Duolingo is replacing hearts with energy

[DaniDePons]

The energy or battery model is much more defeating than the hearts. It has completely taken the fun out of learning another language as I am fixated on my percentage the whole time. I now cannot even make it through 2 full lessons before my energy runs out. It is truly unfortunate as I always thought Duolingo put learning first and made it available to ALL people. This new energy system will not allow for a language learning experience at all as you get less than 10 minutes of learning. Duolingo is the one that promotes 15 minutes of learning a day to actually learn a language. Now that is not easily accessible to people unable to pay for a subscription. I hope that Duolingo changes the system back, lengthens the energy, or that another app takes its place with a free option.

[plf+duo25]

Right there with ya! Trying to decide how much longer I’m willing to put myself through the hell of constantly watching my energy drop
EVEN when I get all the answers correct.

[Lagarto]

Quite frankly I hate it. Just here to add my voice to everyone else’s. I hope hearts really do come back for me because I’m dropping leagues at this point. I can’t do enough lessons to maintain position without running out of stupid energy and I’m NOT going to pay for anything lol, I’m a spiteful consumer. I will put up with inconvenience if it means I get to keep my money.

[lrai]

I stopped leagues early on when I realized what a joke it was to compete and really get nothing in return for all that energy and effort. Okay so you get XPs and gems, neither of which are good for much other than bragging rights. Once I stopped the insanity of the leagues my learning went up and my stress went down. I do my best to complete the daily challenges but if I run out of energy or hearts then I am done for that day. My goal daily is ONE lesson or 15 minutes which ever takes longer...LOL. If I am feeling really challenged I do one lesson in each of the languages I am learning, so 4 lessons total. It's plenty for me. Also, I am cheap so it will be a day when hell freezes over (and thanks to global warming that's not likely) when I will pay to do what was supposed to be a free language learning app!

[Hobgoblin]

I am finding this so dispiriting. I only used Duo to keep my French from becoming rusty, and having completed the course some time ago was on daily refresh. This was pretty tedious as the same old exercises came round repeatedly. But I could complete the daily refresh exercises with my hearts (more or less intact). . Now I have energy rather than hearts even with a perfect lesson I can lose 10 units of energy. This can be reduced by rushing -not bothering with accents for example, but I fail to see how this is an improvement, With the rate of attrition I am only managing 3 of the exercises before my energy has gone. Sadly I can’t see any use for Duo now.

[plf+duo25]

So many folks agree with you. I hope Duo pays attention.

[lrai]

I personally find big corporations who make decisions based on "profits" alone usually wind up losing in the end. Consumers may put up with it for a while but many will go elsewhere and that's the point of free markets. I have choices, yippee, well at least I should have choices, sometimes there are no other choices (ie: skype changing to teams, nuff said). I try to be a wise consumer and I also exercise my freedom to tell big corporations when I am displeased. If they listen win-win, if they don't win for someone else is how I feel. DL began with a good premise and it was a place of language learning for so many, then over time greed took over and things did not change for the better. As long as I can use this platform to achieve my personal learning goals without paying for the lessons (as it was started as a free platform and the promise was it would remain free) then I will stay, once this is no longer the case then I will move on, sadly. It has been my experience that many "free" things on the internet begin with great intentions but later on they either succumb to greed or realize they can't live up to the promise of free. It's a shame when that happens that they are not transparent enough to be honest with their customer base and give them the chance to make choices. Just venting...sorry

[CluelessHD]

I'm slightly wary of mentioning it, in case somebody at the mothership notices and ramps up the changes more quickly to the web version...

Apart from that occasionally irritating 5 heart thing, my website version of Duo is still generally ok - no ads or anything.

I was doing the web as well, but the new achievements tied to the app don’t count when using the web
I’m doing the 2 week trial and just bombing through 2 units to make them legendary, and then will continue via the Web.
As it is, I feel the app is a horrible experience without paying for it if you actually want to get in a good hour of lessons in.

[SweNedGuy]

If I were an IPhone user forced to Energy replacing hearts, I would unregister from Duolingo. Voting with my feet.
If enough people keep lingering on doing an occasional lesson per day, DL will expand its nefarious "Energy" A/B experiment.
Only seeing its user base drop may induce DL to a policy change: less users implies less potential paid subscriptions.

[plf+duo25]

It’s sad they IPhone users are being penalized - and that’s how I view it.

[MoniqueMaRie]

It’s sad they IPhone users are being penalized - and that’s how I view it.

It's only a matter of time before others get the same - at least that's always been the case with all the ghastly innovations in recent times.

[Saperlipopette!]

Nobody has written anything about the beat the clock options. In the app, there are usually two cartoons for each unit - clicking the upper one kicks off March Madness, clicking the Lower one starts a Beat the Clock practice lesson. On the app, mistakes while using these two options don't affect hearts. Logically, it follows that correct answers and mistakes in these two options don't affect energy. I believe those exercises are also on the iPad. Has someone who got switched over to energy tested this ?

[CluelessHD]

Has someone who got switched over to energy tested this ?

Yes, you are required to ‘wager’ 10 energy to attempt each of the 3 levels.
When you go through it and get the 5 correct answer streak you get that random energy reward. Depending on how many questions you get, (1st star is least, and 3rd star will be the most ->I think 15 questions in under 1.5 mins? I’ll check today the specifics).

Edit: 20 questions in 1:30, is 3 part of ‘Rapid Review’

But yeah, if you fail, and didn’t get good energy wins during short streaks, you won’t be able to ‘wager’ 10 energy to attempt again, bc you end up with 9 energy or less and have to wait, etc.

Which is awful (impossible for nonsubs to really get value)
And I can say that after doing the 2 week trial, I realised how powerful these timed quick unit recaps are for my really learning/mastering the unit!!

I find them so powerful, that even if the unit has all new grammar, and vocab (I’m doing Japanese), getting to the point where I can do the 3rd star (perfectly in the allocated time), then I know I’ve successfully learned the unit!
And coming back a day or week later, doing these is an ultimate refresher, and imo a necessity for mastery of the unit.

As a non subscriber I used to save it for last after I’d legendary the unit, but now with the free trial it’s what I focus on in the unit! Everything else is a breeze compared to it IMO, and because of it I will have to subscribe to keep it as my preferred learning tool in the app.

[Syltremy]

Since they replaced hearts with energy, even with all correct answers I cannot complete the 3rd lesson in a day. I fall short of 1 energy point to complete the 3rd lesson on the last question. This is dumb. I feel this just a way to force us to buy Super.

With hearts I was abble to complete many more lessons if I chose to . This energy scheme limits my ability to learn, even if I'm willing to suffer the ads.

[Explorer]

I just found out they're rolling out a new test with more ways to refill energy. Apparently, you no longer have to watch a ton of ads to keep doing your lessons... Good news, I guess?

[Davey944676]

I don't (or wouldn't) even mind a few random ads.

In principle.

[Explorer]

I don't (or wouldn't) even mind a few random ads.

In principle.

Me neither, but now you run out of energy every 3 lessons, whether you make mistakes or not. To get back 3 energy points, you have to watch a 30-second commercial, so to fully refill your energy bar, you need to watch about 4 minutes of ads. Basically you end up spending more time watching ads than doing exercises.

With the hearts system at least you can do practice lessons to get hearts back. That's also annoying, but still way better than watching a bunch of random ads on a loop.

[CluelessHD]

Since they replaced hearts with energy, even with all correct answers I cannot complete the 3rd lesson in a day. I fall short of 1 energy point to complete the 3rd lesson on the last question.

This! I thought it was only me, the way Duo explains it to you like: ‘You don’t have enough energy to complete this lesson’ as though I did something wrong and I was trying to figure out how, after getting everything correct, I was unable to complete the whole thing in 1 sitting! That marked the first time I actually started to pay attention to the energy, and how messed up it all is. Essentially if I don’t have at least 15 energy plus, I don’t even bother with Duo that day, which defeats the whole purpose of using the app. It’s all good though because I’m using Nihongo Lessons for daily Japanese learning/reviewing (Anki/Japanese Level Up/Jalup) style learning. I just really like Duos way of getting the vocab to stick, I find myself repeating new words, even when I’ve forgotten what it means, but I remember the word and how it was spoken/presented.

[lrai]

I'm sorry but the ads are annoying and crude. I don't like the one with the guy on the toilet, not something I'd want my kids to watch. Then I get ads that are totally random, local and in Chinese. My fix, I exit out and then re-enter. It does take more effort but at least I am not offended by stupid ads. Just FYI

[MoniqueMaRie]

I don't (or wouldn't) even mind a few random ads.

In principle.

Lately I've only been getting adverts in Duolingo for one single online retailer whose app I don't want to use on principle.

The worst thing is that the adverts are extremely aggressive and terribly loud. Simply dreadful.

[farazy]

Looks like this is just penalizing us on IPhone first as guinea pigs. You can still buy, I believe. I won’t stay if I always have to buy. I hate the pressure of seeing energy depleting even if all my answers are correct. That’s definitely not fair.

I was always frustrated about losing hearts, but this is also frustrating in its own way. I think iphone users were picked first just because it's a more affluent user base. Everyone is going to get the feature, they just focus on getting features to us first.

[lrai]

This morning the energy level for me went to 30, it had been 25. I also notice I am not losing energy, but then who knows anymore. This whole thing has been nothing but a distraction and so I am trying to ignore it and just move forward with my own learning style.

[Saperlipopette!]

think iphone users were picked first just because it's a more affluent user base.

Iphone was picked first because most Duolingo changes and nearly all the big ones are rolled out on the iphone first. It was this way when they introduced Daily Quests, Friends Quests, even the switch from the tree to the snake. Before that all changes with leagues & xp were introduced on the iphone first, like legendaries and double XP timers. I don't recall Duolingo ever saying why, but it is believed this is because iphone offers more consistency across all its platforms. It's actually a corporate policy of Apple and one of their selling points in advertisements.

This is generally why, when you post on a forum about new features on your Duolingo iphone, you'll often get additional questions about related features and questions about more specific details because iphone always gets changes first & Duo rarely announces changes before a/b tests on the iphone. You'll usually get the advice to use Duolingo through either the app and the web if you want to avoid or postpone the changes. Web is usually the last place to get changes, and they often don't even get those changes.

It may seem like you're the Guinea Pigs if you have an iPhone, but your predecessors have also reaped some of the benefits. They've won leagues because of a higher XP structure and new ways to get more XP quickly. A lot of the beat the clock features come to iPhone first.