Personally, all things considered and, from a newbie's point of view, the fact that skills are levelled through usage but levelling is a harduous task really kills the game.
I've been stuck on level 10-20 for years, out of feeling totally uninterested to play despite liking the game from the beginning, there's no automated in game events, no dynamic and auto-randomly generated quests, early game mobs are too strong for their level and species, game overall makes no sense, the amount of actual human mobs for me is non existing (Fighting NPCs, with skills, stats, and putting up a better fight than a scorpion, then again, Scorpions are OP too).
The game has greatly improved visually, but the feeling overall is as if it has completely given up on gathering more players, not even the ones that would be in for how the game is designed, they can't be attracted because honestly, playing this kind of difficulty for a game like this from early game, is the most unattractive thing for a gamer no matter who it is, I bet there's more than 1 veteran around here that just has their Nin open and simply takes out the phone to play some gacha game instead.
My meant-to-be humble and honest opinion as an easy patch:
- Remove mission limit, generate quests constantly, idk if this is implemented, but the more low rank quests you clear, you should be able to access higher rank ones, and not necessarily harder, for example: Kill 30 Scorpions, D rank, reward 1200xp+25Ryo/ Kill 300 Scorpions and Bring 60 Tails A rank, 12000xp+250Ryo.
- Need mods for in game events.
- Revised Exp curve, I think an easy start and a harder end game is basic for any game, it should not take someone more than a few 3 hours to reach level 20 of relaxed grinding between quests, mob xp and whatnot.
- Attendance rewards, seriously, reward players for logging in, this is standards nowadays, shouldn't be suggested at all.
- Battle Pass, separate from Gold/Silver, monthly, the game has been neglected so, there's barely any combination of rewards that would be meaningful, there's no crafting system to my knowledge, there's no weapon enchantment, there's nothing at all to bring in to the table for this, I personally think everything needs to change within Nin regarding Resources/Items, how they're obtained, the uses they can be given and whatnot, and on top of it, a Free/Paid Battle Pass allowing players to seasonally get some rewards through sheer effort.
- Karma System and Villages being a Safe Zone mandatorily, Leaf, Sand, Mist/etc Karma is accumulated/rewarded through killing other village members or by completing quests, this means that if someone only wants to quest in Leaf being from Sand and not do any fighting, their Karmic value can go from 0 to any positive amount and that will make them safe at that village, but having a negative one will automatically make them able to be attacked and targetted by npcs too
- Equipment stats, seriously, need sum standards in this game for real lul. How can you wear armor or use weaponry that doesn't give you an advantage just by wearing it, at least use real life logic smh. Start by adding Damage Reduction, Evasion rate, Critical Chance/DMG and Weapon Damage.
too lazy to write any more, there's too much I could say, but its already fruitless to suggest this much since it seems like Nin is heading towards a monotony+boring game plan since a long time ago.