Remove Yell and Shout from exclamation mark speech verbs.

[Nanako]

When you end a sentance with an exclamation mark, it randomly chooses one of three speech verbs

Name yells "words"

Name shouts "words"

Name exclaims "words"

90% of the time when people use an exclamation mark though, they only mean to exclaim, not to shout. When people want to shout, they type IN ALL CAPS LIKE THIS. OH MY GOD THE CHANGELING IS MURDERING ME HEEELP

There's no need to have yell and shout as verbs, it just creates immersion breaking moments of 'that's not what i meant to do at all'

Remove them, and make it always use 'exclaims'

[Guest Menown]

Aurora, where having 'shout' and 'yell' as action verbs for speech is immersion breaking.

[Skull132]

I don't think we should be encouraging all-caps shouting in IC. It's fine as is.

[Nanako]

I don't think we should be encouraging all-caps shouting in IC.

Why not, exactly? It's a perfectly valid linguistic tool, which everyone understands as shouting. It's been an internet convention that allcaps = shouting, almost since the internet was invented. It's extremely unlikely that you'll be able to convince people to stop doing it unless you start banning for it

 

It's fine as is.

Fine for what?

If you want exclamation mark to mean shouting, then you'd need to remove exclaims from the verbs. Right now it straddles two functions uselessly and is just an annoyance. I contend that its present state is not fine for either purpose

[Skull132]

"Only the Sith deal in absolutes."

There's a middle-ground between encouraging and actively seeking to remove. A massive one. Seriously.

As for it being a valid linguistic tool. Nope, speaking very technically, typing in all capitals is not a valid grammatical tool. You would use an exclamation mark to convey the same meaning you apply to typing in all-caps. Perhaps we should also look in the dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exclaim

And again, let's look in the dictionary to find that all verbs used to describe the action of exclaiming, as indicated by the presence of an exclamation mark are listed as being synonymous with the verb: http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/exclaim?s=t

As for why I don't want to see more all-caps in general say? Well, okay, perhaps I'm a bit of a prude on this count, but it looks awful. There's also the fact that 99% of the time, all caps is used in combination with the exclamation mark. Aaand also the fact that if you mistype one character as a non-all-caps word, the parser would recognize it as a standard say. And missing one letter is easier than missing an exclamation point.

Oh, and encouraging proper chat endings is a positive thing. Proper punctuation is actually something players should worry about, as it offers a rhythm and pacing to their character's speech. It makes it readable, and enables development of more custom speech patterns down the line.

[pickled_tomato]

This goes in line with the whole force feeding medicine thing. The game makes it seem a lot more violent than how it plays out in people's heads before they do it.

Every time I've seen somebody do it there's always "immersion breaking" OOC about it. It should really go in line with what the player imagines it to be rather than how the game portrays it. Decent RP can lead to it being avoided though, like handing the pills to the player for them to take.

I agree with Nanako and I actually thought a bit about this after I used exclamation points a bit, it just seemed off. "Name yells, "Oh my.. that's quite a burn!" just doesn't sound right. All caps is a bit excessive and really wouldn't add to "immersion", but manually having to make your character yell through /me or something seems a lot better than the game doing it for you when you didn't intend it in the first place.

That's just my two cents on it though. It just seems awkward.

[Nanako]

"Only the Sith deal in absolutes."

Hah, maybe that's why i'm unpopular,

 

There's a middle-ground between encouraging and actively seeking to remove. A massive one. Seriously.

Where's the middle ground here? A player has no control over which of the speech verbs is randomly selected. If they had an ingame means or option to do so, that'd be a reasonable middle ground, but also more work

 

As for it being a valid linguistic tool. Nope, speaking very technically, typing in all capitals is not a valid grammatical tool. You would use an exclamation mark to convey the same meaning you apply to typing in all-caps.

Do you see what you did there? You just bolded something to emphasise it. That's a tool we don't have access to ingame. Nor do we have underlining, or italics. Why didn't you use an exclamation mark? (no editing it now)

Because an exclamation mark goes at the end of a sentance, it wouldn't be correct to use it there. How else are you going to emphasise a word? Typing that word in allcaps seems to be a good indicator

There's a big difference between writing generally, and writing which is ICly meant to emulate speech. Our characters are talking to each other, not writing novels or forum posts. The communication isn't actually writing as far as our characters are concerned

Allcaps uses bigger letters that take up more space. They're more 'in the face' of the reader, and hence they communicate a similar emotional effect as shouting at them.

Perhaps we should also look in the dictionary: http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/exclaim

And again, let's look in the dictionary to find that all verbs used to describe the action of exclaiming, as indicated by the presence of an exclamation mark are listed as being synonymous with the verb: http://www.thesaurus.com/browse/exclaim?s=t

Has several meanings, i'm not sure what this evidences. The one implying speaking with strong emotion is how i use the word

 

As for why I don't want to see more all-caps in general say? Well, okay, perhaps I'm a bit of a prude on this count, but it looks awful.

Of course it looks awful. It SHOULD look awful, because shouting at people is a terribly impolite and taboo thing to do. But it gets attention, which is what you want when something is currently eating your face off. If people use methods that don't look awful and annoy people, then they're far less likely to be noticed

 

There's also the fact that 99% of the time, all caps is used in combination with the exclamation mark.

I disagree. In many times, like when you're dying and time is critical, you often don't bother with punctuation. Punctuation is used to add flair and RP to noncritical situations

 

Aaand also the fact that if you mistype one character as a non-all-caps word, the parser would recognize it as a standard say. And missing one letter is easier than missing an exclamation point.

I never actually intended for any new parser functionality to be added. I can think of a much simpler way to do it.

If you just hit enter, your character would use normal verbs. If you hold shift while pressing enter, your character would use shout/yell verbs, and possibly have the text appear in bold font too. That is a seperate idea though.

[Skull132]

The reasonable middle ground is the status quo.

As for emphasis. You fail to understand that one does not necessarily yell while emphasizing. I use slashes IC to indicate emphasis, and very rarely does my character actually yell while doing it. Stop putting your thoughts into other people's heads.

I'm also glad that the association between the exclamation mark and the verbs that are used once one is detected flew over your head. The presence of the mark indicates that the character is exclaiming. It is not that hard to understand this.

I'm also glad you know what you speak of when it comes to coding. There's a point why I referenced a parser: because using a parser is the most intuitive way to handle this. Not only is your proposed solution convoluted as heck to code (I think the only way to do that would be through a series of hacks involving Javascript), it would also add too much mechanical difficulty to a function which should just work. And also be intuitive.

[Lucychan42]

Okay. First of all, what in the world happened to where everyone is suddenly being disrespectful to each other? With Head Admins immediately shooting down and being entirely condescending to someone for having the belief that something isn't represented properly. Nanako is being respectful and attempting to give her point of you and you're speaking to her as if she has no clue what she's saying and it's appalling, Skull. I don't know what's gotten into you or this community to where suddenly everyone's nipping at each other's ankles for the mildest transgressions.

Is a little respect for each other too much to ask of people? The only "mature" part of this community lately seems to be the mutual hatred for "overdone" sexualities (there hasn't been a day where someone doesn't complain about lesbay). As for how interactions between each other are handled, I couldn't claim that any of it would be mature. Even in your signature, "homo homini lupus est", your little quote, in my eyes you've failed to uphold such that standard.

You act like she's being aggressive and speak to her like it's a personal offense that she wants something done about it. It's getting ridiculous now that even a head admin is doing this; it was bad enough when others were doing it (I'm not even going to bother naming them because the community knows who they are by now) but now it's getting absurd.

As for the actual discussion, I feel this is on the right issue but in the wrong direction. The other topic, http://forums.aurorastation.org/viewtopic.php?f=18&t=6027, is far more adequate for what we're desiring. There have been plenty of times where Aerianna is just plain pissed off or scared and screaming, and rather than add some mild exclamation point at the end of a message in general comms that might get ignored in the rest of the chaos, I use all caps because it does exactly what Nanako said. It emphasizes it, it brings attention to it; it isn't grammatically correct, no, but there isn't exactly another option for bringing more pull and emphasis toward something when everyone else is already screaming in Comms.

And it's annoying that you think of that as if it's a terrible thing. I'm not going to be dramatic and say you think it's the worst thing in the world, but it's a bit frustrating that you seem to condemn doing that at all. It's a valid tool for bringing emphasis and if you desire to deny any other option for bringing emphasis or even suggestions to change how emphasis is done (such as this, where ! places emphasis in the wrong way with chat verbs), then I'm not sure what exactly you're wanting.

People are trying to give alternatives to all caps and it seems irresponsible to deny them if you are concerned with people using the methods they currently have available.

I don't know what's gotten into the community because I don't want to claim this has been this way forever, but goodness, a little respect for each other, especially from the staff which should be at a higher standard, would be a wonderful thing to have.

[Brightdawn]

Bold text is a thing, if I programmed in a method for players to use it during character speech would you accept it as a new shouting?

[Nanako]

Okay. First of all, what in the world happened to where everyone is suddenly being disrespectful to each other?

whoa,

its okay, don't worry, Skull is just like this, he's blunt, i'm blunt, sometimes we have long arguments in OOC about various things

I actually rather enjoy this relationship, i'm sure he doesn't mean to come across as hostile

Back on the original topic, The various ideas about bolding, and especially skull's simple parser idea, actually don't conflict with this one. He specifically said it won't affect speech verbs, and so it won't affect this issue at all

It will provide more options for emphasising and shouting things, which i think only makes this idea more valid. We don't need shout/yell as speech verbs for exclamation marks

It's right in the name, exclamation. It should be used for exclaiming, nothing else

[Skull132]

My point is. Shouting and yelling are synonymous with exclaiming. Whether you exclaim, shout, or yell, is irrelevant. They are the same action, by definition. Literally.

[Nanako]

My point is. Shouting and yelling are synonymous with exclaiming. Whether you exclaim, shout, or yell, is irrelevant. They are the same action, by definition. Literally.

 

They're different degrees of emphasis. Exclaiming is something you do to make a point when you're talking to someone.

Shouting is what you do when someone's really far away, or you're angry at them

One is socially acceptable and one is not. And i've had people telling my characters off because i shouted at them due to the random speech verb selection, and had to explain it in looc

[Guest Menown]

Are you sure it's not because you started screaming in all caps at them, Nanako?

[Nanako]

Are you sure it's not because you started screaming in all caps at them, Nanako?

No i exclaimed something like 'Hey i like your hat!'

[Skull132]

The thing is, if you wanted to state it, you would have used a statement.

The fact that an exclamation mark was at the end makes it loud, and thus, socially questionable depending on who you deal with. If I had a character who cares about folks being loud and obnoxious, I would use the presence of the exclamation mark to determine whether or not someone's being loud, not the verb.

[Nanako]

I would use the presence of the exclamation mark to determine whether or not someone's being loud, not the verb.

The intent was to emphasise the statement. It's a little louder than normal speech, certainly, but it's not 'ow my hears hurt' loud (which is exactly how the person in question reacted)

 

I would use the presence of the exclamation mark to determine whether or not someone's being loud, not the verb.

You would, but i wouldn't, so maybe it's just a personal difference. but when the verb very clearly says shouts, what are you supposed to expect other than that they're shouting?

The problem, ultimately. is that i want to exclaim, and not to shout. They are similar, but not identical things. The only way to exclaim is either to use me's and write it manually (which is more work and prone to typos), or submit to randomness at 33% odds

[Skull132]

Well, that's kind of why I think my parser solution would make this as well obsolete. Because you can add emphasis by simply using the chat tokens, while also retaining effective control over which verbs are used.

And okay, maybe they're nuanced. An exclamation is short and sweet, but I could go on for hours while shouting at you. Still, all of the other chat stuff works the same way, and I don't think there's a point to rewrite it massively. Plus, the lack of a good alternative solution makes this difficult.

[Nanako]

while also retaining effective control over which verbs are used.

Your solution isn't going to affect verbs though, unless you're stripping out all non-say verbs.

I don't think there's a point to rewrite it massively.

Rewrite what?

Say.dm, line 107. A slight alteration is all that's needed to implement this, it'd take zero effort, and won't interfere with your parser idea at all.

[Skull132]

But then you'd restrict exclaim to always mean exclaim. Which lacks flair. The random pick is there to add flair, flavour. Yes, it's random, but let's be frank, majority of the people aren't going to care about it, it's just there to make the chat look less painful at times.

[Nanako]

But then you'd restrict exclaim to always mean exclaim. Which lacks flair. The random pick is there to add flair, flavour. Yes, it's random, but let's be frank, majority of the people aren't going to care about it, it's just there to make the chat look less painful at times.

 

But adding flair is the exact reason i'm using exclamation marks, and this lack of control over it is making me not want to use them.

People can always add flair in lots of ways, your new parsing idea will help add new ways of adding flair and emphasis to words, and to shout the whole thing.

This is a case where randomness is bad, it's taking control away from players.

[Guest Menown]

This is a case where randomness is bad, it's taking control away from players.

 

You're acting like this is an incredibly terrible thing. I've yet to see anybody but you complain about this. If somebody wants a more detailed expression of speech for an RP, they usually use an emote.

[Owen]

I was going to say... If you want to make your voice louder than normal just do, me: Nanako exclaims, "I like your hair!"

You have all the power you need to make it change but you just need to type some extra letters