Remove the *Automatic Unpause* immediately please

[yonderTheGreat]

*****
Edit-Add: PDS is officially aware of the problem. Podcat tweeted "We fixed a few issues today when you have multiple popups and you need to chase the pausing. will discuss the rest" and it was discussed in the DevDiary from yesterday: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...-june-17th-patch-1-1-red-ball-express.949237/
*****

Or, teach me how I'm wrong. Obviously. And apologies for the length of the post. I wanted to be thorough and in -depth.

I'm nearly 100 hours in and have learned the overwhelming vast majority of things that frustrated me. A lot of the UI seems really weird at first, but once you learn it, the reasoning for it being the way it is makes PERFECT sense.

However... there's one thing that I haven't figured out yet how I'm wrong (thusly it's not a "learning" thing) and it utterly infuriates me, and that's the automatic unpause. In case you don't know what I mean, it's when multiple things pop up and clicking on something unpauses the game after you paused it. To illustrate, I will give an example.

While playing as Japan, Italy conquers Ethiopia on the same day that I finish a National Focus. So I naturally click on the "Details" button on the National Focus alert which auto-pauses the game and brings up the National Focus screen for me to read. The "Italy Has Just Conquered Ethiopia" details are also on top of the National Focus display, so I click to clear that news too. This automatically upauses the game.

To be clear... clicking "details" auto-pauses the game and brings up the National Focus screen. Clicking on OTHER news to clear it in order to be able to peruse the NF information UN-pauses the game. There's no reason for this. In SP especially, if I pause the game either automatically or manually, NOTHING should unpause it.

I naively automatically assumed that PDS was going to fix this in their hotfix a few days ago because it was such a glaring mistake and I didn't want to bombard them with yet another forum post about it. Apparently I was mistaken.

This should be an incredibly easy fix, just add a check for "is the game already paused, if so, don't change the Pause Toggle" thingy.

Again, if I'm missing something, please let me know. For example, it took me a while to learn what auto-pauses the game. Clicking Details on the "National Focus Research Complete" alert, for example, auto-pauses. Previously I would manually pause it and then click either Okay or Details and then get angry when the game would sometimes un-pause. So... if I'm missing something, please let me know.

But, to reiterate, PLEASE fix it so that if it auto-pauses in a way that brings up the Research or National Focus screens (i.e. something where I'm probably going to be reading for a lil bit) then make it so that only manually unpausing will start the game back up again.

IF this hasn't been properly brought to the devs attention, please state your agreement or... something... that will add the appropriate community weight to this problem. And since this is a design flaw (assuming, again, that it's not me learning something poorly or incorrectly) and not a bug, this complaint isn't going in the bug forum.

Thank you.

 

[Ulminati]

Dismissing events always unpauses the game. Same as for stellaris.

Lots of people complained both here and in the stellaris forums about this. To the best of my knowledge, there's been no Pdox response.

Your best bet is to click-and-drag the "world news!" event pop-up to the edge of the screen while you set your NF.

 

[yonderTheGreat]

So we just need to be EVEN LOUDER?

This is horribly terrible.

I actually like/appreciate a lot of the streamlining in the game. But removal of certain grognard-friendly features? No.

Give me back my ability to tweak notifications. Give me back my ability to tweak auto-pauses. And for the love of war, give me back my highly-detailed ledger!!!!

And I just confirmed what you said. Started a new game (USA) and 70 days in, the Rhineland was occupied at the same time my WPA was finished. Clicking Details auto-paused the game and clicking "Worrying" on the Rhineland pop-up auto-unpaused the game while still in the NF screen.

I was really hoping it was me doing something wrong. And while I appreciate the technique you have taught me about just moving the notification pop-up to the side while the game is paused and you're choosing the NF... that's still TERRIBLE design.

I really, really, really hope PDS fixes this. It's relatively minor, but it's incredibly terrible.

 

[Cymsdale]

Just going to copy/paste my response from the previous thread on this. Still relevant. Keep fighting the good fight.

Sorry for the upcoming all caps and spam but I want to make sure I am crystal clear.

THE GAME SHOULD NEVER UN-PAUSE UNLESS I EXPLICITLY UN-PAUSE IT!

THE GAME SHOULD NEVER UN-PAUSE UNLESS I EXPLICITLY UN-PAUSE IT!

THE GAME SHOULD NEVER UN-PAUSE UNLESS I EXPLICITLY UN-PAUSE IT!

THE GAME SHOULD NEVER UN-PAUSE UNLESS I EXPLICITLY UN-PAUSE IT!

THE GAME SHOULD NEVER UN-PAUSE UNLESS I EXPLICITLY UN-PAUSE IT!

Now for the final exam.

When should the game un-pause?
A) When I acknowledge a popup event.
B) When the situation that caused the pause is no longer relevant.
C) When I press the space bar.
D) All of the above.

Spoiler

(C) is the only correct answer. If you answered something else, please read this post a few more times until you get it right.

 

[yonderTheGreat]

WRONG!

It should also un-pause when you click the lil thingy in the top right that says "click to unpause the game"



But yes... I usually HATE these types of threads because most of the time they're made by people who don't know what they're talking about. But, sadly, I've gotten plenty of confirmation that this is a specific design flaw that people hate. I was REALLY hoping I was doing something wrong.

For example, early on, I would pause the game then click the notification and clicking the notification would UNPAUSE it.

You know... I can see this being kept for MP games. Habitual pausers can be really annoying (though there are times it's called for). But... no... this is utterly useless and user-unfriendly in SP.

Give us back our tools to tweak things like auto-pause and notification and allow us to implement various rules for MP. Don't make bad parameters and then apply them to 100% of the games.

(I'm not missing a feature that lets us toggle notification popups and unpause moments, am I?)

 

[the_legion]

I really, really, really hope PDS fixes this. It's relatively minor, but it's incredibly terrible.

At least the game informs you when your NF is done.
Ironically you don't get any information about the war in a war game (message boxes or whatever).

So:
THE GAME SHOULD NEVER UN-PAUSE UNLESS I EXPLICITLY UN-PAUSE IT
AND I SHOULD DECIDE WHICH INFO I WANT!

 

[Cymsdale]

WRONG!

It should also un-pause when you click the lil thingy in the top right that says "click to unpause the game"

Removing auto un-pause is too important of an issue to confuse things by bringing up a UI element that a minority uses.

 

[Mann42]

Yeah, this is one of those new "good ideas" that Paradox started implementing that frustrates me more than anything else.

Bugs aren't even as frustrating to me, because I know those aren't intentional. But this (and by extension, the absence of message settings) really annoys me because I know Paradox did it on purpose.

 

[yonderTheGreat]

Ironically you don't get any information about the war in a war game (message boxes or whatever)./QUOTE]

There are more than enough posts about people whining about the incessant notification notification for me to agree

But yeah, I'd LOVE to have access to pages upon pages of highly in-depth statistics and numbers. I don't mind the surface being simpler, but don't remove the depth that I'm used to.

For example, I don't mind the way that resources are presented on the map. But give me a page in THE LEDGER where I can easily see what nation is producing what amount of resources, and which provinces they're doing it with!

 

[yonderTheGreat]

Bugs aren't even as frustrating to me, because I know those aren't intentional. But this (and by extension, the absence of message settings) really annoys me because I know Paradox did it on purpose.

Yup. Is my memory serving me correctly when it tells me something about how HOI4 had either a new design team or a change in design team leadership halfway through.

Again, I'm basically OKAY with the streamlining of many things. I can see HOI4 MP being many times easier than HOI2 or HOI3 *IF* you want it to be. And I'm not upset that a full SP game often only takes me three or so days in RL (excluding the horrific post-42 or post-44 slowdown, which I have faith will be optimized eventually). It's a different game. I'm okay w/ it overall.

But this?

... no. It makes me want to have the ability to sit down with whomever it was that designed this specific part of the game and simply ask, while looking at their eyes, "Why? Why did you think this was a good idea?"

PDS are veterans at this stuff. This is a design mistake you'd be annoyed if a first-time dev made. But from PDS? 100% unacceptable. 100%

 

[OBRkenobi]

C) When I press the space bar.

Or when I click on the unpause icon. (said nobody ever )

 

[fredgiblet]

Just going to copy/paste my response from the previous thread on this. Still relevant. Keep fighting the good fight.

Sorry for the upcoming all caps and spam but I want to make sure I am crystal clear.

THE GAME SHOULD NEVER UN-PAUSE UNLESS I EXPLICITLY UN-PAUSE IT!

THE GAME SHOULD NEVER UN-PAUSE UNLESS I EXPLICITLY UN-PAUSE IT!

THE GAME SHOULD NEVER UN-PAUSE UNLESS I EXPLICITLY UN-PAUSE IT!

THE GAME SHOULD NEVER UN-PAUSE UNLESS I EXPLICITLY UN-PAUSE IT!

THE GAME SHOULD NEVER UN-PAUSE UNLESS I EXPLICITLY UN-PAUSE IT!

Now for the final exam.

When should the game un-pause?
A) When I acknowledge a popup event.
B) When the situation that caused the pause is no longer relevant.
C) When I press the space bar.
D) All of the above.

Spoiler

(C) is the only correct answer. If you answered something else, please read this post a few more times until you get it right.

Uuuuuuuuuuuh...E?

 

[Cymsdale]

Or when I click on the unpause icon. (said nobody ever )

I suppose there might be some one-armed guy who enjoys strategy games and uses the mouse exclusively for all actions.

Which means that when that one-armed guy clicks off an event HE NEEDS TO MOVE HIS MOUSE TO THE CORNER AND QUICKLY PRESS THE BUTTON TO RE-PAUSE THE GAME.

THIS MAKES THE ISSUE EVEN WORSE!

HOLY SHIT PARADOX, HOW CAN YOU DO THIS TO THAT POOR MAN, HE HAS SUFFERED ENOUGH!

 

[fredgiblet]

I suppose there might be some one-armed guy who enjoys strategy games and uses the mouse exclusively for all actions.

That just reminds me of watching my dad use the internet...

He has everything in his bookmarks, almost all of it in one giant, unsorted list. He scrolls down the list and finds things instead of clicking on the address bar and typing 2 letters.

 

[Cymsdale]

@Thorin You marked disagree on my post. I will assume it was simply a mis-click, as that is the only possible explanation.

 

[Modo]

So we just need to be EVEN LOUDER?

You already bought the game. That's how you lose a voice. I learned my lesson with HoI3, I'll see if expansions fix things.

 

[moridin84]

I don't mind it automatically pausing (though I really wish I could disable it for a lot of events) but this unpausing is actually pretty annoying.

Whatever rules HOI4 follows when unpausing it are simply different to how I play. There have been plenty of times when after some notification I'm in the research screen or national focus screen, notice that the game unpaused and had to quickly pause it again.

Events often push you onto screens like the research screen or national focus screen. I don't want it to unpause them game, where I get a research event, picked something to research and then switched to the national focus screen. If it unpaused when I went to the main map or something I wouldn't mind so much.

 

[Thorin]

@Thorin You marked disagree on my post. I will assume it was simply a mis-click, as that is the only possible explanation.

Nope, it is not a missclick. While the msg setup from EU iV would be a really good addition to both HOI IV and Stellaris, the unpause on discarding is not a bad thing. Takes some time to go with it, but currently it just saves me from actually unpausing the game.

 

[HFL]

I need message settings like in HoI 3 and automatic unpause is a no go.

 

[Cymsdale]

I need message settings like in HoI 3 and automatic unpause is a no go.

Message settings would be quite nice, but I think it harms things to conflate these issues.