Emotive Styles

[Shalooonsh]

Greetings, I hope the day finds you all well.

Because, I am, unfortunately, about to 'cramp your style.'

I've noticed a growing trend lately in emotive styles that troubles me.  While it can be amusing at times to bend the emotive rules, the game actually suffers in the long run if this becomes the norm.

Here's a few examples (taken directly from the game) of things I (as a member of staff, and not speaking from the perspective of the entirety of the staff) would like to see never, ever happen again:

** Crossing her ankles to be sure her (something) is visible, the (sdesc) opts to shut the hell up and watch.

** Obviously embarrassed, (sdesc) facepalms.

** Angrily resisting, (sdesc) rips her arm back as if starting a lawn mower.

At first I had noticed a player, or two, doing this kind of thing.  Not anything big, and they mostly kept it to very private situations in which some additional OOC humor would be appreciated.  Lately, however, it has grown more and more public, and widespread.

I'm not an emotive nazi.  I don't care if you emote 'loosely' when you can't actually reference an object using ~.  An example of this would be while in a shop, and gesturing to the massive towershield (instead of writing out the absolutely immense, tortoiseshell and steel banded hoplite shield from hell).  Since you can't target it, and there's only one really huge shield in the seller's list, it's fine to be a bit loose with your descriptors.

The problem arises when you start making emotes like this on a scene-by-scene basis.  When it doesn't end.  And -especially- when it starts influencing newbies to emote in the same manner.

Please, people, be a bit more delicate with your use of loose and humorous emotes.  It is getting extremely heavy handed, and common, and this brings displeasure to the brainz eaters.

I've put this in the general discussion thread because I would also like to hear your thoughts on it.  I don't want apologies, I don't want finger pointing.  I wan't opinions, reasoning, and intelligent questions.

Thanks much!

[bardbard#4]

** Obviously embarrassed, (sdesc) facepalms.

I think that's ok.  I've used the 'facepalm' verb for years because it's shorter than typing out 'slaps a palm against his face'.  Same thing.  It's kinda funny actually, since when I use 'facepalm' in real life, no one seems to know what I'm talking about.  I don't know when or where I picked this one up in my mudding career, but somehow it seems contained to that.

I can't imagine 'obviously embarrassed' is bad either.  It's pretty obvious when someone is embarrassed, you know?  You can just tell.

[Marauder Moe]

Just to be clear, is this just about the real-world references in those emotes or the emotional descriptors too?

[psionic fungus]

I have to agree.  Emotes are not the place for OOC humor.

I even get annoyed when I see things like:

"The man looks at you, his lips curled in obvious distain."

Obvious distain?  What the hell's that?  Why don't you -show- me obvious distain, instead of telling me?  Eh?  HMm?  WHY!?!

Okay, I'm done.  But I agree wholeheartedly, people need to be more serious with their emoting, and please try to keep the language physically descriptive and not so poetically emotional and such.  That annoys the crap out of me.

[Maso]

I personally don't like stuff like....

"opts to shut the hell up and watch." and "(sdesc) rips her arm back as if starting a lawn mower." as I find them jarring and I was a dorky newbie who read all the docs and a lot of the GDB and learnt to expect more from Arm.

However I think emotional descriptors, while should be used with care, are quite difficult to get around. They have been the topic of huge discussion before, however, so I doubt further massive debate about them is really necessary?

Editted to remove silly [/b] and to reply to PF.

Not everyone has the vocabulary, energy, focus to describe 'disdain' 'slight anger' 'shame'. These are things that we have learnt over our lives of interaction to pick up in peoples very very subtle expressions. But how to describe that particular twitch of eye or lips that represents certain emotions is pretty damn difficult.

[Shalooonsh]

Facepalm is an anachronism.  Also, it is not an actual word.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/facepalm

[Marauder Moe]

Obvious distain?  What the hell's that?  Why don't you -show- me obvious distain, instead of telling me?  Eh?  HMm?  WHY!?!

Out of curiousity, how would you show someone obvious disdain?

[Jherlen]

Just to be clear, is this just about the real-world references in those emotes or the emotional descriptors too?

I'd say both.

The lawnmower emote aside, I'd say the others are okay if used sparingly. Humorous and subjective emotes have their place sometimes, in the right situations. They're like spice. They're great to add flavor to a scene, but if you overuse them, you spoil things.

I'd still rather choose to play with someone whose emotes were too flavorful, versus too plain or non-existent, though. I'd likely also choose someone whose emotes were like the above examples over someone who spams 3 line flowerfest emotes at me. I think it's all a matter of taste.


edited because I should have known there would be other replies while I was typing mine

[psionic fungus]

-Really- quickly, and simply, to illustrate from my own example, rather than:

"The man looks at you, his lips curled in obvious distain."

I would vastly prefer to see something like:

"The man looks at you, his lips curled downwards in a sneer."

That's -really- simple and it certainly gets the message across.

Shit, I would prefer to see:

"The man looks at you, frowning."

Even:

"The man looks at you, his lips curled distainfully." or:
"The man looks at you, his lips curled in distain."

The modifier of "obvious" I find to be the real culprit in this emote.  If it's obvious you don't have to tell me that.  Just show me what the character is physically doing.

:/

[Marauder Moe]

To me, though, a sneer implies malicious intent more than it does disdain.  A frown can mean many different things.

In real life, I can pretty easily tell the difference between facial expressions of sadness, maliciousness, and disdain.  I find it pretty hard to describe the differences, though.  Human facial expressions are terribly subtle.

[Xygax]

To extend my post from here, my thoughts on these emotes are the following:

** Crossing her ankles to be sure her (something) is visible, the (sdesc) opts to shut the hell up and watch.

(As a side note, I love Shalooonsh's censorship here, it makes a rather tame emote look very naughty!)  I'm not in love with the "shut the hell up" clause here, and while I'm sure the player won't appreciate having this recent emote be dissected, it's the sort of emote I hope players will turn away from in favor of better, subtler language.  It's not a BAD emote, but it could be improved by erring on the side of objectivity over subjectivity and OOCly conveyed emotion.

** Obviously embarrassed, (sdesc) facepalms.

I'm a bit at-odds with Shalooonsh on this one.  I'm fine with both "obviously embarrassed" and "facepalms."  Again, this emote might have been improved by an objective style, but it can indeed be difficult to objectively describe "embarrassment".  That said, it can be fun to objectively describe the way -your character- reveals embarrassment and let viewers react appropriately.  Perhaps your character's embarrassment is revealed as a facial tick of some sort, or an oddly curled lip -- and perhaps other PCs interpret these reactions as being deceptive or snide.  This can be fun for the whole family, and is the core reason I am such a fan of objectivity.

That said, objectivity can be verbose and finding a nice happy medium between objective descriptions and just getting to the point can be challenging.

** Angrily resisting, (sdesc) rips her arm back as if starting a lawn mower.

The lawn-mower reference is anachronistic and jarring here, though the use of simile here (if sparingly done) might be interesting with a more in-game reference.

-- X

[Rindan]

I have to agree.  Emotes are not the place for OOC humor.

I even get annoyed when I see things like:

"The man looks at you, his lips curled in obvious distain."

Obvious distain?  What the hell's that?  Why don't you -show- me obvious distain, instead of telling me?  Eh?  HMm?  WHY!?!

I actually don't find this to be so bad.  I would probably reword it a little, but some times being blatant is quicker and therefor better then trying to describe just exactly what the expression 'disdain' looks like.  I know what disdain looks like when I see it, but I would be pretty hard pressed to write out an emote on the fly to describe it.  The only thing I would change to this emote would be to switch the word "obvious" with "apparent".  The only reason why I nit pick is because "obvious" implies that disdain is certainly what the character feels, while apparent implies that a look of disdain is what that character is showing on their face and that internally they could feel some other way.  Even then, I rate it as a nit pick and not a great sin.  "Obviously" isn't that bad, just probably not the best wording.

Describing facial expressions is hard, time consuming, and a good way to confuse the hell out of people if you do it poorly.  I don't think that stating clearly what the expression implies is all that great of a sin.  It isn't ideal, but it beats slowing a quick conversation down or confusing what is going on.

[Gimfalisette]

I have not noticed a huge quantity of the OOC humor happening in game. I do know some people who will do it in completely private situations and as long as it's entirely brief and there's a reason for doing it, I really don't mind. The problem with OOC / anachronistic stuff is that it breaks immersion, of course. I can stand to have my immersion broken for like...one or two emotes...but that's my limit, and then we need to get back to the game.

The emotional descriptors...well, it really depends. There are some emotions that would be extremely, extremely difficult to describe in text without sitting and staring at the screen for ten minutes. For example, what if you wanted to indicate that there was a mixture of rage and sorrow on the character's face? I'd rather you take a moment to come up with "his face twisting in a pained mixture of rage and sorrow" than throw down "frowning," or alternately make me wait and wait while you struggle to come up with something that only describes physical movements of the face and still doesn't do the job. It's all about communicating, and all we've got is the text to do that with.

Easier emotions, sure, show those rather than tell them. Simple emotions are fairly simple to show.

[bloodfromstone]

I'm bad about this sometimes. However, sometimes I intentionally don't target items that have obnoxiously long sdescs. Personally, I appreciate it when other players do this. If I want to see what the item is like, I can always look at it without seeing their ebon black pitch negro dark blackened shirt all the time.

[Gimfalisette]

I'm bad about this sometimes. However, sometimes I intentionally don't target items that have obnoxiously long sdescs. Personally, I appreciate it when other players do this. If I want to see what the item is like, I can always look at it without seeing their ebon black pitch negro dark blackened shirt all the time.

I agree with this. And for me, after I've targeted the thing once, I'm not going to target it with every single emote. In fact, I think just typing out "her skirt" is fine (for example), because if another player then wants to "look gimpy's skirt" they can check it out without getting the big-ol' sdesc shoved in their face. Too much sdesc targeting can be wearying and get in the way of the real meaning of emotes, IMO.

[Marauder Moe]

Fair enough.  "Obvious" probably isn't the best word to use when describing externally-visible emotional states, but I'm not sure it's a terrible breach of conduct.  There's no way in hell I'm going to describe the position of every tiny facial muscle instead of typing "disdain" every time I see an elf, though.

There's certainly a line.

GOOD: "emote scowls angrily"
OK: "emote looks angry"
BAD: "emote is angry"
REALLY BAD: "emote is angry because of what ~person just said"


I also certainly agree with the OOC references in emotes, but I think emotive humor meant for the player instead of the character isn't neccesarily all bad.  I once wrote a flowery emote about adding another flavor to the aromatic atmosphere... of the Byn latrines.  ICly it just smells bad, but OOCly I thought it was pretty funny.  It was all plain English free of modern references, however.  Was that still a bad thing?

[Rindan]

I'm bad about this sometimes. However, sometimes I intentionally don't target items that have obnoxiously long sdescs. Personally, I appreciate it when other players do this. If I want to see what the item is like, I can always look at it without seeing their ebon black pitch negro dark blackened shirt all the time.

Maybe the staff might violently disagree with me, but I am 100% a-okay with not referring to items with a ~ or % when attempting to do it for a stylistic reason.  In fact, I think that the compulsion to refer to any object with ~ and % some times leads to some really ugly looking emotes.

:The figure in the dark hood cloak pulls the edge of his cloak tightly around himself.

is better than...

:The figure in the dark hooded cloak pulls the edge of his dark hooded cloak tightly around himself.

As long as it is clear what you are referring too, I don't have an issue with people taking liberties and not using exact sdescs for items.  Only in the case of other PCs do I think you absolutely must use the object commands.

[Gimfalisette]

I also certainly agree with the OOC references in emotes, but I think emotive humor meant for the player instead of the character isn't neccesarily all bad.  I once wrote a flowery emote about adding another flavor to the aromatic atmosphere... of the Byn latrines.  ICly it just smells bad, but OOCly I thought it was pretty funny.  It was all plain English free of modern references, however.  Was that still a bad thing?

Just speaking for myself of course, I don't think that's bad at all. I enjoy it when another player does things like that, because although I'm laughing OOCly, my character is not at all jarred by it. You just used flowery language to indicate that you did something nasty, and to my character, it's perceived as nasty, NOT flowery. But there's no way for me to interpret "lawnmower" as not jarring to my character...if that makes sense.

[psionic fungus]

his face twisting in a mixture of rage and sorrow.

This truthfully doesn't annoy me nearly so much as if there were a word like "obvious" thrown in there.  However, I would still -prefer- to see wholly physical descriptions. Something like:

"Lips set in a quivering line, his face twitches as deep creases appear in his brow."

Doesn't make us mind readers who -know- that he is experiencing a pained mix of sorrow and rage.

While these things are often easily discernable in real life, they are also -often- mis-read.  When I'm concentrating I tend to crease my brow, I cannot count the number of times I've had friends think I was angry with them about something, when I was just trying to remember an address or phone number.  Perhaps Mr. Quivery-Lips DeepBrow just ate something sour, maybe he just found out that his lover was murdered, I really can't say for sure -just- based on his facial expression, especially if it is someone I don't know well.  I would prefer to take the physical description and combine that with the context of the conversation, or with my previous knowledge of the character, and base my conclusions about his emotional state on that.

But really, this is just a personal peeve, on the other hand, jarringly OOC references and OOC humor are just -wrong-.

The "Obviously embarrassed" example is why I threw "obvious" in my own example.  And it's an easy one to fix.  "Face turning a deep shade of crimson" or -whatever-.  Blushing is almost always a sign of embarrassment, utilize it.  If your chracter shows embarrassment another way, use that, people who know you will know you're embarrassed, and if they don't know you, well then it wasn't very "obvious".

Sometimes throwing an emotion in an emote is quicker, easier, and / or appropriate, but I, personally, in almost every situation, would prefer to see emotion shown through physical descriptions as much as possible.

[ale six]

I try to avoid anachronisms whenever possible. However I don't consider "facepalms" an anachronism, and if it may not be an official word, it's one enough people will understand, and it isn't 1337speak in the flavor of "pwns" or anything.

Emotion is a grey area. I think either way people have been saying is fine. Either using a word directly or describing an expression that reflects the emotion. For myself, I tend to like the indirect approach better when someone can do it well, because it makes the scene more interesting when a player doesn't come out straight and tell you their emotions. "emote turns her head away, squeezing her eyes shut and wincing as if struck." is better than "emote turns her head away with a betrayed expression", at least in my book. But sometimes you can't think of anything. So when you can't, better to just use the word.

The time when subjective emotes become REALLY bad is when they stop conveying actions or emotions and start conveying thoughts. For instance, the ever-present example: "emote thinks ~man is really dumb for what he just did." Or, an example that I actually saw a player use once: "emote scoffs derisively at the ridiculousness of your comment."

But barring extreme stuff like that, I think a little subjectivity in emotes can be okay, when it isn't constantly over the top in every scene. I'd rather see there be more emotes in the game, not less.

[Tisiphone]

It is sometimes difficult to tell when you're slipping modern language into emotes. Lawnmowers are obvious, apparently for others facepalming is less obvious.

Not saying this as an excuse, but as a warning. Accidentally including them is as bad as doing it on purpose, so keep your eyes open.

PF, as to your favored style of emoting, I'm partially inclined to agree, though I still throw my baggage on the other side of the fence. Here's why.

While in real life we aren't 'mind readers', there are a lot of subconscious emotional cues on people's faces which we never consciously see. Our analytical pattern machine picks them up and matches them before passing them to our thinker. So you see, explaining in detail whether that's a grimace of distaste, disdain, or terror, without using those emotional words, can in fact become very difficult, and even inaccurate.

[Medena]

To extend my post from here, my thoughts on these emotes are the following:

** Crossing her ankles to be sure her (something) is visible, the (sdesc) opts to shut the hell up and watch.

(As a side note, I love Shalooonsh's censorship here, it makes a rather tame emote look very naughty!)  I'm not in love with the "shut the hell up" clause here, and while I'm sure the player won't appreciate having this recent emote be dissected, it's the sort of emote I hope players will turn away from in favor of better, subtler language.  It's not a BAD emote, but it could be improved by erring on the side of objectivity over subjectivity and OOCly conveyed emotion.

Again, my own apologies for dissecting this emote but I think there is something about this one that has been overlooked which makes it poor.  "opts to shut the hell up" describes the thought process behind the action and not at all what one could physically see.  It would be like emoting:

emote after a mental struggle, @ decides to take the blue pill

instead of something like:

emote after several moments of staring at each of the pills, @ finally reaches out for the blue one

[Adhira]

Medena has managed to find the real issue here, I think.

What I am seeing happening more and more often is people using the emoting system to detail things that are irrelevant and there for 'amusement', or describing things that the viewer wouldn't know.

An emote is a description of an action, and I think this is the paramount item to consider when constructing your emote.

[Hymwen]

I'm guilty of the humorous emotes, but generally only when alone or with one particular player.

I'm a little confused about the direct reference to items - is it prefered that I do ~sword every time instead of "her sword"? If I'm sparring and have just drawn my sparring sword, I just refer to it simply as a/the/her sword, rather than "a bloodied short bone sparring sword" each time.

About the showing of emotions rather than letting the viewer guess, I've always done that and always prefered when others do that. I'd rather see "sends you an angry look" than "frowns and looks at you with a lowered brow" or something to that extent. Not saying that it's appropriate to "looks at you sadly because you killed their best friend", but you can use sadly and I'd have no problems with it.

A thing that I find strange is when people emote something completely redundant. It tends to look like they feel they should emote, but can't think of anything. Not targeting anyone in particular, but I just think it's odd to see, for example, someone doing "emote turns north" before going north. It's not that they're not allowed to emote things like that, but nobody's assuming they teleported to the bar if they don't emote walking there, or that they're walking backwards if they don't emote which way they turn. It's not wrong, but I'd rather see -how- they walk than just the fact that they do it, which I'm already assuming happened if they walk north. Pointless emotes just bother me a little, especially if the same player then doesn't emote an action that should be emoted. Maybe I should worry less about stuff.

Another thing that is often emoted strangely with is eyes. I've seen anything from someone "casting their eyes through the room" to someone's "eye stalking your every movement", or players emoting the exact color of their eyes in every emote that contains the act of observing something. Just gets to me.

On a final note, I wish the original poster would have used some emotes that were fabricated examples made for the post, instead of targeting a specific player by using three of their emotes. I believe the player in question should have been contacted personally about the issue instead.

[alger]

I'm guilty of the "Obviously ~something~" sometimes and do fall into the trap of describing a thought process rather than the action itself though I do consciously try not to.  Thing is I find English to be quite limited in certain aspects.  It has a lot of words for different things but not that many words to fully describe complex/abstract things.  It can be quite annoying when there's this nagging word in your head that describes what you want perfectly but there's just no english substitute for it.