I do not wish to resurrect what I believe is a settled quarrel, but I do wish to state this, nonetheless.
@IllustriousVar You have said that this is your project, the TTV’s project, which is ultimately decided by you all, in the end, with inspiration taken from the fans.
The only instances you were swayed was either by actual fact, or the talent of great artists.
Actual fact occurred when a community member reminded you all that ‘Pohatu’ meant ‘Stone’ in Maori; therefore, as you’ve stated, changing the original six elements while keeping the same characters was a pointless discussion.
Visual instances are everywhere on this topic, and it would make sense that you would follow it closely, as @Jon stated that you all are visual people.
But why, I may ask, do you only discuss the good artists and writers? There have been a number of interesting concepts and ideas that were put out there in Brickonicle’s earliest stages, that were, ultimately, completely ignored.
A good example would be @Matanui606 's ideas topic that was criticized by @Eljay recently; it failed to produce any discussion, however, as those were outdated ideas, that did not agree with the present canon.
But at least Eljay, one of the original TTV cast and a respected BIonicle fan, took the time to convey his thoughts on other’s concepts, right?
Wrong.
If you guys are going to take ideas from the community, then make sure you read through every post, every topic, every single idea relating to it, no matter the skill level of the poster, because if you don’t, then you are just failing to live up to the task you put on the community:
An example would be when @Mesonak stated that he anticipated actual art of the island. Well, we’ve already had at least a couple of topics physically illustrating the island, one of them being my one. Now, they might not be as good as @Oomatu’s creations, but they should at least be respected in the fact that they exist.
Another point I wish to convey in this message is that your reasoning for the whole of this hypothetical G3 is to take on the toil of the Lego group when they re-made Bionicle G2.
Well, this is definitely not the way to go about it.
Lego has never, at least to my knowledge, issued a theme where they originally took the feedback from fans. Bionicle G2 was dumbed down to market more towards younger kids, the only point of “feedback,” but from G1’s sales, not the fans.
If you truly wish to go through the process of creating a theme, then create it yourself.
Lego employees no nothing of how the community will react to their ideas, or how the line will do in terms of sales, until the sets either get leaked, or are officially released by the company.
The only possible feedback they receive is when they select children to play with the sets and test them out. But this is from a toy standpoint, not a story one.
Having information from poles conducted on a largely Bionicle based fanbase (most likely 2001-2003 fans) will, of course, skew the data in favor of the original line. With the cast (mostly) ignoring the poles in their final decisions, as it is your remake after all, one may come to the conclusion that having poles are a waste of time; essentially they say the G1 worked, so do it again. Since you are the end-all be-all, it really makes no sense to put up such a survey without it actually being accurate.
Here’s my suggestion on how Brickonicle should have been done:
Just do it, yourselves.
Seriously. All the poles to is anger and divide people into viewing their own ideas as being superior (or inferior) and it doesn’t even matter cause you have the final say. Which doesn’t matter either, as this won’t actually be a story set in motion, but rather ideas floating in the air.
If you had just debated this amongst the cast, collecting the story and set ideas together, in secret, the anger, joy, and mutual feelings towards the hypothetical G3 would never have been aroused.
The remade theme should have been presented with an animation done by @Xeros610 with music by @Cazapar (as both are now TTV employees) as a surprise idea. Additional story arcs and character development would have been discussed on the podcast, with critiques being made by the audience after the “theme” was out (as Lego goes through this feedback regularly with their themes). Now you can’t do this for 4 years as Lego does, but it would have been made more realistic to the company’s toils.
Plus, you all have said that you guys are visual people; well, so is the audience! Nobody can judge a theme based on concepts. But with a surprise presentation, it’s easier to understand and find appeal to the work.
But alas, Brickonicle was never done in secret (even though, as it has been stated on the podcast, all the projects and new shows by TTV, supposedly, are). And what we have is a divided community split on certain ideas, yet shocked at others, to the point where this isn’t fun anymore.
Well, at least not for us:
The unseen, unheard majority, whose work, if it exists, is not noticed,
So, this was originally planned to be a re-make of Bionicle, yet all we ended up with was a non-canon method of how Lego makes it’s themes for it only has around 30 poeple, at most I’d say, working at any theme at a given time; not 200+, a segregated community some of whose ideas are completely ignored by you, even though you state you look for inspiration, and a maybe 1% complete Bionicle fan-project which is completely formed, managed, and discussed by you and yours .
I’ll conclude with this:
I hope I was not rude nor offensive to the owners or fans of this project. I understand that it was simply a pastime in which select fans could remake a beloved theme in their liking. However, the project was conducted badly, to the point where pretty much none of the community (and even some of the cast) 100% agree to the direction the theme is going. It failed to replicate the design process at Lego (on multiple levels).There are winners and losers in everything, that’s true, but it’s easier to cope and feel for the product of a toil, rather than it’s original components. It had potential, and still, does, but I for one, can say that I am disappointed on how this is and where it’s headed.
tl;dr - Brickonicle was close, but no cigar.