Last night I was in the Powerhouse theater to watch a costume contest organized by a lovely little lady by the name of Saari. The event was a fun one, but not as fun as it could have been had it not been for a certain person.

This person decided that they had nothing better to do than join the contest to make rude and disruptive comments. When almost everyone decided that they should ignore the person, he took to following people around and spamming powers. He was asked several times in a polite manner if he could stop, but he continued.

This situation got me to thinking of ways stuff like this could be stopped. Then an idea dawned on me. 'Instance rentals'.

The basic premise is simple. An event organizer could go to a specific NPC that would allow them to rent out the theater using in game money (not C-store tokens), so that anyone has a chance to use the service.

Renting would give a person similar options as to those that they have in hideouts to control the decor, lighting, etc. Rentals would come with a special NPC known as 'The Bouncer' giving the event organizer(s) the option to have trouble makers thrown out (maybe even have a 'drunk toss' animation).

NOTES:

• The person that rents can choose to appoint other players as 'co-organizers' giving them access to all of the same control.
  
• Devs can decide if the rentals should be time limited or not.
  
  Example:
  
  
  • You pay X and you keep the rental until your event is over and the renter leaves, kicking everyone else out as the instance resets.
    
  • You pay X and you rent the theater for X about of time. After that time, either you pay a renewal fee to keep it going or you and everyone else gets kicked out as the instance resets.
  
  
• A billboard or marquee could be added outside the theater that show the name of the event or events being held.
  
  
  • Name of the event as set by the renter and/or co-renters
  • Clicking on the billboard or marquee would bring up a menu showing a detailed listing of all the events being held, which would show:
    
    
    • Name of event as set by renter and/or co-renters
    • Description as set by renter and/or co-renters
    • Organizer's name (or SG's name is the organizer selects that option)
    • Number of people attending
    • Duration (organizer can set this or it can be set automatically if rentals are time-limited)
    • If applicable, time remaining
    • An 'Attend Event' button, which would be replaced with a count down if the event is scheduled
  
  
• There would be an option to schedule events at a later date
• The Theater could become it's own building in or around Ren Center instead of being inside the powerhouse

I can see the same feature being extended other other areas such as Club Caprice too.

bump? No one has any thoughts?

I think this absolutely should be done. It might take a bit of work to implement, but it would help a lot with more aspects of Costume Contests than just this.

/signed

this!!! would be awesome!

As soon as the free the captive team who is working on the alerts, the new items, the new stats system and so forth

<3

I'm just going to shamelessly quote myself:

/M

Suggested in June? July? Its been suggested a lot.
Thing is events are so rare and griefer's even rarer, its absolutely not a priority.

Think of it this way. Once upon a time there were king's courts, and in the king's court was a fool.
That fool was entertainment for all the well dressed and freshly cleaned and powdered people of importance.

Be entertained.

This is a pretty good idea, I think. You'd need to make it substantially cheap to rent though, otherwise nobody would do it.

As far as invites, you could use a system similar to the Invite to Hideout feature, except add in functionality for players to create a "guest list".

You could also add a new way for players to make money by making it possible to "sell tickets" to the event, and if you're listed as a guest you're muted in local and zone chat and have all powers disabled while inside the instance in question, to stop trolls from "buying a ticket" just to get in and disrupt the event.

Something like that would add more Roleplay flavor to a game already rich in Roleplay potential, and I don't imagine it'd be terribly difficult for the programming team to cook up. You know, once they have a free minute, what with all this wonderful new content they've been churning out :D

I really don't like the idea of invites or guest lists because it would give the events more of a "closed to the public" feel, which is the complete opposite of what you'd want. Not to mention it would be a huge inconvenience to the hoster to have to send out 50+ invites.

Many people only enter the movie theater after making a guess that the previews are probably just about over. It's the same kind of thing here. People might want to enter to watch, but want to wait until formalities like getting people organized/in place are over, or they are just late/just found out it was going on. It would be a hassle to constantly get interrupted by requests to enter.

People should be able to come and go as they please. If you're kicked by the hoster for disturbing though, then you can't get back in (unless the hoster allows it).

The only channel that should be reserved to the hoster and helpers that they appoint is the Zone channel. Guests/participants should always be free to chat in local. An event where everyone is muted is a boring one and no one would attend.

Especially in the case of costume contests, some people use powers to add effects to their costume. As proposed in my original post; hosters and their appointed helpers would have the option to kick trouble makers, so the disabling of powers isn't a really good idea nor is it really needed.

Really? Don't know what game you're playing. There's been at least one Costume contest pretty much every day this week alone. Rare? Maybe to someone that isn't paying attention to them.

Plus a system like this that would help people host events without having idiots cause trouble for very long. It would encourage people to hold even more events.

Keep in mind, I mentioned the Guest List and Theater Mode as optionals, thus giving you several ways to configure your event.

To clarify my opinion:

I think we should be able to spawn closed private ocr group instances of various social locations, where inclusion in the spawning group is necessary to attend. Being kicked or leaving the group would then deposit you outside the location. There could definitely be some sort of toggle for this, to allow for a completely open instance as well. I see no problem with this, and several advantages.

I do not think we should have to pay for this, with globals or C-points. It should come as a feature of the game.

/M