[Denied] Coalf's Head Lore Manager Application

[Azande]

Oh yeah I forgot. I don't support this usurper-application on the grounds of my above message. I support Jackboots continous reign of canon-master of Aurora.

[Coalf]

Oh yeah I forgot. I don't support this usurper-application on the grounds of my above message. I support Jackboots continous reign of canon-master of Aurora.

 

Thank you for your opinion and feedback.

[Skull132]

Well we now have 52 posts here and the scuttlebutt has also started moving about. So, time to wrap this up.

The application itself will be denied. I'm not maverick enough to actually let it pass without looking for suitable candidates from the lore staff first.

However, with that said. Since the primary intent of this thread was to provide feedback to Jackboot, I would like the following to happen. Up until now, [mention]Senpai Jackboot[/mention] has been mostly critical of this application, by virtue of his job being at threat. With that threat now removed, I would want Jackboot to go through this thread again, pick out criticism and feedback, both from Coalf and the community at large, and address it in writing here. This should include plans for actions to be taken. Some of the feedback provided may clash with the view from inside, however, then the disparity should be rectified instead. Now, this is a relatively large task, considering the amount of posts and words in this thread, so he can take a bit. But I would like to have it posted in this thread.

It might also be worth while for Coalf and Jackboot to talk and see if Coalf can still be of service to the Lore Team. Specially if Jackboot is thinking about somehow expanding the lore team. Just a though. Although, I do think Jackboot and Coalf should talk regardless.

Anyways, that is all.

[Coalf]

Well we now have 52 posts here and the scuttlebutt has also started moving about. So, time to wrap this up.

The application itself will be denied. I'm not maverick enough to actually let it pass without looking for suitable candidates from the lore staff first.

However, with that said. Since the primary intent of this thread was to provide feedback to Jackboot, I would like the following to happen. Up until now, @Senpai Jackboot has been mostly critical of this application, by virtue of his job being at threat. With that threat now removed, I would want Jackboot to go through this thread again, pick out criticism and feedback, both from Coalf and the community at large, and address it in writing here. This should include plans for actions to be taken. Some of the feedback provided may clash with the view from inside, however, then the disparity should be rectified instead. Now, this is a relatively large task, considering the amount of posts and words in this thread, so he can take a bit. But I would like to have it posted in this thread.

It might also be worth while for Coalf and Jackboot to talk and see if Coalf can still be of service to the Lore Team. Specially if Jackboot is thinking about somehow expanding the lore team. Just a though. Although, I do think Jackboot and Coalf should talk regardless.

Anyways, that is all.

 

Oh well.

So

Same time next year? :^)

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

>implying I did not already read every single post and create a plan of action

I am slowed only by the fact I am stuck in bed with a nasty flu, but I have read every single post and there are definitely reforms in the works.

I am going to do Coalf's idea of deputy lore developers. They will not be mandatory for each and every lore dev but there will definitely be a handful of them running around. The 'main' developers will effectively become a form of middle management. Human loredev deputy will answer to Zundy, who answers to me. They will not have whitelist perms because tackling delayed apps is an important tool I use to measure dev activity. Having to personally clear slime-people whitelist applications for an extended period is a great red flag that gets me talking to the slime loredev. Right now I am of the mind of getting 2 human deputy devs, a unathi deputy dev, and possibly one for skrell and tajara. Vaurca and Diona depdevs are still something I will bring up with [mention]Bygonehero[/mention] and [mention]SleepyWolf[/mention] specifically.

I am also talking to allybear about giving maintainers more access and a bit more authority, and giving them access to the lore channel on our staff discord. I am basically giving allybear a blank check. The wiki developers have done great work with mechanics but there is also a lot of lore shenanigans that they would like to work on.

Hiring is already stricter. I should clarify the fear that I will keep hiring problematic devs - I probably will not. I have been vetting applicants or applicant hopefuls through abosh or garn to see if they are wary about anyone in particular. I am saying that I won't ever say I'm ashamed about anyone that was a dev under me - everyone I hired had good intentions and genuine work ethics, but lost their position via inactivity or a sudden outburst. I have never let anyone go on bad terms, but because they made mistakes that made their continued tenure impossible. Mistakes are a vital part of learning and I don't place the blame on individuals for making mistakes unless those mistakes are in bad faith or with ill intention. I super hope I'm not coming off as patronizing here haha

I'll try to be more responsive to the lore_channel discord. It's just.... Sooooooo much stuff. It's all white noise. I check it, go afk for 20 minutes, and come back to see the conversation has gone on for 500 messages about 12 different topics. It's even worse when I go to my day job where I cannot check my phone for hours at a time. Puhleaaaaaaaaaaaase spam the forums or PM me on discord about these things, where I can sit and read through them fully. If I got this thread ver batum (minus the wanting my job part) on a semi-regular basis I would be in a constant state of euphoria. Every post dunking on me with clearly outlined reasons and defended points gives me life and energy. I cannot overstate how eager I am to hire people who put me on blast. [mention]Tomiix[/mention] 360 noscoped me straight to hell over unathi and I want him as a unathi deputy dev now.

I reject the intentional unathi bias accusation still but I can understand how the state of affairs they are going through is problematic. If I had unilateral power believe me there'd be an equal amount of rapidfire updates for skrell, tajara, and humanity. I'd pop pop pop articles until mothafukkas dropped, but I respect the boundaries of devs and don't want them to chaff under my overbearing ADHD energy and so I try to let them work at their own pace. I will twofold see about applying more pressure on devs for updates (in form of news posts), seeing if I can get away with shoving my energy into more areas with their consent, while scaling back the scope of unathi updates, and in the future focusing more on the bad time they're having. I always have the nuclear option of completely wiping the Unathi clean by just having the hegemon wake up from his depression coma, which would ic'ly reboot the last like, year and a half of IC reforms. Mechanically I GUESS Unathi are a bit OP. I am going to see about having breaking out of cuffs, which only the men can do to reinforce the gender stratification - no matter what the female is doing she isn't capable of ever doing what a man can, which is super sexist, problematic, and intentional by design. So I just asked Alberyk to have the cuffbreaking get the drawback of dumping their stamina to 0, which will make them unable to sprint or run away for a bit. Their sprint itself I don't think needs to be changed. Tajara run faster than them at their regular running speed, and Tajara can run fast indefinitely. Unathi have the fastest sprint in the game but their stamina is garbage, and after they blitz at you they are super slow for a not-unreasonable amount of time as their stamina regains. Stamina is not a strict hunger bar - even if you devour 20 carp you still become breathless and need recovery time. These speed and sprinting mechanics reinforce the fact that Unathi focus on ambush and CQC. Ambushes are second to kiting as the most important fighting elements in SS13 - arguably Tajara are the most robust race mechanically because of their innate natural speed and ability to kite like nobody's business. The brute resistance of Unathi is a legacy feature and reinforces the fact they are sturdy. I GUESS it could be lowered, but again their lack of burn resistance but buff to brute is a reinforcement of their melee focus. A tajara with a laser rifle in a wide open space can quite literally run circles around a unathi in a breacher suit.

I do not really see secrets being held in the lore chat. The only things that are really kept 'secret' are the schedules of news article updates or the arcs of specific events we want to unfold on station. tl;dr: we don't leak spoilers when we can help it. In the past, circa 2015, when the lore team still used skype, this was a SERIOUS and EXISTENTIAL problem. The state of the lore team in 2015 and prior directly impacts my obsessive need for transparency and communication. In the old days when I was just a unathi dev all lore was held by individual lore devs in google documents, and whenever I wanted to do something I was informed that it violated someone's lore in a google document that only they had the link to, and didn't want to show me or anyone else because it 'wasn't ready'. I usually always harrass my loredevs to ask their playerbase or players in general about something they have a mind about, and I always contact staff chat or players about something I want done. my last big update for unathi, which opened a new avenue for how their society and religion frames tackles LGBT communities in a way that was mostly-original and SUPER patronizing, was something I brought to about 9 people before having a public discussion about it. And it went great! Very thoughtful conversations which framed the final product into its sorta-tolerant-but-also-SUPER-patronizing state it is now. And the same is true for a lot of what I do. I am a very energetic person and can sometimes shoot out updates or reforms on short notice but while I do slip sometimes I also make it a point to always try to pass anything big through other staff if they are even vaguely connected, even if those staff can get super annoyed by me badgering them about random crap. The only other way to be MORE open than we already are is to have all of our official discord in the player discord lore channel, or post more regularly in our loredev diary.

[Coalf]

We talked, stamped, pouted and cried together about this and come to compromises and although the saying goes

"Compromises are a way to make both sides unhappy," we made a compromise that will hopefuly improve the overall server experience.

I'm going to be unhappy about some things, Jackboots is going to be unhappy about some things, but hopefully through collective unhappines we improved the server and we'll help the playerbase.

Now, a lot of people asked, why? Why did you make an application and not a Staff Complaint and I think I should answer that too.

One people who bitched here without providing an ounce of real feedback, outted themselves as nothing but complainers with no real idea of what they're complaining about, if I made a staff complaint, these people would have gotten a platform, I didn't want that.

Now I'm not only talking about people who oppossed me either, I was somewhat dissapointed at what I saw from some people supporting me too.

Two, I got feedback myself, I'm not a god (Not very far though) and I have mistakes I wish to iron out, I now know why some people don't trust me and what they dislike about me.

Three, MAJORITY SAW IT. If I put this in suggestions how many of you would see this? Half? Quarter? Even less? Drama attracts attention and the fact is I needed that.

Four, I partially wanted that seat. I'm a petty person, if you're doing something and tell me to "Do it myself" I'll steal your job and your dog.

 

[Skull132]

Locking, archiving.