For reference there are at least 3 types of Draconic languages in this game, two of which would not realistically be things you'd encounter except mainly through inscriptions on various landmarks, statues, etc. Therefore I think it makes sense that you would mainly learn those through skill pickups from examining those things. For example, Drak'Elrin (middle nobility language) is something described as primarily being on the ancient boundary posts that dot the landscape. Since we know what those areas are called and what those were for it makes sense that finding one might let you learn a word or two. Later, you might find a cenotaph somewhere to a long-dead regional dragon that requires level 2 or whatever in the language, but give much more exp as you learn a larger number of "words".
I think the draconic languages combined with npc-only race languages provide plenty of backbone for a worthwhile language system (wherein you need to learn more of the language to unlock certain perception ques, etc.). I imagine having a common language that's spoken from the outset by the pc races makes the most sense. Maybe you have some proud factions who choose not to talk mainly in it and/or perhaps there are more rural populations that don't speak common well, so lower levels of the language are useful for ease of communication.
I think languages would be great, as long as they impact play. Like if you see some benefit from being able to overhear NPC's talking in an otherwise unintelliglbe language. Or if you are looking at some "words" smeared on a wall in blood inside a goblin dungeon (in Goblin of course), and using the /read command, you can somewhat decipher it all.
It was a nice additional feature to have in EQ. It was really just for roleplaying purposes and I don't see why people would block another persons enjoyment of such a mechanic because they don't want to utilize it. The most fun part came when certain races could talk together and not be understood by another race. It was like having a secret language to convery your secrets with. It was also fun for roleplaying in terms of changing factions. You could put in the time to learn another races language. Every race could speak the common tongue though.
I agree that all player character races should start off with common. I liked languages in EverQuest, but I think if they are going to be in PRF, we need a better way to learn them and we need them to matter more (at all?). I don't have any new ideas to contribute regarding how this can be done, but there are some good ideas posted here and I see that Joppa has a plan, so I'm just looking forward to seeing what the developers come up with.
Fulton said:Aradune said:In most cases, players want to be able to communicate with other races without having to learn a language first. That said, in an RP/hardcore server we might enforce language barriers. The trick is to come up with a system where you can learn other languages over time that can't be artificially accelerated by just having someone spam you with a different language. Any ideas on how this might be accomplished?
Buying/looting language pages/books that can be read to increase skill?
I'm around spanish speaking people all day and have learned very little stricly from listening (Especially without context o the conversation). What I have learned is from me stopping them and having them translate or pronounce something, so simply listening to someone speak a language is seldom going to help you leanr it with out some translation to begin with. So I agree that spamming a language should not work.
Books yes...I love learning ingame languages btw. And in EQII you could learn languages that way, and work your way up to being fluent. Some you could buy and some were occasionally found when you killed some random mob. Think it would be more fun to do it that way. :)
How did they learn to speak other peoples languages in ancient times? All they had was clay and stone tablets. I would imagine they had to learn through both speaking and pointing at things. I'm not really sure myself how it was done. I've seen a few documentaries that stated individuals were able to learn another cultures language.
I like the idea of having to learn the local language to be able to communicate in a new area ( immersion ). I don't mind having to learn languages like learning to swim and learning direction by spamming /loc. I'm sure I'm in the minority here but I don't mind some of the tedious and difficult of EQ1 making a comeback. For when I only have an hour to play and I don't have what I need to trade skill I can work skills. Because I thought it cool when my party was swimming across Lake Rathetear and you could tell who couldn't swim.
I may be remembering wrong but i beleive it was either EQ or EQ2, that made you either do quests, or buy language book to be able to speak to the races your character didnt naturally know already through culture. It probably was a real pain for the devs to program all those other languages in, while it really wasnt much bother for the players to get ahold of said books/quests to overcome that difficulty.
Draknmarr said:I may be remembering wrong but i beleive it was either EQ or EQ2, that made you either do quests, or buy language book to be able to speak to the races your character didnt naturally know already through culture. It probably was a real pain for the devs to program all those other languages in, while it really wasnt much bother for the players to get ahold of said books/quests to overcome that difficulty.
It was EQ2 and that was too easy. In EQ1 you had to have it spoken to you to learn it so people would make macros and spam it. Languages were something you needed for certain quests and most people didn't care about them so I made a lot of good plat training languages to people when they finally did need them. I learned all of mine because it wasn't a race to the end for me I explored every part of the game every level.
I wrote down my thoughts about language some while ago, so I'll just post what I wrote then now.
To start this off I would like to say that I am not in any way a game developer and there might be a myriad of reasons for not doing something like this, it is just my thoughts on the matter and what I believe. I also want to excuse any potential spelling errors or sentences that look very weird, English not being my native tongue makes things like this happen sometimes.
Thoughts about languages in Pantheon
Being a speaker or three languages I find languages very interesting and I hope and think that many others also find languages interesting. There is great history and sometimes even an air of mystique about language. I hope Pantheon are willing and trying to make languages in the game something we as players can enjoy and I have some ideas and thoughts about how this might be done.
First I would like to propose that the languages of the all the races are pretty simple to decipher, just a remapping of letter to their own fantasy letters, but I would like if whoever makes the languages takes good care and don't just make separate languages for every race. Languages are many times related and having races speaking the same language (other than the common language) or speaking totally different languages but using the same letter system, things like that I think add a lot to a game in ways lore and just helping the game feel more real.
Other languages than just the races languages that would make things just that much cooler would be the ability to learn things like Thief's Cant that maybe only rogues have access to. Things like druidic and maybe some other NPC languages would also be awesome to see.
Now to languages that are not learned in a mechanical way in the game, languages that you don't have a “language skill” in. Think about finding a book in a dungeon this book is written with letters that you cannot understand, after some time and more books and other writings you figure out that this is “Divine Speech” a language only used in writing, used to write the old books of the first Clerics. You figure out what every letter is and slowly decipher the language learning some awesome basically hidden lore in the world. No quest, just a book with strange writing you picked up and starter cross referencing with other things.
You now start to think about all the runes and writings on the walls in places using the same letters and start trying to decipher that to, someone finds a Rosetta Stone somewhere and soon a whole community is working on figuring this out. Don't limit it to just mapping the Latin alphabet to some fantasy one. Use pictographic systems, an Adjab or something totally different. Make it hard, with the access to the information we have today and our ability to communicate through the internet in such a big capacity, you shouldn't be afraid of making it too hard.
This sounds and most likely is, a TON of work. But something I think would be something amazing to make the world of Terminus be even more amazing.
Thank you for reading, I hope it was a good read . Any constructive criticism and feedback is welcome.
Maybe if you complete quests that reveal lore of another race you could learn more about their language, allowing you to open up other race based quests. Different languages has potential and can add depth to immersion. You might want to add language to faction status, they may be able to go hand in hand. You could even add stuff for NPC race languages. Obiviously you should always be able to communicate with others when in a group, thats the one exception I would make when talking about the language topic.
Why not throw a little DND into a no-common language system?
you get 1-3 languages automatically from your race depending on what it is and on their strongest friends/foes
You get more languages based on race and/or class/stats which you can pick at character creation, which you are either decent with or a master at. (so a wizard could get 2 more languages and a gnome could get 2 more languages since they are smart, as an example)
These picked languages come from either a list of ALL languages, player AND monster, or, for more immersion, a list of languages somewhat common to your starting area (making an argument for racial allies to be able to start at one another's cities).
You could even denote languages as either "player" or "monster", and grant different amounts of "monster" and "player" languages to different class/race combinations (so a Scar might know several monster languages but not many player languages).
A system like this, though confusing, could allow for more quests or npc friends since you could pick monster languages (and there aught to be rewards for learning monster languages, right?).
It would also theoretically allow you to talk with your friends ok, since you could all do some talking pre-character creation and make sure you pick the right languages.
All this while keeping the immersion of having to learn all the other languages the slow way, be it with books, quests, listening to npcs, or listening to other players. It would be fun seeing people chatting in a monster language, or in a common third language IMO.
You would have groups, trade hubs, or guilds that require a certain language group, which would deter some social interactions, but ultimately I think the immersion and tight-nit community would be worth it.
EDIT: I should probably mention that I would prefer for a language system that makes me not understand other players..sometimes...rather than ALL the time, even if its a bit unrealistic for a single dwarf warrior to know 4+ languages
Nimryl said:Cromulent said:Nimryl said:It'd be pretty cool to pick up quests tho only after you've learnt a langauge.. and I also agree that spamming line after line is a bad way to learn it. Maybe you could pick up a book to actually learn how to read it, compare both books, work out the text.. find the hidden pieces of foreign quest book or something. That'd be kinda cool. You know, buy the reference books you need for the quest book, add them to your library in your player housing.. where it wouldn't just be a decoration, but actually of some use. Map books for old location names etc etc.. It'd be sweet to figure out quests that way... Imagine talking to your friends about this quest you've studied up on and explaining it... and off you go on your merry travels to figure it all out at the location etc.
That does sound pretty epic. It would be cool if they combined it with factions as someone else already said in this thread.
So for instance there is an outpost that starts KoS to all players but you find some books and stuff of their lying around and you slowly learn the language. Once you know enough of the language to read the books they will tell you what mobs you need to kill to increase faction standing with them. Once you have gained enough faction you can then get some really special quests from the outpost that only the most dedicated of players could get because they have both learned the language and done some faction grinding in order to be given the quests in the first place.
^ Pretty cool too.
I really like this idea.
UnknownQuantity said:How did they learn to speak other peoples languages in ancient times? All they had was clay and stone tablets. I would imagine they had to learn through both speaking and pointing at things. I'm not really sure myself how it was done. I've seen a few documentaries that stated individuals were able to learn another cultures language.
When I was learning French (had moved to Quebec) I would point at things in the kitchen..to ask my mother-in-law what the word for a particular object was. I had to learn one phrase to do that..which was What is that..what is the name for that. (in French of course) I learned phrases by reading the bubble chats in French Canadian comic books, "Asterix et Obelix" I would watch French cartoons, French movies. I learned all the cuss words (I have been told that is quite common when learning a new language) So I basically learned that language like a young child would for the most part. Just would like to say we had a lot of fun learning languages in EQ back in the day, and I was most proud when I learned Dragon and Thieve's cant. Hopefully we have that chance again. :) I felt that fleshed out my character..broadened her horizons...and No I am not a roleplayer. :)
Cana
I'd like to see something like this when it comes to languages.
Say you are fighting a raid mob and you see something like this:
Big Monster says "hdyhde jhdjiir sgabbe gdyujsw!"
and you think it is just random nonsense. So you do a bit of exploring outside the raid and discover there is a quest line that you can that requires working for some of the same faction as the raid mob and as part of completing that quest line you learn the language. Then when you go back to fight the raid mob you find out that the raid mob was actually giving orders which would give you hints and tips on how to defeat the raid.
Of course you could beat the raid without knowing the language but it would be much easier if you took the time to learn the language so you can understand what the raid mob is actually saying. That would give a real reason to go out and try and learn all the languages available in the game.
Also maybe some quests require you to understand different languages in order to find out what you are supposed to do. That way players will always feel it is worthwhile to learn as many languages as possible.
I sort of like the stylized "mumble" or "gibberish" languages. You could really work a language barrier into the Lore and make language development a feature in the game, if everyone starts out not being able to understand what others are saying, and over time you learn language skills and these language skills help to unlock certain skills or abilities through communication with advanced NPCs that require the language barrier be overcome.
I could go on for days... Learning the Language is such a poorly developed mechanic. What if your character was deposited in a place where the language all seemed like gibberish? And building your ability to communicate offered a secondary arch of progression, similar to AAs but 10,000% better.
Where is the Imagination?
I think different languages are very important. Different cities where certain npcs will only give you a quest if you speak a language. Maybe you can talk a hill giant into fighting a storm giant with your group. I think all the different ways of learning a language should be in game. Spam learning, book learning, hiring of tutors. It adds to immersion, its more real life and I like that.
Aradune said:In most cases, players want to be able to communicate with other races without having to learn a language first. That said, in an RP/hardcore server we might enforce language barriers. The trick is to come up with a system where you can learn other languages over time that can't be artificially accelerated by just having someone spam you with a different language. Any ideas on how this might be accomplished?
How about a minigame to learn a language? Some setup where you talk to certian NPC's and they say a word or sentance that is say 90% gibberish to you. You have choices that you can select on what you think is being said. The more you get it right the better you understand. Have it work like skills did in EQ so that there is a chance that your skill goes up everytime you are successful but its not going to go up everytime. Then you can make it so no one can max it out in a day. Can have fun with it by adding in some other things to make it desirable for people to do it even if they don;t care about lanaguage. Kind of like diplomacy was in VG but maybe not as in depth.
I really hope there are languages.
I would be fine with the spamming of text to learn them. But something more immersive would be welcome.
I would NOT be fine with simply buying a book to learn a language (how lame) learning a language should be gradual. You can't just "buy a book" as in EQ2 where I learned 5 or 10 languages in a matter of 30 secounds.
As an Elf I EXPECT not to be able to communicate with at least Archi, Ogre, Dark Myr, and Scar from the start. If I can I will be sorely disappointed. I would also welcome poor if any communication with Dwarves, Gnomes, Haflings until I earned the right (learned the language)
I would also be open to Human as a version of "common toung" for those that just want to hack and slash instead of live in a RPG.
A misconception I see being repeated in this thread is "VR needing to create the languages". At least in EQ there were never really languages. If your skill in a language wasn't high enough the system just scrambled the text. As you got higher in the skill there was just less scrambeling. There were some books that were written in other "languages" but if memory serves me they were again just scrambled text. Nothing to the level Tolkien took it.