A "the" checkbox option

[Draco Tanos]

While not a priority obviously, how difficult would it be for religions (and maybe guilds if needed) to have a little option to include the word "the" in messages dealing with it?

For example:  You hear reports of a new temple of Church of Humanity that has been erected in Ossmat.

Doesn't sound quite right, does it?  This would ideally be included to work in titles.  Example:

Michael T. Turner
Emperor of Old Grehk
Ambassador of Old Grehk
Duke of Northern Bay
Margrave of Ossmat
Priest of Church of Humanity

[Zakilevo]

You are just being picky ;)

[Indirik]

Part of the problem is that it is not handled consistently in the game. There are places where adding a "the" would be good, and places it would be bad. The code would have to be reviewed pretty thoroughly to make sure it was handled consistently throughout the game before something like this would work. Otherwise you'd be exchanging "good in areas A and B and bad in C" for "bad in areas A and B, and good in C".

Having said that, if it were handled consistently, this wouldn't be necessary.

[egamma]

Also, religions that end in -ism don't need a "the" at the beginning.
And some religions put "the" at the beginning of their names, which can lead to things like "the the church of redundant redundancy".

[Draco Tanos]

This is true, Egamma.  Which is why I mentioned a checkbox so that it'd be optional.  If the code/notifications were standardized NOT to have "the" in them initially, the checkbox issue would potentially solve the problem entirely.

As I said, it's mostly a cosmetic issue, so it's not like it's a "THE GAME IS BREAKING!" thing.  So difficulty is the main factor, I'd think.

So all in all, if done, it'd make the -isms work better because there would be NO text with "the" in front of the religion name, it'd make the religions without "the" in the name work better because they could toggle it and the sentence structure would make that much more sense, and it'd make the religions with "The" in the name be able to avoid the redundancies.

[Tom]

Rejected.

I understand what you want and I agree it would be nice. But it would be a metric ton of work and we simply won't have that time within the forseable future.

[Indirik]

If your religion is not an -ism name, there are places it needs to have a "the", and places where it shouldn't have one. This needs to be addressed as part of this change and rewritten for consistency, or you're just changing the places where it sounds bad.

[Penchant]

If your religion is not an -ism name, there are places it needs to have a "the", and places where it shouldn't have one. This needs to be addressed as part of this change and rewritten for consistency, or you're just changing the places where it sounds bad.

please give an example of when having a "the" would be bad. I am not saying your wrong I just can't think of any times when the church of humanity sounds worse than church of humanity.

[Indirik]

Visit the "The Way of the Warrior Saints" temple

While I suppose it is grammatically correct, considering that the name of the faith is technically "The Way of the Warrior Saints", it sounds awkward.

[Draco Tanos]

Indirik, I don't quite understand who you're talking to as I already mentioned that all mentions of religion need to be, and should eventually be, made uniform (without "the" in the base text)".  If some rewrites are necessary, so be it.  For your particular example:  "Visit the temple of The Way of the Warrior Saints".  One word moved around fixes it.  "Visit the temple of Church of Humanity" makes less sense, hence the checkbox concept working.

Tom, if you understand it and think it be nice, why reject it outright?  Why not place it on the backburner until after more important things are done?

[Tom]

Tom, if you understand it and think it be nice, why reject it outright?  Why not place it on the backburner until after more important things are done?

Because we are accumulating way too much stuff on the backburner and it reduces the motivation of the dev team if the TODO list is too long. If it really matters, it will come up again.

[Draco Tanos]

So not rejected per se, but bring up later? :P

[Tom]

So not rejected per se, but bring up later? :P

If I said that, I would just open up a second backburner, wouldn't I?

[Draco Tanos]

Only so much as it's something that the player would eventually have to remember to propose again.  If you outright call it rejected, it's likely any future proposals of it would be closed outright and ignored as "rejected".

[egamma]

http://bugs.battlemaster.org/view_all_bug_page.php

Total unresolved bugs: 99
Feature requests on bugtracker: 31

I'd say you should propose it again once the number of feature requests on the bugtracker goes below 10, and total bugs below 50.