I am not a game developer, I am doing research and am wondering whether there are any games out there which limit user interaction rates.

Not everyone can perform interactions at the same rate. For example, Park Sung-joon has been recorded performing 1 action per 73.5ms (818 APM).

To clarify, by interactions, I mean mouse clicks, keypresses, etc.

My questions are:

• What games, if any, limit the number of interactions that can be performed within a given timeframe (eg, 1 second)?
• What are the pros/cons of limiting interaction rate?

They're called "cooldowns". They're quite common in games.

Games which do not explicitly place a cooldown on a particular action typically only check once per frame whether a player wants to perform some action. So in those cases it depends on what the input sampling rate of the game is.

Pros/cons are based on the game design.

Do you know of any games which "explicitly place a cooldown on a particular action"?

"So in those cases it depends on what the input sampling rate of the game is." - Do you know how I can find out what the input sampling rate of a game is? Do you know of any games and their input sampling rate?

Thanks!

Do you know of any games which "explicitly place a cooldown on a particular action"?

Overwatch, Diablo, DOTA, Skyrim, Call of Duty to name a few realtime games with cooldowns.

Also turn based games like XCom might have a cooldown to stop you from using an ability every turn.

Do you know of any games which "explicitly place a cooldown on a particular action"?

Overwatch, Diablo, DOTA, Skyrim, Call of Duty to name a few realtime games with cooldowns.

Also turn based games like XCom might have a cooldown to stop you from using an ability every turn.

I took from the OP that he was asking about limited users 'speed' which could put a focus on strategy over age of empires / c&c first to the gold/tiberium rush mechanic that decides a lot of matches (an interesting thought experiment). You have described gameplay mechanics e.g an AOE weapon which you have to wait 30 seconds to use again.

Maybe I am mistaken.

I don't know any games that explicitly attempt to limit actions like this. Many games have a de-facto limit in that they can only handle one event per frame and each frame typically takes 16 or 32ms. (That tends to be the 'input sampling rate' mentioned above; the physical devices are usually polled more often than that however, and it's certainly possible that some games could therefore allow you to click 2 or more times in a single frame.)

Turn-based games approach this in a different way - actions can be taken as quickly or as slowly as the player wants, but the game treats them as if they all occur in the same timescale regardless. On the whole, if a game developer doesn't want reaction times to be an integral part of the experience, they may decide to make a turn-based game instead.

it would be interesting to see a mix between turn based and realtime.

I can see a couple of systems:

1) Each player makes turne based options and then as the turn plays out you have real time options.

2) Turn lengths are decided by each player. Turns spend points and turns that are larger in scope, e.g. move 10 units across the board vs move 5 (twice) would be more efficient but you would have less control. You could group a series of moves into 1 turn and let them play out. The other player could then react to your large set piece. If your move is interupted by a quicker move your move would be interupted and you would get a free reaction turn.

explaining that in more detail.

imagine an 10*10 board.

Player piece A is at 0,0

opponent piece B is at 5,5

A moves from 0,0 to 0,10

Opponent can see this trijectory and moves B from 5,5 to 0,5. A fight begins.

Player can also see Opponents move but cant do anything since his turn is longer. If it was short (like 3 squares, he would be able to make another move after his piece has reach 0,3 before the oponent has reached 0,5. Ofc the oponent would not have made this move if he saw the player moving to 0,3. My head hurts!