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:

Code Select Expand


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.