Borderline powergaming with regards to languages

[DasFroggy]

This is actually fun to subvert with realistic language skills - Cara learned Mandarin to spite her father (who, despite being from mainland China, insisted on sharing nothing of his past or heritage with her), but lessons do little to make up for the natural ins and outs of a language and slang learned naturally.

 

As a result, her translations suck, and she struggles to understand some phrases in mandarin. For the sake of fun, other players can intentionally butcher their translations when speaking with Cara in Mandarin too.

 

Sure, knowing what people are saying in a foreign tongue can be fun, but knowing only half of what they are saying can be much more entertaining.

Edited March 13, 2021 by DasFroggy

[heathen]

26 minutes ago, radreaper100 said:

Just be reasonable and use common sense, I like to think everyone in this community is level headed enough and is of integral character to be trusted with something minute as language to add flavor and depth to their character.

Unfortunately that's not the case. Not everybody has good enough of an insight of character portrayal to keep up with some (many) of server's players. While it is minute, it's still groundbreaking with some interactions. My main character is a sureño gang member that botched one or two hits over getting instructions in spanish, when he didn't speak spanish at all. However, you can't expect everyone in this server to fall in line with something that could hinder their character's progression or put them a step behind in a situation, in a server where many people play to "be the very best", as a way to speak. There's a handful of people here who won't want to be a loser.

[NickyW]

There’s really no way to regulate it so my advice is to ignore it when possible and just laugh at people who do it

 

like the person up there who was talking about how they know Russian because their uncle taught them or something lmao. Like some goofy ass uncle knows how to teach someone a language just because he can speak it himself 

 

there’s good role players and bad role players. Part of being a good role player is knowing how to deal with bad ones without affecting you or them in a negative way.

[Torlo]

I am certainly not in favor making any sort of script for languages, that would be awful. However, this does need to be moderated in some sort of way. Your character saying he knows some obscure post soviet language just because his cousin taught him and now he can pick up on drug slang or street language in a language that they learned off hand is absurd. I grew up in a non English speaking household in the United States, and if I heard two random guys using slang to make a drug deal or talk shit about someone I'd have some serious trouble understanding them. Having a causal conversation and being able to decipher street slang in a second language are completely different things. 

[mj2002]

9 minutes ago, Torlo said:

However, this does need to be moderated in some sort of way.

If you suspect someone to not have a good reason to know a certain language you can directly ask the player for an explanation. If you believe that this is still questionable, you can make a /report or a roleplay quality report on the forums.

[suleymeow]

Hey guys, I'd like to contribute to this thread, as I was a witness of the very same situation because we were with him at the time we we encountered such situation.

 

My character is a Tatar who originates from Tatarstan, Russia, and he speaks three languages. It would be pretty reasonable to know three languages as he's an immigrant and knowing Russian is a vital thing in Russia, and Tatar is his native language, and the only reason to learn English for him is to communicate with others.

 

I speak three languages IRL too. English, Russian and Kazakh. I just see no reasons how would a lesbian girl who has a "Russian uncle" that taught her Russian speak that language. You can't learn languages without any practice and most likely would be stuck learning it and just dumping whatever she learned. What makes it more funny, that she can understand what we're saying knowing that we use urban slang with Anton.

 

Something should be done about this, this is pure powergaming and should be punished. Management should add a branch to powergaming rule mentioning languages, and if your character is not polyglot, has an American name or just doesn't match the language you're speaking, it should be punished as it makes it worse everyone. 

 

That's my opinion.

Edited March 13, 2021 by suleymeow

[Stiggz]

You know how it is, man, everyone has to be special. Any language your character would realistically know they also know because “I read a book”. I knew a black man from Davis who said he could speak French once, it’s all just people wanting to be special snowflakes. 

[Tsarna]

It is up to the individual, what languages does he or she speak - what is it your problem to say otherwise? It is all about the backstory, where people come from and what did they do before coming to LS. If people say, that their relatives taught them, then you have to take it on face value, not whine about it. 
Some people even whine about names, that if you have a Balkan name, you can not be from Baltics - sorry, pal, but ya know, people tend to move from some countries to other countries, we are not living in North Korea.
It would be a problem, if people know five-six or more languages fully, then it is questionable, but like people say here, they know English and then max. 2 other languages, which is fully in the scope of normal human learning capacity. I learned Estonian, English, German, Russian and Swedish in school and those all were fine - so it is manageable IRL. 
If you start now micro-managing peoples backstories, where they can not even say, that his relative from some country taught him, or he/she learned it with an APP (DuoLingo, which actually does give people an opportunity to learn languages quite well), then we are in some real idiotic territory. 
And I speak of the large language groups - it would become a problem, if people speak some languages, which are usually not so well-known, but you guys have problem with people speaking Mandarin and Russian... https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world#:~:text=Numbers vary widely — Ethnologue puts,is the one for you.

Edited March 13, 2021 by Tsarna

[Torlo]

16 minutes ago, Tsarna said:

It is up to the individual, what languages does he or she speak - what is it your problem to say otherwise? It is all about the backstory, where people come from and what did they do before coming to LS. If people say, that their relatives taught them, then you have to take it on face value, not whine about it. 
Some people even whine about names, that if you have a Balkan name, you can not be from Baltics - sorry, pal, but ya know, people tend to move from some countries to other countries, we are not living in North Korea.
It would be a problem, if people know five-six or more languages fully, then it is questionable, but like people say here, they know English and then max. 2 other languages, which is fully in the scope of normal human learning capacity. I learned Estonian, English, German, Russian and Swedish in school and those all were fine - so it is manageable IRL. 
If you start now micro-managing peoples backstories, where they can not even say, that his relative from some country taught him, or he/she learned it with an APP (DuoLingo, which actually does give people an opportunity to learn languages quite well), then we are in some real idiotic territory. 
And I speak of the large language groups - it would become a problem, if people speak some languages, which are usually not so well-known, but you guys have problem with people speaking Mandarin and Russian... https://www.babbel.com/en/magazine/the-10-most-spoken-languages-in-the-world#:~:text=Numbers vary widely — Ethnologue puts,is the one for you.

The problem isn't that some random person says they speak Russian, whatever who cares? The issues is that if you are not a native speaker of the language or didn't spend years learning it you're not going to understand the street slang. As I stated myself, I grew up in the united States in a non English speaking household, sure I can speak and understand Serbo-Croatian but there's zero chance in hell I can understand a drug deal or any sort of street slang. 

[Tsarna]

1 minute ago, Torlo said:

The problem isn't that some random person says they speak Russian, whatever who cares? The issues is that if you are not a native speaker of the language or didn't spend years learning it you're not going to understand the street slang. As I stated myself, I grew up in the united States in a non English speaking household, sure I can speak and understand Serbo-Croatian but there's zero chance in hell I can understand a drug deal or any sort of street slang. 

Ye, slang is different. That I agree on. But people try to micro-manage also languages, normal ones, which other people speak, not having no idea about their backstories.