Chapter 138: Reinterpretation and Integration
“It’s a decent method, but…”
The problem was that they could not set every spirit to be that strong. Special individuals like legendary spirits or spirit kings could be made that way, but spirit content was general content, planned as mass content meant to attract more users.
So the difficulty actually needed to be low. If they made them powerful, new user inflow would collapse.
“Then what about making it so ordinary adventurers get no reward for killing them, or receive a penalty?”
This was Emily’s opinion. This was also a method sometimes used in online games. Usually, it was used for event monsters, where no special reward was given and only the number of kills was counted, or only event items were dropped.
It was a proven method in its own way, so it was not bad. But it felt slightly lacking.
This kind of method gave gamers the feeling of chewing on food that only looked good on the outside, like a wild peach. In truth, it might not be realistic for items to drop just because something was hunted, but within games, everyone had already agreed that this was simply how things worked.
(Translator’s Notes: Wild peach — Refers to gaeboksunga in Korean, a small wild peach often used metaphorically for something that looks tempting but is unpleasant or disappointing when actually eaten.)
But when a specific monster appeared and the game said, “This one is special,” and “It’s a game anyway, so these are artificial rules,” then broke those rules, it could also break immersion at the same time.
And some players enjoyed killing things even without rewards, while others enjoyed disrupting other people. It was irrational, but games tended to contain more of that irrationality than reality.
That could not be helped, since they were worlds where the risks from failure and waste were low, and anonymity was strong.
“Any other ideas?”
The next day, he received a decent idea.
“How about this?”
It was Lee Suhyeon. Since other team members were present, she naturally spoke in English. The team members who came from Korea had now lived in America for five years. Lee Suhyeon was especially proactive about adapting, so she spoke fluently enough that her Korean accent was barely noticeable.
“Make it so spirits only become visible after meeting certain conditions or using a skill.”
In truth, this method was often used in other games too, so it could not be called especially original. But properly recalling and applying something like this was also ability.
When he thought about it, since they were beings from another world, the idea that they could only manifest in this world through a certain ritual, or only be seen by people with special abilities, fit the setting well.
‘Come to think of it, fantasy novels often included stats like spirit affinity too.’
(Translator’s Notes: Spirit affinity — A common fantasy stat or aptitude determining how well a character can perceive, communicate with, or contract spirits.)
When Insu made TLF Online, he had also held the ambition of fully realizing a fantasy world. Implementing the Korean fantasy settings he knew in this way did not seem bad.
“Let’s use both.”
After considering the team members’ opinions, Insu decided on the method. First, if a character with spirit affinity went to the relevant area, they could sense traces of spirits. Then, by gathering the necessary materials and performing a summoning ritual, the spirit would appear.
In truth, he hesitated slightly because this seemed to weaken the adventurous atmosphere of “A wild Pokémon appeared!” But at the same time, it emphasized the spirit setting and the fantasy backdrop of magic and mystery, so he decided to introduce it for now.
After all, one advantage of online games was that content could be changed and revised relatively nimbly later.
With the appearance method decided, next came the combat method.
‘For wild spirits, I think making only one appear at a time like Pokémon should work.’
The problem came after capturing them and making them allies. TLF Online was also turn-based, but it was not the same kind of game as Pokémon. Since it used nine party members, they could not fight by summoning only spirits and having them battle.
Of course, putting only one spirit master in the party and fighting by summoning spirits was not impossible, but unless it was concept play, gamers had no reason to deliberately play at a disadvantage.
‘They need to have a certain level of performance, at least.’
In Pokémon games, there were no other options, so using Pokémon was natural. But TLF was a game with various races, skills, and abilities besides spirits.
No matter how plausible the setting was, and no matter how cute the appearances were, if they were useless, the content they had gone to the trouble of developing could end up buried. But they could not make them too overpowered either.
If they did, they could easily draw attention at that moment, but they were not going to release only one piece of content and stop there. Conversely, all other content might get buried, and everyone might only play spirit masters.
Insu remembered online games he had played before. Whenever a new class came out, everything was pushed too heavily toward that class, until the whole world was filled with only that class. Like a doppelgänger factory, no, a mannequin factory.
(Translator’s Notes: Doppelgänger — A double or duplicate of a person; used here to describe games where too many players use the same newly released class.)
‘Should I make them buffers?’
The least burdensome method was to design them not as main characters, but as something that strengthened other characters through buff magic and similar effects.
This would raise the rate of players choosing spirit masters without greatly harming the existing balance. Of course, this would still require proper balance adjustment.
‘First, spirit buffs should probably not stack.’
If the buffs were too good, a disaster might occur where people brought one damage dealer and filled all the remaining slots with spirit masters.
But making them only apply buffs still felt somewhat lacking. It did not give them the feeling of being protagonists.
Of course, this update was different from the original Pokémon. Since it was not an independent game, there was no absolute need for them to be protagonists. But because he wanted to develop this into an IP, he wanted gamers to feel intimacy with and immersion in the characters.
After thinking it over, the method he recalled was the structure often used in collection RPGs in 2025.
(Translator’s Notes: Collection RPG — RPG subgenre centered on collecting many characters, units, or creatures, often with different skills, rarity, and progression systems.)
Other TLF Online characters had various equipment, stats, and skills, so their operation was fairly complex. By contrast, spirits would have no equipment and only two skills.
One would be an ordinary skill expressing the spirit’s usual image, and the other would be a finishing move that gave the party strong contribution and left a powerful impression.
In truth, this was also the method he had used for TLF2’s Summoner. He could not think of any better method, and the response in TLF2 had not been bad, so it seemed fine.
However, unlike TLF2’s Summoner, these spirits would be designed with relatively low durability.
This was because, in TLF2, summoners often used summons as tanks and continued using only one summon, leaving no real variety or strategy.
‘I’ll make players keep switching them out and make each hit feel intense to increase their strategic use.’
Combat could be designed this way. Next came the gimmicks.
And the most famous Pokémon gimmicks were naturally Poké Balls and evolution. Honestly, there was not much to say about evolution. RPGs already had a similar system called class advancement, and spirits had lower, middle, and upper ranks, so it could be applied easily without much thought.
Next came the capture gimmick of the Poké Ball.
It might seem like nothing, but it gave persuasive force to the process of naturally turning an enemy Pocket Monster into an ally.
In truth, if one examined the details, suddenly becoming friends just because something was captured was a little strange.
‘Unless there’s a brainwashing room inside.’
But it could be considered a structure that inserted concepts people already possessed, such as wild animals, livestock, pets, and ownership, making them understand it intuitively rather than through logical persuasion.
‘Using Poké Balls as-is would definitely feel awkward.’
It was truly unfortunate for Pokémon to lose Poké Balls, but they simply did not fit the setting. Still, the structure of using something to acquire a spirit was worth keeping.
The first thing that came to mind was a stone. Something like a “spirit stone” that often appeared in fantasy novels. Usually, it was a consumable item used to summon spirits or increase their power, and Pokémon also had something similar with evolution stones.
‘Is it because of the image of throwing?’
One of the important images of a Poké Ball was throwing, and as he tried to think of something similar, that association seemed to arise naturally. It did not seem bad, but it felt slightly lacking.
‘A talisman? Parchment? Scroll? Something like that might work too.’
It did feel like an image that would appear in a Hong Kong film, but it did not seem bad for a paper with a spell drawn on it to fly out, then release a net of light to capture the spirit.
Or, if they went fully Western-style, it could be thrown and form a magic circle beneath the target.
‘Now I’m pointlessly thinking of Granzort.’
(Translator’s Notes: Granzort — Japanese anime Madö King Granzort, associated with magic circles and fantasy mecha imagery.)
Come to think of it, this was also a Japanese anime, but its recognition seemed far too different from Dragon Ball.
After thinking it over, Insu decided on magic stones for now. However, rather than simple stones, they would likely be jewel-like objects engraved with magic.
Another thing he thought about was diversity in growth. Even Pokémon games gave slight randomness to Pokémon in order to make them feel like more than simple data.
The method was that even Pokémon of the same species received random individual traits, causing their stats to differ when they grew.
‘They were individual values and effort values, right?’
Even if there were quite a lot of Pokémon types, in the end, there were only a little over a hundred. Moreover, the monsters players preferred were fixed, so the number of monsters they actually collected and handled was much smaller.
If one simply played alone in single-player mode, it did not matter much. But Pokémon treated battles between players as an important element.
However, if every person one met carried Pokémon that not only looked exactly the same as one’s own but also had identical abilities, one’s interest would inevitably cool. So perhaps those elements were added to give even slight differentiation, creating the feeling that “my Pokémon” was my own unique friend, different from everyone else’s.
Or perhaps randomness was added because, if obtaining Pokémon ended too easily, the feeling of adventure and collection would not come alive, so randomness was included to allow deeper immersion.
In any case, TLF Online was an MMORPG with much longer playtime than Pokémon, so elements like this were essential to keep players from getting bored and let them continue enjoying the content.
Therefore, this side would include a system almost identical to Pokémon’s.
And these spirits would be bound not to a single character, but to a bloodline. There would be many spirits, and the number would continue increasing, so collecting them all within one week would be impossible.
Moreover, this spirit content was not limited to simply collecting them. Quests, and perhaps even a bit of story, could also be inserted.
In truth, Pokémon itself was not a game where story carried a very large weight. In the early entries, it had a very simple structure: conquer gyms around the world and become the champion.
But even with such a simple story, the difference between having one and not having one was large. In particular, Pokémon’s worldview was quite unusual, making it difficult for gamers to understand intuitively and making it hard for them to find a direction for play.
‘Compared to that, spirits are actually a more natural setting.’
And TLF Online had been designed with the purpose of letting players freely enjoy the world without forcing their direction of play. So with spirits too, simply enriching that world and leaving players alone would fit its original purpose.
He had already prepared a plausible position and balance so that spirits would not be left neglected, and he also intended to add a separate collection system to guide players.
Even so, there were several reasons he still wanted to insert story and quests.