his round of Chill and Grill is drawing to a close. Over the past weeks, our content team has provided you with some first-hand insights into current projects they are working on. One or two personal notes were not missing either. Now let us start with the fourth and final part of their answers...

Q: Is it possible to add some sport (for example football/soccer) but with rules? Like, switch something and play 3 vs 3 with counting goals, and doing official tournaments every week with a closed football stadium or something.

Lionet: We talked about a very similar concept last year and it is certainly an interesting idea. With the introduction of world quests, we came one step closer to the technical inclusion of official large-scale events or even contests. These could also be based on a variety of elements, including a dedicated rule system. However, the mechanics of Tibia are obviously not designed to support fluid soccer gameplay. So currently there are no specific plans to include a complete rule-based sports tournament.

Q: Some years ago, when you implemented those new outfits, you also created a big load of addon and outfit quests. The new outfits you release these days are those you get in the main story line of the new area, and are honestly rather boring since everyone gets them in no time at all. Will you ever consider adding a big load of new outfits which got the same kind of quest line like for example the barbarian outfit?

Chayenne: Yes. Question answered. :) No, seriously, we'd love to do that. To be completely straight and honest, unlocking an outfit after completing a main questline has always been a good way for us to implement a reward which pleases most players, whereas designing equipment or other item rewards is a lot more difficult and often leads to controversial discussions in our community because we just don't seem to be able to make everyone happy with that. I agree it's not the most interesting and challenging way to bring new outfits into the game, but what we do like about it is that it enables a lot of players to earn the outfits they like and it creates diversity among character outfits. Even more outfits, some easier and some harder to earn, would of course be the best way, but it's also a question of time.
Creating a new outfit means several days of work for the graphic department and creating a good quest for that outfit means about 2 weeks in the content department. Since we usually work on an update about 4 months, it would be possible to implement about 8 outfits and their quests, but then most other possible game content like new map design, new monsters, new events, new items or other new content features would have to be sacrificed in favour of those outfits. This often leads to players asking "and where is the actual update??", especially those who don't really like outfits. Thus in the past we have tried to create "well-rounded" content updates containing different elements, so that every player can pick something out that he or she likes instead of focussing on one special theme such as outfits only. However, for the next update you can expect a few interesting changes concerning the outfit topic.

Q: You only create new monsters and places for the strong... You could not create others more easy?

Count Tofifti: When I played Tibia for the first time I had a similar thought. I tried to solve a quest, was one-hitted by a monster and died. Back then I got a little bit disappointed as dying is really expensive in Tibia. Looking at other MMOs there is often much more guidance concerning monsters you face, and usually you won't face monsters which you can't defeat. In Tibia, you always have to be careful when you are new to a certain place as you can die almost anywhere especially as a low level. This is a distinctive feature of Tibia. Nevertheless, we are currently working on a concept to make hunting grounds more balanced. We most likely won't have this finished for the winter update, though. We are working on many different levels right now which are deeply intertwined.
We try to offer new features for as many players as possible and yes, we want to design the beginning more intuitive and varying but also keep the spirit of Tibia.

Q: Will you reveal something about Serpentine Tower Quest?

Count Tofifti: Hey, I recently looked that Tower up and it's...
Knightmare (stern look): SECRET!
Count Tofifti: Well. Uhm. Yes, probably.
Lionet: Though I wonder if anyone already had the idea to apply...
Knightmare: Mind you if I apply a Homer Simpson choke grip on you?
Lionet: Oh. Uh. I just wanted to...
Knightmare (stern look)
Lionet (sighs): ...to shut up and remain silent!
Knightmare: Splendid! As for an answer... well... how to approach it in a diplomatic way. Let's say: Some places you currently see in the game might play a greater role in an upcoming quest sooner or later. Other places though are just there for flavour. Others again might be part of something that is yet not discovered. As you can't interact in a meaninful way with each object, you can't interact with each theme. If there are quests that are not found yet though, it is unlikely that something about them will be revealed to enforce their discovery, especially it is unlikely such information would be revealed not in game.
Lionet (whispering): But couldn't you at least tell me if...
Knightmare (smiling sweetly): But of course I could! (voice becoming menacing) But then I'd have to kill you!
Lionet (laughing nervously): You are joking right?
Lionet (looking for Count Tofifti): He's joking, isn't he? Count? COUNT?! Where did he go...?

Q: Why the Tibians can't use the chairs and relax?

Chayenne: I'd like to take the time and explain in detail what the graphical and technical challenges actually are. As you might know, Tibia's graphics are based on 2D pixel sprites and not on polygon models placed in a 3D surrounding. This means that the Tibia client needs information about the order in which to "paint" the sprites so that they are displayed correctly, similar to painting a landscape on a canvas. For example, if you draw a human figure last, it might end up overlapping trees or archways and look "buggy".
Now what does that have to do with chairs? Most chairs have back rests and sometimes arm rests, and if a character sits in it and you view it from the front, you expect the character to be drawn over the chair. However, if you view the backside, the chair would be drawn over the character. From the side view, probably part of the character should be drawn under the arm rest, but the head should be drawn over the back rest, and so on, so the client can't get a simple instruction about the "painting order" of those objects. What makes things worse is that chairs are not standardised in any way - so if you have five chairs, you probably have five different dimensions and locations of seating areas, which makes it hard to tell the Tibia client "if a character 'sits', shift the character sprite to pixel xy so that he's placed properly on the seating area" because it's always different.
And what makes things EVEN worse is that we have many, many outfits and addons, and all of those would have to be redrawn in a sitting position while making sure that if the character wears the first, the second or both addons, ALL of them are displayed correctly over or under the chair in each direction. And since that probably wouldn't work out for each chair, bench or couch, a lot of furniture would probably be needed to get redesigned as well. "Sitting on chairs" is a project with such large dimensions concerning programming and graphic design and so little actual benefit except for the role-playing aspect that it has always been dropped in favour of other features, although we regularily discuss it and many of us, including me, are huge fans of that idea. On the other hand, if we actually implemented it, I can already imagine a large angry mob of players yelling "SITTING?! why don't you fix the real problems first? What about vocation balancing? What about anti-cheating?" - so really, it's all about weighing pros and cons, but I definitely wouldn't say that we'll NEVER implement sitting on chairs. I don't want to spoil too much, but we have taken a first step in that direction and I'm curious to see what you'll think about it upon release. :)

Well, that was it from the content team. We hope you enjoyed this round of Chill and Grill!

Have fun in Tibia!
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