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The Lead Designer answers more questions
Stephane Quilichini, the Lead Designer of Dark and Light, took some time to answer more of our questions in the fourth installment of this bi-weekly Q&A series. Our weekly screenshots will also return next week.
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MMORPG.com: |
It takes a special kind of environment to be able to fly, especially if there is content that you do not wish to be skipped by flying over it for example. Was this every a concern during the development?
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Stephane Quilichini: |
Integrating flying mounts in DnL was the biggest source of issues related to game design. Many gaming phases we originally designed had to be rewritten. We therefore made the choice to give players a higher degree of freedom by adding new functions, which are temperature and its impact on characters and pets. If you want to go beyond a mountain, you need the appropriate outfit, which is not necessarily your combat outfit. Same thing for deserts. If you fly too high, you may also see issues coming from temperature, for your mount or yourself.
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MMORPG.com: |
One more question on mounts, are you thinking of ways to possibly lower the cost of mounts, either through some means of taming them (as a hunter for example) or quests rewards? Mounts have been a form of contention in many MMO's due to the steep money requirements.
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Stephane Quilichini: |
Mounts are an integral part of DnL, and players are advised to get one in order to progress. Our pet management system allows you to manage 3 pets, in addition to summoned pets (that disappear after some time). This allows everyone to have several mounts at their disposal, and to use them depending on the obstacles they come across.
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MMORPG.com: |
Trying to judge the size of the landmass in Dark and Light (which looks huge), if you had to compare it to one of the states in the U.S. what state would you compare it to?
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Stephane Quilichini: |
It is twice the size of the state of New Jersey.
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MMORPG.com: |
With complex quests one of the major hurdles was always keeping track of progress. How does D&L approach this?
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Stephane Quilichini: |
As is the case with many competitors, DnL will have a quest book that allows every player to know at what stage they are in their current quest. The easiest quests will use a waypoint system that will guide the player from one stage to another. The harder the quest, the less accurate the waypoint, and eventually, waypoints will vanish.
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Thank you to Stephane for answering the questions.
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