Yeah the new update was not really my style, and the repairs going away was a big annoyance
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I gave the new path a try for a longer while and honestly, the way they’re trying to implement SRS is not a good idea, because the variety of sentences is just not there. It is way too easy to memorize the individual sentences and their translations instead of the actual patterns they’re trying to teach. There is also too much duplication even across Units.
Not to mention they offer almost no variety in the translations and some of the Japanese sentences are too vague to just apply that 1 translation that fits. And one can’t easily skip lessons, but has to skip whole units instead.
tbh I don’t think getting rid of them all together was necessarily good but back when I used Duo before the update I hated how stuff I’d gotten to crystal would need repairing so quickly
like I wanted to move on to new stuff but to avoid losing that crystal thing I needed to waste 5 minutes going through stuff like aka, ichi and sayonara
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I just never repaired stuff, you don’t need to do anything.
I did like however that completed skills you were not punished for mistakes, and you gained a heart after practicing them. Removing that was a massive downgrade to the usability of the app. Putting in so few correct translations and then implementing a punishment system is just so… dirty, Basically, pay us or have a miserable experience.
I use Lingodeer so that’s super confusing. I wonder if they chose that name to get people looking for the other app by mistake to buy theirs instead.
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Makes sense they would do that, even if your product is good they do not likely have anything near Duo’s user base so might be a slick way to catch a few stray subscribers.
At the end of the day I am just happy that between Wani Kani and DeerLingo I think I can get myself to an intermediate level. Once I get there I can figure out what to do if I want more advanced proficiency
That’s true but the completionist part of my brain hated it because I’d gone to all the work of getting it up to crystal (a status that required limited gems to do)
and it could be lost
Nothing was lost though, it stayed purple and just had a crack through it. Purely visual and a difference in the XP if you repair vs practice it. You could never get more than 3 cracked skills at a time so I just left them once then landed on things I never cared to repeat.
Well those days are gone anyway. Now they don’t want you to practice things you have already learned, but push on with new things. The CEO said as much in an AMA on reddit. Makes no sense when to actually learn things, you need to repeat them.
The actual ‘practice’ to repair hearts sucks too. I am on Unit 67 and it gives me things like ‘there are two desks’ and while I am grateful it’s easy so I don’t have to waste as much time on it, it’s still a waste of my time when I am trying to progress and I have to stop, go back and spend 2 minutes to get a heart back. I ran out this morning and just closed the app. No ad revenue for them.
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I think this was just a typo for LingoDeer.
Sure as hell was lol. I’ll leave the mistake up as a testament to my typo shame.
This first time I thought maybe but after the second time I went hunting for the app lol.
Thought there was a chance it was a Bunpro / Bunpo situation.
People are always so hard on the gamification part of any given service, but as a neuro-divergent person, this is the only way to get me to study or learn anything 
the cute animations, colors, challenges to earn XP or complete daily tasks helps me to advance because it hits the sweet spot of easily accessible dopamine 
The same goes for WaniKani, I only got to Level 30 in 9 months because I love the level up system haha.
In general, I agree that Duolingo is not the best resource for serious language studies and the format of the app leaves a lot to be desired. Japanese is my main focus now, but I know that I want to learn at least 2 more languages (Italian and Korean). Since Japanese takes up most of my day (uni, assignments, immersion etc.), I don’t see myself picking up another language textbook at the end of the day, but I also don’t want to wait until i am fluent in Japanese before I start another language, so I use duolingo to learn a little Italian just 10 minutes a day. It helps me to get used to the sound of the language, pronunciation, and picking up vocab, all while it’s not feeling too overwhelming or like I have to put in energy or work.
Once I can put Japanese a little bit more on a backburner, I’ll be using Duo for Italian just a little every day. Surely 10 minutes or 2 new words a day will quickly add up once I’m ready to jump into seriously studying it
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I use Duolingo too, despite how many problems its Japanese unit has, and I think gamification can be a good thing (for the same reasons stated by Rorioko above) provided that the learning method is solid.
I would never recommend Duolingo Japanese for beginners, but for a more-practiced student like myself, it’s good for some light drilling, and I even learn some new words and kanji here and there. It’s a welcome break from using WaniKani and some of my other more intense learning tools, and it helps keep me from burning out.
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I never realised!
I wouldn’t have been so diligent repairing them if I knew
I thought it would actually take you down a rank
It’s similar with the mistakes you make. They accumulate only to 50 and if you use the browser version of Duolingo, you don’t lose hearts and don’t have to wait :).
それはもう終わってしまったよ
仕方がない…
Since when? I used it yesterday and it was still not costing hearts 
Ok, after checking again, normal lesso s (steps?) don’t have hearts, but “jump here” have.
It’s just that since the last change, I only did “jump here”, as I was back at step 1.
So, sorry for the misinformation.
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Yeah I do the annoying lessons in the browser and just paste the answers to notepad and copy them back in. I’m looking at you, Politics, Conflict and Environment skills. If I haven’t truly mastered how to say “That country is not yet economically independent.” that’s fine with me.
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That’s still way more useful considering the current political climate than the “I am not wearing roller skates to the wedding tomorrow” in the German course. For whatever reason the German course is obsessed with roller skates and other words which are frankly useless 
.
The bane of the Japanese course seem to be movie titles and badly-translated quotes.
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But can you say your hovercraft is full of eels in German?
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