Chapter 77: Anxiety and Anticipation
Chapter 77: Anxiety and Anticipation
Thinking back on it, the monster habitat he tried to look for yesterday was information from the previous game, so there was little chance it would remain the same. The only fortunate thing was that goblins were a relatively common race, so he could probably earn money while slowly moving around and searching.
Was I lucky?
Three hours later, he somehow managed to gather all the materials. Somehow, undead had appeared here and there, the drop rate was relatively high, and he had easily found places selling the materials.
Since this was also his first time playing TLF2, he felt he might be able to do it faster once he became more skilled. But if he were a complete beginner who had never played the previous game, it would probably have taken much longer.
Of course, it would have been easier if his party had grown enough to collect the items easily, but he was too impatient to try this magic quickly, so it could not be helped.
Brian first recorded every place where he obtained the materials.
Because the conditions for this kind of Great Magic were strict, they were designed not to be used easily like ordinary magic, but to function almost like events that created variables in play by being used only a very small number of times during a character’s lifespan.
The system did not set a fixed number of uses, but because the conditions were difficult, the time limit called lifespan naturally restricted its usage.
And the stats barely meet the requirement now.
In fact, when he obtained the magic yesterday, his intelligence had been three points short, but thanks to leveling up during that time, he had barely passed the cutoff line.
Because he had worked hard to prepare it, part of him wanted to save it, but another part of him wanted to use it quickly.
However, there was still no difficult enemy worth using this spell to defeat.
At the same time, it felt wasteful to just go somewhere with a slightly strong enemy and use it there. In the end, as he first thought when he obtained the magic, he decided to use it to gain a companion.
In truth, goblins did not have especially good compatibility with humans either, but because their racial value was so low, their penalty was also low. If the other stacks were high and there were even a few charm-related traits, goblins were relatively easy to hire.
Brian immediately headed to Ender Village, where Tinder was located.
He’s still here.
NPCs also had lifespans, so they could die and disappear, or be hired by other adventurers and vanish. But perhaps because this was such a remote place, or perhaps because Tinder was an ogre and difficult to hire, he was still there.
[Using Goblinization.]
Brian immediately cast the spell. In truth, even Great Magic did not always succeed, and some targets could resist depending on the target. But whether Tinder lacked that kind of resistance or luck was on Brian’s side, the spell worked at once and changed his race.
[Goblin]
Seeing the changed race, Brian unconsciously burst into a small laugh. NPCs were only game characters, and there were no special reactions made for this spell, so only the race changed. But in his imagination, he pictured an ogre suddenly becoming a goblin and panicking.
Ah, as expected, his stats dropped sharply.
He had expected this, but he had wondered just in case whether the stats might remain intact even if the race changed. That did not happen.
However, most of the traits remained.
[Monstrous Strength], [Monster’s Aura], [Blunt Weapon Mastery], [Ferocity], [Rage], and other traits unlikely to exist on a goblin were lined up one after another. Ogre-exclusive traits were deleted, but traits that goblins could technically possess remained.
Originally, a goblin mage was not a particularly preferred companion, but with these traits, the story was different.
[“Tinder” joins the party.]
After that, Brian put Tinder at the front and completely swept through the early game. His skills were those of a mage, but thanks to his traits, his close-combat ability was stronger than most knights, so he had no weakness. His overall combat ability was also high, giving him stats that were not obtainable this early.
This is seriously damn fun.
After tasting that fun, he continued searching for Great Magic afterward.
Right after TLF2 was released, Insu felt quite anxious.
When they had gathered public attention, it had felt good, but seeing the reaction explode beyond imagination at release made those expectations feel burdensome.
Of course, I do think we made it amazingly well.
But people’s thoughts and tastes were all different. No matter how satisfied the developer was with the game, there was no guarantee gamers would be satisfied too.
If they failed to meet expectations now that those expectations had risen this high, that scorching heat could turn directly into anger.
For now, I think we caught the bugs pretty well.
Anger like that tended to explode even more when it met polish issues such as bugs, so Insu unconsciously thought of the bug reports.
Should I have focused more properly on the Gold Master Test? No, should I have fixed those bugs even if it was late?
Trembling with this anxiety, Insu kept going around PC communication services and checking TLF2-related boards.
At first, the posts were only about how hard it was to find, or how crowded the stores were. But about a day after release, posts about the game itself slowly began appearing.
[Seems well made?]
[It definitely feels more advanced than the previous game?]
[But isn’t it too similar to the previous game?]
[I liked that it felt like TLF.]
[Ah! This is set up as the previous protagonist’s descendant!]
For now, the first impression did not seem that bad. Since people did not immediately say it was fun as much as he expected, it felt a little nerve-racking, but at least it did not feel like things were about to explode negatively.
“Team Lead!”
“Ah. Yes.”
After someone came to him briefly about a planning matter and they talked for quite some time, he returned and pressed the refresh button on the board.
A large number of new posts began loading, and Insu started reading them while feeling his heart pound.
[Seems pretty good?]
It was not lavish praise, but perhaps because of that, it was the sort of reaction that made him feel relieved. Without realizing it, Insu let out a sigh.
In only a short time, the board was filling with an enormous number of posts, rapidly pushing earlier ones down.
[Looks like they really increased investment in the graphics side? The characters and effects are much more varied too, and what are these illustrations?]
[It’s the familiar taste I expected, but tastier? This is exactly the flavor I wanted?]
[I like that it feels like they added and improved things instead of forcibly changing them.]
[What the hell, trading is ridiculously fun?]
[Have you tried Great Magic? This feels similar to MFN’s Domain Magic. Like real magic?]
[No, forget all that, multiplayer is the best. You have to try it.]
[...But can you handle the phone bill?]
As he read through them one by one, outright praise was rare, but negative comments were almost nowhere to be seen either.
At this level, the initial response seems successful for now...
Since expectations had been raised so high, it might have been hard to expect dramatic reactions. But if there was little dissatisfaction despite such a noisy release, it likely meant they had met those expectations to some degree.
Only then did Insu relax somewhat and disconnect from PC communication.
However, unlike Insu, who had future plans keeping him busy and could turn his attention away relatively easily since this was already his third game, the team members, especially those who joined in America, could not do that.
The response is incredible.
Ryan brushed the brown hair trying to cover his face to the side and read the PC communication posts with his normally indifferent blue eyes shining.
Seeing people react this passionately to a game he had participated in developing produced an insane amount of dopamine.
I did think it was definitely a cool plan.
Because he had personally participated in the development, it was difficult to remain objective, so he could not easily judge whether it was fun. He could at least evaluate the level of completion, but a game’s success was not determined by completion alone, so as release approached, he had started feeling anxious.
Still, the reason he did not drown in that anxiety was thanks to the little team lead.
Was it really thanks to him?
He was not talking about leadership. He meant that as development progressed, they were squeezed so mercilessly that he had no time to feel anxious.
Honestly, at first, he had worried whether the team would function properly with a little kid as the team lead. But after being whipped forward in a frenzy for more than a year, not even one trace of that doubt remained.
That certainty, drive, and willpower to absolutely make things happen and achieve the goal had an intensity that showed him what a genius encountered in reality truly looked like.
No, rather than a genius, maybe it’s closer to understanding what kind of person actually gets things done.
In any case, the taste of his first success achieved by following that genius was intensely and maddeningly sweet.
Of course, since he had joined knowing Parallel Soft’s name, he naturally had expectations. But he had also heard many times that just because a company produced one hit did not mean it would keep succeeding. Since this was his first workplace and first job, he had not been free of anxiety.
Yet as if that anxiety was nothing, the team lead had drawn massive attention from the development stage and then pulled in a tremendous response as soon as the game launched.
I’m pretty sure neither TLF nor MFN was like this.
Ryan did not know much about management or commercial success. He simply thought that since TLF1 had already surpassed 1.5 million cumulative copies in North America alone despite not receiving this level of passionate response early on, TLF2 might sell much more.
Two million? No, maybe around three million?
In any case, through this, Ryan gained strong trust in the development team and in Insu, the team lead. And this was not limited to Ryan. The other team members were the same.
From Insu’s perspective, since he had to develop an experimental game called an MMORPG, this was highly advantageous.
People said professionals should do their best at any work, but working while filled with hesitation and doubt and working with complete focus, free of distractions, inevitably produced clearly different results.
And that difference could be the deciding factor in whether they crossed the wall of success or failed to do so.
Once TLF2 made a successful start, Insu felt lighter. Part of it was because this was a game they had developed with full effort for a long time, but it was also because of its influence on MMORPG development.
First, they had successfully secured IP power. Also, TLF2’s system was a combination of TLF1 and MFN, and since it was the system they planned to present in the MMORPG, it meant they had verified it in advance.
Moreover, although they would modify it to some degree to fit the MMORPG framework, since it was the same RPG genre, they would likely use most of TLF2’s systems.
“But wouldn’t that make the system requirements too high?”
It happened during a planning meeting. Brian, after hearing that the basic framework would use TLF2’s systems as they were, spoke with an expression suggesting it would not be easy.
“Huh? Why would the requirements rise if we’re making it similar to TLF2?”
It was Yoo Juyeon. He had almost just stayed quiet and listened, but at the start of the meeting, Team Lead Insu said that since this was a game they were developing together, they should make sure to ask if they had questions and actively participate. Remembering that, he awkwardly stepped forward and asked.
“It’s a multiplayer game. First, continuously exchanging data for real-time synchronization, position information, combat status, and so on will consume resources. More than anything, the load on the graphics side will increase. We’ll prevent as many gamers as possible from appearing on one screen, but at least around five people will inevitably appear, and if that happens, the load has no choice but to rise sharply.”
(Translator’s Note: Real-Time Synchronization — Multiplayer system process that continuously aligns player actions, positions, and combat states between clients and servers.)
(Translator’s Note:Position Information — Multiplayer data tracking each player or character’s location during online play.)
“Ah. That makes sense.”
Since Yoo Juyeon was also a developer, the moment Brian’s answer reminded him of what he had briefly forgotten, he understood even before hearing the whole explanation.