ALGS Clarifies How Pause Mechanic Works After Confusing Incident At Champs 2023
Amid a slew of confusion from fans at the ALGS Championship 2023, the organisation behind the event has finallyexplained the pause mechanic.
Jamie Moorcroft-Sharp 
Image via ALGS
The Apex Legends Global Series) ALGS Championship 2023 has been an incredibly exciting event so far. However, there’s been one thing, a new system introduced during this event, that’s been driving fans to despair.
The pause mechanic sent fans into disarray earlier this week as players began posting about how it messed up their positioning and advantages. With no word from ALGS on how the mechanic works, it’s been thought that each pause was caused by a crash and unfairly impacted players. Now, though, the organization has explained how this system works behind the scenes.
Related: Apex Legends Global Series Championship 2023 Complete Guide: Who is Winning & How to Watch
ALGS Outlines How the Pause Mechanic Works During Champs 2023
Official messaging on how the pause mechanic works went out late last night. We’ve been in the press room for the entire event and have seen first-hand how hard the marketing team has been working to get the right messaging together so fans have all the information to answer every question about pauses that’s been raised. We feel what they put out more than does the job.
As per ALGS’ post, the pause mechanic is a result of player feedback, allowing everyone in a match who didn’t crash to retain their position, loot, and other advantages whilst giving the engineers working the event time to get a player who has crashed back into that match.
The system doesn’t work like a time-out in other sports. It’s determined by a program that monitors several inputs. First, two people have to agree that a pause is required. One is the person in the monitoring station watching every player’s screen, the other is an official overseeing the event. Once they’ve agreed, a pause is requested.
This is when the pause system takes over. It won’t initiate a pause until there’s been no player-on-player damage for 2 seconds. This is part of the agreed-upon terms worked out with players and is the fairest way for the system to understand if all players are in relatively safe positions, as opposed to being attacked by a team of three.
Perhaps most importantly, a pause request can be canceled if the issue is resolved before the system finds that window of time where no players have taken damage from other players for 2 seconds. The entire thing is built to keep the flow of the game moving as fast as possible, even when one player experiences a crash.
During the pause, engineers work to resolve all issues. After everything is back up and running, referees tell players they have a 30-second countdown until the match starts back up.
We’ve seen several pauses over the first two days of ALGS Champs 2023 and wouldn’t be surprised if more occur. While some players have criticized the pauses, it seems pretty clear that they’re all aware of how they work and why they happen. Moving forward, the transparent messaging should help to alleviate any frustration players, fans, and viewers have during the rest of the event so they can enjoy the amazing moment-to-moment gameplay.
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