Character Description

[DoctorProteus]

I am very much in favour of this. There is so much I want to say about my characters but there just isn't room, not to mention I also want to list my Main/Alts in the info panel of my characters. Please, please, please consider upgrading the number of allowed characters for character descriptions.

[Arcanum]

Let me tell you - as a book - I am a fan of a good story. I too feel the pain of fitting in my whole backstory within the character limit.

 

Sometimes it helps me trim out the 'excess', though!

[EmperorSteele]

As someone who loves writing bios for my characters.... "meh". I find that the text restriction forces me to be a bit more creative, and no one wants to read a multi-page bio in between missions or when randomly hanging around.

That said, I really like MetaVileTerror's idea of having additional formatting and such.

Then again, it might start to get a little obnoxious reading tons of bios that randomly l👀k like this 😀!

Idiocy aside though, I'd say add some basic formatting options, and increase the limit to 2000 characters. Yes, it's arbitrary instead of code-based, but I think that keeps the spirit of brevity without constricting people too much, but still gives us more to work with.

[Replacement]

7 minutes ago, EmperorSteele said:

As someone who loves writing bios for my characters.... "meh". I find that the text restriction forces me to be a bit more creative, and no one wants to read a multi-page bio in between missions or when randomly hanging around.

That said, I really like MetaVileTerror's idea of having additional formatting and such.

Then again, it might start to get a little obnoxious reading tons of bios that randomly l👀k like this 😀!

Idiocy aside though, I'd say add some basic formatting options, and increase the limit to 2000 characters. Yes, it's arbitrary instead of code-based, but I think that keeps the spirit of brevity without constricting people too much, but still gives us more to work with.

Luckily, people who do this are self-defeating; no one will read the bios. No harm done.

 

Going to echo @FDR's Think Tank about costume slots. I envision a section similar to the set bonuses that adjusts with the current outfit (or failing that, the current build).

[BrandX]

I'd love to see an increase in space.  If doubling breaks it, is there a number that's an increase, that won't break it?  Often times, I can find I could use just 1-500 more.

[Leogunner]

Am I the only one that has issues editing in-game bios?  Occasionally the cursor seems to move randomly and I'll start adding words to the middle of another sentence, something you'd probably run into if you're trimming the bio for shorter words and less wordy phrases.  It was a problem I had in the past, now I just type in another program and then copy-paste.  

[Haijinx]

On 12/9/2019 at 5:30 PM, boggo2300 said:

NO

there is no doing it wrong in City, it's pretty much the whole selling point of the game that there is NO WRONG WAY

 

why the hell does it matter if someone has 2500 characters in their bio? noone is holding a gun to your head to read it!

Except those Dual Pistol people with ultra violent John Woo Esque backgrounds? 

 

Cause they might. 

[BrandX]

I do have that issue with editing my bios.

[Soulstinger]

I'm in for expanding character bios!

 

[boggo2300]

45 minutes ago, Haijinx said:

Except those Dual Pistol people with ultra violent John Woo Esque backgrounds? 

 

Cause they might. 

though if they are holding their guns to your head, in a true John Woo setting, you are pretty safe,  if there was some wire-fu happening all bets are off, but guns to the head, pretty safe...

[MTeague]

I like the idea of keeping existing bio short, but having a "Read More" button of some kind to a place where the player can add lots more text for their character.

 

Of course, full disclosure, for any bethesda game, the "Journal" mods are the most absolute must-haves for me.  My characters bio *will* expand to consume the available space lol.

[MTeague]

1 hour ago, Leogunner said:

Am I the only one that has issues editing in-game bios?  Occasionally the cursor seems to move randomly and I'll start adding words to the middle of another sentence, something you'd probably run into if you're trimming the bio for shorter words and less wordy phrases.  It was a problem I had in the past, now I just type in another program and then copy-paste.  

It adds consumes extra characters somehow when you go back and edit. It's a royal pain, but you can get a lot of space back if you go into an edited bio and delete out ALL spaces between 1st and 2nd word, then manually add one single space, then delete all spaces between 2nd and 3rd word, then manually add one single space, etc.  I've carved back like 200 characters this way that were falsely being consumed sometimes.

Edited December 28, 2019 by MTeague

[srmalloy]

10 hours ago, GM Arcanum said:

Sometimes it helps me trim out the 'excess', though!

Sometimes pretty ruthlessly, as Unicode characters take up two bytes in the bio, so while they can make the bio more immersive, they force you to abridge it more.

[boggo2300]

10 hours ago, GM Arcanum said:

Let me tell you - as a book - I am a fan of a good story. I too feel the pain of fitting in my whole backstory within the character limit.

 

Sometimes it helps me trim out the 'excess', though!

use smaller words?  then you can fit more into the character limit!  I plan on writing one using as many 1 letter words as I can!!!

[BrandX]

9 hours ago, boggo2300 said:

use smaller words?  then you can fit more into the character limit!  I plan on writing one using as many 1 letter words as I can!!!

 

And = &  With = w/

[Shreddles]

Having a higher limit doesn't prevent you from keeping it brief if you value that. If you don't want to read long bios, you can tell how long it is before even starting reading simply by using your eyeballs. It does prevent you from writing your story if it doesn't fit, though. It would give more freedom and take nothing away from anyone. If you're wanting to read people's long bios mid-mission, may I suggest ctrl + A and ctrl + C to read later? I've thesaurus'd, shorthanded, un-punctuated, and chopped up a story beyond recognition and I'm still a dozen characters over. That's including not having spaces after every period. 😢

Edited January 22, 2020 by Shreddles

[Ry]

I can see both the argument to keeping it short and sweet and increasing the amount allowed in characters bios. So maybe a middle ground is in order? Like maybe a couple hundred more characters? Perhaps 200? 1224 characters is just a bit more for people to work with but its not a novel. Everyone wins!

[VileTerror]

I mean, really, even if they keep the character limit down but fix the ASCii character rendering for it, I'd be happy.  As it stands, for example, a double space counts as -8- characters toward the limit.  The idea of having it read from an external source means that it can better parse the data, and 1024 characters can -be- 1024 characters, instead of more like ~900.

[Drakwatch]

I don't think there would be any downside to adding an extra 500 or 1000 characters to the limit. It would keep it readable and somewhat short, but also allow for some extra writing room. I often hit the limit when writing my character bios - which does help me be more concise... but I really wish I could add that extra two paragraphs of character development sometimes.

On 12/28/2019 at 3:33 PM, MTeague said:

I like the idea of keeping existing bio short, but having a "Read More" button of some kind to a place where the player can add lots more text for their character.

 

Of course, full disclosure, for any bethesda game, the "Journal" mods are the most absolute must-haves for me.  My characters bio *will* expand to consume the available space lol.

A "Read More" would be an awesome addition! It would appeal to the long winded writers and the people who want a quick description. Of course this would all depend on the time and effort needed to work with the spaghetti UI code.

[Latex]

1500 Limit would work nicely I think.

 

The problem with unlimited character bio descriptions is that it's supposed to be the bread of your character, the meat of it is your live actions. If everyone's character biography is a sixteen page novel the majority of people will pass it up and instead choose to Roleplay with you, if your character bio is short and sweet more people will read it and have a better gauge on what to expect when engaging in conversation with your character.

 

I've roleplayed in worlds where there was no limit and it's not nearly as convenient as it is here with a generous limit.

 

For examples sake, take League of Legends and it's character design and summary.

 

https://universe.leagueoflegends.com/en_GB/champion/vi/

 

You have a brief summary of the character and can choose to read more about the character by clicking 'Read Full Bio' I'd liken this to a link ingame in your bio to a forum post here so those very curious about your character can elect to look further.

Edited January 22, 2020 by Latex

[AerialAssault]

I'd rather not tank my internet for having the gall to open someone's bio.

 

Increase the character limit to 1,500 - 2,000 but any more than that should be on VirtueVerse.

 

In a similar vein, how about having the AE text editor options for bios? (That is, different coloured text, bold, italics etc.)