When the emotive art goes bad...

[EonBlueApocalypse]

The way watch interacts with semote/hemote should tell you everything about their appropriate usage.

For those that missed this:

Silent Emote     (Communication)

Silent emotes should only be used to express actions that are completely silent. They will only show to people who can see you, so if they are asleep, dying, or otherwise unable to see you, they will not get any indication you did something.

Hidden Emote     (Communication)

Hidden emotes should be used to represent subtle motions that wouldn't be obvious to the room you are in. Only those who are actively watching you, or who are very observant will notice these.

Like I said ...  for all the things that the crowded tavern isn't really going to notice unless they're very observant or actively watching you.

[moab]

* duly beaten into submission *

[EonBlueApocalypse]

* duly beaten into submission *

<3 moab

[Bebop]

If you don't like reading emotes then perhaps this isn't the game for you?  But don't discourage other players from expressing themselves through part of the foundation of Armageddon.  Emoting doesn't equal RP but the game sure would be crappy without it.  I can't believe someone just made a thread condoning more simplified emotes.  Isn't that a step backwards?

I don't now that anyone has suggested or condoned a decrease in the quality of emotes, but commented on the format.  You're taking a pretty personal response to this thread in suggesting that the people who don't enjoy four line emotes because they're cumbersome should find another game?

Quantity does not equal quality, and while the bulk of these small novellas scrolling across my screen are well written, the format is cumbersome in this environment.  Main descriptions, room descriptions, object descriptions are all static.  They aren't changing.  They don't describe something that is specific to you or your character.

Power emotes, however, might involve your character or your character's attention.  And while I don't think anyone is saying they are "bad RP", I think what is being asked for is some consideration to be given to the format of the emote.

Taking Hymwen's example:

Code Select Expand

After hesitating for a moment, a look of uncertainty on her features, the tall, short woman tilts her head forward in solemn agreement, the skin of her neck creasing and revealing soft wrinkles as she holds her head bowed for a few seconds, the soft Nekrete wind stirring her silver-silken hair before she rises her head again.

Might be better received as:

Code Select Expand

A look of uncertainy on fer features, the tall, short woman hesitates for a moment.

Code Select Expand

The tall, short woman tilts her head forward in solemn agreement, the skin of her neck creasing and revealing soft wrinkles as she holds her head bowed for a few seconds.

Code Select Expand

The soft Nekrete wind stirrs her silver-silken hair as the tall, short woman raises her head.

This breaks the actions up into pieces rather than one "power clump" of linked activities.  The format makes it easier to react to and interpret for the rest of the audience.  In this case, they might not have acted differently either way it was presented, but let's look at another example:

Code Select Expand

Thrusting his chair our sharply behind him, the swarthy, scarred man slaps a heavy palm to the top of his wooden table and rises with a furious expression, his slender hand closing about the smooth grip of his ivory-hilted bone longsword and sliding it free from its leather scabbard as he stalks through the crowd toward the short, broad-shouldered dwarf.

There are important and independant actions to be seen here:

:arrow: Rising from his table furiously.
:arrow: Drawing his sword.
:arrow: Stalking toward someone with apparently malicious intent.

Each of these might warrant a different reaction from the crowd (or individual), whom might like a chance to emote their reaction.  Taken as a block, however, the person emoting has removed the ability for those around them to react to any one part of the action.  They have to accept this entire chain of events as the sum total rather than the individual actions they represent.

-LoD

So (and I'm not repsonding to just you LOD)

Basically we are just talking about breaking emotes down etc etc, some people emote different ways.  IF you were there you would see the folds of someones neck crease and pretty much everything else.  I don't think the real issue here is power emoting so much as people are complaining about what they read in a TEXT BASED RPG.

People should be able to be descriptive if they want their emotes to read like a 10 cents romance novel that's fine to me at least they're -trying.- A player shouldn't have to be  concerned about is this emote detrimental or not, I don't see any harm in elaboration.

Sure in things like HRPTs when there is to much going on it's okay to limit yourself but otherwise, who cares.  This person's original post wasn't about HRPTs it was just a general complaint.  And generally I'd just like to comment that emotes shouldn't be policed and this complaint is ridiculous.  Stop elaborating on your emotes in a text based game, I don't like to read!  Next it will be people don't emote enough I want to see more creativity.  That fact OOC that you are taken aback by an emote elaborating on small actions you WOULD be able to see every detail of doesn't mean that emote shouldn't be there.

[Vesperas]

Basically we are just talking about breaking emotes down etc etc, some people emote different ways.  IF you were there you would see the folds of someones neck crease and pretty much everything else.  I don't think the real issue here is power emoting so much as people are complaining about what they read in a TEXT BASED RPG.

The real issue here IS power emoting.

I have tried to make that clear; I admit that my expressive skills are not exactly the best in the world, so my OP may have come off a bit more aggitated or rude than I had intended it to.

However, there is a real difference between writing a novellete for each action your PC takes and appropriately describing that reaction to the rest of the room.

People should be able to be descriptive if they want their emotes to read like a 10 cents romance novel that's fine to me at least they're -trying.- A player shouldn't have to be  concerned about is this emote detrimental or not, I don't see any harm in elaboration.

There is trying, and then there is linguistical flaunting and self-masturbation.

I am not talking about looking at each and every one of a person's emotes and forcing them to have a private mental debate over whether or not an emote is suitable, short enough, long enough, or is written in a perfect pentameter.

It's been established that it is very inconsiderate to try and encrouch onto another player's enjoyment of the game because you are aggravated with their style.  But at the same time, you must admit, it is highly inconsiderate to encrouch onto their own enjoyment of te game because you want to prove you can write a new novellete every 5 to 10 seconds.

If my back is turned to you at a bar, I really should not have to read through 3 lines of description going into agonizing detail about the way that light plays within the depths of your [insert vague or archaic word here] eyes and slips down the streaks of [a color no one's heard of before] hair framing your [some adjective with atleast one synomyn dealing with beauty] face to get to the part where you tap me on the shoulder.

Sure in things like HRPTs when there is to much going on it's okay to limit yourself but otherwise, who cares.

Uh, I do, apparently.

There are A LOT of things that can be going on OUTSIDE of HRPTs.  Why should you only be considerate to other players when its something organized that's going on?  Is there something *special* about HRPTs that I'm not aware of?  As far as I'm concerned, HRPTs are no more uber in roleplay than the everyday confrontations I play out on the weekdays.

In one instance where I had to endure repetitive 4-liners at 4am, there were ATLEAST 5 other people besides myself and the emoter in a tavern. And yeah, these explosively detailed novelletes were ALL in taverns with a group of people.  

And generally I'd just like to comment that emotes shouldn't be policed and this complaint is ridiculous.  Stop elaborating on your emotes in a text based game, I don't like to read!  

And generally I'd just like to comment that I think you are taking this as too much of a personal slap on the wrist; how dare I even suggest there's a such thing as emotes that go to far?  How dare YOU suggest I don't belong here as a part of this playerbase, hmm?

Did I ever say I didn't like to read?  I love to read.  I love high detail.  But there is a time and place for everything.  Hell, even I will throw out the occasional 5-liner... but its rare and special, and usually the result of something climatical in my roleplay.  

I love detailed mdescs (room, PC, object, whatever).  I can read these at my leisure (usually when I first see them); they don't interrupt my play, don't correspond with anything currently happening.  They are static, but they offer up all the information to fill in the blanks of my imagination.  

Next it will be people don't emote enough I want to see more creativity.  That fact OOC that you are taken aback by an emote elaborating on small actions you WOULD be able to see every detail of doesn't mean that emote shouldn't be there.

Here's the deal.

There is the IC level of the world -- the place where all the beautiful magic happens.  It's what we are here for, after all.  We have to protect this realm as best we can, and the methods with which we use to do this are easily discussed in other threads.

But there is also an OOC level to the game.  As much as you would like to pretend that you are living in a completely different world, those bastard breeds and cut-throat elves are being puppeted by real-life human beings, who are playing along with you for your enjoyment just as much as their own.  

Assuming that they are giving their best to the scene to help along with the game's immersion (i.e, they are not twinking, spamming, being out of theme, or intentionally trying to ruin the game), then you ought to do your best in return to make sure that they get just as much joy out of playing the game as you, EVEN if this means not writing in hard blocks.

You are not playing by yourself.

[jcarter]

What's with this mentality of "I don't like it so I'm going to post a thread about it!"?

Let people emote how they want, how often they want, and how long they want. It's a damn game.

[Vesperas]

What's with this mentality of "I don't like it so I'm going to post a thread about it!"?

Let people emote how they want, how often they want, and how long they want. It's a damn game.

That I happen to play as well.

[spawnloser]

As long as we can kill off whoever has their character act like the prima-donna on center stage...because these characters obviously feel they're so important to do everything in such dramatic ways, flaunting whatever they think they have when there are obviously more important people in the world like nobles...I can agree with you jcarter.  Everyone gets to do what they want.  It's a game!

[jcarter]

What's with this mentality of "I don't like it so I'm going to post a thread about it!"?

Let people emote how they want, how often they want, and how long they want. It's a damn game.

That I happen to play as well.

Yeah, you play it. It's not your game, and it's not your place to ask other plays to tone down how they play it either.

Don't like someone's emoting? Use the request tool and send in a complaint. CASE SOLVED!

As long as we can kill off whoever has their character act like the prima-donna on center stage...because these characters obviously feel they're so important to do everything in such dramatic ways, flaunting whatever they think they have when there are obviously more important people in the world like nobles...I can agree with you jcarter. Everyone gets to do what they want. It's a game!

Do you just post because you can?

[Jherlen]

Issues of taste are never going to get agreed on, and how long you like your emotes to be is essentially that.

Poweremoting is something different: you can force actions on other characters in a one-line emote or in a three-line one; either way it's bad.

But just like it would be bad to go ooc and critiscise other players for not emoting enough, it would be bad to go ooc and tell them to tone down their emotes. In either case I would say wish up to the staff if you have a problem. (For me, though, for every 3-liner novelist out there, there are five people who barely emote at all, and they're a worse problem.)

[Malken]

Malken grins.

[spawnloser]

I'd ask the same of you, jcarter.  We both have every right to voice our opinion.  I don't post unless I want to say something...and when I want to say something, I post.  Simple, isn't it?

Your suggestion was overly simple.  I pointed out how.

We all play this game and I don't see you bitching out everyone that says, "I noticed my fellow players doing this and find it fucking annoying."  Why not?  Those other people that are annoying other players are just trying to have fun, in this game that they don't own.

Noone owns the game, which is why we all have to have consideration for each other.  When you write a novel, you take away my ability to react to each individual thing you do in the paragraph that is your emote.  This is poweremoting as LoD pointed out...because when you stand, run across the room, draw your weapon and put it against my throat, isn't there a chance that I could have reacted well before the weapon started to move...like when you started to run?

This is the problem.  If you want to tell us to shut up and deal with it, I promise you that some people will not like it and react in the only way that you feel they should...IG, and this sorts of reactions may be messy.

Editted to add: And before you say that that's not playing someone's character correctly, you'd be amazed how easily you can justify hating someone.  It's just finding the means to respond to that hatred.

[jcarter]

We all play this game and I don't see you bitching out everyone that says, "I noticed my fellow players doing this and find it fucking annoying." Why not? Those other people that are annoying other players are just trying to have fun, in this game that they don't own.

Because it's not a matter of "I noticed people doing this and it's annoying", it's a matter of "hey guys should i tell this rascal to knock off his 3 or 4 line emotes?"

Which also holds the side-effect of making the players of emoters like that uncomfortable, since now they can easily feel singled out by reading the message and wondering if it's them.

As for not crusading in every single thread where people complain, well, I'd think the reasons are pretty obvious. I don't have the time, nor interest, in complaining to other players that I don't like them complaining about things that happen in an obscure online game that not even 0.1% of the population knows exists.

If I was a moderator though, I'd probably just go and delete the threads and ban people who I thought were idiots. That's probably why I'm not a moderator or on staff.

[spawnloser]

Probably not.

Also, it's not like anyone is bitching about something the rest of us don't know about.  It doesn't matter that less thatn .1% of the population knows the game exists...100% of the people reading this thread know the game exists.  That's a good percentage, don't you think?

If you don't like the bitching, stop reading the GDB.  When playing the game, though, you don't have the option to stop reading.

[Lizzie]

Hello. This has been an interesting discussion. I've learned a little about both sides of the coin and will convey mine.

I came from an RPI-type mud to here. I'm used to detailed emoting. But even in the other mud we had what some people called "drama queens." They wanted to impress people, not with their roleplay, but with their emotes. Those types grated on the nerves of everyone else, to the point where people would avoid the characters if they knew the drama queens were playing them. Sometimes someone would post about it, and be soundly thrashed for daring to critize the marvelous emoting styles of these "drama queens." So after awhile, it was just simply much easier to avoid them. And the drama queens ended up RPing only with each other, and there weren't enough of them to support their combined RP, and they started complaining, and it was a mess.

My suggestion, intended kindly, is if you are reading this thread and are offended by it, perhaps you are one of the people that others feel are the "drama queens." And if you are, or think you might be (which is really the only reason why anyone would be offended, since if it isn't you, then it isn't directed toward you either), then you might consider that your emoting style is a little too intimidating for those people who don't use a similar style.

The novelette-style dramatic uber-detailed paragraphs are great for books. With a book, you can skim over it, turn back a few pages if you think you might have missed something, then return to the current page without anything changing, or something new happening that you missed by not remaining on your current page. In a text game, if you scroll back, you risk missing something significant happening. You miss the opportunity to react to it. The moment might be over, before you even noticed it begun. In addition, if you are a slow typist, you are causing whoever is with you to sit there waiting while you get that impressive dramatic 3-line uber-detailed emote out to the game. This can hold up plotlines. It can hold up RP, not help it. It can cause hunters to be stuck behind closed gates because it turned dark while they were waiting for their boss to express exactly how the wind is whipping their hair, or the angle of their finger as they beckon you forth.

If you find that things take too long to resolve, whenever you are around, it might just be you that is causing it. And it might be helpful if you examine your own style, just to be sure that your detailed emoting isn't hindering the RP of everyone else, rather than helping and encouraging it.

That's all I really wanted to say, I hope it wasn't too long, and that I didn't offend anyone. My emotes aren't as long as this, I promise

L. Stanson

[Reiloth]

THIS IS QUITE SILLY!

I've known players that emote like crap. One liners, mostly code, and I still feel like they are right next to me, nodding at me with a slight smile.

Yeah, we all know the slight smilers. Hell. We were all slight smilers once.

But come on. Drama queens? I understand, to the extent that some players that use..."Flowery Emotes"...Don't use the vocabulary right, get the words wrong, use a subjective word that is vague. But cut them slack. They are throwing the fuck down. I haven't met someone in this game ever that I said to myself "This guy's style of roleplaying offends me." I've had difficulty playing with foreign players, and understanding what they were saying because english is their second language. Still, I said to myself "This guy's trying his hardest." Everyone's trying their hardest at this game. If it was easy to emote and write, and be creative 100% of the time in this mostly improv text-based game, half the people in the world with internet would be playing it.

I've been playing Arm for three years and still consider myself a newbie. If someone is having trouble emoting, help them out. If they are emoting, be it simple or complex, don't sweat it. I doubt any of these 'drama queens' are going to have you locked out of a gate where you're going to die so that they can describe how the wind whips about their ankles. I've yet to see anything like this in the game, ever. The character's i've known to be 'flowery' know when its time to be efficient, and when its time to be longwinded. Everyone has their style, and I choose to appreciate both ends of this 'emotive art' spectrum; the intricately complex, and the glaringly simple emotes makes the world go round. I'm a fan of long emotes in one huge paragraph, and broken down into several emotes. I'm a fan of simple ass, brief emotes. Bring it on.

[Cuusardo]

Drama queen, I can understand.  The drama queen is the person that goes to a party RPT, and types out several very long and very detailed emotes just to describe how (s)he is vomiting in the corner.

However, this is NOT a common thing among this community.  At least not that I've seen.

[Lizzie]

I'm sorry, I should have bolded or italicized the crux. My use of the term "drama queen" is explicit, and I did mention that the term is used to describe a very specific type of gamer, and I described that type. Here it is again:

Where I came from the phrase "drama queen" was directed exclusively to people who wanted to impress others through their emotes, and not through their roleplay.

I don't know if there are people like that in Arm, I imagine there are, and it looks like some people posting in this thread might be talking about those types of gamers. In an older thread I saw, a staff member wrote "emoting does not equal roleplaying." That is the point I am trying to make. It goes both ways, don't you think? Everyone tells new players "oh don't worry about not emoting enough, emoting isn't roleplaying. Just get into your character and behave as your character would behave." The other side of the spectrum is what seems to have inspired this thread. "Oh don't spend so much time trying to come up with the most impressive emote you can think of, if you feel the waiting time and/or scroll (depending on the circumstances) for coming up with it might deter from your enjoyment and the enjoyment of everyone else.  Emoting isn't roleplaying. Just get into your character and behave as your character would behave."

L. Stanson

[jcarter]

At this point, I really have to wonder whether this thread is some giant joke that I've missed or if some of you really believe the things you type.

[Nao]

I know what type of drama-queen emoting you're talking about here, and I've noticed this is a problem in certain other RPIs - but I've seen this happen only once during the time I played here and never saw that character again - I don't think it's too much of a problem here.

[WarriorPoet]

I'm on the fence, here. I hate to read a dozen four-liners in a row. I don't really need to know how exactly how the delicate webbed wrinkles at the corners of your luminescant visage crinkle gently as your lids drift slowly together and... uh... blink. Yeah. I hate that. BUT, I also despise seeing a hundred 'emote nods' and 'emote shakes his head'.

Detail is good, but brevity can be just as acceptable. Find a middle ground.

I know that I've chosen to kind of 'miss' some people's RP if they're overly wordy with cheesy shit, or if they continually spam 2-word emotes and socials. Find a middle ground.

-WP knows that his own emoting is superior, anyway.

[Path of loving compassion]

I'm still a slight smiler....sometimes. Although something Sanvean once wrote about the words "almost", "rather" and "slight" always rings through my head when I use them.

The best suggestion I've heard was: if you find a certain character going consistently heavy on the emotes, give them a heads up through the request tool. (NOT using the OOC command, God help us.)

The only other thing I wanted to add is that we're all in various stages of learning and developing our writing, of which emotes rank alongside speech or...could be more important, depending on the character. Obviously important. I remember when I started playing - scraping together four lines for my character's main description was a challenge and even a few years later, I envied people who could lay out a beautifully described four-line emote. Now, after almost nine years of off and on play I still find myself pressing to find new ways of delivery, new ways to both evoke and keep it simple.

I hear you, sometimes players get wordy. I sometimes skim. But hell, they're giving it a go and I love that. Actually, I also really love the newbs. They fill my heart with joy as I watch their often bumbling or inept delivery.

So, in conclusion, I hope people feel motivated to develop as writers and carry that through their RP. However, it be a game, says I. It's play. Relax and enjoy, just mind the gith.