Your Feedback Sought: English

Hi, there,

I'd like to start another feedback thread, this one on possible improvements in English-language text. You can use this thread to post your thoughts on what you may have spotted in the way of inconsistent skill descriptions or other wording concerns. We have another thread on localization, and anyone with input on non-English text is encouraged to share his/her thoughts there.

Thanks for your help!

In moving posts it got a bit confusing with the chronological order, so I will be quoting posts and deleting the originals.

Another...

This would be a lot easier if "Post Quick Reply" didn't take 5 minutes... grrr...

Last one... whew:

Shadowsong: Binding Ritual. Create a level 1...5 Spirit. The Spirit's attacks cause Blindness for 1...5 seconds. This Spirit dies after 30 seconds.

Should also say "This Spirit's attacks deal 5...17 damage and cause Blindness for 1...5 seconds."

Weapon of Quickening: Elite Weapon Spell. For 5...13 seconds, target ally has a Weapon of Quickening, and Spells and Binding Rituals recharge 25% faster.

Should say, "... and Spells and Binding Rituals used by that ally while under this spellrecharge 25% faster."

This spell only affects other spells you use while it is active. It will not lower the recharge time on spells or binding rituals that were used prior to Weapon of Quickening.

Desecrate Enchantments/Defile Enchantments: Target foe and all nearby foes take 6...49 shadow damage and 4...17 shadow damage for each Enchantment on them.

Should say, "Target foe and all nearby foes take 6...49 shadow damage. They also take an additional 4...17 shadow damage for each Enchantment on them."

Splinter Weapon: Weapon Spell. For 15...51 seconds, target ally has a Splinter Weapon. Target ally's next successful attack deals 5...41 damage to all adjacent foes.

Should say, "Target ally's next successful attack deals 5...41 damage to foes adjacent to targeted foe." Splinter weapon does not affect the targeted foe.

the whole shadestone thing..

you are wielding "a the shadestone" <<something like that

My only finding so far (which I sent in a screenshot to support) is in the description for Shelter.

"more then 10%" should read, "more than 10%.

Compare Axe Twist to Axe Rake. They work exactly the same way but worded different. I would get rid of the more dmg wording and go with +XX dmg or additional dmg. +XX dmg adds to the blow delt. Additional dmg should show up seperate like kindle arrow. I would use the +XX dmg on physical attack types. Additional dmg for spells (desecrate enchantments).

Armor penetration should state if it stacks with other penetrating skills and strenth. Strength is also unclear about when it triggers.

Pet attack skills should read "Your pet's next attack......" Animal companion attempts a "skll name."

Gaile, I don't know if this fits within the remit of your request. I don't have a problem with the American-English generally (working in IT you get used to it), but the profanity filter could use a little tweaking for some British colloquial swear words.

For obvious reasons I won't give examples here, but Alex could provide you a list I'm sure

The above description implies that the attacks will be converted to holy damage. Holy damage ignores armor which isn't the case here. Reword it to the effect of:

For 8...18 seconds, target ally's attacks have +20% armor penetration and deal twice the damage on the undead.

Wild Strike:Off-Hand Attack. Must follow a lead attack. If it hits, this attack strikes for +5...18 damage and target foe loses 1 Stance.

stance doesn't stack also any skill remove stance from foe should be cannot be evaded or blocked like wild blow.

There's lots of skill descriptions where you have to wonder if anyone actually bothered to read them. The biggest culprit? Improper placement of commas. There are so many descriptions that could be improved with a simple comma, while others have poorly placed commas that actually make it awkward to read.

Grammatical: a lot of skilldescriptions have the following use of periods, commas and quotation marks:

... "evaded."
... "blocked,"

When coming over from Tyria with all 6 core professions, the first thing I did, was to check for new spells
I was surprised to find, that some spells are simply identical to the ones from Tyria, and have just a new name and a new icon.

Is that some trickery designed to lure people into buying factions, believing there'd be several new spells when a lot of them are just made over?

Your animal companion attampts a Bestial Mauling that deals an additional 5...17 damage. If the attack strikes a knocked-down foe, that foe is interrupted and dazed for 5-17 seconds.

yeah. sure. I'd like it if it were possible, but that's been irking me since factions release.

Actually, No. They stated that there would be duplicates, for those who purchased factions.

They were usually popular skills in prophecies, so they gave them as a duplicate to factions. (As so those with both factions and prophecies could use the origonal and the duplicate.)

Also, WHo came up with Su's name? Su the Vile Henchmen? THat's an awfully funny name, but it's not really an "Awsome OMG L33tz0r" name.

Also, Good to see you around Gaile! I've missed seeing you!(Rhetoricaly speaking that is.)

I don't know if this is what miss Gray intended, but there's a blatant stab at the English language in Su, the vile henchman's dialogue when you double click her:
"Many in this city should welcome it with open arms the way they are forced to live there lives."
There's a comma missing after "arms" as well.

One of my biggest peeves, which seems to nearly fit this category, is that there's a lot of game elements that are not defined, textually, anywhere in the game.

The big one that comes to mind after Factions is "Critical Hit". To learn that a critical hit has a base chance to happen based on weapon skill, and does max damage plus a percentage, one has to go to a fansite. And there's a Primary Attribute built around it!

Likewise, the actual in-game-effects of all of the conditions must either be looked up elsewhere, or intuited through usage. It might be that they're listed on one of the tablets in the Shing Jea Monastary, though, I'm not positive.

I think an in-game compendium of some of this stuff would be useful.

-NotJeff

The ritualist stone in tahnakai temple, it says Mao in it, but a spirit of Kaolai is there, as well as you fight a bound Kaolai.

A good example is penetrating chop/penetrating blow. Several people I run with (including myself when axe-equipped) use both of these together. Since they are adrenaline-based you would normally have to wait for the skill to recharge before using it again. Since they are dupes, we are able to effectively use it twice in a row.

INCONSISTENCY
Also, to Gaile, is there a reason for the differences in the wording of Knight's Armor components? Various languages (unless it was recently corrected) mention that it reduces damage TO THIS SPOT, whereas in the English version it does not say that. According to tests conducted by other people on the forums the English one seems to be correct, unless the armor was bugged itself. If this is correct in English, then maybe this will help fix the wording on the other languages that are incorrect. I believe Spanish was the same, but some of the other European languages had 'on this spot' as translated.

Yeah, the skill descriptions need massaging. Best to do it now, and establish good guidelines for writing them than wait till it gets out of hand around the time of chapter 5 I guess.

Oh, one skill description typo that really bugs me (though not enough to report it till now): the description on Aura of the Lich says, "For 15 seconds, you lose half of you maximum Health..."

@Ashley Twig
The extra duplicate skills are supposedly there for "tactical depth". I'm of the mind that they're like sub-core skills, available to only GW:Prophecies and GW:Factions.

@NotJeff
Pretty much all of the inner workings of GW is hidden. The only reason people know how damage is calculated is because of people bothering to find out. I can't really imagine how they'd slip that information into the game. A Master of Mathematics?

It should probably be "gain an additional point of adrenaline per attack"

Also... Tahnnakai Temple and the Gender-Confused Heroes

There's the minor issue of skill damages being unclear whether they ignore armour or not, too. I can't find any links, sorry (searching disabled, yay!). It was to do with damage types, whether there is an underlying group of damage types or if each individual skill was unique.

Edit:

@Kizukaseru
You mean "I could have sworn Kakumei(banned) made a thread about this", with whom you have no affiliation. *nudge nudge* *wink wink*

I could have sworn I just made a thread about this.

Meta,

I don't actually care to see the math in-game. Just rough definitions:
Critical hit is more than max damage, and chance goes up with weapon skill.
Poison is health degen.
Blinded characters find it hard to hit with attacks.

And so on. The inner math should stay hidden -- it lets the game be tweaked for balance without digging through all the reference text in game. Really, a tooltip the first time a character is either affected by a condition or given a related skill would suffice.

-NJ

o.O
That's a bit overkill.

- Blood Ritual

(Enchantment Spell) Sacrifice 17% maximum Health. For 8..13 [14] seconds, target touched ally gains +3 Energy regeneration. Blood Ritual cannot be used on the caster.

Target touched other ally?

FWIW, Holy damage doesn't ignore armor. Ask anyone slinging a Smiting Wand. Skills that do holy damage often ignore armor, such as Banish. Someone with Judge's Insight will do holy damage with 20% penetration, but armor is still a factor. It's just that the holy damage being done is less suspect to your enemy's armor. That is, if I'm swinging a "slashing" sword at you and you have Gladiator's armor (which gives +20 vs "physical") you will effectively lose 20 AL when I switch to a "fire" or "holy" weapon.

This one's fine as it is, mate.

My biggest beef is already stated in this thread: "I'm wielding a The Yakslapper!"

Smiting wands deal "light" damage, don't they?

If it's a skill-by-skill basis, then the skills that ignore armor should say so.

Holy dmg from judge's insight is treated like elemental dmg. All holy dmg on the game ignores armor except this one skill. Fix the discription of the spell to include it does not ignore armor.

The reason it functions like this is because there is no resistance to holy dmg. If they were to add a specific elemental certain armor and monsters could have additional armor bonus vs your JI. The holy dmg is there so that it is treated like elemental dmg but not subject to specific elemental armor bonuses.

Blood Ritual - For 8...13 seconds, target touched ally gains +3 Energy regeneration. Blood Ritual cannot be used on the caster.

Just simplify to this...

Blood Ritual - For 8...13 seconds, target touched other ally gains +3 Energy regeneration.

EDIT: lol got beat to it

Skill descriptions: some are just worded badly, some are plain wrong, and inconsistencies are really quite annoying. WARNING: A lot of these will be very nitpicky.

Plague Touch: is there anything such as a "positive" condition?

Life Siphon, Life Transfer: why the inconsistency? One explicitly says "For T seconds, your target suffers X degen and you gain X regen", while the other says "For T seconds, target foe suffers Y degen, which you gain as Health regeneration".

Dark Fury: should read "Sacrifice 17% maximum Health. For 5 seconds, party members in radar range gain 1 strike of adrenaline every time they hit with an attack."

Deathly Swarm, Vampiric Swarm: "flies out slowly"? Unlike Lightning Orb, we can't actually see swarms of what-have-you flying toward your target until the spell actually hits (and in the latter case, there is no animation).

Seeking Blade: "evaded" Bleeding lasts for 25 seconds; currently, the duration is unspecified.

Swift Chop: it is not "additional" damage if blocked, which would imply normal damage and more damage if blocked. The skill works exactly like Irresistible Blow, where if blocked, the target takes damage and suffers KD (Deep Wound for swift chop).

Bull's Strike: grammar is incorrect. "If this attack hits a moving foe, you strike for +5..25 damage and your target is knocked down." The extra comma is unnecessary.

Earth Shaker: should read "If this attack hits, target foe and all foes adjacent to your target are knocked down."

Hundred Blades: it does not have the same AoE as Earth Shaker or Triple Chop, so change the wording. "All foes next to your target" or similar (and change the target in the Isle of the Nameless accordingly!).

Galrath Slash, Silverwing Slash: they use different wordings than usual, but there's no problem with them. Consider having them read "If this attack hits, you strike for +1..32 damage."

Axe Twist, Axe Rake: Consistent wording please.

Skull Crack: nitpicking - it's a little clearer to say "If this attack hits a foe casting a Spell, the Spell is interrupted and your target is Dazed for 10 seconds."

Physical Resistance: "You" need not be capitalized.

Power Block: unnecessary wordiness, faulty description. Should read "If target foe is casting a Spell, that Spell is interrupted. That Spell and all skills of the same attribute are disabled for 3..13 seconds."

Energy Drain, Energy Burn, Energy Surge, etc.: like the life-steal skills, you could add "loses up to X Energy" but I generally don't see these descriptions as problematic.

Mend Condition, Mend Ailment, Restore Condition, Purge Conditions: there's no need to list out the conditions in the descriptions. We're assuming at least a modicum of GW knowledge, right? Plague Sending, for instance, doesn't list them...

Phantom Pain, Dismember, Eviscerate, Gash, Crushing Blow, Hamstring, etc.: there's really no need to say what the conditions do.

Wastrel's Worry, Shatterstone, etc.: Maybe add a clause stating that the hexes do nothing if ended prematurely.

There're many more that I have slight or severe beefs with, especially when talking about unspecified "adjacent foes", but we'll save those for later.

If the skill takes up a whole paragraph to explain - either shorten it or rework it see Auspicious Incantation and Unyeilding Aura

Actually, both commas belong there. The comma before the coordinating conjuntion (i.e. "and") shows where the second independent clause is. (It's not like they used a serial comma in a list of two items.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_clause
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coordinating_conjunction

Good point. But instead of holy damage, maybe it should be light damage (like the smiting rod/staff) instead to avoid any confusion between armor-ignoring holy damage and JI's damage. Taking that into consideration, it could be reworded as:

For 8...18 seconds, target ally's attacks are converted to light damage, have +20% armor penetration and do twice the damage on the undead.

The reason it functions like that is because not one attack skill ignores armor for its base hit. Holy damage is just another form of element they can have on a weapon, and functions like shadow damage (Which also doesn't ignore armor when on a wand but does whenever it's used in spells) However, you may as well complain that shadow damage wands are affected by armor if the holy damage of Judge's Insight bothers you, it's the same deal.

IW doesn't count because your attacks don't hit, the victim just receives damage.

You're wrong. Smite is an attack skill which ignores armor.

But there are no shadow damage wands. They do dark damage. :P

Point made, call it light.

Agreed

Savage Shot:
"If Savage Shot hits, your target's action is interrupted. If that action was a spell, you strike for 13...25 damage."

Failes to note that it deals additional damage. Also, the wording is inconsistent with Savage Slash, which does basically the same.

In general I'd like it if skill descriptions for skills that deal damage were clearer whether the damage is armor ignoring or not. One example is Energy Surge. Before having experienced use of this skill I'd have no way of knowing that the damage it causes ignores armor.

Also, it would be nice if duplicate skills had the same descriptions.

Edit: Whoops, I just read the other post, and she prefers specific over general suggestions. What I typed is all I have to suggest though. Hope it helps.