PlayStation [BUG] Chat/Console while using Splitscreen (Unable to pause)

[little_farmer]

Hello,

I am experiencing the following bug when playing a 2-Player splitscreen game on PS4 with the most recent Patch: There is no way to pause the game.
But let me go a little more into detail, to explain what is actually happening:

When going to the chat and pressing X, the PS4 input dialog pops up as intended. However, it's not a dedicated dialog for the user opening it. Instead, booth users can (or better: have to, since both user cannot continue to play while the dialog is open) do inputs. When the message is confirmed, both the message appears in the chat window for both players.

You may asked yourself: Why would I need to use the chat window in local splitscreen? Because when using the /pause command it cannot be executed and shows a warning message that this command 'can only be executed by the host'. So effectively, it is not possible to run commands as the host on PS4 splitscreen, which means there is no way to pause the game with splitscreen on PS4 at all.

I was excited for splitscreen being introduced on PS4 since the feature was announced for PC. I would love to being able to casually play with my partner on the same device, but being unable to pause the game is a gamebreaker when you have a baby at home which at any time may require your instant attention.

I understand that this may be hard to fix, since the input dialog is external by the PS4 environment. I would propose to at least make the /pause command somehow executable on PS4 splitscreen or introduce some other way to pause the game.

Thanks for providing such a wholesome game to us. It helps a lot to unwind and is just plain fun.

 

[grittygambit]

Same issue on Xbox split screen. It's very frustrating to not be able to walk away from the TV unless you take a break at the end of the day (if you sold anything), even though there's no online play. I was even willing to use the console command but like you said, it doesn't work because it tells me the host must enter it.

 

[little_farmer]

Ok, i spend some more time trying to think about some workaround and actually found one:

Let the second player (the non-host) leave the game. This makes the game a single player one, where you can pause by just entering a menu. To continue, go to 'options', click 'start local co-op' and rejoin with the second player.

While this definitely is not a clean solution, it is still better than having to restart a day or live with (half) a lost day. It does indeed make the splitscreen mode playable for me until there (hopefully) is a fix.

 

[grittygambit]

Thanks for that, I'll give it a try tonight! We need to be able to set the controllers down at a moment's notice as well, so this will be lifesaver if it ends up working.

Edit: So I feel extremely silly about this, but apparently, all I needed to do was have both players pull up a menu at the same time and it pauses. Not sure if it's the same on PS4.