Do our emote standards make TI less accessible?

[Geras]

Came across this thread on Reddit, and thought it worth mentioning:

https://www.reddit.com/r/MUD/comments/5 ... based_mud/

Of note was this part:

Also, while I liked The Inquisition and its non-combat XP accumulation and skill advancement, I'm kind of hoping for something a little less intense in how roleplaying is "measured". That is, I want to spend a lot of time doing "say" commands and short emotes to interact with other people, and less time constructing five-sentence emotes as if I am a professional author writing a story. Either the XP formula would have to be less rigorous about measuring whether or not you are RPing, or even better XP might not exist at all and skill advancement would be less concrete and formulaic.

Anyone have any thoughts?

[Andruid]

I sympathize somewhat with this remark, as I think short, snappy dialogue can be used to good effect in some scenes, and not every scene should require participants to write a novella.

Where I think we could probably afford to make a slight adjustment is in reducing the length requirement on hemotes. Right now, even something like hemote flicks a sharp glance in /bald's direction. does not count toward RPXP rate because it's considered too short by the system. I often have to artificially inflate my hemotes just to make them count toward my RPXP rate. I don't have this problem with thinks, because the length requirement for thinks is much lower.

This would be one simple way to address the above criticism without necessarily dictating -how- people should RP.

[Gerolf]

I am of a split mind on the subject:

Is it less accessible? It depends on how you define accessible. Some people are looking for the fast paced stuff and there are places where they can find that. Others are looking for a slower, more eloquent response. So part of the idea between accessibility in this context is "Are we attracting the people who want an experience like TI or are we attracting people who want the theme of TI but not the culture?"

On the other hand, I know that I personally get really annoyed when people write walls of text. I end up skimming and missing things. Once caused an argument because I stopped reading after the first dialog, so I can understand getting lost in the weeds.

I think it comes down to preference and being respectable. People don't typically have time to wait ten minutes between poses so, in my opinion, write a paragraph that includes a body action and some text and you should be good to go.

[Geras]

Follow up from the same poster.

I might just be misremembering why I felt compelled to write these four sentence emotes. Perhaps I just got the sense that there was a social stigma against short emotes, or something along those lines. Plus, the XP doesn't really super matter in TI nearly as much as it does in other MUDs, so I guess it's not all that important one way or the other.
Anyway, like I said, this was a long time ago. I just remember that the length of emotes everyone used felt clunky because it slowed down the live interactive element of roleplay that I was looking for. That is, it felt a lot more like co-scripting a scene than improv acting. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for at the time.
That also interacted poorly for me with some of the other features of the game. At least when I was playing, Inquisition had/has rich world-building that requires you to read hundreds of help files to understand basic background knowledge your character needs, an unforgiving IC culture that makes it easy to mess up and die or become a permanent outcast as a newbie if you don't figure out how to fit in fast enough, and lack of OOC channels to help you learn the ropes. There's a lot of good in that because it makes the game much more immersive, but at the same time I am reaching a stage of my life where I don't have as much time to pore over help files to learn which colors are legal for commoners to wear and what title you should call the widow of a knight. It's fun to learn and it encompasses this really incredible world built by the staff and players, but it also feels like a lot of work to do to play a game.
That said, I will give The Inquisition another chance. It was well ahead of most other MUDs I played at the time in terms of story, code-supported RP, and active player involvement in world-building. Should be interesting to see how much it has changed over the years.

[Azi]

I try to pad out my emotes a little when I see other people doing so because I have noticed that people do tend to define a good roleplayer by emote length, but tbh, I do prefer (relatively) short poses. It makes dialogue flow better, and sometimes what you need is a witty one-liner.

brevity, soul of wit, etc

[Rabek]

The biggest problem I find with excessively long posts is that it really ruins the flow of conversation. Someone can get out twenty different thoughts before you're allowed to respond to even one of them. I often find myself holding two or more parallel conversations with the same individual when they use lengthy posts full of dialogue!

There also tends to be a lot of meaningless purple prose to sift through to get to the important parts, making it easy to miss things as mentioned earlier.

I believe that this is a cultural problem more than a code one, however; the RPXP requirement isn't nearly as long as the paragraph post some people provide, and you only need to meet the limit once to earn the RPXP until the next RPXP cycle.

Having it shorter for hemote would be nice, I agree there.

[Pixie]

I get bored by dialogue without context. When I'm after spoken word roleplay I dip into LOTJ (or one of the other hack and slashy type RP MUDs). I'm ashamed to admit that if someone is using just "say" I find myself making my way out of the scene, solely because without context I have nothing to go on (Note: This is a weakness of mine, rather than a fault of those who use "say" as their primary roleplay command; it's just not my style).

I'm not a fan of purple prose, but I am a huge, huge fan of emotes that have more content and context than dialogue. I'm not here to write out conversations I could have by text message, nor am I really here to read them (this sounds way meaner than I want it to; again, I should point out this is a fault of mine, different styles for different folks -- rapid fire RP is no less valid than any other variety). Generally speaking, a long emote in and of itself does not a quality emote make, but when somebody is tossing out a novel and it's evocative, excellent stuff, I really couldn't be happier.

I think our emote standards are 2 lines cut at 80-characters per line to be credited for RPXP. With very different emoting styles on TI, one favoring brevity and the other depth (and really, all else between), I think two lines is a pretty fair middling point for emote and rpecho.

For hemote, I am in 100% agreement that it should be a "by use" RPXP bonus, similar to think. If it's a few words, that's probably enough for something the people in the room might not notice.

Edit:

Oooh. The reddit poster actually hit the nail on the head, I think, and was similar to something Geras said above:

... felt a lot more like co-scripting a scene than improv acting. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't quite what I was looking for at the time.

[Gerolf]

I'm not a fan of purple prose, but I am a huge, huge fan of emotes that have more content and context than dialogue.

Can you define Purple prose because my mind keeps going to emotes with {M and I know that isn't right!

[Lei]

"The disemboweled mercenary crumpled from his saddle and sank to the clouded sward, sprinkling the parched dust with crimson droplets of escaping life fluid."
Crow: You mean blood?
Mike: Let's not jump to conclusions.
— The Eye of Argon MST

There are times within the life of any teller of tales (not including Film Noir) in which they are faced with a situation not most dire but not far removed: the writing, while not lacking in such delightful virtues as a sturdy coherent plot or rich characterization, is supremely dry and uninteresting to read.
In response, the writer chooses to indulge in the writing technique known to gentlefolk as Purple Prose, wherein the writing becomes much more florid, eschewing quotidian sentences for elaborate concatenation of phrases and clauses. On occasion, such racks of ornament can be despicable, with the scintillating adjectives bewildering the reader and obfuscating the subject. In the worst case scenario, such prose will reduce readers to skim-reading for fear of trudging through pages and pages of mundane description slowly and painfully, just as violet-tinted patches on a garment incompatibly hued are agonizing for a human being's photon detectors.

There's more at the source.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PurpleProse

[Andruid]

Both of those are delightfully funny. Thanks for sharing, Lei. ^_^

This is hardly the first time this topic has come up for discussion, and it almost certainly wont be the last. It's impossible to please everyone, and since this is all about preferences and culture, there's no real right or wrong answer, either. My best advice is to try and be flexible in your emoting style and length based on the needs of a scene or on the preferences of your fellow RPers, in order to come to some middle ground that is enjoyable for all involved.