How exactly is this possible? Partial vent

[Lamiaris]

Got back into FFXIV; in particular, RP. Started fresh with a new character (new RP character; basicaly just fantasia'd and renamed my existing high level boi).  He's Doman, through and through (excepr perhaps, not Hyur). As such he knows very little Eorzean aside from very basic words or broken grammar. I thought it'd be interesting as a sort of linguistic challenge for him.
Buuuuuut. I've encountered a problem with this.

The Doman language itself. How in the world does every single RP character and their mother, Doman or not, just HAPPEN to know perfect Doman? Either that, or they, ever so conveniently, happened to spend just enough time in the nation of Doma to know 'passable' levels? Every. Single. Person. I've encountered in RP. I'm not even angry. I'm just annoyed and quite honestly.. disappointed, in a weird way. There's... no linguistic challenge now. Like, I'm now wondering why I even bothered to give him that linguistic limit.

Partial venting, and also would like some folks' thoughts or input on this.

[Unnamed Mercenary]

Doman is still a branch of whatever the common Hyuran language is, which is likely the root of your frustration. 

 

Yes, they have some specialized words, but this would be better seen as being a dialectal difference and not a separate language. As the player character/WOL, you and your friends travel across seas and have no issues communicating with the locals. And the Doman refugees who came over to Eorzea likewise did not experience issues with most day to day communication. It's not a case where all the characters suddenly and perfectly became bilingual, and the WOL's Echo isn't acting as autotranslator here like it does for certain other characters (like some beast tribes, dragons, etc).

 

So in this sense, while your character might have some jargon differences for some proper nouns and common everyday items, being Doman wouldn't normally impact their ability to communicate with others. While I don't think this is a case of mass player metagaming, I do think it may be a case if misplaced expectations, with possibly a side of people perhaps not wanting to have their characters equally struggle to communicate with yours.

[Faye]

A lot of people are playing adventurers or other characters a bit more larger than life than the average layperson, as is more or less what the game encourages us to RP--and as such, they have perfect excuses for their characters to travel the land to anywhere that might interest them, and the far east is expectedly enticing for a lot of folks. I do see an overwhelming amount of people playing far eastern characters, and on top of that, a lot of non-eastern characters who have found reason to spend a significant amount of time there (adventuring, business, joining eastern themed FC's, etc.). While it may not exactly be realistic... understanding Doman probably isn't a huge rarity in this RP community. I don't really have a solution for the problem apart from encouraging you to either give your character a different communication barrier, or find different folks to RP with to satisfy that angle you want to RP. (And ngl it's a little exasperating RPing somewhere and seeing "Doman" flying by in brackets all the time and being unable to communicate with half the RPers in the same space as you, especially with how frequently it was happening around the time Au Ra were added, so I can't really fault people for deciding they want to work around that.)

Edited May 31, 2021 by Faye