sometimes you have to stop for real life reasons. your dog wants out. your mom needs help. your kids are screaming. there are a lot of reasons why you need to stop. if you stop, you will lose the combine. - if it is a common one no big deal. but if you are in a writ, you lose the writ if you can't get back in time. if you are in the middle of an experiment, you lose the piece. and lately with the bug on the rare items, you may lose your rares. there are a lot of reasons why i may want to pause my crafting. heck, sometimes i wish i could pause the game. could we please get a pause button on tradeskills at least?
I know EQ2 sometimes feels like a single player game, but it's not, it's both online and real time, a pause button is never going to happen. And to answer the unasked question, there won't ever be a save/load game option either.
For writs, you can already log off, it halts the timer. For normal/rare combines, its takes 30 seconds - 1 minutes maximum. Its easy to schedule, your dog/kid/mom wont mind a minute long delay. For experimenting, it takes around 5 minutes. Do it only when you are sure you wont be interrupted during those 5 minutes. Unlike adventuring, tradeskilling is easily interruptable, you can basically have hours long pause between each craft.
for some it takes longer to do things. and we don't want to log off and then log back in. if you took at least 3 minutes or longer to log in you might understand. your toon is there- eating up your minutes, but you are not actually in the game. and if you have animals and kids, you really never know if you will have 5 minutes of uninterrupted time. if your child is having a problem, waiting one minute can be crucial - even neglectful. one thing is for sure, you are not a mom. if you were, you might understand.
I'm a father of two, 3 and 5 years old. If they would bug me during a writ or named fight i would tell them to wait, if something had happened to them, say one of them are choking on something i wouldnt give a rats *** about having to start the writ over. Honestly i wouldnt even wait long enough to hit the "pause" button. There's nothing wrong with asking for things but i dont see this happening, there's just not enough reason.
Some things I learned being a crafter, parent, pet owner, go to person when something goes wrong and general doer of things around here: 1. Never experiment on something you care about while the children are awake/at home. Get up early to do it or stay up later or if you can do it while they are not in the house or otherwise under the care of someone else. Even then, if you have pets, be aware something might happen that will interrupt what you are doing. I never experiment on anything I can't cover the cost of replacement on. 2. If I know I'm going to be called away frequently (kids sick, cats sick, cooking etc) don't do rush orders, just do the regular ones. 3. For kids, if it's not critical, they can wait for the short amount of time it will take to finish the combine(note mine are 6-12 yrs now so its not always a critical thing, different with smaller kids). Sometimes they just can't find the charger for the kindle, sometimes they are just tattling on their sibling. 4. No combine or fight is more important than the kids. If something does happen that absolutely needs immediate attention I have no problem getting up losing whatever I was doing in the game to deal with my kids (or even my cats/husband/other person depending on what issue has arisen). My son when he was a baby was called the raid wiper jokingly . Sometimes you'd just have to stop (and being one of the main healers it could cause issues, especially when hubby was the tank as well). If you do happen to be doing a timed writ, as stated before you can quickly type /camp. You'll only lose about a minute logging out and in. That should leave plenty of time to complete it. If you are experimenting, that sucks but as I said before, just don't do it when there is a high probability of being called away. You might lose out on some commissions but all part of being a gamer, a parent and a caretaker. Emergencies will happen and can just be chalked up to life happening. MMOs don't have pause buttons. They are persistent worlds even when you are standing at a crafting table and it doesn't really seem like it.
My apologies if I seem insensitive, but there has never been anything more important to me in the game that took precedence over real life. There's nothing that I can't replace or do over when interrupted. Might take some more coin or extra effort, but that's what a real time game has as a trade off when compared to a single player game. If something is important enough to interrupt your game, then it's important enough to not be worried about a writ or combine. It's not even the "old school" game that we played years ago when you had hell levels, huge raid progressions and a tedious long term commitment to raise a trade up (Halas Meat Pies anyone?). Years ago I worked a job where I was on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with children and a dog (oh, and a wife) and my play time was often interrupted. I just accepted that as part of the package and worked around it being grateful to still be able to enjoy online gaming.
I'm just going to say, you shouldn't care about loosing a rush order because something came up. The time you lost is less than 3-5 minutes. I spend more time than that cleaning my inventory. I spend more time than that saying hello to the guild when I log in. And if you did save that rush order, you'd still be doing another one wouldn't you? So really, walking away in the middle might be inconvenient but don't let it get to you. Now if you can't finish a rush order when the world isn't banging on your door then there is a problem that needs fixing.
lol everyone acts like the devs might give us a pause button because we ask for it. if they do, that would be great for some of us. but everyone knows they probably won't. funny how everyone panics and begins to give a bunch of reasons why we shouldn't have one. as though the devs might give something to someone and not to them. as though i had asked for a candy bar and so everyone is coming up with why i shouldn't have a candy bar. i guess everyone wants to chime in with why not. well, why not?. can't you consider why so? not like any of us get to decide what we get and what we don't get. it's just an idea. there are plenty of times i have thought "i really wish this game had a pause button". it's not like i play with anyone - i am a solo player. at the most i might box. so yeah, would be nice. i would really like a pause button. i have the right to say it. and so i do. so it wouldn't suit you. if they ever decided to give us one, i give you permission not to use it. but don't come asking to group with me because if i had one, i would definitely find plenty of uses for it. and before you chime in about being selfish and considering what is best for everyone, remember. i am not a dev. it isn't my job to decide whether it is good for the game or best for everyone. i was never hired to think of that. nor was i asked to . they only asked for input on what i would like to see. i would like to see a pause button. i don't have to be unselfish all the time. i can want something for me. just because i probably won't get it doesn't mean i can't ask for it. there isn't a person alive who hasn't asked for something at times that they probably wouldn't get. sometimes we even get surprised by getting it. not always, but it never hurts to ask.
Ya know, I was very polite when I first noticed this post. I wrote up an immediate response and decided saying it was simply unnecessary. But considering the above, why not? Everquest 2 is a MMO. MMOs happen in real time. Even if you don't move, things continue to happen regardless of your participation. While the game wants you to feel special and indulge your own sense of self worth, it also conforms to a convention of the genre: There are no saves, there is no pause button. That kind of stuff is what single player games are all about. Yes, crafting is (depressingly) a single person effort. A lot of the game play focuses on a single player (and the nearly mandatory merc). But that doesn't change how the game is fundamentally designed. It also smacks of another call for easy mode. Why easy mode? Because your turning any difficult situation into "hit pause and wait". Experimenting? Go until you feel a bit uncomfortable, pause and take a walk. Come back in 5 and finish. Or just hit pause after every tick and figure out what you need to do instead of actually reacting. All of those lethal combines? Now they become pause-play combines. Why take the chance of dying to a wrong counter when you can pause after each tick? So no, this idea has no business in EQ2 and if you need that sort of feature, then go play Skyrim.
lol there are no lethal hits in crafting anymore. and just because it is considered easy mode doesn't stop me from wishing i had one. after all, i do solo - especially when crafting. and i don't bother with experimenting anymore. not worth the aggravation. but haven't you ever been in the middle of something and suddenly have to go to the bathroom or someone comes to the door and you have to leave whatever you are doing? doesn't matter if you are in a writ. or just out doing something. and you think, gee, wish i could pause this. so yeah, despite anyone's opinions, i still wish i could pause it. not about how easy it would be, simply about convenience. and it doesn't have to be practical or please anyone. it is after all, just an idea that hits me sometimes - and i think, gee, i would really like a pause button. haven't you ever had a thought that didn't concern practical or anything? it's a fantasy really, and isn't that what the game is? a fantasy. so yeah, funny to me the conversation and debate a simple idea raises. didn't it take your mind form the stress of the recent events for a few minutes as you debated something simple? I still wish i had a pause button.
speaking of pause buttons, eq1 has a /rewind feature so when you are stuck somewhere you can get unstuck by rewinding back to before you got stuck. can't tell you how many times i wish we had that here.
and hasn't anyone noticed? there is a bug on the crafting with rares. sometimes, not all the time, you lose your rares. when it is hard to get rares in the new zones coupled with the need for 6 - 8 rares per combine, if you have to stop suddenly, you sometimes lose them. not one of them, all of them. doesn't this bother anyone? sometimes i would really like a pause button. maybe then, i wouldn't lose my rares. a few times lately when i had to stop i only lost fuel, but i did lose rares not long ago and i have heard others lost them. considering that rare ores go for about 76p each on my server that means another day of harvesting when i lose a few. so yeah guys, i would really like a pause button on tradeskills. and it doesn't have to be on experimenting. that isn't really considered a tradeskill but rather one of the prestige skills anyhow. i don't lose the rares on experimenting. i lose them on tradeskilling. that can hurt a lot. so think about it. i lost rares today, even thought i had thought that maybe the bug had been fixed- it hasn't been. so next time the baby cries or the door needs answering or the dog wants out, you had best hope you aren't making a tunic..
I can't believe it.... If it was only for experiment, I would have understood your point (even if I don't share it). BUT... You're crying for regular crafts also? Which takes... about... 30sec? I can't believe you can't wait 30 sec. Or like other players said, leave it if IRL is really important/urgent. So... You want a pause button to prevent losing components or so? This is not how the game works. Fortunately for you, crafting evolved and is not even close to what it was at the beginning... If you chose to play the solo way, and go for crafting (yay...), just, deal with how it is designed. You have certainly no difficulty in what you do now (please, don't tell me experiment is hard... just long. Not hard). If you want some challenge, just leave your crafting station and go on for heroics/raids. This is not Evercraft.
I'm sorry so many people are being nay sayers, Suka. I often wish there was a pause button for crafting. Just last night I had one of my ferrets start annoying me right as I was trying to make something. I kept trying to shove him off the keyboard while also trying to keep an eye on the counters. Normally that wouldn't be a problem but I was using one of my precious, and rare, progress potions so I wasn't about to stop unless I absolutely had too. I think I hurt his feelings when I unceremoniously dumped him on the floor. I don't care what anyone says, eventually games like EQII will have pause buttons. Games evolve to suit the changing needs of players. As the young guns get older they will discover a multitude of emergency situations they can't even imagine now.
