[MUD-Dev2] Importance of emoting (Was: ArantagainstVanguardreviews and rants)

[Dana V. Baldwin]

Raph Koster wrote:
> For example, in terms of this emotes discussion, a huge benefit of voice
> isthat you do not need to create emotional puppeteering systems because
> voiceconveys emotion very well. A huge weakness of it is that
> emotionalpuppeteering with voice is also  difficult skill that actors
> train in foryears.
>
> When we debate whether emotes make sense or not in a
> game-drivenenvironment, we're actually talking matter of degree, and we
> shouldn'tforget that voice tone alone conveys more nuance than the
> entire emotesystem in a typical game.
>  

I, and players like myself, are probably in the minority here, but I
really feel that the typechat, emotes and voicechat are necessary
enhancements to each other in modern games. Voice chat to me should be
entirely OOC for as you point out there are very few actors who can pull
it off, let alone the rest of us. But, that immediacy of voice is
important for communication and enjoyment, not only for survival of my
group in combat but also for us laughing together over the funny chat in
Barrows (or more particularly the RP chat in Shire).

With this convention we are left to use the type chat (I prefer bubbles
for easily deciphering) and emotes for our characters actions. This
division between the roleplay of my character and the conversations of
me as the "god-player" give a nice line in the sand that allows a player
to have the best of both worlds. Question is are players interested in
this as a standard? Will this be the emergent behavior?

I would loath to see a system that utterly replaces emotes with voice.
Even though there are novel voice disguises available now I really think
that level of play is left to the game world itself. I really don't want
to be an actor. Maybe if Peter M. concocted something but...nah...