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LadyLuvs View Drop Down
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Points: 325 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 23 Apr 2012 at 00:26
Blah nevermind.  This is above my pay grade.


Edited by LadyLuvs - 23 Apr 2012 at 00:45
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GM Stormcrow View Drop Down
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Points: 3820 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Apr 2012 at 23:35
I may need to write a follow-up to the last firestorm we had of a similar nature.

"Chapter Two - Deceptimoticons Attack!"....? Big smile
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Points: 982 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Apr 2012 at 23:25
I would like to add here that, besides the complaining here and on Global, I have literally heard not one comment about the new emotes.  Out of an alliance of seventy players, none have mentioned it, and are if anything using the new ones more.  So, I think we can stop shouting about how "everyone wants the old ones back!" and put this down to a small, vocal minority.
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Points: 1452 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Apr 2012 at 23:10
Originally posted by Beriadanwen Beriadanwen wrote:


Not only do I not like the emoticons - I think I've pretty much decided I don't like -THE GAME- as a whole.

It seems every time I turn around, the Devs are fixing something that isn't broken (meaning the function, and no one's complaining about it. I go away for a couple of days and come back to find, basically, an entirely different game. One that doesn't WORK, either. Just changing pages from one screen of the research tree to the next is resulting in a 10-second loading delay. Chat lags. I can't get the world map to move from one city to the other. It's now hard for me, with my visual impairment, to tell an animal NPC from parked neutral army. And on and on and on. And there's little doubt that all these "little" changes, these "new bells and whistles" that aren't -necessary- for the game to work are to blame.

Oh, and for whatever reason? Half the forum posts that are new don't have new post stars.
I regret having EVER paid ANY money to play this game right now.
Leave the game then and stop wasting our time whinging. I'm a tiny bit sick of this sort of attitude, now guess what? The game is not yours. It's not mine, or any of the community's. It's SCs, TCs, Lunas, Cerbs, Tiberius and the rest of the GMs game. So they can do what the heck they want with it. Personally, I can live without a few emotes, and overall I think the GMs deserve a pat on the back.
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Points: 35 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Apr 2012 at 23:10
Originally posted by GM Stormcrow GM Stormcrow wrote:

I think there's a big picture issue that most everyone might be missing here.

Emoticons - graphical ones - are created by a person or corporation, and to whom copyright resides.

You may think "that's ridiculous", but it is unfortunately the law.  The old chat emoticons are not coming back, ever, as we do not have any licence to provide these chat emoticons for you to use; nor is one available.

We did look at some of the available licensed emoticon sets, but did not see any that caught our eye or provided a suitable number of emoticons in a consistent style.  And there's also a cost involved.  So it was decided that we would provide our own emoticon set.

We will, as Luna has mentioned, be providing the ability to go to purely textual emoticons if players prefer to use those.   I would, however, caution that even these are not as entirely straightforward as they might seem at first glance.  You might think that textual emoticons such as :-) and :-( are copyright free.

The US Patent Office, in a masterstroke of infinite stupidity only rivalled by the patent they issued for using a laser pointer as a cat toy, has actually granted a Patent for the textual representation of the "frown" emoticon.  

Luckily the owners of :-( ® are the highly amusing Despair Inc, who have chosen to use this patent to highlight the imbecility of the current Patent and Trademark system rather than to attempt to prosecute every internet user in the world for breaching their lawfully-owned registered trademark.

Anyway.  The long-and-short of it is... we're not going to be listening to any calls for the return of the old emoticon set, and it has nothing to do with Illy Corp being stubborn, or changing things for the sake of changing them.  If only we had the luxury of that kind of time!

Regards,

SC


Understood, however, I'm not calling for a return, rather just a bit more development of additional pieces to round out this set, and also refinement of the pieces that are illegible or utterly dissatisfying to most people that have to use them. As it stands, it affects communication. 

If anything, the emoticons should be bolstering it. I realize it's hard to rival the yahoo emoticons, and that sort of time might not be on the board for you guys. I really do like Cerberus work, if I didn't, I'd not have asked him to do the interview with me, I think he's more than capable, and this might just come down to time. But this set needs to continuously get some love so that it's not representing Illyriad or the communications of its players horridly.

That's largely my point. Not that you should open yourself to litigation by using an unlicensed emoticon set, but rather that what you've started needs a lot of work to be both communicative and creatively enjoyable. For example, though he's a little hard to read still, I think the Orc is actually somewhat adorable. In so far as Orcs go. But when he winks, he looks like someone punched him in the eye.

So that's what I'm talking about. And I want a coffee cup! Can we get a huzzah! on the coffee cup? Just curious. :D
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Tora View Drop Down
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Points: 35 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Apr 2012 at 23:00
Originally posted by invictusa invictusa wrote:

Many of the people who want the yahoo emotes are the ones that overuse them and make GC look more and more like a teenage chat room of an eyesore.  As an artist myself I have to recognize the creativity that Cerberus put into these.  

You cannot be serious. I actually find that statement to be a little of a personal affront. Not mention an absolutely absurd generalization.

Do I over use them? Have I ever spammed chat and made it look like an eyesore? I'm one of those 'most people' you're talking about. There is something called a 'spam filter' for overuse. Emoticons convey the emotion of the individual using them (or are supposed to), and if the emoticon does not convey the proper communication it's a failure. These actually make me shake my head everytime I see them. And incidentally, I'm also an artist.

Like Bard says, racially typifying the smileys by race is 'ok' but unnecessary, and to be honest, the yahoo set is by far more extensive and capable. Wait till you go to do something 'as an artist' to express yourself and all you get is ;-|. Just an example.

I do understand and recognize the creativity 'as an artist' which GM Cerberus put into these, but I think in this case 'communication' trumps 'creativity'. That doesn't mean one shouldn't be creative, but that the communication given by the creative should be more important than the creativity itself.

And no, it doesn't work. At least not the actual facial smiley group. The reason why is due to readability. Like typography, iconography must be speedily and also intuitively grasped. If someone smiles or winks for example and it makes me lean back, and quirk a brow and then lean into my screen and even briefly think 'wtf?' then it's not working. And these cause that.

If you look at the smileys for the forum for example (just on your left) you'll see a ton of bright little smileys that are all easy to read and instantly recognizable for the emotion or expression they wish to convey. They work. If you over complicate something, it stops working. I think some of the problem is the shape. Circles are easy to re-size, complex shapes on the other hand outside of base geometry, is not. Most of the icons have complex shapes and this makes it hard to see the minute details of the face.

Ultimately this issue isn't about art, it's about communication.
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Points: 3820 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Apr 2012 at 22:53
I think there's a big picture issue that most everyone might be missing here.

Emoticons - graphical ones - are created by a person or corporation, and to whom copyright resides.

You may think "that's ridiculous", but it is unfortunately the law.  The old chat emoticons are not coming back, ever, as we do not have any licence to provide these chat emoticons for you to use; nor is one available.

We did look at some of the available licensed emoticon sets, but did not see any that caught our eye or provided a suitable number of emoticons in a consistent style.  And there's also a cost involved.  So it was decided that we would provide our own emoticon set.

We will, as Luna has mentioned, be providing the ability to go to purely textual emoticons if players prefer to use those.   I would, however, caution that even these are not as entirely straightforward as they might seem at first glance.  You might think that textual emoticons such as :-) and :-( are copyright free.

The US Patent Office, in a masterstroke of infinite stupidity only rivalled by the patent they issued for using a laser pointer as a cat toy, has actually granted a Patent for the textual representation of the "frown" emoticon.  

Luckily the owners of :-( ® are the highly amusing Despair Inc, who have chosen to use this patent to highlight the imbecility of the current Patent and Trademark system rather than to attempt to prosecute every internet user in the world for breaching their lawfully-owned registered trademark.

Anyway.  The long-and-short of it is... we're not going to be listening to any calls for the return of the old emoticon set, and it has nothing to do with Illy Corp being stubborn, or changing things for the sake of changing them.  If only we had the luxury of that kind of time!

Regards,

SC
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Berde View Drop Down
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Points: 380 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Apr 2012 at 22:39
Originally posted by GM Luna GM Luna wrote:

Hello all,

Thanks for your feedback on the new emotes. While I think they are immensely clever and add so much more flavor to chat, I can understand if you don't agree. That said...

First, the old generic yahoo emoticons are not going to return. I'm sorry. 

In the meantime (as what I hope will be a workable compromise) we are looking to add the option to the new upcoming chat system overhaul to uncheck a "use racial emotes" option. So that if you do not like them, you can turn them off and only see the traditional text emotes like :) for example.

I hope this helps, but again, this is something that will come with the new chat system and is understandably lower priority than some other things going into that chat upgrade. 

Until that time, I'm sorry if you don't like the new emotes. This is certainly a touchy subject and is a matter of personal opinion and taste that it would be impossible for us all to agree upon.

Thanks for your patience.

Luna

Not only do I not like the emoticons - I think I've pretty much decided I don't like -THE GAME- as a whole.

It seems every time I turn around, the Devs are fixing something that isn't broken (meaning the function, and no one's complaining about it. I go away for a couple of days and come back to find, basically, an entirely different game. One that doesn't WORK, either. Just changing pages from one screen of the research tree to the next is resulting in a 10-second loading delay. Chat lags. I can't get the world map to move from one city to the other. It's now hard for me, with my visual impairment, to tell an animal NPC from parked neutral army. And on and on and on. And there's little doubt that all these "little" changes, these "new bells and whistles" that aren't -necessary- for the game to work are to blame.

Oh, and for whatever reason? Half the forum posts that are new don't have new post stars.
I regret having EVER paid ANY money to play this game right now.
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Points: 496 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Apr 2012 at 22:37
As a developer I think the new emoticons was introduced preparing for the new chat system (simplify things before going ahead). But the new icons are undetectable, and not funny. So an option to completely remove it will be nice.

By the way, Illy devs, you really really really need a test server. I know, you test it, but you need a live test server where deploy the changes before going live. Where the community can test and give feedback. 

Trust me, I have over 30 years experience developing, managing projects, consulting... Applying patches on the live server is bad, first or later it will cost you more than 100 test server.
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Points: 9 		Direct Link To This Post Posted: 22 Apr 2012 at 21:45
Just my 2 cents - I don't like the new emotes either.  The option to deselect them would be a good solution.  On my other game, a new "improved" chatpane was set up in response to some members who wanted changes.  Note the word "some".  Problem was some things just don't work anymore in the new chatpane, like typing /who to see which of your clanmates is currently online and in clan chat or typing /pm and a player's name to be able to send him/her a private message while in chat.  Solution was to make the new "improved" chatpane features optional.  I gave the new chatpane a 3 week struggle and went back to the old one yesterday.  Some things just don't need improving - like the old Illyriad emotes here.  JMHO.
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