Eye Color in SDesc.

[John]

And the point on that is what?
I don't think anybody stated or implied that it was discouraged by staff.

People go on about how bad it is. Yet the staff have yet to discourage it (not put a stop, just discourage). Therefore it mustn't be so bad.


I don't think we need to keep rehashing this again and again. I think everyone has gotten to the stage where we're all very clear on everyone's opinion. Do we need to have it said again? That's why I didn't think a new thread on this topic was needed. Everything in this thread (except for the whole posting anon thing) has been said quite recently in a couple of other threads.

[Armaddict]

Please.

You're getting a little too nit-picky.

It's not a big deal.

So he has blue eyes.  And you see them without having to look at him.  Holy shit, that's so WRONG.

Seriously, you're blowing this completely out of proportion.  It's a feature, it's something someone else wanted in their sdesc, chill out about it.

[X-D]

Bad? shrug. Annoying? Definitly. Did we need another thread on the subject, Heh, no.

But, what is so bad about rehashing it, really now, if it means maybe people will work a bit harder to have less generic sdescs then "the tall blue-eyed whatever"?

[Thoroughly Annoyed.]

So I suppose people with lithe or muscled frames are more recognizeable by that specific trait when half of Zalanthas walks around in long cloaks or full body armor.  Yeah right.  This point is dead.  To all of those who find eye color in sdescs annoying, fine, but don't let it lower your opinion of the actual player or what really defines his character, the roleplay.  All of our tastes are different, but thats what makes this game so rich in style of roleplay.

!THE END!

[X-D]

The other annoying thing about anon posts is that people are then able to be even more abrasive then normal and need never worry about somebody calling them on the carpet for it, Hell, that means carnage has the biggest balls on the board.

So I suppose people with lithe or muscled frames are more recognizeable by that specific trait when half of Zalanthas walks around in long cloaks or full body armor. Yeah right. This point is dead.

Who cares if they are "more recognizeable" I don't, except for the fact that those terms are somewhat over used (IMO) they are -still- easily seen, it is not a far stretch of the imagination to seeing 15 slim or muscled people 200 yards away, it is a stretch to see 15 blue-eyed people from 1/10 that distance.

Even in full armor and cloaks can I tell when somebody is lithe/thin/rangy/rawboned/stringy whatever, not exactly, but I can tell that they are thin, can I tell somebody is muscled/stout/obese/fat/large etc under the same circumstances, not exactly, but I can damm well tell that they are maybe larger then the lithe ones.

[Vox]

I love how the simple declaration of an opinion can send people into tizzying rants about what people should PRETEND doesn't annoy them. X-D and a few others, myself included, find the inclusion of eye color in a sdesc as bothersome. Why? Well for myself it shows little creativity unless, as Malifaxis has pointed out, they're glowing, smoking or otherwise ashen pits of hollow death. If they are simply blue or emerald or brown.... FIND SOMETHING ELSE  :shock: Be creative, grab a damn thesaurus and find another way to describe something physically noticeable from a distance about your character.

Let's set aside for a moment the fact that emotes which read:

The blah, yadda-eyed man glances over at you, his yadda eyes gleaming rather yaddily as they catch the light.

It's stuff like that which makes me want to RP putting that character's eyes out with a dagger so they HAVE to change the sdesc.  See, it's far easier on the EYES of the player when they see something like this:

The blah, yackity-haired man glances over at you, his yadda eyes gleaming as they catch the light.

Much nicer... Why? Because words aren't repeated. We KNOW you have blue eyes already so it's redundant to include it in an emote. If you want to highlight your eyes then by all means DO SO, buuuuuuut do so in your emoting and RPing. Trust me, you will highlight your eyes in a way that's beautiful and meaningful and not end up bothering those of us who find this kind of stuff annoying.

The key to a great sdesc is how descriptive it ALLOWS you to be through emoting and so forth. Lanky and muscular are fine... Great and generic and leave a ton of room to color your emotes with more descriptive words.
*shrug*

Just another player's opinion. Since the staff leaves the whole issue rather open and offers only a modicum of structure advice it's all up to the individual as to what your sdesc will be. If you're passionate about your blue eyes being in your sdesc then more power to you. Be proud of your choice and don't Post anonymous rants about how everyone who doesn't like it should pretend it doesn't exist. You don't have to like other people's opinions and they don't have to like yours... But at least you can be more constructive in your arguments, especially if you want people to move into your camp of thinking.

Since this thread seems to be focused on voicing sdesc grievances I'll close with a HUGE pet peeve of mine:

The man with the blah hair
The woman with the hoohah eyes

This form of sdesc should be banned immediately. I'm not really sure why, but I hate it intensely.  Even if it doesn't include eye color... it angers my eyes, destroy it. :twisted:

Cheers.

[X-D]

Amen

[The7DeadlyVenomz]

You know...

For the most part, I am with the camp that says go with it. I frankly don't care what is in your short description, truthfully. At first, I was thinking about posting admonishment to those who think it is a big deal.

But truthfully, now, I can kinda see your points. I still beleive that a person should be able to put their PC's eye-color in their short-desc, but I think from now on, I will advise against it. Emotes not included, there are generally other things which would be more noticable.

For the record, I simply don't give a fuck. But for those interested in more pleasing short descriptions, leaving eyes out may be the ticket.

[Bestatte]

The only time the presence of eye color in sdesc bugs me is if there is something in the main desc that is -much- more significant and that thing is omitted.

Such as - the yellow-eyed white-haired girl, who happens to also be missing her left arm. More obvious to the casual viewer would be the fact that she's one-armed, no?

But if a character is just your usual ordinary commoner or elven type person, with no distinguishing marks/traits, then it's no matter to me if they use their eyes, hair, skin coloring, lip size, etc. to describe themselves.

Imagine if every "ordinary indistinguishable" commoner one day showed up as "the ordinary undistinguishable" man/woman. I'm guessing people will be begging everyone to start using eye color again, if only to be able to tell one commoner from the other.

Conversely, there's also the matter of people who use things in their sdesc that don't appear in their main desc, or that conflict with what's in their main desc. I think that is a MUCH more significant issue and will address that in another thread.

[da mitey warrior]

There are people in RL who's eyes are their most defining feature.  Two examples I can think of offhand are Rasputan (who was famous for his piercing gaze) and that green-eyed "afgan girl" from the cover of National Geographic.  

As to seeing the person from 3 rooms away, it falls under the same category as seeing a head of a tall, muscular man.  You can't tell by the head that he was tall or muscular, but if you knew the man while he was alive you know it was Bob the warrior since you'd recognize him.

[Malifaxis]

I no longer really care.

I hate eye color sdescs.  Plain and simple.

I hate The man with cabbage for a head sdescs.

I hate The sharp-eared elves.

I hate The short, blah-blah dwarves.

I hate the bald, muscular muls.

I hate tall half giants.

Just for fucking stupidity's sake, I almost decided to come in and generate, "the eyed, plain haired man"  or "the man with no distinguishing feature".  The above examples, I have all seen.  Dwarves are short.  If you're taller than a normal dwarf, great, be tall.  You're still fucking short.  Elves have sharp ears, end of arguement.  Half giants, even midget HGs with no legs, are freaking tall.  No need to bloody reinforce it.

If you can't be bothered with taking the time to be creative, then I can't be bothered to take the time to appreciate your plain jane f'ing sdesc.

And as for this little gem right here:

To all of those who find eye color in sdescs annoying, fine, but don't let it lower your opinion of the actual player or what really defines his character, the roleplay.

Personally, thoroughly annoying, I have never let a really shitty sdesc impede my appreciation for a player.  There's a dude I knew with a very, very plain four word sdesc.  Later on, he went to having just a three word sdesc.  This sdesc was so terribly plain that it could have described any of a bajillion people from gypsies, to tuluki, to allanaki, to a well-groomed gith.

That dude is in the top 5 RPer's I've met on here.  He could come at me with 'the man with blue-eyes' and I'd still love RP'ing with him every second that I could.  Would his sdesc annoy me?  Oh fuck yes it would.  My teeth would grind to dust.  But I'd enjoy it, because he could roleplay his mother fucking ass off.

Perhaps I need to make a blind assassin who merely goes around whacking out every tom, jane, joe, and randy with freaking blue, green, or brown eyes.

Oh... and one other thing.  Before anyone jumps on me or Vox for getting down on those people with freaking 'The man with pebble-sized nuts", just let me remind you of one, simple, EXTREMELY fucking jarring fact.

The man with pebble-sized nuts gets extremely lucky one day, and happens upon the corpse of a templar... and becomes... yes, you got it.

The man with pebble-sized templar.  That is, if I'm guessing right on how the code for those robes and whatnot work.

Two words:  Fuck that.

I'd say peace, and end this, but I'd much rather people started lobbing nukes.

[flurry]

I don't know, I have a hard time seeing 'lanky' and 'muscular' as more creative than -eyed.    I get the other arguments, but not the lack-of-creativity argument.

[X-D]

don't know, I have a hard time seeing 'lanky' and 'muscular' as more creative than -eyed. I get the other arguments, but not the lack-of-creativity argument.

Fine, how about this, without eye color,lanky and muscular isn't very creative, but a least it is believable.

With eye color it's not creative nor believable and just plain annoying to see.

And has nothing to do with the player's rp, I also can think of at least one eye char in game right now that I enjoy, though I often wish they would put on a facewrap.

And thats another thing, while I'm in a mood to semi derail, People who must put every bit of covering gear on thier char that they can find, I swear, it is nearly impossible for me to not kill every char that walks into the area with a 3 line desc that goes "The short fat figure in a hooded desert brown greatcloak wearing a flowing yellow sandcloth facewrap walks in from the east."

Which, of course turns into:
The short fat figure in a hooded desert brown greatcloak wearing a flowing yellow sandcloth facewrap gazes about with his blue orbs as he slowly moves through the room carefully adjusting his flowing yellow sancloth facewrap to avoid the gently swirling dust in the air.

And Of course, they never lower the hood or take off the wrap.
I even saw two of them together once, both cloaked hooded wrapped and emoting using each other, oh thats a true joy of spam.

Of course, if that char does remove the cloak and hood and wrap and mask and sunslits and I find out it is the tall blue-eyed elf I might ask them to put it all back on.
:twisted:

[Bhagharva]

The first thing I noticed about my ex-wife was her eyes. :shock:

Also, there isn't a need to put more detail into a main desc about a feature described in a sdesc unless you think it is important to detail it further.  If you think it will give you a realistic edge, go for it. Getting anal over not being able to see eye color when a hood is up is ridiculous since you can see plenty of other features that you would not ordinarily see when the person you are looking at's hood is up.

There are many moments when all of us have to bend our own reality to allow believability to take root in this world of fantasy. I'm doing it right now, I have to believe that this topic is being discussed to make this game better, to give less experienced players more options than they may realize is available to them when creating a sdesc and main desc. Wether or not it annoys some of our players that eye color is in a sdesc isn't going to affect the game at all, unless the viewer can't get past it and decides to kill you over it.

With all that said, if you put your eye color in your sdesc others can't see your eyes when you put your hood up, unless those eyes were so magnificent you needed more space to describe them in your main desc, then of course they will see more detail.  

The creativity argument is mostly moot, sometimes people make PCs that do not stand out in a crowd, blending in has merit too. Putting eye color in a sdesc can easily be as creative as placing a more obscure word there, or some active descriptor that awes and inspires. I get a lot more annoyed with someone using an extremely obscure or archaic word, when a simple one suits better. Even though they probably think it is more creative, to me its just fluff.

The atramentous, effulgent-eyed elf     ..(Sorry for using atramentous and effulgent as my examples. You know who you are.). If you know what the definitions of both of these words are at a glance you may need to go outside and get some fresh air, most normal people do not and will have to look them up.

To me this is worse than..

the lanky, blue-eyed man .. Immediately, we know this guy is pretty thin and blue-eyed. Wow. Is this as thought provoking as a multi-colored beaming-eyed elf? Probably not.

[John]

There are people in RL who's eyes are their most defining feature.  Two examples I can think of offhand are Rasputan (who was famous for his piercing gaze) and that green-eyed "afgan girl" from the cover of National Geographic.  

To add weight to DMW's comment. I knew exactly who he was talking about, and can't recall much except she was fairly haggard and had green eyes.

So your either gunna have the haggard green-eyed woman or the tanned green-eyed woman

[Anonymous]

My main issue with eye color in a sdesc:

How do you, the keen eyed scout, describe 'the blue-eyed man', who is standing three rooms away, to others around you.  Eye color isn't discernable at a distance.  It's more possible that posture, musculature, skin-color, hair-color, deformities, tattoos,  etc, are.

Either you have to bend the rules of reality and somehow pick up on the blue-eyed man's eyecolor, or you have to say something is blocking your sight or some other virtual impedence.

The other reason I've don't make descs that include eyecolor anymore is because of the redundancy that Vox pointed out.  I like bringing up eyecolor in an emote even if it is cliche now.

But I certainly don't look down my nose at people who do have eye color in their desc or call them uncreative.  That's going too far.

[John]

or you have to say something is blocking your sight or some other virtual impedence.

Within cities I try to do that with stuff 2 rooms away (sometimes even 1 room away). Problem is when other players can magically see stuff I can't. Sure, the code says I can see 3 rooms away, but I like to limit myself to 1 room away at the most (not including late at night, then I let the code determine).

[Bestatte]

CRW asks:

How do you, the keen eyed scout, describe 'the blue-eyed man', who is standing three rooms away, to others around you. Eye color isn't discernable at a distance. It's more possible that posture, musculature, skin-color, hair-color, deformities, tattoos, etc, are.

The same way I can tell that the "tanned tattoo-covered elf" two rooms away has tattoos and tanned skin. The elf is probably covered almost head to toe in clothing. How the fuck is it that I know he's got tattooes on his arms and legs, let alone a tan under the tattooes?

Answer: I don't. But for some reason, this elf's player has decided that these will be the most distinguishing features of his character, so I have to just kinda go with it and assume that once I get up close and personal, I'll notice that he also has tattoos on his tanned face and not just his body.

Hopefully I'd be right. But if I'm wrong, then he probably shouldn't be a tattoo-covered elf unless he is *often* running around naked. You take into consideration what people will *usually* see when they look at you. Not always see, since you can't count on people seeing you consistently wearing the same stuff, or with/without a hood every moment of every day. But certainly include those things which the average Joe looking in your direction will be most likely to notice.

[Armaddict]

You people...need to get out more.

[Mr.B]

First off, Armageddon is loosely based on the rules of reality, and more strongly on realistic character personas and interaction. It is a world of fantasy.

Now, my vote goes for the inclusion of eye-color in sdescs at the discretion of the player. Why? Because it can be a character's most (if not one of the more) distinguishing or striking features, as it can be in RL. Having eye-color in your sdesc is perfectly alright, and whether or not emotes that run on with redundencies to your sdesc's or main desc's eye description grinds on someone's sensabilities is their goddamn problem. Emoting, descs, all that is there to help express your character as you see fit, so do it how you feel it should be done and ignore the emote and descriptor-nazis. Sure, if you have some other outstanding feature other then your eyes, it should be included as well but that doesn't make placing eye color in the sdesc any less valid then decribing yourself as lanky, or -haired. Anyone who doesn't want to play around the small things as that and sweat it should take a moment to relax their butts.

Bottom line: Describe your character's eyes as much you want wherever you want, because they aren't anyone's but yours.. usually.

Silly bottomer line: Everyone! Set your eye-descriptions in your sdescs to fool the sharp-eyed scouts! They're everywhere! .. and they're out for BLOOD! :wink:

[jhunter]

Most people's arguement about hating eye-color seems to be that they can see it from a distance away and they shouldn't be able to.

All I have to say to this is, do you not have enough confidence in your own rp to deal with it realistically or are you just looking for something to whine about?

I personally think the people who are whining about it are being too fucking anal, plain and simple.

That's all I've got to add, I'm out.

[Mr.Camel]

Most people's arguement about hating eye-color seems to be that they can see it from a distance away and they shouldn't be able to.

Actually, I think people want something they can see from a distance that they can describe, IMO.

[sarahjc]

I don't really think all too much about my Short description. My current PC is an -eyed one. It's one of the main points of her main description, so I thought it suitable that is should be in the short desc as well.  And no my sdesc isn’t the most creative, but it doesn’t have to be.. It is pointing out the most predominate features in my main description.

I always prefer to save all the elaborate words for writing up the main desc, you aren't going to get a good idea about what I look like from my short description anyway, its just a tag so that you know who I am.

And what’s this hoo haw about "I don't like to rp with this kind of Sdesc" Come on people? Are you serious?

<admonishment>Malfaxis.. I had higher expectations.</admonishment>

You know who I don't like to rp with? Shitty role players..

You could be the belshun fruit-faced, stump-fingered man, but I don't really want to role play with you if you can't use a capital letter at the beginning of your sentences and a period at the end.

I don't give a flying fuck about what your Sdesc is. I am certainly not going pass judgment on you because you're "the lean man" or "the blue-eyed man". Look past the short description people.. There is a whole character there.

Bunch of judgmental sdesc nazis. .

*jumps off her soap box and shakes her head furiously*

[Quo]

There are people in RL who's eyes are their most defining feature.  Two examples I can think of offhand are Rasputan (who was famous for his piercing gaze) and that green-eyed "afgan girl" from the cover of National Geographic.  

it's a bit off-topic, but it seems that the eyes on that picture are a common memory shared by many of this generation. For those who
had their memory and curiosity triggered again, I dug up a link describing what became of the girl:
Original story:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/100best/storyA_story.html

... and 17 years later:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/03/0311_020312_sharbat.html