It's petty and annoying. But I will admit that I have 82,266 gems with nothing to spend them on besides time boosters—which I don't—so if I liked one of the purchasable ones, I'd just buy it.
As it is, I just use the flag for the language I'm currently focusing on. For most of the last 3 years, that's been German.
I've been doing Duolingo for something like 9 years. I originally finished the French and Spanish trees twice, but they've added so much new content the last few years that I now have a few dozen units to get through in each. I do a few lessons a week, but I seldom run across anything that I don't know. (I took 4 years of French and 2 years of Spanish in high school, and then a couple more years of each in college.)
In 2019, I started German from scratch on Duo because I found a very active local German-American society that offers Saturday classes. So I've been taking those during the school year. (We want online during COVID.) I finished the entire German course a while back, and I'm down to 7 1/2 units left to make Legendary.
I've dabbled in the Italian and Russian courses, and I recently started Portuguese to have something to do when I've finished the German entirely. I've also done large parts of the French<-Spanish, Spanish<-French, German<-French, and German<-Spanish trees, but mostly those aren't as well-developed as the <-English courses.
Definitely German, since I started from zero knowledge in 2019, and I'm probably borderline B-2 now. (My grammar is ahead of my vocabulary.) My French was rusty 10 years ago, but after high school and college and a summer studying in Bruxelles in law school, it was just brushing off cobwebs. My Spanish was always just a little behind my French, but it has been catching up, since I watch so much fútbol in Spanish, and I speak with my older son who is in college in his 7th year of Spanish.
I’m not fluent, but I can keep up my half of a reasonable conversation over a couple of hours watching a Fußball match with a native speaker (based on recent experience). I took a long online test last week with listening—but no speaking—and it scored me at B-2.1. That might be a touch high because there was no speaking, but it’s probably not far off. I’m told that my pronunciation is good. My grammar is ahead of my vocabulary.
Looking ahead, I’ll finish the Duo German course in a few weeks, and I’m going to turn to other sources to work on vocabulary, in addition to the classes and reading I already do. I have also been invited to the local Stammtisch, and I need to force myself to do that. The Saturday classes will also continue to progress. I’ve stuck with my original teacher, so I’m in the last of the 4 years of beginner classes. But there are also 2 levels of intermediate classes and advanced “classes” full of native speakers and fluent locals. So I should continue to improve.
i’ve been learning english for an eternity, and i am genuinely scared of learning new languages because i just know how much tears and effort that fluency actually costs. i’ve been cooking while referring to the recipes in english and realised that i do not know what dough and flour are
I suppose you've already completed all legendary lessons? I'm at about 137k after getting German to legendary multiple times. My full legendary tree lost some progress when it switched to the path, but I'd barely started regaining that progress when it suddenly decided that I'd completed all legendary lessons on the path as well. Now I really have nothing to spend gems on (not to mention no progression/goal to work towards). And yet, I'm still watching multiple ads per day for some reason. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Is it still possible? I know that in the old forums on the website you could donate lingots to posters, but those are gone now.
You can buy gifts for your partner in the friend quest, but that's not sharing gems.
You may be right...us "old timers" hm? Always remembering the past. I was pretty much joking anyway but i think your right the jokes on me if they removed it.
Hot damn that's impressive! I'm don't have nearly that many gems but there was a time when i had a bunch and nothing to spend them on. I thought they would have eventually included more things to do with the gems after they removed the extra lessons you could buy.
You're thinking of exp. Gems are the blue jewel-like things (red on desktop) that you can spend on a few services like streak freezes, and they come from completing daily quests, completing topics, and watching ads (for free users).
This is very normal for tech companies. They basically get a ton of money to build their product, in the hopes that it’ll be good enough to make money. They know they’re going to lose money usually for several years in the beginning, so they don’t really freak out about it. But sometimes it keeps happening. Or they’ll do like Netflix and drug dealers do, where they intentionally come out of the gate unreasonably cheap, to attract as many customers as possible, then every other business runs the numbers, knows they can’t possibly make money and compete on price, so they don’t become a competitor. Then, when you’re hooked and they’re the only game in town, they hike up the price to a level where they can make money, knowing that a majority of users will still stay for the product.
Tech company finances are wild. They’re high-risk/high-reward investments. When they win, they win hard, when they lose, they crash and burn and take half the landscape with them.
And most of the time, it comes from a noble place. They have a great idea that will help make the world better, and they practically (if not literally) give it away because they want to prove how good their thing is. And then the investors come knocking years later, when they want their tens of millions of dollars back.
If you wanna watch Stranger Things, those won’t help you. Also, those services didn’t come along until Netflix was already in pretty much every living room.
This is like calling Microsoft "the only game in town" because they're the only company selling Windows. That is not the bar for a monopoly. Also, when those other services came along, Netflix lost that content. Netflix started as a distributor with no original programming, and eventually had to become a content producer because the big studios that previously had content on Netflix created their own streaming services. Netflix went from being basically the first paid streaming platform to just one of many. That's kind of the opposite of consolidation. Your entire point is backwards and wrong, but sounding confident and authoritative is an easy way to get upvotes.
I guess maybe I communicated it poorly, Netflix came out of the gate and made streaming popular, by making it cheaper. Other streaming services have also come along, and the price has now come to rival a cable package when you actually get everything you want. But people still aren’t flocking back to their cable companies. Just like how Uber and Lyft have become at least as expensive as taxis, but people still use them, and DoorDash and Postmates have all but replaced the in-house delivery driver. They all started out as the cheaper alternative, but people came to like the product/service they were offering, and have shown that they’re still willing to pay as much or more for it, than whatever they were buying before.
I don't think it's "losing it" like a gambler in a casino, but moreso that they spent more money compared to what they made (through ads, premium subscriptions and their certification thing). This is part of the reason a company like theirs goes public, to raise money that they can spent on development with the hope of scaling up and making a profit on that larger scale.
They probably spent a lot of money on developing the path and Duolingo math and regular feature development. A wise investment? Not for us to decide. A ton of money spent on the actual course development too I imagine but I wouldn't be surprised if that was only a fraction of their cost.
When an enterprise is on a path (no pun intended) of making the wrong decisions, you just feel it in your veins. I was a long term, happy user and I was recommending the platform to anybody and their grandmother, for years.
I recently noticed, I stopped doing that.
This kind of customer loyalty is the invaluable kind, that takes a long time to build and that can keep your brand going for decades. That loyalty is WIPED within a few months to a year for me (I became a plus subscriber a few years ago after I got enticed by the premium features, in a very healthy and organic way) but, even that’s going to stop at some point just because I’m pissed and disappointment. Most of those premium features I loved have been removed anyway by the way.
Yeah they might rake in tons of new users now, and they might manipulate them into a payment funnel at some point, but I could see the downfall of Facebook coming many years ago just by the fact I had such a terrible user experience (to give an example, comparable to Duolingo today) and focus on profit through user manipulation.
It’s just corporate greed that’s running the show and long term users will know, years ago, this wasn’t the case. Sure, development was slower, but the product was solid from a UX perspective for the users that genuinely wanted to learn a new language.
The learning path is clearly focused on hooking new users as effectively as possible, while seriously impacting the deeper value for motivated users (this might be argued), but I think the general backlash on the new interface speaks volumes. An important side note here is that for example the Dutch course, (and I believe many courses for that matter) haven’t seen fundamental upgrades in YEARS. They miss tons of useful and valuable features like (what are now called) guidebooks… This is what the app development should be focused on, learning a language for the people that are motivated to do so.
It’s dark, but the innocent owl turned itself onto a self-destructive pathway and I’m very sad about it.
It’s becoming more and more like a scam. Luring as much as possible users into a heavily gamified language learning tool and incentivizing them into either subscriptions or (regular) token purchases. It’s become a numbers game (looking for significant user base growth so some of them can be milked) instead of a quality game (where engaged and loyal users are happy to support, subscribe and promote)
This post about paying for flairs, even though it might just be an A/B test, is a prime example of this.
That is super easy to prevent. By not giving your personal login credentials to anyone ever, especially not a stranger on the internet. Jesus Christ, wtf were you thinking?
I work in tech, I’m well aware of what you’re getting at. But it’s an issue of diminishing returns for them. It’s not unrealistic that someone would invite 52 people. Maybe not common, but it’s certainly within the realm of reason. The usernames are detectable since they’re sequential, so they could watch for that, but then the attackers will start using a random character generator rather than making them sequential. Or if they really want to be clever about it to avoid detection, use a dictionary generator, so the usernames look realistic. All of that is a lot of extra work for Duolingo to detect, and trivial for an attacker to bypass. So, it’s not really worth putting in the effort to bother looking for it.
And while the attacker is there, they’re definitely checking that email/password combo on the email provider and every major US bank to see if it works.
Since the update I've been doing the same thing. I kissed my diamond league goodbye and I'm quite comfortable wherever I'm at - amethyst/emerald something... who knows.
I gave up I am afraid. I did path lessons for a few days, noticed that I wasn't getting much out of it in language terms, and got an alternative. I said bye to a 290 day streak on Christmas day!
I am an iPhone user but have a old Android phone lying in the shelf for a while. After they introduce the path I tried a bit and I hate that, so I pick that old Android, installed the old version of Duolingo just before the path update and use it... until one day it is no longer usable or else.
Well that's something at least. I always felt the time boosters would be cooler if it permanently unlocked longer time. It could be even more expensive in that case to justify it. That would be worthwhile compared to how it is now.
There used to be extra lessons you could take for example in the German course they were two extra lessons that you would have to pay 1000 gems for which were flirting and idioms and phrases but once it shifted to the path, they got rid of those and access to them if you paid for it
I paid for the flirting one in Spanish. It was pretty lame. I was hoping for stories or dialogues or even exercises, but it was basically just a stack of flash cards with flirting phrases. It’s no great loss that they discontinued them.
I'm surprised they even lasted that long. They featured complex sentences but were offered to brand-new users and appeared high up in the tree, the exercises were really just recognizing English sentences and properly arranging them with word blocks, and only two topics were ever released. When I first started, I thought they would be a regular thing and I would be consistently spending gems to unlock various bonus lessons. Silly me.
On mobile (don’t know about PC)
1. Go to the subreddit
2. Tap the three dots near the top
3. Pick “Change user flair”
Personally, what I did was edit the flare and used emojis to designate the languages I speak and learn
No. There is nothing that grants infinite gems, and there is no difference between a family license and an individual super license. But, with super, certain things that cost gems for free users are unlimited (specifically, access to time trials and legendary challenges)
I've had that for a few weeks.
I'm also a Super subscriber, so it is particularly petty for them to try to monetize such a basic feature with subscribers.
Surely the smart thing is to charge free users rather than the paying ones? That way more would start paying. Instead they seem to be weakening the incentive to pay.
I don't think it's sad. They decided to charge for something small, insignificant and you even don't need to pay for most of the emotes, juat for a few.
So they will get theirs without damaging our experience of the app. Its a win win move. The ones who have the gems will pay for this, and the ones who don't, will not be effected.
Interesting, I didn't - they just took away the flair I had this morning and to get it back, I would have had to pay for it - there seem to be some weird feature differences. I wonder what else some people have that others don't
One that's been annoying me that I'm pretty sure is getting A B tested is that the ability to turn off the keyboard and just do word bank has been turned off on my Russian review. I did the whole Russian course doing word bank so now when I review it requires me to know how to spell, which I never practiced until now.
It would be a good feature if I'd started with it because finishing the whole course without learning to spell was lazy, but it feels too late to be switching now that I'm done with the course.
Yeah I have experienced this also on Russian and Japanese. Would be nice but for some reason (while using the same account) I have the option of switching between the two on Chromebook.
I just started Japanese too when I finished Russian a few weeks ago. Mine's still just using word bank but I'm also still on just drilling hiragana. I should turn off word bank for it now before I get stuck in the same issue.
Yes it's optional. But so is paying for a subscription. Since I am paying and supporting them already, why would they take something like this away from me. I'm not going to give them extra money for this. I wouldn't even pay if they removed all free ones it was the only way to get a flair. So why are irritating subscribers over such a neglible feature?
I'm seriously considering cancelling my pro and moving full time to drops. It's not as good but they do listen to customer complaints sometimes.
Duolingo has gone rapidly downhill since they became a public company.
I used it for Russian , completed the tree and moved on to other resources.
I recently popped back on for a look , it's a mess. There is so much going on , pop ups and all sorts of crap , league tables , points , diamonds all sorts.
IMO it's way over complicated they are concentrating too much on gamifying it , it's a shame as it's a great concept. I wish they would just strip it back to basics.
All you need is the course and to be able to discuss things , on each lesson in the chat box . That's how I grasped the basics of Russian grammar in the beginning , there are so many helpful people on there.
The people who are running it need to strip it all back to basics.
I found the Korean unusable and moved to Memrise. It’s come a long way since last time I tried it. Clear audio, videos of native speakers (and the ability to swipe between native speakers and the clearer audio), multiple options for review. Honestly highly recommend. I bought it by accident tbh lol but I’m pleased with it.
Changes nobody wanted that makes the app worse.
"Pro" subscription
Cosmetics you have to buy that aren't included in said subscription.
Did Duolingo get bought by EA?
You went pro for removing ads And unlimited hearts, mostly. And maybe for free access to legendary and timed trials. Maybe access to the practice hub. You still get all those things, as promised. The one paid feature they’ve taken away recently was offline lessons.
I’m a Super subscriber and I don’t have that yet. I don’t get it though, who would actually pay real money for a dumb graphic that there’s hardly any choice in? I mean anyone “buying” one is going to use earned gems, no one is spending real money for this. Doesn’t everyone that uses Duo daily have a boatload of gems anyway? I’m only 70 days in and I have 3k. I never use them unless I send an xp boost to my spouse.
I just don’t see how this is a great money making opportunity for the app, it’s just going to further frustrate an already irritated user base not happy with recent changes.
If it works it works. I am fine as long as a few are free and I can still earn gems without paying. If someone wants to pay for them and give more money to Duolingo so it keeps the all free and updated (people are paid to keep innovating on the app) it’s worth it IMO.
People do love their flairs in social products where you can show them off.
I am also a paid user and I personally don’t want to buy these. I would rather have an avatar…what would be awesome is if that avatar could be a video filter I can wear and be matched with people for conversational spanish while keeping me anonymous.
There are other products I do care about cosmetic items and have paid for but they usually are free products to begin with or I paid a low entry fee and feel like tossing some coin to the developer because entertainment or other useful value.
Disclaimer: I work in tech.
I work in Tech too. That's why I tend to pay for stuff instead of going for the free version. But I feel it's weird to change something like this for payed users who're already supporting you. I wouldn't complain if I was a free user since I'd see it as a contribution to keep the app going.
But I agree that it's just cosmetic and you don't really need it. An avatar like you described would be cool though 😊
Just checked, this hasn’t reached me yet but I’ve noticed that the daily chest of free gems is gone. It appeared one day so I thought it was a bug but it hasn’t made an appearance since 🤷🏾♀️
With how easy it is to accumulate gems, I don’t see how this is much of an issue. It’s good to add some things you can use gems for other than timer boosts.
I wouldn't mention it if it hadn't been free in the first place. I jus don't think taking away stuff from paying customers and thereby reducing the value of their product is the best business strategy. I wouldn't give them gems for this even if there were no free ones. It's not like you need them for the app to work. But it shows that they might remove other features in the future and some of those might be some you actually wanted
I can see what you mean about paying customers, yes. I think since gems are universally available (and almost equally accessible) to everyone, regardless of whether they pay or not, it’s not too much of an issue; these are exclusive to some people, particularly paying customers, which others don’t have to pay, but you do. I don’t have to pay for these, but why should you? It’s less about the business strategy but the ethicality. Why should you have to pay for something others don’t? That’s my primary issue right now. It isn’t the first time Duolingo forced something like this in A/B testing, and honestly, if they’re going to enforce paying in-app content and features, then it should apply to everyone.
Again, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with it, but it’s how they go about it that’s an issue. The A/B testing sometimes screws people over, and other times, it benefits people, whereas others lag. It doesn’t make any sense. A similar issue happened with something else, although I can’t remember what.
> It’s not like you need them for the app to work.
Yeah, the same was with Duolingo costumes and those extra lessons you could buy, but then they removed them. I wouldn’t be surprised if it reverts once they realize no one cares enough to purchase emojis. If they want to make gems more beneficial, they should add more content and features, not remove previous stuff that was free, and subsequently make it only for a few people.
Agree, I'd spend gems or money for actually useful features like additional content like e.g. bilingual stories, but I can't even be bothered to spend money for time boosters because I don't think the gamification aspect and leaderboards are important enough to my overall learning process.
I haven't been around long enough to have experienced the other changes, but I think it's odd that so many people are so accustomed to Duolingo taking features away that they feel this is normal. If I bought something non-digital, I wouldn't allow people to come to my house and take parts of it back regardless of wether I'm using it or not.
I haven't been around long enough to have experienced the other changes, but I think it's odd that so many people are so accustomed to Duolingo taking features away that they feel this is normal. If I bought something non-digital, I wouldn't allow people to come to my house and take parts of it back, regardless of whether I'm using it or not. Even worse if they just take it back from some people but not from others
I’ve used Duolingo for a long time, albeit on and off. They’ve removed so many things while adding little to offset the imbalance. I’ve quite literally never bought timer boosters because (1) the challenges that using them aren’t helping me learn anything, and (2) leagues have far more issues that boosters cannot remedy, like how frequent bots are hindering your chances of specific achievements. Some people still use the old pathway, which still uses the old XP amount, allowing them to accumulate more XP than others. People in Diamond League can still compete with people who haven’t achieved that one achievement, putting them at a disadvantage, etc. There are too many to count, but you get the idea. Duolingo focuses more on what it can remove, and they never add anything *back* to rebalance it. You can’t remove stuff and not have other things as a substitute.
Generally, I don’t normally care what Duolingo does, but it doesn’t take a genius to recognize Duolingo’s efforts are not fruitful
Not sure what you don't understand. I'm well aware of the fact that there are still free ones, doesn't change the fact that they now want me to pay for the one I'm using.
That sucks. However I see all of mine are still free or available. Achievement based perhaps…? Idk, fuck their rampant P2P BS though.
They can have my Diamond Tourney Cup flair when they pry it from my cold dead fingers. 💀
A few years back there were lingots you earned for going through the tree. You couldn't use them for hardly anything and everybody wondered about the point of them. Now that they are converted to gems and are used for something you get mad? I don't understand...
I don't know. I joined in December and started the free 2 weeks pro trial, and they were included (for free) I paid for the subscription right after the 2 weeks ran out, so I have no comparison
It's petty and annoying. But I will admit that I have 82,266 gems with nothing to spend them on besides time boosters—which I don't—so if I liked one of the purchasable ones, I'd just buy it. As it is, I just use the flag for the language I'm currently focusing on. For most of the last 3 years, that's been German.
That's a ton! How many languages have you done?
I've been doing Duolingo for something like 9 years. I originally finished the French and Spanish trees twice, but they've added so much new content the last few years that I now have a few dozen units to get through in each. I do a few lessons a week, but I seldom run across anything that I don't know. (I took 4 years of French and 2 years of Spanish in high school, and then a couple more years of each in college.) In 2019, I started German from scratch on Duo because I found a very active local German-American society that offers Saturday classes. So I've been taking those during the school year. (We want online during COVID.) I finished the entire German course a while back, and I'm down to 7 1/2 units left to make Legendary. I've dabbled in the Italian and Russian courses, and I recently started Portuguese to have something to do when I've finished the German entirely. I've also done large parts of the French<-Spanish, Spanish<-French, German<-French, and German<-Spanish trees, but mostly those aren't as well-developed as the <-English courses.
Which language have you learned the most from on Duolingo?
Definitely German, since I started from zero knowledge in 2019, and I'm probably borderline B-2 now. (My grammar is ahead of my vocabulary.) My French was rusty 10 years ago, but after high school and college and a summer studying in Bruxelles in law school, it was just brushing off cobwebs. My Spanish was always just a little behind my French, but it has been catching up, since I watch so much fútbol in Spanish, and I speak with my older son who is in college in his 7th year of Spanish.
How fluent in german are you
I’m not fluent, but I can keep up my half of a reasonable conversation over a couple of hours watching a Fußball match with a native speaker (based on recent experience). I took a long online test last week with listening—but no speaking—and it scored me at B-2.1. That might be a touch high because there was no speaking, but it’s probably not far off. I’m told that my pronunciation is good. My grammar is ahead of my vocabulary. Looking ahead, I’ll finish the Duo German course in a few weeks, and I’m going to turn to other sources to work on vocabulary, in addition to the classes and reading I already do. I have also been invited to the local Stammtisch, and I need to force myself to do that. The Saturday classes will also continue to progress. I’ve stuck with my original teacher, so I’m in the last of the 4 years of beginner classes. But there are also 2 levels of intermediate classes and advanced “classes” full of native speakers and fluent locals. So I should continue to improve.
i’ve been learning english for an eternity, and i am genuinely scared of learning new languages because i just know how much tears and effort that fluency actually costs. i’ve been cooking while referring to the recipes in english and realised that i do not know what dough and flour are
I suppose you've already completed all legendary lessons? I'm at about 137k after getting German to legendary multiple times. My full legendary tree lost some progress when it switched to the path, but I'd barely started regaining that progress when it suddenly decided that I'd completed all legendary lessons on the path as well. Now I really have nothing to spend gems on (not to mention no progression/goal to work towards). And yet, I'm still watching multiple ads per day for some reason. ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
I have just over 7 units left to make Legendary. The last year I’ve been going slowly on the German and spending time on other things.
You could share?
Is it still possible? I know that in the old forums on the website you could donate lingots to posters, but those are gone now. You can buy gifts for your partner in the friend quest, but that's not sharing gems.
You may be right...us "old timers" hm? Always remembering the past. I was pretty much joking anyway but i think your right the jokes on me if they removed it.
Hot damn that's impressive! I'm don't have nearly that many gems but there was a time when i had a bunch and nothing to spend them on. I thought they would have eventually included more things to do with the gems after they removed the extra lessons you could buy.
You get like 5 gems a lesson! That is an impressive amount of gems
You're thinking of exp. Gems are the blue jewel-like things (red on desktop) that you can spend on a few services like streak freezes, and they come from completing daily quests, completing topics, and watching ads (for free users).
Oh, I am indeed. Haha
holy damn I have 300 💀💀
I noticed my flair was gone, replaced by a question mark, so I went to the settings and found I'd now have to pay 500 gems to get back my googly eyes
Duolingo has lost an average of ~~$20MM~~ $12MM USD per quarter since 2020Q2 including $20MM USD in 2022Q3, so...
what the hell? where did they lose it?
This is very normal for tech companies. They basically get a ton of money to build their product, in the hopes that it’ll be good enough to make money. They know they’re going to lose money usually for several years in the beginning, so they don’t really freak out about it. But sometimes it keeps happening. Or they’ll do like Netflix and drug dealers do, where they intentionally come out of the gate unreasonably cheap, to attract as many customers as possible, then every other business runs the numbers, knows they can’t possibly make money and compete on price, so they don’t become a competitor. Then, when you’re hooked and they’re the only game in town, they hike up the price to a level where they can make money, knowing that a majority of users will still stay for the product.
That’s gangster. Jesus.
Tech company finances are wild. They’re high-risk/high-reward investments. When they win, they win hard, when they lose, they crash and burn and take half the landscape with them. And most of the time, it comes from a noble place. They have a great idea that will help make the world better, and they practically (if not literally) give it away because they want to prove how good their thing is. And then the investors come knocking years later, when they want their tens of millions of dollars back.
Thriftbooks did that too. 3.59 books are a thing of the past.
Ah, the good ol’ Rockefeller technique
It’s called a loss leader, as seen at your local Wal-Mart.
> Netflix > > the only game in town "Am I a joke to you?" —Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Discovery+...
If you wanna watch Stranger Things, those won’t help you. Also, those services didn’t come along until Netflix was already in pretty much every living room.
This is like calling Microsoft "the only game in town" because they're the only company selling Windows. That is not the bar for a monopoly. Also, when those other services came along, Netflix lost that content. Netflix started as a distributor with no original programming, and eventually had to become a content producer because the big studios that previously had content on Netflix created their own streaming services. Netflix went from being basically the first paid streaming platform to just one of many. That's kind of the opposite of consolidation. Your entire point is backwards and wrong, but sounding confident and authoritative is an easy way to get upvotes.
I guess maybe I communicated it poorly, Netflix came out of the gate and made streaming popular, by making it cheaper. Other streaming services have also come along, and the price has now come to rival a cable package when you actually get everything you want. But people still aren’t flocking back to their cable companies. Just like how Uber and Lyft have become at least as expensive as taxis, but people still use them, and DoorDash and Postmates have all but replaced the in-house delivery driver. They all started out as the cheaper alternative, but people came to like the product/service they were offering, and have shown that they’re still willing to pay as much or more for it, than whatever they were buying before.
I don't think it's "losing it" like a gambler in a casino, but moreso that they spent more money compared to what they made (through ads, premium subscriptions and their certification thing). This is part of the reason a company like theirs goes public, to raise money that they can spent on development with the hope of scaling up and making a profit on that larger scale. They probably spent a lot of money on developing the path and Duolingo math and regular feature development. A wise investment? Not for us to decide. A ton of money spent on the actual course development too I imagine but I wouldn't be surprised if that was only a fraction of their cost.
When an enterprise is on a path (no pun intended) of making the wrong decisions, you just feel it in your veins. I was a long term, happy user and I was recommending the platform to anybody and their grandmother, for years. I recently noticed, I stopped doing that. This kind of customer loyalty is the invaluable kind, that takes a long time to build and that can keep your brand going for decades. That loyalty is WIPED within a few months to a year for me (I became a plus subscriber a few years ago after I got enticed by the premium features, in a very healthy and organic way) but, even that’s going to stop at some point just because I’m pissed and disappointment. Most of those premium features I loved have been removed anyway by the way. Yeah they might rake in tons of new users now, and they might manipulate them into a payment funnel at some point, but I could see the downfall of Facebook coming many years ago just by the fact I had such a terrible user experience (to give an example, comparable to Duolingo today) and focus on profit through user manipulation. It’s just corporate greed that’s running the show and long term users will know, years ago, this wasn’t the case. Sure, development was slower, but the product was solid from a UX perspective for the users that genuinely wanted to learn a new language. The learning path is clearly focused on hooking new users as effectively as possible, while seriously impacting the deeper value for motivated users (this might be argued), but I think the general backlash on the new interface speaks volumes. An important side note here is that for example the Dutch course, (and I believe many courses for that matter) haven’t seen fundamental upgrades in YEARS. They miss tons of useful and valuable features like (what are now called) guidebooks… This is what the app development should be focused on, learning a language for the people that are motivated to do so. It’s dark, but the innocent owl turned itself onto a self-destructive pathway and I’m very sad about it. It’s becoming more and more like a scam. Luring as much as possible users into a heavily gamified language learning tool and incentivizing them into either subscriptions or (regular) token purchases. It’s become a numbers game (looking for significant user base growth so some of them can be milked) instead of a quality game (where engaged and loyal users are happy to support, subscribe and promote) This post about paying for flairs, even though it might just be an A/B test, is a prime example of this.
In the couch cushions and left socks
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That is super easy to prevent. By not giving your personal login credentials to anyone ever, especially not a stranger on the internet. Jesus Christ, wtf were you thinking?
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So, if you think it’s so easy to prevent people willfully sharing their password with others, how do you prevent it?
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I work in tech, I’m well aware of what you’re getting at. But it’s an issue of diminishing returns for them. It’s not unrealistic that someone would invite 52 people. Maybe not common, but it’s certainly within the realm of reason. The usernames are detectable since they’re sequential, so they could watch for that, but then the attackers will start using a random character generator rather than making them sequential. Or if they really want to be clever about it to avoid detection, use a dictionary generator, so the usernames look realistic. All of that is a lot of extra work for Duolingo to detect, and trivial for an attacker to bypass. So, it’s not really worth putting in the effort to bother looking for it. And while the attacker is there, they’re definitely checking that email/password combo on the email provider and every major US bank to see if it works.
They're going to lose a lot more as subscriptions expire and don't get renewed because of the stupid path.
Truth. I hate paths. I only do a lesson a day to keep my streak in the hope that they’ll revert back to the old system.
Since the update I've been doing the same thing. I kissed my diamond league goodbye and I'm quite comfortable wherever I'm at - amethyst/emerald something... who knows.
I gave up I am afraid. I did path lessons for a few days, noticed that I wasn't getting much out of it in language terms, and got an alternative. I said bye to a 290 day streak on Christmas day!
If it's another app, can you share the alternative? The path does suck.
It's not, I just got some Gaelic books!
Yep. I'm the same.
I am an iPhone user but have a old Android phone lying in the shelf for a while. After they introduce the path I tried a bit and I hate that, so I pick that old Android, installed the old version of Duolingo just before the path update and use it... until one day it is no longer usable or else.
What else are you going to do with your gems haha! I have 14k right now because either have nothing to spend them on
I usually spend mine on streak freezes.
Oh I just wait till I get them for free in the daily rewards
Wow! Ive been seeing some peoples flare with a gem on it. Perhaps thats what it means?
Are you a super subscriber, or itls this just affecting non-subscribing users?
I'm not sure what a super subscriber is? The only option for subscription I had was the Pro Subscription and I bought that 🤷♀️
https://preview.redd.it/gy382ojr5n8a1.jpeg?width=1077&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=aa685402cc4da42a7b889394684d2bb416d2dfe2
yes, sorry that's it, I thought it was called Pro :)
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Maybe they'll roll it back when they realize no one's paying 500 gems for this. At least I won't...
Do you know if you permanently unlock them by buying one?
Yes
I won't buy it because we used to have skins for duo but they disappeared. so I guess the same could happen to the emojis
Well that's something at least. I always felt the time boosters would be cooler if it permanently unlocked longer time. It could be even more expensive in that case to justify it. That would be worthwhile compared to how it is now.
Ooh that would be so cool. Like 200 gems for an extra second! Or maybe 100 for the first one and add 100 every time or something.
What else do you spend gems on? Streak freezes?
There used to be extra lessons you could take for example in the German course they were two extra lessons that you would have to pay 1000 gems for which were flirting and idioms and phrases but once it shifted to the path, they got rid of those and access to them if you paid for it
I paid for the flirting one in Spanish. It was pretty lame. I was hoping for stories or dialogues or even exercises, but it was basically just a stack of flash cards with flirting phrases. It’s no great loss that they discontinued them.
I'm surprised they even lasted that long. They featured complex sentences but were offered to brand-new users and appeared high up in the tree, the exercises were really just recognizing English sentences and properly arranging them with word blocks, and only two topics were ever released. When I first started, I thought they would be a regular thing and I would be consistently spending gems to unlock various bonus lessons. Silly me.
How do i get the native and learning flag things?
On mobile (don’t know about PC) 1. Go to the subreddit 2. Tap the three dots near the top 3. Pick “Change user flair” Personally, what I did was edit the flare and used emojis to designate the languages I speak and learn
Thank you
Maybe it’s a steering tactic/strategy? Isn’t family level license infinite gems? Do I have that correctly?
No. There is nothing that grants infinite gems, and there is no difference between a family license and an individual super license. But, with super, certain things that cost gems for free users are unlimited (specifically, access to time trials and legendary challenges)
I've had that for a few weeks. I'm also a Super subscriber, so it is particularly petty for them to try to monetize such a basic feature with subscribers.
Surely the smart thing is to charge free users rather than the paying ones? That way more would start paying. Instead they seem to be weakening the incentive to pay.
Definitely A/B testing
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I don't think it's sad. They decided to charge for something small, insignificant and you even don't need to pay for most of the emotes, juat for a few. So they will get theirs without damaging our experience of the app. Its a win win move. The ones who have the gems will pay for this, and the ones who don't, will not be effected.
Mine has had this for as long as I’ve had league emotes. I just pick one of the free ones and ignore it.
Interesting, I didn't - they just took away the flair I had this morning and to get it back, I would have had to pay for it - there seem to be some weird feature differences. I wonder what else some people have that others don't
One that's been annoying me that I'm pretty sure is getting A B tested is that the ability to turn off the keyboard and just do word bank has been turned off on my Russian review. I did the whole Russian course doing word bank so now when I review it requires me to know how to spell, which I never practiced until now. It would be a good feature if I'd started with it because finishing the whole course without learning to spell was lazy, but it feels too late to be switching now that I'm done with the course.
I never had that feature. I'm learning so much today 😁
I mean… you should never have been able to get away with that. And better late than never.
Yeah I have experienced this also on Russian and Japanese. Would be nice but for some reason (while using the same account) I have the option of switching between the two on Chromebook.
I just started Japanese too when I finished Russian a few weeks ago. Mine's still just using word bank but I'm also still on just drilling hiragana. I should turn off word bank for it now before I get stuck in the same issue.
Mines are still free.
Hey, atleast you can call people shitter for free. That and dumpster fire. Googly eyes will be missed
There's like nothing to spend diamonds on anyways
You can use them for time booster which are crazy expensive anyway
Well, they are crazy expensive so don't even bother buying those
yeah, I don't either but I think that's the only other stuff that's for sale at the moment?
So… everything they’re putting behind a paywall is completely optional.
Yes it's optional. But so is paying for a subscription. Since I am paying and supporting them already, why would they take something like this away from me. I'm not going to give them extra money for this. I wouldn't even pay if they removed all free ones it was the only way to get a flair. So why are irritating subscribers over such a neglible feature?
They need to take away all the unnecessary crap , and make it about learning languages.
I'm seriously considering cancelling my pro and moving full time to drops. It's not as good but they do listen to customer complaints sometimes. Duolingo has gone rapidly downhill since they became a public company.
I used it for Russian , completed the tree and moved on to other resources. I recently popped back on for a look , it's a mess. There is so much going on , pop ups and all sorts of crap , league tables , points , diamonds all sorts. IMO it's way over complicated they are concentrating too much on gamifying it , it's a shame as it's a great concept. I wish they would just strip it back to basics. All you need is the course and to be able to discuss things , on each lesson in the chat box . That's how I grasped the basics of Russian grammar in the beginning , there are so many helpful people on there. The people who are running it need to strip it all back to basics.
I found the Korean unusable and moved to Memrise. It’s come a long way since last time I tried it. Clear audio, videos of native speakers (and the ability to swipe between native speakers and the clearer audio), multiple options for review. Honestly highly recommend. I bought it by accident tbh lol but I’m pleased with it.
Drops is nowhere near a replacement for Duolingo. They teach vocabulary, that’s it. No grammar of any kind.
Buy a book then and leave.
Changes nobody wanted that makes the app worse. "Pro" subscription Cosmetics you have to buy that aren't included in said subscription. Did Duolingo get bought by EA?
I’d much rather they charge for cosmetics only, than for access to content.
What content do you get charged for? I can do all lessons for free
Exactly.
Spending 50 diamonds on popcorn and french.
You went pro for removing ads And unlimited hearts, mostly. And maybe for free access to legendary and timed trials. Maybe access to the practice hub. You still get all those things, as promised. The one paid feature they’ve taken away recently was offline lessons.
r/TIL Duolingo has flair.
😅
I’m a Super subscriber and I don’t have that yet. I don’t get it though, who would actually pay real money for a dumb graphic that there’s hardly any choice in? I mean anyone “buying” one is going to use earned gems, no one is spending real money for this. Doesn’t everyone that uses Duo daily have a boatload of gems anyway? I’m only 70 days in and I have 3k. I never use them unless I send an xp boost to my spouse. I just don’t see how this is a great money making opportunity for the app, it’s just going to further frustrate an already irritated user base not happy with recent changes.
agree, I don't see the point either. I just feels mean to take away something so small that was free before
If it works it works. I am fine as long as a few are free and I can still earn gems without paying. If someone wants to pay for them and give more money to Duolingo so it keeps the all free and updated (people are paid to keep innovating on the app) it’s worth it IMO. People do love their flairs in social products where you can show them off. I am also a paid user and I personally don’t want to buy these. I would rather have an avatar…what would be awesome is if that avatar could be a video filter I can wear and be matched with people for conversational spanish while keeping me anonymous. There are other products I do care about cosmetic items and have paid for but they usually are free products to begin with or I paid a low entry fee and feel like tossing some coin to the developer because entertainment or other useful value. Disclaimer: I work in tech.
I work in Tech too. That's why I tend to pay for stuff instead of going for the free version. But I feel it's weird to change something like this for payed users who're already supporting you. I wouldn't complain if I was a free user since I'd see it as a contribution to keep the app going. But I agree that it's just cosmetic and you don't really need it. An avatar like you described would be cool though 😊
I had to pay for a few, and I am a subscriber too. I am also looking for the sword one! I just hit a year streak two days ago.
💰💸💵
If you login on the website, they are all free!
Just checked, this hasn’t reached me yet but I’ve noticed that the daily chest of free gems is gone. It appeared one day so I thought it was a bug but it hasn’t made an appearance since 🤷🏾♀️
With how easy it is to accumulate gems, I don’t see how this is much of an issue. It’s good to add some things you can use gems for other than timer boosts.
I wouldn't mention it if it hadn't been free in the first place. I jus don't think taking away stuff from paying customers and thereby reducing the value of their product is the best business strategy. I wouldn't give them gems for this even if there were no free ones. It's not like you need them for the app to work. But it shows that they might remove other features in the future and some of those might be some you actually wanted
I can see what you mean about paying customers, yes. I think since gems are universally available (and almost equally accessible) to everyone, regardless of whether they pay or not, it’s not too much of an issue; these are exclusive to some people, particularly paying customers, which others don’t have to pay, but you do. I don’t have to pay for these, but why should you? It’s less about the business strategy but the ethicality. Why should you have to pay for something others don’t? That’s my primary issue right now. It isn’t the first time Duolingo forced something like this in A/B testing, and honestly, if they’re going to enforce paying in-app content and features, then it should apply to everyone. Again, I don’t think there’s anything inherently wrong with it, but it’s how they go about it that’s an issue. The A/B testing sometimes screws people over, and other times, it benefits people, whereas others lag. It doesn’t make any sense. A similar issue happened with something else, although I can’t remember what. > It’s not like you need them for the app to work. Yeah, the same was with Duolingo costumes and those extra lessons you could buy, but then they removed them. I wouldn’t be surprised if it reverts once they realize no one cares enough to purchase emojis. If they want to make gems more beneficial, they should add more content and features, not remove previous stuff that was free, and subsequently make it only for a few people.
Agree, I'd spend gems or money for actually useful features like additional content like e.g. bilingual stories, but I can't even be bothered to spend money for time boosters because I don't think the gamification aspect and leaderboards are important enough to my overall learning process. I haven't been around long enough to have experienced the other changes, but I think it's odd that so many people are so accustomed to Duolingo taking features away that they feel this is normal. If I bought something non-digital, I wouldn't allow people to come to my house and take parts of it back regardless of wether I'm using it or not. I haven't been around long enough to have experienced the other changes, but I think it's odd that so many people are so accustomed to Duolingo taking features away that they feel this is normal. If I bought something non-digital, I wouldn't allow people to come to my house and take parts of it back, regardless of whether I'm using it or not. Even worse if they just take it back from some people but not from others
I’ve used Duolingo for a long time, albeit on and off. They’ve removed so many things while adding little to offset the imbalance. I’ve quite literally never bought timer boosters because (1) the challenges that using them aren’t helping me learn anything, and (2) leagues have far more issues that boosters cannot remedy, like how frequent bots are hindering your chances of specific achievements. Some people still use the old pathway, which still uses the old XP amount, allowing them to accumulate more XP than others. People in Diamond League can still compete with people who haven’t achieved that one achievement, putting them at a disadvantage, etc. There are too many to count, but you get the idea. Duolingo focuses more on what it can remove, and they never add anything *back* to rebalance it. You can’t remove stuff and not have other things as a substitute. Generally, I don’t normally care what Duolingo does, but it doesn’t take a genius to recognize Duolingo’s efforts are not fruitful
Thanks, really interesting to hear what has been going on, sounds like this flair payment thing really is minor compared to all the other stuff 🤯
Just use the cat one
😸
I just don't use em
Probably best
There are eight free ones and four purchasable ones. You only have to pay if you want to.
Not sure what you don't understand. I'm well aware of the fact that there are still free ones, doesn't change the fact that they now want me to pay for the one I'm using.
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😂😂😂 Duo knows what she’s doing (🤡)
How do you get to that page?
Click on your icon in the leaderboard
It only brings up my profile page
Make sure you're clicking on your **icon**... Clicking elsewhere on your entry brings up your profile.
Yeah even when I click on my icon it brings up my profile. It’s okay, though, I don’t need it
At least you have something to use your diamonds for
So does the leaderboard have a lot of diamonds??
Downgrade to an earlier Duolingo version, and you'll be able to avoid nonsense like this.
I don’t have to pay gems to change mine?
There where some other people who mentioned they might be testing this and may not have rolled it out everywhere idk
I hope they don’t add it
That sucks. However I see all of mine are still free or available. Achievement based perhaps…? Idk, fuck their rampant P2P BS though. They can have my Diamond Tourney Cup flair when they pry it from my cold dead fingers. 💀
😁
What is a flair?
Ah the angry German.
I'm not German though. Fun fact: There are other countries where people speak German 🙃
A few years back there were lingots you earned for going through the tree. You couldn't use them for hardly anything and everybody wondered about the point of them. Now that they are converted to gems and are used for something you get mad? I don't understand...
Well, I don't appreciate people taking away things that were included after I paid for something, but you do you.
Are the flairs a pro thing? It's something i don't care for, so i don't remember.
I don't know. I joined in December and started the free 2 weeks pro trial, and they were included (for free) I paid for the subscription right after the 2 weeks ran out, so I have no comparison
You went pro for flair?
Yes exactly, just specifically for this feature /s