r/DestinyTheGame • u/DTG_Bot "Little Light" • Jul 19 '22
Megathread Bungie Plz Addition: Expanded Emote Wheel
Hello Guardians,
This change has been added to Bungie Plz.
Going forward, all posts suggesting this change will be removed and redirected to this Megathread.
Submitted by: /u/MirakleB
Date approved: 07-19-2022
Modmail Discussion:
/u/MirakleB: "While an emote wheel with more than four slots would be nice, it isn't possible to add this feature due to memory limitations as stated by devs at Bungie, and the comments rarely fail to mention this on posts about this topic. Despite that, posts about it keep cropping up every couple of months with very little to add to the discussion."
Given these reasons and the examples below (as well as 9 other times this has reached 300+ upvotes), the mod team feels that community consensus on this issue has been achieved and a solution is now up to Bungie to develop.
Criteria Used:
"...3 examples (with links) of recent submissions (with at least 1 being over 30 days old), that have been well received (hundreds of upvotes on the front page of the sub - ex. 300+ upvotes)."
19
u/rsb_david Jul 19 '22
The common argument people post is there is a technical limit. From what I recall, Bungie said they have to preload the data into memory for each emote from each player. This is then used to provide an instant feedback to the user when using the emote and it is also used in physics calculations when animating, so your character will respond to effects or even dodge projectiles that zoom just past you. The limit is due to older consoles not having as much resources to support more data being loaded into memory.
That being said, a technical limitation is always going to exist until someone creates a solution to tear down that limitation. That is how development works. You don't just sit on your hands and say "well, my game doesn't have a function to do XYZ, so I guess we can't support the function". If there is interest in XYZ, then you get people together to find a way to make it happen. Also, games have had emote wheels for 20+ years now, so it is astounding to me that Bungie hasn't found a solution.
Now, when Bungie does seriously consider this idea, I'd like to see them support more than just emotes. In addition to emotes, the system should also support equipping items (if in inventory) and consuming items. Later on if they add loadouts to the game, then maybe they could support binding loadouts to the wheel. If they add pinging or quick voice commands, those should be bindable to the wheel as well.
They could implement a wheel in increments. First, add a wheel UI object that is bindable to a key/button, but maintain a 4 emote limit with 4 additional slots to bind other things to as needed. Next, implement a cache mechanism that maintains the data of the last 4 emotes used for older consoles, then allow modern devices to have more emotes. When the older console sees a new emote triggered that isn't cached, it would clear the oldest played emote and make space, basically a FIFO cache system.
Finally, do all clients need to simulate collisions or can emotes just be dumb? How many situations in the grand scheme of things have occurred where an emote is actively used to avoid attacks. I know you can use some emotes to sort of noclip into areas to avoid some attacks like with the Warsat in SABER strike, but that is not something that is commonly done AFAIK, however I could be wrong. If the authority in the lobby is the only one doing the calculations, then the rest of the clients can more loosely manage the data without breaking things too much. It should take a few milliseconds to load the animation data from cache anyway. A separate packet could be sent to trigger the intent to emote a few frames earlier than when it gets loaded, followed by a sync packet to ensure the people nearby are animating at the same frame.
It makes me sad and frustrated that a company like Bungie can't make this happen even though it has been asked for since early D1.