Home » Site News » Answers from the Content Team - Part 1
elcome to the second round of Chill and Grill! Last weekend, players submitted their questions and today, our content designers Chayenne, Knightmare, Lionet and Count Tofifti are ready to share their first bunch of answers with you. Here we go...
Q: What is the future of role playing in a time that people are more and more dissatisfied with power gaming?
Knightmare: Tibia is designed like a sandbox in a way. You can go back and forth between the different areas without content becoming totally useless for you. So given Tibia's nature, there is much freedom for personal tastes. It is up to the player to decide what he or she likes to do most. If you like powergaming it is certainly possible to do so. If you like socialising there are thousands of people and guilds to interact with. When you like a more RPG'ish approach to any of these it is up to you to roleplay. It is not possible to enforce roleplaying. It is a personal decision and might even depend on the mood you are in on a given day. The RPG part is up to the players, we can only provide some tools and enviroments that help.
Q: Of all the quests already created, which was the hardest and the easiest to create?
Chayenne: It is difficult to determine "the" hardest and "the" easiest quest in Tibia since a lot depends on which technical possibilities were available at the time of creation and the experience and personal conception of the creator. Generally speaking, quests which require a lot of complicated event scripting or implementing challenging riddles are harder to create than those which might have a beautiful background story, but which are broken down to basics like "bring me item xy" or "talk to npc z" tasks. Examples for very complicated quests from a creation point of view are the sneaking part of the thieves' cellar, the railroad chaos in Beregar or also quests like the Lightbearer world event or the Svargrond arena. Quests tend to get complicated when you have to consider multiple players entering an area with a high risk that they disturb or block each other. Then you have to implement a lot of "safety routines" to make sure players can't enter when the area is already occupied, or teleporting players out when they block an area for too long while making sure they can still finish their quest. On the other hand, easier quests are those where player interaction can't really turn into a problem and where the quest options are limited, for example some of the outfit addon quests which only involve looting certain items and handing them in to an NPC, or the Annihilator - only one teleportation event and a treasure room. Designing quests gets both easier and harder when time passes by: easier because technical features are implemented that help us with scripting, and harder because there are already so many quests in Tibia that it can be challenging to develop innovative new quest ideas. It's always fun to create them though!
Q: Where do you guys get the inspiration from for creating new areas? Is it all just coming randomly in someone's brain or are some ideas referred to a movie, a book or perhaps a song?
Lionet: Many players are wondering where the source of our inspiration and ideas may be found. Usually we try not to base our content too much on existing media. Tibia has a very unique world with many tales of its own and we want to contribute to this rich and often freshly alternative lore with every change and update. What we do use, however, is a lot of music to accompany us at work. Practically all of us play the latest games and like watching movies - and we certainly love to include the occasional allusion here and there. In fact, one of the quests we are working on alludes to a certain, well-known story. :) We also talk a lot about our quests with each other. Not only when conceiving new content, but also while the design is already being implemented and even late in development where we try to polish the content to a level the Tibia players will appreciate.
Q: When looking at hunting ground designs, it is easy to tell which vocations can hunt there most efficiently. Are there any plans to make hunting grounds in which high level knights can hunt better than the other three vocations?
Count Tofifti: You're right, there are hunting grounds which seem more profitable and fitting to one vocation than to the others. Our aim is to design fair and challenging hunting grounds, so each character no matter what level or vocation can find a place where he can have a nice hunt without hours of grinding the same monsters. To give you a little insight into what's going on right now: We're working on a new hunting ground structure that is designed clearer for certain vocations and level ranges. Also, special balancing issues are currently on our agenda.
Q: Any chance for more daily tasks?
Lionet: An interesting question because this is one of the features we are currently working on for our next update. As usual we are adding several new quests and stories to the game. We are currently creating additional daily tasks to include even more repeatable content than in previous updates. Many quests are now also designed to allow players to relive certain parts of the experience in the form of daily or weekly versions of tasks that were actually in the quest and part of its story.
That was just part one. Stay tuned, guys and gals! There are more answers to come next Friday.