Aurora's 'Irrelevant'™ Lore

[Fortport]

I will list all my points as to why I think Aurora's lore is, for the most part, irrelevant. I am not saying that the lore is wrong, bad, or poorly written. I am saying it holds no weight to gameplay and has no reason to matter and is almost entirely optional.

At present, all lore(human, skrell, tajara, factions, etc.) are handled for the most part via wiki exposition dump. How you handle exposition is very important, and what a lot of people look for in good writers. Here are some questions that I have, though they are rhetorical.

(A)Why does everyone in this entire universe have to come to this tiny speck of a space station, where everyone could care less for their presence? They are the rare exception rather than the rule.

(B)Why is it that the optimal method of learning lore is an exposition dump on a separate web browser? Good novels and movies explain the world with honest, and natural scenes while indirectly passing on necessary facts, contained in the work itself.

(C)Why do people pretend that the lore of all these factions and races matter, when its impact on the game is negligible? They change nothing overall and rounds with them included are minor at best when it comes to the general body of lore and what impacts they have on characters.

Now that I've put forward all of these thoughts in a somewhat condescending way, I would like to dump even more thoughts. Ideas as to what I think would really help Aurora as a whole to discuss and wonder about for the future.

Point A
Big one that almost everyone has wondered about at some point. I think the answer is to bring everyone to these people rather than the other way around. How do we do this? There are multiple ways if you think about it. One thing that came to mind for me was to put us on a planet, moon, asteroid, or in space by one of these factions or races. In my next point, I will elaborate on what we can do with a change like this.

Point B and C
By neighboring close to a faction or race, this could change gameplay considerably. By being in their space, you could adapt to whatever system of law they have. You could see what news that particular faction has, along with regulations potentially changing to conform to their culture and rules. That particular faction visiting your station for whatever reason is a lot more reasonable when you're closer to them and events could be more realistic as a result. If every group gets their time in the spotlight, people have more opportunities to learn lore about them with everything I've listed above through people roleplaying with the station, and the station itself tolerating these groups explains more about them.

It all boils down to this. We should be the guests and not the other way around. We need to learn lore outside of an exposition dump, with more ways for all those paragraphs on the wiki to be broken up and sprinkled into the game.
 

Edited June 22, 2019 by Fortport

[Sytic]

The problematic occurrence with deciding to stick to a particular subset of lore to let it grow and evolve over you, is that we intend to play in an environment with clashing cultures. It's one big melting pot, and typically our goal is to survive with people, from different communities, religions, and places in an environment that for some reason, wants to murder us all.

If we removed that, we'd have minor elements of people's culture become relevant every now and again. It's up to all of us to create believable characters that actually fit within this "melting pot" environment corporate democracy, as with culture clashes and the mix of identities, true player-to-player relations and even important, server-wide events can form.

EDIT: Also, people come to the station because it's just a quick blip in Tau Ceti. It's like saying "why do we go places when we could just stay at (x)" with your given proposal.

Edited June 22, 2019 by Sytic

[Fortport]

1 minute ago, Sytic said:

EDIT: Also, people come to the station because it's just a quick blip in Tau Ceti. It's like saying "why do we go places when we could just stay at (x)" with your given proposal.

 

The real meta for factions and people coming to the station is so that they have a presence at all, to begin with, outside of the forum and wiki. They don't have to be there.

[Sytic]

And vice versa? Why do we have to go anywhere in your given proposal? It disregards reasoning for the sake of "Let's go play Oregon Trail and look at all the factions before doing it again!"

It's obligatorily making sure every faction has a presence at all, to begin with, outside of the forum and wiki. We don't have to be there.

We have factions come to the station not to make sure their presence is felt or known, but to provide interest and history to the Aurora, in the same way every faction has. We see events shaping up the galactic stage and that affects us, but notably we'll almost always be doing our job. The lore that affects us the most will be the lore brought on in Tau Ceti, and the lore of factions has ties to individual characters and how they respond to events and other characters as a whole. Is that a bad thing?

Plus, I've "been there done that" with the "travelling ship with a thematic, canonized theme which is very much the straight and narrow approach to finding morsels of lore across the universe that overall takes far longer to actually 'witness' lore developments". It's not particularly my forte. I enjoy how Tau Ceti's political schema and actions are the most effective upon us as the Aurora community, but also how the further background lore allows us to expand characters and their personalities. Isn't that what background lore is all about?

Edited June 22, 2019 by Sytic

[Fortport]

1 hour ago, Sytic said:

And vice versa? Why do we have to go anywhere in your given proposal? It disregards reasoning for the sake of "Let's go play Oregon Trail and look at all the factions before doing it again!"

It's obligatorily making sure every faction has a presence at all, to begin with, outside of the forum and wiki. We don't have to be there.

We have factions come to the station not to make sure their presence is felt or known, but to provide interest and history to the Aurora, in the same way every faction has. We see events shaping up the galactic stage and that affects us, but notably we'll almost always be doing our job. The lore that affects us the most will be the lore brought on in Tau Ceti, and the lore of factions has ties to individual characters and how they respond to events and other characters as a whole. Is that a bad thing?

Plus, I've "been there done that" with the "travelling ship with a thematic, canonized theme which is very much the straight and narrow approach to finding morsels of lore across the universe that overall takes far longer to actually 'witness' lore developments". It's not particularly my forte. I enjoy how Tau Ceti's political schema and actions are the most effective upon us as the Aurora community, but also how the further background lore allows us to expand characters and their personalities. Isn't that what background lore is all about?

Disregards reasoning? I said what my reasoning was, and suggested an idea to try and make the overarching plot of the universe more self-evident and available as a driving force of rounds from time to time, thus revealing more information about it. How that happens, whether by traveling around the universe and being caught in situations(like Star Trek), or just having more characters from those factions "respond to events."

Background lore helping shape characters is fine. I am hoping that someday "further background" lore comes into the foreground beyond just a person coming from far away to react to what's happening on the station. It feels very remote and distant, to me, but my opinion is just an opinion. Driving the overarching plot, with our place in the universe, is not an easy task unless you change the formula that makes Aurora what it is in some fashion. And that's a very sensitive thing to do, potentially taking years for big sweeping concepts like I spouted. My concerns have been addressed in "TNBT" in some capacity, which shows that it was something that was at least thought of in some minor capacity. Even if it's not as bad as I'm making out.

My questions, though rhetorical and somewhat condescending, were mostly intended to spark discussion of our future with some complaints. Organically learning everything about the universe is hard to do when the story of Aurora has no clear-cut beginning, middle, and end like movies or books do, and so what I expect from the game as a medium for storytelling holds that in mind.

Edited June 22, 2019 by Fortport

[Alberyk]

What is the suggestion here?

[Fortport]

13 minutes ago, Alberyk said:

What is the suggestion here?

I proposed ideas for putting the station physically closer to other factions in the universe.

Edited June 22, 2019 by Fortport

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

7 hours ago, Fortport said:

along with regulations potentially changing to conform to their culture and rules.

I'm not sure it's a good idea to have the entire playerbase relearn regulations every so often. As away missions, events, or arcs maybe. On a permanent basis? It would not be ideal.

7 hours ago, Fortport said:

(A)Why does everyone in this entire universe have to come to this tiny speck of a space station, where everyone could care less for their presence? They are the rare exception rather than the rule.

Tau Ceti is writ as the shining city on a hill. It's the land of opportunity; it's the optimism of the American Dream that attracts people from all over the Orion Spur. (How cynical this dream actually is also part of the narrative.) The Aurora is an important facility for NanoTrasen, as its one of the premier RnD facilities. NanoTrasen is also the primary job provider in our system. We have gone to great lengths to create easy justifications for any character to have employment on the Aurora.

7 hours ago, Fortport said:

(B)Why is it that the optimal method of learning lore is an exposition dump on a separate web browser? Good novels and movies explain the world with honest, and natural scenes while indirectly passing on necessary facts, contained in the work itself.

We continue to work to bring lore onto the station. The primary means of doing this is through the characters. Mechanics, UI, etc are all secondary. An empty station full of worldbuilding is just an empty station. A station full of characters interacting with each other is where the world comes in. Do you need to worldbuild the succession crisis of the Hegemony directly on the station with flyers, posters, or what have you, to explain to you why there are Unathi that think Not'zar Izweski is either the best thing since sliced bread, or a cowardly cheater?

The exposition dump 'tells' and the characters that use it 'show', in the 'show and not tell' for our worldbuilding.

However I do love seeing world events on the station. That is why I have always pushed experimental arcs and events that push these boundaries and bring them onto the station. The Alliance's troubles with Tau Ceti lead to an invasion wherein for a week the station was ran by military officials from an occupying power, for example.

7 hours ago, Fortport said:

(C)Why do people pretend that the lore of all these factions and races matter, when its impact on the game is negligible? They change nothing overall and rounds with them included are minor at best when it comes to the general body of lore and what impacts they have on characters.

Isn't that just your opinion that people shouldn't care? I would say that the lore of factions and races matter a lot because of how it impacts the game. The lore of several major species have direct and immediate consequences for how a round progresses if they are involved, in what ratio, and how they interact with each other.

Edited June 22, 2019 by Marlon Phoenix

[Fortport]

17 hours ago, Senpai Jackboot said:

Isn't that just your opinion that people shouldn't care? I would say that the lore of factions and races matter a lot because of how it impacts the game. The lore of several major species have direct and immediate consequences for how a round progresses if they are involved, in what ratio, and how they interact with each other.

 

I think that as things are, the interaction between characters and their personal relationships are usually what drives the round for people. I almost never see or hear a drop of lore outside of a few subjects, unless someone is doing something because of lore. Which really isn't that often in my experience.

As for direct and immediate consequences, I don't see many. All the races are generally tolerant of one another for logical reasons unless an event or antagonist empowers them. There's no reason to bring up history or lore on a normal day of Aurora, unless you're talking in private with a colleague or are making an effort to include it in something.

I admit I'm biased. I've played the game off and on for years and haven't learned almost anything about the human race on our server. There are not many organic opportunities to learn something about the universe while playing the game, and I will stand by this as my opinion. It's not because I don't roleplay and it's not because I don't care, because I do seek out interaction. I will agree that more world events on the server would be better, but so would just a situation where current events are being compared to the past and debated about.

I'll also say it's hard to work lore into everything when it's not relevant to the day-to-day. This isn't a story with a beginning, middle, and an end. It's always going forward. Everyone here knows the lore, even if the person OOCly doesn't. Can't just ask without seeming incompetent or ignorant ICly.

Edited June 23, 2019 by Fortport

[Xelnagahunter]

Part of my answer is to let yourself seem ignorant ICly. It's a big galaxy. Maybe you have a hard time reading massive wiki-dumps, that's fine. Ask people about current events where they are from. I am missing a ton of human lore. I'm also missing a ton of other information for the various factions in play. This is mostly because I'm not gonna spend hours reading a wiki on something I'm not stupidly interested in. So unlike my whitelisted races and their homes I didn't go on a binge. I've also taken a huge break from the server recently and there are a LOT of news articles on the forums here that I am not reading, mostly because sorting what I do and don't want to read is impossible. So I just try to learn things as I go by asking people. Seeming ignorant IC isn't always a bad thing, it's a VERY large galaxy with a lot of information being sent from place to place, it's okay for a Bieselite to not keep up with events in Sol or any of the frontier worlds. THose news articles don't get read because they don't effect you, even if they do.

[Aphelion]

I like to think that the immense amount of lore is just to really give good consistent characters.

Like that lore guy said, character interactions and shit.

But like, it would be cooler if there were more chances for in-round events that made our location actually interesting. Without any admin interaction or whatever.

[Carver]

Just like the real world, I can choose to ignore the news and not give a shit about world events. Feels pretty realistic.

[Fortport]

11 hours ago, Carver said:

Just like the real world, I can choose to ignore the news and not give a shit about world events. Feels pretty realistic.

I see what you did there.

I see what you did there.