Trisphee's 2015 Halloween Event Pre-Planning
 

Hello and a good October to all of you Trisphee users out there! What with days getting chilly, we all know what we're excited about: Halloween, and all the events that entails! So you ask, what is Trisphee planning for this event?

Stuff!

We have a host of things in the works for all you users out there, and I wanted to get your opinion on them. So without further ado, I present the Lists of Things We Shall Be Doing. (Not catchy, but work with me)

1) Writing Contest!

Some of you know that I've been playing around with this, and a few of you have even profited off of it! Now we're going to step it up a notch for Halloween. We're looking at an event contest where you, the users can write up a short story from three different spooky prompts, giving you options in how you win! Prizes for this particular contest are still in the works, but I feel that this iteration would give users the flexibility and time (we're looking at a 3 week period) to tackle a story how they however they like.

2) Avatar Contest!

Let's be honest, besides the disproportionate amount of candy, this time of the year is all about dressing up, and what better place to do it than Trisphee? Your makeup can't run, no one can wrinkle or bend your props, and your avatar doesn't have to worry about sweating inside that suit. Best of all if you're snazzy enough, there'll be something in it for you! This classic event is pulling out the stops again for all of those looking to impress with their dress. Themes are to be announced closer to the actual contest.

3) Event Shop!

Event Shop specific items that will be exclusive? Check. Admiration and envy of those who weren't able to get in on it? Check. Make sure to grab this year's set before they disappear. Something something spooky!

4) RIGS!

No Trisphee event is complete without a RIG set! Of course all RIG stuff can be earned by posting, as well as purchasable in the shop. But wait! Did you get too many of the same item? Is one the equivalent of getting a pencil in your treat bag? Never fear! They're resellable for currency if you're simply not feeling it.

5) User Interactive Murder Mystery!

When six visitors with tangled pasts get together on a dark and foreboding night, it can only mean one thing - Murder! In this event that moves with the users, death will descend upon an unfortunate character. It will be up to the users to read what has happened, check for clues, and interview the remaining guests to figure out who the killer is and what links them to it. All of Trisphee will be able to participate and decide who they accuse and how, and will be responsible for the capture or consequences. Will the murderer kill again? Can they claim the other guests? Are there more sinister designs at work in the shadows? It will be up to Trisphee to find out in...Murder at Scrimshaw Manor! But I'm sure you're asking "Gee Salone, that sounds okay, but what's in it for me?" How about an exclusive item for the event? You heard right! Nab the killer and win an exclusive item for solving the dastardly deed.


So Trisphee, what we need from you is thoughts! Ideas! What else do you wish to see this Halloween? Do you have any suggestions for things you would like to see? Comment below and tell us what you think we should know!

Very much liking the possibility to resell duplicate items for currency *eyes her collection of last year's items and sweatdrops*

What about games in the games section? Things like matching games, and puzzles?

Art! Art contest! Yeeeeees, I think an art contest could be discussed. It's on the table. We're synergizing plans and diversifying something something exploring new paradigms, yeeeees.

EDIT: Den, no harm in asking! Although I am no program jockey, so I have no idea what that would entail. That one will have to be directed towards our resident coding president Coda!

Is that a guild wars joke? >.>

Whiiiich part?

1) Not enough people will enter and they we're always the most iffy in terms of participates in the past. I say save yourself the trouble and go with something else. (Still if there are more than 4 people up for it then go for it. :D)

2) Everyone enters these and always they're a ton of fun.

3) + 4) So uh. RIGS orrr an Event shop is the question here. What's the point of an event shop if there are RIGS and vice versa? Just throw a bunch of single posed items in a RIG, make the RIG somewhat cheap in terms of event currency (10-15 event currency = 10-15 posts), and that makes it more fun as people will be pulling for the item they want. Throw in other things like 5 runes, recolors of some past items (just 1 pose though) and things like that.
AND! If you decide to go the RIG route, make the event prizes runes AND Rig boxes. I'm sure everyone would hunt for a rare Pumpkin Orange version of the original Yearly items. (1 pose though.)

Fill the RIG's with hundreds of prizes and actually make some rarer then others.

The reason why I say RIG's rather than the traditional shop of items is just for experiment purposes. See how it works out. If someone didn't get the item they want their post more to get it. (I know I would.) You need to be increasing forum activity in this event, so you need to be using everything at your disposal and use every weapon you have.

And maybe have even more expensive currency RIG boxes that take out the common items. (But still the odds are against you.) Just make sure the items in this RIG aren't exclusive to this event and will be back every year.

5) Yes and the way you have this set up works perfectly. You can have a set story. Great idea entirely, especially with an exclusive reward. (I like that you guys are trying to make rare items, it's something people need, we need items people are willing to work for or desire. The marketplace died because the lack of rarity. Well that along with other reasons...)

Some other ideas:

6) Give people rewards for huge threads in the event forum, currency, boxes. And let it be concurrent with the event as well. So someone made 300 non-spam posts in a thread for the event, give them RIG box or currency equivalent to a RIG box. let people who are creating activity be rewarded.

7) Try another refer contest again and have members join, and maybe cheat a little and make it a contest to bring old members back as well with the older member confirming they came back because of ___ member. Make an exclusive prize for this that is desirable, but allow the prize to be brought back each refer contest. (A trophy, or better yet a piece of paper with IOU on it.)

8) Get a notification if you we're poked and how many times by a person. Maybe call it "You've been spooked 24 times." Just go to that person's profile and press a spook button. (Make it so it rewards 1 event currency per day or something.) Nothing too special about it, but it helps get peoples attention and start a conversation out of nowhere.


... I can keep on talking with more ideas in my head. But long story short make this event about recharging Trisphee again and bringing new ideas to the table. We know the old system from the past 3 years hasn't worked out, so change it up a bit, experiment with ideas that has a certain end goal or effect, keep it fun and creative. And let the events feed your excitement on making the next event and so on.

Its been so long since trisphee had an event! I must say I am looking forward in participating in in the posting and getting those items. Not to mention the contest. It has been awhile since pinkie had a chance to this stuff

*Glomps pinkie*

Don't leave us evuuur again! D:

Fire nets! Do not let that Trisphee user escape again!

I mean, uh, I am glad you're looking forward to it pantzer! We're going to try to pull out as many bells and whistles as possible to give everyone a good time and a reason to have fun on Trisphee.

And Illusion, no worries on turnout there. Even if it is slow going for the writing bits, we'll still do it. Everyone has different talents, and I think it's fun to see what different people can do across different mediums of communication...even if I only get two entries! Definitely making you stick to the rules this time though! =P

lol I never left I lurk...=ninja=

LIES. Dirty LIIIEES

Ur face is a dirty lie.
/ fleeeeeees.

Your... Your mask is dirty! D:

Selling back event items is a bit of a technical challenge, sadly. (Not insurmountable, but a LOT of work.) It's also simply not a good idea at all if we're selling RIGs and not individual items.

That and it's a good idea to have an excess of event items to give away to newer members, is it possible to code for a Garbage Dive-Like game where people can trash old items and people can fish them out? Isn't that called a tumble or tubble or something like that in coding?

Just allow members to dump an unlimited amount of items to a inventory, then if people want a random trash item then every hour or something like that they can click a receive button and a random item in that dump.

Multiple RIGS, more expensive ones (or maybe just make them rewards randomly given) = better chance at a rarer RIG item. The goal is to make people post more to try and attempt to get the item they want, not getting a item = more posts = more attempts to get said item. The only problem is not having enough of said item in the system, but just bring it back in a future event, or at request but keep it rare. (We need to keep people here and interested to come back/questing/working for something.)

If people can just buy the item they want, they will post a little, get the item, stop. <-- This hasn't been effective method in our past events. The only reason it was ever effective was because items we're rarer or their was a lot of items = a lot of posts needed. But even then people went for the items they wanted and stopped. We need to drive up activity more than anything right now, and throwing all items in a event RIG would do just that. Everyone has equal chance for a item, and if the event ends and people didn't get the item they want. Oh look there is reason to go back to the marketplace and trade and sell for that item.

I put a lot of thought into this one and all the positives and negatives. Positives outweigh the negatives in a long run.

With all due respect to Toho, I know the code better than he does, and I've spent more time thinking about the implications. :P I wrote it, after all.

Yes, it wouldn't be that hard to make the existing sellback function give you a few aurum if you sell back an event item (in other words, a step above just throwing the item away), but if you want it to give you back event currency then we have the mess of making sure that you can't sell back event items for a currency that you're not supposed to be able to have! And the list of currencies you can have changes over time, based on what events are currently running, and even then you have problems if we decide to reuse items from a previous event. (For example, if you hoarded before, you might be able to get more event currency than we intended to have in circulation; worse, if we're not using the same currency we were using before...) And not every event item should be able to be sold back, so we'd have to go make sure that we mark the existing event items as sellable or not-sellable. (I've actually done the groundwork to support THIS part, but no one has wanted to do the work of actually updating the tens of thousands of items in the system.)

Like I said, nothing here is actually insurmountable, but it has to be done carefully and thoughtfully.

That said, I wouldn't be opposed to something like Pokemon's Wonder Trade, where you throw an item into the pool and get in return something someone else had given away.

I like the idea, but the problem with Wonder trade is that everyone trades Weedles expecting a Mewtwo in return. LOL

Rad different color combinations = Awesome.

Oh a different set on the side along with the RIG? Okay, I still think it's a better idea to just throw them in the RIG. Unless you make the RIG an annual thing, and the separate item set is the one exclusive to said event? (Which works too and keeps event exclusive items, which isn't a bad thought either.)

But yes, no common items in the RIG, maybe Aurum as the worst prize you can get. Lol. (After thinking about it, probably not. Granted we have enough Aurum dumps to keep an economy balanced. Thinking...)

Also! If you have a RIG and then sold the items for event currency, that wouldn't work out and would conflict with each other. I'd prefer a dumpster dive over a wonder trade because a dumpster dive means you can trash items cluttering your inventory you can't sell, and a wonder trade is hoping there is someone online and one that will have something worth trading with. <-- A wonder trade would work better if there was a lot of people on.

The whole reason why people wanted cheaper event items we're so their we're multiples of them to give to newer members. Allowing us to sell those items just limits that pool. :/ *shrugs*

Galla, you did hear about it before, and you volunteered to tag items when it came up in the past. :P But honestly the issue of dealing with currencies that aren't always in circulation is the biggest issue, and that's less of a technical question and more of an administrative one.

Edit: Also, we'd seed the wonder trade pool with some items in it already, and I wouldn't be opposed to having the option to donate to the wonder trade pool without expecting to get anything back from it. I just think that REQUIRING that you put an item into it is a good way of keeping it balanced so that there's always stuff for people to get and one person can't just go hoard everything.

Raffles are nothing fancy. It literally picks a random copy of the raffle ticket out of the system and tells you who owns it, then destroys the ticket so it can't win again. :P The numbers are totally arbitrary, just for show. Raffle prizes are decided upon by the admin running it, not automated. I think our first raffle was stocked by the rare items out of banned users' inventories. >.>

Marking items as sellable/non-sellable was farther back than the discussion you recall, I think. It didn't see a very big discussion at the time. The code is in place and active to support it for items that cost aurum, but it's mostly only used to allow destroying items that are both free and common and to prevent selling ADIs.

Let's move the administrative discussion into the administrative section. I'm willing to put some more work into the site, but most of the things that have been blocking me have been beyond my control.

That's why I suggest a dump, the problem with just giving copies to a new user in general is that if it's sellable, that item could just be sold by another user and destroyed for good. Never able to come back. :/ That and if I could just sell an item for money why donate?

It's still probably better in the long run to have a dumpster/charity system like this, especially when activity is low. That are you could have a NPC run it and I know just how much the staff love the Shopkeepers. /Bad joke

My main concern is that I really do have a whole lot of last year's items, and I haven't been able to get rid of them. If we had a way to gamesell them, even for 1-5 aurum, or a place to dump them for deletion after the event was over, that'd go a long way toward cleaning up the inventories, and might be helpful for users. Say you've gotten enough of one (common-ish) item to do the background or outfit you're wanting to do, and then you start to get more and more when you don't need them. Right now, we can't get rid of them and I know it's frustrating as heck for me, if not for other people. If we had a way to clear them from our inventories, I think that'd make players happier. But I'm weird. I don't hoard things.

*Huggles the Story, Art, Avatar, and Murder Mystery ideas*
My precious...precious...

I can open up the upper story of the Library for the event. (Translation: make a thread). Already working on Drawloween and trying to write more, so I can guide it to the Trisphee Nocturnalis!

(I don't know about you guys, but for me the friends and events sort of are what attract me, so this is great :3)

You can give all of last years event items to me~ since I missed it.

Just sayin.

xD

Vote for art contest! Although I think it should be creativity based rather than based on who draws the best picture or makes the best sculpture or what have you. It could be like "I made an NPC out of cake - here's a picture" and then we all laugh . . .

I'm rambling.

*heavy breathing*

I heard cake. You may...proceed.

Well that's what I mean... Put it in the games tab and then have it done during or after the event. (Well assuming it's easy to code for and it's not a big problem with Coda or anyone else time-wise.)

*Hears about cake*
Ca.. Cake?

If we manually handle marking the event items as unsellable when the currency goes away, it's a pretty simple matter to make the sell function work for those.

Wonder trade isn't hard, either. There's a few administrative things to address, but it's just decisions to be made and artwork to be requested.

Was there anything I forgot to address?

Edit: Oh, new currencies. I can add them really easily. They're nearly trivial. Give me names and icons, I can have it in quickly.

The reminder of Halloween is getting me into the spirit. I literally can't stay off the orange now.

http://i265.photobucket.com/albums/i...pshhsu56aj.jpg

That's the, er, spirit!

I'm glad to see everyone coming together to throw out ideas (and cake!)for Halloween. And I'm glad to see some older faces coming back! We're going to have some fun stuff happening very soon.

I was practicing with textures in case your wondering.

Whoops, apparently I cannot click with a darn either when I'm still getting my bearings in the morning.

But aye, I was just typing and realized you had already said 'spirit', and I was trying to resist using it again and failed. Textures are looking well though!

It's so weird seeing more than 3 people on right now...

I know, it's really nice, isn't it? :3

Oh, and that shading looks really nice, Illu. You've been practicing!

I love all the ideas, guys! This thread has been really fun to read. *nods* :3