Negative Terminology

[Fensfield]

Probably this'll be seen as one hell of a massive nitpick, but since it'd be so easily changed I figured I might as well point it out..

Why are Square-Enix insisting on using such negative (and somewhat misleading) terminology when it comes to announcements? The two that I keep running into are 'Emergency Maintenance' and 'Abolished'.

Emergency Maintenance suggests that something has gone seriously wrong despite (or possibly due to) the efforts of the people managing the game, and it needs to be taken down and fixed now. It suggests S-E screwed something up, and badly.

When is Emergency Maintenance actually used, here? Well, ninety percent of the time, it's used for what most MMO games would describe as 'unscheduled maintenance'. That is, for instance, 'something needs to be fixed, and it's not critical but we can't just leave it until the next scheduled maintenance, so we're giving you all two days fair warning before we take the game down for repairs.'

I'm not saying Emergency Maintenance shouldn't be used, but why not use it for when it's, well, an emergency? Not just something needs fixing on a specified date before regular maintenance rolls around again.

And abolished, well.. 'Repair Materials will be abolished.' for instance. It makes it sound like the game element in question was some sort of distasteful behavior. Really, why not simply say removed? This one's particularly problematic because oftentimes removed features have favour with a portion of the playerbase, and necessary removal or no, a word with the negative connotations of 'abolished' creates the subtle feeling that announcements like that are taking the chance to make a dig at the people who enjoyed the feature in question.

Again, I know it's a nitpick, and I know that given how long I've been studying English I must be particularly sensitive to these things, but these are terms you're (hopefully) going to be using over a very long time - maybe a decade, or more - and often for quite controversial topics. I would be very surprised if they did not have a subtle, ongoing negative impact on the mindset of the playerbase that could easily be averted by using words that are both less negative and less misleading.

[ToxicFox]

Abolished is probably just cause the translator didn't know what word to use. Most people who don't speak English as a first language don't understand that some words carry more weight then others. I've spoken with plenty of people that learned English as a second language and they all make little mistakes like that it not a big deal though.

[Fensfield]

Abolished is probably just cause the translator didn't know what word to use. Most people who don't speak English as a first language don't understand that some words carry more weight then others. I've spoken with plenty of people that learned English as a second language and they all make little mistakes like that it not a big deal though.

Oh, I realise that fully - I'd definitely attribute the wording to it being someone missing the nuances of the language.

That said, it isn't a big deal.. it's a long deal. Negative wording repeated over and over and over generally will have a negative impact, albeit a very subtle one.

And again, who cares if it's not a big deal? It's so, so small and easily fixed. So where's the harm in asking them to in the future just.. use wording that's far less likely to register negatively or mislead anyone? This is hardly a request that needs new code, or even new art resources, after all.

[Urthdigger]

Abolished is probably just cause the translator didn't know what word to use. Most people who don't speak English as a first language don't understand that some words carry more weight then others. I've spoken with plenty of people that learned English as a second language and they all make little mistakes like that it not a big deal though.

Except I believe the localization team is english speakers with japanese as a second language (It's probably better to translate from a language you don't know well into a language that you do, rather than the other way around)