Guild Wars 2

I’m not typically a dramatic Role Player when it comes to MMOs, and yet I would love my emotes to be used more.
Across games the emote system seems to me to be vastly under-used and forgotten about outside RP Servers. It’s a shame because they are flavourful and create a richer social environment.
I would suggest two possible methods of players being able to optionally have emotes trigger automatically:

1) A general schema is created for each of the three personality traits used in the game: Ferocity, Charm, and Dignity. The player auto-emotes to particular triggers in ways that are relevant to the trait they are strongest in. For example, a charming player near-always cheers when a nearby player levels up, a dignity player bows to nearly all NPCs they interact with, and ferocity players taunt a small percentage of all creatures they engage with (these are singular examples among many possibilities).
To change your auto-emote schema means shaping your dignity/charm/ferocity interactions.

2) Auto-emoting becomes a player-managed interface. Through various achievements in game players unlock specific auto-emotes which are triggered by specific actions. For example, each dynamic-event in the game awards all players with an unlocked auto-emote.
One event unlocks “Occasionally cry when selling items”, while another event unlocks “Occasionally cry when an ally falls in combat”. One unlocks “Occasionally cheer when leaving combat” and another could be “Always Laugh Out Loud when you type ‘lol’”.
Players could then manage which emotes matched the kind of character they wanted to show the world, and could pursue the auto-emotes they want from around the world.

Of course, players can opt-out of auto-emoting, and possibly also opt-out of seeing other people’s auto-emotes if they get annoyed of them (not all emotes, just those tagged as triggered by the auto-emotes).

Some simple auto-emotes I’d like to see in any case are:
- Making your avatar pull out a map and stare at it when the player opens the map window.
- Make your avatar rifle through a backpack when inactive with the inventory window open.
- Make your avatar stand and count coins in hand when browsing the TP.
- Make your avatar examine their limbs and clothes with the hero window open.

Just some common behaviours for characters that kinda show what the player is doing and adds colour to all the people standing around.

I think that would be cool, although I’d be happy with just more emotes being usable manually by players who are sufficiently charming or ferocious, etc.

Both the charm/dignity/ferocity system and the emote system are very lacklustre and could be so much better.

Part of me wonders, though, if the reason for a total lack of /flirt /hug etc type emotes is that they will be available from the gem store on Valentine’s Day.