Would you pony up more cash to hire some DM devs to run events?

Lord British should run these events for free. Our game is closely associated with his namesake. Spare a few hours a week, month, or even quarter and run some events. This would certainly help to silence many of the detractors of our great "Liege" and his tarnished history in gaming.

@Lord British

 

KDC is a good RPG however let's not forget how buggy it was, but it was a good story

 

Its an interesting idea, but no can do.

Players already do a great job running events. So I'd vote instead to prioritize stuff like Lord British vs. Darkstarr lore/drama in-game, virtue-faction-team-based PVP in Shardfalls, Episode 2 content, etc. first. Any cash raised would be better spent on game systems like this that might help make Catnip and the game more secure.

 

I might "pony" up some cash to support @Chris's idea to make the switch to the unreal engine and have open lands.

 

There was a time when I would have gladly given more money to Portalarium (now Catnip), and the vision of what Shroud's development was originally purported to be. Now, not so much.

My contributions in both time and money are at an end. At least for now. The thousands of dollars and hours I had previously spent on Shroud's development, have not equated to what I believe to be a positive "return on investment" of fun. Fun is of course completely subjective, so I say this solely in my own humble opinion; as a player who cares deeply about the story, lore and quest driven aspects of the game.

 

to answer the original question: no. just not that interested in player run events.

I too love a good rpg and I recently tried single player and imho it's a lost cause. As far as I can tell there was never any extra work put specifically into the single player experience and at this point it is missing absolutely everything required to be a great single player rpg. It's still way to grindy, the game world is way too big and empty and most importantly the story is just not good enough both in content and in presentation to motivate to endure the other shortcomings.
I have played a lot of the great classic story driven rpgs like planescape torment or system shock but recent stuff as well - yes kdc too
imho the single player of sota is so far behind any classic or modern top level rpg that i'd rather pick any great game from my long todo list than try sota single player again. Today there just so much out there where you get dozens or even hundreds of hours of enjoying a really great single player game for like $10-20. there is really no reason to go for something meh just for the nostalgia.

 

No from me...
"Live" events aren't all they are cracked up to be, at least not once you get beyond a certain scale.
Performance issues aside, trying to herd a large group through content or keep people on task can be frustrating. I remember some of these events in the past and the novelty's gone. Remember Dragon Week(s) when we had 100 or so people in Desolis and it was like trying to walk through a molasses slideshow.

I think players do a decent job of making events happen when there is something to celebrate, and more tools to do more would certainly be welcome, but I don't think we need paid staff whose job it is to come up with, plan, and police events on a regular basis. I'd much rather put money toward development of tools to help create static, permanent content in the game that can be enjoyed for years to come rather than on a 2-hour lagfest.

 

Gotta agree with the field here after reading all these comments. I personally think that 99% of the player hosted events are like a monkey trying to F a football, but with all the other more important things out there that need to be finished it would be a bad idea. I also would not be interested in donating any more money to this game.
Thanks for all the input however!

 

I think with the player DM abilities coming that will automatically happen. I would like to see though if they could have someone dedicated to quest / story creation to bring more life into the game as well even more reasons to visit a lot of the zones beyond farming / killing things.

I Know many including my self who are itching to player made content stuff so we can build and make things that will make things more exciting. I just hope the tools they offer will allow us the flexibility to be very creative and reward people. Would love to see tools like that of Landmark with Event timers and triggers as well checks for items so we could build fully fleshed out quests

 

No, and for most of the reasons already mentioned...

 

Yeah, I wish INKY could be coupled with a player driven EP1 story upgrade.

 

I ponied up $500 for a PoT in Episode 2... I pulled the plug on any money at all going to Portnip until they catch up to where they already promised they would be. The idea of giving them more money seems insane. If the work isn't fix the broken systems or get Eps 2 out the door then I don't want to hear about it.

 

This is another reason.

 

That's especially an important consideration with a game that has worldwide access. We've got Aussies and Euros as well as Americans and Canadians. Unless they can find super-humans that need no sleep, that means three times the people would be needed than the naive assumption.

This is the right way. And they'll be doing it on their own, so there's no trouble about whether they are employees or not, which has affected a lot of "volunteer" things in the past, going all the way back to AOL chat moderators.

Sure, there is potential for abuse, but limiting it to a pre-screening, plus four-hour limited access that you can start when you are ready, is a good compromise to limit the potential for shenanigans. I think Chris also wants it to be a separate account from your main too. In a F2P game this isn't much of a burden.

 

I would pony up some cash to hire Raymond Benson, the lead writer of Ultima VII: The Black Gate.

 

I agree with this... hire devs to add real content and stuff that people actually would like to do.

 

For me it would need to be something significant to pony up more cash. Already have multiple subscriptions going. Plus the kickstarter and a few grand afterwards. I don't see the benefit. It would have to be something really compelling. Dunno what that would be at this point.

On the other side of all that. I am curious what EP2 has in store. It could change my mind. I'm already in it for the 5 episodes. And hopefully we can take our crap between EP1 and 2 lands. That's been a sticky point for me. After the couple thousand hours I've played already. I'd really hate to start over again.

Time will tell.

 

Live events should be run by players who want to add their own enjoyment to the game.

I feel Catnip is getting enough money and should use that money to build the lore of the game so there are more reasons for people to want to run their own events. Not to mention what everyone else is upset about in relation to lack of PVP and balance and all that stat stuff.

I would love to run my own events for people if there was a reason to do so. And I know a lot of other people already run events.
Money isn’t the problem it’s priorities.