I guess in general I'd like to see guides as more of the "Dungeon Masters" of the Universe! Well, when we get more complex events and stuff, it would be neat to have them run the scenarios, maybe even participate. As in, play the "NPC" character upon which the event revolves around, or something.

For example, let's say that in the future there's a CtC-style event. The players join up and on one side it's Eldrad, Shape, Spellcast, UncleDave, and Martin. On the other side, it's just LeberMac 'cause some other people forgot about the event. So the guide could spawn some bots to help out and make the event more fun, possibly even slightly modifying the event parameters in order to make it more than a five-second battle.

I don't mind a little guide-meddling in the affairs of us mere mortals. I could see where "accusations of impropriety" would raise their ugly heads, but overall I trust 'em. More Power I say!

hmm it would be cool if the guides could (or would) act more like "Game Masters", but i think the larger problem is that there aren't that many guides, so not only is getting enough players for an event a problem but so is getting enough guides to run the NPCs. and such most events have been run so as to encourage players to fill all roles.

so here is a question/idea:
is it posable for a guide to "deputise" a player by devwarping them to devlopia and back allowing them to purchase whatever "NPC" ship they need for the event.

that way one guide could operate a much larger and more elaborate event without the need for half a dozen guides.

I favor giving guides more gameplay-creation powers. I've talked to a few people about this at various times. We just haven't had a chance to do this kind of.. stuff. More complex events and things are great. But, it would be good to have some bounds / sanity checks to make sure we don't have any more "Obsidian Incidents" (heheh).

Guides, in a sense, have almost infinite power right now. Just very few of them know how to use it. Anyone who has seen the scary stuff Firemage has built on the test server (a giant worm that chases you, and some sort of soccer-type sport) can see how much power they actually do have. What we need to do is make that easier to use and more applicable to making fun events.

I'm all for added Fun. Let's get the new client out first, then we can make interfaces for this sort of stuff too.

Now wait a minute...

giant worms chasing you? How does a guide adds content to the game? Or was that "worm" made up of known objects like crates?

And why haven't wee seen fire-breathing giant space hamsters yet?

He made it out of the docking ring from the sector 7 asteroid cluster, I think. So it was a little silly looking, but interesting. He can add content because he knows Lua, and has a list of the object names in the game.

I keep hearing about that Lua thing and never really understood what it's all about.

Is it described somewhere?

Ooooo me wants to write LUA scripts in the VO universe, I'd like to apply for guidship please. I'll wash your car too...