The Language Barrier

[Matt]

Do you think it would be fun to add a "language barrier" between races in a game? It would add a level of challenge to the game I think.

I was thinking a programatically enforced language modifier (probably just a letter-swap) that different races would get different languages. Players speaking the same language would see what they say and others say in english, while players talking in a different language would show as more or less gibberish.

Players could gain skills in some sort to understand the language, and would get one or more letter replaced with the english equivalent with each skill (similar to FFX maybe?)
When the player becomes "fluent" in the language they could speak in either language either using a selector or a markup of some sort.

Using a markup would allow them to speak in more than one language in the same sentence, mixing words.

This would add no additional server strain. The text would be converted to the tongue, sent to the server, then the server would send it to the appropriate clients where ti is either converted to english or left alone.

Questions, comments, or snide remarks please.

I assume the packet the client sends to the server would contain both versions of the message. If you're sending both to the server, then both back to the client, why not have the server convert it so only the packets to the client would be twice as large?

[Kousaten]

I think you would need to account for other languages too, especially those that are in phonetics... symbol based like Chinese and Japanese. Switch a few letters around and unless converted exactly it could really mess things up.

But I'm sure you've thought about that.

[Jacob]

Someone has to say it; "WoW does it!"

I think it adds something cool to a faction based game.

[Mattyw]

Someone has to say it; "WoW does it!"

I think it adds something cool to a faction based game.

Kek. =-p

Yep. Sounds pretty cool especially, the learning part.

[Robin]

Sure it's cool. Unfortunately, you won't get a player-base big enough to have the luxury of isolating your members.

[Mattyw]

Sure it's cool. Unfortunately, you won't get a player-base big enough to have the luxury of isolating your members.

Go advertise on other games & MMO's. =-p

[Liz]

Send messages in plain text. All the players would have to have attributes defining what languages they know anyways, so if needed (if the language isn't known) just encode on the receiving end.

[Andrew]

There was this orpg of MS style long ago that had this.
You could buy books or something to learn other areas languages to speak with them.
It was really cool.