Restrictions on dialogue in emotes?

Quell

"This is disconcerting," I explain, "Because it's somewhat restrictive on my emoting style."

For those who aren't in the know, the game allows only one instance of spoken dialogue in emotes. Given the rather official looking error message this gives you, it's a little worrying that this may be deliberate. Even in briefer emotes, I can't stand having one big chunk of dialogue, it feels hackneyed. It's nice and visually pleasing to break it up a bit. 

What's your take? 

Zil

Oh no, no, no. I don't like that.

In trying to guess at the reasoning behind such a feature, I would suppose that it's to force RPers to break up their emotes into fragments. One action, one piece of dialogue. I happen to feel that that's generally a good thing to aim for, as it helps keep the back-and-forth tempo more collaborative and allows everyone ample opportunity to react to one another and to help shape the scene.

But I really don't think it's something to be mechanically enforced. Especially not in a way that inhibits the use of sentence structure to enhance descriptive flow.

Any other ideas as to why this restriction might exist? Am I missing something?

Scorpia

"I also like to write with my descriptors in between swaths of dialogue," Scorpia agreed, crossing her arms and raising a skeptical brow, "since it's stylistically sound and breaks up your prose so you don't have long strings of dialogue corraled by awkwardly-placed descriptors."

I can roll with it for now but it does trip me up. I hope it's something that gets adjusted - along with not being able to refer to your equipped items with @thing (or was it $thing? either or).

StarFiry

A little trick (and you may already know): when you want to emote something that doesn’t start with your name you can do:

em (even though agreeing, ) crossed her hands and raised a skeptical brow. 

It will emote:
Even though agreeing, Scorpia crossed her hands and raised a skeptical brow. 

BobbtheBreaker

Would this work?

em (an explosive sigh precedes, "No, no no no. No. No." ) sighs again. "Just....no."

Iorwerth

While slightly off topic, I will point out the following sections of HELP SAYS and HELP EMOTICONS, which can be combined.

PREFATORY PHRASES
=================
Emoting can be tagged onto the say command using the following syntax:

   SAY (speaking in a harsh tone) You will pay for this, Oryx.

Everyone sees:
  Speaking in a harsh tone, Eukelade says, "You will pay for this, Oryx."

If you are using a prefatory phrase in conjunction with talking TO a person, you
must use them in a specific order:

   SAY TO ORYX (speaking in a harsh tone) You will pay for this.

Placing 'to oryx' after the prefatory phrase will not work.

EXPRESSIVENESS

You can complement SAY/TELL with adverbs by prefacing what you are saying with the adverb (or
phrase) surrounded in asterisks.

For example:

   If Tecton types:    SAY TO GARRYN *ANGRILY* You barbarian!
   Garryn sees:        Tecton says angrily to you, "You barbarian!"
   Others see:         Tecton says angrily to Garryn, "You barbarian!"

   If Garryn types:    TELL TECTON *LONGINGLY* I miss you!
   Tecton sees:        Garry tells you longingly, "I miss you!"

These adverbs/phrases can be combined with prefatory phrases (HELP SPEAKING), but the prefatory
phrase must come AFTER the adverb/phrase

Quell

I appreciate the tips, guys, but I know all of the syntax. What I'm describing is a specific case in which you can't "say" more than one thing in an emote.

Try typing: em test "test" test "test"

Indecision

You could go one of two ways:

(Method 1: Ignore the "X says" and just make it a say.)

'This is disconcerting," I explain, "Because it's somewhat restrictive on my emoting style.

(Method 2: Incorporate it into the say.)

'This is disconcerting." With a sigh, she goes on to explain, "Because it's somewhat restrictive on my emoting style.

TextWench

Quotes in the () often fail. 

I've picked up a workaround with em blah, "blahblah," and, 'blah.' because I can't not.

Quell

I've had to try a few workarounds myself, but it's a pain not being able to type my emote however I like. I really hope this is "fixed" or at least clarified soon, it might make or break my experience here.

Eshe

It seems like an unnecessary restriction.

Quell

Praise the Lord

Tiase

I'm just wondering. Could we have the same functionality in tells as we do ins SAYS? Tells in starmourn are explained as long distance communication links. I think it's feasible that folks would be able to hear mood through tone and background noises. It add more immersion into the game. 

Nykara

Tiase said:

I'm just wondering. Could we have the same functionality in tells as we do ins SAYS? Tells in starmourn are explained as long distance communication links. I think it's feasible that folks would be able to hear mood through tone and background noises. It add more immersion into the game. 

It already exists. Can use emoticons at the end and * blah blah * at the front.

Tiase

@Nykara I thought that it was a bug. Because in the helpfiles, the *blah blah* was only supposed to be used for adverbs in SAYS. 

(I break things)

Nykara

Bug or feature it's hard to tell