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There Needs To Be Some Sort Of Pause Feature


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In single player, viewing the map was not just about navigating, it was a time to sit back and plan out my next move. I'm loving everything in DST so far, I just consistently feel rushed (more so than I believe was intended).

 

In my opinion this could be fixed in a variety of ways, but the most basic implementation I can think of without inconveniencing other players would be a global pause when all players on the server are viewing their map (Edit: at the same time, I guess I wasn't clear). I think this would be a good start anyway, it wouldn't be as useful for larger groups of players, but it certainly wouldn't detract from the experience larger groups had. Smaller groups of 2 or 3 players on a server could easily co-ordinate this, but it wouldn't force a pause for players not in communication on more public games.

 

I think that should be a default setting for the game, with additional pausing/afk features implemented on top of this mechanic for the larger public servers. What do you think?

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@Gordelox, Most of these features are planned. There's going to be a global pause that the host can toggle, and each player will be able to toggle AFK on, which will protect their character as if leaving the server, without actually losing your spot and having to load back in, etc.

 

But I definitely feel you on being rushed. It gets a bit exhausting x_x

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In single player, viewing the map was not just about navigating, it was a time to sit back and plan out my next move

 

Truth has been spoken. At night Im like: "Ok, tomorrow I'll explore this and this, and grab something there"..I mean if its at night I guess you can still do that in DST , but I get your point.

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@rezecib We'll I was aware of the afk/host enabled pause, and thats fine and dandy, but I'm very specific when I say the game should pause while all players are looking at the map, purely and simply because this would have no negative or unwanted effect on larger groups of people (nobody will be forced to pause), but could be used to great benefit on servers where you and a friend or two wanted to plan your days (or simply just look at the map without getting killed). This idea is very geared towards the idea of small co-operative servers among friends, but wouldn't interrupt or interfere with larger groups or pvp servers.

 

I don't know about you, but playing single player every morning I would look at my map and decide where to set out, where resources were, etc. This would allow 2 or 3 people to do just that.

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Truth has been spoken. At night Im like: "Ok, tomorrow I'll explore this and this, and grab something there"..I mean if its at night I guess you can still do that in DST , but I get your point.

 

In my opinion it just feels like every moment the world time is ticking, you should be doing something, my friend and I tonight were woefully unprepared for winter, and I can only attribute this to time wasted in the map. In single player, at least in my experience, every moment of daylight needs to be used wisely outside of your camp, while nighttime provides you time to work on expanding or improving your camp.

 

I'm not tooting my own horn here, but I'm a fairly experienced player, and very precise time management is the name of the game. Frankly any other solution where your character was paused (or afk) but the game time kept moving forward would just put you behind the curve. There could be balances made through making things slightly less demanding (hunger draining slightly slower, seasons lasting slightly longer, day/night cycles taking more time to complete, etc) but a quick and easy fix for the guys who want to play together would be my map pausing idea.

 

I'd really like to hear a dev weigh in on this, as I really can't see any detrimental effect to the game pausing when "all" players are in their map "at the same time". In public games you couldn't count on the game being paused by looking at your map, but in smaller private games it would make a world of difference for those who communicate.

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The devs have already weighed in on this. It's on the list of things to implement.

 

FWIW, the downside of auto-pausing everyone simply because one player did so means that you're interrupting others gameplay. What if they're in the middle of kiting a mob when you suddenly yank them out of it because you want to look at your map? As in all multiplayer games, communication with these sort of sudden changes is essential.

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The devs have already weighed in on this. It's on the list of things to implement.

 

FWIW, the downside of auto-pausing everyone simply because one player did so means that you're interrupting others gameplay. What if they're in the middle of kiting a mob when you suddenly yank them out of it because you want to look at your map? As in all multiplayer games, communication with these sort of sudden changes is essential.

 

I'm not sure that you read my post. It would be terrible if people were forced to pause just because one person wanted to look at their map. That's why my suggestion is to force a global pause only while "all" players are looking at their maps.

 

Edit: I realize now my wording may have made it seem like I was suggesting a global pause while just one player opened his map, I've edited my posts to make my suggestion more clear.

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I'm not sure that you read my post. It would be terrible if people were forced to pause just because one person wanted to look at their map. That's why my suggestion is to force a global pause only while "all" players are looking at their maps.

 

Oh, I misunderstood, I see now!

 

I think there would be a lot of networking overhead to get that working correctly. As it is now, all data in the game is sourced from the host. Clients aren't running the game on their own necessarily, they're simply receiving the world as it's being given to them from the host. There's already a bunch of lag in the game from clients trying to get data in real time while moving about in the world or performing simple actions (like gathering resources, selecting inventory items, etc). It would be pretty hard to sync up an all-player-map-pause in real time without one person (the host) being the driving force behind it. 

 

Now that I understand what you meant... I do think it would be a good addition to the game once they implement the regular global pause feature for the host though. The host could let everyone know they're about to map-pause, so clients could have a few seconds to prepare, and then everyone is good with pausing together.

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Oh, I misunderstood, I see now!

 

I think there would be a lot of networking overhead to get that working correctly. As it is now, all data in the game is sourced from the host. Clients aren't running the game on their own necessarily, they're simply receiving the world as it's being given to them from the host. There's already a bunch of lag in the game from clients trying to get data in real time while moving about in the world or performing simple actions (like gathering resources, selecting inventory items, etc). It would be pretty hard to sync up an all-player-map-pause in real time without one person (the host) being the driving force behind it. 

 

Now that I understand what you meant... I do think it would be a good addition to the game once they implement the regular global pause feature for the host though. The host could let everyone know they're about to map-pause, so clients could have a few seconds to prepare, and then everyone is good with pausing together.

 

I'm sorry I wasn't clear to begin with, I can have that effect.

 

I won't pretend to know how networking and coding come together, so I really couldn't argue one way or the other on whether or not my idea is feasible, but I do believe a host based "map-pause" of sorts would be amicable, just as long as people could still access their maps while this pause was in effect. Unfortunately, if it was completely host based that would still give one player the power to interrupt and or potentially grief other players, but at the same time, if it required a vote or check of some sort that would slow down the game as well, not to mention a player unwilling to pause could interrupt or delay those who wished to. I really believe my original idea (if possible), would be the best of both worlds.

I agree further mechanics for pausing are necessary for different situations, potentially such as the host driven pause, I just feel my way would work best for small groups, even just a pair of friends who want to survive together.

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What do you think of this, instead... instead of the host-global-pause option, lets look at the AFK option. What if, for whoever went AKF, the player still despawned from the host game temporarily (as the devs are intending for now), but instead of simple a pop-up showing that the game is paused, instead that person's map appeared? That way, it doesn't matter who wants to pause.. that person could go AFK and see their map at the same time, and not impact anyone else in the world?

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What do you think of this, instead... instead of the host-global-pause option, lets look at the AFK option. What if, for whoever went AKF, the player still despawned from the host game temporarily (as the devs are intending for now), but instead of simple a pop-up showing that the game is paused, instead that person's map appeared? That way, it doesn't matter who wants to pause.. that person could go AFK and see their map at the same time, and not impact anyone else in the world?

 

The only problem with that is it goes back to the original problem of a player falling behind the world age, what I'm trying to implement is a method in which players can maximize their time in comparison to the time passing in game. an AFK solution is good for players going AFK, and will probably be necessary in tandem with other solutions, but that's not what I'm trying to achieve here. I want a true global pause for coordinated players co-operating.

 

There's really not much more I can say that I haven't said already. If my original idea is possible and implemented, it wouldn't solve everyones problems, but it wouldn't have any drawbacks that hurt players either. It would be super useful for friends co-operating, and would completely unalter the game for everyone else.

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In single player, viewing the map was not just about navigating, it was a time to sit back and plan out my next move. I'm loving everything in DST so far, I just consistently feel rushed (more so than I believe was intended).

 

In my opinion this could be fixed in a variety of ways, but the most basic implementation I can think of without inconveniencing other players would be a global pause when all players on the server are viewing their map (Edit: at the same time, I guess I wasn't clear). I think this would be a good start anyway, it wouldn't be as useful for larger groups of players, but it certainly wouldn't detract from the experience larger groups had. Smaller groups of 2 or 3 players on a server could easily co-ordinate this, but it wouldn't force a pause for players not in communication on more public games.

 

I think that should be a default setting for the game, with additional pausing/afk features implemented on top of this mechanic for the larger public servers. What do you think?

 

I completely disagree with you. I think the currently system works just fine and don't feel the least bit rushed as I move about. This is coming from someone who, up until I started DST less than a week ago, played Don't Starve with crafting pause and minimap mods, and paused the game every bleeding minute to plan my next 5 minutes of play.

 

I was really worried about being accustomed to relying on this mechanic. However, I can say that the game feels just like it should and not in the least bit rushing me anywhere. Not so more at least than the single player game. 

 

If this is enabled, and isn't a toggable feature, I'm not exactly sure I'd be too excited to see it implemented.

 

There's really not much more I can say that I haven't said already. If my original idea is possible and implemented, it wouldn't solve everyones problems, but it wouldn't have any drawbacks that hurt players either. It would be super useful for friends co-operating, and would completely unalter the game for everyone else.

 

As long as said feature is something that the host can enable/disable

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