Character Descriptions

Ladies and gents, can we please clear up and refrain from holding enter for hours when creating character descriptions?

It offers you very, very minimal advantage for PvP.

To the extreme it's an awful OOC advantage when they're so long they can cause peoples clients to freeze up, or drop them out altogether.

This is borderline common sense rule here. If you don't have a description and feel that the .1 of a second it takes to scroll to the bottom of a legitimate length one is an advantage you can't live without - hold enter for a page.

Or better yet, don't. Or even better, write one!

*reads post.... looks at Myra's description containing 2ish page worth of text and ##-###ish worth of blank space pre-bonus list*

I feel this post of your might be directed at me and players like me....

Wouldn't it be better to make a post directed at players with descriptions which are non descripted.

Instead of writing " RP " or "Ooc; my char's rp is going to be this way, fair warning!"
how about.. Describe your character leave it as default or write nothing.
(But that's on the boarderline of telling how people should roleplay...)

I can understand the advantage of examining monsters in/for pve to know how to defeat them but to try to examine people in pvp... sort of senseless?
But maybe I'm being bad in pvp
whats the advantage to seeing the bonuses list during pvp? xD

To reiterate the first post, which I thought was clear enough.

Using your PC's description for a legitimate reason is fine.

Using your PC's description to attempt to hide bonuses you currently have, or cause someone who examines you to explode - not fine.

==

TheeVals wrote:Myra's description containing 2ish page worth of text and ##-###ish worth of blank space pre-bonus list

Wouldn't it be better to make a post directed at players with descriptions which are non descripted.

Instead of writing " RP " or "Ooc; my char's rp is going to be this way, fair warning!"
how about.. Describe your character leave it as default or write nothing.
(But that's on the boarderline of telling how people should roleplay...)

This isn't concerning the RP nature of descriptions. It's to do with the needless length of descriptions, for an obvious mechanical advantage.

Professor Plum wrote: or cause someone who examines you to explode - not fine.

Since when does it cause people to explode, in the two years this server's been up it is the first I hear of this exploding due to examining characters with a long space in description.



If I've gotta put text in all that blank space of Myra's description I'll try. I'll go all twilight descriptive about Myra dedication 5-10 pages worth just to describe her hair and her eyes.. they could get another 10 pages...

oh! and hey.. she's a shifter... each of her shapes could use a section of the description for their unique description...

(The scroll bar on myra's description isn't as thin as it could be it's a delicious golden hamburgar size. Easy enough to select with the mouse and drag down if people really wanna know which stats she has boosted or immunities etc.)

TheeVals wrote:

Since when does it cause people to explode, in the two years this server's been up it is the first I hear of this exploding due to examining characters with a long space in description.

Since before June 13th, 2002.

Try examining yourself and let me know if that doesn't freeze you up for a second. Certainly it does for me and I'm definitely not lacking for hardware!

TheeVals wrote:If I've gotta put text in all that blank space of Myra's description I'll try. I'll go all twilight descriptive about Myra dedication 5-10 pages worth just to describe her hair and her eyes.. they could get another 10 pages...

oh! and hey.. she's a shifter... each of her shapes could use a section of the description for their unique description...

Sure! Though 10 pages is nowhere near what you have spaced out! (I examined Myra on the sly!)

Legit reasons are fine.

TheeVals wrote:(The scroll bar on myra's description isn't as thin as it could be it's a delicious golden hamburgar size. Easy enough to select with the mouse and drag down if people really wanna know which stats she has boosted or immunities etc.)

Professor Plum wrote:Using your PC's description to attempt to hide bonuses you currently have, or cause someone who examines you to explode - not fine.

I'm not singling you out at all.

Though out of curiosity, since you are vehemently trying to justify this, why did you include copious spacing on your characters description? Is there some legitimate reason that I'm missing?

Hmm, I question this.
I've never created a char with 500 lines of nothingness before, but I'm not sure about the impact of the Player Client.
Each new black line, each new "enter", is just one "letter" (symbol). One input. So the whole line as actually just one "letter".
You would have to have a hell of a lot of blank lines to have enough information there to come close to an average length description.
When you think about it, 500 letters isn't all that much.
(I typed 465 so far, including spaces and excluding this text).

So unless someone made blank lines by holding down the Spacebar (which would then amass to a lot of symbols per displayed line), I can't see how this would have any impact for players reading the description.

Back in the day when we hade the updates posted on signs in A Dream, they could take a second or two to load sometimes, but that was only when they were totally swamped with information.
It must have been 10.000's of letters (symbols), probably much more.

Do you have a source for this being something that slows down and crashes Player Clients?

As far as meta gaming goes, which is more meta - reading someones current effects or hiding them?
But from a philisopical perspecitve, which is more cheesy?
I know many Servers use Overrides to hide the Effects when you Examine someone.

Eitherway, I can only agree that it's stupid and silly to have such a Description.
I examined a player in Ranz once that had tons of blank lines and something like "RP to know more" or something at the end.
Thats just bullshit.

-TheMothMan

After patch 1.67..

■Added a new setting to the nwnplayer.ini file under [Server Options] "Examine Effects On Creatures=1". If this option turned off then any magical effects on a creature will not appear in the creature description when you examine a creature in the game (Note: DMs will still see the effects on the creature).
■Added a new setting to the nwnplayer.ini file under [Server Options] "Examine CR On Creatures=1". If this option turned off then the challenge rating of a creature will not appear in the creature description when you examine a creature in the game.

Love that idea ^^

It's easy to test for yourself - but it's quite a known issue.

To the extreme you can exploit it to crash players out.

There was also an issue with specific characters that caused a crash as well - luckily that was fixed very early on!

I'm aware of the toggles in the ini, for a heavily PvP focussed server it's not really an option.

The CR hiding also favours experienced players and gets newbies killed!

-Never did I say you were singling me out, but thanks for the reasurence?
-I've seen others, plenty of others characters around before with the long blank space.
Been playing nwn since 2001 only heard about this right now.
(I don't lag from examining people with blank space.. what lags me sometimes is a player crafting their outfit around me.)

Well.. you already know this.. Hellball has a chance of crashing my game.. as well as potentially other player's game. Never will the solution be for hellball to be taken away.

So I simply will never understand this selective logic. Why you chose to make an issue out of something trivial when there might be bigger fish to fry.
For example try this out; Have a hellball casted on someone and then have that targeted player use a transition before hellball lands. Maybe a rule preventing the results of what happens should take priority. Maybe some way to fix it should be discovered/implimented?

I have never experienced any lag opening a long blank description. Not once. Definitely not any more often than I experience lag repeatedly examining items to sell. I don't believe there is any more lag opening a blank long description than there is opening a description in general.

I also don't feel the need to put that into my description. If you're examining me in PvP instead of casting or attacking, you're probably about to die. PvP is typically moving too fast to bother.

Let's focus on the real issue here, from the Suggestion topic... getting a way to save time selling items by having them all identified at once.

I posted a solution to that on another topic!

I can vouch for this. My laptop has no graphics card other then crappy "default" one, and fighting in general causes me to lag pretty harshly (you'll note me saying "//lagburst" alot) the top of the beaked creature cave thing causes me to crash out when fighting just because of the sheer number of them in it, and the spell effects. (ask the Unty/Bracegirdle clan they where there every time)

And I never have a problem with descriptions other then people arn't writing them, or writing something stupid, like "---RP for info---"

Half of you that do that don't even RP, and for the other half... we're not looking for a life story, just tells us what you look like.

I just got done redoing Willow's description based on my pic here and the outfit she wears in game. It's pretty long but I was bored that day.

You guys are on the team. if it bugs you so bad why not use DM powers to eather blank it out or get rid of the spaces, with something like the renaming tool (which can't actualy make descriptions and I want to know why)?

As for the removing of CR and effects, by god don't do that... You all may have beat the tar out of these things millions of times, but this is the first anphillia character i got past level 16 that i can even remember. Possibly ever...

I heavaly rely on that to know if I want to try fighting something or not. What I would -like- to see is the CR's adjusted more to fit with the level you should be when fighting it. I'm starting to give up trying to judge that way because everything is eather actualy too strong, or it says it is so i try and find something that says challenging or overpowered. (can't ever find them though)

Some monster descriptions wouldn't hurt eather, as well as items other then. "This is a cloth robe dar dar" +wtf why is this so powerfull?

Bet you 50k in game that I can make you lag from examining!

TheeVals wrote:-Never did I say you were singling me out, but thanks for the reasurence?
-I've seen others, plenty of others characters around before with the long blank space.

You brought everything back to you. I was simply reinforcing that it is not you on a personal level. Not singling you out.

Again, this post makes it seem that you feel you are being singled out.

TheeVals wrote:Been playing nwn since 2001 only heard about this right now.
(I don't lag from examining people with blank space.. what lags me sometimes is a player crafting their outfit around me.)

Please don't take this personally. Many people have been playing NWN since before I have and many people don't know even 10% of the bugs and exploits that are -still- currently in the game (That I know of, I'm sure there are more!). It's not unusual.

TheeVals wrote:Well.. you already know this.. Hellball has a chance of crashing my game.. as well as potentially other player's game. Never will the solution be for hellball to be taken away.

So I simply will never understand this selective logic. Why you chose to make an issue out of something trivial when there might be bigger fish to fry.
For example try this out; Have a hellball casted on someone and then have that targeted player use a transition before hellball lands. Maybe a rule preventing the results of what happens should take priority. Maybe some way to fix it should be discovered/implimented?

This is not a thread about hellball. It's a thread about needlessly long descriptions.

Needlessly long descriptions that cause crashes.

The point you raise is ridiculous - because something is a smaller problem than something else, it shouldn't be fixed?

Perhaps the entire police force should focus on murder cases and not burglary, because it's not as bad?

In an ideal module, everything would work perfectly and smoothly. To get there, everything needs to work perfectly and smoothly. Which requires everything that causes it not work perfectly and smoothly to be dealt with.

Steley wrote:Bet you 50k in game that I can make you lag from examining!

You're on!

What's your characters name so I can find you ingame?


-TheMothMan

Dae_Blazin wrote:
You guys are on the team. if it bugs you so bad why not use DM powers to eather blank it out or get rid of the spaces, with something like the renaming tool (which can't actualy make descriptions and I want to know why)?

I can do that, sure.

I'd just rather not have to and I'd like people to know -why- it was being done. So there are no hard feelings. Even doing it this way and talking it out, people still get super defensive and feel victimised.

You can alter your PC's description with chat commands. /help should get you started.

Professor Plum wrote:You brought everything back to you. I was simply reinforcing that it is not you on a personal level. Not singling you out.

Again, this post makes it seem that you feel you are being singled out.

Well then this is me reinforcing the fact that this topic is about characters with blank long spaces in their character's description.
I happen to have a character with a blank long-ish space in their description.
I stated that I'm not the only one with a char which has a significant blank space in their description since the 2 years this server's been up.
(Yet still I've somehow managed to get you to read my text and come to the comphrension that I am thinking that YOU are singling ME out. Okay... )

Honestly.. only reason I replied is because I think these prioritis are a bit ridiculas when there are worse things happening on the server...
Also assumed this wasn't a "Notifieing people" type of post as much as it was open for 'debate'.
maybe make locked announcments... then you won't get unwanted feedback. Similar to the Update thread... there is a reason people can't post there... because the updates aren't for talking.. it's for info.
(Unless people make posts specificly to reply to those announcments/updates.)

Theevals wrote:I stated that I'm not the only one with a char which has a significant blank space in their description since the 2 years this server's been up.

Exactly.

TheeVals wrote:Honestly.. only reason I replied is because I think these prioritis are a bit ridiculas when there are worse things happening on the server...

Well, forgive me if I don't think a mechanic that causes client crashes is a ridiculous priority!

TheeVals wrote:Also assumed this wasn't a "Notifieing people" type of post as much as it was open for 'debate'.

I fail to see the debate here. This open ended post is because I am not a perfect human being, I do not know everything. Someone may have a valid reason for having a huge amount of spaces in a description. This is what I put forward:

• Long character descriptions are needless.
  
• Long character descriptions cause problems.
  
• Don't use them.

Whether or not you agree they cause problems (Which they do and I will gladly demonstrate that for you, if need be - as a few players have already volunteered to in the thread) the crux of the argument is that they are needless. You have yet to argue the contrary.

If you would like a more autocratic post, god knows why, here it is:

• Long character descriptions are needless.
  
• Don't use them.
  

If someone is willing to state a reason why having a description with a bunch of breaks is necessary, by all means I'm willing to hear that.

I don't particularly want to read anything else, it's unnecessary and completely off topic.

Professor Plum wrote:

Dae_Blazin wrote:
You guys are on the team. if it bugs you so bad why not use DM powers to eather blank it out or get rid of the spaces, with something like the renaming tool (which can't actualy make descriptions and I want to know why)?

I can do that, sure.

I'd just rather not have to and I'd like people to know -why- it was being done. So there are no hard feelings. Even doing it this way and talking it out, people still get super defensive and feel victimised.

You can alter your PC's description with chat commands. /help should get you started.

You can edit your characters description at anytime????

/help

/appenddesc
/newlinedesc
/setdesc

TLDR; Yup.

Yeah, it's in the commands book. Just /help and scroll to descriptions

TheMothMan wrote:

Steley wrote:Bet you 50k in game that I can make you lag from examining!

You're on!

What's your characters name so I can find you ingame?


-TheMothMan

Aethraeness De'Sakaide (Desa). Well she'll have the money.
I've been away but I'll be active sometime this weekend. I hope.