Languages of Verra
Teyloune
Member, Phoenix Initiative, Royalty, Kickstarter, Alpha One
Hejo,
I've always loved it, when Developers went full on passion mode and added fictional languages to their games.
Depending on how this is done, fictional languages can add entirely new layers of how you play and approach a game.
And I believe that adding languages to a game can result in some deeply engaging situations.
In a game like Ashes of Creation, which isn't just about rushing to some elusive endgame to actually get to play the game, having features that go beyond combat and crafting, which help to build a world are very important, to me.
It has an entirely different feel, If you meet a god in a game, and you are able to hear/see them speak in their divine language, than when they just happen to speak english and ask you for a cup of tea and a firearm.
I want to be able to explore ancient ruins, learn ancient forgotten languages, find a ancient golem construct, and awaken it from its eon long slumber with long forgotten words of command to serve me in battle.
That someone who comes from the Planet of Sanctus via the Divine Gates to Verra has no problem talking with the locals, considering that eons have passed, cultures changed and evolved, and we have various races and cultures that kind of became one, I find it hard to believe, that this didn't affect the language that they speak in some serious way.
It would sense to me, If the Sanctus Races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs) had some kind of common language, to communicate with each other, but still have their individual languages.
I also like the idea of being able to talk in a specific fictional language (like the Tulnar language), so the average human character doesn't understand what I'm saying, while I converse with fellow Tulnar.
And I like the idea of having to learn a bit of a language in order to accept and understand a quest from some old orcish guy, that at the end of the quest rewards you with a traditional orcish outfit - as an example.
Or having the option of posting my Guild Recruitment Flyer in a specific language onto the bulletin board.
I would love to play a game, in which I'm more than my Combat stats.
How are you all thinking about this?
I've always loved it, when Developers went full on passion mode and added fictional languages to their games.
Depending on how this is done, fictional languages can add entirely new layers of how you play and approach a game.
And I believe that adding languages to a game can result in some deeply engaging situations.
In a game like Ashes of Creation, which isn't just about rushing to some elusive endgame to actually get to play the game, having features that go beyond combat and crafting, which help to build a world are very important, to me.
It has an entirely different feel, If you meet a god in a game, and you are able to hear/see them speak in their divine language, than when they just happen to speak english and ask you for a cup of tea and a firearm.
I want to be able to explore ancient ruins, learn ancient forgotten languages, find a ancient golem construct, and awaken it from its eon long slumber with long forgotten words of command to serve me in battle.
That someone who comes from the Planet of Sanctus via the Divine Gates to Verra has no problem talking with the locals, considering that eons have passed, cultures changed and evolved, and we have various races and cultures that kind of became one, I find it hard to believe, that this didn't affect the language that they speak in some serious way.
It would sense to me, If the Sanctus Races (Humans, Elves, Dwarves, and Orcs) had some kind of common language, to communicate with each other, but still have their individual languages.
I also like the idea of being able to talk in a specific fictional language (like the Tulnar language), so the average human character doesn't understand what I'm saying, while I converse with fellow Tulnar.
And I like the idea of having to learn a bit of a language in order to accept and understand a quest from some old orcish guy, that at the end of the quest rewards you with a traditional orcish outfit - as an example.
Or having the option of posting my Guild Recruitment Flyer in a specific language onto the bulletin board.
I would love to play a game, in which I'm more than my Combat stats.
How are you all thinking about this?
4
Comments
From my understanding, some of these are only developed enough to have basic sentences, and others have had... linguistically gifted(?) fans fill in the gaps. I think you can learn Klingon on Duolingo these days!
Regardless, very interesting and intriguing thoughts that are fun to discuss!
Since, you know... we play with other players in an mmo?
I think there are plenty of mmos that put more emphasis on world building and narrative experience, instead of massive multiplayer capabilities and gameplay quality.
An mmo should have a setting in which players make their "home" with their online friends. But nothing more than a setting.
The quality of social dynamics, from class viability and engaging market, to domination goals and epic world boss encounters in the wild should be the focus.
I rly, rly, rly dont understand the need for top noch NPC development and in-depth lore and "world" creation.
There are series of video games that achieve that engagement (when they dont try to introduce mmo-like features such as deep crafting and endless, same old, boring open world designs).
How do they achieve that? By focusing on the single player (solo) experience.
Some may say to get free, fan-made content, but there is no quality in that.
I can at least understand what you are saying here even if I disagree with 'having writing staff as something at the bottom of the list of priorities'.
Writing staff is usually who help make the backbone to quest progression and fleshing out the world build relative to the player. If I wanted 'just a combat simulator' I am definitely not choosing AoC. There are better team combat simulators that actually have the skill to balance both team AND 1v1 fights.
I'm sure you can at least meet me in the middle with 'we want quests that don't suck' and therefore writers who write and structure those quests to not suck yeah?
Some people can write more entertaining people than flesh and blood ones. Most irl people are not particularly entertaining and usually combative in a way that does not really lead to much investment in any given place. NPC's, like the setting, are there to give backbone and context to the general feel of a place and the needs to make such a place run (quests)
You have nothing but sympathy from me. It sounds like you haven't played an mmo with good npc dialogue or quest writing. Everyone who likes mmo's deserves that experience. It's a pretty comfy one.
I played eso for 5 years. Wont ever play a story driven mmo again if they dont have open world pvp and real guild gameplay content. Spare me the writting. A quest giving npc needs 2 introduction lines and 2 quest related paragraphs with the juice highlighted in yellow. (More info on the player quest log).
Do you think Im just after combat? Wrong. Mmos are:
Exploration
Combat
Class building (progression)
Looting
Material gathering and crafting (ecomomy)
Guild aims and goals
Raid boss encounters and Epic World bosses battles
Land ownership (home, guild hall, castle)
In my list lore isnt it. I like to know the relationship between races, a few legendary figures (hopefully mentioning their combat class), a bit of creative writting on each item (material or finished product), but definatly, definatly not the story driven writting of eso wow and ff14. Boring as. A singleplayer game has 10000 times story for 100hours of gaming, than esos countless new stories, npcs and ingame books. Not all of them are bad, but non of them is needed for a real mmo.
Spend money and resoyrces on systems maintenance and gameplay AoC.
Realistically I see this more as a franchise thing. I am hoping they hire authors to write books to flesh out the universe and IP, and adding some basic language stuff would be cool. Ideally they hire a linguist to create all the basic structure and phonetics of the languages, so it's consistent, and the writers can take it from there.
For Ashes release I suspect we'll see very little, and I am ok with that. But down the line, if Steven achieves his franchise dreams, yeah, let them go nuts with languages, also in Ashes.
I am all about species specific languages. It doesn't have to be Tolkien-level of thorough. Something as simple as toggling "Tulnar" as my spoken language and then the chat client translating my words into gibberish for anyone that doesn't speak Tulnar would go a long way to add to species fantasy and immersion.
This is a good idea, and I hope it happens.
Well, most of the books came from the single-player Elder Scrolls games, so won't have taken much effort or resource.