Why is there no pause option in OW public matches?

A lot of every other games have a pause option. Why does OW not have it? Now I understand the argument against it. Its open for abuse, it wastes time, etc. But other games with this feature aren’t ripe with these problems. Additionally, its simple to put constraints on it to mitigate abuse. Have a 5 minute time bank and that’s the maximum allotted pausing allowed for one team. Only allow two pauses per team per match. Have the team vote for pausing so it isn’t abused by one angry player. Its pretty annoying when you disconnect briefly and your team is penalized so massively in a heavily time-oriented game for a short-term disconnect.

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Pausing simply doesn’t work in an online game. It would especially suck in a game like Overwatch where the matches are meant to be quick.

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Online games don’t work like that, that’s why.

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Works in CS:GO because of short (and many) rounds.

Wouldn’t really work in Overwatch because the game is constantly going for up to 10 minutes until the round ends. When would you fit in this pause? Can’t really have it in the middle of a fight.

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CS:GO and Dota 2 are both played online and have pause functions. They are hardly unsuccessful as well. Implementing pausing is a precedent that has already been set. Fights in overwatch generally last less than 30 seconds and you wait for the next one. Sure, there might be some poking or chasing down in between major fights, but that’s why the responsibility lies in the team to vote for pausing. If you have played either of these games you realize it isn’t that big of a deal; no one is gaining a severe advantage. The game is paused for both teams.

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Especially considering in PUGS and user-created tournaments held by GM level players, pausing is a thing. it doesnt mess up their games. if someone DCs midfight, yall can reset and vote to pause. don’t understand why people think this would be hard to implement when it’s ALREADY in the game.

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Mom? Mom how did you make a blizzard forum account?

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Overwatch doesn’t have a pause, because it’s a little casual shooter played just for fun.

There’s a highly competitive multi-million dollar league dedicated to the game, and there are a lot of people who care about ranked games and take them seriously. Sure OW can be “played just for fun” but in COMPETITIVE games there should be competitive features.

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Please no. Pause sounds horrible for this game. If people started pausing mid match I’d probably just leave.

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Best case scenario, the game pauses after a teamfight already finishes. But there are still most likely other small things happening around the map that can be affected by pauses, like an isolated duel between a backline squishy and a flanker.

It will ruin OW fluidity
No

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For the PUGS I’ve been in, pause is only done automatically on DC.
It also relies heavily on third party communication (discord) to figure out if they’re coming back. An internal system doesn’t have a way to figure that out with the only connection broken.

I literally would leave match if it suddenly paused. I dont have a ton of free time and I like to jump on OW to play a match or two between a very busy irl. If I had to sit and wait because some one needed a quick jerk off I’d be pissed.

Didn’t know CSGO had one. Works fine in dota but I only really watch tournament games so I dunno how effectively it works in pub games though. Tbh I think it’s a great idea but I’m sure it would be abused. Though I’m pretty sure there some reasonable way to do it (ie someone votes to pause and other on their team accept).

Because Overwatch is designed for quick attention grab and a short burst of fun… a pause option would either be abused to hell or get people to constantly leave matches because a big amount of the playerbase has that short of an attentionstpan

Online games don’t have pause buttons. I never played a single online game that had a pause button. Maybe if you have dedicated server like in CS and you are the owner, then you can do what you want.

That a pause button exists in Mobas is understandable, because games can easily last up to an hour, so quite a lot can happen irl in such timespan.

Games in Overwatch last like 8-10 minutes on average. Not really useful to add in a pause button for that kind of timespan.

I don’t know how it works in CS:GO though

I don’t think their is a pause button for LoL. Only for professional matches or tournament level matches. Don’t think Hots has one either. An hour isn’t very long.

The old LoL I could see a pause button added cause matches could last 2-3 hours.

There is one in Dota… unless they removed it since I last played the game (which has already been 7 years ago admittedly). I actually never looked if there’s one in HotS and I never played LoL so I wouldn’t know. :man_shrugging:

I really just went off from the one example I know and assumed that other Mobas would likely have something similar. :sweat_smile: