Nothing frustrates me more than not being able to pause for no seemingly good reason. I'm playing Wild Hearts right now and even though I never play online I cannot pause for some reason. To simulate pausing, I can turn off the xbox and the quick resume feature makes it look like the game was paused when I turn the console back on.
Other games guilty of this are Fromsoft games: Dark Souls, Elden Ring and so on.
Obviously all of these games have an online component. Not allowing pausing when this component is activated makes sense. But if I am playing completely online why cannot I pause? In Soulslike the worst exploit I can think of is switching equipment on the fly but is that really that bad? When stuff comes up in the middle crucial moments it frustrates me a lot.
What's the point of pause function if you can just hit Escape and the game will remained paused that way, while showing you menu.
I'm not sure what you mean. Pressing escape in Wild Hearts and Elden Ring shows the menu but doesn't pause the game which is what I am complaining about.
If you are talking about having a distinction between the state where the menu is visible vs the state where the game is paused, having them separate and mutually exclusive in Souls games is desirable because if the game stops while you switch around your inventory then the whole balance of the game will be thrown into disarray.