It’s like Episode is trying to erase INK from history

Awe, this is exactly how we felt about Classic…if anyone remembers that style.

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agreed with that last part. And I feel like if you didn’t start playing Episode from a very long time ago, you can never truly appreciate the classic style. It was the first image you saw in your head when you saw the words ‘Pocket Gems’. It will still be sadly missed, but of course the styles I feel are just gonna come and go, as their tech advances and they continue to better things for us and themselves as a company. And we’ll just have to be fine with that or not play. We do have a choice.

EDIT: Even the Episode stories at the time with the classic style were so much better than what we have now. They had a purpose, a plot line that had you on the edge of your seat. While I do appreciate the freedom creators have now to create their own story (which we never had on ‘Old Episode’, the featured stories Episode are churning out now will never be able to compete because of their target demographic now, Usually when real story seekers who recognize greatness are looking for stories, they don’t even go into the featured section unless they want to see new clothing, hairstyles and features.

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I understand your frustration. I love INK and LL equally. It would be nice to have a choice, but atp I don’t think there’s much we can do. Remember how episode said they could not support INK anymore once LL is out? Well maybe that’s why everyone has LL avatars now. But you can always make as many INK, classic, or LL stories as you want, it will only be the profile avatar that will be different. I don’t think they’re necessarily trying to punish you, as I’ve seen in multiple threads made by the admins where they tried to make it clear that they’ll never take INK away on purpose

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They have abandoned Ink in the sense that they have discontinued it. It’s not unjust; it’s just a company moving to keep things current and putting money towards the newest style, working to advertise said style, developing said style further, etc. If they move on to another style after Limelight, the same thing going on here will absolutely happen to Limelight and that’s okay.

Them allowing us to make new stories in any of the three styles is a boon. They could easily force us to only make new stories in whatever is the newest style, but they don’t do that. The app making you use a Limelight avatar isn’t some personal vendetta against Ink lovers. It’s just the way of the business. No company can afford to support every style they’ve ever created equally.

But I agree with Amber that your best chance at seeing this changed is through making a feature request thread. You gotta be prepared to accept that it might not happen, and that even if it did, it would likely take months to be enacted.

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I get what you mean!
I think it’s fine that they’re promoting Limelight, but Episode should try to respect the older styles more, too. I think not allowing INK avatars is just not good, especially since INK IS a part of Episode.

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Someone did make one today, by the way: FEATURE: allow us to choose the style of our profile avatar

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It is unjust. They shouldn’t force something on somebody especially when they originally presented INK as the in thing.
It’s not just to just says either you use it or you get nothing. especially when you build up all your stories apund a character and then are forced to change it to a different one

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Because Ink was the new style at the time. It’s not just or unjust, moral or immoral; something like this is just business. That’s like saying it’s unjust for Burger King to change their menu or for Instagram to change their icon. Nobody has to enjoy change, but a visual layout change for a free service you are choosing to use isn’t actual oppression.

And for things this small - unless popular demand wants otherwise - it is their way or the highway. That’s how it is with any active business. Companies that don’t adapt to changing tastes and keep their business fresh will go extinct.

This isn’t true at all. You do have something. You have Ink as a writable style, and from what I can tell, it’s staying that way; your author profile just won’t be in Ink.

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image

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Yes it is unjust. I went to all the hard trouble of building my stories around my avatar as an INK character. If there was any indication that this avatar was not going to last, I never would have gone to all the trouble of this. Now it’s taken away simply because I “wouldn’t confirm”. Of course you don’t see it as unjust. It is hard to see it coming from a style you liked then trying to force you to a style you don’t want and are basically told you have to use as your avatar even though you clearly don’t want to.
I don’t see how that’s fair. I don’t want to have a limelight profile, but now no one can even see my profile because I don’t want it in limelight. So, preferring INK is wrong? I don’t like the way it’d look in limelight. I’d like to keep my option, not be told “if it’s not limelight” you can’t have one.
Actually if Hungry Jacks changed their menu I would argue it’s unfair. You can’t even use the arguement that most changed because they wanted to as no one had an option.

No actually that’s not right. I said I have nothing for an avatar. I don’t see anything there. I meant if I don’t you it I don’t use their one, I don’t use any, zip, no avatar at all.

My argument entirely. Just because it’s happened, doesn’t mean I can’t voice my opinion against it

i agree this is frustrating as hell. i wish they allowed us to choose what style we want our avatar in. stop shoving limelight down our throats for fuck’s sake. some of us still prefer ink, and likely always will. even with the recent body updates, i’m still not converting to limelight. i just don’t like the style. period.

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I’ve left my own avatar as Ink as well. Limelight is not my cup of tea. :coffee:

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Come on… you’re going to invalidate everything I said because “it’s not my preferred style so I don’t understand?” My thoughts about this wouldn’t change even if the shoe was on the other foot, if Limelight had been discontinued and Ink was the newest style. When all is said and done, this is just normal business practice.

Nobody here is telling you to stop writing stories in Ink or that you have to like a different style. That specific Ink character will still exist in your stories. It’s not going away just because your author profile avatar is changing to Limelight.

For god’s sake, you don’t have to like it, but let’s not act like this is some great miscarriage of justice.

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It’s nothing about “not understanding” please don’t belittle my opinion because you don’t agree with it.
I’ll explain my position in a example.
Let’s just say your favourite team changes their colours and logo. Sure, that’s the style they want. That’s the style they will sell if they sell merchandise. They obviously want to push only that style and obviously not sell the old kind. But they don’t go around and take the old merchandise off fans, nor stop them from coming to see the games because they wear the old style.
That’s my opinion and how I see it. It hope that helps you understand my position

No, this is just going in circles so I think I’m done. But I’ll say one more thing.

Episode is a service subject to ongoing change and is in no way comparable to a finished product that is bought once by the consumer and left untouched by the seller afterwards. If anything, the situation is more comparable to this:

f395802ce0b1aaea715408f6a70c46d0

When you use a service subject to ongoing change like Episode, by continuing to use it, you’re agreeing to whatever changes they make in a way. You’re not prohibited from giving negative feedback of course, but the fact is that service changes will be an expected and inevitable part of your dealings with any company like it.

Even something like terms of service can be changed at their discretion, although they have to update you on what is being changed - which is why you’ll see social media sites give notifications like “we’ve adjusted our terms of service” and then give you the option to either agree or you won’t be able to continue accessing their service until you do:

Changing the author profiles isn’t some personal punishment or authoritarian decision made for any user who “doesn’t conform” by preferring Ink. They still put Ink stories on shelves. They still let them win contests. They do that even with Limelight becoming the more preferred style in recent months.

Agree with the method or not, changing the profile layout is 100% them just trying to keep their ever-changing product (i.e. the app itself) desirable, current, and hopefully less glitchy. That’s it.

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I agree. I love ink. I still am searching so much for stories with ink. They’re so real I think and they hv many options too unlike LL. I have to hunt down good ink stories and that’s quite a challenge. Since everything’s turning into LL now. I appreciate some authors who do both LL and ink of the same story. Many popular authors do so. And I really ask episode to please bring ink stories back. I love them so much. :heart::heart::heart:

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I agree with @writingspirit. There is also the technical point of view from authors as well who write on the episode app. The writers portal uses shared data from the episode app to the website that allows authors to use commands such as @CHARACTER becomes female avatar. This command WILL NOT WORK if a reader’s avatar is in the INK style, since the command is for limelight stories. By your use of the INK avatar when it’s clear that episode is trying to minimise errors for all writers on the platform by generalising the use of a Limelight avatar, you’re disabling writers from using the portal in a way that will give them their own freedom to write. While I understand that you would like to use your logo to represent your stories, there is nothing stopping you from recreating her in the limelight style as an avatar as mentioned by @Parix. There is no reason for you to change any backgrounds or covers in any of your stories as they are completely unrelated to the avatar issue that you seem to have. People are not stupid enough to not realise that the LL avatar you have is indeed the same character as the one in your INK stories.

I also disagree that episode is trying to “erase INK from history.” It’s a discontinued style, and from a business perspective it makes sense that they would rarely if at all advertise the style anymore. There are also technical limitations with the INK style that the limelight style does not have, though it is not without faults of its own.

If you truly feel strongly about this, you should make a feature request to add the option for an INK avatar, or support the threads if there are some already made (which there probably is as most INK fans will have thought the same thing you do.)

I’m not saying you shouldn’t have an INK avatar, don’t get me wrong here. I’m saying that at this point of time, it is technically limited to have INK and classic avatars as opposed to having a generalised style throughout the app.

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Couldn’t have said it better!

Change is bound to happen! And I don’t think They are trying to delete INK “from existence” they are just not supporting that style anymore!
The same thing could happen to limelight in the feature if they introduce a new style!
Thats just how things work, I really don’t think it’s something personal!
I mean if you buy a new phone thats the only one you will use not the old one :woman_shrugging:t2:
And you wouldn’t be first author who changed the character to a LL version, people still get that is the LL version of your INK character!
And considering the fact that they are no longer updating INK or CLASSIC it is unlikely they will let us choose our avatar style :confused:

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Lol like I said, I see no reason not to keep my avatar. It was there a whole 3 years after Limelight was introduced. It was doing no harm. Couldn’t update it, but didn’t complain.
It’s different when give you an avatar that you base you whole stories on then decide that theyre taking it away, than a simple logo. Episodes logo changed long ago and I never complained, although I didn’t mention it was a shame they got rid of Regina. Episode logo wasnt what i based my stories around. If I’d had a clear indication this might have been temporary then I might not have. But although limelight was definitely in construction, no warning. Now it’s spoiled my profile by the choice of having none or what they want me to have.
It’s unfair and I stand by my point.

Couldn’t agree more! I based my avatar around ink not limelight. If I knew it was going to be changed I probably wouldn’t have bothered or made it my logo.