Why stamina should be changed or removed

[Shoto Todoroki]

From what I heard, Stamina was a feature intended to be added to Nin Online over 10 years ago. While I understand this might have been the intention, I want to make it very clear that the idea of a stamina system truly is something that belongs in a game 10 years ago. I have several examples of games that initially had a stamina system that later removed them for the reasons that it hinders gameplay in Nin Online today. 10 years later, there's a lot of research that has gone into making video games more fun, especially in the field of MMORPGs. But first let's look at the stamina system on Nin Online, how it's implemented and ways that it can either be changed or removed.

What is Stamina

Stamina was implemented in June of 2024, a mechanic intended to be added to the game at the start over 10 years ago. This mechanic is tied to combat as well as travel. This is important to note because in modern day games, stamina has either been completely removed or combat has been slowed down to the point where stamina management is another aspect of the game. In titles such as Genshin Impact, stamina is used to traverse the land at a faster rate through climbing and sprinting. However, the reliance on stamina is greatly reduced later on based on teleportation through the map. Genshin's combat also has attacks that will use stamina such as charged attacks or repeated heavy attacks. However, the combat is rarely hindered by Stamina. This is because stamina is mostly relegated to dodging attacks in combat or to temporarily increase your speed to move out of the way of an AOE. 

However, our stamina system is more in line with a game like Elden Ring. The problem with this is that Elden Ring utilizes telegraphed animations in order to give the player more time to dodge, counter or move out of the way. Running takes stamina,  attacking takes stamina, jumping and dodging takes stamina and larger hits take stamina all at variable rates. We don't have a form of larger hits, but to summarize it better, Nin Online is currently in a state of Unbalanced Elden Ring on crack. To better demonstrate this, here are some of the i-frame data from Elden Ring.

(these calculations are at 60 fps) Bloodhound Step allows for 41 frames of invulnerability while the lowest i-frame move, fat rolls is 24 which is a dodge roll while at 70%-99.99% weight ratio. Weight isn't something that isn't in nin online, nor do I think it would be an effective correction to our current stamina system. But I just wanted to showcase that Stamina in Elden Ring is balanced around close quarter combat. It's not like Nin Online where you will have to chase around an entire stretch of land to fight and kill another player. This is mainly why our current stamina system doesn't work. The main form of gameplay is currently pvp in which you need to manage your stamina against 1-10 people in most cases who have the ability to traverse multiple maps. 

While we share similarities with Elden Ring, you're also not fighting 4+ bosses at once who can attack you 5-6 times per second depending on build. However, I want to reiterate, this is a shortcoming of our stamina system. I would rather see stamina changed than see cooldown adjustments on attacks or jutsu.

Why Stamina was removed from FFXIV

Back in 2010, FFXIV was released and became a commercial failure. The MMO received an average rating of 5/10 from most critics and a 4/10 from user reviews via metacritic. The game was initially created by the original developers of Final Fantasy 11 a game that was released back in 2002. Those same developers used a lot of inspiration from Everquest (1999) in order to make Final Fantasy 11. This is just to show how outdated the mechanics truly were. However, one of the most complained about mechanics in FFXIV during initial launch was Stamina and fatigue.

Stamina was a combat gate introduced to FFXIV 1.0 in order to prevent players from attacking too quickly and preventing them from fighting multiple monsters in a row. This was eventually removed all the way back in June 2011 after massive development team changes, but the damage had already been done to the game. Players often complained about how sluggish the combat was. Restrictions on quests and etc hindering progression in the game. Systems like stamina and fatigue making it so even in the down time from questing you still had to struggle with progressing in the game. 

The remnants of the fallout between developers and the community still linger through websites like the square-enix forum and GameFAQs. "Remove Stamina Bar" "Please get rid of Stamina" "Removal of the Stamina Gauge and Auto-Attack" it was a unanimously hated system, and it's not too different in the way it's implemented in Nin Online. 

This is somewhat hinted to in the Final Fantasy XIV 3-part documentary that I've linked below.

The barriers created by our stamina system

As it stands, Stamina in Nin Online creates barriers for multiple forms of gameplay. It hinders exploration, it hinders leveling, and it hinders pvp. For years one of the biggest complaint about the game was that traveling took too long, especially after Mist was introduced. With large scale maps, traveling to Mist often times took 5 minutes just from Asoki port. That means from Sand it could take 10 minutes and then another 10 minutes if you were doing a mission that required you to survive all the way back to your village. This was originally remedied by Erox with the reduction of maps between Asoki Port and Mist. However, the time to get from Mist port to Asoki port with stamina management is now back up to 4 minutes. This means that boat is once again better than walking because the time difference is negligible and you won't be forced to walk around the the longest flicker ranged NPC.

This also dramatically impacts the new player experience. One of the most common complaints has always been that early game leveling takes a long time. If we take a look at the average new player, such as formattedorc, and we extrapolate his playtime it would seem that most new players take roughly 6-8 hours to reach level 15. This was before the stamina update. This means that for new casual players it would take roughly 10-12 hours to reach level 15. Before stamina it took me an hour on blessing to reach level 15. Now I believe the time is probably upwards of 2 hours, but this is just an assumption because I can't stand to play the game for more than an hour at a time on a new account.

As for PVP, there is nothing that will save low levels that will make veterans happy. Some people only play this game to kill low level players in safezones. This stamina update is a blessing to them because it's impossible for a low level to escape a high level without abusing log out. We genuinely have people bragging about escaping 8 sand ninja at level 20 because he map switched and logged out before they could combat log him again. 

There's another game we know of that suffered from these problems and it was called Pirate Souls. Let's check out some of the reviews for the game on steam.

Why does it matter and what changes can be made

As someone who has played the game off and on for nearly 11 years, I've seen the game go through a lot of changes. One of the biggest struggles the game has always had was retaining new players. We unfortunately can't rely on maintaining a healthy playerbase solely off of the people who have 10+ accounts and 5 years of experience. We need new players to be able to get into the game and play for more than a week. We need new players to enjoy their experience at the beginning of the game. We can't keep catering to the people who are leveling their 8th account. We shouldn't require veterans to babysit new players every inch they walk because systems are implemented to slow down the early leveling experience.

I think the best thing we can do is change stamina to be more like Elden Ring. Here are the changes I would make to better balance out combat.

1. Remove stamina from running: as stated above, though this deviates from the gameplay in Elden Ring, most NPCs engage in combat with the player. In a PVP MMORPG, not engaging is a form of strategy. This also removes the inherit reward that mapswitch camping received from the introduction of stamina to the game.
2. Remove Jump and Replace with Dodge Roll: For this to work we would need to increase the invulnerability frames and also add in recovery frames so it can't be spammed like jumping currently is. This would practically remain the same, except changes to the animation and duration. 
3. Keep Stamina cost for melee: This is perfectly in-line with Elden Ring as a damage gate for melee attacks.  
4. Scale Stamina cost to base damage/speed of weapons: This will basically make it so end game items will be more balanced around timed attacks rather than holding down the button. This might further kill hybrids, but I don't think that's a playstyle that is desired given all of the other recent changes to the game. 
5. Remove "infinite stamina" from Youthful Springtime: Since stamina would be removed from running in this instance, the penalty for holding down the A button should remain, however since the stamina cost for punches isn't that low to begin with, this won't really penalize Youthful Springtime as much as it should.
6. Increase weapon melee base damage on slower weapons:  As it stands, the above changes would heavily impact slower weapons like Adamantine Sword and Kraken Hammer and heavily reward weapons like bone sword a ridiculous amount. This should even out their damage in a way.

the problem with this system, as well as Stamina in its current iteration, is there's very little penalty for int builds. Stamina cost on running, in a way, balanced them out as most jutsu require you to chase someone or at least move within range. However, this made masteries where you don't have to run at all (Int Weapon Master) the most desired mastery after several months of already being the strongest mastery. This is essentially why stamina for Nin Online doesn't work. Elden Ring's solution to this is that most magic has a walk speed penalty and an associated cast time. Since majority of jutsu are instant casts, this doesn't make sense for Nin Online. On top of this, having jutsu with an associated stamina cost on top of the chakra cost doesn't entirely sound appealing either. It would prevent people from using too many attacks after one another, but the only mastery that has enough true combos to be penalized with this system would be lightning.

The only perfect solution to balancing stamina around ninjutsu and melee masteries in nin online is to simply remove it entirely. Ninjutsu masteries already benefit from higher base damage, higher scaling and the lack of stamina requirements for using jutsu. There's really no reason to penalize melee masteries, especially so one-sided in terms of str weapon master with previous changes to weapon swapping and general str weapon jutsu scaling. This combined with the fact that Int weapon mastery revolves around camping your traps. This penalizes opponents pushing you and pushing maps during raids which was always at a disadvantage to begin with. 

In closing, stamina makes everything in the game take longer, which has been a complaint about the game for almost 10 years. It slows down combat, leveling, daily missions, and traveling to an insane degree and the above proposed changes will at least minimize the impact it has on every level of the game as opposed to heavily punishing new players. Also just to make sure it's stated, if Yamikami makes any comment on this discussion, please for the love of god ignore it.

As for me, it's been a fun decade to see the game grow, but I'm going to head out and play games that I actually enjoy until stamina is either changed or completely removed 

[Slifer]

Regardless of whether or not you agree with this, and I definitely agree with this, you have to admit this is one of the most well thought out and structured posts concerning changes to the game. Well done brother. 

[Seifer]

^ What my shadow clone said.