Perspective of a new Player

[Diluc]

I have been playing ninonline the last couple of days and thought some perspective of how the game is for a new player may help this game grow in the future. I would like to point out I understand that the game is still being developed and isn't finished but I still would like to help improve it and point out the pros and cons. I also don't know everything about the game yet only from what I have seen and what helpful players info have shared with me.

First I would like to start with the pros of the game. The aesthetics of naruto and the ninja world has always in my opinion been a fantastic setting for a mmorpg so to see the concept come into light in such a well designed way is amazing. I have played a similar style naruto game on byond, if you can remember that throwback, which wasn't this well polished with combat and customization. Having unique clans instead of reusing the current ones opens up a lot of unique abilities that I am looking forward too. The tutorial was very well done, that wasn't too long and did a good job introducing you to the simple mechanics of the game. The sprites and graphics are beyond amazing, especially the scenery and jutsu that just blow me away every time I see them in action. The combat is enjoyable and very responsive for the most part and doesn't get boring for a 2d game like this. 

Now for the Cons. Although the games combat is fun the variety of leveling options is very limited making the only way of endlessly murdering mobs over and over feel VERY grindy. Only being able to do 3 daily missions makes your income of money very limited at the earlier levels which in turn just forces you to just continue to endless farm mobs to sell their drops or hope to obtain and sell blank scrolls which you need for jutsu early on. Also the trash mission for the mist village at least is HORRIBLE you could spend 30 mins running around and find nothing.(update on this. the garbage is hidden behind trees and buildings. Not sure if this is design but I found just swinging behind random stuff helps the mission go faster) I am not sure how the spawning works but for one of the early quest it is a huge time sink for a pretty unsatisfying reward. As for the biggest problem of the game in my opinion is pvp for new players. The number of times my party and I were grinding on mobs just to get suddenly attacked, killed and then camped has just made leveling in the game unplayable. It seems the only responses I get about this is "just suck it up" or "Welcome to ninonline" which in my opinion are very weak and sad reasons for the effort that went into this game. 

As for some suggestions I would make to improve these problems. As for the leveling I think having repeatable D-S rank missions that could give players direction as well as a better source of exp and income would make the grind a little easier. Having the daily missions be a bit more unique and rewarding would have them stand out from these rank missions. As for the pvp problem with the early players being killed. I think giving new player a grace period where they can't be harmed by other players that are higher than 3 levels up until say level 25 or 30(while in their own region) would give players time to adjust to the games combat as well as choose their paths/builds. Also the wounded debuff for being killed is waaaay to long for new players who aren't much of a threat to other but just extends the already intense grind. These solutions would make it so new players can enjoy the game without worry about being killed by a higher level player that makes it impossible to play the game. I have heard that these rogue ninja kill players because of their missions so maybe have it where if a player is well under their level they are not rewarded for killing them. I know that coding this might not be possible but these are just suggestions because I really do believe something needs to be done to aid new players.

I have really enjoyed this game for the most part and see it having a lot of potential but I think the pvp and grind might turn off some players so hopefully they are addressed in the future. I know the game is still new and being developed but as where the game stands these are the problems I feel hold it back from being amazing. I hope no one takes this in a negative way, I just thought the perspective of a new player would be helpful for the future of the game. I am not here to argue with anyone because I do enjoy this game and I know every has their own opinions and way they think the game should be. 

[Fuma Yusei]

Seeing a lot of people confuse inconvenience and time wasting as "difficulty" in this thread.

[Diluc]

18 minutes ago, Ryuchi Hakuja said:

Seeing a lot of people confuse inconvenience and time wasting as "difficulty" in this thread.

That is what I am trying to explain. I think a more enjoyable experience would help the game a lot.

[Accelerator]

27 minutes ago, Ryuchi Hakuja said:

Seeing a lot of people confuse inconvenience and time wasting as "difficulty" in this thread.

 

17 minutes ago, Diluc said:

That is what I am trying to explain. I think a more enjoyable experience would help the game a lot.

Did you watch the video in Rory's thread?

[Sound]

i think what he's trying to say is making the lvling long n boring doesn't especially make it hard, as lvling is right now its not very hard if you ask me it's just very long 

[Diluc]

2 hours ago, Gilgamesh said:

 

Did you watch the video in Rory's thread?

I for sure see more where you are coming from and although I don't think the suggestions I made are to the extent other mmorpgs have taken it I have a better understanding of what you mean with the hand holding and convenience. But he also talked about helping new players and building a better community as well. I wish you started off with that video instead of being so aggressive in your response and it would of been a much more civil conversation. 

[SaphV2]

11 hours ago, Ryuchi Hakuja said:

Seeing a lot of people confuse inconvenience and time wasting as "difficulty" in this thread.

this tbh 

[Accelerator]

4 hours ago, SaphV2 said:

this tbh 

Did you watch Rory's video?

[Accelerator]

13 hours ago, Diluc said:

I for sure see more where you are coming from and although I don't think the suggestions I made are to the extent other mmorpgs have taken it I have a better understanding of what you mean with the hand holding and convenience. But he also talked about helping new players and building a better community as well. I wish you started off with that video instead of being so aggressive in your response and it would of been a much more civil conversation. 

The point is: 

This isn't the kind of game where you can just hop in and be on the same level as everyone else.

You will have to grind to get up to par.

It's going to suck, and that's just how it is.

You're still going to suck for a while when you hit 50

We don't know why we like it, we must be masochists deep down. 

But that's how it is.

 

[Seifer]

The solution to this is directing missions for lower leveled players closer to their village, adding new missions, fixing exp amount for each mission, and adding new mobs with levels in-between those already there.

Once you are around lv 35 and have all your jutsus, then you should be traveling to other places.

 

On 3/23/2021 at 7:01 PM, Ryuchi Hakuja said:

Seeing a lot of people confuse inconvenience and time wasting as "difficulty" in this thread.

^ Also, I 100% agree with this. There are missions that everyone just abandons every time. Look at blood puppets or medical supplies.

Medical supplies in particular, for the amount of time you spend collecting the materials you will get less exp. This is saying even if you already did your 3 dailies, you will receive better experience hunting people for bounty xp. It is only beneficial if you are rich and pay for the supplies saving you the time.

[Kuroi Merlin]

We all know the game is not very welcoming for new players and I don't think it will ever be, it's only the old  community that sticks around because they are the only ones that can deal with the heavy grind/lvling system I have tried countless times to get friends over and they quit straight away, and they are used to byond games like goa or nff which are similar, even though Nin Online appears to be a superior Byond Naruto Fan game it unfortunately fails to cater new players and I guess in a way that's fine, it's not meant to be a huge populated game but it could be

It's a great game nevertheless, but the grindiness/lack of events/missions/content is what makes people not stick around, but if you love PvP/Roleplay it's a great game, plus the artwork/sound of the villages is spot on and you can tell the developers love the game.

It could also benefit from instanced dungeons similar to the spider boss, that's really fun to do but only for low lvls, really surprised not a lot more like that were made

[Black Rain]

Depends what village you are from, my advice would be to reset to sand village. I'll explain why:

Leaf village

1. You will be suspected as an alt: there are multiple freaks who are paranoid in leaf and will just not let you enjoy the game the way it should be enjoyed (trust me, I started in leaf and had this treatment). It will ruin your gameplay
2. Everyone hates leaf: your missions will be 10x harder alone, because every village will kill any leafie on sight, even on BI

Mist village

1. Village is not as active as it needs to be to enjoy the game as a lowbie
2. The grinding spots are absolutely terrible; not only are they extremely far from the village, they are also in DZ in which players will hunt you
3. The boat is just insane, you spend x2 the amount of time another village would for a mission

 

Why you should go sand village

1. Grinding spots are by far the best in the game inside sand village
2. Village is very safe (you have to pass through the village gate to get to the lowbie spots) and most of them are safezone

[Balcoin]

sad but true i agree with black rain even tho i don't personally jump leafies unless they look at me funny 
but he's not wrong about sand being the best to start in but mist is my heart

[Ueda]

Thanks for the good feedback and discussion

A lot of people have sort of the right idea on why the game isn't as easy to get into, and how that's by design.
I don't like giving it as an excuse, but I will say that the ability to affect someone else's experience is one of the key defining advantages an online game can provide to a player over a single player experience, and that's something that's sorely missing when it comes to most MMORPGs. So it's not something I wish to change. I try not to have anything that encourages harming a new player's early experience, like limiting what counts as a mission kill and not rewarding bounties etc. but I think the ideal behind why it's still possible (even though not incentivized) is that player freedom is just fun.

Someone brought up the concept of a theme park MMORPG experience, which is where you're strictly on a rail and you can't go off the rail/course too far before the game design nudges you back into what you can do/be in the game. I think the niche, small community game benefits from there being this freedom for someone to do something annoying to another player if he so chooses, because it allows for player expression. Whereas a more conventional "theme park" experience would put a hard "You cannot kill a player under level 10" in your face when you try. It's a trade-off, on one hand you're able to be who you want to be, even if that disrupts a new player's experience. On the other hand, it creates a new dynamic where taking care of your own becomes more important and factions, teams and grouping up becomes highly valuable.

Someone also mentioned that things have gotten easier over the years, and yeah that's pretty true because of lots of new ways to gain experience. Over time I do intend to add more story arcs like the Level 30 and level 50 arcs for the lower level ranges. But it's a bit of a daunting task at the moment. But giving lower levels some content like that where they are partially removed from the open world where they get brutally slayed by high level players is part of the design, but it'll take some time.

[Fuma Yusei]

On 3/24/2021 at 10:05 AM, Gilgamesh said:

Did you watch Rory's video?

I'll be honest, I wouldn't take advice from someone who 1) Hasn't made an MMORGP and only played them for "20 years" 2) who can't even make an interesting video that grasps someone's attention for more than 2 minutes. 3) There's a reason that so many of the MMO's that he's listed don't have more than 1 million active subscribers. 4) Some of the MMO's he listed barely even have a 6/10 on Steam.

 

It's pretty clear that majority of his preference is based on older MMO's because, clearly they have "not gotten better" because "modern MMORPG's SUCK" regardless of sales numbers showing the opposite of this claim. Let's not forget this guy has played MMO's since they were first released. In 20 years he only has an opinion on what he likes about old MMORPG's and how to fix them (make them sell less) That's what this game was based on as well. Which is why it's hard to get behind a MMO in 2021 when it's inspired by 2005 MMO's.

 

I also played MMO's a lot in my childhood, and the reasons this guy details as "improvements" are the exact reasons I quit them for a good 10 years before getting into this one. Which one of us is correct? Well there's a reason the MMO's that I like sell well.

[Accelerator]

11 hours ago, Ryuchi Hakuja said:

I'll be honest, I wouldn't take advice from someone who 1) Hasn't made an MMORGP and only played them for "20 years" 2) who can't even make an interesting video that grasps someone's attention for more than 2 minutes. 3) There's a reason that so many of the MMO's that he's listed don't have more than 1 million active subscribers. 4) Some of the MMO's he listed barely even have a 6/10 on Steam.

 

It's pretty clear that majority of his preference is based on older MMO's because, clearly they have "not gotten better" because "modern MMORPG's SUCK" regardless of sales numbers showing the opposite of this claim. Let's not forget this guy has played MMO's since they were first released. In 20 years he only has an opinion on what he likes about old MMORPG's and how to fix them (make them sell less) That's what this game was based on as well. Which is why it's hard to get behind a MMO in 2021 when it's inspired by 2005 MMO's.

 

I also played MMO's a lot in my childhood, and the reasons this guy details as "improvements" are the exact reasons I quit them for a good 10 years before getting into this one. Which one of us is correct? Well there's a reason the MMO's that I like sell well.

[Cosbo]

Lol the ammount of aggressiveness here. 
I totally agree with the Lvling being pretty, not hard, but boring? Having only 3 missions daily its kinda sad lol, and the fact most of those missions are "kill 90 X mob" when the lvling in general is already pretty grindy feels kinda akward.
Not saying "make  the lvling insta and easy af" but either just giving some more daily missions or more sidequests would help ( specially in the mist village) 
Started yesterday and was like 2/3 hours killing mobs for the 2 dailies with my bare fist lol cause there's nothing a new player can do to make the grinding at least a bit more interesting other than subing or throwing some shurikens ( yeah there's the kunai and some swords but still ). Giving a jutsu for the new players could help a ton instead of *killing 2 mobs * *standing still for some minutes to recover the health* *kill other 2* *recover health* for 2 hours
I may be talkin nonsense lol i started yesterday but yeah,,,, thats my opinion oop. Excuse my bad english, not my first language
 

[Anna Primal]

On 3/26/2021 at 12:42 PM, Ueda said:

but I will say that the ability to affect someone else's experience is one of the key defining advantages an online game can provide to a player over a single player experience, and that's something that's sorely missing when it comes to most MMORPGs.

that the very reason why mmorps are dying  somebody can gank you  for hour ruining your game enjoyment for the day that alone is why all the mmorpgs are dying and dotn see the penny most other rpgs do when you let ppl be bullies  you will lose players.

[Diluc]

2 hours ago, Jaiir said:

Lol the ammount of aggressiveness here. 
I totally agree with the Lvling being pretty, not hard, but boring? Having only 3 missions daily its kinda sad lol, and the fact most of those missions are "kill 90 X mob" when the lvling in general is already pretty grindy feels kinda akward.
Not saying "make  the lvling insta and easy af" but either just giving some more daily missions or more sidequests would help ( specially in the mist village) 
Started yesterday and was like 2/3 hours killing mobs for the 2 dailies with my bare fist lol cause there's nothing a new player can do to make the grinding at least a bit more interesting other than subing or throwing some shurikens ( yeah there's the kunai and some swords but still ). Giving a jutsu for the new players could help a ton instead of *killing 2 mobs * *standing still for some minutes to recover the health* *kill other 2* *recover health* for 2 hours
I may be talkin nonsense lol i started yesterday but yeah,,,, thats my opinion oop. Excuse my bad english, not my first language
 

This was kind of the same experience I have had myself and it seems this is "By Design." Besides the people telling you "Go play something else." This is a lot of the leveling experience for most of the early levels which gets easier when you reach level 10 which shouldn't take to long although a bit boring. The daily missions become a bit more unique but they send you into enemy territory rewarding you a lot of exp but at such low levels it is hard to complete them without some help or the server being dead. But it seems that this post is pretty split for the most part with most people in favor of a better experience in the earlier levels of the game. I am glad the developer is also checking this post out so hopefully we can talk about improvements for the future.

[Akai Shuichi]

I'm new and recent player reached 11 lvl Sand ninja. 

My opinion about the game is: Lack of quests, ik the objective is a rp and demand alot of players, but this game desing inst atractive for mataining players and gather news players the
1 reason: Lack of quests, u just haved 3 daily quests and 1 randown npc quest(sand village) in the beining the game
2 reason: Lack of players in ranks chunin, jonin and above. This problem cause a low rate of rp missions and ruim the base of the game. (maybe u can add some npc for make this rp missions more playable?)
3 reason: Lack of information about the village locations, doenst have a map.
4 reason: Hunting monsters simulator, make the game repetitive alot and boring. I hate the very grind games (i played alot of aqw and others grind rpgs like old runescape) is just a lost of time. 
5 reason: Must of the game mechanics i searched in the forum like about seals and the quest with npc(normal villagers)
6 reason: The game will be fall in the time old players start stop playing because is a based rp game, is the central of proposition and designed for this.

Good reason:
I still playing because this game don't have the must hated thing, the pw and alot of transactions who make u god in 1min of the game.

[Seifer]

15 hours ago, Akai Shuichi said:

I'm new and recent player reached 11 lvl Sand ninja. 

My opinion about the game is: Lack of quests, ik the objective is a rp and demand alot of players, but this game desing inst atractive for mataining players and gather news players the
1 reason: Lack of quests, u just haved 3 daily quests and 1 randown npc quest(sand village) in the beining the game
2 reason: Lack of players in ranks chunin, jonin and above. This problem cause a low rate of rp missions and ruim the base of the game. (maybe u can add some npc for make this rp missions more playable?)
3 reason: Lack of information about the village locations, doenst have a map.
4 reason: Hunting monsters simulator, make the game repetitive alot and boring. I hate the very grind games (i played alot of aqw and others grind rpgs like old runescape) is just a lost of time. 
5 reason: Must of the game mechanics i searched in the forum like about seals and the quest with npc(normal villagers)
6 reason: The game will be fall in the time old players start stop playing because is a based rp game, is the central of proposition and designed for this.

Good reason:
I still playing because this game don't have the must hated thing, the pw and alot of transactions who make u god in 1min of the game.

1) There is a lack of quests. The quests we do have are not all completable to certain masteries (i.e. stealthing into sand village with no int). Depending on the time of day you cannot do any missions because of 1 way maps (if an army camps a map, you are shit out of luck until they decide to move). The quest's experience scaling is not perfect either.

 

2) There is actually an abundance of ranked however, they do not get rewarded enough to spend the time doing RP missions and helping others. If you believe that them not wanting to help without a reward is reason enough to not have rank blame the promotion process. Other than that, Kages will accept ranks that don't help into the village while forcing others to pay to get in or not get in completely.

 

3) There is a village map however your position is not marked. This can be used for realism I guess, but let us be honest it is not. There is no other maps for other locations besides the overarching one that is useless to look at. Having a map would extremely help new players.

 

4) There is a lot of grinding early on, but once you hit level 36 from toad quests it completely stops. Recently LOI was added, but it is better to not do those missions completely because the experience points rewarded is not worth it. There should be mobs for every level to have a better scale with experience points so that it does not turn into this "hunting monster simulator" early on. Additionally, the zones themselves should be fixed. It is 100% easier to grind in Mist/Sand over Leaf. Reverting Leaf's rats to what it once was may help put Leaf back on equal playing field.

 

5) When you say "forum" I assume you mean on this website. I never used it, but there is a Wiki that is supposedly more informative on what you can do. Otherwise, it is best to find a mentor in-game to teach you what side quests there is, what is worth doing, and to help your build. For such big villages you would think there would be missions within them to make players fill up the empty spaces.

 

6) A lot of old players have already fallen, or only touch the game from time to time. That being said, the new players that remain after being weeded out from Nin's inflexibility sort of fill those spots. I believe the game mechanics allow the community to yeet people out of existence too easily. Examples of this are:  Hospital camping, one way maps, no organization cycling, rigged elections of Kage positions, broken meta that assist in unethical behavior (i.e. bubbles on doors), and more. @Ueda should really consider this imo.