I'll have to totally agree with Richter here, but let me bring a few more points for people to peruse over. Currently, balance from custom emotes is about 1-2 seconds. I feel the acceptable emote-balance would be somewhat closer to 8, perhaps 10 seconds. For good emotes, it would take that long to type them out. Thus, this way, you're getting less potential for abuse than before.

Using the argument 'If this change was implemented, people could use emotes before each attack to get extra system-ruining fake-afflictions' is entirely invalid. People could do the same now. They could, infact, have a single emote which contain ten, twenty, maybe more afflictions lines in. Every two seconds. If people were going to abuse emotes, they would already be doing it. Changing emotes to its own balance will certainly not invoke players to abuse the priviledge. And if the odd one person did, it is illegal. However, emoting 'hurls a tarot card with the image of the Hanged Man on it at you. As it reaches you, a huge mass of rope bursts out of it, entrapping and hindering you.' would be just as illegal with that change as emoting the same thing is now. Abuse is not a valid argument for denying this roleplay-enhancing change.

One thing to clarify, I'm not sure where people are getting the "the balance is long enough for you to type it" argument.

Here's how emotes work:
You type them
The emote goes off
You have several seconds before you regain balance

Typing an emote in no way affects the balance time. You spend however long typing it (or have it aliased, like I do), it goes off, and then you have to regain balance. You don't get balance back while you're typing. I just don't understand this point.

Especially if you alias the emote.

Excellent point though.

So, because we don't get a lot of abuse with it now they should change it so people could more easily abuse it in the future? How does that make sense? "Hey there is a good system set up, lets mess it up so it can be more easily abused!"

As for Roleplaying changes baring more importance then major destabilizing abuse, I've got to disagree with you there. I've not had any trouble with emotes as they currently are when I'm RP'ing, no more then the limit on says.



Yes, they can currently do that, but CURRENTALLY the balance it takes up makes it not worthwhile to try.

Now you are proposing to take away that balance, or make it some sort of emote-only balance, this would open the door for people to start abusing the system, and you've just got input from Viravain saying "yes this would be a bad idea." if anyone was still confused about it.

Edit: I've got my emotes colored myself, that's not the issue.

I don't see why the admin's should stop there work on Bugs/improvements to implement this change which...I see no reason for. Do you want to emote curses to enemies in battle while your balance is already taken up by using skills?

Example:
emote prods Murphy in the chest, and mutters "Stop killing me already!"

Instead of

prod murphy
mutter stop killing me already!

I haven't seen the original context of the "typing should take long enough" argument, but I have a feeling that it was meant as in, "typing out custom emotes takes a while, that should be enough of a balance, we don't need to lose REAL balance on top of it".

Regarding abusability: As the others have pointed out, emotes can already be abused. Emotes can be -really- long, so you can stuff in enough affliction lines etc. to mess people up long enough to make up for the 1-2 seconds it takes for you to hit for real.

I honestly don't think abuse would be a big deal. Using emotes that way is illegal already, if someone uses emotes to do fake combat in a way he can't right now, people will notice, they'll issue it, the admin will grant a spot in the greenhouse for a while, end of story. I am confident people would learn abusing emotes is a bad and unhealthy idea soon enough, IF it were to get out of hand in the first place.

Here's a suggestion: I don't know how much work it'd take to introduce separate emote balance, but, why not simply give it a try and see? If people are abusing it in a way that can't be dealt with by other players or admin in reasonable amounts of work, you can just get rid of it again....

Separate emote balance would indeed add immensely to our roleplay abilities in my opinion. We can't emote when fighting someone, we can't emote during long trips while following someone, etc. That's sad

(Another thought regarding abusing emotes in combat: A different way to abuse emotes is using them to spam people, which can already be done with the premade emotes. Nothing prevents me from having a macro that makes me bitchslap my opponent and just keep that key pressed between my attacks. But do we see anyone doing that? No, because we all know it'd get us shrubbed before you can type in .)

I would personally love to see custom emotes work off their own balance for the sole purposes of being able to custom emote while following someone without it causing me to lose them. That said, it's way too easily abusable. Just ditch your title and suffix, and you get balance-free illusions that start with your name. Of course, it's ISSUEably illegal, but that requires policing it. Much easier to just not let it be possible.