Thought or Rant of the day!!!

[SekoETC]

I've had a character staying in a Spanish location for a long while and it seems like a nice little community, although it's not on their old island. Often I don't even check the character since I can't understand much of anything but sometimes I use an automatic translator to find out what's going on, although my character only understands the emotes but he should also be able to understand if people are happy or worried or upset, and that's generally only expressed in words and not emotes.

[joo]

<thought><rant>
I know it's too late to change the game as it is now, but I sincerely believe that Cantr would have been better if language groups were completely separated, i.e. living in separate game world instances. This is mainly because in practise it causes, as I see it, far more problems than any positive effects.

For example, positive effects of having language groups integrated into the same world:

• Increased diversity of gameplay.
• Increased quality of roleplaying (?).

And negative effects:

• Causes logistical problems when planning features involving player-written content as well as causing situations such as it being impossible for two characters to spawn a new character when they speak different languages.
• Players can be unable to understand emotes which their characters should be able to interpret and respond to.
• CR-related problems arise when players play a character in a language other than the spawning language. The rules are vague and difficult to enforce and interpret. Bilingualism is difficult to roleplay naturally; it is difficult for players already knowing both languages as they must maintain realistic progress and remember known words, etc; and is difficult for players not knowing the second language, as it takes more time and effort than just playing Cantr in another language to learn and understand it.
• Players resort to using translators to read and write emotes, which decreases the quality of gameplay due to the current low quality of automatic translation, and the inherent lack of creativity in the sentences generated.

I suppose the idea of integrating language groups the way they are was part of the grand experiment of Cantr - the part involving languages, being, as I see it, somewhat of a failure so far.

So, if Cantr is ever redesigned or the world is reset giving a chance for some fundamental changes to be made, I hope Jos and/or whoever is involved will consider changing the language groups, as so far I have noticed that the negative effects outweight the positive effects.
</rant></thought>

[Dudel]

I think having a staple language for emotes or hard-coding a few/some emotes would avoid SOME, not all, of these problems.

On another note: If Cantr mechanics "let you" then by all means... however some mechanics SHOULDN'T.

[Rebma]

I have a feeling even if it were hard coded, and there was a drop down box of some sort, the people Wiro is referring to still wouldn't use it.

Anyways I agree mostly with joo, it seems to cause more problems then it does enhance roleplay. We forgot the part where it causes fights on the forums between people of different languages, and oog cultural wars because of things that happened IG.

[*Wiro]

I like a lot of different languages and had lots of fun with Polish, German, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Swedish characters, and some Spanish. But the biggest part of the group just ruins it for the others.

Even though it has, in a way, failed, it did also succeed in a lot of others.

[Piscator]

Considering the current dimensions of the map, language groups have been placed too close together. Interlanguage contacts are okay, but you should be able to avoid them if you like.

[chase02]

So, if Cantr is ever redesigned or the world is reset giving a chance for some fundamental changes to be made, I hope Jos and/or whoever is involved will consider changing the language groups, as so far I have noticed that the negative effects outweight the positive effects.
</rant></thought>

Completely agree. I wondered about allowing non-english speaking players into Reveries, after seeing a group of Polish players on another forum talking about how they have high hopes for Rev. But I think the best way is to entirely segregate them, too. Probably in a much smaller map, due to the much smaller player base.

[joo]

...a group of Polish players ... I think the best way is to entirely segregate them, too. Probably in a much smaller map...

[chase02]

*cough*

[lulkoek]

That's... just bad, joo...

[Piscator]

I'm probably not allowed to laugh, too.

[Arenti]

Sorry all.... I will be away for one week.

[Sabsi]

Considering the current dimensions of the map, language groups have been placed too close together. Interlanguage contacts are okay, but you should be able to avoid them if you like.

I agree with this. Some of the current problems in our region wouldn't exist if at least every language group would have gotten its own island at the beginning, not placing Spanish and German spawn points on one island and Dutch and French on another directly adjacent to the Spanish/German island. This gets even worse when one of these language groups is bigger than the other three together.

[Dudel]

Well my solution is to just make the game on language and tell everyone else to "stick it".

Multiple game worlds for X amount of languages is ugly and taxing while blurring them together... well that's a difficult if not annoying balancing act that is easier to just avoid.

[Doug R.]

I agree generally that without a better way to have multi-lingual emoting, mixing the language groups was a bad idea in hindsight. The game shouldn't need to depend on the charity of bi-lingual players to make inter-language contact manageable.

I had a charrie that decided to go with some bilingual Poles because where he was sucked. I knew they were bilingual before I went, because they were emoting in English. I thought it would be adventurous and fun. After leaving with them, while they did emote in English when they were emoting to my character, they didn't when they were doing anything else (even if they were emoting -about- my character). Even asking OOC (which I loathe) for them to please do dual emoting (because there was one guy on the boat that wasn't bilingual), they didn't, so I left the ship, even though they begged me to stay. Sorry, guys, just couldn't do it. Being alone is preferable to not knowing what the hell is going on and having to run things through goonslate, which only works if you spell the words right and they're in the google dictionary.