[anw]

I really like Duolingo. It's not my favorite way of learning a language§, but they do a good job of pounding vocabulary into your head over and over. I will never forget that jeruk is "orange" in Indonesian.

However, taken from "Risk Factors" on this S-1:

> •users feel that their experience is diminished as a result of the decisions we make with respect to the frequency, prominence, format, size and quality of ads that we display;

Duolingo has a big problem with both their ads and how they promote their Plus plan. (I hope to never see an owl flying through space again)

Primarily, the quality of the ads I see are those stupid fish games or the "pull this pin to drop lava on the knight" that you see advertised on Facebook. I'm sure they're making money off of views, especially since you can't proceed in your lesson until you watch the video, but it cheapens the brand name of Duolingo (at least for me).

If they had ads for anything language, travel, or even food related, it would feel more on par with their branding. But so many other dollar grab apps do the same thing [regarding those kinds of video ads] that it feels like I'm just looking at another cheap app.

Secondly, how they promote their Plus plan. You are limited in how long you can access their platform by how many hearts you have. Miss enough questions, your hearts run out. Run out of hearts, you're restricted from proceeding further in your studies. You must buy hearts to stay on their platform. This feels counter intuitive, as you are now kicking users off of your platform and lose the ability to sway them towards other things you have to offer.

I have found that between carrot and stick approaches, it is usually better to use a carrot where you can.

§ - For my style of learning, I've found Pimsleur to be one of the better approaches. Breaking sentences into phrases, phrases into words, and down words into syllables really helps me grasp the langauge more, especially with the context that goes around in the "story".

[kogepathic]

> You are limited in how long you can access their platform by how many hearts you have. Miss enough questions, your hearts run out. Run out of hearts, you're restricted from proceeding further in your studies. You must buy hearts to stay on their platform. This feels counter intuitive, as you are now kicking users off of your platform and lose the ability to sway them towards other things you have to offer.

Pro-tip: Hearts only exist in the app, not on the website.

As soon as they switched to the hearts system, I uninstalled the app and now exclusively use the mobile website. Considering their app is just a web view, the experience is essentially the same (you'll need connectivity at the start and end of a lesson), except no ads and no hearts!

As a plus, the website actually allows you to view the forum discussion on sentences, for example if your answer was wrong but you feel it should be correct, you can see what other people are saying about it. Why they don't offer this in the app is beyond me.

The decision to gate people's learning by restricting their number of attempts stupid. It's counter to the point of learning, but I guess they didn't feel they were getting enough revenue from just ads alone, so they have to kneecap the learning experience to force people into their over-priced monthly subscription.

[gurkendoktor]

> Why they don't offer this in the app is beyond me.

Lesson instructions are even weirder:

When you take the Japanese class in English, you can read the explanations for each lesson in the app. However, when learning French in German, the instructions _only_ exist on the website. If you use the app exclusively, you'll have to guess all the grammatical special cases through trial and error.

[memsom]

This is the difference between Duolingo created content and community created content. The Duolingo courses have a lot more to them in app form. It seems like it is a lazy implementation in the app to me.

I have a over 1000 day streak and I've seen the app change a lot over those 1000+ days. It is heading towards "why am I bothering with this?" territory to be honest. I also do Memrise, and their marketing is just as obnoxious, but the app is actually a lot better at doing the stuff DuoLingo used to focus on IMO.

[occz]

You can also get hearts back without paying by doing what was previously known as 'practice', a random lesson of what you've previously learnt, by pressing the heart icon - on android, at least.

[kurizu4444]

I think it's more complex, Apple's app store rules make it clear than an iphone app cannot be a clone of their website, and there must be a differentiating factor. Thus, hearts.

[BlueGh0st]

Another alternative (for Android) is to roll back to an earlier version of the app that was actually usable.

I use version 3.106.5 and I don't get any limitations on messages and there's a glitch where you can skip the ad by tapping where the 'X' will be before anything loads. Additionally, you can view the discussion in this version and submit change suggestions.

[voisin]

> As a plus, the website actually allows you to view the forum discussion on sentences, for example if your answer was wrong but you feel it should be correct

You can do this in the app. There is a button on the bottom right when you finish a lesson that lets you see the forum for the question.

What boggles my mind is that you cannot collapse parts of the conversation irrelevant to your inquiry about the question.

[orangepanda]

I like the hearts system. It makes me think about the answer more, instead of just hoping it's right.

[Tepix]

You can see the discussion in the app, just click on the flag icon.

[nanodeath]

> "pull this pin to drop lava on the knight" that you see advertised on Facebook

Not at all your point, of course, but someone got fed up with those ads and actually made the game depicted: https://www.theactualgame.com/

[ALittleLight]

I had to try this after seeing all those ads. It is pretty similar to what the ads were. The game itself also has an obnoxious number of ads. For example, I had to watch a thirty second ad (or pay 75 "coins") to unlock the second level. In the second level I had pull one of two pins, to either dump lava on myself or gold. I chose gold and won a flawless victory, on to the next ad!

The other annoying thing about the game is that every level it asks you to register some kind of account or sign in with your Google account. If I refused to do that at first, why would I want to be asked every level?

I guess it's kind of fitting that the game is annoying as the ads that inspired it are too. I'd pay 1 dollar for an ad free version of this game, assuming the levels eventually became challenging and the game didn't nag me all the time about creating accounts. I won't watch 30 seconds of ads every 30 seconds though.

[DilipSripuram]

Hello Guys, This is Dilip Sripuram. The developer of the TheActualGameRescue you are talking about. Just wanted to address the issues you mentioned. About the Ads, you don't need to watch an Ad. The whole game can be played without watching a single Ad. Each level gives you enough coins to unlock next and by the end of easy levels you will have enough coins to unlock 3 medium levels. The login issue is so that I can save the save file with Google Play services. I will recheck this and limit the number of times it asks to once. I recommend watching this video to better understand the gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksI3YVoMwnM&ab_channel=GeneM...

Thanks. P.S : Posting this to every mention here. First time here on Hacker News.

[ALittleLight]

I applaud you for creating the game that people clearly want to play based off of those ads. I think that's a creative idea and you executed it pretty well. I see those ads most frequently on twitter - do you have a twitter bot that just links to your thing whenever those ads get posted? Might get some traffic.

I admit I didn't check to see what the coins were. I just assumed it was some kind of microtransaction. If you don't need to watch ads - why would anyone choose to? Unless, like me, they mistakenly thought you had to (which I would think is just as bad)?

Regarding login, I would suggest just explaining why you need this service, what you get for it, and letting the user choose it or not.

Curious how many users you have and what you make from this game.

[DilipSripuram]

I have about 3.3k downloads as of now. Mobile games need over 5 million downloads and many daily active users to make anything. 98% of the mobile developers don't make more than 500$ for their entire project. So, all work is just to stand out. My only way is with good gameplay. I will increase the "Buy" button size and may be add an animation to it suggesting you to click it. Thanks.

[jsnell]

Welcome. But please don't post the same message multiple times like that. It makes the thread hard to read, and you should not feel like you need to address every comment separately if this response already covers all the points.

[DilipSripuram]

Sorry jsnell, this won't happen again.

[wolframhempel]

Actually this is something that's been bugging me forever - maybe someone knows the answer? What's the incentive to advertise one game but sell another? There's clearly a market for the "pull the pin" kind of game, they don't seem to be particularly hard to make and these ads are by large game publishers. Why not just make the game that people actually want?

[hakfoo]

The "pull the pin" game requires actual level design effort. You design 2000 puzzles and in 6 months the player's done with them all.

Taking Bejeweled and painting it a different colour can be done once and keep the user occupied indefinitely.

[atatatat]

Larger total market.

[danparsonson]

Wait... are those adverts not depicting an actual game??

[ALittleLight]

On Twitter you can read the comments on the ads and the most frequent comments are from people complaining that the actual game apparently has nothing to do with those ads. I think I've read it's more like clash of clans.

[danparsonson]

Wow, TIL - I never click those ads because I assume the games are aggressively monetised nonsense but it didn't occur to me that the game might be completely different from the ad.

[Avalaxy]

This is very very often thr case with crappy chinese games in the play store. I get ads for so many games that look cool in the trailer but are apparently something completely different if you read the reviews. There's even one that uses some kind of really weird ripped off Age of Empires textures/models for their game. What they have in common is that theyre all pay-to-win chinese games where loot boxes cost up to $100.

[atatatat]

They're probably also (digitally) malware in many cases, too.

[DilipSripuram]

Hello Guys, This is Dilip Sripuram. The developer of the TheActualGameRescue you are talking about. Just wanted to address the issues you mentioned. About the Ads, you don't need to watch an Ad. The whole game can be played without watching a single Ad. Each level gives you enough coins to unlock next and by the end of easy levels you will have enough coins to unlock 3 medium levels. The login issue is so that I can save the save file with Google Play services. I will recheck this and limit the number of times it asks to once. I recommend watching this video to better understand the gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksI3YVoMwnM&ab_channel=GeneM...

Thanks. P.S : Posting this to every mention here. First time here on Hacker News.

[DilipSripuram]

Hello Guys, This is Dilip Sripuram. The developer of the TheActualGameRescue you are talking about. Just wanted to address the issues you mentioned. About the Ads, you don't need to watch an Ad. The whole game can be played without watching a single Ad. Each level gives you enough coins to unlock next and by the end of easy levels you will have enough coins to unlock 3 medium levels. The login issue is so that I can save the save file with Google Play services. I will recheck this and limit the number of times it asks to once. I recommend watching this video to better understand the gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksI3YVoMwnM&ab_channel=GeneM...

Thanks. P.S : Posting this to every mention here. First time here on Hacker News.

[DilipSripuram]

Hello Guys, This is Dilip Sripuram. The developer of the TheActualGameRescue you are talking about. Just wanted to address the issues you mentioned. About the Ads, you don't need to watch an Ad. The whole game can be played without watching a single Ad. Each level gives you enough coins to unlock next and by the end of easy levels you will have enough coins to unlock 3 medium levels. The login issue is so that I can save the save file with Google Play services. I will recheck this and limit the number of times it asks to once. I recommend watching this video to better understand the gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksI3YVoMwnM&ab_channel=GeneM...

Thanks. P.S : Posting this to every mention here. First time here on Hacker News.

[nxpnsv]

That trailer is great, epic music, I have no idea if the game is playable, but I guess that's beside the point

[DilipSripuram]

Hello Guys, This is Dilip Sripuram. The developer of the TheActualGameRescue you are talking about. Just wanted to address the issues you mentioned. About the Ads, you don't need to watch an Ad. The whole game can be played without watching a single Ad. Each level gives you enough coins to unlock next and by the end of easy levels you will have enough coins to unlock 3 medium levels. The login issue is so that I can save the save file with Google Play services. I will recheck this and limit the number of times it asks to once. I recommend watching this video to better understand the gameplay.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksI3YVoMwnM&ab_channel=GeneM...

Thanks. P.S : Posting this to every mention here. First time here on Hacker News.

[smcl]

DuoLingo is alright for very light language practice but it gets frustrating very quickly. Some examples:

1. About 25% of the time it's asking me to type out letter-by-letter the meaning of a sentence in my native language. So I'm learning Czech and it'll give me a sentence like "Ta moucha seděla na něčem zvláštním" and present me with a free-text field where I have to write out the English version. The other way round (making me type out "Ta moucha..." in Czech) I totally understand but this way is really stupid, not least because...

2. The expected translations are often wrong or inflexible. In the case above it wanted me to write out "That fly was sitting on something weird" - but I had written "That fly was sitting on something unusual" which is a perfectly valid interpretation of the sentence, but because they basically did a strcmp() I got it "wrong". Another example I remember was particularly bad because of the content of the sentence - "Tuhle větu jste opravdu nepřeložili příliš dobře", which I translated as "You really did not translate this sentence very well" (I'd expect "didn't" IRL but because I know how dumb DuoLingo can be I went with the simple version). The expected meaning was "You really did not translate this sentence too well" which is pretty clumsy IMO, and it's like they're taunting me but they're the ones who who didn't translate it "too well". I've dozens of these, there's seemingly no way to report them (I can see discussions but there's no way for me to participate)

3. There were enough lessons and material early on to give me the impression it was worth paying for the service, but after a couple of weeks I realised that I was being served the same sentences over and over. Now I understand there's value to spaced repetition, but what I'm experiencing is beyond a joke.

It's a really polished app in some respects, but in some areas where it really matters it's as useful as learning by copy-pasting into Google Translate.

[blindmute]

Yeah, I'd say it's about as polished as it can get, but it conceptually is just not going to be useful for any serious learning. It's been my experience over the years that the more enjoyable a language learning technique is to do, the worse it actually works. And duolingo is to their credit very enjoyable.

[smcl]

That's quite an astute observation - I guess getting out of your comfort zone is a necessary part of language learning. I've written on HN before about relatively simple things I have found useful (keeping a diary in $language, or watching films with $language audio) but looking back, if I'm honest the toughest situations were probably the most valuable for building confidence and testing my abilities.

[laurieg]

Pimsleur really is a fantastic method. I'm surprised it has dropped into relative obscurity.

For those who don't know, the Pimsleur language tapes involved learning a bunch of phrases and repeating them back to the tape. This would build into full conversations using the phrases, along with dropping out particular words like changing "eat" into "drink". There was essentially no written component.

The lessons also had an element of spaced repetition: Phrases from lesson 1 would pop up again in lesson 3, and then again in lesson 7 just to check you hadn't forgotten them.

Paul Pimsleur marveled at the invention of the tape recorder, saying that now students would be able to record and practice samples of real language while on the go. Nowadays everyone has a 'tape recorder' and then some in their pocket, but most methods seem to ignore audio completely, or let it take second place to written language.

[stephen_g]

Language Transfer [1] is a little bit like that, (all audio, and you are meant to talk back and just listen, speak and think, not write anything down), but it’s more of a conversational style where the teacher is explaining things to a student and you are supposed to pause to answer before the student does. Actually saying it does make a difference!

I haven’t got all the way through a course yet (need to get back but I’ll have to go back to an earlier point because it’s been a few months) but I feel like I made ten times the process as I did trying to do a course Duolingo for the same language.

It does the same kind of thing with the repetition. “Now remember how we’d say [word]” and it really does stick better than just seeing the word and a picture.

And it’s all available free too (but you can support on Patreon if you want).

1: https://www.languagetransfer.org/

[depthfirst]

I have gone through several courses with passive listening and learned so much. Would highly recommend.

[developer93]

Sounds like the Michael Thomas method

[nulbyte]

> Nowadays everyone has a 'tape recorder' and then some in their pocket, but most methods seem to ignore audio completely, or let it take second place to written language.

Admittedly, there is a cost involved for voice talent. But it is well worth it, in my opinion. I started using Duolingo to learn Hungarian. The course is in beta. It began with pre-recorded clips, which were very helpful to understand the tone. Later, the course switched exclusively to text-to-speech. It is so much harder to understand than a real person's voice, and so much nuance is left out.

[jfengel]

Unfortunately, Pimsleur is rather expensive. A set of CDs at full price is over $200, and most have three levels to buy.

It's cheaper online: $20 per month, and it'll take you about a month to do the equivalent of a set of tapes/CDs at one per day. (I assume it's the same or equivalent lessons.)

I've learned several languages to the "tourist" level via Pimsleur, but mostly borrowed from the library. Duolingo is a good complement to it for building vocabulary.

[memsom]

Pimsleur is great. A lot of their courses are on Audible too, so with a subscription you can buy them slowly over a number of months. That is what I started to do.

[yakireev]

Try their desktop browser version. All the ads can be blocked by uBlock Origin, there are no limits on what you can do whatsoever (I have no idea what are these "hearts" you're talking about), and most importantly - you can switch to the "write your answers on a keyboard" mode.

That last bit makes a hell of a difference. One thing is to click through, another is to actually translate a sentence or to write it down in "type what you hear" exercises, with hints showing up only when you explicitly ask for them. It makes the whole thing harder, but is absolutely worth the effort. You'll pound not just the words into your head, but also the grammar.

I learned two foreign languages in the recent years (as in: can read a newspaper or talk about my last vacation, humble brag!), and Duo was one of the keys to success (Anki & having an actual teacher were another ones). I believe it wouldn't work so well if I was just "clicking through" on mobile.

[broof]

Duolingos website actually has different features (and less/no ads for the mobile version of the website). On iPhone you can export the website itself to your home screen and it’s essentially an ad free version of the app with better features. I found it to be way more enjoyable this way

[emsy]

Thanks for the tip! Ads in Duolingo have become so obnoxious I stopped using it (I have better language apps that I pay for so the plus plan doesn’t make sense for me). This is probably the biggest risk for this IPO. You spend almost as much time dismissing ads and popups as you are learning the language. I can’t imagine this is helping them attract new users or converting users to the plus model for that matter. And no I don’t want notifications especially if you ask every 2 minutes.

[voisin]

I saw a ton of ads for the first 2-3 weeks of daily practice and then never saw ads again except for the occasional ad for upgrading to Plus.

[tagawa]

Reduces tracking vectors too.

[turkeywelder]

> •users feel that their experience is diminished as a result of the decisions we make with respect to the frequency, prominence, format, size and quality of ads that we display;

They should show short video ads in the language you're learning, so the challenge is to understand the ad. Free learning, better engagement and actually relevant ads.

I'd be up for that I think

[sdenton4]

Looking forward to the imminent expansion of the Klingon-language advertising sphere.

https://www.duolingo.com/course/tlh/en/Learn-Klingon

[misterben]

Today is a good day to BUY!

[gangstead]

I started using Duolingo a month ago. When you are out of hearts you can do "practice" sessions to replenish. Sometimes it gives you the option to watch an ad, but only a single time. My wife bought the Pro plan where you never run out of hearts but I figure if you are out of hearts that probably means it's time to practice instead of doing new material.

[memsom]

The problem with Duolingo is that not everyone sees the same, even under iOS. When Hearts came in, it was immediate on my Wife's account. But I didn't see them for 6+ months. We both regularly update apps too. It is a very strange thing.

[CryZe]

> Run out of hearts, you're restricted from proceeding further in your studies. You must buy hearts to stay on their platform.

This is not true. It just means you made enough mistakes that you should use their practice mode rather than continuing learning new stuff. The practice mode is entirely free and rewards you with new hearts.

[lwansbrough]

I bought a $50/yr subscription to Busuu and never looked back. Long time Duolingo user. It's a good app but a bad product. Busuu on the other hand feels easily worth the money if you're actively learning with it, and you can get quick feedback from native speakers in their community (and give others feedback which is just as rewarding.) I haven't used Duolingo in a while so maybe they've added similar features, but if they haven't they're seriously missing out on the community effect of language exchange.

[globular-toast]

The only thing something like Duolingo could be good at is learning vocabulary. But I found it pretty bad at that. I had much more success with Memrise. However, this was many years ago and last I checked Memrise had regressed significantly, at least for me.

Duolingo is a terrible way of learning languages overall. Almost as bad as Rosetta Stone. But, like Rosetta Stone and other things like gym memberships, it doesn't have to be effective to be profitable.

[kwanbix]

I like Duolingo, but I wonder why can't they charge something more reasonable. I think they charge like 60 o 70 euros per half year, so 10 euros per month. We are 4, that is 40 euros per month, almost 500 a year. That is a lot of money.

I would gladly pay a family pack of 10 per month for all 4 of us not to have adds.

[voisin]

They have a family plan that works out to $2 or so per month per person if I recall correctly.

[kwanbix]

Thanks. I haven't seen it. you are right.

[Tepix]

Some comments: I haven't really seen any ads in DuoLingo apart from their own. I guess my ad-blocking efforts are paying off.

Regarding Pimsleur: I hadn't heard about them, are they only for learning the basics? I'm at A2 french now and aiming for B1. Is Pimsleur suitable for that stage of learning?

[borispavlovic]

Pimsleur is great to improve your pronunciation and learn until B1. From there on I would recommend using Memrise and ClozeMaster. Memrise has a great collection of community based courses that will push up to C1

[Tepix]

The thing i miss most in DuoLingo is a solid way to teach the underlying grammar.

There must be an app that is good for learning all french conjugations.

[developer93]

Babel is really good for grammar and explains well in bite sizes, but it's a little pricy. It could also do with some more repetition imo, however I would recommend it.

[hoppla]

When you have everything right, I love how owl comes and say he will make it harder, so you loose your hearts quicker, and suddenly you cannot study any more that day

Ps. I subscribed

[ehnto]

They would send me ads in languages I didn't know, which was hilarious as if any app should know what languages I speak it's Duolingo.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Hearts is the worst thing about Duolingo. They themselves claim 'it is ok to make mistakes', and then punish you for them, making you do useless (for learning) repetitive tests over and over again.

Luckily, there is still a classroom loophole that allows you to study with unlimited hearts, but I don't know how long it'll last

[aiven]

In the app you can use free practice mode to restore hearts.

[hombre_fatal]

The problem is that you’re grinding something you already know (in my experience always something too easy) just for hearts, and the heart system removes the ability to grind something you don’t know until you know it in a lesson. I want to make mistakes until I nail it when I’m learning.

That said, at least the Pro version fixes it.

[Andrew_nenakhov]

Thank you Captain Obvious. It is still useless grinding that takes time and gives nothing to learning.

Oh, and you start being afraid to make mistakes, to not be forced to perform said grinding over and over again.

I have 800+ days in Duolingo. There were no hearts when i started, it appeared when i was in early 700s and I learned how to switch them off with classroom trick. If I had hearts from the start, I'd choose a different app. Hearts are that bad.

[voisin]

> Secondly, how they promote their Plus plan. You are limited in how long you can access their platform by how many hearts you have. Miss enough questions, your hearts run out. Run out of hearts, you're restricted from proceeding further in your studies. You must buy hearts to stay on their platform. This feels counter intuitive, as you are now kicking users off of your platform and lose the ability to sway them towards other things you have to offer.

This is incorrect. You don’t need to buy hearts - you can do some practices and get more hearts to do more lessons, which is (IMO) a huge part of the learning. When you are weakest you lose hearts so you practice more in order to keep working through lessons.

[Karamazovian]

I have had unlimited hearts without pro for almost as long as I've used Duolingo. I only had limited hearts for the first few months. And I still have no idea how they decide between users but I suspect locations probably has something to do with it.

[skissane]

> especially since you can't proceed in your lesson until you watch the video

That's not true. On my iPhone, I just quit the app when a video ad starts playing and then reopen it. For me, the ads play after I've finished a lesson, and doing this it still saves my progress. Quit and restart is quicker than watching some dumb video (and even if it isn't, I'd rather spend my time restarting than watching a video ad)