One of the most important auto-pause options in the Infinity Engine games was the one which triggers when a player controlled character casts a spell. Yet, it has not been implemented into PoE. I mentioned it here on forums quite a few times when the beta was released thinking it was an oversight on developers part (given that there is an auto-pause option when an enemy cast spell and many others, imo less useful, auto-pauses).

 

I checked the last beta build and to my surprise, it is still not there. So my question is, will this ever be implemented? And if not, what was the reason to it?

 

 

I thought it already was. Does this only auto-pause on enemy cast? Because I would not want to pause on enemy cast, but I would want to pause on PC cast.

Edited January 21, 201511 yr by BrainMuncher

I thought it already was. Does this only auto-pause on enemy cast? Because I would not want to pause on enemy cast, but I would want to pause on PC cast.

 

Only on enemy cast, unfortunately.

Hopefully it's not too hard to add in. But please Obsidian, if you do add it, make it separate from the enemy cast auto-pause. And make it pause when a PC finishes casting a spell, or is interrupted when casting, or fails their casting for any other reason.

Wow, I simply assumed it was when the player cast a spell. I have the eerie feeling that someone misread the intention of the option and programmed it wrong, because there's no way I can see how "pause on enemy spellcast" to be an intended functionality.

Wow, I simply assumed it was when the player cast a spell. I have the eerie feeling that someone misread the intention of the option and programmed it wrong, because there's no way I can see how "pause on enemy spellcast" to be an intended functionality.

I guess it's helpful in that you can take the time to see what's being cast and on whom, then adjust your tactics accordingly before unpausing? Instead of having to go "Issuing some orders, yeah... totally issuing WAIT! PHILLIP WAS PETRIFIED?! AWW CRAP! *PAUSE*". Hehe. *shrug*

Petrified? Theses no save or die in PoE. Its "unfair" and makes people get red about the face.

Petrified? Theses no save or die in PoE. Its "unfair" and makes people get red about the face.

No, but there is petrification. It's just not "you didn't save so you're dead" petrification.

In theory.

 

In practice the enemies keep wailing on you and damage comes straight out of your health, so it is an extremely quick trip to Maimed at the very least.

In theory.

 

In practice the enemies keep wailing on you and damage comes straight out of your health, so it is an extremely quick trip to Maimed at the very least.

Unless you stop them ASAP because the game auto-paused the moment the petrification took effect. 8P

 

Not saying it's easy, but there's a lot of room between guaranteed death-avoidance and guaranteed death when something happens.

To be fair though, Petrification wasn't equal to death in the IE games. It was poorly implemented because it could break some questlines (related to romance or companion quests; but so could regular dying) but in most cases, you were simply petrified and it could be cured fairly easily.

Implementation was just stuck between "Perfect" and "Holy ****snacks this is ****ty".

Wait wait wait they STILL haven't fixed this? That's ... auuugh come on Obsidian. This is one of the central ways to make large numbers of ability-users manageable.

I reckon all we can do is keep bringing it up and hope that it is implemented. If pushing back the release date means more features like pause-on-self-cast are included, by all means I am happy to wait. I know Obsidian folks read our posts so if we speak they'll listen.

Same thing (problem) with auto-pause on hit. 

 

It is supposed to be when a PC controlled character is hit... Not whenever an enemy is hit ....

 

So IMO the auto-pause options are pretty useless right now :/

... And make it pause when a PC finishes casting a spell, or is interrupted when casting, or fails their casting for any other reason.

 

Yes, I wholeheartedly agree.

It looks like they did exactly what I warned against all along: Throwing together a bunch of lazily-brainstormed autopause options, without even trying to understand how and why players would actually use use auto-pause. 

 

A good auto-pause system would have required them to go about it systematically: I.e. carefully think about the kind of play-styles that benefit from auto-pause, and then for each of those identified play-styles make sure that all required auto-pause options are available and implemented in the most useful way.

Edited January 30, 201510 yr by Ineth

A nice auto-pause option would be on ability use (spells included, they are a caster's abilities).

A good auto-pause system would have required them to go about it systematically: I.e. carefully think about the kind of play-styles that benefit from auto-pause, and then for each of those identified play-styles make sure that all required auto-pause options are available and implemented in the most useful way.

 

That's a good list. It tallies up with what I want from autopausing.

Yes, I think auto pause on player cast would be great, hope they can implement this, or they leave it open for modders. Dunno if they can leave it for modders due to unity, but yeah. Hope so.

Just a quick info: no changes to auto-pauses in the latest beta build. 

 

Auto-pause when a player controlled character casts a spell is still missing and the auto-pause when an enemy casts a spell is buggy - sometimes it triggers, sometimes it does not.

Edited March 13, 201510 yr by Tanred

Odd. in [435] that option caused a pause at the start of every combat when my Paladin character threw up his aura. I thought this was annoying enough to quickly disable the option, so I haven't tried it much. Still, it triggered on a Player Spell.

 

So may be more bug than lack of feature?

Yes, the enemy spell auto-pause triggers on certain player spells - it has always been like that and I reported it as a bug when the first beta build was released.

Edited March 13, 201510 yr by Tanred

Obsidian, thank you:)

Obsidian, thank you:)

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