The Emote Character Limit is Damaging, Here's Why

[geminferno]

I'm a relatively new player to Armageddon, and to MUDs in general, really. However, I am no rookie when it comes to roleplaying. I've been roleplaying and telling stories for 13 years and I enjoy expressing my characters' feelings, describing their movements their facial expression, etc. because that's what makes roleplaying more immersive. I personally think the character limit on emotes is holding people back from really building lasting relationships and even roleplaying in general.

I want to be able to roleplay without having the flow stopped abruptly because I got too excited and wanted to give my roleplaying partner something to respond to. I know not everyone wants to see a wall of text, which is fine, but I also want to be able to make a response worthy of being... well, replied to. I feel it should be extended, or maybe even dismantled altogether.

There's too many instances where I get un-motivated because I get a one liner with barely anything to build upon. It makes me not even want to interact with other players sometimes. And before anyone tells me to "find another game without a character limit" I'm gonna stop you right there. I LOVE Armageddon. I think the concept is super fun and I like the thought of my character trying to survive in a fucked up world. I just wish for once I could get as much effort back as I put in.

[Tailong]

Completely agree that it needs to be longer. Even just a bit would be a huge advantage. Sometime I need to get off as much information as I can, either an emote, or textual conversation and have to break it down into two  or even three separate things. I also agree that I would to try and foster better roleplay with more in depth and complete emotes and conversations. Bump it up please.

[Dracul]

I've been guilty of including two or three items tagged in an emote and had to blink because it was hard to read what was being conveyed in between all the long sdescs items.

That's one way to accidentally drop a wall of text.

On the text limit I struggle with arrange/drop descriptionss and longdecs too.

[Patuk]

I'd like to see it doubled, too. Memory isn't the issue it was in the early 90s, and this should be no issue at all.

[Riev]

Personally I like the limitation. Text-walls are a sure-fire way to get me to go crosseyed and tune out of a scene.
Though the constant scroll is a bit tough too.

as far as making the emote limit longer? I think its decent enough. I've seen enough mdescs that had 4 lines with no period, that really could have been cut down a little.

My concern is: Extend the limit. Then what? What happens when now someone wants to write half a page flourishes about how they bent over to pick up a dropped item, but the reader needs to know about the arch in their hips and the giggle in their throat?

[geminferno]

My concern is: Extend the limit. Then what? What happens when now someone wants to write half a page flourishes about how they bent over to pick up a dropped item, but the reader needs to know about the arch in their hips and the giggle in their throat?

And if someone does that? Then skim over it to the meat of the post. It's easy to skim over things and summarize it--I do it when I read descriptions. Even if it's extended, I doubt we'll see much of those probably just one or two, anyway. Given the amount of people who post one liners with nothing to build off, I don't think we'll have an explosion of that happening.

[Tranquil]

Fully support extending the limit of letters. I like elaborate emotes and elaborate roleplay in general. It feels like more then half of my speech/emotes get cut off, which makes me purposefully dullen my RP just so I don't have to continue whatever I was saying in seperate emotes all the time.

inb4 someone says something about mudsecks in this thread

[Brokkr]

As a player, I have a strong preference that other people do no more than one sentence per emote, due to how I consume the data.

As a Producer I remain open minded.

[whengravityfails]

I couldn't agree more with the OP. I had been playing mainly MUSHes for the better part of a decade before arriving here - and like geminferno, I absolutely have come to call Armageddon home over the past year to the exclusion of everything else. The world and the concept and my experience here has been wonderful.

But I effing hate the emote limit. At first I was constantly having to break everything into 3, 4 emotes or says or tells or whatever. I've managed to squish it down with great displeasure and loathe the lack of detail and expression that could be used by having more room to write. There's even hack and slash oriented MUDs with greater emote limits ffs.

Yes, I have strong feelings on this!

[Armaddict]

I actually have a healthy respect for long-winded emotes, because I also play-by-post and use other mediums of roleplay where such is the standard, not the exception.

Armageddon is different than those places, because of the pace of the game.  The hybrid of coded and emoted makes it so that waiting for longer emotes can have actual -dire consequences- in a permadeath game.  It's why you see less emoting and flourish in combat.  It's why you see more direct interactions in crowded bar scenes.  Things are happening so quickly and often with so many people involved in something that pausing to wait for more description can have a hefty detriment.

That being said, I'm okay with longer emote limits, particularly since it can be such a turnoff to people coming from another atmosphere.  It doesn't really -harm- anything, but it -is- something where you are likely to feel spurned or burned at some point because events continued happening while you were typing; there's no post order here, there's no turns, there's no initiative checks.  I say let it be an option in places that fit but with the -hefty- warning that Armageddon the Game (not the players) is not very friendly to it.

[geminferno]

I'm not quite sure where the impression that people don't know about time and place came from but I'm positive that people know when and where to make long-winded posts. Being in a bar is a perfect example of a where. Crowded? Maybe not so much. Private conversations with other PCs? Very appropriate.

[MeTekillot]

If I feel the need to be more descriptive, I just emote again.

I prefer the current limit, with a modest increase if any.

"Brevity is the soul of wit."

[Tailong]

Of course you would write out a paragraph eote in the middle of a crowded tavern, or during combat. Privately in a decent settling, I could see the need for more elaborate emotes and conversations.

[Narf]

The main problem I have with long emotes isn't that it's a lot of reading, it's that it takes a long time for people to type them out.

The other problem, of secondary importance, is that it encourages people to do a lot of things serially that you might have wanted to respond to before they got on to the next thing.

[dumbstruck]

I wouldn't mind seeing the limit increased, in fact I would like it. I believe I remember reading somewhat recently that it's currently 180? Aren't tweets capped at 240? So we can't even emote the length of a tweet? I think a 500 character (or 100 word, via WPM at 5 character) limit seems reasonable. That's literally the length of 2 tweets.

If we can't be assed to read emotes the length of 2 tweets on a game we insist is based on hardcore roleplay, what are we even doing here?

That said, I don't think that making the character limit a whole lot longer or doing away with it altogether would be great. I've played muds and I've played mushes. And the main thing that keeps driving me back to Arm over Mushes for roleplay (other than loving to be able to use code to trick out a character with clothes and tattoos that are interactable) is pacing. While I love that you have unlimited room to express yourself in mush based posing, I am driven nuts regularly by its negative effect on the pacing of roleplay. It slows it to a crawl. It's nothing to see scenes where you get in 5 poses in an hour. I want to bang my head into a wall in situations like that.

But I absolutely want to be able to be more expressive without having to worry about be cut off so quickly, so often, and so much, in interactions.

[najdorf]

emo takes a deep breath, and reaches for the hilt of his greatsword

[Barsook]

The limit is fine for just as dumbstruck and others who said that longer emotes will ruin the pacing of Arm. I also agree that it's draining on the ones typing them and the ones reading them if in a crowded place.

I think it's because I tend to write short emotes rather than long ones.

[Inks]

Em shakes %inks head at %op ridiculous topic, as if ~inks is aware that a massively long single emote is impossible to read in the screenscroll, ~inks seems despondent that %op post exists, yet with his body clad in %inks armor such as ~boots, %inks legs in ~greaves, %inks chest clad in ~vest as well as %inks hands over ~warspear, ~inks goes towards %op obsolete form, and attacks %op obsolete and needlessly emotive form which is to say he attacks %op body but also %op head if he crits, the wind in %inks hair much like %inks hands around~warspear will soon be in %op life for a short while, magickal currents ripple up %inks form as ~inks defiles the immediate area if you even catch this part, as both opponents struggle to see wtf is going on while reading a book which distracts both %inks mind as well as %inks body while ~op reads his emote.

[najdorf]

could be a great PK tool though. drop a 10 liner, sap @ their face when victims mind is clusterfucked halfway through reading

i am kidding

[Inks]

could be a great PK tool though. drop a 10 liner, sap @ their face when victims mind is clusterfucked halfway through reading

i am kidding

em As %inks nod of %inks understanding occurs on %inks face,  it seems clear that ~najorf recognises one of %inks main points, unlike the point on %inks weapon which happens to be ~throwing.shortsword, a weapon that ~inks got nerfed when ~inks realised he used ~throwing.shortsword on every single assassin ~inks ever played, although ~inks doesn't look apologetic as many pretenders started to copy %inks style, ruining %inks fun as idiot assassins killed all that moved during this time using %inks style ~inks prepares to backstab you btw hope you are a fast reader. Me smiles.

Me being effing hilarious aside, here is the real thing - a single emote is one action or a closely linked series of actions, making one emote that takes up a single paragraph completely missing the point of emotes. Emote often, don't emote like an endless snowflake.

[Halaster]

could be a great PK tool though. drop a 10 liner, sap @ their face when victims mind is clusterfucked halfway through reading

i am kidding

Ok, this gave me a good real life laugh.

[betweenford]

Everyone has different emote styles. Getting hit with a truncation because you decided to talk a little bit too much is annoying. You can already create unholy walls of text by using full sdesc references that dont get truncated. Fifty more characters couldnt hurt.

[Kaathe]

I wouldn't mind seeing the limit increased, in fact I would like it. I believe I remember reading somewhat recently that it's currently 180? Aren't tweets capped at 240? So we can't even emote the length of a tweet? I think a 500 character (or 100 word, via WPM at 5 character) limit seems reasonable. That's literally the length of 2 tweets.

Max emote length is 248 characters based on my testing staff side.

Tweets are 280 max.

[dumbstruck]

I wouldn't mind seeing the limit increased, in fact I would like it. I believe I remember reading somewhat recently that it's currently 180? Aren't tweets capped at 240? So we can't even emote the length of a tweet? I think a 500 character (or 100 word, via WPM at 5 character) limit seems reasonable. That's literally the length of 2 tweets.

Max emote length is 248 characters based on my testing staff side.

Tweets are 280 max.

Fair enough, my numbers were off a little, but that really just means doubling it would easily cover even long emotes or speech reasonably, and that it's still dozens of characters shorter than a tweet can be as it currently stands. So we can't even emote a whole tweet was right, just the numbers were off. Thank you for the actual counts on it though. That was genuinely helpful.

For people wanting to talk about emote lengths, 500 characters:

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000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000
00000000000000000000000000000000000000000

Which, I mean, could you fill it with ridiculous targeting? Yeah, same as you can currently, I don't see why that should matter. I hardly think that's a ridiculous wall of text is what I'm saying though. Especially when you consider that the parser also affects speech, and it's quite easy to get cut off in the middle of saying something (more so than emoting, this is what bothers me, honestly), even more so if you dare to use () to add any emote to your speech. And yes, I get 'an emote is suppose to be a single action', but if that action is playing an instrument? If it's dancing? If you are a performer of any kind? How about singing a 4 line portion of a song as many of the original submissions songs are formatted in? Like... what is the resistance to allowing people the latitude to be more expressive? If you don't like how long someone's responses are taking, don't interact with them. I don't. And no one is forcing you to use longer emotes yourself, so what is it hurting?

[geminferno]

Em shakes %inks head at %op ridiculous topic, as if ~inks is aware that a massively long single emote is impossible to read in the screenscroll, ~inks seems despondent that %op post exists, yet with his body clad in %inks armor such as ~boots, %inks legs in ~greaves, %inks chest clad in ~vest as well as %inks hands over ~warspear, ~inks goes towards %op obsolete form, and attacks %op obsolete and needlessly emotive form which is to say he attacks %op body but also %op head if he crits, the wind in %inks hair much like %inks hands around~warspear will soon be in %op life for a short while, magickal currents ripple up %inks form as ~inks defiles the immediate area if you even catch this part, as both opponents struggle to see wtf is going on while reading a book which distracts both %inks mind as well as %inks body while ~op reads his emote.

This was unnecessary.

[Kaathe]

Is the issue that you can't break your intended emote into two at all? Or that it's inconvenient when it comes up?  What are some examples, without using anything currently IC?

Personally, I don't think players should stack multiple consecutive actions into one emote because other PCs should have the time to interject, respond, and/or prepare. But if you're writing 249+ character emotes that are all happening in a brief moment then I'm both impressed and curious to see.

[geminferno]

Is the issue that you can't break your intended emote into two at all? Or that it's inconvenient when it comes up?  What are some examples, without using anything currently IC?

Personally, I don't think players should stack multiple consecutive actions into one emote because other PCs should have the time to interject, respond, and/or prepare. But if you're writing 249+ character emotes that are all happening in a brief moment then I'm both impressed and curious to see.

Where in the docs does it say that emoting is a single action taken? I can't find it anywhere so I'd like to read it if it exists! In my experience, if someone makes multiple actions in a single post then the other person can also respond to those actions if needed.

I've had the limit break up my posts with both speech and action many times. And not to mention I enjoy adding in my character's feelings into an emote when I don't have time to make a separate "feel" post.

Also, again, why would anyone try to make a long post while in the middle of a dire situation? Or when it doesn't call for it at all?

[Tailong]

If the character is increased who does it exactly hurt is the correct question.  Don't want t to read it, don't, don't want write one, don't. The objections don't really make sense.

[adri]

I support a limit increase but removing a cap entirely would be a bit much. Also, I think the longer you make emotes, the easier it would be to miss your character being addressed in them. Some kind of color variation or emphasis for that would be great if we're thinking of extending emote length. Just my two cents!

[Nao]

I wouldn't mind this too much, but I'm not a fan. Is it really that hard to hit enter after a period?

Why?
It slows things down.
Chances are you're squeezing more than one action into one emote, not giving me a chance to react between those actions.
I might miss something in the middle of that wall of text.

I don't like 20-line main descriptions, either. Chances are that the big picture gets lost in too much detail, and I probably don't have time to read it all AND react in a timely manner to meeting your PC for the first time. I much prefer 10 lines or shorter. 

[betweenford]

Is the issue that you can't break your intended emote into two at all? Or that it's inconvenient when it comes up?  What are some examples, without using anything currently IC?

Personally, I don't think players should stack multiple consecutive actions into one emote because other PCs should have the time to interject, respond, and/or prepare. But if you're writing 249+ character emotes that are all happening in a brief moment then I'm both impressed and curious to see.

sex. Theres one example people get flowery. Executions. Speeches.

[Kaathe]

Where in the docs does it say that emoting is a single action taken? I can't find it anywhere so I'd like to read it if it exists!

There are some help files suggesting it's one action, but nothing that says "only one action per emote or you're in trouble".  I also want to be clear my opinion was personal and not official by any means. https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/emoting https://www.armageddon.org/help/view/emote%20examples

I still think it would be valuable for everyone if there were some examples.

I'm curious how you add feelings into the emote in lieu of feel.

[mansa]

Q.
Is Diku capable of receiving input longer than 256 characters?

Q.
Would this change how the game parses and interprets text?

Q.
If we bump it up to 312 characters, would that break the game?

[Brokkr]

Where in the docs does it say that emoting is a single action taken? I can't find it anywhere so I'd like to read it if it exists! In my experience, if someone makes multiple actions in a single post then the other person can also respond to those actions if needed.

There is a native emoting style that has developed on Armageddon over the last nearly 30 years that most players follow. One action per emote and to a slightly lesser extent, one sentence per emote.

Not everything is written down in the helpfiles on the website.  There have been official Staff posts on the GDB for years and years, for one instance.  Some of those have been about not forcing actions on other people and as a corollary, not doing actions in emotes that others should be able to respond to but you give them no opportunity to do so by the nature of your emote.

[dumbstruck]

I still think it would be valuable for everyone if there were some examples.

Here's one that clocks in at 415:

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emote Pulling up her hood against the fierce howl of the scouring sands in the storm, @me leans
against %inix side, using it's massive bulk for shelter and brings an arm up to cover her face while
digging around in ~knapsack with eyes half slitted against the elements to protect them until she
can locate ~sunslits, pulling them on quickly to obscure the vivid gleam of emerald eyes in a prison
of styrax and bone.

416:

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emote Settling at the edge of ~stage, @me pulls out ~lute from ~case and begins tuning it, plucking
along slowly at the strings of it and adjusting the pegs. A curtain of drov-black silk, her hair falls to
partially obscure the look of concentration on her features, shielding her face from sight in deepening
shadows as the last dying rays of Suk-krath's setting comes with a darkening sky above the torchlit stage.

402:

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emote The crowd around @me slowly gathers with the dawn as ~templar and ~dwarf arrive at the foot of the
great Dragon statue at the Gate here, the milling slowly ceasing with opening words of the templar. Nodding
along, #me echoes the words silently to &me after the one leading the morning Devotions, fingers clasping
quietly along the hem of ^me ragged cloak before #me falls to ^me knees, prostrate.

[Patuk]

I still stand by this having no downsides. Keep your brief emotes if you want - you're welcome to. Limiting other people is unnecessary, and they should be free to have some more characters to write with.

[Filthy_Grey_Rat]

I don't personally like the idea of adding extra chars to the emote limit, but every example of a reason not to boils down to personal preference and a lot of semantics. After going through it, I've realized it's not that I want people to have shorter emotes, or to break their emotes into pieces, I merely want a chance to interrupt.

There's an ellipses in speech when you have too many characters. Like, if you're giving a long speech, and it's appended to the end...

And that's where, if you were going to interrupt a person being long winded, you can. It's /possible/ with longer limits to drop a huge wall of speech as if your character is rattling on and no one at all is interrupting them, but I'm not certain this will happen a lot. And people who do it will likely have me avoiding them IG. Although, thanks to MUD magic, I can just try 'say (interrupting %templar speech about midway) BOO! Get a job!'


Then there's the actual emote command, and it's own limits and uses. When my brain sees an emote three lines long, I typically skip past it mentally to whatever comes after next, to keep myself up to date with what's going on, and only go back to reread it if I notice it involves something specifically important to my char, like ~me, or some item I'm watching. That's fine, if it's longer, I'd just keep doing this. However, I'm personally worried that a trend of this type of emoting (emotes that are real long comparatively) will result in more people participating in a behavior I've noticed among a portion of players.

It's this thing where people throw out an emote, then wait for someone to respond, then throw out another emote, and a back and forth happens, over and over. One to one emotes. I used to rp like that, but I've changed how I do things over the years. I'll drop an emote, add any less than obvious parts of that emote to hemotes, think about what has just happened, was just said, and typically feel something, usually all before someone responds to the emote or say. I don't think there's anything we can change about the game to make people add more of the uncommon types of RP commands, so insisting their emotes remain so limited isn't going to help my personal worries on this matter, and that's fine.


All of that being said, I want to give a good storyteller all the tools they need to cooperate with my story, and tell their own. Adding an emotive action into speech will limit how much you can say, that limits creativity. Solo RP'ers will sometimes entertain themselves will vivid, flowery emotes because frankly, it doesn't seem like anyone's waiting on them. I've completely thrown away some emotes that were 'too long' and just said fuck it, because I wasn't counting my characters when I was illustrating how the wind blew around my cloak while alone in the wilderness. Another point of limiting creativity.  My personal experiences with singing have been sometimes obliterated by the char limits. Another point of limiting creativity.

To rebut some of the arguments against this change, I'd like to point out how much I'd love it if Inks dropped a 10 liner emote before killing my character, that'd be a lot more than I usually get from an assassination. Frankly, this should be a point in the favor of expanding RP. You CAN drop a long emote right before you kill someone, without complaining about how 'they might get away' if you have to RP with them. As far as single actions being taken per sentence, I'll oppose extending char limits when someone actually goes through this game and becomes an RP police force. I'm tired of nods being the extent of what I get back from other players, even when I'm codedly watching them. Or having someone steal from me when they just emoted watching me from across the room. How'd they cross so fast? There's a lot of iffy, not so concrete things to complain about when it comes to people's RP, and worrying that extending a char limit is going to change things for the worse doesn't seem realistic to me.

emote jumps up and down, turns around, bows to the templar, and walks off. Technically several actions right there, and I've seen people IG do some similar stuff. I can't interrupt that any more or any less than if they added the full limit of characters to the emote. Or doubled them. It's a player's personal RP quality that determines things like this. In the vast majority of my roleplay, I've often typed 'attempts to' or 'tries to' when touching or reaching into another char's personal space. This extension of benefit of a doubt regarding whether or not they LET me has rarely, rarely ever been reciprocated. If someone does some emoting that doesn't allow me to RP interfere, that's a personal trait of their RP, not a trait of the character limits on emotes.



Now this got a bit rambly, and maybe isn't as coherent as it could be, but none of that matters if you don't read this last part. More than a few players have expressed this desire, this request, that will improve their storytelling ability, and their enjoyment, and the reasons NOT to indulge them have little to do with the request itself, only what I believe to be semantic hypotheticals too vague to be constructively argued.

[Dar]

Strangely enough, but we share playerbase qualifications with MUSHs.  A lot of our good writers and evocative emoters enjoy playing in MUSH. This happened ... 7 years ago, but I once got 4 players to try Arm at the same time. All of them excellent roleplayers who were looking for a game with a greater aspect of "rough and tumble".

All 4 came to the same observations.  Emote limit was stifling and too many people stuck to basic emotes.  Im a pretty basic emoter myself and I argued emote does not equal role play and mostly carried my point across, but none of them stayed eventually.

I dont think extending emote limit will ruin anyones die and yet it will improve someone elses profoundly.   So why the hell not?

[dwarven fists of doom]

The only downside to this after playing MUSHes is sometimes the cadence of emoting can become slow as people type large paragraphs. Personally I have adapted to the limit and I think it allows for a better cadence and more opportunities for more roleplayers to get involved.

[Brisket]

Strangely enough, but we share playerbase qualifications with MUSHs.  A lot of our good writers and evocative emoters enjoy playing in MUSH. This happened ... 7 years ago, but I once got 4 players to try Arm at the same time. All of them excellent roleplayers who were looking for a game with a greater aspect of "rough and tumble".

All 4 came to the same observations.  Emote limit was stifling and too many people stuck to basic emotes.  Im a pretty basic emoter myself and I argued emote does not equal role play and mostly carried my point across, but none of them stayed eventually.

I dont think extending emote limit will ruin anyones die and yet it will improve someone elses profoundly.   So why the hell not?

This, I've recruited several people to try from MUSHes who were down and excited, but the character limit was so stifling that they lost interest.

Doubling it would get us more players and allow for more.. emotive.. emotes without forcing anyone to write more than em grunts. if the don't want to.

[Halaster]

As a player...

If I'm in a scene and it's busy or fast-paced, and I see a really long description emote, I will skim it as fast as I can or outright skip it.  Because I feel like I need to keep up with everything else , too.  While I'm reading that 4-line emote, that I agree is awesome and very descriptive, several other things happen, and I start to fall behind.  If it's a more personal or slow-paced scene, sure, I'll read them.

That is what makes ArmageddonMUD different than MUSH's, it is DIKU based and intended to be a bit more action-oriented and fast-paced.  We basically took a Hack-n-slash codebase and added (crap-tons of) Role-Playing elements on top of it.  It puts us in a kind of pretty unique spot being a mix of the two.  As a result, the emoting and storytelling aspect is different than a MUSH.

That said, I agree with others that it's not a 'big deal' if it was updated to accommodate others.  From that perspective, I lean a little towards changing it.


As a producer...

Like Brokkr said, I'm open to listening to the idea of changing it.


As a coder...

I looked into it, and you'd think it's a simple change, but if there's one thing I know about our code, it's rarely simple.  And that's true here, due to the nature of how C handles strings, it takes a lot of code/work.  While I could just simply update a variable that is used in emoting, that is also used in about 50 other places in the code.   So extensive testing would have to get done to make sure it doesn't break something else somewhere else.  Doable?  Yes.  Worth the effort?  Meh, I'm leaning towards no.

[geminferno]

That is what makes ArmageddonMUD different than MUSH's, it is DIKU based and intended to be a bit more action-oriented and fast-paced.  We basically took a Hack-n-slash codebase and added (crap-tons of) Role-Playing elements on top of it.  It puts us in a kind of pretty unique spot being a mix of the two.  As a result, the emoting and storytelling aspect is different than a MUSH.

My question is: why would you not accommodate the Roleplay Intensive aspect of the game by extending a character limit? If having roleplay as a requirement, then you shouldn't stunt the creativity of people by shortening their replies. Yes, it's fast-paced but it's still a roleplaying game for people who want to tell stories. Need room for words to tell stories.

[Armaddict]

That is what makes ArmageddonMUD different than MUSH's, it is DIKU based and intended to be a bit more action-oriented and fast-paced.  We basically took a Hack-n-slash codebase and added (crap-tons of) Role-Playing elements on top of it.  It puts us in a kind of pretty unique spot being a mix of the two.  As a result, the emoting and storytelling aspect is different than a MUSH.

My question is: why would you not accommodate the Roleplay Intensive aspect of the game by extending a character limit? If having roleplay as a requirement, then you shouldn't stunt the creativity of people by shortening their replies. Yes, it's fast-paced but it's still a roleplaying game for people who want to tell stories. Need room for words to tell stories.

Roleplay is not accentuated by more words and emotes, but creative expression of the narrative is.  Roleplaying being done well or poorly is determined by actions, not the description of them.

I don't particularly care if people are allowed more space for emotes.  But to demonstrate both the pros and cons of it:

A:

The tall, rangy man slowly comes into view over the crest of a dune, followed by the enormous bulk of his inix.  The gleaming scales of the beast of burden are ebon and dark, starkly contrasting the brighter, pale shade of chitin that its rider wears, and its claws spread as it powerfully pounds its steps into the ungracious support of the sand beneath.  The rider, meanwhile, glowers down upon the environs, a wordless sentinel seemingly unphased by Suk-Krath lowering towards the horizon and the imminent arrival of darkness.

B:

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The tall, rangy man has arrived from the east, riding a glossy, black-shelled inix, rising over the crest of a dune.

Code Select Expand

The tall, rangy man sways gently atop a glossy, black-shelled inix as he rides, his pale armor gently clacking with the movements.

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The tall, rangy man squints harshly as he watches the area as shadows lengthen in the evening.

The two methods are capable of distributing the exact same information to the reader.  A is generally going to be expressed as 'more interesting', long enough to build a cadence of words, and more free to expression.  However, A takes a lot more time to write, with empty space in all of that time while it's written.  A is also a lot more prone to flowery filling, because that's precisely what those of freedom of expression and emphasis on the words gives; flower-ness. This can be a tremendous strength that makes some scenes far more artful where a single emote can set the stage for a whole scene; it can also result in a dialogue filled with over-description and 'eyes that glimmer like morning sand-dew', where every single statement is inflated with similes, metaphors, and uber-inflation.

B has a -huge- amount of repetition of nouns and a certain directness that makes it very unappealing in a pure storytelling setting.  However, Armageddon is not a pure storytelling setting, and anyone saying otherwise is likely just complaining about the actions of another player.  B is a concise description of players, parts, and actions.  It is brief on purpose, because in even this period of briefness, other interaction is already at play, either from other players or from the world itself.  It is not generally 'exciting' to read, though some players are -very- gifted at putting in beautiful things in either a pointed way in a single emote, or in a methodical way over multiple emotes.  But it -is- adept at both conveying the needed information and the parts of it, as well as allowing for multiple people to be doing it at the same time.

B is and always has been highly stressed as an Armageddon strongpoint because of the nature of the game.  People lightheartedly make fun of tressy-tresses and porcelain skinned aides and handsome, white-teeth white knights...and it's not generally because they hate the player or want to fault them, but because the writing around it is jarring in comparison to the setting or its prevalence can feel out of place when you see it too often.  B is direct and cutting words, simple but effective, and with plenty of room to play around with throughout at scene to build narrative, description, and beauty through concise actions.  It is the direct opposite of A, where nicer floating cadences are what build the niceness of the picture in roughly the same period of time, but all at once, rather than through a series of reactable actions.

As I said, I've no problem with A being within the game.  It has great advantages as far as those slow scenes where you're more intent on building something great for someone to read in an otherwise relatively barren wasteland for deep prose.  But it -does- come with tradeoffs, and -will- impact the game over time, and -will- slow down scenes that other people may not want slowed down. This stated idea that extending the character limit is pure increase of roleplaying ability is false; the level of roleplay is already huge here, but just with a lower bar as far as sharing anything more than the needed information and with a high window of interaction.

[Hestia]

@Armaddict: There's also room for C:

The tall, rangy man has arrived from the east, riding a glossy, black-shelled inix, rising over the crest of a dune.

Swaying atop his mount as he rides, the tall rangy man's pale armor gently clacks with the movements. He squints
harshly, watching the area as shadows lengthen in the evening sky.

Using the emote system, you can place your character's sdesc somewhere other than the beginning of the sentence and give your two-line emote more creative "oomph" without overwhelming the reader.

[Barsook]

I honesty do like option C over the other two. Knowing the symbols that we can use to target allows this. That's why I like Arm's emoting system.

Even though I haven't masted it.

[geminferno]

@Armaddict:

There really is no con to it other than the coding difficulties Halaster stated. If someone wants to be descriptive in a situation where nothing potentially life threatening or too crowded, then what's the problem? If you don't want to read it, no one is forcing you. And that seems more like an emote that's done in a solo situation anyway. Some people want to describe actions in a bit of a more detailed way to get a point across. To add in thins that not only prove an action but give more perspective on it. For example:

The tall, rangy-skinned man reaches for a long-haired, redhead's hand.

Which hand is it? What does he do with her hand? Is his hand rough and calloused? Or surprisingly soft? Sometimes detail gives the emote substance and something to respond to. Which is my point here.

And the difference between roleplaying being done well and poorly is character development. You can be as descriptive as you want but if your character is completely flat then you're not doing what's intended as a roleplayer.

[Armaddict]

@Armaddict: There's also room for C:

The tall, rangy man has arrived from the east, riding a glossy, black-shelled inix, rising over the crest of a dune.

Swaying atop his mount as he rides, the tall rangy man's pale armor gently clacks with the movements. He squints
harshly, watching the area as shadows lengthen in the evening sky.

Using the emote system, you can place your character's sdesc somewhere other than the beginning of the sentence and give your two-line emote more creative "oomph" without overwhelming the reader.

Oh, I know.  But the nouns will be present in every emote.  There is variety, but the structure is overall the same.  Mostly, my emphasis was that B (and your C) is more based in creating short-term delivery of actions to progress narrative that people can interact with.  I have a very healthy respect for A, because I do enjoy reading narratives and seeing real, deep collaborative storytelling.  But there are some concerns about introducing it into Arm that I don't think outright cancel the idea, but need to be acknowledged by those who think they would stick to A, or that A being possible would be wholly a bonus.  There are boons and drawbacks.  There's a certain pacing of Arm that A will be challenged to engage with.

I love beautifully creative writing.  Love it.  I -do- read the long mdescs.  I do read item descriptions that someone spent a lot of time going into concise detail about their creation.  But Armageddon 'storytelling'  as a full narrative is completely integrated with the idea of movement, actions, and the idea that things are still progressing all around you even while you're still reacting to a thing that happened 2 minutes ago.  Play-by-post style, each post can take someone 10-30 minutes to write up their responses, and that's a whoooole lot of actions taking place in Armageddon.  But there have been, definitely, moments where I wanted to fully describe something, had to break it up into multiple emotes, and lost that ability to make something genuinely pleasing to read as a result.

Then again, as Patuk points out, I'm overly verbose.  I like big words in big sentences, sometimes.  They paint a picture more easily.

I favor expanding the limit, but hopefully without the same thing happening as what happened with, for example, 'think', where it started off as a way to enhance roleplaying and give opportunity to express things through another medium and more fully develop something...into a thing that people viewed as a requirement for good roleplay.

[creeper386]

I often think it's too long already. When someone drops a paragraph on me in an emoted say, it becomes really hard to keep track of the flow when I have to scroll up and read what actually was going on.

[Qzzrbl]

I don't know how I'd feel about an increase....

Seems sometimes, some people already try to cram a full ten minutes worth of action into a single emote.

[creeper386]

Personally, already people put too much into their emotes and says, that gets walls of text already. IMO.


Extending this to just let them include what, twice as much?

If your emote includes just so must stuff to hit the limit, personally I don't think you are interested in RP with others. Because you either are going to descriptive that it's not going to be readable except in one on one interactions, or you are including so many actions that IMO is basically powergaming.

Because now you aren't even letting me respond to anything. We already see it when people spam a bunch of emotes or says and you have to kind of retroactively go back and respond to them, sometimes out of order because you missed something.

If it was extended and became even slightly the norm, I'm not sure it'd be great to play.

[Tailong]

If your emote includes just so must stuff to hit the limit, personally I don't think you are interested in RP with others. Because you either are going to descriptive that it's not going to be readable except in one on one interactions, or you are including so many actions that IMO is basically powergaming.

What? That makes no sense what so ever. If people are going out of their way to be expressive, they clearly have an interest in roleplay.

[creeper386]

I explained why, because someone having a wall of text, especially with mutliple actions, isn't letting people actually respond.


We are playing a game in actual time. We aren't writing a book, or a chapter or even a paragraph.

The game is about interaction, which requires back and forth.

If someone drops a way of text, rather it's in one long massive text, or just spamming a bunch of emotes or says, that kind of doesn't let someone respond in real time to .... anything.

[Svalinya]

If your emote includes just so must stuff to hit the limit, personally I don't think you are interested in RP with others. Because you either are going to descriptive that it's not going to be readable except in one on one interactions, or you are including so many actions that IMO is basically powergaming.

No one is saying this change would be explicitly for group scenes. Nothing wrong with descriptive emotes.

[Tailong]

I explained why, because someone having a wall of text, especially with mutliple actions, isn't letting people actually respond.


We are playing a game in actual time. We aren't writing a book, or a chapter or even a paragraph.

The game is about interaction, which requires back and forth.

If someone drops a way of text, rather it's in one long massive text, or just spamming a bunch of emotes or says, that kind of doesn't let someone respond in real time to .... anything.

With the current limit, no one is dropping a massive a wall of text, and the current expectation is that an emote is used to describe a single expression or action and a not a list, so if you seeing anything other, I'd be surprised.

[Riev]

I have seen people use three emotes to express their "one" emotion. I DO hit the truncation limit, at times, but it tells me "be more concise".

When that happens, though, its usually because my pre-emote on my 'tell' is so long, I get to say four actual words.

I don't know how often I've hit character limits on ACTUAL emotes.

[Pariah]

It's a double edged sword.

If you increase the emote size, you might get smacked with a wall of text.

But if you don't and you have a fast typer like me, You'll just get hit with three emotes in the same period of time.

Pick your poison, want it in one chunk or three?

[Riev]

Frankly, three.

And this is PURELY for twink reasons, but you could drop a wall of text that you expect someone to read, and then engage in combat or theft or any number of PvP actions while the PLAYER is reading, but the PC would be paying attention.

Sort of like "Let me <give> this heavy baobab log to this guy before I attack him, because weight affects combat".

[Pariah]

Sort of like "Let me <give> this heavy baobab log to this guy before I attack him, because weight affects combat".

I would file a player complaint and wish all soooooo fucking quick if someone pulled such twinky shit on me.

[Windstorm]

I'm a relatively new player to Armageddon, and to MUDs in general, really. However, I am no rookie when it comes to roleplaying. I've been roleplaying and telling stories for 13 years and I enjoy expressing my characters' feelings, describing their movements their facial expression, etc. because that's what makes roleplaying more immersive. I personally think the character limit on emotes is holding people back from really building lasting relationships and even roleplaying in general.

I want to be able to roleplay without having the flow stopped abruptly because I got too excited and wanted to give my roleplaying partner something to respond to. I know not everyone wants to see a wall of text, which is fine, but I also want to be able to make a response worthy of being... well, replied to. I feel it should be extended, or maybe even dismantled altogether.

There's too many instances where I get un-motivated because I get a one liner with barely anything to build upon. It makes me not even want to interact with other players sometimes. And before anyone tells me to "find another game without a character limit" I'm gonna stop you right there. I LOVE Armageddon. I think the concept is super fun and I like the thought of my character trying to survive in a fucked up world. I just wish for once I could get as much effort back as I put in.

Hello. Flowery emoter here. I've learned to just break things up into multiple emotes (and hemotes) on Armageddon compared with other places.

The pace here is meant to be faster with the back-and-forth. A bar scene in Armageddon with like 5ish active people is still able to be followed. On a MUSH everyone sort of takes turns and a scene with 5 people can take an hour to get through introductions, or people are just dropping paragraphs too rapidly for others to follow. It's a different flavor but once I got used to it I simply got used to packing things into the character limit and trying to make them more concise while also of my own style.

This is a problem I personally have in either environment. On Arm, I'm probably being too flowery by some peoples' measure. On a MUSH, I'm going too fast and people can't follow in the scene because I dislike "waiting my turn." Personally? I think the practice of both styles makes me a better writer.

That said, I could see the benefits to a slightly longer allowance. So, I'm not really of an opinion either way.

[cnemus]

I just want to go on the record as against making the limit longer.

(Some of the following has already been said in slightly different ways)

I realize most of the discussion here has to do with personal preference and there is nothing wrong with those preferences. My personal experience with MUDs, MUSHs, forum RP, and other games that have longer paragraph-RP is that the pacing is significantly slower. Some will like that. In other settings I like that. In Armageddon a lot can happen in a minute, I want to be able to act, react, and pivot RP direction.

I totally support anyone who wants to be more expressive than the current limit allows by using multiple emotes or other commands to do it. In para-RP in other places everyone pauses to let everyone have their turn. This makes sure you each are reacting and contributing to a single narrative without random posts altering the content while it is being written. There are situations where this happens in Arm, but a change like this affects all situations not just the ones it is ideal for.

Hard pass, please.

[Shalooonsh]

As an author, I can appreciate both sides of this debate, however, there's one very simple thing to keep in mind:

You may want more characters, and that's fine.  But there's a whole lot of people here who are here for fast paced interaction.  Allowing someone to write a paragraph in order to describe an action isn't conducive to fast paced interaction. 

Also, if you are finding the character length limiting -- check your client.  You should have an option in there for a command somewhere that allows you to insert another command.  Often you'll find it's the semi-colon. 

So if your normal rhythm is "emote does this and this and then that, and this other thing, while getting their phone out and dialing the Senate" then you can just break it up and have those fire through in rapid succession.

emote does this and this ; say (doing another thing) This and that; emote continues to pull out their phone and call the Senate.

.... which, to me, seems a whole lot easier than changing the coding on something so deeply ingrained into the game.

[ShaiHulud]

As an author, I can appreciate both sides of this debate, however, there's one very simple thing to keep in mind:

You may want more characters, and that's fine.  But there's a whole lot of people here who are here for fast paced interaction.  Allowing someone to write a paragraph in order to describe an action isn't conducive to fast paced interaction. 

Also, if you are finding the character length limiting -- check your client.  You should have an option in there for a command somewhere that allows you to insert another command.  Often you'll find it's the semi-colon. 

So if your normal rhythm is "emote does this and this and then that, and this other thing, while getting their phone out and dialing the Senate" then you can just break it up and have those fire through in rapid succession.

emote does this and this ; say (doing another thing) This and that; emote continues to pull out their phone and call the Senate.

.... which, to me, seems a whole lot easier than changing the coding on something so deeply ingrained into the game.

[Kronibas]

For me, the length of the emote should be situational.

If you're doing something that *should* be emoted *well*, like a Tuluki templar giving a tattoo, then there is no way it's not all that likely you're going to accomplish portraying that act accurately *via the written word* with the current emote character limit, using only one emote. But obviously, someone who has been tattooed a fair a bit IRL, like myself, might have more to say about that matter — because of vivid memories or the experience(s), maybe.

Thinking a little bit abstractedly here, but when you're studying poetry in a university setting, you usually learn about "enjambment," which is how poets will extend sentences from *edited here* one line or stanza  to the next, for practical and/or stylistic effect.

Similarly, this tactic can be used with the current emoting constraints: if you realize that the idea you're attempting to convey is a large or complex one, then go ahead, as you plan out how you'll write it, and just prepare for breaking the larger idea... into two smaller ones. By using introductory sentence elements for the second part of the idea (or both), it will not only be more aesthetically-pleasing, but it'll be easier to consume for those who view reading sentences of words, as opposed to code, as a chore.

At the end of the day, emoting length is like the flavors of ice cream: different people enjoy different things, and that's why there's more than just chocolate, or vanilla, at ice cream parlours. Since most of us will self-regulate and reserve longer emotes for times when it's appropriate — your Tuluki templar is tattooing someone, vs. in the middle of a Byn RPT with 30 people — then I don't see a problem with allowing longer emotes: twice as long as the current limit, even, seems fine.

Edited to add:  Also relevant to this entire question is how, as we play a game like Arm, we tend to go into "survival" or "skimming" mode. And sometimes, for very real reasons, it be can hard to turn this off. Recently, I have had to *force myself*, on account of new rooms/areas, to slow down... and actually read the damn words, reminding myself, consciously, that, although I have seen and read a lot of words on Arm, I haven't read *these* in particular and could be missing something if I don't.

Sometimes, we see so little that is "new," exciting, or actually intriguing, in the way of written descriptions (room-wise, player-wise, object-wise), that we might be cheating ourselves a little by not opening ourselves up a bit more, despite the fact the it at times runs contrary to deeply-ingrained survival instincts

[Kronibas]

I think, if done well enough and under the right set of circumstances, the written word has the capacity to elicit the same positive responses to writing as we've seen to the recent code changes.

We should... not underestimate how wickedly-talented some of the writers we have here are, and the environment should maybe strongly reinforce the notion that this is a place where near-unfettered creativity is highly encouraged.

[creeper386]

Take your tattoo example Kronibas. If you have gotten tattoos. Even with modern equipment, it takes some time.

That time shouldn't be condensed into one emote. Ever. No matter how well written it is.

In my opinion, if you want to write this elaborate emote that could cover an hour or more work in a tattoo. You might be writing a wonderful story. But you become the only author. You aren't letting others partake. Same if you want to describe any complex activity in one emote.

And if you want to take a minute to write an emote that covers how you flipped your cloak as you enter the room ... While everything else has gone on, and now they have to roll back some as you just now finished describing how you enter the room. Seems weird to me.

And honestly I'd argue a MUD, where you are writing a story with others in relatively real time, might not be the place for that.

If you break it up into three emotes. Spaced out to indicate time has past and that allows other to interact. Yes I'd much rather that. If you just go ahead and take the same out of time to type out, emote dha dah dah; emote dahd adad; emote dahdaha. Then the again, I don't think you are being at all considerate of other players.

[geminferno]

Wanna bump this to start up the discussion again if that's okay with you guys and staff.

[Halaster]

You're welcome to keep talking about it, but we're still not planning to change it.

[Kavrick]

I'll be honest, the arguments against the idea of a longer character limit talking about people who write too much doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. If I'm writing a lot I'm just going to split up the emote/dialogue into multiple posts, which uses up more room than if I had it all in a single post.

[Pariah]

I'll be honest, the arguments against the idea of a longer character limit talking about people who write too much doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. If I'm writing a lot I'm just going to split up the emote/dialogue into multiple posts, which uses up more room than if I had it all in a single post.

Agreed, and while I have seen some people who emote like this.

Open cloak (as a small smile comes across his face, he opens his cloak by first undoing the little leather straps and using a florist to sweep it behind his right side, causing a slight whoosh noise to come from the quick movement.)

Which I think it a little too dramatic, I don't hate it, I think oocly he's trying too hard and all that and I might chuckle at the silliness of it.  I'd rather have too much than too little.

I just hate the breaking of immersion that happens when you type out something and it goes...

Then the next emote is talk (continuing) or something like that.

While it's 💯% their choice as staff, I don't get why the limit feels like it's such an important part of code it can't be changed.

[Kavrick]

I'll be honest, the arguments against the idea of a longer character limit talking about people who write too much doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. If I'm writing a lot I'm just going to split up the emote/dialogue into multiple posts, which uses up more room than if I had it all in a single post.

Agreed, and while I have seen some people who emote like this.

Open cloak (as a small smile comes across his face, he opens his cloak by first undoing the little leather straps and using a florist to sweep it behind his right side, causing a slight whoosh noise to come from the quick movement.)

Which I think it a little too dramatic, I don't hate it, I think oocly he's trying too hard and all that and I might chuckle at the silliness of it.  I'd rather have too much than too little.

I just hate the breaking of immersion that happens when you type out something and it goes...

Then the next emote is talk (continuing) or something like that.

While it's 💯% their choice as staff, I don't get why the limit feels like it's such an important part of code it can't be changed.

Honestly I prefer people who over-emote to people who never emote. Dramatic, flamboyant characters just tend to be more interesting to me but that's subjective.

[mansa]

You cannot recite AND use a command emote to describe how you're expressing yourself in a 4 line stanza.

[creeper386]

I'll be honest, the arguments against the idea of a longer character limit talking about people who write too much doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me. If I'm writing a lot I'm just going to split up the emote/dialogue into multiple posts, which uses up more room than if I had it all in a single post.

For me, it's not about "using up more room." The issue is, when emotes, talks, whatever take to long, there is little interaction. Add up to, a bigger emote limit, people start potentially taking multiple actions in one emote. Which borders on power emoting. It prevents someone from responding to one action, before you move onto the next. It becomes more round robin RP at that point instead of interaction. Feels way too much like play by post, message boards.

Can you still do this if you just type really fast or type it all up, with command separators in your editor ... Sure you can. But it still often has the same negative connotations for me, and your right in the case it would cause more screen scroll, but I'd rather not have this actively supported by the game.

Have I hit the say limit and been annoyed by it, sure. Something like the new clients ability to warn you when you are close to the character limit, is a great idea though.(Not sure if that actually got put in or not.) So you can plan around the limit, and not be caught unaware.