Smilies.

[Parallo]

Is it just me being an "rp nazi" or do smilies in the main chat not seem totally and utterly wrong? Take this example from a high ranked member of a respected guild(The member's name and the guild's name shall remain annonymus.)

Culprit looks at X "Good to hear "

In this case the person has demonstrated a knowledge and yet indifference of the '/me' and its fuctions and clearly would prefer to abstain from using punctuation for anything more than decorative purposes. My question, is that good enough? I find it horrible. It is distracting and displeasing to the eye. '/me smiles' would even suffice. You don't have to be a writer.

[Gharan]

I know one or two characters who did it in every sentence and they've been around a long time. I agree though they should be kept out of main. They don't really annoy me but I see no point in them. If you wish to smile use /me or an emote that's why they exist in the first place.

[LARAGORN]

I agree they should not be used in the main channel, however in tells or guild channels I see no problem.

[emeraldfool]

I agree. For me, it's the equivalent of using chat-speak, at least in the RP-sense (God knows I use enough smilies outside of RP )

Using ':-)' instead of '/me smiles'
Is like using 'Sup d00dz' instead of 'Hello.'

[Parallo]

Oh I use it in guild and group and all that. That is OOC. You don't say "Oh hi there Emerald colon close bracket." Thats just stupid. And yes it is, to me, exactly like chat-speak.

[bilbous]

Perhaps what is needed is an additional chat filter that takes standard smilies and converts them to the appropriate /me command similar to the way "cya" is converted to "see you later." The reason people use them is convenience and it is unlikely to change.

[Parallo]

That would be too akward because what if they use /me already.

"/me blah blah blah " becomes "/me smiles. /me blah blah blah"

[emeraldfool]

Perhaps what is needed is an additional chat filter that takes standard smilies and converts them to the appropriate /me command similar to the way "cya" is converted to "see you later." The reason people use them is convenience and it is unlikely to change.

If they take 'convenience' over proper RPing they're probably not RPing properly anyway.



Edit: That's actually another issue that annoys me: there should be another descriptor besides /me and /my. Kind of like the /narrate command that NPCs use...

[Parallo]

I could /narrate Emeraldfool is a *!£$&*%!

You wouldn't have a clue who did it.

[Lolitra, Celorrim Purrty Twins]

it would be good to have a narrate - but have at the end of the text [PlayerName] inserted in parenthisis.

[bilbous]

Personally I think all the typing takes away from the roll-play so let us just eliminate it and the problem is solved. More seriously though, Why should there not be textual short cuts, possibly player editable, for common descriptive elements? Sure you can make a shortcut for /say or /shout or whatever but the number of shortcuts is limited and it would be better to have text variables that could be interpolated in-line. You find it awkward? don't use it.

As for the example it would likely become "bilbous blah blah blah. bilbous smiles." 

The less typing I have to do in game the better I like it. Typing is an OOC action and hinders immersion. If I wasn't so lazy, I might try running the game through a speech recognition engine and do away with typing altogether.

[Idoru]

The only way that this bothers me is when I see other members of my guild doing it. Not because I think it is the wrong thing to do, but because of how I feel it would reflect on the guild. I can certainly say that I have done this in error, mainly because I rarely type a sentance in guild/tell/group without tagging a smilie at the end. I often find myself typing them at the end of open chat messages and then deleting them. But I could almost guarantee that the odd one slips through when im typing (probably caused by me facing the opposite direction from my monitor when im typing and then hit ENTER too quickly).

Why make them change into words? just allow a filter option that removes them all together if someone doesnt like them and wants to turn them off. Now I think of it, maybe they should add filter options to remove [all this kinda junk] if a particular player wants to maintain that 'full immersive' experience.

[lordraleigh]

One word resume my opinion on whether smilies are a blast against immersion or not:

Nitpicking

Really, it never drew me as OOC seeing smilies, as I "filter" them mentally for their meaning.

Of course "Sup d00d?" is another history...

[Karyuu]

Aw, you can't filter "Sup d00d" either?

[emeraldfool]

Aw, you can't filter "Sup d00d" either?

Why would you want to? It's the ultimate excuse to abuse someone until they cry. Me and Paro have a whole schtick