Moods - Suggest new ones

Jukilian

Where is my electric mood?

Aehren

Jukilian said:

Where is my electric mood?

Silver Dragon!

Jukilian

Aehren said:

Where is my electric mood?

Silver Dragon!

But there's already Wind, Fire, Water, and Ice moods.. Fire and Ice at least have dragon counterparts, so what's the harm in an electric one?

@Sarapis? I'm sad.

If it's not going to be put in, I'm not really that bothered. If it does though, I will likely buy it.

Ourania

Tesha said:

Could we change worried?

From...

Adoption Messages                                                      (Active)

You see   : The sky may actually be falling!

Others see: Tesha glances up, looking worried.

Room LOOK                                                              (Active)

Argent Artificer Tesha al Ashtad, Golden Justice is here looking worried.

Movement Messages                                                      (Active)

Entering : Worried expression on her face, Tesha enters from the north.

Exiting  : Tesha leaves to the southwest, looking worried.

SAY Messages                                                           (Active)

You see   : You worriedly say, "Blah blah blah."

Others see: Tesha worriedly says, "Blah blah blah."

SAY TO Messages                                                        (Active)

You see   : You worriedly say to Haidion, "Blah blah blah."

Rcpt sees : Tesha worriedly says to you, "Blah blah blah."

Others see: Tesha worriedly says to Haidion, "Blah blah blah."

TELL Messages                                                          (Active)

You see   : You worriedly tell Haidion, the Wanderer, "Blah blah blah."

Others see: Tesha worriedly tells you, "Blah blah blah."

YELL Messages                                                          (Active)

You see   : You worriedly yell, "Blah blah blah."

Others see: Tesha worriedly yells, "Blah blah blah."

SHOUTing Voice                                                         (Active)

You see   : You worriedly shout, "Blah blah blah."

Others see: Tesha worriedly shouts, "Blah blah blah."

to...

Adoption Messages                                                      (Active)

You see   : The sky may actually be falling!

Others see: Tesha glances up, looking worried.

Room LOOK                                                              (Active)

Argent Artificer Tesha al Ashtad, Golden Justice is here looking worried.

Movement Messages                                                      (Active)

Entering : Worried expression on her face, Tesha enters from the north.

Exiting  : Tesha leaves to the southwest, appearing slightly distressed.

SAY Messages                                                           (Active)

You see   : You worriedly say, "Blah blah blah."

Others see: Tesha worriedly says, "Blah blah blah."

SAY TO Messages                                                        (Active)

You see   : You worriedly say to Haidion, "Blah blah blah."

Rcpt sees : Tesha worriedly says to you, "Blah blah blah."

Others see: Tesha worriedly says to Haidion, "Blah blah blah."

TELL Messages                                                          (Active)

You see   : Concern evident in your tone, you tell Haidion, the Wanderer, "Blah blah blah."

Others see: Concern evident in her tone, Tesha tells you, "Blah blah blah."

YELL Messages                                                          (Active)

You see   : Voice laden with worry, you yell, "Blah blah blah."

Others see: Voice laden with worry, Tesha yells, "Blah blah blah."

SHOUTing Voice                                                         (Active)

You see   : Concerned distress conveyed clearly, Tesha shouts, "Blah blah blah."

Others see: Conveying concerned distress clearly, you shout, "Blah blah blah."

Or something like that? Using Person worriedly does something in every line feels very repetitive. Same for all the others that have very similar lines for almost all of them? Coming up with new and different things for each one would be time consuming, but I'm certain a lot of people would happily chip in if you opened up a contest, you probably wouldn't even need a prize.

Worried, distressed, and concerned are not the same thing. If you use all three for one mood (worry), then distressed and concerned cannot be created as a mood.

Silas

@Ourania, while that's true, do you not agree that just taking an adverb, sticking it into the different lines and calling it a mood is lacking in creativity?

Ourania

Isn't my call. Also, people keep suggesting new moods! It is appreciated.

Silas

How Hashani.

Tharvis

Shouldn't you be working on multiclass @Silas?  :-O

Sobriquet

Wysteria leaves, following Colgano.

A swarm of bees flies off to the up.

Colgano swaggers out to the up.

Have to say, not really a fan of these having enter / exit lines. A mood is more of a feeling and should be expressed by words and interaction, not by seeing someone walk past. Plus, the swagger one is stupid imho

Sarapis

So, the reason that adverbs are used for so many of the basic public moods is simple: We want to have lots of them, and we don't want the moods everyone has access to be long in terms of the text they output.

Those two desires kind of dictated why they use the same words repeatedly - so that we can have worried, distressed, concerned, disturbed, nervous, distraught, fretful, etc etc all as separate moods (as an example of many things that are similar, but perhaps not quite 100% synonyms).

I'm not really a fan of how it's working out though, with so much repetition. 

The only solution I see is to have and aim to have a lot less moods, making the moods 'broader' as it were vs. more specific, or at least make most of the 'basic' moods broader. Kind of hard to make things like the dragon moods broader. 

See @Tesha's example above for an example of that approach.

However, if we were going that route, I think we'd probably want to do multiple messages for each thing in a mood and then fire them off randomly, to mitigate the repetition issue.

Aerek

I think I'm a fan of that, personally. I don't think we really need separate moods for every conceivable variation of an emotion (worried, concerned, distressed, etc), we just need broader moods that are worded in a way that can cover those variations.

I think folks suggest a lot of moods because they don't like the specific wording of the existing moods (i.e. "The Angry mood is lame, I'd rather have a 'simmering rage' mood."), so we end up with a lot of mood suggestions because folks are trying to tailor-make moods for their characters. But really, we don't need a "rage" mood if the "angry" mood can still get our point across.

Sarapis

I'm unsure. I mean, to me, angry and rage are different. When I'm angry, I wouldn't want to be raging around, and when I'm really upset, I don't want to be seen as merely angry.

Sylvance

Ideas:

1) Sell each mood as a triumvirate. So, you buy the Neurotic set which allows you to assign 'nervous/fidgety/worried' to your outputs as you please (i.e., it's customizable), including the ability to set them to random,

b) You could have a base cost associated with the set, with the choice to buy/quest for extra ones that are compatible with the set

2) Make a rich-man's/poor-man's split between complex (e.g. Neurotic set) and simple (Surprised; see Ekman's basics) emotions. That way you get the best of both worlds.

Trey

Or allow custom moods to be purchased subject to strict policing before implementation. I'm a huge fan of the concept of moods, but I feel like I know several talented writers (myself included) that could do a better job making them more subtle, and less caricatures of moods. 

Sarapis

We might sell custom moods at some point, but they'd be pretty expensive.

Aalm

Custom moods sound like a good idea.

I don't know if it's been suggested, but since there's fire, wind, and water moods, then earth and spirit sound like natural extrapolations.

Also, since there's "shadow," a Light mood for the followers of the Bloodsworn.

Oceana

Aalm said:

Custom moods sound like a good idea.

I don't know if it's been suggested, but since there's fire, wind, and water moods, then earth and spirit sound like natural extrapolations.

Also, since there's "shadow," a Light mood for the followers of the Bloodsworn.

Bright and Shiny?

Jovolo

How can a mood even be Fire, or Water or Shadow or Light...

Jamethiel

@sarapis Maybe broad mood sets where players could select X out of (X + N) random messages for the various things (where X may have a minimum as well).

SAY for happy may have:

Pete happily says...

With a chirpy voice, Pete says...

Gleefully Pete happily says...

Pete excitedly says...

But somehow you only get to choose two. This way you might be able to get variation with less "prescriptive" moods.

Not following on from that example (because that would make sense!) you could have a generally "ANGRY" type mood set with various ways of saying/doing/telling and for newbies you could even come up with some predefined (so they don't sit there for 6 hours in wherever they get trained these days, I'm going to call it Loom, configuring moods instead of adventuring). But for bigger people, the Divine could even get a mood-set up such that with the right combinations it may look a little jarring (and bi-polar).

Pros: Lots more choice, could avoid repetition.

Cons: Give the Divine so much more to do, badly implemented it could take a lot of server resources (but it wouldn't be badly implemented would it - I probably mean it would take more care to make sure that the system behaved itself than the no mix'n'match moods we have now), and people will still complain about what people can do with them (but really, whatever we do with them, now they're out of the bag to speak, someone is going to complain); so the biggest against is it sounds like a lot more work.

But seeing as it's been hinted You've been helped by others with some of the moods, and really we Achaeans are a creative bunch, You could possibly do "something" to encourage us to help.

ed. Damned typos!

Sarapis

Jovolo said:

How can a mood even be Fire, or Water or Shadow or Light...

A literal mood can't, but of course, this is a game system, not a dictionary definition.

Aalm

@Sarapis , @Tecton

A bit to add, if you don't mind... Some people have expressed discomfort with something like a person crackling with lightning as he or she talks because that should be left to the Divine. Fire, Water, Wind, Earth and Spirit, as well as philosophy-oriented moods such as Light, Shadow, etc., can be useful in rituals performed by those possessing them, or adding RP to relevant skills like Rite of Prayer. People in the course of rituals or other magical happenings regarding the elements or their religions do that all the time through illusions, reflexed prayers attached to particular skills, etc. A mage about to drop Holobombs might do a clever witticism in the Fire element. I am not sure that would be great for combat because it's announcing your action, but if the mood is reflexively turned on for that and turned off after, I think it's great RP. So, I think even people opposed to their use constantly might find them extremely useful occasionally and thus worth having for that reason.

Jurixe

I think, really, it all boils down to the responsibility of the players themselves in how they use the moods. While I do think that the more 'general' moods should be left free (and to their credit, most of them are), it's not entirely fair to blame the admin for the players misusing the moods. It's not the admin's fault if someone who had a lot of money just felt like buying all the elemental moods and the shadow moods and annoying everyone just because.

You can and should use it for RP and have RP-related reasons for them - even more so for the non-generic moods than the others, because those are harder to explain away - but there's really no way for the admin to police that. The onus for creating such a backstory, however, lies entirely on the player and I would be disappointed to see this line of reasoning being used to deny future potential cool things (like poses, if we ever get them). I have a shadow mood and so far people seem to like it because of the way I play my character, and I'm sure there are plenty of other people who can and will use their moods to enhance their RP instead of just for the sake of being a special snowflake.

That being said, I agree with the general calls to 'tone down' the moods a little, which is some of the reason I prefer the shadow mood over the elemental ones - because it's more suited for everyday use than the others without losing its unique flavour. I can see instances where the elemental mood messages would add great atmosphere, but I think of those as once-in-a-while things, like rituals as @Aalm suggested.

Kinda wrong thread, but I guess it's still relevant.

Cyla

It's most likely already been covered, but I'm too lazy to look through and check. Perhaps we could get giddy, humble, and something along the lines of studious? I think studious would be kind of neat and could eventually be kind of "code for busy". Such as "Cyla tells you studiously, "Learning to sail at the moment!".

Accipiter

With the config moods off, could the says be left on? You cannot see the mood says with an accent/voice, so you have a choice between them and the mood, which is a shame if you don't know if people will see the mood voice.

Mithridates

Accipiter said:

With the config moods off, could the says be left on? You cannot see the mood says with an accent/voice, so you have a choice between them and the mood, which is a shame if you don't know if people will see the mood voice.

Nothx.

@Sarapis thank you for the mood config off. I no longer have to watch @Colgano swagger out to the ether. Whatever that means. 

Jarrod

@Sarapis would it be possible to make a blacklist setting for MOOD CONFIG OFF?

There are some people who use moods well, turning them on situationally to enhance things. On the other hand, there are people who leave them on 100% of the time and use them for nothing besides, 'lol I'm fire'.

I'd like to be able to disable the latter while still being able to enjoy the former.

Sarapis

Mithridates said:

Accipiter said:

With the config moods off, could the says be left on? You cannot see the mood says with an accent/voice, so you have a choice between them and the mood, which is a shame if you don't know if people will see the mood voice.

Nothx.

@Sarapis thank you for the mood config off. I no longer have to watch @Colgano swagger out to the ether. Whatever that means. 

It means something like this, I'd imagine!

Antonius

@Sarapis: That's far too understated to be the swagger mood.

Sarapis

@Jarrod Probably not going to be a big priority to do something like that.

Herenicus

The black dragon mood, like Doggy Fizzle Televizzle or a Waffle House menu, leans a little hard on the word "sizzle."