preferably from their tactics and and environments, not from the control system being limited.

[Sacred_Path]

For me personally nothing is gained by very short pause or no pause, except honing your twitch skills. Especially the placing of spells is a PITA in real time. A slider could appeal to some people, but then I'd say you can always enforce short pauses yourself (much like I'd play with no reloads even if there was no Ironman mode).

[PrimeJunta]

No me gusta. P:E should not, repeat, not, be or become a twitch game.

[Osvir]

Sacred_Path pretty much said it.

 

Baldur's Gate can be played entirely real time, except it is very very difficult (on higher difficulties too). P:E should be difficult on "real time", challenging, that's all I'm advocating for (we all agree). Like Sacred_Path said, you could simply enforce yourself to not press "Pause". Likewise, like in another thread (About Economy & Difficulty, Adventurer's Hall "Off" option?), enforcing yourself is not quite the same as being enforced "You can't climb that 'mountain' because the game doesn't allow you" versus "Oh you can, but you don't have to climb that 'mountain'".

 

If there are optional rules, that makes the game more difficult for the Challenger/Player, turning off "Pause" in some script sounds not too difficult to implement, unless the pause is woven into abilities and events and the fabric of the world somehow in the code, then it might be a little bit more difficult to just turn "Off".

 

I'm just saying plain n' simple that it'd be physically difficult to be able to turn pause "Off" or on a "Timer" or just "Unlimited". Just as if the Adventurer's Hall would make the game more difficult by being able to turn it "Off". Likewise, I can just enforce myself (but in that case there's always a plan B).

 

What I'm thinking is something Heroes of Might & Magic use, where you can choose "Indefinite" or choose a specific time for how much time everyone can take on their turn and I wonder if a mechanic like that would be functional in P:E.

 

Playing with the idea/Brainstorming: Could a "Pause" physically affect your party members somehow on a harder difficulty? Stamina drain? Penalties? Morale? That might make little sense, I'm fishing for difficulty ideas~

[Ieo]

No. Pause as an external player mechanic should never be limited into "difficulty" modes. My feelings here.

And to expand on S_P/PrimeJunta's observation:

 

The idea of reducing or impeding the pause function of a game in this genre implies you believe twitch games and real-time like MMOs without pause functionality are somehow inherently more difficult, challenging, and thus "better" in gameplay. This is a completely wrong frame of mind.

 

Get out.

Edited January 4, 2013 by Ieo

[Osvir]

No. No what makes you come to that conclusion Ieo?

 

I just said that I think that BG is inheritable difficult as is if you enforce yourself not to "Pause".

 

What does MMO have anything to do with it? P:E would be played like the IE games and Josh has already said that he feels that nostalgic feeling about it? Sure, there could be a feature or two that you could use if you took it apart in an MMO game, that's the entire thing, you'd have to pick it apart first. <- underline is de-railing topic.

 

*shakes head*

 

Try playing Baldur's Gate without "Pause" on the hardest difficulty and tell me how difficult it is. More or less than MMO-kindergarten? You got BG:EE, right Ieo? So which is harder? MMO or BG? (without pause)

 

EDIT: "Parried"

Edited January 4, 2013 by Osvir

[AGX-17]

No. No what makes you come to that conclusion Ieo?

 

I just said that I think that BG is inheritable difficult as is if you enforce yourself not to "Pause".

 

What does MMO have anything to do with it? P:E would be played like the IE games and Josh has already said that he feels that nostalgic feeling about it? Sure, there could be a feature or two that you could use if you took it apart in an MMO game, that's the entire thing, you'd have to pick it apart first. <- underline is de-railing topic.

 

*shakes head*

 

Try playing Baldur's Gate without "Pause" on the hardest difficulty and tell me how difficult it is. More or less than MMO-kindergarten? You got BG:EE, right Ieo? So which is harder? MMO or BG? (without pause)

 

EDIT: "Parried"

 

The game's combat system is designated as "realtime with pause," not "realtime." That's really all there is to it. In an MMO, each character is being controlled in realtime by a human player. In a game like P:E, a single human player has to manage and direct the tactics of the entire party in a game environment specifically designed to allow or even necessitate pausing.

 

If you don't want to play the game with pausing, don't pause it. That's really all there is to it.

[Ieo]

Try playing Baldur's Gate without "Pause" on the hardest difficulty and tell me how difficult it is. More or less than MMO-kindergarten? You got BG:EE, right Ieo? So which is harder? MMO or BG? (without pause)

 

You missed my point. Your suggestion doesn't merely want to shift this genre into a completely different one, but by tying pause to difficulty levels, you're making an evaluation across the game types that's inappropriate. Pause is a key feature in this genre that makes it different from those game types I cited. Different. That's different. Not more or less difficult. I've raided in MMOs and played plenty of SP games with pause, whatever challenges either game type presents are different.

 

You can't fairly or logically conclude an evaluation or "difficulty" across completely different game types like this.

[Osvir]

No no no. My suggestion is only to retain the old, but instead of playing Baldur's Gate on Hardcore Ironman normally, I could turn off the pause button (this doesn't exist in Baldur's Gate). Mechanically, not "Off" by default. ~Sigh.

 

I just forgot that you could just choose not to use it.

Edited January 4, 2013 by Osvir

[rjshae]

As the player you're essentially doing the thinking for six different characters. The only way to realistically play it as a "twitch" game would be to slow the action down to one-sixth normal, which wouldn't be fun at all. So no, even on hardcore mode, I still want my pause button. If you want to play hardcore mode without a pause, then do so... and good luck to you.

[Duke]

Look, I would never in a million years play with a limited pause function, but all he's suggesting is that it be an option.

[Heresiarch]

Ironman could implement shocking the player with a nice 5 volt discharge every time he hits the pause. It should work like a good deterring measure in my opinion, not to mention that it's such a healthy and natural way to increase the game difficulty.

[TRX850]

What about a save function similar to the original Tomb Raider or Tomb Raider 2 game?

 

I prefer the TR2 option where finding limited "save crystals" throughout the game allows you to er...do what it says on the can...save the game, which makes you plan your game strategy much more.

 

Much in the same way permadeath introduces palpable fear/stress to some games, if you choose a hardcore mode in P:E, removing the "save every 5 seconds" option would be one method.

 

I'd only play hardcore once I'd completed the game in "normal" mode first though. But I'd still want a traditional pause option.

[Heresiarch]

Ironman mode is about making you cope with the results, not about making you replay the whole game when you loose. Hence, to have a decent Ironman mode a game should be relatively hard to screw up, otherwise no one is going to use the feature. So cranking up the difficulty on the Ironman is more than likely to simply make it unplayable.

[aVENGER]

Challenge should come from the enemies, preferably from their tactics and and environments, not from the control system being limited.

 

^This.

 

For anyone who thinks that not using the pause button is providing an additional challenge - no one here is stopping you from playing that way. Heck, go record a video of your "no-pause playthrough" and put it up on youtube, if you are so inclined. I just don't see "limited pausing" as a feature that needs to be implemented.

[Luridis]

Since you're asking for it as an option, sure as long as it's 100% optional on all difficulties. Likewise, there is a pause option I would like to see too: Automatic end of round pause. Oh and, something that can be toggled from the UI please.

 

Why? For your average run of the mill encounter AI typically works fine. When you're in a heated battle is when things can go very wrong. i.e. You're a little late getting back to cue something up for the wizard and all of a sudden you have FF artillery going off in your warrior line that is already struggling under high incoming DPS. It's not like a PnP game where there's an actual brain behind each party member's action. This is you, needing to make all the decisions and that's made even more difficult with the real-time nature of a CRPG engine.

 

A passive follow for combat would be nice too. I'm currently playing NWN2 and when you set the AI options to "Don't Engage in Melee" and "Don't Cast Spells" the idiot keeps running back and fourth, and around the corner, and down the corridor and aggros a ton of other mobs. If you turn AI off for the character they don't do these things, but then they don't bother to follow you either. More often than not I've got the whole party on "follow me" and don't bother giving the attack order until we're in a room full of enemies where I can safely cut them lose without them running to another door and opening it. Ya know so... "Don't Engage" and "Don't Path Like a Freak" in one button would be nice.

[Dream]

They should add Heaven or Hell mode because, you know.

[Somna]

Time-limited pauses would only be valid if it was going to be a multi-player game, because endless pausing when there are other people is incredibly annoying.

 

Since there is no multi-player...