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I agree with you except for ¿ as most people see this as a ? but the other way around, and that in the appropriate languages they should appear ( ß for german or ʎ for greek,) as they would understand it.

The example of ¿ was more of a more extreme one, where developers just put in random symbols. Going to edit the post to make it more clear.

There is nothing wrong with using some foreign letters; if people don't know them they can look them up. Also þ used to be in English until ~300 years ago so people should know that one.

"Just look it up" is completely unnecessary. It should not be that way about such an insignificant feature. Why should someone's immersion be broken because they have thrown in a symbol which is not used in the language the game is written on, for not much of a reason. And about þ, not every English person knows about that, or if they once knew, they might have forgotten. Why not just use "th" or "t"? In addition, a lot of players are not from a primarily English speaking country, without being able or wanting to play with their language. Who says they know about þ? I am completely against the policy of "Use weird symbols instead of sufficient regular letters to make the names more alien." The words themselves can be alien (but in my opinion, pronounceable), but making it even harder, frustrating and immersion-breaking for a large part of the players, by using a large selection of symbols is just bad.
 
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a lot of players are not from a primarily English speaking country, without being able or wanting to play with their language. Who says they know about þ?
I am not from an English speaking country and I know þ. By the way you could also use ð.

but making it even harder, frustrating and immersion-breaking for a large part of the players, by using a large selection of symbols is just bad.
I don't see how it is immersion breaking; are people seriously expecting aliens to be speaking English and use the English alphabet?
And for things like я and з people who don't know them can just seem them as weird Rs and weird Es. And the ß could be seen as a weird B. And letters like ф and ʎ wouldn't be problematic either, since Greek letters are used all the time in science. (I am aware that ʎ is a mirrored \lambda, but that shouldn't be a problem.)
 
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I am not from an English speaking country and I know þ. By the way you could also use ð.

I don't see how it is immersion breaking; are people seriously expecting aliens to be speaking English and use the English alphabet?
And for things like я and з people who don't know them can just seem them as weird Rs and weird Es. And the ß could be seen as a weird B. And letters like ф and ʎ wouldn't be problematic either, since Greek letters are used all the time in science. (I am aware that ʎ is a mirrored \lambda, but that shouldn't be a problem.)

It is immersion breaking to have to look up at the web what a symbol means, which you clearly stated earlier. And why is it good that letters should be seen as weird versions of letters they clearly are different from? People are not expecting aliens to speak English, but are you expecting them to use our alphabet? With the symbols, where are you going to draw the line? Should they include Chinese symbols? Just come up with symbols? It is not needed for the game to have these symbols, unless someone is playing in that language. Where should they draw the line on how much they are used? Should there be names in the pool which are just written in runes? Also, using the Greek letters is also not needed, as there is letters in English that can replace them. Lastly, I am not from an English speaking country and I know þ too. That doesn't mean everyone knows it.

I think we should stop this discussion, as none of us seems to convince the other. This was not the topic of the thread, which has already been resolved. It is just based around me stating my opinion, which I still hold strongly to.
 
Should they include Chinese symbols?
Why not; though that would require the engine to be able to use them. But if that is resolved like the OP wanted then why not.

Where should they draw the line on how much they are used?
Preferably a whole new alphabet would be drawn up, since it is completely unrealistic to expect aliens to use any Earth alphabet; but that would probably be too much work so lacking that then mixing several human alphabets obviously is better than just going English.

Actually aliens might well not use written languages---or at least in any way similar to what we understand as a written language. But since we are limited in that regard due to being humans we obviously have to make do with using written language as understood by humans.
Also, using the Greek letters is also not needed, as there is letters in English that can replace them.
They give more variety in the names and English letters don't exactly correspond to them. And it is letters everybody are familiar with so it is an easy way to implement way more letters.
 
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Why not; though that would require the engine to be able to use them. But if that is resolved like the OP wanted then why not.


Preferably a whole new alphabet would be drawn up, since it is completely unrealistic to expect aliens to use any Earth alphabet; but that would probably be too much work so lacking that then mixing several human alphabets obviously is better than just going English.

Actually aliens might well not use written languages---or at least in any way similar to what we understand as a written language. But since we are limited in that regard due to being humans we obviously have to make do with using written language as understood by humans.
They give more variety in the names and English letters don't exactly correspond to them. And it is letters everybody are familiar with so it is an easy way to implement way more letters.

I am not saying aliens would use the English alphabet... I am saying the game should. Also, I am not against the OP. He said that he wanted Stellaris to support unicode, which I agree on. What you are proposing is that the world of Stellaris would be filled with weird symbols who the majority of people don't know. Sure you aren't just trolling me by now? I have a hard time believing you actually want Stellaris to be filled with Chinese symbols.
 
Sure you aren't just trolling me by now?
Yes. My personal cultural names mod for CKII contains Mongol names and Arab names which I have no idea how to even start pronouncing, but I include them since they are accurate. Even if you cannot pronounce them you can still use them; the memory is a great thing which e.g. remembers shapes and patterns meaning that you will remember the shape of the name even if you cannot pronounce it.
I have a hard time believing you actually want Stellaris to be filled with Chinese symbols.
I wouldn't have anything against it. I also wouldn't mind EU4 using Chinese character names for the Chinese provinces when they are owned by Chinese cultured people. As mentioned in that case you just remember the shape; the mind is good enough to do that.
 
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Preferably a whole new alphabet would be drawn up, since it is completely unrealistic to expect aliens to use any Earth alphabet; but that would probably be too much work so lacking that then mixing several human alphabets obviously is better than just going English.

Don't you think the Alien language would be romanized...?
 
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Don't you think the Alien language would be romanized...?
Ah good point. Though given humans aren't split up in nationalities like on earth, but are a single group we still shouldn't just use the English alphabet.
 
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Yes. My personal cultural names mod for CKII contains Mongol names and Arab names which I have no idea how to even start pronouncing, but I include them since they are accurate. Even if you cannot pronounce them you can still use them; the memory is a great thing which e.g. remembers shapes and patterns meaning that you will remember the shape of the name even if you cannot pronounce it.
I wouldn't have anything against it. I also wouldn't mind EU4 using Chinese character names for the Chinese provinces when they are owned by Chinese cultured people. As mentioned in that case you just remember the shape; the mind is good enough to do that.

Do you realize that people are different? I believe most people would want the planets to be written in letters they can understand. Many people (including me) have problems remembering stuff just by their shape, especially in the long run, unless we study the shapes for a long while. It is easier to remember words if they are written in an understandable language. Also, many people learn spoken words easier than written words, especially messes of unknown symbols. Also, think about youtubers. They could hardly explain what they are talking about, if everything is written in weird symbols they have no way to understand. Think about multiplayer. People would have difficulty explaining what they are talking about. Think about a scenario where you are discussing what to do with a defeated empire in a war. "Erm, I want that planet. I don't know what the name is, just two weird symbols. Chinese? It is an arid planet. Wrong solar system. It is the one north of their home planet. Yes, it is colonized, you are looking at the wrong planet." And then there is a lot of other situations, which might be weird. "亖丵侖 declare war on your ally Ашеяи over Йεrζ in the solar system of Brø8ŝ." If the game was like that, I might just drop the game, unless there is a mod of sufficient quality that completely removes the symbol dependency. I am sure I am not the only one.
 
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Yes, the primary use of a name is to identify something. Even in SP, I am far more likely to be able to remember which nation is which when I can pronounce the name. On the other hand, unfamiliar symbols are difficult to remember, because I can't match them to a pattern in my head.

There's a reason that English news sources always use romanized forms of foreign names; "Hirohito" is far simpler to remember than 裕仁. Imagine if you had to read a history of the Pacific War with all the names rendered in Japanese characters; you'd have great difficulty keeping the individuals straight without knowing Japanese already. You'd very quickly have to give up and go back and check "ok, was the funny hat guy with a weird house and a blocky C the emperor or the prime minister?" all the time. Now, imagine having to do that during a game (especially a multiplayer game: "hey, can we pause while I figure out who the hell is attacking me? I don't know how to use the search function to find province squiggle").

Nor is it particularly immersive. Aliens are no more likely to use Chinese characters or upside-down question marks as they are to use the Latin alphabet. Any message or name is going to be transliterated; thus it makes sense to assume that you would transliterate it to your actual alphabet, rather than a bunch of random characters. Nonsense symbols are simply nonsense symbols, not an actual language. That's one reason I get annoyed by some fantasy authors who insist on nonsensical names for their characters. Tolkien was a professional linguist and designed his languages before he started writing his novels; some authors just go for random, inexplicable names without putting any thought into it, with weird symbols to look cool. Randomly generated symbols in names would be like the latter, by definition.

Adding unicode support to allow for e.g. Chinese-speakers to play the game in Chinese is fine and logical (assuming it can be done in a reasonable efficient manner). Having aliens with random, incomprehensible symbols for all their names is both immersion breaking and obnoxious.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I have no problem with, in e.g. CK2, a Mongol dynasty using romanized Mongolian names. Those names are from a real language, just not one I am used to. And they tend to at least be pronounceable; I may butcher Jinghiz Khan's name, but I can at least pronounce it. Aliens, on the other hand, unless Paradox decides to create a zillion conlangs, will not be given names in real languages.
 
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Ah good point. Though given humans aren't split up in nationalities like on earth, but are a single group we still shouldn't just use the English alphabet.

The game language is English ;) So I think the romanization should be into English/Latin.

But I want unicode support too... in this case it would be moddable.
 
I wouldn't mind creating an alien race where the list of random character/planet names were random strings of face emoji.

All hail :cool::D:(;), illustrious military ruler of o_Oo_O:(:oops::p:p:), long may he reign!
 
I wouldn't mind creating an alien race where the list of random character/planet names were random strings of face emoji.

All hail :cool::D:(;), illustrious military ruler of o_Oo_O:(:oops::p:p:), long may he reign!

Coolbiggrinfrownwink, ruler of Erwhaterwhatfrownoopsstickouttounguestickouttounguesmile?
 
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Yes, the primary use of a name is to identify something. Even in SP, I am far more likely to be able to remember which nation is which when I can pronounce the name. On the other hand, unfamiliar symbols are difficult to remember, because I can't match them to a pattern in my head.

There's a reason that English news sources always use romanized forms of foreign names; "Hirohito" is far simpler to remember than 裕仁. Imagine if you had to read a history of the Pacific War with all the names rendered in Japanese characters; you'd have great difficulty keeping the individuals straight without knowing Japanese already. You'd very quickly have to give up and go back and check "ok, was the funny hat guy with a weird house and a blocky C the emperor or the prime minister?" all the time. Now, imagine having to do that during a game (especially a multiplayer game: "hey, can we pause while I figure out who the hell is attacking me? I don't know how to use the search function to find province squiggle").

Nor is it particularly immersive. Aliens are no more likely to use Chinese characters or upside-down question marks as they are to use the Latin alphabet. Any message or name is going to be transliterated; thus it makes sense to assume that you would transliterate it to your actual alphabet, rather than a bunch of random characters. Nonsense symbols are simply nonsense symbols, not an actual language. That's one reason I get annoyed by some fantasy authors who insist on nonsensical names for their characters. Tolkien was a professional linguist and designed his languages before he started writing his novels; some authors just go for random, inexplicable names without putting any thought into it, with weird symbols to look cool. Randomly generated symbols in names would be like the latter, by definition.

Adding unicode support to allow for e.g. Chinese-speakers to play the game in Chinese is fine and logical (assuming it can be done in a reasonable efficient manner). Having aliens with random, incomprehensible symbols for all their names is both immersion breaking and obnoxious.

EDIT: Just to clarify, I have no problem with, in e.g. CK2, a Mongol dynasty using romanized Mongolian names. Those names are from a real language, just not one I am used to. And they tend to at least be pronounceable; I may butcher Jinghiz Khan's name, but I can at least pronounce it. Aliens, on the other hand, unless Paradox decides to create a zillion conlangs, will not be given names in real languages.

That was essentially what I was saying. Thanks for breaking it into a single more condensed message.
 
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Hmm... I received an event with some weird looking characters...

strange_event.png
 
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I have been told that the event doesn't make any sense, I am unable to verify because I don't know the language but at least I tried! ;)
 
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What is it? Wraith from stargate?
 
Na.. it just say: press alt + F4 for the ultimate Laser Beam!
 
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I have been told that the event doesn't make any sense, I am unable to verify because I don't know the language but at least I tried! ;)

Just mouse over the options so the tool-tip will lay out the consequences of each choice. I suspect many veteran EUIV and CKII players stopped actually reading event text long ago and read most events as... "Oh a pop-up... Lose one stability or spawn 6 pretender Rebels... Rebels it is!"
 
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