Ads:

If we do run ads I'd prefer to go with something really well-targeted. Despite working for AdSense I'm not certain that AdSense would be ideal -- but I'm also not sure I'd want, say, Project Wonderful either. (Though I'd prefer Project Wonderful over most alternatives!) Personally I was leaning towards selling ad slots to users (maybe even for runes) and backfilling to something else like Project Wonderful when there's not enough inventory to avoid showing the same ad too many times. (I'm going to have to ask Toho to write the code for this, though, since it'd be contractually iffy for me to work on it myself.)

Roleplaying:

RP is a big deal on Trisphee and always has been. We can't run RP events like the first Taskal War anymore because those simply aren't manageable at scale, but I want to know -- what would make RP better for you guys, as users?

Reinventing Trisphee:

I don't think we can get away with this. We just got a big influx of users who came here because their old site tried to reinvent itself. We're better off improving what we have and adding new things.

Meta-discussion:

I've not taken anything in this thread as flaming. I see passionate users wanting the best for the site, and I'm thankful for that.

We've actually been working on stuff in the background even before anyone said anything. :P So it's not like we weren't trying and the thread kicked us into action. The thread just made us say something publicly.

Well, I know someone mentioned this before and you I think said it wasn't possible, but something like a dream avatar thing where we can create characters using the item database instead of having to look up pictures from something else (it usually can take me hours before I find one I like ^^; ) and several of the sites I'm on have this as an option which is why I'm suggesting it. And maybe, as someone suggested, have special things for users who are active in the RP thread, something simple like borders that are made for the avis. Borders can be very simple and don't need to be complex. Like maybe a wall with a see through window or something. Or just a trim alone the avi's box for it. Heck, I could probably make something simple like that if I tried. ^^;

Yes, please don't change Trisphee, I'm one of those mentioned people. ^^;

And thanks for looking this thread over. :3

I didn't say it wasn't possible -- it's actually pretty darn easy. I just said that as a matter of policy we'd much rather have such a thing done by a third party. Not only would such a thing be more things we'd have to maintain in terms of developer-hours, but we'd also have to be very careful in making sure that the only items available in the dream avatar editor are the items that have actually been released to the public.

I AM, however, amenable to the idea of preview-only items that you can get for free but can't save onto your avatar.

I am also completely in support of making it easier to search for items that you want in the shops. I have plans for this but there's a ridiculous number of man-hours necessary to make it happen, not all of them code-related.

These two features together will get most of the way to a dream avatar creator.

I've also got a longstanding plan for post flobs that I just haven't had time to iron out -- not specifically something you asked about but related enough to warrant mentioning.

The main problem I have with the idea of visibly tagging certain users in a thread is that it implies a concept of thread ownership that Trisphee explicitly does not have in the general case. This isn't an insurmountable concern, but I'd need to brainstorm with the staff to figure out how we would want to handle this.

Well, it could just be a random thing we get from posting, not really needing to fulfill certain requirements or anything, and could probably be applied to other parts of the site. Kind of like with the souls but happening at random. This would allow everyone to have a chance at the items and they can also be traded for those who would want to collect them. *cough*likme*cough*

Sorry, what context are you referring to here?

The posting thing where we get items. x'D I tend to go off the road at times, sorry. ^^;

OH. I see that I misunderstood you the first time! I thought you were suggesting having the forum software put a border around the avatars of e.g. people participating in the current thread's RP.

I don't have a problem with the idea of coming up with a set of posting reward items that have a small chance of getting granted with every post. I'll swing it by the staff.

Sorry, thought I might have confused you. x'D

Now that I think on it, I feel like Trisphee's story could use a bit of a rework, or possible full on rewrite.

I'm not flaming, or trying to step on toes. However, it does feel like most of the story chapters were released with little to no fanfare, and had almost nothing tying them in to really bring people to want to read them. I'll be honest, I didn't even know Trisphee had an ongoing story for several months. And now looking back, quite a few bits do not fit together or are completely contradictory. The threads detailing the planets and races of the Trisphee universe alone contradicts itself about every three sentences, and it seems like the stories have fallen to the side entirely.

I mean, we haven't had one since *checks* March of 2014? Could we try to jumpstart them perhaps? Perform a full reboot or even a rework of the story? It would allow you to start fresh instead of keeping to the current obscure or convoluted world setting rules, and bringing back events that tied in to the story would be fun and engaging. I don't know if anyone actually enjoys reading them or not these days, but it could be worth a shot.

We've had some discussion on story rewrites, but there's a lot of work that would need done to accomplish it effectively. And a lot of the older stuff was made up on the fly by individual staffers that weren't even on the writing team; there wasn't a whole lot of effort put into canon until we got Suzerain of Sheol on board.

Perhaps we could think about tossing out what we have of the story so far, or archive it, and start something anew? It's certainly dramatic and scary sounding, but it might be for the benefit if we are hoping for some new user base, since people wouldn't feel like there's a ton of backstory they need to get through to understand what comes about now.

If Trisphee needs some reworking, and the consensus seems to be that it does, I don't think there'd be anything wrong with just up and saying, "hey! Story is a little messed up here, so we're going to start up something new!" Make a new canon.

I also don't think changing the layout or format of the site is going to help much. I think it's fine as it is and I'm quite comfortable with it. Easy to use, not hard on the eyes.

There are a lot of things I'd really like to do to help the site, it comes down to time and money. I have a car, a house, etc to pay for. So I can't quit my job. I still fit some time in for trisphee but I have 2 other jobs besides here.

One of the things I would love to do is do Item reboots. which is rereleasing old items but repixel them. i am not blind to the fact that the items I pixel now are much better than before. But i am afraid doing things like this would deter people as well. I want to put more time into trisphee, I'd like to see this place prosper even if I am not the owner anymore, so I have to say I agree, a lot needs to be done to fix trisphee but in the end the question is HOW far we have to go to do and how far is to far?

Given this is an avatar site, what about focusing primarily on the items as far as the events go? Smaller events rather than big ones, that are based around the user population and new items rather than any specific story that users around at the time may or may not want to bother with. Not having to work out an integrated story to tie the events together would probably save some time and frustration. One less thing to worry about is one less weight on the brain.

Re-pixeling is fun. Especially when you get to compare it to your old work. :3 You should re-pixel for fun and release them without consistency so you don't have to feel like your "working."

I'm juggling a lot in life as well, I always forget how much free time I have and how much free time I don't have. It comes and goes, but I found it easier to do things a little bit at a time. :/

I still think we need better Shop organization (finding anything when you don't know what your looking for is impossible! CODA. HALP. Top on your to-do list! Forget Taxes! Oh and teach my Python for class. K thx bye.)

But Fen we love you, we miss you, and I heard that someone said you couldn't do it because you didn't have the guts too. What that thing is. DO IT FEN. PROVE THAT PERSON WRONG!

Edit: And again... Trisphee's Business Plan in a nutshell:
https://johndorris.files.wordpress.c...mes-theory.jpg

i actually made a lot of suggestions for shop, avatar, inventory and trade improvements to help sort things through so it wasn't hard.

2nd reply, you know funny enough its not the pixels that are hard for me, its the designing. We do have plenty of designs back stock i could be using but it comes down to a question of what fits what we should be doing. Also the monthlies this month are done, they are just getting recolors right now which is my fault. Fitting Tris in is hard. But I do try my best. That being said I'm starting to catch up otherwise they'd be later. once recolors are done they will be out.

As for repixels. I want to repixel Inventory dream and Cyber reaper so bad and rerelease them, but i don't want to step on people's toes either. There are others I want to do as well.

As Coda said, it's an idea. Doing so would likely involve a communal throwing of our hands in the air and giving up on the entire mess that was the plot, which I suppose there's been inertia to actually doing.

Well, no, they stopped getting event or art support some time ago, which led to the forced abandonment of the project, more or less. We began to shove the plot updates into the most lifeless corner of the forums while running events themed around the site mascots that went nowhere. I don't really have an answer as to why that happened. It was not a decision I had any part in.

That honestly should have been deleted years ago, it's an artifact of the days before I had anything to do with the story, and it's embarrassingly poorly written. I think its sheer age has deterred anyone from removing it.

They stopped because I was in the hospital for a year and the site moved on in the meantime (or, rather, withered up into the limping husk it is now), and no one was really reading them before that anyway. I still have all my notes on where it was going, but I doubt the plot that was in motion will ever be finished. There really just seems to be no reason or interest to.

And in terms of a re-imagining and starting from a clean slate, I'm not entirely sure what form a new story for the site should take. Whatever it might be, though, would require integrated support in items, events, and themed games to prevent it from stagnating and choking to death the way the last one did. It can't stand on its own.

I'm still here, though, even if I don't post much, if anything is ever sorted out regarding it. I have no real attachment to the extant plot as it stands, besides the amount of hours I put into writing it. It was always an effort of trying to salvage something deeply, deeply flawed from its very inception, and it could only go so far. I would not be opposed to attempting something new or different in the future; it's the details and logistics that I'm at a loss to account for.

-Suze

Everything that has been done was part of Pandora's dream. She wakes up to find herself back in her shop at the cash register waiting for customers.

-nods-

I'm all for a story rewrite. starting off with actual story with background info on the NPC's in the header, and the shop NPC's.

Don't delete existing NPCs, use them as side characters (Filler Characters) that aren't as important. Just give them a background re-write keeping certain aspects of them, like their personality and if possible their profession.

Don't make new NPC's for this reason or that. Use the ones you have if you need someone that's not a main character to do something. The one reason I can't seem to follow the stories and stuff is that NPC's are made then forgotten about.

Kaimid's Furball has gone missing. More than likely she ran away after the third catapult into the ceiling. Zeo, who had wanted to get some body art done, came looking for the tattoo artist. He tells Kaimid that he saw furball sitting on one of the chairs in the shop. Kaimid rushes back and finds his furry friend curled up and sleeping right where Zeo said she was. Zeo got a small discount off his new tattoo. A painfully small discount.

Rewrite the planets as well. Some of the races on those planets were supposed to be taken down anyway. Explain the countries and territories of the planets and with information of what race lives there and what they are like.

Quesaria, a beautiful planet full of forests and ruins. Crystals that radiate a strange energy cling to trees and rocks as if it were growing off of them. Home to the ever hunted Sinopa. If you have one as a pet, keep them away from radioactive chinchilla's, who seem to be their sworn enemy.

In the story part, have stuff in there that will lead up to the next event, and when the event happens add a summary like part. Like a NPC remembering what went on during the event, and have the event linked somewhere in the memories. Since Events are RP based and are in chapters, link each chapter to the memories of that section. That way for those who don't like reading RPs can still read what happened in the story.

As an ex-writer back from the not-shopkeeper storyline, I'm going to put it out there that the shopkeeper-verse extremely fragmented and hastily put together. Sure, it may have been cheery and lackadaisical, and maybe that drew more readers, but I also felt it was really haphazard and didn't go anywhere in particular.

On the other hand, the storyline with Dyten/Ryuko/everyone else was, in my own opinion, intact and planned out for months in advance. Sure, it was going down a rather morbid path, and I think that's why people started not reading it. Perhaps the chapters were too long, but all the writers at the time (who often amount to just two or three of us) spent hours hammering out a third, fourth, fifth draft.

Do I want to keep the darker storyline? Sure. But I don't see it helping Trisphee much at all, so I'm not fully opposed to somehow writing around it. But the "waking up from a dream" thing is one of the most cliche deus ex machina that writers use to reroute a plot, and it also has the appearance of tossing everything we've done for the past few years under the bus.

We could do a trisiana or Sarya accidently destroy the story line bit.

Unfortunately, having some higher power destroy a world is tantamount to the main character waking up from a dream. Honestly, I think a better option (and one that I'd be willing to help with) would be to have Mirothea, who doesn't really have much in terms of details yet, to be reworked as some sort of purifier. I know there are things happening in the story aside from Mirothea, but since most of the later plot hasn't actually been revealed yet, I feel like that a path the storyline could take.

You guys should just pull a X-Men: Days of Future Past. Just write up an epic adventure of the shopkeepers of our present go back in time to grab their former selves to help fight a mighty force, then kill everyone off in the present and send everyone to the past at the end with the knowledge that we know what will happen and how to prevent it. So that way you can start fresh on all the adventures if need be, change outcomes of the events, and have an excuse to repeat some events as well to maintain consistency and simply just haves things to do on the site.

I agree with Espy's assessment, those deus ex mechanical solutions are extremely cheap and the mark of poor writing. I would never endorse something like that, which is not to say it wouldn't happen, since as you can likely tell by the last several events, I have remarkably little input on the kinds of stories we feature these days. I don't think it's any secret around here that I absolutely detest the shop NPCs, never wanted them featured in the site story and was overruled on the matter, and I don't support any storyline involving them period, whatever we end up doing going forward. I think they were the single worst creative decision ever made on Trisphee. That is my opinion as the nominal head of writing around here. They are better left as mascots, not characters. If for some reason we require mascots.

I would much sooner just "[toss] everything we've done for the past few years under the bus.", Espy, than attempt to wrestle the current plot in a completely new direction to somehow wrap it up with an ending that can only be weak and disappointing.

As to the "morbidity" of the plot, I am fully at fault for that, if it is a fault, but I'm sorry, that is what you get when you ask me to write a war story. I never have and never will accept the white-washing of violence into something delightful and adventurous suitable for children. If it's going to be portrayed, it will carry the necessary emotional consequences to do it justice. The original plot for the The Fight for Freedom (I still cringe at that title) was laughable: the plucky underdog rebels against the moustache-twirling aimlessly-evil monarch. That was an interplanetary campaign of insurgent terrorism aimed at igniting a civil war. It should never have been "fun".

But I digress. I'm more convinced that it was a lack of interest in reading long chapters, than the content itself, that played the larger factor in causing the userbase to lose interest in the plot. And that same problem is what concerns me with starting anything new. If the format remains the same, I foresee a similar outcome, regardless of the nature of the plot.

And @DK, I have literally no idea what any of that is supposed to mean, but all of the mentioned NPCs were part of the core foundational problem with the story in its faulted state. All of the staff-insert NPCs should have been obliterated long ago, and the writing should be left to actual writers if there's to be any sense of professionalism to the project.

And quite honestly, the term "NPC" has always bothered me. This is not a video game. This is not a roleplay. Those characters were just that, characters; protagonists, antagonists, foils, supporting roles, etc. Any supposed "NPCs" I personally added were there for a reason, and the others were forced in because of staff politics, "rewarding" non-writers by allowing them to make their own character for the story. This can not happen in the future, no matter what we end up deciding to do. It is a shameful way to conduct a professional endeavor, and the disastrous results it wreaked are plain to see.

I am sorry if I come across as bitter about this, but I feel like a lot of the blame for the failure of the story gets laid at my feet, and I'm not sure anyone understands the hopeless, Sisyphean task I was given in trying to produce something workable out the wreckage of the Taskal War's catastrophic mess of a background plot. Add to that years of being out-voted on story matters, being denied item support for changes in the characters as the story progressed (or events actually relevant to the plot), and the general sentiment around the site that "anyone can write, and everyone should have equal input on the plot direction", and you can get an idea of the sort of framework I would require before undertaking another attempt at a major story for the site.

So, if you were turned away by the violence and despair and what I did to some of the old, beloved NPCs, you have my apology, but if it's anything else, I cannot be sorry, as I quite likely hate it far more than you do. Maybe there's hope for something better in the future, but that's where it stands right now.

-Suze out

I wasn't saying use what I put. If you guys haven't noticed the jokes in my little bits you'd see that those weren't meant to be taken serious. Then again I guess since everyone seemed to have taken it seriously, Quesaria really does have radioactive chinchillas =/ here I thought that was a particular user who likes to eat Sinopa's on here.

I was going to pull a gif of a slowly rising clap, but they all looked sarcastic so I'm just going to scrap the idea and proceed.

I've never really doubted your work. You've put some tremendous patches in the sinking hull that has been the plot and characters so far. If you're head writer then you really should be able to have full control of the story and more autonomy about how characters and plot points proceed, and definitely some event and item support (provided that can be mustered, anyway. I know we're stretched thin when it comes to item creation at the moment.) Sorry that it's built up for so long mate.

As far as tone of stories, war and morbidness go hand in hand. It's a nice sentiment, but too many examples of anime and manga involve massive wars with no real show of loss or death. While it's a pretty picture, it's bad writing. No one cares about characters unless they're experiencing hardship, inconvenience, or loss. If you are going to throw characters in to a setting of hell, it makes no sense to have no one burn.

The bits with Kaym were done oh so well. It was a beautiful addition and actually had me caring for what happened to a character and what he had done. No, the site story doesn't have to become super serious grimdark gritfest, but if it's going to cover mature subjects it should be conducted in a mature manner. Less intense and light hearted pieces are great, but I feel they ones we have are written with in the more "supercaffienated oh so random squirrel squirrel squirrel spork of DOOM!" style of writing that has random things happening in a nonsense plot that goes nowhere and ultimately has about the same effect on the story as kitten has on stopping a freight train. Cute yes, but nothing is accomplished and you've just been left with a huge mess.

Suppose I'm a bit more firm in my standing after all. I would like to suggest we take a cannon to the canon and start anew. Stories have not been attended to since March, and with this new information I really can't blame anyone for not doing it. There's no real reason to put a bandaid on the dying plot if we're just going to take it out back and shoot it before bringing in a new one.

I agree with a lot of what Suze said, I would gladly support events if I have time. its not that I don't want to but as one of the only current pixel artists and having so little time its a lot to do. I was never the best writer, I always threw ideas out and maybe at times could of been selfish with certain story parts. But at a point i completely stopped being involved with the writing process. There were some amazing parts in the story and Suze is a fantastic writer. I however am not., and I should of handed the story to him when he first started. I think we can do a lot if the story is restarted and in all seriousness I think we need a list of must have improvements for the site as a whole, and I think the users NEED to help with this because its you guys who use it and are the ones we'd need to like it.

What I got out of this:

Your terrible writing with restrictions: You desire to completely write your own characters rather then working with existing ones. You aren't good at writing for characters you didn't think of yourself or feel limited to because things are set in stone. So instead of writing new ones, you dwell on it personally because you can't think of ways to fix a bad foundation. <--- A huge sign of a weakness as a writer right here.

You were easily outvoted on subjects or matters that came from a 2nd party that is unrelated to your job. So a social worker telling a rocket scientist what they should be doing to launch a rocket. From what I learned from you guys on Skype years back, this is very much true. And I agree to the extent that you might had needed a little more authority or ability to deny from people outside of being site writers. Granted, from what I learned from your post is that your ideal of how to run the site's story is probably not for the best for what the previous owner was going for. But again, you should be working within your limitations, while being aloud to reject suggestions for stories from non-writers. This is your department, no one outside from being writers except for the main administrators should be voting on what stories should be accomplished.

I do think your forgetting that your writing a story for a interactive site which is seen as a game by most people. We post for currency, we participate in events for rewards, avatar sites are very much of a story. Your writing should be to interact with the users, not write an elaborate story that doesn't revolve or make use of Trisphites. Which has been a problem ever since the Taskal Wars/Masquerade War ended, the stories after those two became meaningless and boring. I stopped reading around then completely or neglected the plot entirely because I felt as though there was no point to read because it had nothing to ever do with me the user, let alone the story looked like someone was roleplaying with themselves then actually telling a story with all of us. So the Taskal Wars and Masquerade were especially great because they really pushed for user interactivity with a plot that involved fighting which was essentially fun. That's what events should had been like entirely.

Oh and let me slightly confuse you despite saying this was bad, it's always a good thing to hear out ideas for characters and plotlines from everyone. Even if you tweak it or not. We gain a lot of very good NPC's with a very fleshed out personality that was much better then most NPC's we already had on the site. I can't stress how much I love Kamid and Ashy's character whatshisface.

But one last thing, if you think the best idea is to completely sweep the story under a rug and then ignore every single character to go off and write your own for the sake of a new direction. It's okay to hit a reset button once in a while, but if you hit the reset button in a Spider-Man comic for example and then completely ignore Spidey and the huge backlog of characters fans recognize the series for. Your hurting it more then helping it. You have a great cast of characters to work with, you can completely change their personalities, give them struggles, and bring about better characters by working with them. But always remember your writing is for us to interact with.

And let me make one suggestion: Make a bet with everyone. Write an event that has an tie in with the site. If one side wins you can do what you want and hit the wipe out bomb on the current story of Trisphee that we all know and write from a new direction there. If the other side wins Trisphee can continue being what it was. You can add a scoreboard and some game or way to gain points for either side. Make a gamble but let everyone participate. ;D

None of the characters were completely Suze-created-with-no-other-input. And none of the characters were created because Suze went "Hey, we need new characters because we don't have a character I can work with". The characters that were made, were made because they were /needed/ to fix holes in the plot. And obviously, when a writer makes a character, that character is going to be in the style of the creator. I'm just throwing that out there. (Also, if you ever somehow get me to create a middle-school pre-pubescent teenage boy character with anxiety problems, he'd be completely different than a character with the same guildlines that, say, Johnny would have come up with.)

You /can't/ completely change a character's personality. /People/ don't change their personalities overnight. To tweak a character's core values, there'd have to be pages and pages of writing, building up to and explaining why this happened!

We can try as much as we can to get users to read and talk about the storyline, but it can't all be the job of the writers -- there has to be immersion and whatnot, and that's brought about in the form of games, items, and mini-events.

I think the point was made that we (former writer here, too) have been stuck with working from a crummy foundation to begin with, that we haven't been able to fix because of said limitations. If a foundation is a problem, then you fix or replace it, which is what we are trying to do.

I don't think that many people will be missing the characters or backstories much besides the users that are already here because newcomers simply won't have heard about them. I have some personal investment in the story and characters as well, but as a writer it is my personal experience that it is less work (and time and energy are open problems for many staff) that it's best to scrap a sinking ship and start again. I like the mascot shopkeepers idea, but there isn't any reason to keep to the original story over a new one except or nostalgia.

As much as you say, Illusion, the Trisphee story is not an interactive story. I believe it was said before that having user input in the course of events caused chaos within the story line. Sure, the "characters" interact with the users on a surface level in threads and such during the events, and I think that's enjoyable, but the actual story line is staff directed. Role play and story are two different things.

If there needs to be some "canon" means of explaining a re-write, than why not have the segments of story we do have be one of the shop-keeper's notebooks or something? Though I personally think setting fire to the whole thing is a fine approach.

Uh... "Fix holes in the plot?" I... I feel like heavily arguing about this, but then again you know more about this subject then I do, but I do raise the question if it was truly necessary. Now if that was the reason why something may had happen in that way, that was a very poor reason in general from both parties and I stand by my point.

And I acknowledge the fact of how different writers may handle or write for a character differently. (AKA the 50 billion different writers for Superman and how his powers and strengths depend on the writer then the actual character himself.)


I was saying that that someone could alter or change a character's personality by writing a story that made them different/evolve/change as a person. (You know, that stuff you mention which is what I meant.) So we're very much both on the same pace about this.

But let me say re-read your last sentence and rethink what I was trying to address as NPC's and the story as an interactive piece then relying on other gimmicks to make a storyline interactive. There is a huge difference between writing about a character, and writing about how a character is indirectly interacting with it's users.

edit:
Not what I meant at all. I meant writing an event that interacts to it's users that doesn't involve directly interacting with them.

Example of all the events we had for the past 2-3 years:

You tell me that character X is doing _blank_, and that's why we are having _blank_ happening, which is why we should go on the site and get items, play games, and chat. But don't forget there is _blank_ happening while you do all those fun activities!

Instead I mean:

Character X is doing this because _blank_ and needs _blank_ from the users to _blank_ and by _blank_ happening there are items to get because of _blank_ and that these tasks lead to _blank_ happening because of the users did _blank_ which lead to _blank_

The users are not interacting with the characters or the plot in terms of writing the story themselves, but is following the same story the creator set out but in turn feel like they are effecting the site as a whole because we had a role to play even though we weren't technically adding anything to the story and how it was originally conceived itself.

Consider this my vote for a clean reboot rather than trying to explain it away in-universe.

When the description of the setting itself is contradictory, you can't salvage it. Not even a time travel story will fix fundamental facts about the planets.

If the current story is to be preserved, then you could call it fiction, sort of like Quiet suggested.

I'm a newb so I'm just going to say I had started to read one of the stories because since I couldn't read them from the 'beginning' I lost interest quickly. ^^; I personally think that starting over might be a good idea, what with the contradictions that were mentioned.

To start from the /very/ beginning, you'd have to go into the past event forum and get a feel of what was going on back then.

Reading your posts, Illusion, either I've been terribly unclear or you're misinterpreting my meaning at several intervals. So, I will attempt to clarify a few of the things you seem to be hung up on.

1.) The only characters I ever personally had any hand in creating for the site story were those on the planet Deivai, and I quite literally *had* to create them from scratch, as we had never had an event on that planet before. Every single other character (of the 60? we have) was made by someone else, and I worked them into the plot as best as I was able to. Some worked better than others, admittedly, but I was essentially doing exactly what you're describing the entire time the story was being written. So I'm really not sure where your grievance here derives from. If there is a surplus of characters, it's because of every staff member having to have their own, a decision I never supported.

2.) I'm not sure if I gave the impression that I, at some point, decided to go on a power trip and write whatever the hell I wanted for Tris's plot, but that never happened at any point. I never had any desire to warp Trisphee into some personal project of mine, I... have actual personal projects I can channel any such interests into perfectly well. What did happen, on the other hand, was me being essentially told -- with almost no training, integration, background on the setting, or even knowing who anyone else on the staff was -- I was begged to "fix" the story at the last minute, since if you may recall, over a month into the Fight for Freedom, there was NOTHING being written by the rest of the writing team, and no one had the slightest clue what was going on. There was no plan to speak of. I'm sorry if what ended up happening didn't meet your expectations. There could have been no event story at all, if you'd have preferred that. The few active staff at the time, however, did not prefer that, so I did what I could. I won't defend it as particularly good work, but it's water under the bridge at this point.

3.) I fully understand that you liked the Taskal War better than any of the other events. I can even understand why that's the case, and I don't blame you for it at all. But there's two things I need to point out. The first, which has been largely covered by the others above, is that it's never going to happen again. It isn't feasible to have a site-wide roleplay (well, it probably would be with our current nonexistent userbase, but we're trying to plan for improvement here, not the status quo of stagnation), and it isn't feasible to let users decide the direction of the story. There has to be direction, planning, structure. The lore and setting created by the Taskal War was completely unworkable for forming a coherent story out of. And that brings me to my second point about it.

You have to look at our perspective (and by "our" I mean every single writer who I ever worked with on the team, except I think Johnny, who was barely ever here) and it's this: we keep being told about how great the Taskal War was, and how we should build on it, and then we go through the old event forums to take a look, and what do we find? A disorganized mess. RP threads hundreds of posts long filled with off-topic chatter, interspersed with in-character posts written in barely-literate English featuring the personal fettish-fodder of the old staff members, most of whom we were not allowed to alter or really use in any way because of potential legal or ethical issues with ex-staff.

If what you wanted was more of the Taskal War, I am truly, personally sorry that we've disappointed you so tremendously. It was never even a possibility for any of us to make that happen again.

4.) I don't want to give the impression that I have nothing but hate or disrespect for Trisphee and it's story; after all, I poured a tremendous amount of largely thankless hours into trying to help in any way I could. Of course I feel an attachment to a lot of the characters and the setting elements. I'm just really with Coda on this one, that at this point it is better to cut our losses and excise the festering wound, and attempt to start something new that will be better for the site in the long term.

5.) Just so I'm clear as to why I think that, it is because where the story was left off, it was never in mind that we would be doing any kind of reset, so in order to actually do one in-universe, a very large amount of work would have to be done to re-route the plot train in that direction -- work that, I think we're all pretty much in agreement on here except maybe you, Illusion -- would be better spent actually designing something new.

6.) I just noticed the edit to your post above, and while I suppose something like that is feasible, I really don't see why it's such a deal-breaker one way or the other. It could honestly just be me, I've never seen the site as anything approaching a game to play. I could not begin tell you how many of the staff, past or present, agree or disagree with that.

7.) And finally, I feel like you hold the site as a whole to a very high standard -- and it is absolutely your right to do so, but I think it might be prudent to keep in mind how bumpy Trisphee's road has been all the way through its life. I don't think I can remember a single time when the staff were working as an efficient, well-oiled machine. There were always deadlines being missed, miscommunincations, people being absent without leave for long stretches of time, lack of interaction between the different teams, and any number of other impediments (especially if you start taking money into account) that have limited our ability to do things. It's never been what anyone's hoped it could become, but all we can do is try to keep it going and make it better in the process.

So. That was very long, and I apologize. I hope that dispels any misunderstandings here. I don't expect it'll change your opinion much, but it's all I have to offer.

Assuming you actually read it. I know how fond you are of walls of text. :P

*raises hand* I would be one who disagrees. I've always considered "game" to be a relatively decent metaphor -- it IS just a metaphor, of course, but it's not that big of a stretch. (I thought the same of Gaia, for the record.)

I can see the opposite view easily enough. There's nothing wrong with it.

Yeah, I can understand the perspective. It's not something I feel terribly strongly about one way or another. I don't think I'd object to something along the lines of Illusion's suggestion in that regard, assuming it was done well.

1. I never meant that you made characters that became a mess, I'm saying that the route you took to write the story itself became a mess. "I quite literally *had* to create them from scratch, as we had never had an event on that planet before." And I'm asking why it had to be that way and why you could come up with an idea or element that made it so it didn't require you to make 60 different billion characters.

2. I'm not saying you did in the past had a power trip. You explain perfectly you couldn't had, and I confirmed that it was very much true. But I'm saying that getting the complete freedom to start anew is somewhat of a power trip, especially when there are so many ways to fix the current storyline to begin with. Coda mentions on how the planets can't logically be in space at the distance their at with the only explanation being magic, I'm saying write a good explanation as to why and how, and that itself could be an interesting story within itself. (Top of the head thought, a device on the planets that was made in yee olden times that kept the 3 planets that were to collide with each other intact.)

3. And Masquerade, and Fight for Freedom I did like them... And everything after that was. Well erm.. Yeah. This is even with the exception of any sort of Roleplaying and not what I meant at all as in terms of how the actual story is written. And how it could be written as you originally created, but it can give off the sense of illusion (oh hey unintentional name drop lol) that makes people feel as though they are making a choice or doing something for the plot, when in actuality it's just following the course of events you originally planned to happen.
I wasn't suggesting for staff members to roleplay around in the forums, and I was suggesting, well, read my previous edit of the type 2 of event/story I was pointing out.

4. I'm on the stance that you can still easily fix everything that is currently wrong with the old story or at least transition into a complete reboot that doesn't completely wipe out everything that has happened in the past beforehand. (Which is why I mentioned X-Men: Days of Future Past. I'm not saying that we should use time travel and that will fix everything, but I'm saying that the plot device of time travel used in this movie to make all the movies that came before it never happened, giving the movie series a soft reset while still having their entire cast and characters and the audience knowing full well who they are from the other movies despite the franchise soft reseting itself. <-- I don't think I'm explaining this too well, but I hope you follow.

5. Now this is opinionated and could go either way. I say it's better for a soft reset then a complete reset.

6. (Nothing to really say here.)

7. High standard...? Um. Sure, I thought I had a pretty low standard, but uh okay.


No no, you wrote everything out pretty well. Nicely spaced, and was nicely broke down somewhat. So the wall of texts clause was not in effect and I came out unaffected.

I'd like to know what you mean by this as I was working on it, too. What "way" are you talking about? We had to create new characters and a storyline because we were working from an entirely new setting. I wouldn't be believable in my opinion, to have the current "cast" show up on an uninhabited place to continue what they were doing on their own planets.

Probably is power trippy if just one person said it, but I agree with a hard-reboot completely. Fixing something with so many internal errors is only going to come off as bandages really, and would involve a lot more work then you seem to think.

Retconning irritates people. That is something I have seen a fair bit of around the internet and it follows with my own opinion of it. I haven't seen X-Men Days of Future Past but I've gotten the impression that people are more than a little annoyed with the approach it took to it's backstory, and I expect people would feel the same way about such "fixes" with the Tris story as well. I also think that it looks better for the site if we make a new story than to try and drag out something we know is a problem, just for the sake of some manner of ending.

I still vote clean slate.

That isn't necessarily to say, either, that the "clean slate" approach would just wholesale erase every single remnant of the old canon. I don't think anyone wants to completely alter Trisphee's identity that way. I should probably stress that the idea of a reset wasn't mine, and it actually took me a fair while to come around to agreeing with it.

But using your planet-alignment example, Illusion, I think you're being a bit uncharitable to the attempts that have made to fix things like that. Obviously, you weren't privy to those discussions, but in that particular instance, we had a lengthy thread debating and trying to come up with a satisfying explanation for the magic!physics of the three planets and Toamna, and we weren't able to iron it out in any way that really "worked". I can't read your mind; maybe you really do know better than all of us put together, but is it not also possible that you're oversimplifying something that is legitimately problematic enough to have us considering scrapping the entire project and starting over?

It wasn't just a whim that struck me one day; it's been a sentiment that's been brewing among the staff for at least a year now, and gaining more and more agreement as time has gone on.

On the topic of characters and such, I don't see why we can't keep some of them around for things other than an overarching storyline. Keep the story too, if we want to have one, but have other stuff kicking around in sort of a meta fashion.

Kaimid, for example, I wasn't especially fond of in the story, but I liked the little comics that cropped up with him and Fakir. I could see having some characters be "official" forum personalities rather than part of any major story.