I added some custom emotions and set their hotkey to "//xxx" where the xxx is some number.
And I bring up the Msgplus emotion panel, use mouse clicked one of my custom emotion, it displays fine in the text area, but after I press enter to send it, my msg changed to "/xxx", and it is not my emotion. The other just see a text /xxx....

Try using another hotkey f.e. <xxx>, don't use / cuz these are linked with commands

using a double / ( // ) also shows the command to your contact.