Star Wars Galaxies

One of the things that SWG failed to capitalize on, from the very beginning, was to use its language system to promote role playing and to give the game starwarsyness.  Not to mention a role for droids that was seen on screen a plethora of times, and gave Star Wars one of its most memorable catch lines..."I am fluent in over six million forms of communication"

Each race had its own language, and every avatar had the ability to understand, if not speak, a common language, basic, which was the language of the dominate Human race.  The Wookiees coudln't speak anything but their own language, which created a situation that, at the launch of the game, made Wookiees incomprehensible to everyone, at least in spatial.  A /tell of course would get you around this.

The potential of multiple languages created problems for those who were too impatient, or too ignorant, or just too simple minded to get around, so the ability to learn to speak and understand languages was made very close to trivial.  One of the first things you did with a toon was to find a veteran player to learn the languages.  There were a few exceptions...non- Wookiees could not learn to speak Shyriiwook, and non-Twi'leks could not "speak" or understand the lekku language of the Twi'leks. There was no skill point cost associated with languages, but you could INSTANTLY learn an entire language in mere seconds, and there was no barrier aside from those I mentioned before to learning them.  A bug early on allowed everyone to speak Shyriiwook as well as comprehend it which further degraded the language system, although this was corrected.

While this allowed everyone to talk and understand everyone else in spatial, it undermined an entire skill branch of Smuggler (except for the Smuggler's ability to get slightly higher prices for junk from Jawa traders), and it rendered protocol droids utterly useless, even if they were given translation ability in the game.  Which kills off the reason to be for C3PO, who had a real role in the films as a translator.

Imagine, if you will, having a protocol droid by your side, talking to the locals on Dantooine or even a fellow advanced sentient whose language you could not comprehend?  Imagine how delighted the droid engineers would be that their crafted goods had an actual job in the game that nearly everyone would have need of?  One of the problems with droids was that there was no real game play need to have one.  Oh, the probots were pretty good tanks (so good that they were subjected to an endless series of nerfs to make them less and less desirable in combat), and you could put crafting stations in an astromech droid shell, and droids were always good for extra inventory space if you had the right modules installed, but droids initially didn't have much use at all.  You didn't need an R2 unit to get a stubborn door open.  Imagine needing an R2 or R3 unit to open the door to the DWB or multiple doors on the Corellian Corvette...how starwarsy would THAT be!  VERY!

Making it so that languages were instantly understandable and you could, as a human, speak Dosh, Rodian, Bothese, Mon Calmari, Zabrak, and verbal Twi'lek, and could comprehend Shyriiwook, as well as your own language, basic eliminated possiblities for players to use language as a means of quasi-covert communication in spatial, as well as opportunites for social interaction and giving droids a reason to be in the game, and droid engineers a vital role in the cycle of interdependency that was the hallmark of classic SWG.

The problem of Luke exploiting by having two droids called out at once is an exercise I will leave for the reader to grapple with.

I agree. I was lucky enough to have some good rp-ers around me that "learned" the languages to trade etc but would not converse with anyone they did not actually know the language of. SOE/LA could have done more, but they could have with so many things!

I hate to admit this, but the NGE did bring more GCW presence. That I did like about it. I mean being an Imperial officer meant nothing with tons of rebs running around in an Imp player/npc town!!! And as a rebel I wanted to sneak (I played both sides) around always with the chance of being forced out by some jack booted Imp. I really wanted highest level player Imps to have some skill, like under 50% or it would be annoying with a timer, to scan "IDs" and out rebs. But alas that was in a galaxy far, far away.

Droids and, as pointed out, protocol droids in particular would have been fun in a real sense of the SW world. Oh well.

I agree. However I always thought that the purpose for languages was to initiate communication between characters (at least initially) so that players begun to understand how to teach each other new abilities.

But again, I totally agree with you. Languages certainly could have made things much more interesting in the ways that you've described.

This is exactly the type of thing that could be implemented on... erm, private servers, if such things existed.  If they did, and I were to run my own, this would be an idea that I would implement.

Originally posted by SioBabble

Imagine, if you will, having a protocol droid by your side, talking to the locals on Dantooine or even a fellow advanced sentient whose language you could not comprehend?  Imagine how delighted the droid engineers would be that their crafted goods had an actual job in the game that nearly everyone would have need of? 

You didn't need an R2 unit to get a stubborn door open.  Imagine needing an R2 or R3 unit to open the door to the DWB or multiple doors on the Corellian Corvette...how starwarsy would THAT be!  VERY!

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes! I said this myself -- protocol droids don't translate anything! They should have.

The easy solution to this was to make languages cost skill points. Maybe even make "linguist" a prof with a skill tree. You want to learn every language in the game? Become a Master Linguist. (Or a smuggler.)

The second they did that, 90% of the players would have just decided to get by on common and maybe 1 other language. Not worth the SPs.

Meanwhile, my Dancer, would have had another role -- she could have understood everyone and been a translator. And just think of the RP with that.

One thing you never saw in the game was a wookiee talking to person A, who then translated what he said to person B. Never happened, because 99% of all PCs could understand wookiees. This is as UN-Star-Warsy as you can get, considering how in the movies, only Han, and 3PO can understand Chewie.

And R2 units opening doors, hacking computers.. again, YES.

C

*covers ears and eyes* your making me feel nostalgic! The lost potential! It burns!

It's very true that, droids and the like had such a great potential to be capitalized I also think that if they had just spent more time improving and less time changing then the game could have improved so much it really would be just like the movies, I really just want my SWG back now... Or at least something that will keep my mind away from SOE, all these buyouts are making me go insane ugh...

I just would have been content if the droid engineer profession worked at launch since that was what I aspired to be.... *grump*

Lekku communicating as a Twi'leck was fun...esp when someone else and myself would do it for fun just to get to the people around us /evilgrin (/whisper don't tell but most of the time we weren't really saying anything that was a big deal just small talk or laughing at other people's reactions).

My idea for language was much simpler...once one learned the languages all one ever saw on the screen was English.  One lost all the languages.  Now, in real life, my first language is English.  I can understand and speak a little bit of Spanish but, guess what?, I still hear Spanish as Spanish.  Just because I can understand some of what is being said doesn't mean I hear it or speak it as English.  In game, that should have played out as speech bubbles being in the language that was being spoken in and the chat log showing up in English (or whatever language the person's chat log was in).  This should have been the case for EVERYONE that was speaking or understanding an alien language.  In order to see the language of your toon, you had to have alts of a different species, find someone speaking the language of your toon, and go "OH, so that's what my other toon looks like when talking. That's what _____ language looks like."

Now if one wanted to make it so languages were more difficult to learn, only certain people could teach them, and/or you needed a droid for translating purposes, that would just add another level to the game and languages.

I made it a point to NOT learn shyriwook...

Man, those wokiees were insanely angry when I told some person walking by to "Hey you, can you translate what this dirty hairball is saying?"

I got soo many angry tells, calling me everything from Nazi to Racist to well, worse.

And there I was, wearing a Imperial uniform or a stormtrooper armor...And I was supposed to understand the hairballs and treat them nice`?!?!?!