8:46 PM] Durandal: Yo.
[8:46 PM] Durandal: Finally got a minute to talk.
[8:46 PM] Durandal: Crazy fuckin' day as you might have guessed.
[8:58 PM] Markam: Heyho
[8:59 PM] Markam: How can I be of service today
[9:02 PM] Markam: Decided that Jutland is better than Fortitude as a name for the BBC? Good that you have come to your senses
[9:02 PM] Durandal: Hah.
[9:02 PM] Durandal: Not quite, but it is a good name.
[9:02 PM] Durandal: Actually I wanted to talk to you about potentially bringing you aboard the development team as a writer.
[9:02 PM] Durandal: That's what the English poll was all about.
[9:03 PM] Durandal: I needed a list of native English speakers with their heads on straight.
[9:03 PM] Durandal: You say "we need writers" and you get a whole bunch of people climbing over each other, y'know?
[9:03 PM] Markam: Oh right, that poll. I'm certainly an English speaker, and I did graduate university and all.
[9:04 PM] Markam: I could do it, sure. I am however also fluent in Japanese and use it daily, so my English can get a bit fuzzy at times.
[9:05 PM] Durandal: Which one is your native tongue?
[9:05 PM] Markam: English of course.
[9:06 PM] Markam: I didn't lie on your poll, born and raised in the UK
[9:11 PM] Durandal: So,
[9:11 PM] Durandal: I've got a few questions for you. We'll start simple.
[9:11 PM] Durandal: First is fairly obvious. How would you, well, feel about such a position?
[9:12 PM] Markam: I would feel more than happy to help in any way I can. I did also do a bit of balance work back in the day.
[9:13 PM] Durandal: I'm shocked. I wasn't aware there really was anyone back in the day besides Mjolnir and Blodo.
[9:13 PM] Durandal: And I'm familiar with everyone who came after them.
[9:14 PM] Markam: Those two were the heads, but a handful of guys were used as testers basically. I used to be decent at PvP. I was invited by  MarvinCZ
[9:14 PM] Durandal: Ah.
[9:15 PM] Durandal: I tested 4.86, but I never really felt my input was taken into account. As I recall, the status quo was more or less the heads telling us "okay, do this with X ships" and seeing if it got them the result they wanted.
[9:15 PM] Durandal: Which has its merits, and I do use people for that myself, but I try not to like..
[9:15 PM] Durandal: Romantacize the position, I guess? It doesn't really feel like doing balance work. I don't know. It's a tangent.
[9:16 PM] Markam: I'm pretty sure I single handedly got the rock nerfed by snacing mjolnir in it.
[9:16 PM] Markam: Roc*
[9:17 PM] Markam: But yes, it's unclear the level of influence testers have/had.
[9:17 PM] Durandal: Mjolnir, to my recollection.. didn't ah,
[9:17 PM] Durandal: Appreciate ships that could beat him.
[9:17 PM] Markam: And then again, it's not always right to balance based on PvP skill.
[9:18 PM] Markam: But we're not talking balance right? Haha
[9:18 PM] Durandal: We could, but that's gonna take us waaaaay off course.
[9:18 PM] Durandal: I'd be interested in coming back around to it.
[9:18 PM] Durandal: So in summary you'd like to help.
[9:19 PM] Markam: That's correct.
[9:19 PM] Durandal: Tell me why.
[9:20 PM] Markam: As I said, I have history of helping, and it's quite taxing on Devs with all the negatively around.
[9:21 PM] Markam: I don't have desires to affect the story, if anything, to bring some realism to it.
[9:22 PM] Durandal: So you'd be more interested in work that helps make the planned story more digestable, rather than changing those plans?
[9:24 PM] Markam: Yes. And I think the current direction is more levelled than before. I support the O49 changes for example.
[9:25 PM] Markam: Sorry if I'm slow, I'm using my phone.
[9:26 PM] Durandal: That sounds like an awful way to have this conversation, but its your perogative. :P
[9:26 PM] Durandal: So what would you do with it? Your position, not the storyline. How would you go about effecting the change you'd like to see?
[9:30 PM] Markam: Well, forgive me for my ignorance, but what is involved in a writer position? Do I have a set of tasks for specific stations etc, or do I have free reign to choose what to write? If I get to choose, I'd obviously play to my strengths, bretonia, kusari etc.
[9:31 PM] Durandal: How we handle this,
[9:31 PM] Durandal: Is we list work that needs doing, and allow people to draw from that pool of work.
[9:31 PM] Durandal: Occasionally you may be asked to handle specific tasks, especially if those tasks have remained unclaimed for a long period of time.
[9:31 PM] Durandal: But generally speaking you will have free reign.
[9:32 PM] Durandal: Moreover, you'll also be participating in discussions which decide the direction of the story. These discussions are what go on to form the foundation of these tasks, by reaching a point where we achieve quorum on  how to progress the story.
[9:33 PM] Markam: Interesting, well theny point stands about playing to my strengths. But in the case I have been tasked to do something less popular, I will try as a rule, to base my writing in some part of real life, to help ground it.
[9:33 PM] Markam: Then my*
[9:34 PM] Durandal: Well, we are writing for a sci-fi work. We do try to ground ourselves in realism, but that's obviously not always going to be the case
[9:34 PM] Durandal: There is a certain level of handwaving involved, especially when it comes to tech.
[9:35 PM] Markam: I don't mean to mimmick real life, but to at least give it some flavour.
[9:35 PM] Durandal: I understand. Moving on.
[9:36 PM] Durandal: What do you think of gameplay vs lore? This was a major issue in the previous development administration where story decisions were made with no regard for what players actually wanted / what was fun from a gameplay standpoint, such as forcing Kusari to fight a civil war with no participants which removed Kusari as a player on the political map for several years.
[9:36 PM] Durandal: Other such decisions included moving bases and jumpholes to very distant locations away from activity centers, to promote "realism."
[9:39 PM] Markam: I'm a huge fan of gameplay over lore, which may be found in the kinds of posts I make. There's a balance to be struck, but if it were realism versus gameplay, I would suggest those who argue realism to take a wider view of things, we are hardly playing the most realistic space Sims. Having played elite dangerous, I'm glad we aren't.(edited)
[9:41 PM] Markam: And Kusari..  it's always been a mess in regards to lore. Japan is complicated after all.
[9:42 PM] Markam: I never understood why the emperor and shogun tended to be one in the same, they are entirely separate entities.
[9:43 PM] Markam: (in real life)
[9:47 PM] Durandal: What would your writing style be? Not asking for a sample of prose, but rather your methodology. Release posts? News posts? In-game news? Base/solar infocards? Rumors? Official story events? Official story characters? (Yes, those are a thing now. Canon story characters.)
[9:51 PM] Markam: I'd much rather avoid writing characters, as that is for the players, and it's a slippery slope. I would prefer to stick to infocards, naming of things etc. The news angle is interesting, but I would need to experiment a bit first, it would need to written subjectivity with a certain style.
[9:53 PM] Markam: Rumors too, would need experimentation. It'd be interesting if there were humour involved in rumors. It's a person telling them after all.
[9:53 PM] Markam: I mean, it could be a complete lie, or a joke for instance.
[9:54 PM] Durandal: Alright,
[9:54 PM] Durandal: Now we're going to get into the heavier questions.
[9:55 PM] Durandal: Discovery is a very political place. Which people do you feel should be removed from the game world? Also which cliques? Which factions? Directness here is valued; we all know certain mindsets that we believe Discovery would be better without.
[10:01 PM] Markam: Perhaps it's due to my absence, but I see noone who should be removed, nor do I think there are cliques that are overtly hostile to eachother, though I'm sure you are more educated in that regard. I see things more nuanced, and even if I were super BAF, I value my opponents the GRN greatly and I am glad they are there and not. Similar to the CR in 484, if they were not there, the baf would have noone to fight. If I'm direct, I have always found some Zoners behaviour bizzare.
[10:02 PM] Durandal: Impressive. Let me come at the question from a different angle, then.
[10:03 PM] Durandal: What mindset do you think we should be trying to endgender here in Discovery, and which mindsets do you think are detrimental to that ideal?
[10:07 PM] Markam: Interesting question. I think in general, considering the size of the community, we should be more positive in general, I have seen some negative opinions which have no basis in reality. I would also suggest more engagement and more creativity, but that is something I can see is happening already.
[10:08 PM] Markam: I mean, saying xyz sucks is fairly easy, and overtly negative, why is there no suggestion to fix it to follow?
[10:09 PM] Durandal: Two more questions to go.
[10:09 PM] Durandal: Our current style of writing is aimed at big, dramatic, shock and awe style developments. I am sure you've noticed this outwardly already. Is this a style of writing you feel comfortable working within and contributing to?
[10:10 PM] Durandal: This is in contrast to the much slower and more politically oriented writing we saw in the previous development administration between 2013-2017.
[10:11 PM] Markam: Oh certainly, it's hard to do anything small that affects gameplay, it's a PvP game after all, people need to see the changes from their cockpits.
[10:14 PM] Markam: I'm open to anything within reason. Even a personal union between Bret and gallic crowns.
[10:14 PM] Durandal: Actually I lied.
[10:15 PM] Durandal: There were three questions left.
[10:15 PM] Durandal: So, two to go.
[10:15 PM] Durandal: You've got a 2008 join date and you've been absent for quite awhile. How do we know that you're motivated to stick around and won't vanish the next day? What brought you back, what is keeping you here, and what caused any previous departures?
[10:18 PM] Markam: Okay. So I left in conjunction with university, which includes a year abroad. I started work in 2015 and I'm finally settling down again. I'll be honest, I cannot guarantee anything, but I'm here for the foreseeable future, obviously with family and work commitments I'm not going to be playing several hours a day, and my time zone is a bitch.
[10:21 PM] Markam: Oh, what brought me back? An undying love for freelancer. No other game can fill the void.
[10:21 PM] Durandal: No, no other game can. Which is awfully sad for a game that came out in the early 2000s.
[10:22 PM] Durandal: What timezone are you in?
[10:22 PM] Markam: Japan. So uh, GMT+9? Yesterdays event was at 3am for me.
[10:24 PM] Durandal: Ah.
[10:24 PM] Durandal: Alright. Final question.
[10:24 PM] Durandal: This one is rather heavy.
[10:25 PM] Durandal: There are certain growing political tensions within the staff, which may at some point result in confrontation. What are your feelings about the role of the administration team and the development team, and what areas do you feel they posess jurisdiction over?
[10:29 PM] Markam: I assumed jurisdiction was admins run the server, enforce and create rules. Development work is to improve the mod. The main overlap is in IDs, they can be a Dec issue, but it's important not to make too many drastic changes that would affect admin workload.
[10:31 PM] Durandal: I see. I'm going to expand on this question a bit with some hypotheticals.
[10:32 PM] Durandal: How would you react to the administration telling the development team that they are not allowed to canonize a faction into the lore via the addition of an IFF?
[10:35 PM] Markam: Interesting. This was not something the dark ages of 485/486 had, but I would take a conciliatory tone in said discussion, I'm pro IFF addition in general, but admins are entitled to concerns, though I'm not sure it's entirely their jurisdiction to deny such a request.
[10:36 PM] Durandal: That's reasonable enough. We're not looking to hire people who have an axe to grind with the administration, as we are looking to cultivate positive energy and attitudes here.
[10:37 PM] Durandal: But I am a firm believer in that such things, on occasion, do need to be protected.
[10:37 PM] Durandal: We look for people who have a good sense of right and wrong, above all else.
[10:38 PM] Markam: I try to, and it is by no means easy, to take every issue as is, and not through any predisposition I may have.
[10:38 PM] Durandal: I see.
[10:39 PM] Durandal: Well, I'm going to go ahead and take this up the ladder to Xalrok and Unseelie.
[10:39 PM] Durandal: Thanks for your time, Markam. You may be hearing from myself or one of those two in a few days time.
[10:40 PM] Durandal: I say "up the ladder", but we're all equals really.
[10:40 PM] Markam: Hey, it was a pleasure, and I'm more than happy regardless of your decision, please keep up the good work and stay positive.
[10:40 PM] Durandal: We try.