Very valid points, I had no idea the ambient population line was still in full color in people-empty rooms. Thats what I get for testing only the positive state! :)
I made these changes because:
When I added color to clothing, it was to let you all share your style more as well as draw attention to and away from certain parts of the things you all wear. After some amount of my RP and watching when others were looking at the various individuals, I realized we were all speed-reading to find things we cared about. Guns, armor, maybe an empty holster. It's all easier to find and be noticeable when things are broken up into sections.
The changes to the room again about being able to notice things as well as knowing how to reference the individuals of the game. Your title is not part of your name and I kept seeing people try to use commands against your title, or your titled name (i.e. - Badass Johnny, or Badass, instead of Johnny). In the heat of battle, this can be the difference between life and death. This is especially true when someone is shrouded.
While I do indeed mourn the loss of that pretty mustard-colored line that people would scan to find the sentences that mattered, we already require that people consider the scene presented in the description above, so I don't think we're losing much except an accustomed style of how we present that line of text.
I'm not 100% satisfied with the spacing in the room descriptions. The idea is/was to improve the readability of the scene. Overtime, I plan to add full paragraph breaks in the description itself where its clear that the designer was presenting a new paragraph.
Another aspect addressed by changing the spacing is improving our support for screen readers that service our visually impaired players. :)
As far as reading like a book, exactly! The room title in my mind is the demarcation of a new section, not a paragraph break.
In summary, a wise creative director once told me, use the whitespace. And thats what we're trying to do!
