Since the launch of Overwatch, one of the most requested competitive features has been a pause button. The lack of it was puzzling, as it has been standard in competitive games for years. But it took only a couple of months (and disruption to a few minor tournaments) for Blizzard to push the pause feature into the current PTR.
A pause feature is crucial for any esport with a time element. Technical difficulties can and do arise in tournaments of any size despite careful preparation, and are the last thing that should influence the outcome of a match. Pauses cannot fix all technical difficulties; in the Overwatch Open, Splyce's dps shrugger crashed with a Dragon Blade on the cusp of a pivotal teamfight. Even with a pause, shrugger would have lost his ultimate and failed to impact the teamfight. However it would be perfect for aiding in the kind of situation seen two nights ago, as compLexity and Liquid clashed in their final decider map on Numbani.
At 2-2 in the Lower Bracket Final of the Alienware Monthly Melee, DahanG disconnected. It killed the momentum for Liquid and lengthened their time on attack, contributing to their loss in the match overall. Clearly a pause feature would help here, but something as yet unconsidered by the Overwatch community is how the rules are implemented. Should Liquid have been allowed to pause immediately without warning? What if it was in the middle of a teamfight, or in overtime? What if DahanG’s mouse had died rather than his internet connection?
How pauses are incorporated into the ruleset of a game - when you are permitted a technical pauses, whether tactical pauses exist, or what form they take - can often have as big an impact, in a completely different way, as whether pauses are possible or not.
Pause Abuse
In online leagues of various esports, admins struggle with a “pause rule” balancing act. If players are allowed to pause at any time, the damage done by technical difficulties is more likely to be mitigated but the rule is more abusable. If one strictly limits the situations in which a pause is allowed, technical difficulties may still heavily impact the result of a map but the rule is far less open to abuse. Abuse, in this context, would involve players pausing a game when no reasonable technical difficulty has occurred in order to gain a tactical advantage.
Abuse of technical pauses is an issue that rears its head in many online games. With almost any pause rule, players can feign technical problems to get a pause which they actually use to stop momentum or assess the situation and change gameplan. If tactical pauses are not permitted in the game then this is an underhand way of creating them. It is by no means a prolific issue, but one that must be considered when adding pauses into a competitive game.
In games which are continuous and not split into regular rounds, there also needs to be consideration on when teams are permitted to legally pause. Pausing in the middle of a teamfight is not acceptable even for good reason, as the disruption caused by the pause outweighs the disruption caused by the technical issue. Identifying downtime for a pause is easier in games like Dota2 than Overwatch as well, because in Overwatch teamfights are the majority of the game and they happen thick and fast. There can easily be single teamfights lasting a couple of minutes (especially on Assault or Control) that should not be interrupted. Picking out fair moments to pause will be a contentious issue for players and admins - admins who do not have the power to enact pauses, as it is currently only possible as a player.
Tactical Timeouts
This is all without considering tactical timeouts. When pauses are added as a feature, tactical timeouts will become a logistical possibility and a natural consideration given their success in CS:GO. After being allowed in CS they formed a core part of the tactics. The legendary “Fnatic pause” was a term coined by analysts to describe how well the dominant Fnatic side used timeouts. They took tactical pauses at key moments during a game to turn it around: it killed momentum, let them come up with a counter, or reset the players’ emotions. Fnatic had a far higher percentage of map wins shortly after taking pauses due to their tactical application, proving the efficacy of pauses. It was a popular addition to the game as well from spectators, contributing to amazing comebacks and a higher level of play overall.
However, if you were allowed to tactically pause in Overwatch, then when? You or the other team may have a player behind, have a huge player advantage, interrupt your opponents in an engagement, or be in the middle of a teamfight. There are no natural moments to pause in the game as it is not divided into small rounds, and any pause would be while players are in motion.
Pauses in the midst of action disrupt the flow akin to freezing the ball and players in the middle of a rally in tennis. It takes the players and the spectators out of the game and is only valuable to the overall experience in tactical, iterative games rather than those based on constant fighting, waves of spawners, and adaptive compositions. Tactical pauses are not present in other continuous games and likely would not even help in Overwatch to the same level; the battleground is constantly changing, both positionally due to moving objectives and with regards to composition.
I believe it’s clear that the pause feature should not be used tactically, as in CS:GO, because Overwatch is always flowing and information is always important. Pausing would allow teams chance to think about and track ultimates, see what the current situation is and how to react, and analyse the enemy composition and its counter. This would not be like discussing how to proceed in CS, where each fight is separate and freezetime is already present; in Overwatch the game is fluid and has the most frequent teamfights of any esport. It would run counter to the style and skill of the game.
When the Patch hits
Despite this aspect being fairly cut and dried, there is still a large discussion to be had on the fairest way of implementing (technical) pauses into the game. As admins are unable to pause the game and players frequently have to fend for themselves in tournaments anyway, there exists a large margin for manipulating pause rules. Limiting them to only be allowed for disconnects would be a good start, though one could certainly make a case for pauses being allowed less strictly if warning is given in chat. This is something that tournament organisers will have to start considering for the next update, and is a rule you can pre-emptively give input on.
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