Imhotep

To be fair it happens in every village, due to spying. Your best bet is to try to be as vocal as possible with people so they start to know you around the village. If you can't get it resolved in Leaf, reset to Sand. It's by far the most stable village right now.

If I thought that it was within your power to make big enough changes to the early leveling experience to actually increase retention, I would have voted for that. As it stands, new techniques/jiinchuriki is the best way to bring players back and keep them for a while.

Imo, Nin post-50 content needs to pivot towards team-based, guaranteed reward/progression model. No one in their right mind considers LOI fun or engaging. With all the work that was done on instancing I'm hoping for dungeons to one day save post-50 PvE. For example, after unlocking the tower, it could contain a 4-man dungeon and an 8-man dungeon. Teaming could be handled same as events so different villagers could be put on a team, or more than 4 rogues can be on a map without FF. End of the dungeon is one guaranteed drop among a wide range which includes EVERY class OR some cosmetics OR "trash" drops like 3 blanks, 800 ryo, etc. but never nothing. You can clear each dungeon max 2 times a week, with a bonus 3rd with a payment of Beaks and Tails for the first dungeon, Iron pieces for the second. Every class has motivation to join up with others and take on a structured challenge. Farmers have motivation to farm and sell mob drops to people running dungeons. The entire zone is a DZ but no one hunts here cause who the hell goes there? Now they will. I'm telling you LOI would be lit for years till the next content drop. The barrier to mass alt exploit is having to unlock the tower, which is a huge time investment, on top of the weekly limit. Other bosses outside of dungeons don't have guaranteed drops, but respawn to be farmed off CD. I think they should have a better drop chance for blanks/ryo/blood vials, but okay, it's a good enough balance.

Time to harass the ninja world for revenge

Not buying it. In what universe is a pill anywhere near as good as a Med? I really don't understand. It's also hard to believe Kona as a 9-year player is just now quitting over leveling and pills. Just a year ago leveling was 10 times harder and it's not as if we haven't had Oils healing for 80 ticks. Sounds like you're just tired of playing Med for so long, are finding reasons to justify why you're bored, and are too burned out to level another account to 50. Some of that may be the game's fault, most if it is probably that you've played a niche indie game for 9 years. Though like I said, clearly Nin like anything will always have room for improvement.

How exactly is Med replaced by items? The regen system changed back to what it was before, not having a Med is a nightmare right now. Pills don't replace meds, we had pills for a long time. Food is only usable in PvE, is expensive, and even then it's not as good as meds. Not sure what the issue is here. Agree that the gameplay gets repetitive and road to 50 is kind of monotonous at a point. Implementing more village quests, revamping bosses and grinding can help with that. Agreed on the other points as well, except maybe bosses which could use a serious rework imo. Put them more in line with what players expect from MMO bosses.

@UedaMost people coming from an MMO background naturally expect this (though I understand the limitations historically). It's an extension of the village missions that give you one of the starter jutsu for free. A string of village exclusive missions from the NPCs around the village as the primary driver for leveling; with grinding, dailies (which are usually grinding missions) and RP missions coming in between level requirement intervals. Quest Arcs coming online as they usually do and dailies finally taking over as the primary leveling mechanism at around 28-30, just before Toad Arc. By then the player is fully equipped for a lowbie, and in groups of 3-4 stand a chance in DZs. Players might not even get Genin until they complete the village help quests, earning their title by helping the village. Exp rates can be nerfed to account for the new options but the variety alone will help retention. Leveling right now is easier than ever but it requires already having knowledge, help and a willingness to switch off your brain and grind 5-10 levels at a time (and also pop blessings). Players doing this can hit 35+ in 2 days (even 1 if they full send). If you pace the proposed quests, dailies and RP to get you to 30 in 3 days of reasonable playing hours I think that's a much more sane alternative that doesn't really hurt the game. From there, the harass of DZ dailies can begin.

Bit of a vicious cycle, I was nice when I started and didn't mind dying in a PvP game but after the 5th time some clown kills you and types 'L' you start waiting on the day you can return the favor. Leaf jumping out with 6 50+ every time for a lowbie is part of it, Sand not letting literally any lowbie through GD without tax or dying is another (Mist dead so who cares). On the other hand, it forces you to learn the game. As a lowbie I learned how to sneak through villages, how to wait at the top of spiders as the response team of 6 leafies came hunting for me then slip by, I learned shortcuts through Mist and flicker points. By the time I was 50 I felt like I learned a lot more about the game than in other MMOs I've played. Besides that I'm not sure what can be done. Telling people don't be toxic isn't going to undo 9 years of player killing and rivalry. I agree with lowering mission frustration. They could be better explained. Bad missions should have exp rewards buffed or mission objectives altered. Especially as a fresh lowbie the ONLY thing you do is get killed, grind mobs and do dailies. Grinding mobs has never been fun, getting killed isn't great so at least dailies should feel good. A lot of new players burn out just getting to 20, despite it being relatively easy these days, because the logical gameplay is to grind and take dailies (which are not worth taking) and nothing else is well described. I'd have to make a lowbie helper account just to help every new player get to 20 in a reasonable time frame. I don't see the problem in telling lowbies there's missions for their level in Takumi, and giving them a map that actually takes them there. The odds are they get killed on their way anyway; that should be the challenge, not the opaqueness of missions in the game.

RP is always difficult to pull off in Open World PvP games, failing strict GM/Admin intervention to monitor spam killing and such. It's possible, other games have systems in place for it, but Nin doesn't have a foundation for it outside of relying on the goodwill of the players. Doesn't mean RP cannot exist on the village level. Kages can push for RP at all times during Org events/activity, for example. Village events can be held where RP is mandatory. It happened in the early stages of Ainz' Mizukage term fairly recently. The problem is it relies on players setting up their own incentives. The Kage funds his own events through Village Banks that they set up rather than any system the game provides. Ranked ninjas are rewarded for their RP missions only if they make the lowbies pay for them, etc. It's high effort, and at the end of the day people are drawn back to the only thing the game makes easily accessible: PvP. I don't think this is necessarily the Devs fault. It's a feed-back loop. PvP is easy to find and enjoyable, so most people drift to PvP and demand content surrounding PvP, further isolating anything that isn't PvP. If changes to RP missions were pushed before the current balance patches, for example, people would be losing it. Any RP is going to have to live with that in mind. Assume the lore setting is a land in perpetual war, where no one is safe, and groups of Ninja have to band together to survive. Maintain RP within your group and when you're inevitably jumped, write it off as an IC attack by hostile ninja. It limits the scale of your RP interactions but as it stands large scale RP events simply cannot run without a Kage/leadership willing to push for it. The future for RP in Nin is expanding on the village systems, clans, RP missions, integrate village politics and banks. This will make having localized RP easier and more prevalent. Outside of the village, less can be done. I'd especially oppose anything that got in the way of the Open World PvP.

The concept of having the open sea that Mist villagers can run across is a good one but the main frustration comes from A. It not being apparent to new players that running is an option. B. There being a Kraken that will one shot them and make them not want to run the sea C. Maps filled with bears leading up to the port on the mainland It makes the already long distance between Mist and the rest of the game feel even greater. When I first started the game I hopped from village to village trying to find where I fit best. The moment I spent 7 minutes just getting to the mainland only to be killed by a horde of bears and get sent back to wait out BI, I decided Mist wasn't for me. With experience, the trip stops being dangerous but stays long and onerous. To relieve the pain points, I would shift the Kraken one map up from the mission giver, rather than on the path itself. Reduce the boat time to 2 minutes, it already takes 30 seconds to board for some reason. Finally, replace the bears on at least the first map with Tigers. I understand that the boat ride and sea is meant to give Mist defensive options to either catch enemies on the water or set up a defense at the port to catch people taking the boat. But ask anyone why they don't want to play the village with the best summon, the best tool and by far the best Org buffs, and its because it's far away and disconnected from the main end-game gameplay loops. People don't even bother HUNTING in Mist anymore. Who wants to spend an extra 15 minutes getting to and searching a village that's probably empty?

What do you mean by fix PB puppets? @Enver

Imagine ERP'ing, catfish or not, then showing up to the e-funeral and giving a sob-story speech. Nin community is different I swear.

Nah, orgs are fine. If anything they should just find a way to not let people stack 30 buffs in a bank alt. If you lose your buff, you're done for the next 24 hours.

I agree that there should be some limitation on these kinds of weapons. If they're meant to be so rare, and thus equally powerful, they should have the same limitations of org buffs being one-of-a-kind and time limited in some way. Otherwise they have to be made more accessible to players. It just does not make sense to have one Yamazaru in the game because the thing is so damn rare, and it's shared in permanent rotation by already the best WMs in the game. It's cool and thematic to have rare legendary weapons, yes, but it's also straight up unfair. Farming these weapons for 1000s of kills is no guarantee you'll even get one to put you on par again. Basically: have these over the top, buff level weapons be time/event restricted and make the rest more achievable.

+1. The number of times I swap hotbars and pop a pill mid-rotation is crazy