Glorious Alpha Two Testers!
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Phase I of Alpha Two testing will occur on weekends. Each weekend is scheduled to start on Fridays at 10 AM PT and end on Sundays at 10 PM PT. Find out more here.
Check out Alpha Two Announcements here to see the latest Alpha Two news and update notes.
Our quickest Alpha Two updates are in Discord. Testers with Alpha Two access can chat in Alpha Two channels by connecting your Discord and Intrepid accounts here.
Racial laguages
Heljy
Member
Hi! I think that language is an integral part of immersion. In your opinion, how should AOC integrate this element, if it is to integrate it?
I think several possibilities could be nice!
For Role Play:
Each race could have its own language, in addition to the common language (in the style of Wow), with, why not, a slightly different dialect between the two types of dwarfs for example. This could result in:
-An orc does not understand what a dwarf is saying, the text is totally modified.
-An orc Ren'Kai can understand what an orc Vek says, but with an accent materialized by a distortion of certain words.
For the Node Vs Node:
Nodes could have the possibility of adopting a single language, spoken by the citizens of that node alone. Thus, the use of chat in general channel in the region would allow citizens to communicate without being understood by external citizens.
Going further
The translation (and therefore the understanding) of these dialects could be a competence of technological or religious nodes,
I find that these elements would strengthen the sense of belonging to a community (race, region), while providing opportunities for PR.
This could also be very specific situation generator in PVP!
Imagine yourself in hostile territory, witness to an incomprehensible discussion between several opponents who did not know each other 2 minutes earlier, and find themselves gathered together by the sole objective of having your skin .
In short, I look forward to your opinions on this, and your ideas!
I think several possibilities could be nice!
For Role Play:
Each race could have its own language, in addition to the common language (in the style of Wow), with, why not, a slightly different dialect between the two types of dwarfs for example. This could result in:
-An orc does not understand what a dwarf is saying, the text is totally modified.
-An orc Ren'Kai can understand what an orc Vek says, but with an accent materialized by a distortion of certain words.
For the Node Vs Node:
Nodes could have the possibility of adopting a single language, spoken by the citizens of that node alone. Thus, the use of chat in general channel in the region would allow citizens to communicate without being understood by external citizens.
Going further
The translation (and therefore the understanding) of these dialects could be a competence of technological or religious nodes,
I find that these elements would strengthen the sense of belonging to a community (race, region), while providing opportunities for PR.
This could also be very specific situation generator in PVP!
Imagine yourself in hostile territory, witness to an incomprehensible discussion between several opponents who did not know each other 2 minutes earlier, and find themselves gathered together by the sole objective of having your skin .
In short, I look forward to your opinions on this, and your ideas!
2
Comments
In Ashes, your node affiliation is more important than your chosen race. It's more important that you can communicate with others.
Even though it might make sense with the Tulnar, that does not mean that it is good game design to be unable to communicate with the Tulnar, as the last few posters have pointed out. Perhaps the physical repulsion of the Tulnar will be sufficient (no insult intended towards those rolling Tulnar!).
@Heljy
This does not sound fun to me this sounds very annoying. You aren't building suspense, if this is a pvp situation and can not talk you are even more inclined to flag up and not bother with discussion.
This is what i mean bad rp trying to influence gameplay for 0 actual reason. Effectively because you can't talk you are actually reducing RP elements in the game since those players can't talk to one another. The solution will be more scaled towards pure pvp than rp, discussions, politics, etc. Things will be taken off the game even more so and discord used as well.
This is what i mean and my reasoning on why it is bad.
^YUP!
Finally, the impact would be very slight in my opinion. In any case, I understand your points of view.
Hm, I kind of like the idea. On the one hand this could be intesting. Maybe you could have professioncy in language too? And somehow train to learn new languages by some quest or what not? Ofc common language as a base. But I agree it could be cool and increase immersion. At base threshold of a language you get some gibberish text. Hear enough of that language gives you experience. At a certain threshold the text could get hints of english here and there. Simple word could be in plain or close to english. And so on, better and better at later thresholds.. One could imagine this would be a reason to go to a town with many dwarfs (if you are an elf race)for example. And while there you could do a quest like "Studying the language" which would give a buff to increase the exp in that language. It would be a skill that could give you intel when people try to be secretive. And the ones that would try to be secretive would maybe not suspect you understand. Could lead to intresting situations. Could be something to spend time on once you've maxed out your level.
As the game is suppossed to be player driven, this could be good.
On the otherhand I guess if you play with people you know/"in guild" and use discord this wont really matter anyway. Because of that this might be a low prio to develop anyways.
But..... at least fun to dwell a little on the idea.
Every race starts knowing Common and their racial language, then you can learn others in some ways.
This could impact recipes and schematics used for crafting, requiring the services of a translator for gold sink and managing the economy. Of course a player who already learned that language, wouldn't need to pay for those services (already spent many hours learning that language).
But to completely block people from speaking to their friends in game because each picked a different race? Hello no.
I like the idea, @Heljy ... but as already pointed out in the thread it should be an optional toggle for those that want it.
Also, it's probably something best saved for after the game releases (DLC feature or something).
As some have suggested, in what ways would you implement this feature, or languages, in which it is an optional, RP-focused feature?
Different fonts for different languages
This is a Barbarian speaking the Halasian language to a player that does not understand it. To a player that does understand it, it comes across as just regular text. If a player were to take the time, they could look up the font file of the language in question and "translate" it.
What this allows developers to do is to essentially give "personality" to different languages. The Barbarian culture was one of the more ancient cultures in EQ/EQ2, and the language font used reflects that, looking as if it is perhaps inspired by Sumarian text.
From there, you can add language fonts that suit the culture of the various races, adding to the cultural identity of player races, as well as any other races or cultures added to the game.
As long as the default is a common language, and all characters speak common, there is no need for any communication issues between players.
Two additional things that the EQ2 developers did with this that were interesting and enjoyable was that they tied a small number of quests to knowing a given language, and each language was able to be learned by player characters (EQ2 had 45 or so languages). Basically, they made languages and quests for those languages an integral part of the quest game.
The other thing they did was they used these language fonts in the games landscape. An engraving on a wall, or writing on a tapestry etc. This made things just look more interesting and intriguing to the average player, but gave those with the predisposition to be bothered to translate it something fun to do.
Often times, these endeavors lead players to clues about the games lore.
I agree with you. The "frank" language barrier poses a problem of interraction, and offers almost only the conflict as an outcome of a meeting between players. That said, I have great memories as a dwarf or troll team in WoW, playing on the language option to create original moments of play.
I really like the idea of being able to learn another language of node or race. I think it’s a great customization factor for our avatar.
As for using original characters outside the human alphabet, it’s definitely a big implementation job, but it can really bring credibility to racial cultures.
It isn't really that big. Each language needs 26 characters made for it, and then it's literally done.
┞ A
━ B
┍ C
┐ D
┤ E
└ F
┙ G
┃ H
┱ I
┻ J
╂ K
═ L
╡ M
╪ N
╭ O
╮ P
╯ Q
╰ R
╱ S
╲ T
╳ U
▁ V
┄ W
◇ X
□ Y
○ Z
Now, I would expect better quality from a professional product, obviously. Though to be fair I didn't actually create that, it was all just taken from the Character Map - but it still only took me about 3 minutes to throw that list together.
Point is, it really shouldn't take all that long.
So how could different languages be introduced to the game at a later stage? I'd say:
By region. The more you contribute to the development of Nodes in for example regions the Aelan Humans have inhabited before, the greater your "affinity" with their history. Venturing into ruins of Aelan civilization and looting in these areas has a chance of finding records of the past which let you learn the ancient Aelan language. This makes "traitors" or enemies in the region more dangerous, as they can basically "spy" on your communication on the battlefield.
Mechanically I would say the increasing skill level would lead to more and more words in a chat message being exchanged with words from the selected language. This could also be a feature in some questlines where communicating with an ancient entity in a certain area requires a certain level of proficiency in their language to actually take their quests. And for example not being able to understand them could trigger a quest to consult a scholar on how to learn about this language.
While the races may have all lived in Sanctus, since the original intent was for each gate to be race specific (changed due to gameplay reasons, not lore reasons), my take on that is that the races in Sanctus lived at least somewhat segregated. The fact that they have vastly differing architecture and clothing styles suggest this to also be the case. I wouldn't want to assume details past that.
Based on this, it seems logical to me that there would be a common language, but that reach race would maintain it's own language.
To me, the notion of a common language as well as race specific language seems to perfectly fit what we know of Sanctus.
That isn't to say a node specific language couldn't develop.
One of the coolest things I saw in recent months was this song from dwarf fortress where they have created their own dwarven language, and now someone was able to write and sing a song for their tavern events in the game.
The song I refer to starts at 1:05 and this is just an example of how awesome having different languages for us to play with could be. (also this song slaps
https://www.youtube.com/embed/W2Df3_k9PGM?list=PLp1Y6qRhEmZyEeE3O1xz-qb62htJbPqIF
I used to play Ever Quest with my dad when I was a kid (like 12 years old) and they had this feature.
As I remember it, correct me if I'm wrong, each race could at least speak their own racial language and common language. It was skill-based and both racial and common was max level from start. You could change what language you wanted to speak in the chat, like a filter that changed everything you typed to gibberish, like this "sdrle aksbsje kals jdkele", for those who didn't have any knowledge in that particular language.
You could also learn new languages and if I'm not remebering it totally wrong it was just simply by being spoked with that language to and then try to use it. The more you use it the more you learn. So the skill level you have in the particular language will affect the amount of gibberish you will see when others is typing with that language and also what others will see when you type, even if they are fluent/max level in that language.
Common language was just like the normal chat as default and would look normal for everyone.
I think we should hold off on all RP features for when the game has the more important core features done. Then if you aren't rushing the game out the door you can add them later as more refined ideas.
U.S. East
In the topic we agreed on the fact that we would need a comune language that everyone speaks by default. The alternative languages would be activated at the envy of the players, so that everyone could interact without real concern.