Oh dear! My loquacious self often already struggled to narrow my thoughts to the confines of the ~350 word text limit, but today I’ve been bumping against a firm 500 character limit. Past that point no letters appear in the message box. I sent myself a copy & pasted longer letter by using my alt, and the text past 500 characters was indeed missing and not just hidden. Any idea what’s going on with this?
I can reproduce the symptom my dear wife is describing. It would be a shame if that limitation became permanent, I had quite some verbose conversations over that message system.
The limits are still in effect. I am completely, totally, utterly, altogether, and downright displeased, disgusted, dismayed, and vexed! And I am unanimous in that!
Seriously, lengthy correspondences are one of the best parts of the game; please bring them back.
Allow me to add my voice to the chorus of disappointed players. My “curriculum” of Shadowy Protege instruction includes several lessons that go longer than this. (To say nothing of my long and whimsical acquaintance-snubbing text, of which I am unduly fond.) There are so many wonderful examples of creativity on display here: http://community.failbettergames.com/topic5843-best-of-calling-cards--other-social-actions.aspx Many of those could not have been sent under a 500-character limit.
[color=#C2B280]The background to this: there was a hidden limit on messages of a thousand-and-something characters. If you go above the limit, the invitation isn’t sent and the game unceremoniously consumes the words. We added a restriction to the form to deal with it more gracefully. But 500 characters is, as you say, too short.
The limit is now 1000 characters. I don’t think more than that fit pleasantly into FL’s unparagraphed messages; for lengthier exchanges, a better option may be to send multiple letters for zero actions from your lodgings.[/color]
Yes, the text-gobbling from too-long messages was also frustrating, but was also easily avoidable by using a word counter and/or copying & pasting for those who know they tend toward verbosity. The old limit must have been closer to ~2000 characters, because if I kept things in the 350-word range, all would usually be well. 1000 characters is certainly better than 500, but isn’t there just a way to keep the original limit without the disappearing text?
Thank you for upping the limit! And responding so quickly! But I agree with Lady Taimi, unless your resources would get slammed by a high character limit, why not make the limit = lots and lots?
Thanks for changing the limit.
Sending letters from your lodgings does cost an action each, though.
[color=#C2B280]We’ve increased the limit to 1400 characters, which is nearly what it was before. Any further increase isn’t really feasible, for boring (but rather stubborn) reasons. I hope that will suffice for most purposes.
Apologies for my mistake about the cost of writing letters. I forgot we’d decided to keep the action cost: there’s a small but unlovely possibility that it might be abused for automated spam, otherwise.[/color]
That is fantastic news! Thank you!
If I could make a suggestion:
For long conversations, you might find it easier to create a thread in Mr Pages’ Fabularities on this forum, or use the private messaging system instead if you’d rather keep them away from prying eyes. These methods have the benefit of allowing proper formatting, and not costing anything as far as actions go.
Hooray Flyte!!