Needlessly complex Emoting system

[Delicious_Marinade]

So, I recently tried to get a friend of mine to play Armageddon, and good god, were they overwhelmed by the emoting system. The more I tried to explain that it's there for a good reason and that they should just keep a copy of Help Emoting in a text file for reference, the more I realized that actually, there really isn't.

Basically, the entire reason we have eight different ways to target a person in an emote is so that their sdesc shows up as "you" on their screen. The question is... why? Why go through all that effort for just that? You're not your character. Even then, your sdesc even shows up at the start of your own emotes, so it's really inconsistent, too.

All in all, it just feels like an artifact from less RP-Focused MUDs that relied more on preset socials, and it really has no reason for existing, imo.

Like, we could have a much simpler system where we still have ~amos for basic targeting, and ~amos's could easily just work, too, but it still shows up as the sdesc for everyone, including Amos. This way you can just actually write complicated emotes normally without doing any weird syntax-shenanigans.

Am I alone in thinking like this?

[nauta]

Funnily enough I was just going over the "How do I emote?" section of Mansa's Guide this morning and thinking about this. One thing that is great about the emoting system is that you don't have to use the advanced features: they are there if you want to use them, but you don't have to.  In fact, if I had to boil it down, what you said is exactly right: just stick to tilde (~) until you feel more comfortable with it.  You can do:

Code Select Expand


em winks at ~tall
em winks at ~tall's little pupppy


This works great, and is about all a new player needs to tackle.  (I think it might add a little space after the sdesc, but no biggie.)

Why do anything more advanced?  I can think of three obvious cases:

1. Better looking possessive.  Use '%' instead of '~' to indicate a possessive, e.g.:

Code Select Expand


em winks at %tall little puppy

The svelte, strong-jawed woman winks at the tall muscular man's little puppy.



2. Eliminate redundant sdescs.

So, for instance, instead of ~tall which places the full sdesc in that spot, you would use !tall, if this is the second time you reference them.  This just reads better.  Example:

Code Select Expand


em winks at ~tall and then nods to ~tall.

The svelte, strong-jawed woman winks at the tall, muscular man and then nods to the tall, muscular man.


That repeats 'tall, muscular man' twice!  So instead:

Code Select Expand


em winks at ~tall and then nods to !tall.

The svelte, strong-jawed woman winks at the tall, muscular man and then nods to him.


This is an 'advanced' feature, since you could just do:

Code Select Expand


em winks at ~tall and then nods to him.


But if there are many people in the room, then the tall, muscular man won't know if you nodded to him or to someone else!

3. Disambiguation and hidden people.

The main reason you want to target things in the emote, instead of just doing 'you', is because of 3rd parties.  For instance, if you type:

Code Select Expand


em winks at you. (thinking you are alone with the tall, muscular man)

A thief in the corner would see:

The svelte, strong-jawed woman winks at you.


So we want to use ~.

In sum: advanced features are there if you want, but aren't necessary.

It took me forever to learn them all, and to be honest I still rarely use anything but '~' and '!' in my emotes.  Sometimes '%' and '^' (the possessive versions).

[Delicious_Marinade]

Still, it kind of feels arbitrary, since those advanced features basically just lock "having complex emotes" behind a wall of gripping with the weird features, when really, you could just write grammatically correct sentences while referring to different people and then using things like him, his, her, hers in a way that makes sense. My point is, it doesn't ADD anything to the experience for anyone (apart from maybe getting the occasional chuckle at hilarious failed attempts at emoting) and therefore has no real reason to exist.

I mean, sure, you don't HAVE TO use those, but then you're basically restricted to very basic sentence structures or emotes that just look -weird-, when that really doesn't HAVE to be like that. I'm not arguing that this is a super complex and hard to understand system, but I am arguing that it makes it harder for new players to get into the game, when that is really, really the last thing I think everyone here wants.

[Armaddict]

I wouldn't call it needlessly complex.  Sure, it's not something you pick up the moment you read the helpfile and it takes a little bit of muscle memory to do it seamlessly without having to slow down your typing.  But that's not...flabberghastingly terrible.

It's been specifically cited as a big feature of the game for those who end up enjoying Armageddon for the point of immersion.  It helps the flow of the narrative move along, making other player's typos or lack of representation the biggest 'jerkers' for taking you out of the deep play mindset, rather than the wonky shift of perspective that is prevalent in untargeted or inconsistently presented emotes.

Have you ever read a novel where the author decides to make perspectives and the way people refer to each other inconsistent?

[Riev]

Its not NEEDLESSLY complex. I conform to the standard that I don't need to see "you" in MY OWN EMOTES, but there's a disjointed feeling when someone's emote says:

"The handsome man ruffles you's hair"
rather than
"the handsome man ruffles your hair"

or

"the handsome man's eyes peer deeply into you's"
and
"the handsome man's eyes peer deeply into yours"


You can get away with ~, @, and % for about 95% of all standard emotes.

[Delicious_Marinade]

Okay, just to reiterate, what I'm proposing isn't just flat out removing everything but ~amos from emoting, what I'm proposing is completely removing "you" being used in emotes at all. There wouldn't be a constant shift of perspectives or anything.

It's the difference between

em looks deep into %amos eyes, then flicks ^me gaze down at the knife at ^amos belt, before abruptly thrusting ^me face towards +amos while trying to reach around ^amos back.

vs

em looks deep into ~amos's eyes, then flicks her gaze down at the knife at his belt, before abruptly thrusting her face towards his while trying to reach around his back.


Of course, this is even more simplified than it really needs to be, we could technically still have %amos instead of ~amos's, this is just assuming that they'd give the same result.



One problem with the current emoting system that would be fixed with this that I didn't even think of would be this:

em holds up ^me shield, gasping pitifully for air after ~amos lands a solid kick on her.

Which would show up as "The scar-riddled, long-legged woman holds up her shield, gasping pitifully for air after you lands a solid kick on her." to Amos.

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

I do personally believe that the constant shift between seeing 'you' or seeing your sdesc (e.g. you see your sdesc when you put in an emote, 'The amos-faced amos kicks her feet forward.') is jarring. When emoting, you can type !me, ~me, and ^me and all that sort of stuff to get "you"s, but then it's just "The amos-faced amos kicks your feet forward". That doesn't read well.

I think there needs to be a consistency. Seeing as when you talk it says 'you', and when people emote to you it says 'you', when you emote yourself it should also say 'you'. Or, swap to display sdescs instead of 'you's.

There can't be pick-and-choosing. It's jarring. Or at least, there should be a coded option to swap displays! Sort of like swapping if a taste displays when you eat a food.

'Change edesc on' to see your sdesc when emoting, and 'change edesc off' to see 'You'.

[nauta]

Oh, ok, I get it, and yeah there are loads of cornercases where you doesn't come through or comes through funky like you point out.

If I'm grokking the proposal, it is simply to get rid of 'you' (and friends) tout court across the board simpliciter.  That sounds like an interesting idea, but a couple questions on the proposal. 

1. Codewise, you'd have to get rid of 'you' (and friends) from all the commands (get, put, combat output, etc.)

2. It'd still have to have all 8 symbols.  You'd also have some cases where you want to disambiguate 'her' and 'his' in complex situations, so all the emote symbols would still have to stay in place.

[Uh, these are statements, but pretend there's a 'Right?' at the end... :-)]

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

I think it'd be simpler to change the occurences of seeing your sdesc or 'her' or 3rd-person-ness in personal emotes to 'you', as there are less instances of your sdesc showing than of 'you' showing from the code.

[MatisseOrOtherwise]

I think it'd be simpler to change the occurences of seeing your sdesc or 'her' or 3rd-person-ness in personal emotes to 'you', as there are less instances of your sdesc showing than of 'you' showing from the code.

Though, thinking on it, as you need to write things in 3rd person anyway to make it make sense to others, it'll just show as "You takes your shield into your hand and thrusts it forward."

...Which sounds like I'm just doing an impression of Smeagol teaching a class on shield technique.

[Delicious_Marinade]

Oh, ok, I get it, and yeah there are loads of cornercases where you doesn't come through or comes through funky like you point out.

If I'm grokking the proposal, it is simply to get rid of 'you' (and friends) tout court across the board simpliciter.  That sounds like an interesting idea, but a couple questions on the proposal. 

1. Codewise, you'd have to get rid of 'you' (and friends) from all the commands (get, put, combat output, etc.)

2. It'd still have to have all 8 symbols.  You'd also have some cases where you want to disambiguate 'her' and 'his' in complex situations, so all the emote symbols would still have to stay in place.

[Uh, these are statements, but pretend there's a 'Right?' at the end... :-)]

1. Yes. They'd have to do that. Then again, a lot of them already use your sdesc anyways, so it's kind of long overdue to make it all consistently be one thing, at the very least.

2. It'd actually not! You'd disambiguate 'her' and 'his' the way you normally would in a sentence where they'd come up, y'know, by only using them if you don't wanna refer to the full sdesc twice in a row. So, basically, you'd only need one targeting thing with a possessive so people don't have to type out full sdescs again and again, and so hide code things still work properly and things don't go full meta.

[BadSkeelz]

It takes practice, for sure. But being able to target emotes with precision beyond ~ is a godsend in group situations.

Start slow with single target emotes before expanding to using the rest of the system. It isn't needlessly complex, it's just deep.

[Veselka]

What if you target multiple people in an emote?

[Delicious_Marinade]

What if you target multiple people in an emote?

em looks over at ~vamos and gives him a thumbs up, before turning over at ~amos and just giving him a blank stare for a good ten seconds or so.

[nauta]

2. It'd still have to have all 8 symbols.  You'd also have some cases where you want to disambiguate 'her' and 'his' in complex situations, so all the emote symbols would still have to stay in place.

2. It'd actually not! You'd disambiguate 'her' and 'his' the way you normally would in a sentence where they'd come up, y'know, by only using them if you don't wanna refer to the full sdesc twice in a row. So, basically, you'd only need one targeting thing with a possessive so people don't have to type out full sdescs again and again, and so hide code things still work properly and things don't go full meta.

Yeah!  Now that I think about it, you are right.  The rules of proper English grammar already disambiguate for us, so we'd really only need ~ and % tops, or even simpler: ~tall and ~tall's.  That is radically more simple.  Spot on proposal.

Although we could flip the proposal on its head: what if we fixed the corner cases and kept the current system in place?  This is more a "it looks cool" argument: it is kind of cool when it refers to you as 'you'. 

[BadSkeelz]

It'll look better for Amos seeing "and just giving you a blank stare".

Just tell your friend how to use ~  and that there's more options should he ever want to dig a little deeper. Their use isn't mandatory so there's no reason to dumb down the game.

[Delicious_Marinade]

It takes practice, for sure. But being able to target emotes with precision beyond ~ is a godsend in group situations.

Start slow with single target emotes before expanding to using the rest of the system. It isn't needlessly complex, it's just deep.

Complexity =!= depth.
Depth would imply that that extra syntax existing would give you lots of options that you wouldn't have without it, but that's clearly not the case, as it actually limits you more than anything else. Okay, I'll give you that if there's like 10 people in a room during an RPT, just seeing a "you" somewhere in an emote is a nice little thing to know you specifically are being interacted with, but those situations are always gonna be chaotic and hard to keep track of regardless, and can easily be fixed by just customizing your client to make your sdesc show up as bold.

It'll look better for Amos seeing "and just giving you a blank stare".

How does it? Especially in that example. I genuinely don't think there is any solid argument for having it refer to your character as "you", especially in a game like this where you haven't really played until you've been five different yous.

Just tell your friend how to use ~  and that there's more options should he ever want to dig a little deeper. Their use isn't mandatory so there's no reason to dumb down the game.

My friend's problems with this aren't why I made this thread. They're just fine. This is because it bothers -me-. Things like grammatical errors that this "you" system inherently puts into your sentences, general inconvenience, tendency to be the source of many mistakes and weird emotes that hurt immersion, making emotes take longer to come out, and generally just making it harder for newer players to partake in the RP as much as they want to from the get-go.

There's nothing that would be "dumbed down" unless you genuinely think learning eight different syntax symbols instead of one makes Armageddon more of a cool internet sekrit club for only the smartest boys and girls.

Actually, the CURRENT system is the one that is "dumbing down" emoting and actively making the game worse, by not letting people who are already decent RPers from experience on other platforms actually express the exact things they want to express without having to take an extra minute and slowing down the RP or just ignoring the system entirely and sending much less interesting emotes as a result.

[Armaddict]

Just tell your friend how to use ~  and that there's more options should he ever want to dig a little deeper. Their use isn't mandatory so there's no reason to dumb down the game.

Indeed.  Throwing people into it full fledged is the wrong approach, since it's one of the accepted 'new player' behaviors to have a bit of struggle with it.

I started with none.  Nada.  I didn't use the thing at all, had no idea it was even there.  I typed out 'you'.  I had someone point out ~ to me in ooc and help emote.  I used ~ and % solely for about a year, then I added ^.  With those three, I can do pretty much 95% of all emotes I want to do.  Probably a higher percentage than that, even.

Sinking your teeth into the emote system is based around desire to do the things, not a community expectation to use each symbol at least once a day or something.  The 'main ones' are entirely dominant, and 1-3 symbols is really not that hard to pick up.

[boog]

The emoting system is why I stayed.

Crazy.

[azuriolinist]

I, for one, love the emoting system. When used properly, it makes for an immersive experience one can sink deeper into. I may not be my character, but doesn't one roleplay to step into their character's shoes?

However, I won't deny how cumbersome emoting is and can be. The syntax definitely isn't difficult to learn. This seems to be more of an aesthetic issue, which I get. Why bother using the emoting syntax when referring to your own PC, when it ends up shown as 'The tall, black-haired man cleans your pants.' The usage of the '#' (he/she/you) syntax in emotes is also often clumsy (e.g. 'emote turns to the direction that #breed faces' shows up as 'The tall, black-haired man turns to the direction that you faces.' to the targetted PC).

Like I said, I like how it is despite all its clunkiness. I like the CYOA feel and how it heightens the feeling of, hey, I'm the character in a story set in some desert wasteland. But a third-person emoting system would definitely have its merits.

[LucildaHunta]

It is a little complicated when you start getting into the obscure cases. Like others have said though, master ~ % ^ and you're good for most things....like 95% of things.

It's also one of the things that make the game unique. That first person narrative, it might be why people take things that happen to their character so seriously. Most games today use third person or worse, in my opinion, past tense emotes.

[cshoov]

The usage of the '#' (he/she/you) syntax in emotes is also often clumsy (e.g. 'emote turns to the direction that #breed faces' shows up as 'The tall, black-haired man turns to the direction that you faces.' to the targetted PC).

In my admittedly limited experience, I've found that those situations can be avoided by wording the emote a little differently. E.g. "emote turns to follow %breed gaze."

I know that^^ might come off as "The system is good, you just need to get better at playing" and I hope that it isn't. Sorry if so.

I will say that the emoting system is something I initially really liked about Armageddon over other games I've played, which tend to stay in the third person and are far less immersive.

[BadSkeelz]

Just tell your friend how to use ~  and that there's more options should he ever want to dig a little deeper. Their use isn't mandatory so there's no reason to dumb down the game.

My friend's problems with this aren't why I made this thread. They're just fine. This is because it bothers -me-.

Allow me to rephrase my initial advice then: figure out how to use ~ and don't worry about using the rest until you feel like you want to. Or don't even do that, if that's too difficult or jarring to look at. Their use isn't mandatory so don't worry about trying so hard.

If you can understand your emotes, and other players can understand your emotes, then there is nothing more to worry about. It's my experience that using the available system to its fullest extent is the best guarantor of both those conditions being satisfied, as I can be sure my target(s) are getting unambiguous first-person views of the emote. I have to put up with the slight awkwardness of seeing my full sdesc and "you" in the same sentence, but this is a price I am willing to pay.

You may have your own conclusion or philosophy to what makes a good emote, which is perfectly fine. The system allows for it. There is nothing stopping you from typing emotes in the third person without making use of the emote code at all.

[Insigne]

Boy, do I get the struggle of learning the emoting system. It does take a good while of practice to get the hang of. With time, I found that the ones I use the most are ~, !, %, and ^. The rest aren't really necessary for a player just starting out.

Personally, I think there are merits to both second-person and third-person narratives, but I'm not sure changing it is worth the workload on staff. That's a lot of echoes. I do think there's something that can be said about how difficult it is to just dive into the game without ingesting a lot of syntax or handicapping yourself until you can figure it out, though.

As a sidenote: I remember reading a post where someone mentioned having a post-it with the symbols and usage taped to the corner of their screen. If nothing else, that suggestion helped me check my syntax without switching back and forth between tabs.

[Grapes]

As far as detailed, thoughtful, extensive emotes are concerned, they're nice to look at, but as long as I can get some inkling of what the player is trying to do, I tend to overlook the awkwardness and stick to the story, much like I overlook spelling errors, numbers in says or emotes, complete lack of punctuation or capitalization, or any number of other things that may otherwise be jarring. It takes time for anyone to generate the muscle memory needed to fluidly emote with  the symbols, it shouldn't be a barrier to entry.

Keeping a copy of the help emote file in a text file, as others have suggested, can be an aide to getting over that initial hump, though completely optional. Restructuring the emote system of a game that dates back some twenty years on DIKU, could generate more problems than it would solve.

ETA: A real-life situation with an interesting parallel is the story of the QWERTY keyboard we all know and love. Do better, more efficient designs exist? Yes. Then, why haven't they been mass-implemented? Well consider this, every single person would have to unlearn, then relearn how to type.