Forced emotes - worse than ever

[Dawnn]

I also strongly dislike the forced emotes, One of the things I like about LotRO, is the fact its nothing like Wow. But the FE's we have, makes me think a Dev came over from Wow to work at Turbine.

[mjk47]

First I would like to say, I love the emotes. I am a collector and really like them and enjoy them. I don't mind others using their emotes on me. With that being said, I do know there are times not to use them. I would never use them on anyone playing music, crafting, etc. There is a time and place to have fun with them in my opinion. I do hope lotro fixes them where they are off limits to some activities and I wish you and your band the best.

You sound like a responsible emoter, all credit to you. However, your post illustrates perfectly the problem. There are many people for whom being the target of an emote is never "fun". Your "fun" use of an emote is intensely irritating to the recipient. You will never know how many people have you on their ignore list becuase you and they do not share the perception of "fun".

The introduction of a toggle* to opt-out of forced emotes altogether looks like the only way to handle this issue.

* with appropriate constraints so that you cannot opt-out immediately after performing a forced emote yourself.

[Sonsy]

I've never had a huge problem with FEs. Usually people only hit me with them when I'm at the vault, so it doesn't interfere with what I'm doing. However, I am dismayed to hear that FEs now interfere with playing music. I'm sure it wasn't an intended thing, but it should definitely be fixed. Even though it's not a big thing on Firefoot, I know that the concert scene is important to the social fabric on many servers. It's a great role-playing tool, as well as just being fun.

Players have the option to turn off player music if they don't like it. I think it's only fair for musicians (and everyone else) to be able to turn off forced emotes as well.

[Whart]

But remember one key to the opt out solution is that the user still gets credit towards the deed. The only ones who will be upset they can't actually affect other characters will be the griefers, and who cares about them?

Exactly. If I have the toggle on to avoid FEs, I have absolutely no objection to people using them on me for deed credit, as I will not see them. The people who will truly lose targets are the griefers who will suddenly find themselves without their quickest and easiest tool to grab attention. An opt-out is a quality of life enhancement that will improve game enjoyment for the majority of players, whether they enjoy FEs for fun social purposes or prefer to avoid them.

[Dworin]

Greetings all!

I am from earlier not happy with the forced emotes cause I spend most of my time 'abusing' the music system to play music with the band 'The Chosen Few' on [En-RP] Laurelin. Not fun when you're doing a concert, got a lovely audience and some sod comes in and spams the room with forced emotes.

Well, up until now those forced emotes did not work on people already doing an emote, like playing an instrument. Now it does. Had a little rehersal last night with the band, and some ramdom fellow did one of those emotes, and the entire band just 'kneeled' in the middle of a tune. &&&....

There is also another thing thats changed, and that is the idle emote on chars not doing anything.
This also takes affect while playing a tune for a couple of minutes. Kind of strange seeing a person in the middle of a heavy lute-solo, putting down the instrument to scratch his arm, before continuing the visual part of the playing.

These things need to be fixed, and fixed fast.

We in The Chosen Few are putting up a big concert called 'Archet Aid' at the 3rd of November, and one 'troll' can in this way totally ruin the event for the majority of people attending it.

Anyone else got the problem?


Best regards
Grymrock Grey
Officer - Order of the Divine Brew
The Chosen Few

I have not tested it, but one workaround may be for the band to play the concert mounted?

[Mark_J]

What's really awful are these emotes going off in towns when folks are trying to get/turn in quests. Today there were about 6-7 people standing around an NPC and someone thought it was a great idea to unleash the Turbine sponsored griefing tool. Frame rates instantly plummeted, people were running into walls trying to get away, it was utterly ridiculous...

[Valadilene]

Greetings all!

I am from earlier not happy with the forced emotes cause I spend most of my time 'abusing' the music system to play music with the band 'The Chosen Few' on [En-RP] Laurelin. Not fun when you're doing a concert, got a lovely audience and some sod comes in and spams the room with forced emotes.

Well, up until now those forced emotes did not work on people already doing an emote, like playing an instrument. Now it does. Had a little rehersal last night with the band, and some ramdom fellow did one of those emotes, and the entire band just 'kneeled' in the middle of a tune. &&&....

There is also another thing thats changed, and that is the idle emote on chars not doing anything.
This also takes affect while playing a tune for a couple of minutes. Kind of strange seeing a person in the middle of a heavy lute-solo, putting down the instrument to scratch his arm, before continuing the visual part of the playing.

These things need to be fixed, and fixed fast.

We in The Chosen Few are putting up a big concert called 'Archet Aid' at the 3rd of November, and one 'troll' can in this way totally ruin the event for the majority of people attending it.

Anyone else got the problem?


Best regards
Grymrock Grey
Officer - Order of the Divine Brew
The Chosen Few

One Forced Emote to rule them all, One Forced Emote to find them,
One Emote to bring them all and in Turbine bind them.

P.S.

Sarcasm included as I'm sick of dealing with forced emotes.

[whheydt]

If an opt-out toggle is implemented, FE users might just find themselves without targets.

Since, by and large, those favoring the "opt out" have no particular desire to adversely impact those that like forced emotes and/or wish to work on forced emote deeds, the usual proposal would be that, using a forced emote, still give credit towards the deed. It just wouldn't *do* anything to any character that had opted out.

If the motivation is to see someone elses character act out an animation you chose...then I have no regrets for your "lack of targets".

It's my own personal opinion that many people who don't even post, let alone read, the forums will use the toggle, as long as it isn't hidden the way the Instance Finder was on it's implementation; and the number of dissatisfied players and ones who are changing their stance from pro-FE to pro-opt out seems to be growing.

Can't have it both ways. Either people, in general, like the forced emotes and won't opt out, or people in general *don't* like forced emotes and will opt out in droves. If the first case were true...these threads would not exist, or those asking for the "opt out" would be buried by those not wanting it. In the later case...wouldn't that just prove the point that the "opt out" is badly needed?

That may be the reason it's taking Turbine so long to come to grips with this issue, as it would be an admission of a mistake on their part.

Wouldn't be the first time. They've admitted various mistakes over the years. One of the most noticeable was Radiance. Took two years to remove that one. In this case, with very few exceptions, there isn't a demand to remove forced emotes unless the "opt out" won't happen.

I'd far rather Turbine step up to the plate and admit they made an error than that they try to sweep the error under the rug and pretend there was no error when there plainly was.

--W. H. Heydt

Old Used Programmer

[Dworin]

*sigh*

I was at a concert just a bit ago, and some minstrel came by and hit us with *irresistable melody*, and some dwarf came by and make the entire band fall over with some forced emote. The music kept playing, but it just looked stupid with them all lying on the ground.

I guess it's ok to dream of the day when we can have undisturbed concerts. But for now, the only emotion I feel is disgust.

*edit* fixed spelling

[Zerfinite]

It lately also seems to be used to allow friends to get to nodes, or it was just a coincidence. Multiple times when I was running to a node and someone else too (but I was closer), I got a forced emote on me by a third person (perhaps a few of those times the one I was outracing, as sometimes I was within range), allowing the one I was outracing to get to the node before me.

But regardless, it's of course annoying in ANY situation when you're running somewhere, and suddenly you're forced to wait because someone used a forced emote on you. None is as bad as having an event disturbed of course, but still felt like adding this.

[mac173]

One of the reasons I have played LOTRO from Beta, and have two Lifetime accounts, was that I did not have to worry about 12 year old griefers making my play time unpleasant. I have had few issues in this game (unrequested assistance lowering XP, Node stealing, thats about it) but now I find myself having to change my gameplay to avoid these e-motes.

I find it intrusive and downright abusive that my character is FORCED to take actions I did not induce. Control of my character should be MINE, not another players.

As an original Beta player, Founder, and Lifer, I expect more from the game.

I really hope WB is not trying to turn this game into "LOTRO meets Looney Toons".

[SabrielofLorien]

Anyone notice the line on one of the new splash screens?

"Play tricks on your friends"


Turbine's official unequivocal response is right there: There Shall Be No Opt Out.

[evangel]

I was at a concert just a bit ago, and some minstrel came by and hit us with *irresistable melody*, and some dwarf came by and make the entire band fall over with some forced emote.

Don't misunderstand, I hate forced emotes, but I think it would be kinda funny if *on purpose* somebody did an entire concert faceplanted lol. Nobody could interupt that! I don't think.. unless command respect or something else could make you stand back up again.

[Zombielord]

Doubt this will improve. They did some modifications (shared/increased cooldowns) and I bet this is all we'll get.

[Glenwin]

Don't misunderstand, I hate forced emotes, but I think it would be kinda funny if *on purpose* somebody did an entire concert faceplanted lol. Nobody could interupt that! I don't think.. unless command respect or something else could make you stand back up again.

Yeah, of course. It takes a lot of time and efford to prepare such a concert. The bandleader invests hours into setting up a good playlist that is nice to listen to and the band meets up an hour early for a rehearsal. We are talking about 10-15 man-hours of work these preparations take up easily. If you don't believe me, you never have done it yourself. Of course not all of this work is lost when someone decides to disturb a running concert. But it displays an incredible ammount of disrespect to others. Do you jump the stage, grab a guitar and play over a concert in real life? Do you jump the stage and stand next to a band and kick them so they all fall over?

You may laugh. But you will laugh for 0.1 seconds at the most then security caught you and throws you out if the stadium. Well, the game is not the real world and we can't throw people out or port them away. But does that mean we have to endure idiots? Is that by any means fair? No, it's not. At all.

Oh yeah, that newest stupid bug the QA team let slip which makes the band emote is just unbelievable. I really hope the devs fix this soon. I was in the band Estellost described and I was so glad that I heard about this earlier and was able to try it out beforehand so it didn't hit us completely unprepared. I will post a video of it here should the bug still exist next weekend when we play the next concert. I am sure there will be some "funny" guy coming and make us lie down. It's practically a given.

[Furrbawl]

I personally don't understand why Turbine is so slow to respond to this player concern.

It is obvious FEs annoy a lot of players. If Turbine will allow players to ignore Player Music, why can't they let us ignore Forced Emotes? I find Forced Emotes a lot more annoying than Player Music.

[evangel]

Yeah, of course. It takes a lot of time and efford to prepare such a concert. The bandleader invests hours into setting up a good playlist that is nice to listen to and the band meets up an hour early for a rehearsal. We are talking about 10-15 man-hours of work these preparations take up easily. If you don't believe me, you never have done it yourself. Of course not all of this work is lost when someone decides to disturb a running concert. But it displays an incredible ammount of disrespect to others. Do you jump the stage, grab a guitar and play over a concert in real life? Do you jump the stage and stand next to a band and kick them so they all fall over?

Woh, chill honey. Did you read the first part there where I said I don't like forced emotes? Or the "on purpose" part? I think you misunderstood my post. I understand the amount of effort, and I hate griefers too. I'm all for a toggle or maybe allowing somebody to be marked player killable as soon as they do a forced emote. I just thought it would be funny to see somebody do a whole concert laying down, *on purpose*. Thats all.

[Whart]

I personally don't understand why Turbine is so slow to respond to this player concern.

It is obvious FEs annoy a lot of players. If Turbine will allow players to ignore Player Music, why can't they let us ignore Forced Emotes? I find Forced Emotes a lot more annoying than Player Music.

I am hoping that the reason it is taking so long is that they are actually devoting development resources to working on a solution. As you know, everything they do has a risk of breaking something else (hence all the weird bugs that have come about since RoR release), and a new addition such as an opt-out toggle will have to be refined and tested and refined again many times before we get it in the game. At least that's my dream.

They can't be unaware that this is an issue. But likewise they can't promise something that they aren't 100% sure they can deliver. As much as I wish they would step in here and say they are working on something, I'm guessing they aren't allowed to do so.

So here's a hug and a batch of cookies for all those devs who I know are working hard on fixing this for us! And pie for all the players who continue to provide entertainment and enjoyment for the rest of us, despite the griefers who try to keep you down. We do appreciate your efforts, no matter what the griefers do!

[Jayvani]

/signed we need a toggle that we can use as players that is a /forced emote on/off

so this way if we are busy and dont want to be interupted or just hate forced emotes we can turn them off... and if we want to play along then we can do that too just by flipping the switch...

[Glenwin]

Woh, chill honey. Did you read the first part there where I said I don't like forced emotes? Or the "on purpose" part? I think you misunderstood my post. I understand the amount of effort, and I hate griefers too. I'm all for a toggle or maybe allowing somebody to be marked player killable as soon as they do a forced emote. I just thought it would be funny to see somebody do a whole concert laying down, *on purpose*. Thats all.

First off: I am not your "honey". You just have no idea who I actually am so you better don't call me "Honey".

Secondly: "Laying down a whole concert on purpose" was exactly what was happening today. If you really are against forced emotes what is so funny in "laying down a whole concert on purpose": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKWpJdWOpPE

Forced emotes are a bad idea because they bring out all the bad stuff in people. Let people prank others in RL where they can be punished but not in a game where there is nothing you can do about it as the victim.

[evangel]

First off: I am not your "honey". You just have no idea who I actually am so you better don't call me "Honey".

Secondly: "Laying down a whole concert on purpose" was exactly what was happening today. If you really are against forced emotes what is so funny in "laying down a whole concert on purpose": http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKWpJdWOpPE

Forced emotes are a bad idea because they bring out all the bad stuff in people. Let people prank others in RL where they can be punished but not in a game where there is nothing you can do about it as the victim.

Are you trying to misunderstand me? I mean on purpose by the people that are DOING THE CONCERT. Not the griefers, the music players purposely laying *themselves* down to do a concert. I hope you understand this time. I'm always totally on the side of the concert givers, but you're making sympathy a little tougher than usual. Take a freaking breath.

[Whart]

Are you trying to misunderstand me? I mean on purpose by the people that are DOING THE CONCERT. Not the griefers, the music players purposely laying *themselves* down to do a concert. I hope you understand this time. I'm always totally on the side of the concert givers, but you're making sympathy a little tougher than usual. Take a freaking breath.

I didn't understand your first post either. This is the first of your posts where it was clear that you meant the band laying themselves out, which I guess could be entertaining perhaps. But if you don't want people to get upset you may want to avoid phrases like 'chill honey' and 'take a freaking breath'; due to their condescending tone, they tend to increase aggravation rather than alleviate it.

[Dworin]

Are you trying to misunderstand me? I mean on purpose by the people that are DOING THE CONCERT. Not the griefers, the music players purposely laying *themselves* down to do a concert. I hope you understand this time. I'm always totally on the side of the concert givers, but you're making sympathy a little tougher than usual. Take a freaking breath.

I understand what you mean. But it's not going to be funny, nor will it help anything. As I understand it, some of the emotes will just stand you back up again.

i do not understand Turbine. The only thing that makes any sense to me is that Turbine folks want to make this as much of a PvP game as they can, within the constraints of the license.

[SabrielofLorien]

What WB/T future designs are I do not know. I do know that in the RoR Beta there was nothing in the test code I saw that had any possiblity of stopping a /FE. The topic was discussed in the Beta forums. If they have any plans for an /FE opt out, it was not demonstrated there.

old story twice told:
I played SWTOR when it came out and things where just fine. I'm a slow player, so I had few problems that the more advanced players had. There were lots of problems but I figured they'd work it out eventually. That was until they came up with The Rakghoul Plague event. If you were L50 you could go to this planet, get infected and return to the main game hubs, noob worlds and just infect everyone. If you didn't buy the antidot your toon blew up in a green cloud and infected everyone around you. My toons were L20ish and were infected. The antidot did not last and cost 10,000 credits each. My toons had 2 or 3,000 credits max. It wasn't fun for me. Their forums burned with people unhappy about the situation. You could hardly log in without seeing the melt down in progress. The official response was.... D E A D A I R. My offical response was: Closed 2 accounts.

Not long ago, I called up their CS and asked if they'd ever found a Perma-Cure, the answer was: No. My accounts are still closed. They're going F2P soon but you know, if they haven't fixed the /FE on their side it won't matter.

In LOTRO the /FEs are not as bad but now, whenever I'm around other players I look for hiding spots. Places other players cannot tap me. Places that I'm hidden or where I can see another player coming towards me. The only players coming up to you these days are those who plan to drop D.R.A.G.O.N. on you...

[rhegan]

I used to never do festival emotes, especially on rpers, people playing music, walking, etc. Then people complained, and the timer got changed to 5 minutes - I used to learn them on a friend's account, inside our houses, quickly. Now I have probably 1200 festival items still left - after years of getting them. Everyone and anyone is a target now, when my timer is off and you're near me. I won't pick you out of a crowd (unless you're a friend), or disrupt a group of people, but the timer for learning them is so annoying that I just don't care about your hurt RP feelings anymore. Blame Turbine? Sure - it was a poor fix (why not have an insta-learn a stack of items if you have them on hand?). Blame the rp community? Yes, I do too. I have no sympathy for most complaints about festival items.

And yes, I have removed alts from RP kins on my server because the bickering over things like this (and obviously other drama too) got unpleasant. (In fact the scroll above shows exactly what kind of drama gets started on a regular basis, over minor things, like one word.)