Forced emotes - worse than ever

[whheydt]

I've said it very, very, clearly....as of now Turbine considers it a fun part of the game.

That assumes facts not in evidence.

It doesn't matter what you feel or what I feel. It's all up to Turbine and ToS are dictated by them and the violations come from that.

Yes...and Turbine also provides a way to report harassment/griefing. Use of forced emotes can be reported as such. If Turbine gets enough tickets saying so, the word may filter up the food chain vigorously enough for changes to be made. (And in the mean time, if the same people keep getting reported, just maybe they'll be pulled aside and told to stick to the willing as targets and leave the unwilling strictly alone.)

Rule 1 of the CoC can be applied to anything it is so woolly. I could decide that a warden's shout ruins my enjoyment of the game, or the colour purple, or trees, and apply rule 1.

You can report those things if you think they violate rules. If enough people agree with you--and add their reports to yours--you may get Turbine's attention for a change.

Yes and no. I'd be happy with this as a first step in the right direction (assuming they greatly expanded the number of people who could be put on the list), but would still much prefer the opt-out toggle. The one situation not addressed by the /ignore option would be a character that you've never encountered before: that character could still target you with an FE before you have an opportunity to /ignore. In a group performance, three out of four band members may have that person /ignored but the 4th may never have encountered him, and the performance can therefore still be disrupted by the emote.

There is a work-around. It's an ugly one, on some levels, and it's one Turbine probably wouldn't like, but it's there.

Start a list of "known forced emote users" and circulate it. Anyone who wishes to pre-emptively put those people on ignore could use such a list to do so. What I would expect though, is that if anyone posted such a list in *these* Forums, the thread would be black holed very quickly.

Such lists would also be a source of abuse by maliciously adding people for reasons other than forced emote use.

If blocking forced emotes were to be added to /ignore, I would expect there to be immediate calls for a *greatly* expanded ignore list.

In terms of processor and database resources, I would expect an "opt out" toggle separate from the ignore list to be a better choice.

It does matter. Pranks are not part of the fun part of the game for some. Unless and until Turbine aligns itself with that notion, those who want an opt out will continue to advocate for one. The only valid reason not to implement an opt out is "Too complex to program correctly without hosing up 8 zillion other things."

Hence my periodic note that, if Turbine can not (your point) or will not implement an "opt out", then (and only then) forced emotes should be removed from the game, root and branch. (Including, by the way, the class based forced emotes.)

I only wish that were true. I sent two PMs to Sapience concerning an earlier thread on forced emotes. They were polite PMs asking for clarification of Turbine's policy on the use of forced emotes. Sapience didn't deign to reply to either of them. I know he's a busy guy, but frankly I think that's downright rude.

I've just sent Sapience another PM concerning this thread. If he doesn't reply in a few days, I'll post my PM as an open letter.

You might try Celestrata, who doesn't appear to be as busy as Sapience.

As for publishing a PM you've sent...you'll probably be okay doing that (as the person who *sent* it), but there's no guarantee that you won't get dinged for it.

I imagine there are only 2 things keeping an opt out out of the game: technical ease implementation and "someone important enough at Turbine thinks festival pranks are a real hoot of a great idea and how dare those killjoys not see the truth of it."

On the technical side...see my remarks above about a less desirable alternative.

On the social problem... About the only levers the players have are to make so much noise about it someone even higher up decides that implementing an "opt out" is the only way to shut up those that want it, and using the power of the purse--hitting Turbine's income and making sure that they *know* that's why they're taking a financial hit.

There is more than one way to make that financial hit. One is, of course, not spending any actual cash on the game, or even dropping VIP status. The others are indirect. Every post in every thread has to be at least glanced at by Forum Mods as part of their job. Lots of posts--and, specifically, lots of posts in controversial threads--chews up the mods time, time that costs Turbine money. Likewise, if you feel that you have been harassed, whether by one use of a forced emote or many, by filing a ticket you are eating up GM time. Granted, very little on a simple ticket ("Harassment by use of forced emotes"), but if enough people are doing that, it costs Turbine money. Unless Turbine is different from any other company that has a customer support group, there is analysis done on what types of tickets they get and what those ticket were submitted about. If there are *enough* such tickets, the word will flow up the food chain and the support department will start demanding a fix. In the mean time, the powers that be will understand that players are NOT HAPPY about the present situation.

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer