CLOK BBS

Hey there. I thought I'd contribute a suggestion.

Over these past years, there's one thing I've noticed. People keep walking away while you're trying to type in that emote. I find it a bit annoying because you do kinda work hard to get in that whole emote only to have to erase it because the person left.

My suggestion? An emoting command that alerts the other player that you're typing an emote and at least to wait until it's done before you walk away. Perhaps it could be an OOC notification kinda like AFK is if you type the AFK command, but this one for emoting so you can have the time to type in that long emote and the other player knows what you're doing.

Just thought I'd pitch in that suggestion as I think many people would like something like this for the sake of getting in some good rp/keeping the interaction going.

Obviously we can't make people sit in a room to wait for an emote, but it could be nice to have a command -- similar to the AFK command -- that just pops a little tag out roomwide as a courtesy.

Typing: [OOC: Name is typing.]
Reading: [OOC: Name is reading to catch up.]

You don't have to use them but they could be useful for others to indicate that you didn't disappear on them and are responding.

I think just emoting is fine. It's more automatically understood anyway when someone's reading said emotes. It does help with the type of roleplayers who prefer long emotes, or characters who don't talk a lot and prefer conveying through something else more which means emoting is used more often than say, stuff like that.

Also thank you Verel. I've been meaning to suggest this but kept forgetting. Thank you for putting that forward.

I don't think I'm on board with this one. I could see it becoming the norm for a lot of people to send OOC notifications preceding the majority of IC interactions, and the idea of frequent OOC notifications starting off interactions in the RP-Enforced environment feels yucky.

If someone's just passing through and you want to catch their attention and let them know you want to interact, you could always give them a wave, say a quick "I've been meaning to talk to you" or do a quick emote waving them over, or something like that to let them know they should wait as you type up a fuller emote. And if someone does zip away before you're done writing, you can always send them a tell of "hey come back a sec!"

obviously the solution is to create a web based client just for Clok that has a detector in the entry field that can detect when someone is typing. That way everything is done all automagically and stuff, heh. Just kidding. Even if Rias were on board with something like this , you get new players who didn't know about it, old players who forget about it, and people who just don't want to interject that bit of OOC into a IC situation even for the sake of not looking like they are AFK. The best advice is really just don't make long emotes, at least at first. If you really need that extra emote quantity you could do something like

emote has his hands full but manages to wave and...

emote the rest of a fairly expansive emote.

I personally would look at this a lot more than I'd look at

OOC so and so is typing an emote please hold
minutes pass
really large emote
I'd probably ahve to scroll back just to remember the thread if the emote took too long, but I'm old and probably senile, not sure. Keep in mind this is coming from a person who on his first day in Clok long long ago gained the Emotional achievement (50 emotes) so take my advice with a grain of salt.