[MUD-Dev2] Importance of emoting (Was: A rant against Vanguard reviews and rants)

[Richard A. Bartle]

On 29 March 2007, John Buehler wrote:
>Is a textual emote in a graphical environment a reasonable thing?
        Sure it is. It works for speech, why not emotes?

>I assume that players who are drawn to graphical settings are drawn to
>them at least in part because they are graphical.  If they're going to
>be using emotes, surely they want graphical emotes.
        They seem to be fine using smileys without getting an "evil
grin" or "sticking out tongue" animation.

>Graphical emoting isn't "such little effort".
        You're right, it's not. Data-mining the beta to find out which
of several hundred non-graphical emotes are the most popular and
then adding appropriate animations would be a reasonable compromise.
        Then again, if Blizzard are happy to animate /train and
/chicken, why not /faint?

>In a computer-controlled environment why are we letting the player throw
the
>ball if the game is structured to only allow kicking it?
        Because if the ball is about to hit someone in the groin at
high speed, you're going to want to handle it before it reaches its
destination.
        If there's a legitimate use for a command, then on the whole
you want it in. If people use it for illegitimate purposes, then
you have to decide whether to ban it, keep it or try to separate
the legitimate and illegitimate parts.

>Again, I'm talking about the mainstream case.  But it seems that we agree
on
>the basic principle: macroing of a game action is a sign of a problem
>between the system and the player who is macroing.
        In general, yes, I agree.

                Richard