Languages
There is something broken

As for a lot of people becoming Polyglots, I find it largely situational on the PC. Some PCs have very legitimate reasons to speak a variety of languages. Some don't and simply don't.

The silver lining of language learning being skewed towards longer played characters is that languages are kind of a mess, in terms of their lore (the absurd nationalist fantasy that is Tagalog supplanting Sinitic languages get real, the unending misconceptions of Euro being a continental lingua franca instead of a vernacular street language, the mistaken idea that the coded languages are the only languages to exist in Withmore) and in terms of implementation because they're a very cool concept that never really got extended or deeply integrated into the gameplay that much so a lot of gameplay systems are English only.

So they are cool and have roleplaying potential but too many fresh character trying to do a lot of stuff with them is probable to cause more difficulties (for them and everyone else) than it might seem.

Is this pattern as prevalent as it seems or have a couple of us players just happened to see a pattern that isn't widespread?

If it is a fairly common pattern, is it a desired one? I for one would love to see it change - if it is real.

Are there any ideas on how one might adjust things to break this patters without having to rework the whole system?

Those are some of the things I find myself wondering after reading all of the responses so far at least. :)

Learning languages early is fun. I've posted before and I'll post again, though, that I think the Max number of languages you can learn should be based on your base INT stat with a minimum of two. Make the max ue guys buy skillsofts too if they're dummies.

I've kind of toyed with that idea in my head a bit as well, but often just fall back on remembering that this is a game. While it may be unrealistic for everyone to know every language in existence, there is enough exposure to the various cultures across the board that it does actually make a bit of sense to be speaking a number of different languages.

Takeshi Kovacs probably isn't the best example, as he was highly trained for assimilation and operations in hostile territory, but Altered Carbon Season 1 Episode 1 where he trades words with Jaeger in three different languages over the course of a very simple conversation was pretty cool.

This would make learning all 8 a major time sink even for near-cap players, and thus increase value of translator chip, skillsofts etc across the board, while letting more languages fly, without making them feel like "everyone knows them all anyway".

But also would not hate faster learning on curve to go with it, encourage the newbies to get into that, I think it's a great flavor.

The underlying goal was always for the focus to be Withmore with the world as a faint backdrop of megasprawls and awfulness. It also originated with a very small players of ten who had no ill-will towards representation but rather feeding the cyberpunk tropes which are very informed by the Cold War rhetoric and Hollywood media of the 80's plus a few homages to a PC or two @history which was then defined in the timeline.

Beyond that tangent, I really think it's best not to overthink it but rather make positive gains in cultural representation and overall storytelling when we can.

I have said that my character does speak a dialect of a country and use a few words to flavor here and there, but I always feel bad for trying to say things since there's no coded support.

I think coded languages are cool in giving language support to players who don't know those languages a way to rep speaking them with characters who do, I'm a little bit less enamored with how much the game cracks down on language use outside of the coded system when it's so limited in scope.

I don't really have solutions to offer overall but I'm just happy there is interest among players in having more and better global representation!

I personally really love seeing underrepresented or regional minority languages getting roleplayed, shout out to whoever it was using really good lowland Scots years ago! I know it can be a challenge and suspect some staff don't like non-English use but whenever language becomes part of the story, like how Haitian Creole is a major game touchstone, it really makes everything feel deeper and authentic to me personally.

Best way to get slang into the game is to just start saying it. Work it into your conversations often. If people like it, they will start using it.