Animal Language Character Restriction

[triaddraykin]

Per heavy suggestion, I'm making a feedback thread on the recent change to Animal Language, limiting it to 25 characters.

Unlike thieves' cant, Animal Language doesn't have a supporting reason behind it's use, as an alternative to Common. Those speaking the language have no more reason to use it than Common, other than limiting the number of people who can understand what they're saying, as with the other languages. With this change, and with no need for it to be used in comparable situations such as the secrecy of Thieves Cant, it's likely to fade into disuse.

I think alternatives to this change would be allowing emotes to not count towards the limit, or even expanding it to a more reasonable 50 characters. For clarity, even saying "Do you understand this?" runs right to the limit of what you can use it for, now.

[Ork]

'''' ''''''' '''''''''.

[Red Ropes]

Thieves Cant, Animal Language, and Sign are all languages that have been considered for either removal or "reshaping" in how they currently exist.

AR did the work but I'm the man behind the concept there. Speaking to animals is a staple in DnD and some races have inherent kinships with particular types of animals.

I for one have never been about full removal of most languages, however, and especially since Druidic and various other languages that were used as a placeholders now exist it needed to be taped down to being less obnoxious.

One should never be asking deep, philosophical questions to animals. The intention is with the limitation to keep "animal chatter" in whatever form it takes to simple things. "Hungry? Anger!" and so forth, sensible things that creatures of animal sapience can contend with.

It might get touched up (and other other languages may receive their own chopping block and or renovations) in the future.

[Gouge Away]

IMO Animal language is completely unnecessary.

I think Animal empathy should cover the "speak with animals" part of being a druid. Otherwise there's not really any situation where you can speak to an animal aside from DM possessed NPCs and wildshaped druids which... aren't actually animals.

It probably never should have been something PCs use to communicate since it will always be used as a way to obfuscate something that should have been expressed in a traditional language. Even if you limit it to 50 characters that just means you'll get the same paragraphs of text just split into more lines.

We now have sylvan which could cover any other natural communication. Maybe druids should speak that instead of animal, likewise rangers with a nature deity.

[matheusgraef]

IMO Animal language is completely unnecessary.

I think Animal empathy should cover the "speak with animals" part of being a druid. Otherwise there's not really any situation where you can speak to an animal aside from DM possessed NPCs and wildshaped druids which... aren't actually animals.

It probably never should have been something PCs use to communicate since it will always be used as a way to obfuscate something that should have been expressed in a traditional language. Even if you limit it to 50 characters that just means you'll get the same paragraphs of text just split into more lines.

We now have sylvan which could cover any other natural communication. Maybe druids should speak that instead of animal, likewise rangers with a nature deity.

I disagree completely. I've used and seen animal language be used amazingly - I'm not talking about philosophical conundrums, I'm talking about punctual, beast-like chatter, used by rangers, druids, firbolgs, polymorphed players, companions and alike.

It should not be removed and perhaps the change was too drastic but saying "their fun is wrong" is not very nice at all.

tl;dr I agree with OP, animal language does need a rework but the change is far too limiting specially with the tiny character count.

[Halibutthead]

I disagree completely. I've used and seen animal language be used amazingly - I'm not talking about philosophical conundrums, I'm talking about punctual, beast-like chatter, used by rangers, druids, firbolgs, polymorphed players, companions and alike.

i bet other people would enjoy that fantastical and wonderful animal language use, if it didn't look like ''''' '''' ''''''' '''

[matheusgraef]

I disagree completely. I've used and seen animal language be used amazingly - I'm not talking about philosophical conundrums, I'm talking about punctual, beast-like chatter, used by rangers, druids, firbolgs, polymorphed players, companions and alike.

i bet other people would enjoy that fantastical and wonderful animal language use, if it didn't look like ''''' '''' ''''''' '''

You have a good point. '''''''' looks kind of jarring, and doesn't really communicate anything. Which is why I've seen many players emoting whilst animal-speaking. However this update kind of ruins that. *emotes* count towards the 25 character limit, meaning that you'd have to switch to common to emote, then back to animal language to say your few words. Kind of awkward, imo.

It'd be good if emoting didn't count towards the 25 character limit. But I still think it should be increased to 40-50.

[Kalgoon]

Is it possible for sentences in Animal Language to automatically remove prepositions and substitute words? Like, there might not be an animal language word for contract, deal, or agreement but from an animal's perspective they would just see the people "talk".

This would leave a lot of animal language open to interpretation but would also simplify the language. Problem is then that a database of words to be replaced has to be created.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

Please revert this. It's annoying. It just forces me to post twice to do a one word emote and say a single sentence. Actual good detailed emotes and RP as animals is impossible now.

[Mattamue]

Otherwise there's not really any situation where you can speak to an animal aside from DM possessed NPCs...

Kind of powerful to use with -investigate when you're tracking. I assume the NPCs won't get truncated...

[Vaeldria]

Getting a lot of this sort of stuff now.

Are there any sort of clarifications for the types of languages one should be using in shapeshifted forms? Should we just be talking common as an animal, then? What about druidic, is that acceptable?

[The Rambling Midget]

Are there any sort of clarifications for the types of languages one should be using in shapeshifted forms? Should we just be talking common as an animal, then? What about druidic, is that acceptable?

I can't speak for the staff, but I think the idea is that you're not meant to be having long, deep philosophical discussions about the nature of life and the universe while in animal form. Animal language is, by nature, simple. It's meant for communication between creatures that don't have the mental capacity to speak with human complexity, by which I mean that their brains lack anything more than a rudimentary speech center.

I would say that if you're going to be shapeshifted, use emotes to express your intentions, or keep your statements very short and very simple. You can quickly and easily switch back and forth between common and animal with prefixes before your emotes and speech. And if you want to have a more complex conversation, switch back. Druids aren't really meant to be played as full time animals.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

We can't even make short simple emotes or sentences. Look at this.

This is horrible. Please revert.

[Inordinate]

That number of characters is hilariously short. If it's going to be limited at least be reasonable with the cap.

[skellyboi]

Animal language isn't meant to be used for even sentences as long as your screenshot. It's a simple method of communication, in animal sounds. You shouldn't be able to speak eloquently, or in long sentences. It would be single words, or pairs of words at best. Animals aren't capable of full-on speech. This change makes total sense.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

I guess now totem druids have a reasonable excuse to be lazy with their RP and to one-line people they don't like in PVP. Can't exactly tell them to emote and be descriptive when they are mechanically prevented from doing so. This change can only make RP worse it won't do anything to make it better. People who want to have conversations in animal form still will they'll just use sylvan or play talking animals or flood chat with tons of short choppy interrupted posts and broken emotes.

[AstralUniverse]

Thieves Cant, Animal Language, and Sign are all languages that have been considered for either removal or "reshaping" in how they currently exist.

AR did the work but I'm the man behind the concept there. Speaking to animals is a staple in DnD and some races have inherent kinships with particular types of animals.

I for one have never been about full removal of most languages, however, and especially since Druidic and various other languages that were used as a placeholders now exist it needed to be taped down to being less obnoxious.

One should never be asking deep, philosophical questions to animals. The intention is with the limitation to keep "animal chatter" in whatever form it takes to simple things. "Hungry? Anger!" and so forth, sensible things that creatures of animal sapience can contend with.

It might get touched up (and other other languages may receive their own chopping block and or renovations) in the future.

I understand that the logic here is that if players are limited to fewer characters it sort of encourages them to keep the content of their text simple and more in line with what animal language should contain but I think it is a bit too few characters as is and really short now. Perhaps the limit could be raised a bit? It wouldnt be beyond the realms of the same logic that animal language is more complex than somatic languages.

[Vaeldria]

I can't speak for the staff, but I think the idea is that you're not meant to be having long, deep philosophical discussions about the nature of life and the universe while in animal form. Animal language is, by nature, simple. It's meant for communication between creatures that don't have the mental capacity to speak with human complexity, by which I mean that their brains lack anything more than a rudimentary speech center.

I would say that if you're going to be shapeshifted, use emotes to express your intentions, or keep your statements very short and very simple. You can quickly and easily switch back and forth between common and animal with prefixes before your emotes and speech. And if you want to have a more complex conversation, switch back. Druids aren't really meant to be played as full time animals.

It raises further questions and implications about the nature of languages and various forms, and there doesn't seem to be a go-to guide for how that information is meant to be presented.

For example, I can shift into a Gargoyle, Harpy, Manticore- what level of speech would each one of those creatures be expected to have? Previously, Animal Language was a useful clutch as the implications were much clearer mechanically, but now my character suddenly feels like a mute in animal forms.

Still, I can't imagine this change affects many people overall, and if that's the direction they want to go so be it, I'm just against it myself for the above reasons and figured it was better to say something rather than nothing at all.

[Miaou]

Adding in that this makes roleplaying in a nature-based settling much more difficult. For druids and shifters, animal language has always been the preferred language that even staff has nudged players to use when taking the form of an animal that can't speak normal languages. I feel like this is a roundabout way to deal with an issue and spawns many more.

As is, I like some of the feedback and suggestions (And was going to make my own feedback thread commenting on this). The biggest issue I have is the limitation on emotes while under the animal language. I am very emote heavy when using animal language to show that some of it is via body language and expressions that can help convey whatever is being said. Normally, the actual conversational part is short. This requires me to split up my emotes and go to common, then switch back to Animal to say whatever it was. Constantly switching language commands can get tedious and annoying, and mistakes are bound to happen. I don't feel like this is a well designed "fix" to stopping a certain type of useage.

[WanderingPoet]

I agree with the OP, and agree that the screenshot shows why this change is really no good. If it counts emotes then doing 25 characters is silly. It makes sense for thieves' can't because at least then you're not emoting, as it emotes (though honestly I wish I could emote, as the thieves can't emotes are really silly and obvious).

Speaking beyond that though, speaking from the study of linguistics, there is no reason to limit it to 25 characters.

1) Druids (at least) often use magic to communicate with the animals, magic can easily convey more meaning.

2) Linguistically speaking, words have different meaning in different contexts. Inuktitut has at least 10 different words to describe snow, while in English we describe snow using adjectives and verbs. Languages among 'intelligent' species vary greatly in how different sounds mean different things. Therefore there is no reason to believe that animal language lacks complexity just because 'animals dumb har har'. They may lack words for complex thoughts but that isn't the same as lacking words to describe the world.

This would be like claiming that goblins shouldn't have a word for 'star' because they live in a cave and are low int. There is no reason to assume that a bear can't say "I am hungry for fish" vs "I am hungry for berries."; and even less reason to assume that a druid/ranger can't communicate such. Further, it actually limits more realistic words, like an animal is more likely to refer to the "Sun" as the "warmth above", conveying the concept rather than the proper noun.

3) All animals (humans included) speak with body language, and limiting emotes limits the communication. Furthermore, it can be assumed that the 'spoken' part incorporates part of that body language (just as when you speak common your character isn't standing there unmoving just because you didn't emote).

So it would be best to raise the limit to 50 or 75, or remove the limit entirely. We shouldn't punish people using animal correctly just because some people want to talk philosophy as an animal. Further it doesn't stop anyone from doing so, it is just annoying.

[Hedgehog]

As a person who loves to write emotes, especially in animal form, this change hurts!


Please undo, or exclude things in asterisks or brackets from the character limit! Thank you.

[Skibbles]

I like the spirit of the change, but the fiddly nature of emotes makes it less palatable.

Personally speaking I preferred the actual overuse of emotes while speaking animal as I thought it was more important to convey how it was being used rather than what was being said.

Characters being assumed to be barking and growling always seemed just too silly to me compared to the subtlety of expression that you'd think would probably be almost exclusively the method.

Big hope that emotes are not part of the character limit if that's possible. Switching to common to emote and communicate nothing, then back to animal to get the words out, again and again, could bring a sense of urgency to a conversation that will sacrifice the RP for expediency.

Also dropping this here: viewtopic.php?f=15&t=30187&hilit=Animal+empathy

Less people using animal chatter simply by having less people have it (though being in certain forms giving it to you naturally can still be neat though ripe for abuse too - then again it's already the case I don't really see people reaching for their polymorph wand to talk to animals very often or at all) can also be a solution.

[Nevrus]

I think at the end of the day, this a role-play server built around interacting with other characters.

This directly hurts shape-shifting druids' capacity to interact with other characters.

Therefore, this is harmful to RP.

Totems can no longer have conversations in dungeons, with other druids or rangers. Or while walking around. They literally lose the ability to RP while doing the thing they are mechanically set up to do without shifting in and out of their form constantly.

I get the flavor reasoning behind it, but like... There needs to be some concession made here for the sake of interactivity.

I need to say this again. The primary thing we do on this server is talk to people. We should not be taking that away.

[Nitro]

Limitations =/= harmful to RP. Limitations are good for creativity. If limitations to who and how people interact were blanket bad for RP then surely we should allow drow to host debates in Cordor and remove the language system entirely so everyone can understand each other.

I can't even begin to count the number of times I've seen rangers and druids carrying out long winded discussions entirely in animal, not even necessarily in animal shape. I wholly support animal language being given the thieves cant treatment, short functional messages with unnecessary words stripped out to convey as much meaning as possible with as few words as possible.

Though the fact that it also restricts emotes is a bit silly. A workaround would be swapping to a different language for emotes, but it would be nice to see emotes exempt from the 25 character limit.

[NPC Logger Number 2]

Limitations =/= harmful to RP. Limitations are good for creativity.

Trying to argue that limiting our ability to emote does not harm RP is just absurd, to put it nicely. The fact that *the red fox chases its own tail running around in circles* has to be broken up into two separate posts and that the emote will probably be broken so that most people can't even understand it so that the poster will have to type it again in a non-broken format or send tells to clarify what they just did to everyone present is just.... It's just dumb.

Edit: Also, I doubt any of the "animals can't talk" people have actually studied whales or dolphins, animals which have incredibly complex languages that may even be too complex for the feeble human brain to ever translate.