Language Lessons

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Apothys
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Language Lessons

Post by Apothys » Sun Jul 18, 2021 11:27 pm

Hey,

This is going to be real unpopular, but i ask as i find myself getting angry about it when my toons are present. Ill explain.

Language lessons on the whole usually consist of back and forth with people rping and learning the language. Of late this has changed greatly. Now I can enter a language lesson and spend a few hours sitting around and learning a good deal of language points in (list below taken from sample lesson found on arelith):

Sylvan, Celestial, Infernal, Elven, Draconic, Hin, Jotun, Undercommon, Xanalress, Gnoll, and Abyssal.

This is all in one sitting, where a bunch of players copy and paste the same phrases in each language at a really fast pace. Meanwhile the growing crowds players shift, sneeze or scribble once every tick to make sure there getting all there bonus RPR experience. Or perhaps a few chat casually in the background about something else while absorbing the language points. Anyone see what im saying about this?

For me if feels like its gaming the system and I have to quickly leave as my frustration with what I'm witnessing is happening. I dont think realistically anyone can learn that many languages all at once. For me it feels that a language lesson should be like one language at a time and done with a little more rp than simply copy and pasting. I could be wrong and you all think thisis okay?

Dont even get me started on the rp implications of why someone would want to learn some of these languages. Its now at a point that noone blinks an eye as certain heavenly or diabolical languages are spoken freely in language lessons in certain settings within arelith or Elves learning the hated Drow speak or vice versa in large groups for example. Of course again this could just be my view on things.

Let me know what you think, because i don't know how to act around these events.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Marsi » Sun Jul 18, 2021 11:54 pm

This is the inevitable conclusion of "learn by doing" mechanics in a multiplayer game. It will be datamined and optimised. Any "new player guide" to Ultima Online, for example (a game entirely comprised of do thing repeatedly to gain xp) begins first by instructing the player in setting up their macros.

I wonder how things would be if languages were instead selected at character creation, and progression in other languages thereafter was tied to level, like crafting (despite the fact that it would be a prime candidate for UO/Runescape like progression).

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Nitro » Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:02 am

Language lessons suck and are dull as rocks but with the language system the way it is, it practically encourages them. Alongside spamming short phrases in a language to someone learning while grinding. Learning by actually RP'ing with people in another language is miserable for 90% of the experience as you go "What?" or "Repeat that" over and over, unable to understand enough to hold any meaningful conversation.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Red_Wharf » Mon Jul 19, 2021 1:38 am

I've seen language lessons which were more dynamic because there was no copy-paste, just a player discussing a subject with the attendees with plenty of back and forth between them. But I agree with Nitro, the language system is uninspiring and it encourages spamming.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Farlius » Mon Jul 19, 2021 2:03 am

Nitro wrote:
Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:02 am
Language lessons suck and are dull as rocks but with the language system the way it is, it practically encourages them. Alongside spamming short phrases in a language to someone learning while grinding. Learning by actually RP'ing with people in another language is miserable for 90% of the experience as you go "What?" or "Repeat that" over and over, unable to understand enough to hold any meaningful conversation.
I believe languages would benefit from lower thresholds to translate, instead of it being a linear chance as you progress perhaps a sharp climb to a slow peak, and leaving speaking/full comprehension to near or at complete understanding.


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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Party in the forest at midnight » Mon Jul 19, 2021 3:23 am

Learning languages is the least fun part about making a new character, even worse than having to find places to buy scroll cases/jewelry boxes/etc. I don't pre-make characters to fit in with a preexisting group of people, starting fresh and trying to find people to learn languages from is not fun. It's even hard to pay people large sums of money to teach, nobody wants to do it. I'm thankful public language lessons exist.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by -XXX- » Mon Jul 19, 2021 7:55 am

Language lessons where 2-3 characters keep copy-pasting walls of text in 5 different languages make me cringe.

1) It's virtually impossible to RP during these (even keeping up with the presented text can be challenging sometimes),
2) They are always causing a lot of lag, making the game virtually unplayable for anyone who doesn't participate,
3) It all defeats the spirit of the language system - there's basically no point in keeping something like that around if every character knows all the languages anyway.



It's 2) that I am having the biggest issue with personally. There's usually about 200 players around on average, yet some 20 of them get to basically force everyone else take a break (often during the peak hours nonetheless) because they just have to go semi-afk in that crowded room while attending that IG "lesson" that they don't even bother paying attention to.

If faction PvP in starting towns is a concern because new players could get caught in the crossfire only to never return, language lessons should be even a bigger concern. Were I a new player who decided to try out the server only to be met with unbearable lag caused by a crowded room on the other side of the island, I might not have returned again either.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Ninjimmy » Mon Jul 19, 2021 9:49 am

I think I'd like it if tutors were more easily located and maybe boosted the numbers a little faster? But equally I do like having to find them by exploring because its engaging so... yeah.

Language Lessons devolve into cacophany because otherwise you need to double type or repeat yourself until RNGesus decides your 30 int character is smart enough to recognise the word "thanks" that you've heard 8 times before.
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Re: Language Lessons

Post by cakewalk » Mon Jul 19, 2021 10:00 am

I agree very much with OP. Having gone to the usual surface lessons over the last few years it has become so OOC I’m surprised it’s not been shut down by the team, just that there’s no alternative.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by -XXX- » Mon Jul 19, 2021 10:34 am

cakewalk wrote:
Mon Jul 19, 2021 10:00 am
just that there’s no alternative.
Of course there is. It's perfectly fine to engage in private lessons, learning one language at a time while doing something else too (dungeon crawls, sailing, checking shops... you name it). It's much less efficient, but much more fun.

It's just a matter of not treating languages as mere checkboxes needing to be checked ASAP.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Frailman » Mon Jul 19, 2021 11:16 am

People just spam walls of text to mechanically teach language?
Not seen this but by the descriptions in this thread it sounds very much not in the spirit of the server, and like gaming the system.
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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Definately Not A Mimic » Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:04 pm

I fall on the line of hating the method as well. No one can sit around with five different books marking down phrases in each as the same phrase or paragraph is read out to them. However on the opposite side of this, I love how much effort some players put into their lessons. The read books and/or give history lessons and answer questions about the topic. Even setting up to do a copy paste run takes time out of their RL day to do and when you find one knowledgeable about the topic you know they've sunk a lot of effort into it.

That said, it takes so much time to learn even one language I've caught myself trying to make it to these large lessons to make even a bit of progress along the way. It is hard enough for myself to walk and type, much less teach or learn and have the character walk.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Twily » Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:29 pm

I'm not overly fond of the spammed lines approach myself, and I have seen that lately things like elves learning xanalress is perceived as relatively normal which is a bit strange to me as well.

But in regards to the first half of that, I'm not really sure other options exist. I've had several characters who I tried to learn a language on through one on one lessons, and I've put in 5-10 hours of roleplay on them to get less than 10% progress before I just gave up. I don't personally as a player have the time to put in well over 50 hours into sitting around doing the dull 'I'm sorry, I didn't quite follow you there, can you repeat that?' roleplay over and over again.

If someone only has a couple hours to play a day due to working a full time job, it could take them literally 3+ weeks of nothing but seeking out that dull tutor roleplay every day to fully learn the language. I wouldn't expect them to do that, and completely understand why they'd seek faster ways of learning.

Overall I view these large group lessons more like a band-aid for a flawed system than a means of gaming the system. I've also seen large numbers of incredibly skilled roleplayers attending or even hosting these language events; players who I wouldn't expect to be super gamey about things. So again, I personally think it's mostly just a band-aid.
It's not ideal, but for some players it's the only option if they want to actually play the game and focus on writing and sharing interesting stories with others.

EDIT:
To add, I agree with the below. The Plays and Arcane Tower lessons are what comes to mind. They can be large and a bit spammy at times, but I think these are good/completely fine.
A circle of people spamming 2 words per line with several languages in a circle, I think is quite cheesy and isn't needed when things like the Playhouse lessons exist.

And I do agree loremaster made languages far more common than they used to be. I suspect it's a large part of why Xanalress and other rarely spoken languages are becoming so widespread.
Last edited by Twily on Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by helitron » Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:40 pm

There used to be very good language lessons at the arcane tower a few RL years back where one of the head mages there was teaching just ONE language and was reading one or two of the many books available on Arelith in that language. These were also very rare, happened ca every month or so.
The theater plays that some players organise in a given language are also awesome examples for how to learn/teach a language.

I think these are more realistic compared to the current copy-paste spamming by multiple teachers in dozen languages.

With everyone speaking every languages to perfection, the languages become obsolete and nobody cares about that anymore.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Drowboy » Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:46 pm

Something needs to be done about languages. Language lectures are a good way to get people in a room, since everyone always needs them, but as mentioned above, with how easily gamed it is/the advent of loremaster, the language system is essentially meaningless right now. Unless you're making an on purpose RP choice to not learn a language your character might run into, assuming there aren't any overlaps and you can't just -- with the other person, it's just colored text at this point for everything except the rarest languages.

Would gladly see the whole learning system gutted, replaced with a language gift or background languages, and the addition of a linguistics skill either in levelups or the radial menu like crafting, tbh.
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Re: Language Lessons

Post by magistrasa » Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:51 pm

Definately Not A Mimic wrote:
Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:04 pm
I fall on the line of hating the method as well. No one can sit around with five different books marking down phrases in each as the same phrase or paragraph is read out to them. However on the opposite side of this, I love how much effort some players put into their lessons. The read books and/or give history lessons and answer questions about the topic. Even setting up to do a copy paste run takes time out of their RL day to do and when you find one knowledgeable about the topic you know they've sunk a lot of effort into it.
This sums up my conflicted feelings as well. I know the players running these things are doing as much as they possibly can, and certainly more than should be expected, to make the experience fun. Unfortunately, when the premise itself is flawed from the get-go, it's hard not to hate these events, in spite of the effort and in spite of the utility. I love how host's for these events usually try to base their lectures off of player-made books and how they often try to frame their material around current events, but in the end, it's still really hard to have fun.

I just hate how difficult it is to roleplay during these things. Heck, half the time it's hard to even read the text that's being dryly copy-pasted, even if you did want to engage with it (though maybe that's my own issues coming in). Maybe it's better to try and keep the number of languages limited to a small handful, both to make the walls of text easier to digest, and to keep the numbers for the event low (fewer languages = less interested people = lower turnout = less lag)?

I've always kinda wanted to see (or do) a literal language lesson, like "here's what these words mean and here's how they're similar to words you already know so even if they sound foreign you can still get the gist." Because it's totally possible to do that with a number of languages in the module. Idk who put together the Jotun language but it's REALLY WELL DONE and I love how there's so many recognizable words sprinkled in there that make it so much more apparent that Jotun is a precursor to the common tongue. Similarly, I think most veteran Underdark players have a psychic connection to Xanalress where after a while you can kinda just sight-read blue text even if your character isn't fluent in the language. And I noticed how many words in Elven are very similar to recognizable words in Xanalress. I guess I'd just love to see more genuine linguiphiles on the server.

Roleplay around learning languages is often very uninspired and unengaging, but I think people will soon discover ways to make the experience more fun, and it'll be cool to see that evolve over time.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Haroshia » Mon Jul 19, 2021 1:02 pm

I would much prefer if language lessons were similar to how bard songs are taught. Maybe not EXACTLY the same but some sort of faster system that required finding a teacher still but didn't take hours of spamming walls of text.
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Re: Language Lessons

Post by -XXX- » Mon Jul 19, 2021 1:13 pm

I guess that players simply just don't show up for these unless their character gets to learn a new language.
More languages taught = wider potential audience.

Then again, if players need to be motivated by actual mechanical benefits to attend an RP session, then perhaps the content of said RP session was never that appealing to begin with.


I don't mean to bash anyone's RP here. I'm perfectly happy to simply keep ignoring language sessions held in this way. Nothing wrong with it if the people attending them are having fun. The lag vexes me though.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Techne » Mon Jul 19, 2021 6:10 pm

In short, languages are not intuitive to learn on Arelith. This has been established by many posts above this one and it would be fruitless to repeat this sentiment.

However, I want to give the perspective from one of the "copy-paste" language lesson organizers (specifically the Guldorand one).

I really like what Mimic said:
Definately Not A Mimic wrote:
Mon Jul 19, 2021 12:04 pm
I fall on the line of hating the method as well. No one can sit around with five different books marking down phrases in each as the same phrase or paragraph is read out to them. However on the opposite side of this, I love how much effort some players put into their lessons. The read books and/or give history lessons and answer questions about the topic. Even setting up to do a copy paste run takes time out of their RL day to do and when you find one knowledgeable about the topic you know they've sunk a lot of effort into it.

That said, it takes so much time to learn even one language I've caught myself trying to make it to these large lessons to make even a bit of progress along the way. It is hard enough for myself to walk and type, much less teach or learn and have the character walk.
The amount of effort that is put into creating a "copy-paste" language lesson is quite a lot. You have to balance so many things when you're creating the piece you're going to copy-paste off of. For example, if you're just using a lorebook from Arelith's archives:

- You have to make sure you're not exceeding the 295 character limit for each copy-pasted line, typing it out on a outside application
- You have to make sure your piece is under a certain time limit
- You have to pick out a piece people might find interesting to learn about
- You have to ensure your quotations and apostrophes are the right kind, or else you end up with question marks in their place.

This is not including the extra effort if you want to create your own piece of literature, such as our War of Creation story, the Maztican story or any number of personal creative works.

My point is not to poke a nest or upset anyone with this post. We who organize these multi-language lessons understand what its like to not enjoy these lessons. It is boring to sit through walls of text and have no interactive roleplay. And on our end, it's stressful to come up with a new topic each week, to run to every message board on the isle and ensure we have enough supplies for everyone to enjoy / listen / AFK at the lessons.

I would love for there to be a more intuitive method to learn languages, especially for those who only have a couple hours to spare every couple of days to play.
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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Hobojoe » Tue Jul 20, 2021 12:18 am

Apothys wrote:
Sun Jul 18, 2021 11:27 pm

Dont even get me started on the rp implications of why someone would want to learn some of these languages. Its now at a point that noone blinks an eye as certain heavenly or diabolical languages are spoken freely in language lessons in certain settings within arelith or Elves learning the hated Drow speak or vice versa in large groups for example. Of course again this could just be my view on things.
I feel the gamey aspects of learning 15 languages in a single lesson has been well covered, but this didn't get enough light 🙄

I know we're all playing characters outside of normal but it very often feels like very little is taboo, publicly teaching the entire vocabulary of hell should really raise eyebrows, yet very often it's shrugged off as "know your enemy!"
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Re: Language Lessons

Post by The Rambling Midget » Tue Jul 20, 2021 12:51 am

Apothys wrote:
Sun Jul 18, 2021 11:27 pm
Let me know what you think, because i don't know how to act around these events.
Don't attend them.



Yeah, I know they feel strange, but they're absolutely no different from powerleveling your way to 30, as far as "creative utilization of available mechanics".

The problem is that learning a language is a miserable process, which necessarily involves sitting through a lot of gibberish, to learn with any measurable efficiency. If you were to teach realistic language lessons with individual word translations and grammar exercises, fluency would take RL years. Most characters don't last that long. Before this language system was put in place, learning a language involved RPing it for nine months, then receiving a token from the Devs. Not many players were willing to sacrifice so large a chunk of their personal time for that.

Further, Arelith's language system is all or nothing. If you're 99% fluent, you don't have a 1% chance of fumbling a difficult word you aren't sure about, you have a 1% chance of having a stroke and either vomiting gibberish or failing to understand an entire paragraph of text.

The cacophony of languages at large lessons also isn't necessarily about having everyone learn 15 languages at once. Lots of people are learning different languages, and it's unreasonable to expect players of language teachers to put on separate lessons for each individual language. And if the Devs see this as abuse, they can very easily put in additional blocks to prevent characters learning multiple languages at once.

So, the problem isn't the mass lessons, but rather that the current language system almost demands them, if any enjoyment is to be extracted.


As far as whether I think it's "okay", I have to say, meh. If that's how people want to spend their time, fine. It's not hurting anyone who isn't voluntarily going there in search of something to be offended by.
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Re: Language Lessons

Post by LovelyLightningWitch » Tue Jul 20, 2021 4:38 am

I would for one think "RPIng for years/months go get a language" to be a positive feature, rather than a negative one. But I have different perspectives on what I feel as ideal longevity than most here, I guess and such a feature helps push people towards that ideal.

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by DM Monkey » Tue Jul 20, 2021 6:54 am

People attend this sort of thing for different reasons. If you don't like them then don't attend them.

That said, players should always be attempting to build a narrative with others. Simply turning up and spamming out lines or endless nonsense isn't a good thing. If you can hold a language lesson in a constructive way, with creativity and in a way that it continues the stories of the characters involved, then that is great.

Try not to game the systems on Arelith, focus on the story.

Try harder! Help set a good example of roleplay for the server culture.


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Re: Language Lessons

Post by Nitro » Tue Jul 20, 2021 8:13 am

My biggest problem with language lessons is they often get so large, with so many people in the same place that the entire server starts to chug. You can pretty frequently notice a period of lag, look at the schedule and go "Ah, language lesson. Of course."

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Re: Language Lessons

Post by TooManyPotatoes » Wed Jul 21, 2021 6:51 am

Lots of people intersperse their rp with long xp grinds. Its just how people like to play the game.

Language learning is no different... except it is.

Imagine if orclands was the only place you could gain meaningful amounts of xp but it only opened once a week. Now imagine you didnt lose xp per kill for traveling with more than 4 others.

I think we all know that orclands would just become one or two roaming gangs of 50+ players. People would make excuses as to why they werent pvping each other. It would be hilarious. It would be nuts. It would be like a language lesson.

The existence of huge language lessons highlights several flaws with the current system. If you have a problem with the language lessons then you have a problem with the entire language system. And you should.

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