SPELL CHECK. C'mon!

I've lost track of the number of bug reports I've filed for spelling errors at this stage. There certainly seems to have been a large increase in them from GR onwards.

The worst offender so far has been "per say" (I don't remember what arc it was but I do remember doing a real-life facepalm ). All they need now are "would of" and "irregardless" to complete internet grammar trifecta.

I agree with the op that these mistakes take away from the immersion a bit.

However, I do hope that any and all of you are sending in /bug reports and pointing these out. Best way for them to get to this quicker is right when you see these typos, stop and /bug it with as much information as possible.

They are human after all

I tried sending bug reports for text errors. Seven year old typos are still there. Go and read Maria Jenkins' "Ask about this contact" text some time. Her arcs got updated (sometimes), but her description still has the pre-launch shoddy writing, and no-one looked at it. Also, during the Eternal Nemesis arc, Archon Cassady is still referred to as Fieldmarshal Bulech, I think in the mission entry clue. I've reported that. It's still there.

Look, I get the occasional bug, missed trigger, misaligned texture and so on. These are often hard to catch. But obvious mistakes I catch on the first read-through just have no excuse to exist, not in the quantity that they do. Seriously, guys - hire an editor, or at least have someone with a sharper eye read through all of your texts before you greenlight them. And make sure it's someone who hasn't read them before, as you become blind to mistakes once you know the text well enough.

Yeah, it's not a big deal, but it's UGLY. Ugly mistakes like this make the game look very unprofessional, even if it's otherwise very good and very competent. Especially now that we're trying to woo new players, presentation should really be top priority, and ugly typos really detract from that presentation.

Seriously, hire an editor, or at the very least run the mission text through a Beta forum of some sort where a select few people will go specifically to find faults with your writing. Or at the VERY least, don't bin "text error" bug reports before they even reach QA, please.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

Well, I used to report text errors, way back when. But when you see the same text errors year after year... What's the use? I don't know if the bug reports ever get read, but the text errors simply don't get corrected. I don't think anyone cares any more.

And, seriously, why are text errors so hard to fix, even with precise instructions as to where they are? I've written a few Architect arcs and, of course, had no editor. When players played them, they sent me their final thoughts and pointed out text errors in there, usually half a dozen of more. Within 15 minutes of reading the report, I would have the text errors fixed and the arc submitted for a republish.

I sincerely believe that Paragon Studios need at least one person whose whole entire job is to play through new arcs before they're published, read every line of text and write detailed reports as to what's wrong and where. Said person should also have text error bug reports forwarded directly to his mailbox for him to verify and document. In-between doing that, when no new arcs or bug reports exist to be read, said person's job should be to just play the game and read all the text it supplies.

If that's what it takes to weed these things out of the game, then that's what it takes, because having 7 years of bad spelling and grammar is was funny, then it was sad, then it was funny again and now it's starting to turn sad once more.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Arcanaville Samuel_Tow is the only poster that makes me want to punch him in the head more often when I'm agreeing with him than when I'm disagreeing with him.

FWIW, I actually sent in a resume and cover letter/pitch offering to remote contract as an editor. Sole job - finding and correcting all the spelling, grammar, and canon mistakes ("Dr. Richard Keyes" being the one that always makes me wince, with the trainer in Atlas referred to as "Miss Liberty" being right behind it).

And as a tech writer/editor with 20 years' experience, yes, I think I'm qualified to do just that.

I never got an answer.

Michelle
aka
Samuraiko/Dark_Respite

I'm assuming by all the rancor you are all ivy league university English professors; no?

Typos happen - send in a /bug report about and post on the forums, sans the freak-out-emotion over a typo.

I too find the numerous spelling and grammatical errors in the game very depressing and immersion-breaking. I don't know how their dialog//text database is set-up, but it would have to be an extremely-poor setup if text errors can't be easily fixed.

Aside from the already-discussed errors, the one area that's always reeked of poor workmanship is the Invention System - specifically in the textual descriptions of each recipe and/or corresponding IO, There are many instances of a given recipe and it's corresponding IO that are named slightly differently, or even have differently-worded descriptions. Furthermore, there's the "code gibberish" error in numerous recipe/IO descriptions that has yet to be fixed.

There's many people that play the game that would be more than willing to do the editorial work for the game. I'd even be willing to give it a shot, even though I only classify my writing skills as, "Above Average".

With the current quality I'm guessing that there's either nobody performing this task, that person is considerably overloaded, or woefully incompetent for the job.

I briefly discussed this in a global channel not long ago; a lot of people said that if spelling breaks my immersion that I'm too uppity.

To them I said: "I am a servant of the Secret Fire, wielder of the Flame of Anor! The Dark Fire will not avail you, Flame of Udûn! Go back to the Shadow! You shall not psas!!"

They changed their tune immediately.