Pathfinder Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Xor]

Also Deadfire translations

Just because you found a bad official translation, it doesn't necessarily relate with the difficulty of translating something. Tyranny unlike Pillars of Eternity had a good translation, even though this was a smaller game in size and scope.

But let's take that aside, your whole argument centres on: making good translations costs a lot of effort, and a lot of money. However, there are countless RPGs that have been translated by fans with excellent results in small frames of time. If literally one tiny group of people can translate a game for free, out of simple goodwill, what is stopping a company, not for free, but with payment included to do a good translation? It's one thing that they can't and it's another that they don't want to.

So, while no company is forced to make any translation to any language, there is also no reason to try to sell that a company with the money in the hand is uncapable, instead of unwilling, to translate it to another language.

I just grabbed the English dialog from Kingmaker from the game's data files and isolated just the text. It's about 1,500,000 words. Apparently the industry standard for professional translators is about 12 cents a word, which would come to $180,000, and that's not even getting into editing and QA. We're not talking about an insignificant amount of money.

Now, that json file is probably baked by a program and probably has a ton of redundant words in it that wouldn't need to be translated multiple times; I don't know how many, only Owlcat would. But even if you lowball the total cost, would the profit from sales in Portuguese be worth that much? I don't see it.

 

[Tigranes]

This must be from the same brain bucket where "hey guys why dont u just get ur fans to do all the voiceover for ur game!!!!" people rent their cells.

 

[LannTheStupid]

No worries, Angolan fans will translate the game for free, and those Brazilians who survived favela wars would use it as well.

 

[Ontopoly]

View attachment 12383

What the fuck? Someone tell Tom Senior "PoE" stands for Pillars of Eternity.

Gaming "journalism". Is there a single reporter we can trust? Even the reviewers, people literally paid to play games for a living don't know anything about mechanics because they only ever play on easy so they can push out a couple reviews a month. I'm glad I have you guys.

 

[Drowed]

I wouldn't have been able to do that if it wasn't for game translations with a lot of text. The best part of the whole thing is that games have actual, non-adapted texts in your target language while breaking it up with gameplay, making it impossible for you to overwhelm yourself, especially since you can tailor the difficulty with the type of game you choose, and gives you time to process the information.

Honest question, Lacrymas: how exactly does playing the game in your native language make you learn a different language? I'm having trouble with that concept.

In my case, I learned English by playing games in English - my native language is Portuguese. So obviously, I ended up learning a new language because I was literally "forced" to deal with that new language while playing. In that sense, yes, the context and the events helped me to gradually understand the meaning of certain words. Playing helped me a lot to learn the language, although I have some difficulty in writing sometimes. But for reading, I consider myself fluent. I can even watch videos or movies without subtitles without problems.

But let's say that the developers translated the whole game into Portuguese. How will that make me learn English, or any other language? The game is all in my native language, I literally have no contact with English when playing the game, so where exactly will this learning come from? I can't see where this argument makes sense.

If you want to say that translations are a way to broaden the audience of a game and maybe even democratize access... All right, really, I'd even agree with you on that. Although I think if you're on the internet, learning English is the minimum.

 

[Lacrymas]

$180,000, and that's not even getting into editing and QA. We're not talking about an insignificant amount of money.

I really doubt they are paying that much. PF:KM is available in 5 languages, i.e. it comes with 4 translations. Let's say editing and QA costs $20k for easy math, that would mean they've spent $800,000 for translations alone. That's not realistic.

I wouldn't have been able to do that if it wasn't for game translations with a lot of text. The best part of the whole thing is that games have actual, non-adapted texts in your target language while breaking it up with gameplay, making it impossible for you to overwhelm yourself, especially since you can tailor the difficulty with the type of game you choose, and gives you time to process the information.

Honest question, Lacrymas: how exactly does playing the game in your native language make you learn a different language? I'm having trouble with that concept.

Playing the game in your target language, not your native one.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Time-limited decisions are gone too - apperently players absolutely hated them.

l o l

We come one step closer to decline every day. I can't even imagine what gaming will be like in 20 years. They will probably put a feature on Steam where it just gives you all the achievements and even 1000 hours played because "there's nothing wrong with giving people choices"

I can see people getting frustrated with everything in Kingmaker being on a timer but I thought it gave a great sense of urgency when normally the main plot of an RPG conveys fake urgency with no consequences for ignoring it (BG2, POE, POE2, etc).
I don't think they should do away with it completely even if they take away the global main-plot timer, have a few certain main and side quests be time-sensitive at least.

I've made this point before but timers are very rare in RPGs. It's not "decline" when barely any games have them in the first place. It's Chesterton's fence, don't tear it down without knowing full well what you are doing. It's an example of developer hubris thinking they can force the consumer to play games differently.

 

[LannTheStupid]

I think for Portuguese speakers and other people who use Latin alphabet it's hard to imagine what it means to switch to Latin from native Cyrillic. And there are 3 Japanese systems, Arabic and Hebrew speakers, and the whole Chinese Universe...

I would be very grateful that European colonization granted some people Latin letters instead of their native writing systems.

 

[TT1]

Spoiler

So, dropping 50% every day now. It will take we 5 days to reach a single stretch goal. Hold your horses.

 

[Xamenos]

Time-limited decisions are gone too - apperently players absolutely hated them.

l o l

We come one step closer to decline every day. I can't even imagine what gaming will be like in 20 years. They will probably put a feature on Steam where it just gives you all the achievements and even 1000 hours played because "there's nothing wrong with giving people choices"

I can see people getting frustrated with everything in Kingmaker being on a timer but I thought it gave a great sense of urgency when normally the main plot of an RPG conveys fake urgency with no consequences for ignoring it (BG2, POE, POE2, etc).
I don't think they should do away with it completely even if they take away the global main-plot timer, have a few certain main and side quests be time-sensitive at least.

I've made this point before but timers are very rare in RPGs. It's not "decline" when barely any games have them in the first place. It's Chesterton's fence, don't tear it down without knowing full well what you are doing. It's an example of developer hubris thinking they can force the consumer to play games differently.

It was definitely incline to have the timers. Both to stop the 5 minute adventuring day, and to give the illusion that the world moves without you and the bad guy's plan doesn't advance at the speed of plot. And it's not hubris to try and make things better, no more than it is to have some proper difficulty in this era of casualification.

 

[Pink Eye]

Spoiler

So, dropping 50% every day now. It will take we 5 days to reach a single stretch goal. Hold your horses.

But I donated all my horses into this race.

 

[Drowed]

Playing the game in your target language, not your native one.

Oh, yeah, that makes sense. So the idea is that the more different translations into different languages a game has, the more opportunities people might have to practice the target language?

Well, yeah, I don't disagree with that, but I think here it's more of a tangential point, since what I find annoying is precisely the cases of people who (for example) refuse to learn English and want the game in their native language to the point of crying and spamming on topics/reviews, which is kind of the opposite of the case you point, where someone is using the game in a language where they're not fluent in, trying to learn.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

It was definitely incline to have the timers. Both to stop the 5 minute adventuring day, and to give the illusion that the world moves without you and the bad guy's plan doesn't advance at the speed of plot. And it's not hubris to try and make things better, no more than it is to have some proper difficulty in this era of casualification.

To quote Jeff Vogel, "I think you're getting a lot of your fun from making other people have less fun."

 

[Xamenos]

It was definitely incline to have the timers. Both to stop the 5 minute adventuring day, and to give the illusion that the world moves without you and the bad guy's plan doesn't advance at the speed of plot. And it's not hubris to try and make things better, no more than it is to have some proper difficulty in this era of casualification.

To quote Jeff Vogel, "I think you're getting a lot of your fun from making other people have less fun."

Would you say the same to someone who likes Dark Souls as it is?

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Would you say the same to someone who likes Dark Souls as it is?

Dark Souls has no timers and can be won through (excessive) grinding. In fact it's impossible to "lose" Dark Souls because re spawning is a game mechanic.

 

[jerfdr]

So, dropping 50% every day now. It will take we 5 days to reach a single stretch goal. Hold your horses.

The day is not done yet, the drop will be closer to 30% rather than 50%. Still, if you look at how Kingmaker performed at the same stage into its campaign, Wrath is still going way faster.

 

[Xamenos]

Would you say the same to someone who likes Dark Souls as it is?

Dark Souls has no timers and can be won through (excessive) grinding. In fact it's impossible to "lose" Dark Souls because re spawning is a game mechanic.

And you missed my point entirely. I'm not talking about timers specifically. You said "I think you're getting a lot of your fun from making other people have less fun." A lot of people like Dark Souls. Many others cannot get into it, and have been asking for an easy mode for years. The very reasons that make the first group like the games are the same ones that keep the second group out.

Now, I'm sure you're gonna try and answer that it's not the same, and that Dark Souls' difficulty is more integral to the games than Kingmaker's timers were. And you might be right in that, but you'd be missing the point again. It's not specifically about timers, or difficulty or any one feature. It's about general design philosophy. The question that must be answered when cutting or including features in a game is "Does this make the game better or worse?", not "Does this make the game more or less fun for the normies?"

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

I'm assuming the codex will be collectively voting Rat Folk?

I am voting Kitsune no matter what.

Also, "furry whales" sound nice, but impractical.

shocking news

 

[Tigranes]

Kingmaker timer: yet another piece of proof that even a 3 billion day timer to deliver a potato next door will bring about the wrath of spurned gamers, many of whom appear to own unlicensed time vortexes in their anus

 

[LannTheStupid]

Yay, I have been banned from WotR discord!
Achievement unlocked.

 

[Pink Eye]

Yay, I have been banned from WotR discord!
Achievement unlocked.

You mad men. I stayed there for a couple of minutes, then left. I can see why old fags from chan don't like discord.

 

[LannTheStupid]

Well, technically I've been muted in "General", may be temporarily. But may be not!

 

[NJClaw]

Yay, I have been banned from WotR discord!
Achievement unlocked.

What did you do?

 

[LannTheStupid]

What did you do?

Talked!

 

[Pink Eye]

What did you do?

Talked!

The indignity! Don't worry Lann, my friend. I shall raise a monk crusade in your honor. They will rule the day for banning you!