SweNedGuy wrote: ↑Thu Jun 01, 2023 8:40 am
DL Staff will try to make their point that repetition is now ingrained into the path...
As far as I see the new repetition system really sucks. The have some lessons a the couple of last topics and practice lessons that also touch just a couple of last topics. So if you don't do the heart practice or the challenges, this system slowly renders your past skills obsolete.
Also, even though there are no limited hearts in my region right now because you can't basically pay for super Duolingo (thanks to DL staff for that), I miss the times when there were no hearts. Someone can argue that hearts make you repeat previous lessons and stuff, but you can't actually choose what topic you want to practice (not after the new path update at least, which made repeating previous lessons require hearts for some reason last time I checked, and that also makes absolutely no sense to me) so you are most likely to practice some unrelated stuff and continue to make the same mistakes again and it doesn't even let you finish your lesson, which can get really frustrating and make you want to quit DL. I know DL is a free app and requires money to exist, but I think this system could be implemented in much more better and thoughtful way than it was.
Also, this is not really a feature, but still, I see some courses switching from the grammar-based lesson approach to a topic-based approach, which I don't really like that much. In example the old vietnamese course had skills where you practice some grammar topic to a full extent and the new one, as far as I've seen, is like "going to cafe" or similar stuff, where grammar is being introduced too slowly. I see a lot of old courses with the grammar approach and courses with a high rate of updates having a topic-based approach so I guess it is common stuff for Duolingo. Like the most bare example of the topic-based approach, as I see it, is the German course, which while being quite an annoying course overall introduces grammar so slowly and inconsistently that the whole course becomes nothing more than a side practice and requires you to learn a lot from another resources (I know Duolingo is not a sufficient resource to learn a language but hooly mother of God not to that extent). Well, on the other hand, the Spanish course has a somewhat similar approach but it is much more useful for learning, so, I guess, it depends on how it is being implemented.
Also, yeah, forums and tips and notes, as it was mentioned before. Removing both of them have literally made 90% of the courses a puzzle game, which is not the kind of genre I expect when downloading a language learning app. It may be not that noticeable for now, but if Duolingo is going to stick to updating old courses without adding tips and notes I can guarantee that a lot of courses without preserved comments will become a bunch of puzzle games, where you will have to come up with grammar explanations for yourself making them even less sufficient for language learning. I know Duolingo had to pay for forum servers, but the at least could keep the comments.
Next is the old tree. I've mentioned some problems with the path before but ehh, it gets worse. Technically, as I see, path nerfed progressions and now you get to the crown level of three in the tree equivalent on the skills which is also lame IMO. It makes you do much more word-tapping than typing, which is not very good to memorize the words and stuff.
Also I miss the times when there was no match two challenge for popular courses. It totally needs more rework than it had for now, otherwise it is going to stay the comically unfair minigame that requires some kind of godly speedrunner skills from you. The golden lightning challenge (which is replaced by the match two) of course provided ridiculous amounts of XP for low effort which was unfair for the punishing ramp-up challenge but it at least was completable without having any supernatural abilities.
Furthermore, the times when there were volunteers creating and updating niche courses were nice, but as I know discontinuing the volunteer program was not the choice of Duolingo but result of some legal changes, so can't really blame them for that.
To sum it up: path bad, hearts bad, forums good.