Interview with Evonary!

Tibia Wiki: Hauopa! We believe this is your first interview for a fansite. The whole Tibian community, specially the Brazilian one, is very curious about you. After all, who is Evonary? Share with us some personal information like name, age and hobbies, interests besides games and, why not, some mania.

Evonary: My interest in gaming flared up at the delicate age of around 5, when my father brought home a computer game just for me. He has always been very keen of new technology especially in terms of computers, so it was no wonder he allowed me to game. He even gifted me my first video game console when I was only 7 years old.Since then I was the one among my friends who constantly came up with new playing ideas. When I was 12, I made my first card game (DragonBall themed) and later on I always played pretending “if I could make an RPG, what features would it include?” – I also took part in other kinds of loosely game projects.

Evonary: Well, first of all, when I graduated from school, I had never even realized that Game Design was actually a real career choice. So when I found out it was, well, that was the thing I really wanted to do. I applied at a university and studied Game Design. During those studies we also created little game projects which were indeed playable and we also had internships at game companies. So it’s been around 5 years of engagement in the game industry.

Evonary: You should obviously look at many games, analyze them on how certain things are done in them. Try to understand patterns and what consequences they have in each game. As each game feels different, their communities differ as well. Try to understand why that is. If you want to get a closer feeling what this job means (and it can mean many different things in each company), try to get a small Game Design hobby project running or try to do an internship at a games company. If you then decide you actually want to study at a school or university, for example, look at institutes that offer “Game Design” classes. But please have a look at what exactly “Game Design” means for the school, as each institute does things in their own way. Their way has to match your ideas and needs.

Evonary: …never let personal gamer experience cloud your judgement. A feature isn’t bad per se, just because you personally would not enjoy it. Step back and think of your core audience, but don’t forget your higher-up demands either – this can be very tough. Try to consider all opinions and all possibilities. Evaluate them and then stick to the best solution. And you have to be a real team player. This is very important. You should be able to work with other people and be able to communicate with them.

Evonary: I joined CipSoft 2 years ago. Mostly, I work for Tibia and I’m the only Game Designer for Tibia. Besides that I’m also part of scouting and evaluating new game ideas at CipSoft. I also take a rather small part in creating new ideas. But my fellow Game Designer colleagues play the major part in that.

Evonary: Funny enough, I heard of Tibia ME before I knew Tibia. That happened at gamescom in Cologne 5 or 4 years ago as CipSoft had a booth there (I still have their stickers :D). I had my first look at Tibia just before I applied for a job offering. My first impression was that I really wished for a much simpler User Interface, as I was quite overwhelmed with the Flash Client.

Evonary: Well, it depends a bit on what I’m currently working on. But most days begin with me checking my emails and looking at the Tibia website. I’m following the newsticker threads and the gameplay forum regularly. After that, I usually have a short meeting with our Product Managers, lead testers, designers and developers to see if everything goes according to plan.There are several challenges in working on Tibia. Due to its age it is really complex and there are many things to have in your mind when you want to develop or adjust a certain feature as things are often connected to each other in a rather unique, and sometimes unexpected way.

Tibia Wiki:  Is playing Tibia part of your duties? Can you “turn off” the professional side and enjoy the game as a simple player or are you always looking for new ideas and fixes that need to be made?

Evonary: Yes, it is indeed part of my duties. I can turn off the professional side and just play for fun. I always try to get as close to a regular game experience as I can. At the same time I cannot just ignore my background knowledge about certain things completely. If I happen to find something which I consider research-worthy while playing or simply remarkable in some way, I note it down in order to work with it later on, after the playing.

Tibia Wiki:  How is your experience as a player? Are you an active player? If so, can you tell us your level, vocation, favorite city and favorite hunting place?

Evonary: As a player, I did the classic things, like falling into a hole without a rope, running into the plains of havoc with a level 8 character and dying to a giant spider, trying desperately to claim my corpse loot back and dying in the process and so on. One time, when another player told me: “Leave! This is my cave!”, I could not resist to laugh at him, which resulted in my immediate death. Sometimes it’s hard not to be amused by such statements if you happen to see the actual creators of those places daily. Thank god I cannot really screw up in Tibia’s “content design”, because I’m working as a game designer 😉 That’s two different things…

Evonary: As a player as well as a Game Designer I would really like to see a proper crafting system in Tibia. Sadly I cannot tell you what an implementation of that idea would feel like to me, since it hasn’t come so far yet. However, I guess it would be very satisfying. Since it’s not up to me to decide which features will be adjusted or implemented in the end, I cannot tell you if or when such a crafting system would be planned for real, though.

Evonary: Normally, I get hands on those proposals which were handpicked by Mirade and Tjured and forwarded for further evaluation. They are doing a good job in pre-filtering proposals, and I can rely on their work. Sometimes I also actively ask them if they have seen any good proposals on a particular topic.

Evonary: There a several difficulties. It begins with the idea and ends with the issue of implementation. Along that line, problems can pop up at any given point. Let’s start with the idea. Sometimes players don’t take other points of view into consideration. Things have to be fair for any side of the medal or at least all sides should be viewed as equally worthy. Also overall topics like the game balance or the worth of certain items, spells or the consequences a change could possibly have need to be taken into consideration. Another point is that in Tibia, so much time has already passed, so when you change a certain thing, it’s possible that all the effort which has been put into this thing or topic by older players would come to waste. It should of course be avoided to annul any former effort. Then there is the implementation phase. This is probably the point about which players don’t have enough information about in order to know whether their proposal could work or not. The content designers, as well as the programmers, are limited by the way the servers work. So even if everything seems good and fine with the idea of a proposal, it might just not be possible in a technical way. Sometimes we can find a workaround for technical restraints, sometimes we don’t. Renewing some old Tibia code for a proposal can turn out to be not feasible at all because it could require a lot of work and could delay or even stop another project we have on our agenda. So time and costs also play a role in decisions about a proposal. And because Tibia is the way it is, both points can become quite high easily. So all planning has to be done very thoroughly, and any decisions need to be made with great care.

Evonary: The most frustrating project for me which was released were the unjustified values in PvP. I knew beforehand that this specific topic would be hot and emotions would come to the boil, especially as several players don’t seem to particularly like the underlying PvP system. The PvP System per se wasn’t touched when we were implementing the new values, however, it was a big source of the frustration. To actually get into the focus of that very discussion was very tough for me, especially as I was still pretty new in the company back then and hadn’t been around when the underlying system had been designed. I definitely developed a thicker skin when it comes to player’s opinions in these discussions. And I learned that you can really never please all. On the other hand, the concept of Dawnport was a rather nice experience I had on the job so far, even though we had to work on several adjustments later on, as mentioned earlier already.

Evonary: My very first thing in Tibia was the adjustment of how the Amulet of Loss works in combination with the blessings and especially with the Twist of Fate. I didn’t even have my CipSoft character in place at that time. Sadly, I cannot tell you about unreleased projects. But the most complex one which has been released so far was the concept of Dawnport as there were many different fields of work woven into each other. Dawnport was also the most motivating. The previously mentioned unjustified values were also complex, but on another level. I had to do much research with that one as well as to take many special cases and exceptions into consideration. There is no project so far, which I would really call “my baby”.

Evonary: Unfortunately, I wasn’t actively involved with Council or Focus Groups, yet, as I joined CipSoft afterwards. However, I read a lot about the stuff posted in the last PvP Focus Group. It was a very interesting read as there were so many different ideas on certain topics. If there are any plans for new focus groups or councils, we will of course let you know beforehand. Right now, at this time, I cannot promise anything, though.

Evonary: The new Tibia client is still under construction. Unfortunately, I cannot share any information with you on that project as I’m only very partially involved.

Evonary: There are no plans for a voice chat, as far as I know. Sorry, but I’m not really the right person to be asked about such detailed questions concerning client programming as I’m no programmer myself. I simply don’t know what’s all possible in that regard. So – Next question, please!

Evonary: That would be my wish as well. It’s a hot topic internally, by that I mean it’s talked a lot about by colleagues here. New ideas on how to design a crafting system flare up regularly. As I mentioned earlier, however, I cannot give you a definite ‘no’ or ‘yes’ for this topic as there are far more things to discuss about that, and the decision is not mine to make, either.

Evonary: First of all, I would like to thank all players who participated in that survey. You sure had some good ideas! If a thing like extra mount abilities will come to live, we will of course let you know as soon as we have information to share!

Evonary: The plans for a battle server are currently not on our priority list, to be honest. Battle servers, however, were not the reason for server merges, that I know for sure. Server merges happened to achieve a healthier world population for several lower populated game worlds.

Evonary: We are of course interested in delivering a good party system and we are striving for improvements in this area. New ideas come up quite often and are discussed internally, but there are no precise plans I could share at this point.

Evonary: Party tasks is yet another topic which arises regularly amongst the developers, also inspired by feedback we receive from players, of course. There are different approaches and ideas for this topic. However, unfortunately, I cannot really share any details about this, either, at the moment.

Evonary: I remember some good suggestions about party spells. Due to changes in our priorities, party spells haven’t made it into the game yet, though. As you have probably noticed, we are currently taking a real close look at vocations in general and spells are definitely a topic we look at, too.

Evonary: Just recently we had a large survey in order to find out what you, the players, think about various relevant categories when it comes to vocations. Once again, I would like to thank all participants for giving us feedback! For us, it’s rather important to see what you think about this topic, so right now we are evaluating your answers in order to work with them. This will take some more time.

Evonary: For the next PvP update our focus will most likely be the war system between guilds. I don’t think this will really come as a surprise. Currently we are working on a concept, but – you won’t like to hear this – I cannot spoil yet when to expect this update.

Evonary: I wouldn’t destroy or recreate any game mechanism, if truth be told. A high risk lies in such an action! Tibia is a very unique game and the existing game mechanics are part of the reason for this. Any wrongful change could destroy the complete game. Also, each change has to be matched with the big vision for the game. Such a big change could not be done without a preceding thorough and detailed analysis, and not without giving it real good thought if such a change really really would be  necessary in the first place.

Evonary: What to expect this year? <takes on a serious look> Just three words: Winter is coming! Thank you as well for having this interview with me. My best wishes to the readers of TibiaWiki.com.br!

We hope you enjoyed the interview as much as we enjoyed making it.