kyres1 deputy loremaster application

[kyres1]

Ckey/BYOND Username: kyres1

Discord Name: noodle_buster

Position Being Applied For: Deputy Loremaster

Past Experiences/Knowledge: A very long tenure as deputy loremaster, synthdev, synth deputy, and spriter. I've been staff consistently since 2017.

Examples of Past Work: Hard to estimate what would be relevant here. For the position, I would say my biggest reference would be coordinating/hosting KING OF THE WORLD start to finish, being responsible for proposing the current setting (NBT), and solidifying a lot of very important themes in our setting. I also restructured a lot of the new player experience by changing the main pages for the wiki and writing a lot of the starting guides, as well as the assets for them ground-up.

Additional Comments: I have no intention to lessen my spriter obligations. Right now, my obligations are slim, and while the projects I aim to tackle are really vast, only 2 of them have my mandatory participation. Those being the development of Konyang dev-side and an obligation for another dev's WIP project. Otherwise, I am in a much more available place than I was when I was initially deputy LM.

It might be an immediate question to ask; "But Kyres, didn't you just resign from deputy LM?" in which I would say, it's been over a year. I resigned knowing I wouldn't be able to contribute for a very long period of time, something I think every staff member should do if they opt to go inactive for extended periods. As I had expected, I was unable to do much for the following months - I would've been slot sitting, so I left as soon as I saw my inability to contribute would become a problem soon.

Furthermore, I love the work. I love it so much in fact that I have spent the overwhelming majority of my free time since 2017 contributing and enjoying the work as a player and staff. I'll never say never to these positions as they open, and I am confident that very few people of my experience in the community are left to take these roles. It's less that I feel obligated to apply, and more that I feel gratified to just be making things better. As a wise man here once said, this place is a project that never gets finished - and that's the best part.

1. Do you have any experience managing a Team? The duties of a Deputy Loremaster often revolve around being a Project Lead, not necessarily just writing. 

Spoiler

I think that being in the loop and having my teeth as deep as they are in the community has given me a decent enough grasp of how to manage people in this environment. That said, the experience is definitely there with my past tenures as developer and deputy LM. I've hosted over one hundred events of different climate, scale and context both as a player and staff. I've worked on more projects than I can count and contributed as much I could to the setting swap by helping the original mapping and development efforts, both as lore and otherwise.

 

2. In a brief summary, explain the direction you'd wish to see the Lore Team take in regards to Aurora Lore.

Spoiler

Cooperate more. Vocalize more. Be more enthusiastic.

A crowning jewel of a volunteer team is the passion that ties it together. If nobody enjoys working together, it's not really a team. However, you can't exactly force people to like each other. My ideal has always been to give people reason to work together and actually tackle topics of lore with glee. Not only that, but figuring out ways that these joyful things can reach players becomes simple once people enjoy the very position they share.

 

3. If you were selected, what do you believe should be changed about how the Lore Team operates?

Spoiler

The game (the actual server you play on) is on a back burner. It should have never left the forefront. To me, the beginning of stagnation is when we abandon the things that make us unique and fun to begin with. Right now, the only unique and fun thing we have, and ever really had, was canon that encroached into the game. Without it, we could name swap and be any other server with lore (of which, there are certainly many, and many are certainly dead.)

What this means, is effectively that I'd drive players and staff to want events. To crave contribution and work more as a community and less of a detached writing mechanism. How I'd reach that conclusion is the same I did in my last tenure. I'd coordinate more and delegate more to people with what they personally invest themselves in. Where people find their fun, they'll build works of art.

There are also plenty of untouched projects I have leftover from my previous tenure that are untouched. Among these, the phoron scarcity and categorizing important game information ; like the function of phoron and its cost, are a good example of things I find to be important enough to tackle immediately.

 

 

[Vulcenus]

As a Sol main tired of seeing the same John Sol gimmick of nuking Konyang with antag announcements and boarding the Horizon to kill and capture anyone they see, I have a question or two since you coordinated/hosted KOTW and talk about how the game shouldn't be on the backburner.

I believe that the current lore is equally to blame/is responsible for the frequency of these antagonist plays as the limited creativity of the players running the gimmick. Do you plan on making any changes to where Sol Alliance currently stands in the lore post-KOTW arc so it can get out of the cartoon villain / monster of the year role it's currently hogging?

What do you think about highlighting the bad laundry of the other major factions in the lore to blur the lines between good and bad guys so we can get rid of this mentality of Power Rangers Union of All the Major Factions in the Galaxy united against Sol Alliance rushing in to save the day (again), so we can embrace the dystopic nature of the expanded universe rather than focusing on a singular BBEG entity?

Edited July 27, 2023 by Vulcenus

[kyres1]

15 minutes ago, Vulcenus said:

I believe that the current lore is equally to blame/is responsible for the frequency of these antagonist plays as the limited creativity of the players running the gimmick. Do you plan on making any changes to where Sol Alliance currently stands in the lore post-KOTW arc so it can get out of the cartoon villain / monster of the year role it's currently hogging?

You aren't entirely off the mark, but I am a very firm believer that this is not intentional on part of the writers. I find myself critical of the handling of Sol at points, but I think any of the centralization of player focus is generated purely by factors out of the writer's control.

As it stands, I think that one way or the other, Sol should be doing something. This has been the case since KOTW concluded and human writers have been plenty hard at work ensuring this. An unintended byproduct of tending to Sol is that Sol receives attention, much like any other faction at any given point when it gets developed; however, Sol has since day one been a very big "carry-over" from the development of Bay. While our Sol is extremely unique and different, the immediate attachment that migrating players feel towards it is very apparent. On top of this, Sol in general is an appealing background for a variety of simplistic backstories, both for antagonists and characters alike. Mix all that together with the ability to play army man, and you have a very simple reason that we continue to see an overwhelming saturation of Solarian content for better or worse.

None of these factors are, as I said before, in the ballpark of the Human team's responsibility. Unless they dismantle the concept of the Sol Alliance from the ground-up, not much can be changed about an imperialistic Earth-leaning super-empire without betraying those themes to begin with. To say the least, I hate going back on old work, and I would doubly hate to deconstruct that monolithic appeal Sol has.

All that leads to me saying this; Sol is as core to our setting as Biesel is. If it was left stagnant, there'd be even more confusion and upset. I think, however, it is possible to affect Sol without actively making it a centerpiece. To that extent, my best idea is to do literally anything else with the universe outside of it; especially the region we're in and scheduled to arrive in. After that, I guess things become simpler.

The "cartoon villain" aspect is something I basically gave up fighting as an argument a while ago. I do not think building the Solarian Restoration Front as zealous nationalistic fascists with a penchant for xenophobia was at all a good angle to pursue. The implications of this, among the extreme decision-making of other higher stellar powers (such as Elyra barring phoron from the galaxy), are things I plan to work on in stride as a result.

27 minutes ago, Vulcenus said:

What do you think about highlighting the bad laundry of the other major factions in the lore to blur the lines between good and bad guys so we can get rid of this mentality of Power Rangers Union of All the Major Factions in the Galaxy united against Sol Alliance rushing in to save the day (again), so we can embrace the dystopic nature of the expanded universe rather than focusing on a singular BBEG entity?

I really don't care about "leveling" this, and here's why.

From the perspective of a player, one is not more or less enticed to read the lore of a faction or story because it is simply more miserable ICly. I'd argue that, given our disproportionate amount of Dominian nobles and super-rich upper-class, it's actually a downside to make something completely insufferable to a character. This isn't to say things can entice the character to leave and pursue employment on the Horizon as a result; but this is no longer the Aurora. The bar of entry is no longer simply "I was a criminal and escaped my former life," but a tad more specific and upstanding.

From the perspective of a writer, and speaking from personal experience having dealt with it for years, stacking up the good-bad points of a faction and trying to hit a competitive score against others is like signing up to write NationStates fanfiction. There is, at that point, no more "lore writer." It's not lore anymore. It's a fan fiction. I wholeheartedly do not think things must compete with one another in terms of OOC appeal and vice versa as a result.

That said, all of that can be solved with the magic wand of "giving things direction." Once you wave it, people stop acting in a vacuum and ways to move forward (see : writing lore) become obvious. Making something more or less dreary to even out the galactic karma rating is only indicative of a direction just not existing to begin with.

 

I hope all this answers the questions fully. It's easy for me to run on about these subjects, so let me know if I missed anything.

[Vulcenus]

I will rephrase my second question to "would you consider giving factions other than Sol a direction to a grey-er area in upcoming changes and development?" then, as I didn't necessarily mean that we should pause and stack up bullet points for every nation in the active lore for good and evil points. As it stands, most people read Biesel, the Coalition of Colonies and most of the Xeno groups as underdogs and Solarian Humans as the dominating evil guy here to take everyone's sweet rolls and phoron. Don't you think it would he beneficial to the conflict of actors and players in-game to expand the variety of involvement from different factions in a way that isn't solely good or solely bad? Or having one of these outweighing in a particular faction disruptive?

Thanks for the answers though, satisfied my curiosity more or less. (Also +1 while I have my reservations about the impact of KOTW on the faction standings, kyres[one] has a big [good] impact on the world building and interactivity of the lore with in-game elements so they are simply based I believe)

Edited July 27, 2023 by Vulcenus

[kyres1]

2 minutes ago, Vulcenus said:

Don't you think it would he beneficial to the conflict of actors and players in-game to expand the variety of involvement from different factions in a way that isn't solely good or solely bad? Or having one of these outweighing in a particular faction disruptive?

Yes, and no. I think that going for a morally grey angle can be interesting, but oftentimes in storytelling not everything can be so mysterious when it comes to people's agendas.

Essentially, whenever we run an espionage arc, the spy is answering to a big bad boss, right? Well, that big bad boss can't just act in a completely dubious and unpredictable way - the writers, host, and person playing the character needs to know how both of these characters act. The dilemma of morality between the characters, from our perspective, doesn't exist at that level. What is seen is their actions and reactions to their surroundings, and they organically react to the surrounding stimuli. Like a character in a roleplaying context would!

Factions should be no different. I think agenda, action and reaction should be considered at every echelon of writing these things. It makes it a far more complex, but easier to consume story for everyone.

It's more complex because people can interpret separately while ultimately within the boundaries of seeing how or what a faction entails. The hatred of synthetics in the context of Dominia is something that characterizes far more than just "I hate robots." It tells you a lot of inherent story beats of a character just by reading it. For example, you can assume they're raised skeptic of more than simply robots; they might be fiercely traditional and adopt more nuance from a space-feudal society like it.

This singular gimmick can evolve into a lot more than whatever a ton of pre-written involvement could.

To simplify all that, remember a very key point; the lore is the rules. That means the more rules there are, the less fun things get. Obviously. Because you can't change the rules, right? It only makes sense that, the more specific things get, the narrower your creative options become.

So, tl;dr, no I think writing absolutes as behavior or involvement for any faction should be minimized, not expanded upon. Cause/effect events (visible ingame or otherwise) that transpire are much better at illustrating the intermingling of factions than any mountain of written knowledge ever could.

[Vulcenus]

Do you plan on keeping the Sol Alliance acting rather than put them in the backburner for other factions/races that were overlooked during the Human and most overwhelmingly Tajaran arc and event trains, so it can be freed the current direction or past sins (major) in order to give the Alliance the (in my opinion) needed leeway to act more "neutrally" or shed it's previous skin and take a different direction once you're tagged back in? (I liked the action taken for Sol to destroy the SFA in the more recent articles, rather than have them be annihilated by Elyra, or the Coalition, or a united production of a WMD in example.)

Do you think it's a good idea to expand on the lore (cultural mostly) of the Core and Jewel Worlds of the Sol Alliance, now that they've shrunk? I think Konyang (when they were still Sol) and New Hai Phong are great Solarian worlds, Europa has a distinct identity and Venus has two clashing cultures within itself that can be identified by their appearance and ideals, just like Silversun with the Originals and the Idris drop-ins. I like the cultural points in the wiki articles and I would like to see more of it.

I think one way to combat John Sol is to give the common Solarian man more to tackle than crayons and gargoyle voidsuits, even though you said you'd rather work on something entirely new. Arguably, all these vastly different and identitarian cultures could've been integrated to original planets to expand on a smaller but more meaty Solarian circle but that's a hot take from me that I'm not looking to argue.

Connected to all of this, do you intend to tackle anything specific on the Human lore front besides expanding on phoron lore once you're back in action?

Edited July 27, 2023 by Vulcenus

[kyres1]

3 minutes ago, Vulcenus said:

Do you plan on keeping the Sol Alliance acting rather than put them in the backburner for other factions/races that were overlooked during the Human and most overwhelmingly Tajaran arc and event trains, so it can be freed from in order to give the Alliance the (in my opinion) needed leeway to act more "neutrally" or shed it's previous skin and take a different direction once you're tagged back in?

In case it was misread, what I said before was my intention as well. I want Sol to keep itself active, at least in its immediately relevant affairs (like the wildlands) but share its spotlight with other factions that are relatively unseen by comparison.

It's been a very, very very long time since a species arc that wasn't Human or Tajaran took the "spotlight." The most recent I can possibly imagine is Warbling and just before, the SLF arc. Otherwise, four of our playable species are mostly nonpresent in terms of things that draw the server's focus, such as event arcs. To say the least, putting one of our core and most apparent factions on any backburner for something that historically doesn't happen is shooting us in the foot.

Do I think species devs can contribute otherwise? Yes. KOTW was hugely powered with the help of species devs chipping in on all fronts. I however would not bank something so essential for less likely things like species-centric arcs to take the forefront.

 

10 minutes ago, Vulcenus said:

Do you think it's a good idea to expand on the lore (cultural mostly) of the Core and Jewel Worlds of the Sol Alliance, now that they've shrunk? I think Konyang (when they were still Sol) and New Hai Phong are great Solarian worlds, Europe has a distinct identity and Venus has two clashing cultures within itself that can be identified by their appearance and ideals, just like Silversun with the Originals and the Idris drop-ins. I like the cultural points in the wiki articles and I would like to see more of it.

To beat a horse that has been dead and still beaten for probably close to half a decade now,

I think origins are incredibly, incredibly, incredibly saturated. Even discounting some obvious numbers like the sheer volume of planet pages, we're already spreading a very critically character-starved setting with a peculiar focus on expanding this even more. To this day I'm probably not going to get an answer as to why things are added - instead simply because a writer wanted it. That logic should not need explanation as to why it is harmful moving forward. I don't think I ever plot to support the "fluffing" of things again, personally. I however don't intend to even think about enforcing this without major sit-downs and talking with a lot of people first.

14 minutes ago, Vulcenus said:

I think one way to combat John Sol is to give the common Solarian man more to tackle than crayons and gargoyle voidsuits, even though you said you'd rather work on something entirely new. Arguably, all these vastly different and identitarian cultures could've been integrated to original planets to expand on a smaller but more meaty Solarian circle but that's a hot take from me that I'm not looking to argue.

It can't be avoided, honestly. A huge draw to Sol is familiarity and simplicity. Playing an Earth Solarian military veteran is, in every way, just Biesel but simpler. Swaths of lore need not exist and a huge portion can simply be swept aside with a character's mere disdain towards other nationalities or species. To boot, being inflammatory ICly and "causing conflict" is often something that is seen as hip to pursue, for better or worse. So, like before, a strident effort to really combat "John Sol" is a waste of time and probably harmful to anyone who works towards it.

22 minutes ago, Vulcenus said:

Connected to all of this, do you intend to tackle anything specific on the Human lore front besides expanding on phoron lore once you're back in action?

Not immediately. There is still an utterly gargantuan amount of writing in the San Colette arc that I probably need to familiarize myself with before I scrutinize things. Corporate lore and fitting us proper for Konyang is something far more pertinent right now anyway.

[Vulcenus]

Thanks for all the answers. I would like to conclude my questionnaire by stealing Caelphon's question before they arrive.

What is your perspective of the Libération, Révolution et Évolution Arc so far? 

[DriedMilk]

The KOTW arc is the main reason that I'm still playing Aurora to this day. If we can get arcs, or lore of similar quality again I see no reason to not approve this. 

+1

P.D I know that replicating something akin to KOTW again is absurdly complicated, so don't fog yourself over it.

[Sneakyranger]

I noticed in your original post that you intend to work more on the phoron scarcity.
It felt like Orchard Moon was intended to ameliorate the phoron scarcity to a degree so that other things could take the focus - I seem to recall Cael saying as much at one point, but I have no will to go sifting through discord logs to confirm that at the moment. Either way, my question: do you intend to play it up again?

 

2 hours ago, kyres1 said:

I'd argue that, given our disproportionate amount of Dominian nobles and super-rich upper-class, it's actually a downside to make something completely insufferable to a character.

Could you elaborate on this?
I don't necessarily mean expanding your point - though feel free - it's more that I don't know what you're trying to communicate here and I want to. "Insufferable to a character" is what is confusing me the most, and I'm not sure what it has to do with either the first half of the quoted excerpt or the sentences that precede and follow. 
 

 

1 hour ago, kyres1 said:

I think origins are incredibly, incredibly, incredibly saturated. Even discounting some obvious numbers like the sheer volume of planet pages, we're already spreading a very critically character-starved setting with a peculiar focus on expanding this even more.

Could you talk more about the abundance of origins?
I imagine you intend to slow or halt new ones altogether. Does that include expansions to existing areas, or just entirely new content? I'd like the answer to that question, but also for you to speak more generally about it. 

As for my most pressing question:
Where do you want Biesel's lore to go? I like the idea of the Republic, but it seems from my perspective that the main new and exciting things being added to it are planets that it's taking from collapsed Sol. Do you foresee any reworks to existing content (vague nonsolid ideas are fine)?
Do you feel that SCC and Republic lore are inherently intertwined? Obviously Biesel is and will always be attached to the SCC in some form and to a lesser extent vice versa, but more in the sense of one having lore developments without the other's involvement.
I'm definitely keeping an eye on Cael's current article series and the shakeups that lore's been doing to the Republic/SCC related pages, but I imagine that most of the content hasn't been released yet. 


Most of these questions are to sate my own curiosity. As it stands, I feel like while I have some stark differences in some areas, after reading all the currently open applications my hopes for the lore's direction most closely aligns with yours. I'm going to reserve the right to change my mind in case further replies from other applicants or in your thread change things, but as of right now you have my vote. You've certainly got the drive and interest to do it, even if you do go a bit overboard or rush in to things at times.

 

Edited July 27, 2023 by Sneakyranger

[kyres1]

13 hours ago, Vulcenus said:

What is your perspective of the Libération, Révolution et Évolution Arc so far? 

I don't know, it's two articles in. It seems unfair to judge it so fast from this kind of perspective

 

12 hours ago, Sneakyranger said:

It felt like Orchard Moon was intended to ameliorate the phoron scarcity to a degree so that other things could take the focus - I seem to recall Cael saying as much at one point, but I have no will to go sifting through discord logs to confirm that at the moment. Either way, my question: do you intend to play it up again?

I do intend to capitalize on the things the scarcity was meant to give us. Making it scarce made our setting(s) more important as they generally revolved around the acquisition of phoron. It was and still is the easiest justification with the most possibilities for what our setting is. By capitalizing on it we lose nothing and just gain an even more grounded angle to direct the story, since like above, a direction helps things write themselves.

This means that lingering questions like Elyra's capacity to withhold galactic phoron reserves, the Aurora II's presence in lore, and what Orchard Moon really is, are things I want to answer myself.

12 hours ago, Sneakyranger said:

Could you elaborate on this?
I don't necessarily mean expanding your point - though feel free - it's more that I don't know what you're trying to communicate here and I want to. "Insufferable to a character" is what is confusing me the most, and I'm not sure what it has to do with either the first half of the quoted excerpt or the sentences that precede and follow. 

"Insufferable to a character" is literal. The question is whether or not it changes anything for things to be "morally grey" or mixed-in with grim aspects as a matter of balance. I responded by clarifying that this sort of stuff just makes things boring. Dominian nobles exemplify this by being a type of character that has a good position in life and some substantial clout by most metrics. This is as opposed to say, an Eridanian dreg, who is obviously not going to have a fun time being alive in this universe. Both are popular angles and very free-form, but neither are grey whatsoever. The question of morality, or quality of life for that matter, is not even regarded, hence the response.

12 hours ago, Sneakyranger said:

Could you talk more about the abundance of origins?
I imagine you intend to slow or halt new ones altogether. Does that include expansions to existing areas, or just entirely new content? I'd like the answer to that question, but also for you to speak more generally about it. 

I always get lost in having to elaborate on this specific point. I would definitely say it is a tired point of contention in 2023.

I do absolutely want a planet freeze. I wanted a planet freeze four years ago. Myself and Mofo even enforced one for some time. This is not a secret of mine. However, this is one of those cases where things are just too far gone to retract so suddenly. Because of that, I really need to emphasize that I need to re-integrate with the team and talk at length before slowing or halting anything.

To clarify the specific questions here;

I am a fan of Konyang as it exemplifies an origin that is intricate, highly developed, and reaches into plenty of character concepts by virtue of being so important to such a large part of our server; being synthetics, machines and IPCs etc. It capitalizes on this with a definitive culture, a myriad of inspirations, and being among the longest (if not the longest) planet page on the wiki. I do not find many other planets (I can count the others on one hand) that have gone to lengths to integrate with lore enough to justify having as much content as this planet has. Not to mention, huge efforts have been made for years to involve and work with Konyang as a centerpiece of a species team; similarly to Adhomai, it's inadvertently stacked wide as a bastion for species development. There is however a difference between stacking tall and stacking wide in this context. Effectively, Konyang's content would be meaningless were it confined to Konyang and affected nothing beyond its page.

To follow on that though, I don't think every planet should be like Konyang or Adhomai. The amount of these can only be small because special factors make these locations important and worthwhile. This is a matter of fact, because at the end of the day, these are not in a vacuum. They are in a living universe we strive to develop every day. The universe can't consist of fifty novel-length planetary origins of varying importance; some priority has to be set in terms of what players should care about, or players won't feel the need to care about anything at all.

To overly simplify this, a multitude of reasons leads anyone to the basic conclusion that we do not need thousands of unique excerpts of individual origins. To this day I still don't hear any argument to the contrary. The above is only a tiny portion of a lengthy rant I could go on against the efficacy of fluff, anyway.

12 hours ago, Sneakyranger said:

As for my most pressing question:
Where do you want Biesel's lore to go? I like the idea of the Republic, but it seems from my perspective that the main new and exciting things being added to it are planets that it's taking from collapsed Sol. Do you foresee any reworks to existing content (vague nonsolid ideas are fine)?
Do you feel that SCC and Republic lore are inherently intertwined? Obviously Biesel is and will always be attached to the SCC in some form and to a lesser extent vice versa, but more in the sense of one having lore developments without the other's involvement.

I want Biesel to keep being our setting's heart. It lets us project the power of the corporations more easily and fall back to a familiar government entity when we need it. It also remains at extreme odds with Sol historically, and the butting of their heads is a major point in our story. It goes up, or it doesn't budge. That's my feeling.

For the next question, I would sooner step on a lego than rework/retcon anything about Biesel.

For the SCC/Republic lore being intertwined, yes this is kind of a given. I don't think they're as intertwined as they could be in WRITING, but historically the Republic is a foremost playground/ideal of the corporate throne. If Eridani is everything bad about the corporations exemplified, Biesel is the opposite. It always has been, and there's a reason it's not painted as some decrepit backwater. Capitalizing more and more on the imposing presence of the Conglomerate and the Republic is important in giving the players agency and a feeling of freedom on the Horizon. If not for freedom and participation with exploration, we moved to the ship for nothing.

 

[Caelphon]

What is your opinion on the following?

 

[kyres1]

2 hours ago, Caelphon said:

What is your opinion on the following?

 

I offered to map it so I am a fan of the idea, yeah. I'm a fan of practically any event, especially one of this sort. Though I don't think this needs to be a lore team thing at all. Nothing can (or should) stop an admin from hosting whatever event they want/how they want for this sort of stuff.

[Lucaken]

I am against this application on the basis that I think new blood is needed in the team. This was my focus during my tenure, and limited as my voice may be now, I still think that should be an important factor.

I do not oppose most of the ideas here, or just you yourself, but I do think it’s mostly concepts we’ve already tried. Whether they worked or not, or how well, is a question for history. But I personally don’t think they did.

We need fresh eyes and ideas more than ever, instead of scaling things back.

 

[kyres1]

On 29/07/2023 at 03:17, Lucaken said:

I am against this application on the basis that I think new blood is needed in the team. This was my focus during my tenure, and limited as my voice may be now, I still think that should be an important factor.

I do not oppose most of the ideas here, or just you yourself, but I do think it’s mostly concepts we’ve already tried. Whether they worked or not, or how well, is a question for history. But I personally don’t think they did.

We need fresh eyes and ideas more than ever, instead of scaling things back.

 

Could you explain what exactly is beneficial by considering "new blood" a positive trait for head staff?

Also, could you explain what I plan to "scale back?" Most, if not all of the things on this application require investment, effort and tangible progress from more than just me to pull off. This also all rides on the idea that I want to see the team work together more. Is that not scaling up from what we presently have?

[Lucaken]

3 hours ago, kyres1 said:

Could you explain what exactly is beneficial by considering "new blood" a positive trait for head staff?

Also, could you explain what I plan to "scale back?" Most, if not all of the things on this application require investment, effort and tangible progress from more than just me to pull off. This also all rides on the idea that I want to see the team work together more. Is that not scaling up from what we presently have?

I’ll answer both questions with one reply, since the two are fairly interlinked.

We need new people in the team because I am of the opinion that the things you’ve mentioned here are things we’ve already tried and (in my eyes) didn’t really succeed. We should come up with new plot hooks other than just trying to do the phoron scarcity but better this time. There are so many unresolved, unexplored questions in the lore and yet we seem to bounce around the same funny purple stone every time. As I said - fresh eyes, fresh ideas.

As for scaling back, perhaps my choice of wording was poor. What I meant was more about your stance on the planet freeze and origins. I think blocking writers from developing new ideas is always a bad idea. It stifles their interest and is a fast route to burn out. Unless it’s a case like the human team a couple of months back, where there is a serious back log, it’s not worth it.

Also, I would hate to be the person to tell said team we are re-instating the planet freeze after having them work for so long on getting all their old lore updated.

[GeneralCamo]

This is an important question in my mind that I will ask all deputies.

Lately, I have seen a disconnect between the desires of the development team, and the lore team. Examples include the attempt to give skrell Sol common which is blocked by maintainers, and an attempt to remove special glove types by maintainers which was rejected by lore. Do you feel that this is an issue at the moment? Do you have any ideas to potentially improve cross-team talks between lore, development, and moderation? 

[kyres1]

3 hours ago, GeneralCamo said:

This is an important question in my mind that I will ask all deputies.

Lately, I have seen a disconnect between the desires of the development team, and the lore team. Examples include the attempt to give skrell Sol common which is blocked by maintainers, and an attempt to remove special glove types by maintainers which was rejected by lore. Do you feel that this is an issue at the moment?

Things historically stay in their own lanes. I've been in development just as long as I've been lore, and very rarely have I seen the two cross paths negatively. In my experience, the expectations between team members vary depending on what topic is being addressed, and there is very little "leeway" where a developer can leverage a lore change, or a lore writer can leverage a development change. Regardless of the intent of either, one person has to end up working at the end of the day, and whoever puts that foot forward tends to be the one who gets sway on things.

This has ups and downs. The most obvious up-side is that people who contribute nothing and generate nothing but ideas tend to get nothing done, sit on positions, and give in to turnover.

The downside is that the expectations of either team can be so unclear at times that even those who do contribute will have difficulty doing things that line up with their lane. A great example is confusion amidst projects between lore and development. There is plentiful cases of lore misunderstanding or plainly misrepresenting the workload a project needs to happen. I myself, for a while, was a culprit of this. After all, an overwhelming majority of our writers have never coded, sprited, mapped, moderated, or even hosted events as developer, much less admin.

Regardless, I think this balance is vital. I do not think people should be endowed with authority and power to be staff with nothing to actually contribute, in any echelon of the team. Lore is no exception, nor development. At the end of the day, this all rests on what a volunteer can offer, lore or otherwise; if someone signs up with the expectation to do nothing, they ought not be surprised when nothing comes back in return.

In terms of the examples you proposed, I'll cover the details of both and what I view them as.

For Skrell Sol common; a decision was made not by maintainers, but by head developers (who supercede the entirety of staff) regarding this. Whether it's accepted or not rests on if it can meet their expectations. Why? Because they made the decision. You can disagree with it, be annoyed, or support it, or be happy. It doesn't really matter. What was needed was a decision, and so they decided their conditions a very long time ago. Decisions are key for head staff to make in any position because this is ultimately an open-source project. If anybody can contribute, anybody can argue. If anybody can argue, you'll hear arguing. Endlessly. Don't believe me? Use the suggestion forums as reference and locate threads with more than 5 pages. You'll quickly see that, while I love this community, I can not deny that feeding contentious topics to unprepared feedback avenues will generate nothing but talking loops and arguing.

As for removing special glove types, I don't recall this being an issue. I also don't recall lore ever over-turning a maintainer decision. In terms of a "hierarchy," our staff has a clear focus on development/maintainers maintaining sway over game play. Without extraordinary circumstances I can't foresee any decision a maintainer could make be rejected by lore. That's not only swinging high, but that's also swinging well out of one's lane.

3 hours ago, GeneralCamo said:

Do you have any ideas to potentially improve cross-team talks between lore, development, and moderation? 

No. If one team does not want to inhabit the same working area as the other, there is nothing I can do in this position even as an idea without seeming mean. There is also, like all of what I said above, the case of teams just not sharing the same specialties whatsoever. There is a vastly different requirement between a green-name developer, a moderator and a lore writer, and all of them branch into wildly different avenues both as a hobby and a position. There is also the case of how extremely wide and encompassing our lore is, and a very very huge majority of the typical discussion between the writers is so distant from most other team's cares that they may as well not happen at all.

Do I think everyone should work together seamlessly? Yes, but that is a fairy tale ideal. It's not possible with a team as humongous as ours.

21 hours ago, Lucaken said:

We need new people in the team because I am of the opinion that the things you’ve mentioned here are things we’ve already tried and (in my eyes) didn’t really succeed. We should come up with new plot hooks other than just trying to do the phoron scarcity but better this time. There are so many unresolved, unexplored questions in the lore and yet we seem to bounce around the same funny purple stone every time. As I said - fresh eyes, fresh ideas.

To the best of my knowledge, the phoron scarcity did not ever change. Phoron is still stifled and the SCC still exists. It seems pretty important. I also acknowledged that among our heaviest in-game questions are still unanswered; the price of phoron, how to estimate it, who has it, where it's stored, etc... none of it is detailed whatsoever outside of sparing details, as if the entire subject has been consistently beaten around but never directly addressed.

It's hardly in my interest to throw down themes that were built if barely a year or so ago for the sake of freshness. There is a very, very plentiful amount of content, and no amount of adding more will make the game more fun. To pile on what we have is working backwards to that goal.

21 hours ago, Lucaken said:

Also, I would hate to be the person to tell said team we are re-instating the planet freeze after having them work for so long on getting all their old lore updated.

The planet freeze was first proposed in the middle (and just before) KOTW. It's been years. Some sinking feeling I have suspects that, if these lore bases are taking multiple years to just "update," things are either;

A. so disproportionately unorganized/huge already that curating and quality-controlling them is pointless (nightmare scenario, in simple words)

or B. already being disregarded in favor of compounding more origins into the universe.

There's no real argument as to it being anything but these two things. And, which one it is doesn't matter; both are really bad!

We're reaching a very obviously-foreseen point where things that are simply older than a set duration are slated to be replaced or overwritten for the sake of existing and being old thoughts. It's as if the plan is to simply re-write the whole lore, but with new names on it this time, to no effect. There are plenty of community members that have been here for longer than two years. The vast majority of regulars have been. Even disregarding that, why would we continue to pave over or ignore the foundations that got us here? Shouldn't we build into what's given, instead of adding more, more more? That is way more gratifying and more importantly enjoyable for players to jump into.

[Fluffy]

What is your opinion on factions on the more "evil" side of the spectrum (eg. Lii'dra, SRF, ATLAS)? Any plan/direction on/for that front?

[Triogenix]

I've been struggling to put my thoughts into coherent sentences, but I think I've finally been able to. My apologies if this makes no sense.

I think my biggest fear with you becoming deputy loremaster is that we get the kind of situation where you just end up running with a single theme, towards a single objective, without planning for the aftermath, or planning for its effects on the rest of the spur beyond general ideas which 90% of the playerbase will just ignore given enough time.

I'll try and use the phoron scarcity as an example.

When the phoron scarcity first started, it was a major development, the purple rock that most of the spur relied on, not to mention what KOTW did. Except, the issue was there was only the vague "It allows for bluespace travel". It seems to me, as you state you were heading the development/coordination of KOTW and the associated scarcity, that you never really sat down with the team and said "Okay, we want to make phoron scarce, so we'll do that. That makes bluespace travel more difficult. Therefore, how does bluespace travel being difficult in addition to phoron being scarce affect the spur?" Because as far as I've seen, there was never really any discussion or a plan to get into specifics. If there was, I wonder what came out of that discussion because what ended up coming out wasn't specifics, and lasted, I'd say 3 months or so before people just began to ignore it. It was picked up again when NBT launched, but again, in my eyes until the start of dreary futures, was ignored.

At the end of the day, Aurora is a roleplaying game, and the lore should work to facilitate this, being used for roleplay in the game itself. Beyond event arcs which essentially were forcing players to engage with the Phoron Crisis, I feel as though it's rarely mentioned, beyond an "Oh yea the phoron crisis is a thing" and I believe the reason behind that was poor preparation for the aftermath of KOTW, and poor preparation in planning how it would affect the rest of the spur. There were no articles written out for individual species, about the effects of the shortage, no plan for how it affected the wider spur, etc. If I were in your shoes, and what we've actually started working on now, before even beginning the scarcity arc you should have looked at your end goal, and been like "Okay, here's what I need to get there." Then written what was needed first. Things like;
a commerce and trade page, to show where phoron is actually being used for transporting goods via bluespace
an updated Interstellar travel page, going into more detail about interstellar travel and how it works.
A indepth technology page explaining the various uses of phoron for things like power generation, medical chems, etc.
An updated Mictlan page + accent, so it wouldn't be dead when the CRZ was established.
Lastly, a vastly more in-depth Stellar Corporate Conglomerate Page, going back into history to when it was formed, why it was formed, and its current status beyond the paragraph that it was at first, and then for the longest time until being recently updated.
Then, finally, after all this is done go "Okay, now how would a phoron scarcity affect all this" and start making up effects, that would have(IMO), slowly chain reacted as a shortage here causes a shortage there causing something else here, until at the end of all of it you have an event that affects most of the known spur in heavy ways, one that will change backgrounds.

Had you done any of this, I feel the phoron scarcity would not be ignored as it is now. Of course, we writers still write with it in mind, but outside of the Unathi Scarcity arcs(part 2. being the Titan Rises) and some skrell arcs, it's rarely mentioned in the game, which is where we should strive to have all our lore be spoken about. In order to do that, however, we need to get into specifics. How did the phoron crisis affect this planet, how did it affect the price of goods, continue on that train of thought for as long as you wish, and then write it down. But there was none of this after KOTW, though in my mind, it's the most important part of planning an arc, planning the aftermath. For an arc the size of KOTW, and for how impactful it should have been, its effects still should be discussed in the game, and deeply relevant to characters, but it isn't, because the aftermath, specifics, and foundations weren't planned.

 

Therefore, for all the reasons outlined above, I cannot support this application and do not believe you are fit for the position of deputy loremaster. It's not just because you've had it before, or because I'm gunning for it as well, but because at a baseline level, the way you write arcs is simplified, reminiscent of arcs in the past, and not considering the whole picture but merely a line of it, leaving a huge potential for development and impact unfilled. 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Triogenix

[kyres1]

6 hours ago, Triogenix said:

Beyond event arcs which essentially were forcing players to engage with the Phoron Crisis, I feel as though it's rarely mentioned, beyond an "Oh yea the phoron crisis is a thing" and I believe the reason behind that was poor preparation for the aftermath of KOTW, and poor preparation in planning how it would affect the rest of the spur.

"Event arcs" should be synonymous with "arcs." The two should not be separated in the slightest. The idea that running events to make things relevant is "forcing players to engage" kind of contradicts what you (lore development) are here for. This is the closest thing to an obligation that our largest staff department has. This entire reply just doesn't make sense because of that.

19 hours ago, Fluffy said:

What is your opinion on factions on the more "evil" side of the spectrum (eg. Lii'dra, SRF, ATLAS)? Any plan/direction on/for that front?

I think the second these things become an analog to real-life ideologies (SRF/ATLAS and fascism) they become incredibly boring. It's 442 years in the future. Our community historically does not play well with the subject of "anything-supremacist" characters.

In any other scenario, yes, having an antagonistic faction to oppose is a necessity in my opinion. Without it, things become boringly peaceful.

[Triogenix]

2 hours ago, kyres1 said:

"Event arcs" should be synonymous with "arcs." The two should not be separated in the slightest. The idea that running events to make things relevant is "forcing players to engage" kind of contradicts what you (lore development) are here for. This is the closest thing to an obligation that our largest staff department has. This entire reply just doesn't make sense because of that.

I think you're misunderstanding my point. Forcing players to engage is fine, but in my eyes, your arcs, whether they were event or otherwise, failed to engage players at all 3 months after the arc ended, except during some events, which is a travesty considering how important KOTW and its consequences were. But there's nothing long-term to it, therefore it begins to die off the moment the arcs end. Instead of being "the arcs were engaging in the wrong way" the point I'm making is that the arcs weren't engaging ENOUGH even if that engagement is forced(god I hate that I used that word), and could have been significantly more in-depth, spanning far beyond the limited scope they were presented in. 

Edited August 2, 2023 by Triogenix

[Flpfs]

What are your thoughts on lore applications for new aspects/expansions of a planet's lore? (Sports, culture, hobbies, TV shows, and more?) 

[niennab]

The argument that an event arc needs to somehow still be generating content 3 months after its conclusion is an wild suggestion to make, let alone a point of contention against another applicant.

Although I was stuck between a move during the time, I have heard nothing but positive reception to KOTW as the server's best arc to date, and I think it shows. KOTW had an impact on multiple factions within lore, and was the catalyst in moving the server towards the NBT and the Horizon.  To criticize KOTW for this point ignores the nature of collaboration, that any role on the server is a volunteer position. and the sheer volume of work that subsequently went into NBT following the event's conclusion. The server is living in that very phoron scarcity and to baloon the wiki with commerce and fluff pages wouldn't be the answer.

That aside, Kyres has shown time and time again that they're able to take up the mantle of lore deputy and do great with it.

Edited August 3, 2023 by niennab

[kyres1]

I think that, with my fundamental disagreement of the intrinsic traits of lore and how it's come to operate in recent times, me stepping into this position again would make for a workload I simply wouldn't be able to handle. In a lot of cases I'd happily tackle difficult tasks, but undergoing team-wide reforms is a different story; one that chips away at reputation and exhausts one very quickly.

That level of exhaustion is something I can pass up on for a little longer. I'll retract this application and look at openings in the future.