Increase Language Bloat - A Brainstorming Thread

[Kintsugi]

 

One thing I think Bay does better than us is languages. Humanity comes from all over space - there's hundred of billions of Human beings. They inhabit hundreds of planets, come from hundreds of ethnic groups. How many languages do they speak? Three. Not counting Tau Ceti Basic, Humanity speaks three languages. Sol Common. Freespeak. Tradeband. In the future, apparently Humanity forgot how to speak every language that wasn't Mandarin, Hindi, or Latin. I know some people will complain about bloat, but I think that language is an exceptional tool when it comes to characterizing people.

Bay has a total of nine languages that Humanity speaks - potentially more, but it's nine at the very least. Gutter is an option too, but isn't available for the character I made. Language changes based on background.

To demonstrate why I think more is better, let me provide a personal example - I have a headcanon Solarian colony that was established by Eastern European settlers. On Aurora, I've had to make up a bullshit regional language - based off of Tradeband. On Bay, I'd have a far more logical option - I'd use Pan-Slavic. 
Think about it - why have Elyrans speak Tau Ceti Basic when they could speak Prototype Standard Arabic? Why have everyone in the Coalition speak a single language when the Coalition is supposed to be ultra-diverse?

 

Ultimately this is something for the lore team, and I know their attention is elsewhere right now, but... Imagine how much more interesting characterization could be on Aurora, if your Dominians and Elyrans and Eridanians spoke their own languages.

 

EDIT: As a clarification, I am not saying we should have a 1:1 port of Bay's languages. I just think we should have more than what we have right now.

Edited May 16, 2020 by DanseMacabre

[DeadLantern]

scarab language

[furrycactus]

As much as I abhor Bay, I personally have to agree that more human languages would be a boon, at least in my opinion. My other human lore colleagues may disagree though, and I imagine development staff will be considerably against it as well, however.

[Boggle08]

I get the impression that the lore team is retardedly occupied right now, but having additional languages at least for a few major human factions would be fantastic. Everything being a dialect of tradeband, freespeak, sol common, or ceti basic is a duct-tape solution for many planets and factions, especially Dominia, Elyra, and the Scarabs.

Edited May 16, 2020 by Boggle08

[Roostercat]

For me, there are two sides to this. 

1, I feel that Dominia and Elyra should absolutely have their own languages, with Tradeband being secondary. It makes sense that they would have different languages and all the different human spots in the universe all revolving around three languages is a bit strange.

2, Adding more languages i feel would make the radio a hellhole. We already have people only talking in sol and cats that only mrowl. This might amplify that.

[Kintsugi]

1 minute ago, Roostercat said:

2, Adding more languages i feel would make the radio a hellhole. We already have people only talking in sol and cats that only mrowl. This might amplify that.

As someone who detests radio-language shenanigans, I don't think this will amplify them. If anything, it may make it less prevalent? If people aren't as pigeonholed with their language choices, they may not be able to join in, because the radiotalkers aren't speaking a language they know.,

[VVipEdout]

Languages aren't terribly complicated codewise, as far as I can tell, so implementation can't be an issue. Eridani (West African heritage), the Scarabs (multicultural cultural isolation) and Dominia (lizard town) in particular would benefit a lot.

As far as secret language club memes go, why not use mutual intelligibility? TCB is practically Esperanto, iirc, and Tradeband is about as much of a bastard child of every Romance language.

[Kintsugi]

2 minutes ago, ChloralCocktails said:

Languages aren't terribly complicated codewise, as far as I can tell

 

Can confirm, even I could implement them. They're quite simple, ultimately.

[Owen]

I've held the opinion that there should be more human languages that can be selected. When I returning into SS13 after a while of being away, I did check out Bay for a bit and was drawn to the number of language options that were present. 

I recall that some time ago here, we had that suggestion to implement even just variations of Sol Common, though having an Elyran language (some sort of colonial Arabic mixed with other local languages), Scarab religion, etc. Those would all be nice I feel. It helps show the variety in humans, rather than just once unified bloc. 

[canon35]

Hard agree. We should have a colonial arabic language for Elyra, a language that the scarab leaders developed to help unite their community, and anything else that would make sense to be it's own thing. I don't really see it as bloat to add more languages and to develop that part of these cultures more. 

[Caelphon]

Language bloat would be amazing.

 

+1

[Wigglesworth Jones]

I think extra languages would add a lot. 

[Carver]

Sol Common remains one of the most disgustingly terrible things ever written in the history of science fiction. I'd support more variety (I'd say real life languages but those can be RPed well enough, though it doesn't mean I'm averse to them) to draw away from the ridiculous concept of 'only one language used in Sol'.

[nonno_anselmo]

Blus 1

More languages for races outside of sol would be nice and having my dominian be understood by an e*idani feels weird.

[Codename: Bear]

More languages would be nice.

Also I miss Gutter being called Gutter

[Kaed]

I'm against this because I think only xeno races should get nice things.  Humans suck.

To elaborate: Humans already have the immense advantage of being socially dominant in our setting, and the most common damn race on the server, because they're the only generally available one without whitelists.  They should be, ideally, a beginner species that doesn't have a pile of distinct lore, languages and mechanics to memorize and conflict with on.  That should be saved for the races that need to be whitelisted.  Most of the xeno races even barely have more than 2 languages available specific to that race, so adding half a dozen extra human languages would only serve to make it even harder to have a common species-specific language you can share with other humans.  This is bloat for the sake of itself, which is not good.

Edited June 17, 2020 by Kaed

[Codename: Bear]

I see what you're saying Kaed and  can accept everything else but this bit really

57 minutes ago, Kaed said:

 that doesn't have a pile of distinct lore,

Still I do see your point on the languages. It could bloat humies then bloat everyone and it's just a mess. However, I would argue we would all be united by the TCB being what it is the Basic Language for literally everyone.

[Carver]

1 hour ago, Kaed said:

Most of the xeno races even barely have more than 2 languages available specific to that race, so adding half a dozen extra human languages would only serve to make it even harder to have a common species-specific language you can share with other humans.  This is bloat for the sake of itself, which is not good.

Is this a bad thing? The most fascinating part of humanity is being as diverse within itself as the xenos outside are to it. Multiple languages and further differences within the vastness of humans I think is a brilliant point to add to conflict: Knowing the man next to you doesn't share a language, a culture or possibly even the same loyalties.

To see them as a beginner species I also find to be a terrible point of view, as it'd imply you're ever intended to 'progress' onto other species. They're in many ways a 'customisable blank slate', with a bare enough 'start' for new players to settle into and a greater 'ceiling' of depth than any other species due to having thousands of years of real life lore one can draw upon for inspiration. A face doesn't need to be inherently alien to be distinct from the rest.

[Kaed]

48 minutes ago, Carver said:

To see them as a beginner species I also find to be a terrible point of view, as it'd imply you're ever intended to 'progress' onto other species. 

That is how I see them, yes. They're a low effort barely canonbound race that you can get away with playing basically anything you want because any almost any personality type and behavior can be explained away as 'human', owing to the fact that they are the same species as we are outside the roleplay.  You barely even need to read the lore to join as a human, you can just coast by talking to people like yourself and not getting involved in anything lore related.

The thousands of years of depth you speak of is an illusion, because a human player is rarely likely to explore earth-based cultures outside of their own because this is not the medium for it - it's a cold, sterile space station in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and you didn't have to spend any time learning about where you are.  You don't have to spend time reading a lore page and writing a short essay about a culture, because you are your aping own culture, and most players are US or European. How many humans on server do you see that aren't the default caucasian skin tone or slightly darker, with something more exotic than brightly colored hair or a non-anglo flavored name, like Fernando Gonzalez or Kim Sung?  I can't think of the name a single human character that was darker than a latte, even though we've got the tools for it.

And why would they? What is to be gained by playing an out of place spacebound Brazilian, or Inuit, or Iranian?  We are not playing in the location or time where any of those cultures have still relevance, and it would make very little sense for there to be a population of Tau Ceti people who remember what it was like to live in Russia or China when their family lines have not lived in the Sol system, much less Earth, for over a century. So the most you can do is claim to be distantly related to the culture we as players know today, and maybe quote some passages from the Quran or something to emphasize that you are playing a Muslim character or whatever. Whee.

You can't explore a culture that you exist outside of without reading a lot about it and having a deep interest in it, and xeno races require you to do both of those things before you can even play one.  Their cultures exist as they are now and are distinct on their own as they are, and you can dive right in and make something different from how you would normally act. There's not a thousand years of varying religions and languages and cultures to muddle everything up, it's been very streamlined to tell you how playing an unathi or tajaran is NOW, and give you options on active sects of that xeno culture to play as and/or subvert.

Streamlined is not a bad thing.  If you bloat everything up with two many options, everything becomes a confused, discordant mess as all the languages mean to anyone is which flavor of snowflake language you want to pick. There's a reason many roleplaying games almost always give playable races a single unique language, or two at worst - no one wants to keep up with shit like knowing the difference between High Elven, Wood Elven, Gutter Elven, and Jungle-Elf, +6 others just because they chose to play an elf.  Elves speak 'Elven', unless they're a drow, and humans speak 'Common', as does pretty much everyone else except random monsters.  

[Codename: Bear]

6 minutes ago, Kaed said:

-snip-

How does any of that not pertain to aliums?

I get it aliens are whitelist and you're supposed to read, but some people just like doing that and enjoy expanding things. Some people enjoy making human characters, and I know the meme from most whitelist owners is "humans bad rpers/bad characters/bad whatever" but I've hardly honestly seen that JUST FOR HUMANS. People would enjoy expanding the lore and vocabulary of humanity there isn't really anything that could be said against that IMO. At least not in the "cultural" gap you are arguing.

Perhaps expansions to all the species could come from it as well.

Edited June 17, 2020 by Codename: Bear
addendum

[Kaed]

6 minutes ago, Codename: Bear said:

How does any of that not pertain to aliums?

I get it aliens are whitelist and you're supposed to read, but some people just like doing that and enjoy expanding things. Some people enjoy making human characters, and I know the meme from most whitelist owners is "humans bad rpers/bad characters/bad whatever" but I've hardly honestly seen that. People would enjoy expanding the lore and vocabulary of humanity there isn't really anything that could be said against that IMO.

Perhaps expansions to all the species could come from it as well.

I don't think giving them a bunch of extra snowflake languages is going to help with that.  You need more than adding a half dozen of what amount secret club code languages to the roster to encourage people to explore new things - all this will result in is subcliques of humans who band together because they can talk the in special tongue that the outsiders can't.

[Codename: Bear]

Just now, Kaed said:

I don't think giving them a bunch of extra snowflake languages is going to help with that.  You need more than adding a half dozen of what amount secret club code languages to the roster to encourage people to explore new things - all this will result in is subcliques of humans who band together because they can talk the in special tongue that the outsiders can't.

So humanity will be just like most aliens. </s>

 

Eh, I guess I can see that point. The more you add the more it will make cliques, but honestly cliques will sadly just happen in servers like these. I do see a point in not encouraging it though.

[Carver]

16 minutes ago, Kaed said:

That is how I see them, yes. They're a low effort barely canonbound race that you can get away with playing basically anything you want because any almost any personality type and behavior can be explained away as 'human', owing to the fact that they are the same species as we are outside the roleplay.  You barely even need to read the lore to join as a human, you can just coast by talking to people like yourself and not getting involved in anything lore related.

Versatility is a virtue in this case.

16 minutes ago, Kaed said:

The thousands of years of depth you speak of is an illusion, because a human player is rarely likely to explore earth-based cultures outside of their own because this is not the medium for it - it's a cold, sterile space station in the middle of bumfuck nowhere, and you didn't have to spend any time learning about where you are.  You don't have to spend time reading a lore page and writing a short essay about a culture, because you are your aping own culture, and most players are US or European. How many humans on server do you see that aren't the default caucasian skin tone or slightly darker, with something more exotic than brightly colored hair or a non-anglo flavored name, like Fernando Gonzalez or Kim Sung?  I can't think of the name a single human character that was darker than a latte, even though we've got the tools for it.

How is the bolded text even remotely related to any of this? Are you placing the value of a human character on their own skin colour?

18 minutes ago, Kaed said:

And why would they? What is to be gained by playing an out of place spacebound Brazilian, or Inuit, or Iranian?  We are not playing in the location or time where any of those cultures have still relevance, and it would make very little sense for there to be a population of Tau Ceti people who remember what it was like to live in Russia or China when their family lines have not lived in the Sol system, much less Earth, for over a century. So the most you can do is claim to be distantly related to the culture we as players know today, and maybe quote some passages from the Quran or something to emphasize that you are playing a Muslim character or whatever. Whee.

And yet you dismiss human culture whilst shilling for xeno culture, which by all right, would be as virtually irrelevant within the confines of the station and Tau Ceti? To assume people would not uphold their family's old cultures or traditions is folly, as most anyone can attest to by looking at near any modern country. It also makes the assumption (again) that every human character comes from the same stock, roleplayed to the same quality or lack thereof that may be present in any other species.

22 minutes ago, Kaed said:

You can't explore a culture that you exist outside of without reading a lot about it and having a deep interest in it, and xeno races require you to do both of those things before you can even play one.  Their cultures exist as they are now and are distinct on their own as they are, and you can dive right in and make something different from how you would normally act. There's not a thousand years of varying religions and languages and cultures to muddle everything up, it's been very streamlined to tell you how playing an unathi or tajaran is NOW, and give you options on active sects of that xeno culture to play as and/or subvert.

Miraculously, this applies equally well to real cultures if not better due to the aforementioned thousands of years of history. I can draw upon dozens to hundreds of sources learning classic literature, customs and more about the myriad of documented groups. Compared to a rather simple few wiki pages that a whitelistee may need to read before they're accepted.

25 minutes ago, Kaed said:

Streamlined is not a bad thing.  If you bloat everything up with two many options, everything becomes a confused, discordant mess as all the languages mean to anyone is which flavor of snowflake language you want to pick. There's a reason many roleplaying games almost always give playable races a single unique language, or two at worst - no one wants to keep up with shit like knowing the difference between High Elven, Wood Elven, Gutter Elven, and Jungle-Elf, +6 others just because they chose to play an elf.  Elves speak 'Elven', unless they're a drow, and humans speak 'Common', as does pretty much everyone else except random monsters.  

Streamlining is made for tabletops, not for heavy roleplay where you're liable to play a character for weeks, if not months, if not years. 'Customisable blank slates' in the form of humanity are intended to offer both the streamline you desire, as well as a near-infinite ceiling for growth and variety. Your 'streamlined' language is Ceti Basic, it gets the job done in every round without any fuss.

Cliques are also a fucking piss-poor excuse, and if you desire to avoid them then we wouldn't have any languages or different species to begin with. Language-based cliques have the funny effect of being the easiest for any player to get into - just create a character whom speaks it, you're in, bravo.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Language in the past was primarily based on class. You can tell a lot about a character's background by the language they are speaking.

Language is also a powerful method of reinforcing social groups. Language is one of the important elements of expressing a character's culture, alongside clothing for the sprite. Call it a clique or not, but friend groups in-character more often than not share a language. Creating more languages with our limited slots will make these groups smaller in size and more numerous. It could be interesting. The break up of the major languages for humanity would reinforce the importance of basic so that would be neat. Or superfluous. Do we have any data on the languages on Bay and its impact on anything?

Edited June 17, 2020 by Marlon Phoenix

[Kintsugi]

On 16/06/2020 at 19:58, Kaed said:

I'm against this because I think only xeno races should get nice things.  Humans suck.

To elaborate: Humans already have the immense advantage of being socially dominant in our setting, and the most common damn race on the server, because they're the only generally available one without whitelists.  They should be, ideally, a beginner species that doesn't have a pile of distinct lore, languages and mechanics to memorize and conflict with on.  That should be saved for the races that need to be whitelisted.  Most of the xeno races even barely have more than 2 languages available specific to that race, so adding half a dozen extra human languages would only serve to make it even harder to have a common species-specific language you can share with other humans.  This is bloat for the sake of itself, which is not good.

I absolutely detest the notion that Humans should be undermaintained and treated as a secondary species that is unimportant and only exists to facilitate training players to play xenos. It is utterly nonsensical to suggest that we would be better off by not giving distinct lore, languages, and mechanics to Humans - ultimately we play in a Human setting, and by making Human lore as minor and unimportant and easy to understand we would be making our very setting less interesting and enjoyable - because we don't play in alien space. This suggestion is not "bloat for the sake of bloat" . It is to make the predominant species represented in our lore more diverse, dynamic, and interesting. After all, they are the most common race on the server, like you said. And why would we not focus most of our work and attention to what most of the playerbase plays as?

 

It is statements such as this that illustrates why SS13 species have long had problems with elitist and cliqueish behavior.

Edited June 18, 2020 by DanseMacabre