It's called for every time I play with someone who hasn't played QW before and doesn't know no pause nor timeout is available. It doesn't count that those who know don't say a word after so many years.

seriously, a fast paced first person shooter like qw should not have a pause or timeout in my opinion. pausing is for strategy games

it doesnt matter that ppl are new to the game. when you play with them to teach them stuff you could just tell them that you are going to show them something. if they need to go away from the computer you either stand still or break. it is just a practice game afterall so it doesnt really need to be paused because of the results or anything else...

Why is pausing for strategy games and not for first person shooter like qw?

Nice feature suggestion ddk.
Always nice with some new input to this conservative game.

Before making any hasty statements people could instead of just saying no, try to help you (ddk) out by suggesting the best way how such a feature could be implemented. Some did!

When there's a finished proposal, maybe with some examples, then we could consider the pros and cons and see if it's a feature qw could benefit from or not and take it from there.

"pausable 1;pause;pausable 0" for a good admin

problem is that noone can join when paused

yeah moon, for sure! definitely implementation is the issue here and not the concept.

Implementation measures that prevent abuse: Should we allow the players to even use the time-out? Should it be an admin only feature? Server feature?

Generally with this time-out thing, personally from my background I think it should be universally available as I truly believe it will not be abused. But, equally, I completely understand if the community only vouches for it to be usable exclusively in official games; as those are the games that count!

Perhaps the following could be implemented, although probably one of the strictest possible options:

Time-outs in officials are not available until 5 minutes have passed. Should the player drop/disconnect before the 5-10 (?) minute period, a break can be called by players but no other action is available. However, if the player should be gone longer than a minute, an automatic time-out should be incurred by the server to prevent skewed results or a restart should be available, but the vote must be unanimous(?). The time-out is used exclusively by the server itself; upon detecting a dropped player/disconnected player during the match. Should the dropped player then re-join, it will automatically time in, giving a count-down of 20-30 seconds to make sure that the player who has re-joined has ample time to be set up and ready to go once again. A time-out allows no more than 3 minutes for the player to return before the match is automatically forfeited. The winning team then gets the option, overseen by an admin, to take the win or replay the match.

What do you think? I am trying to cover the issues here of: potential abuse by the down team facing a full start, protect the team that is damaged by the random external factors and maintain equitable resolutions.

I think we are lucky here that our community is tightly-knit and the majority know one another, which is probably one of the largest reasons why there is true sportsmanship in qw, but equally the competitive manner that we all love (an example of this, tVS taking the current map pool seriously unlike many teams, almost forcing other teams in division one to take themselves seriously as a result). But my point here is that, so many anti-abuse measures may not be required, I do not know the community as well as most, that is for you guys to decide. I doubt that people will ever abuse it.

How would we implement it to the satisfaction of everyone?

My opinion is that time-out should be implemented in two ways:
1. Server implementation
When someone disconnects the server auto time-outs the game for two minutes or until the player has returned.
If someone is timing, getting huge lag spikes then the server time-outs for 20sec.

2. Player voting
Simply allow the players to vote for a 2 min time-out.

Before start after any time-out have a 10 sec count down.

I really don't get the fast paced argument. The pace is going to be just as fast when you resume as before.
As someone said, what really hurts the pace of the game is playing 3v4.
I don't know whether Im for an auto-pause on timeout in public servers,
but one thing im SURE of is that beeing able to pause an EQL game when sd-player times out in a tight game vs ]SR[ is something that I would wan't to have.

Just make sure to implement it in a smart way.
To clarify, Its intended to be used when absolutely needed. Not for tactical purposes.
And I don't think anyone disagrees with that, and I doubt people will abuse it, How many teams do you see now days pulling their cable to get a 'break(this feature actually also removes that small possibility of abuse)

To make on of these Sports-related thingies everybody loves: hockey has timeouts. its a pretty fast paced sport tbh, and they don't have random 1 player disadvantages.

pausing wont help the game much if the timeouted player was the one with a good item or weapon anyway. face it: the round is pretty much fucked up when a player times out even with a pause function. in my opinion a time out feature will not redeem the situation because that player who was timed out will lose his stuff anyway and it will impact the round even if no time was lost during the time he reconnects

instead of pausing automatically when player drops, perhaps only initiate a vote when it happens. The same vote could obviously be called by a player.

Then it is up to teams to decide.

for full flexibility: /callvote timeout <seconds>.

If time-out is voted when the game is already paused, the countdown is set to the new value. (/callvote timeout 3 , when the game is paused, would mean the game will resume after a 3 second countdown).

unfortunately qw never fully had timeouts implemented so now a full decade+ later it seems like a foreign feature to have, but the facts remain that it was introduced into every single quake except for qw (and q2 im not sure), without it breaking the gameplay.

it'd be more productive to ponder this feature further rather than poking a stick at it like some type of caveman ;p

The problem with this is that the opponents can abuse it by not voting for time-out. This would make the future worthless but of course using rules EQL crew can demand that any game where a player drops out is paused. Anyway you do it you get the same result.

Fern, Q2 has a time-out function.

When a player drops / times-outs IMO it means that the other team won, but out of sportsmanship can offer the other team to restart the game or continiue.

With a timeout feature, teams can agree on pausing the game. So I wouldnt call it abuse.

Having players drop by intent is already forbidden in the rules of EQL.
However having a team win just because someones router or computer crashed, or because their ISP sucks or some construction company accidentally cut the internet cable in two is not a good thing. I don't really like the idea of having to forbid DDoSing your opponents...

Personally I think this is an OK feature although it needs careful consideration on how it is implemented.
A German server (one of the first outside Poland) that ran ktpro, "Something of Darkness"? had this enabled for a while in the early days and it did cause a couple of issues I seemed to remember regarding how you can restart a game correctly.

Some enhancements I'd like to see if implemented:

-Ban mm2 to prevent tactical discussions.... can't ban mm3 though, so maybe best not to?
-Make sure gameclock is frozen
-Game doesn't restart until all players go /ready

In general though it's pretty rare these days that you see players timeout in QW. Not like the bad old days

if this feature worked for 1on1, a winnerbracket finals game would have been saved today =) only read half the thread though so might have missed something

/andeh

I think it could work well for duel actually. Fewer downsides than 4on4 where people can start discussing tactics etc.
Obviously, some kind of failsafe would need to be in place to allow the player left on the server to break the game in case his opponent never comes back (might happen in a prac game). In a league, you'd ban him from breaking the game within x mins of the timeout occurring.

******MOVED TO SERVER TALK FORUM*********

Would we get a normal timeout feature aswell then? I.e. timeout on request from one of the players?

I'd be against user requested timeouts. I suppose you could make a case for it being used when a player is under heavy lag (xxx ms, xx pl) but not actually timedout, but it just disrupts the flow too much IMO.

Timeout should only be used in a case when a player has completely lost connection to the server, IMO.

Well, why fix one kind of "force majeur" and not another?

In the middle of my preparations for this awesome jump over lava, my opponent times out and the game is paused, I grab some coffee and when I come back I jumped in the lava!

Tournament rules can cover the cases when timeout can be used pretty well. E.g. now when losing you can reconnect in dm4 until you finally spawn at RA, without losing frags, but rules don't allow that.

Don't leave for coffee during a tournament game

The autopause would be insanely good for tournament duels, even a normal timeout would work as well as it works in QuakeLive currently, but the autopause feature sounds even better.

The server already feels when someone is timing and gives out the warning that someone is timing, doesnt SOUND that complicated to make it a working feature to also /pause the game when sending that warning or whatever, I'm not sure how it works xD

Of course I guess a normal timeout feature requested by players can be invented as well, I don't think people would exploit it but rather have it to good use when it could possible be needed =) Åke Vader's comment is valid!

One thing to take in consideration if the games gets paused is aircontrol. I hope the pause doesn't stop the guy in the air or something similar and make him because of that drop into lava etc... Otherwise we have a pause feat that will suck hard when jumping from lg -> sng on dm4 as an example and there will be more crappy cases than "saved ones".

I'm sure somebody already mentioned this but perhaps there should be a countdown of just a second or two to sort out your air movements where nobody can do damage or pickup items. I don't think this countdown would be so good in 1on1, though.

If a feature like this got implemented (although i think it can be abused) i think it would be appropriate with at least a 5sec countdown after both players /ready again after a timeout.

Scenario:
- Game freezes
- Gameclock stops
- The timeout lasts until a minute has passed or both players /ready again
- When the timeout has lasted, an announcement is made, a countdown begins and the game starts just like it was before (i.e. the movement is kept, the time is the same etc)

I guess one should add a restriction of how many timeouts a player can make/have aswell, 1 or 2 is enough i think. Should be toggleable so you can set it to infinite amount when you're just playing for fun with friends.

autopause when u first hit the floor after ur opponent timed out!?

What if it's midair mode!?!?!?!?!?!?!

For casual duels, something like this could work:

Make it so that pressing pause doesn't immediately pause the server, but rather broadcasts a message, "awsum[KilleR] requested a timeout. Stand still for 1 second if you agree".

So if you're one of those peeps who believe pause is evil, you can just keep hopping around and the opponent's request will time out in 5 seconds or so. If you agree to pause, you stop moving and the pause kicks in. If you're timing, the server automatically decides you don't mind.

The player requesting pause will have to already be stationary, or the server won't even consider the request.