Poll: Updating VC system commands

I'm considering altering many of the VC commands in order to help keep down on mistypes, and I want to know what everyone thinks.

Are the current commands easy to use?

Would it be easier if each started with a special character, such as "/":
/e x instead of emote x (I've already added the ability to use / x instead of emote x, and it seems to be working well)
/option x instead of option x
/info x instead of info x (to avoid popping up the inventory screen)
/help instead of vc help (I keep bringing up the voice chat )
etc.

Maybe . instead of /?

So, what are your thoughts. I want to be able to keep adding things to the VC system, but I don't want it to become bogged down in dozens of differing types of commands. I'd rather have it easy to use as well as fast, with as little confusion as possible.

A prefix would work great I think, as well as bringing all the various commands under one general formate Perhaps not the / character, as that's used for manually choosing channels.... mistypes could cause people to accidently shout a command and feel red in the face, I certainly get a "DOH!" feeling whenever I mishout something. The . or \ would work very nicely

/ is used in World of Warcraft.... so folkd whop have played wow would have an easy time with that, but it does have the chat channel issue, so that could be an issue.

I have sometimes started chats with ".... and don't call me shirley"
so the . for the prefix could be an intermittent issue, but less so (it being rare would make it even harder for new players to figure out why their chat just disappeared into oblivion)

I would actually recommend a bracket ] or brace }. Nobody is going to start a chat with those characters.

Other options would be @ or # or =

I like the / myself (was also used in Star Wars Galaxies, which I played once upon a time ago, and took a while to get out of the habit of using it when I switched to NWN). I don't really think the chat channel thing would be much of an issue, but I could see a small problem if people try to preface something with "//OOC" or the like; there might have to be something worked into the code that says "if there are two /'s then it's not meant as a command" and thus let's it go through the talk channel or what have you.

I often use "//" for OOC comments, and frequently start lines with "..." (more when continuing to say something linked to a previous comment)...

... I don't like the idea of the singular "/" as I often leave the chatbar in "talk" and use "/p /s /w" when required... I think it'll get too confusing...


In fact if I had a choice of any singular key as a VC prefix it would be the hash "#" key.. ... my next favorite would likely be the q-mark "?" .. then any of the eight "brackets" , ()[]{}<>.....

I'm not 100% sure but I think the chatbar-console commands start "##".. if they do then I'd go for "?? ".... the vc prefix should be unique and not get mixed/come-close-to any other type of command ....

... and most of the vc commands are (in my mind anyway) "questions to the server"..
... such as "give me some info", "I need help", "my options are what exactly"... in fact I rather like "??"...

I could do ??, or even ; or : - but the more I think about it, the more I like the ??. I also like making everything the same, so you don't have to muck it up down teh road. Uniformity=flexibility (at least in my mind)!

simply using a dash followed by a word is good with me, or a dash followed by vc + word. I don't like the idea of doing it any other way, because I've played alot of old school games that don't rely on graphics and images, and in those games accessing commands and the like are done in this form. also lots of other games that have online features such as Diablo and the like (WoW mentioned) do this too.

as such leaving things the way they are would probably be best, but altering it slightly could work out well...