WvW Alliances - Communication Challenges on EU Servers

[Grimbrok.1897]

Hey folks,

I wanted to address an important issue that I noticed during the beta phase. The beta is going pretty well overall, but there's a huge problem on the EU servers: language diversity. Europe has a ton of languages like German, French, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, and many more.

This makes communication a real struggle. There are plenty of public commanders who either don't feel like it or can't speak English. It makes teamwork and strategic coordination a real pain.

I've got a couple of suggestions on how we could tackle this problem. How about adding a language selection option in the game? Everyone could choose their preferred language and switch to the corresponding language alliance. This way, teams could be formed with better understanding and more effective collaboration.

Another idea would be to merge regional guilds into an alliance. This would mean that players who speak the same language could play together in a common alliance. It would greatly facilitate communication.

Let's put our heads together to find a solution to this issue because we all want to make the most out of the game.

[Zok.4956]

1 hour ago, Grimbrok.1897 said:

I wanted to address an important issue that I noticed during the beta phase. The beta is going pretty well overall, but there's a huge problem on the EU servers: language diversity. Europe has a ton of languages like German, French, English, Portuguese, Spanish, Polish, and many more.

This topic has nothing to do with alliances or world restrucutring. Since Anet started the server-links years ago, linked-servers are mostly multi-language. With the exception of baruch and maybe one or two other servers.

 

1 hour ago, Grimbrok.1897 said:

This makes communication a real struggle. There are plenty of public commanders who either don't feel like it or can't speak English. It makes teamwork and strategic coordination a real pain.

They can continue to write and talk in their own language.  Players should already be used to seeing many different languages in chat that they don't understand themselves.

And important announcements that all players should understand and respond to could read as follows: "[ping target] <number> green/red/blue inner/outer wall/gate <number>%"

Learning some basic words like green/red/blue/inside/outside/wall/gate is possible for everyone. They don't need to write poems in a foreign language.

 

1 hour ago, Grimbrok.1897 said:

How about adding a language selection option in the game?

You can enable a language filter in your chat settings to show only messages in your local language. But then you maybe don't see important announcements in team or map chat.

 

1 hour ago, Grimbrok.1897 said:

Another idea would be to merge regional guilds into an alliance. This would mean that players who speak the same language could play together in a common alliance. It would greatly facilitate communication.

Nobody will forbid you to make a guild or alliance exclusive only in a certain language. But a guild or Alliance is only a part of a server. Servers are and will remain multilingual.

 

1 hour ago, Grimbrok.1897 said:

Let's put our heads together to find a solution to this issue because we all want to make the most out of the game.

On my server I regularly see bilingual leads in English/German with participants who only speak German or only English (or a little bit of both). And there are also leads, with only one language. They can all exist together on the same server. This works pretty well.

 

Edited June 14, 2023 by Zok.4956

[Grimbrok.1897]

47 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

They can continue to write and talk in their own language.  Players should already be used to seeing many different languages in chat that they don't understand themselves.

And important announcements that all players should understand and respond to could read as follows: "[ping target] <number> green/red/blue inner/outer wall/gate <number>%"

Learning some basic words like green/red/blue/inside/outside/wall/gate is possible for everyone. They don't need to write poems in a foreign language.

sure. they can talk in their own language and its it should be no big deal. but the last week it was a big problem. there were many commanders but 3 out of 5 refused to talk in english. they didnt even call anything important in english.

 

51 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

You can enable a language filter in your chat settings to show only messages in your local language. But then you maybe don't see important announcements in team or map chat.

i have no problem seeing other languages - but i have problems with people who dont wanna communicate with everybody in such a team based gamemode.

 

53 minutes ago, Zok.4956 said:

Nobody will forbid you to make a guild or alliance exclusive only in a certain language. But a guild or Alliance is only a part of a server. Servers are and will remain multilingual.

well thats not 100% true. there are servers marked with [DE] or [FR]. sure you wont get in trouble if you are a german playing on france server but there are serveres wich are "designed" to be for a special language.

[Zok.4956]

1 hour ago, Grimbrok.1897 said:

there were many commanders but 3 out of 5 refused to talk in english. they didnt even call anything important in english.

It's not good behavior, but it's their choice if they don't want to play with players who speak different languages. Maybe some players/comms need a little longer on some servers to get used to multiple languages on one server.

 

1 hour ago, Grimbrok.1897 said:

well thats not 100% true. there are servers marked with [DE] or [FR]. sure you wont get in trouble if you are a german playing on france server but there are serveres wich are "designed" to be for a special language.

It's true now.  Sure, some servers were dedicated to specific languages in the past. And have that mark still in their name. But for a couple of years now that server links have been around, that's no longer relevant.

What's the assigned language of a link between a [DE] server and a [FR] server when the [DE] server was linked before with an [INT]-server and several EN-only guilds transfered to the DE-server during the previous link? The answer is: There is no dedicated language for the link.

The german speakers don't understand french and the french speakers don't understand german. But both understand some basic english words. Not enough to discuss Descartes or Kant, but enough to communicate that the home keep is under attack at the water gate.

[Dawdler.8521]

2 hours ago, Zok.4956 said:

The german speakers don't understand french and the french speakers don't understand german.

Going by some of the scout reports I've seen, I'm surprised there are french speakers that understand french. 

But anyway, I really dont understand why Anet didnt just remove the language designations years ago. All the servers non language specific, period. It's not like they stop speaking. And it wont/cant exist if they get world restructure through because any language specific sorting would make it a whole lot more complicated to actually create a team - and it'd be ripe for exploit, just designate the whole bunch of your "allied alliances" as spanish regardless of your nationality and end up on the same team, lol 👍

Edited June 14, 2023 by Dawdler.8521

[Tavin.7450]

I think the idea is great!

There should at least be a preferred language option, even if it ends up working out with the team composition.

Small note:
Here we often talk about people not "wanting" to speak a language.
There is a difference between not wanting to speak a language and not understanding it. 🙂 It is also a difference to understand the important commands and to talk to someone. There is part of a functioning community.  
By the way: my english is not so good, so I use translater 😛 - unfortunately does not go so easily in the game.^^

 

Edited June 18, 2023 by Tavin.7450

[Dawdler.8521]

1 hour ago, Tavin.7450 said:

I think the idea is great!

There should at least be a preferred language option, even if it ends up working out with the team composition.

How would you imagine the feature to work so that it stops intentional stacking by players simply choosing any language that they dont even speak which guarantee them ending up together (or maybe give a 50/50 chance with more language specific teams on the same language)?

I mean I assume that people are not thinking about things like Anet demanding a scanned passport to verify your country of origin, or some sort of language guarantee by an approved government agency before allowing you to click a button in game that says "Spanish" or similar.

I am genuinly curious how it would work.

[Tavin.7450]

In purely technical terms, it actually works in exactly the same way as server selection. Now you will choose a server - with international, or national language. (the same as now also selectable) In the alliance system, you choose this as a single player for yourself, as a member of a WvW guild, this is taken from there and as a member of an alliance counts the choice made there for all members.
There should be only a small option like "preferred language in WvW".
 
The system must now consider only on the basis of this attribut, whether it gets out of it one, or several full teams. If this is not the case, it will be distributed again according to the previous scheme as before, because a team of 80% Spanish and 20% English should be avoided, because 20% of the players have certainly not chosen the now dominant language.
How the players use this, or perhaps also exploit is then again something else.

A guarantee for an assignment to a complete team with this language would not be given but possible.
The main question for me is whether it can be integrated with the previous filter settings in the team building process compatible

automatically translated 🙂

Edited June 18, 2023 by Tavin.7450