Whitelist languages

[Keira_Feia]

I agree with the fact it'd give admins that much more to sort through. As it stands now people have applications for fluff items, characters, or ban appeals that sit for anywhere from a week to a month without anything being done. If languages are whitelisted you'll either have everyone just speaking common because they don't wanna deal with waiting just to be able to add two extra button presses to their speech, or everyone would be applying and the admins will quickly stop caring on having to deal with an application just because someone wants to meow or chirp.

On a related note, woof language when?

[Scree]

To be honest this is probably only an issue because of people having language-offs over comms, and the occasional edgelord speaking demonic.

edit: maybe we can change the language descriptor to a subtle mock of people who pick demonic just to be cool and dark :p

[Wickedtemp]

To be honest this is probably only an issue because of people having language-offs over comms, and the occasional edgelord speaking demonic.

edit: maybe we can change the language descriptor to a subtle mock of people who pick demonic just to be cool and dark :p

While that's slightly annoying, the suggestion is likely just an attempt to bring, well... More fitting RP to a High RP server. These languages have origins, some are widely spoken, others are spoken only by a small population. So when someone speaks several languages, you'd think there'd be a REASON, a STORY behind it. RP stuff. Backstory. Why would an ordinary Neko know both birdsong and the demonic languages? Why would a naga know both skrellian and catbeast? Gutter and tradeband of course would be widely spoken in general so no whitelist would really be necessary. But for the species-specific languages, I'd support a whitelist for them. It requires that people put just a liiiiittle bit of effort into the backstory of their c.haracter, thus hopefully just making things overall more interesting.

...also it'd stop edgelords from being too edgey

[antsnap2]

If the goal is added realism, this won't work because it's inherently unrealistic. Assuming that every species would be drastically less intelligent than the modern day, and humans the dumbest of all.
If the goal is to improve play, this won't really do much beyond making people jump through hoops and give more power to anyone with access to a translator. IE: Whoever grabs it first.
If the goal is to improve the quality of characters, this isn't going to change anything at all. Improving the characters means improving the people who play them, and extra restrictions aren't the same as role-playing experience. You can still be a very poor quality, horrible character, while fallowing every rule.

Pretty much this, and I have some things to add. I mean it in the nicest way possible when I say this is a bad idea that will hurt creativity and fun. I have a demoness character, and although I slightly roll my eyes when some non-demon Taj speaks it...

1. Their character might have a very good backstory-reason for being able to speak it.

2. I know some languages are physiologically dependent. (e.g. Skrellian, which requires bubble noises). However, just because a character can speak a language, doesn't mean their accent is perfect. Rather, it just means they can speak it well enough to be understood. We can understand Indian and thick Chinese english accents most of the time right? Same deal. It's not hard to make bubble-esque noises, even if you aren't made of jello like Skrells.

3. If we ban it, it prevents chars who ICly just "understand" the language from playing. E.G. I may not be able to make the noises, but I know that the demon word for kill is Borsak'Vlah (just an example, probs isn't true :3).

The biggest reason is what Arbon noted: speaking more than one language isn't unrealistic at all. The only hard part of learning languages is vocab imo, since grammer understanding is built into our brains.

The only reason we normally limit to 2 anyways is for balance as far as I know.

To be honest this is probably only an issue because of people having language-offs over comms, and the occasional edgelord speaking demonic.

edit: maybe we can change the language descriptor to a subtle mock of people who pick demonic just to be cool and dark :p

I'm ok with that. I think the demon race chars usually look down on the non-demon-but-speaks-daemon speakers anyhow.

[Aces]

I am completely in favor of language whitelisting. It irritates me to know end that every security person and their dog knows Gutterband, because they shouldn't. It makes crook RP impossible. I have considered using Tradeband just to be a smartass.

[somekindofpony]

Especially when people just openly growl gutter over the radio. How would those people be employed on a research station if they're that open about their background.

[Vorrarkul]

I'll throw my lot in with the pro-whitelisting, mostly because I tend to restrain what languages my characters know based on what they'd realistically have reason to learn; and even then most of them don't have any second languages. As an example: Lucina knows Tradeband because she's royalty and part of NT for diplomatic purposes; it'd make sense for her to know a trade language with careful intonation and grammar.
And if people can't be bothered to make a simple app for languages, just how important was that language to their character, really?

I'll admit I might just be bothered by the times people use alien languages over the radio, too, so there's a bias there.

EDIT:

Con: Every character would have to wait for an admin to approve it, adding more work for the admins to sort out. Going one step closer to the time when players had to submit a character bio to get in at all.

Just because we whitelist one thing doesn't mean we're going to inevitably slip down the slope and make everything require applications.

[jemli]

I agree on the gutterband thing. I mean, the whole point of the language is basically to be able to speak in code in front of authority figures, and while yes, it could be argued that a security member might be able to pick up on it after a long enough exposure, that defeats the point of it, so the criminals would change their language some more to prevent exactly that.

Whitelisting it would also help keep it from being used by the stupid criminals who blurt it out over public comms. Cause, yeah, doing that is silly.

[Arbon]

Just because we whitelist one thing doesn't mean we're going to inevitably slip down the slope and make everything require applications.

We've already fallen a few rungs down that slope with whitelisting on races, and this would be the next step involved. But this brings up an interesting aspect in that not all languages would need to be whitelisted, only specific restricted ones. SPECIES SPECIFIC languages, IE: the main language that species uses in normal conversation amongst themselves would be beyond stupid to try and whitelist, especially for the reasons given. Hidden, secret languages intentionally designed so that no one outside of a certain circle can understand them? That would be perfect to whitelist. In which Gutterband makes a rather brilliant example.

[Dhaeleena]

Yea, i think doing a whitelist on gutterband and the deamon thing language and maybe vox (since how defuck did u learn vox even) sound good i guees, but some other more common languages from the more common races around the sector like Tajara and Unathi wouldn't have much sense to whitelist.