Hey Ninja,
I wanted to give a bit of a general wellness checkup on Shinobi Story & to give everyone some insights on the direction & our points of focus.
It was no surprise that the first phase of alpha was a lot of hype and did not live up to the expectations exactly. We tried a few things, and some worked, but mainly the general feedback we got was this: the world was too large; things were spread too far apart, there was a lack of combat for most of the alpha, and most importantly there was nothing to do. I'll break each of these down and give my take on them as well as solutions we're taking.
World is Too Large; Things spread out too far
We had good intentions behind this one. We wanted the world to feel immersive and real; providing a sense of grandeur that a lot of games today lack. Imagine an immersive and ever-developing ninja world where there are landmarks, towns far and wide offering different things, and a sense of exploratory adventure- ready to be explored and pieced together. Insidead.. we got, as some people put it: "running simulator" (?).
To fix this, we've been working on finishing the vast Land of Fire first, giving a unique identity to each town, completing the Hidden Village, and adding plenty of landmarks to explore and discover the secrets of. While we are keeping the large and enemy-rich forest, we are going to increase player movement speed baseline. This will allow for quicker ninja movement to feel more line movement in the show. On top of that, we are giving all ninja the baseline ability of [Ninja Traveling Speed] which is an ability you can use to grant you 100% increased movement speed while not in combat, but if you get hit by anything while using it, you will be dazed for a few seconds, but this will drain your chakra a little bit per second of use.
This would allow players to travel a little quicker between places, while not completely breaking the game, because the integrity of Shinobi Story is very important to us. We don't want to make the game free of challenges or easy-mode.
Lack of Combat
For most of the alpha phase 1 there was a lack of combat besides auto attacking. We quickly were able to make a projectile system, but there were only three elements available at the time. Making skillshots is more difficult and more time consuming on our end. A solution to this is: we are going to add slightly less skillshots, and add more jutsu in general of all kinds, but the abilities that are skillshot based will do quite more damage to make up for their more skillful use. While we want to make the most creative jutsu we can, the reality is we are not a very large development team. I promise you this, though: combat in Shinobi Story will be flashy, exciting, and unique. Expect good things from us in Phase 2 of Alpha!
Nothing to do/Lack of Content
Now for the elephant in the room.. I know. The alpha was hyped a little too much for the amount of content we had. There is no excuse for this, and it wasn't my intention to mislead anyone. The alpha was supposed to be a "testing Sandbox" where we test player functions, creation, map bugs, etc. We got a lot of info out of this, namely: our server has never crashed so far. The whole alpha was played without any server crashes! (?) Our core was very stable, and most people reported great connections and no lag. Unfortunately this was lost in the hype and ended up giving people a not so hot initial experience playing the demo version of Shinobi Story. This is not something I take lightly and will do as much as I can to deliver a fun experience in Shinobi Story. Over the couple months, i've been making quests to try to flesh out the story and to give things for players to do. Please understand it is a lot of work, as our dev team shrank a little bit after the subpar alpha 1.
New Direction for Shinobi
Let's be honest- Roleplay has been and always will be a niche that is very difficult to do right, if at all. While Shinobi Story was originally supposed to be fully RP based, we have decided to no longer prioritize it as much as we did before. This was decided months ago, and a lot of work has been put into making Shinobi Story more RPG based. This means that we are going to have a heavy emphasis on combat, professions, group/factions, politics, and power struggles. We want Shinobi Story to still have roleplay, so we are making most towns safe havens for roleplay, while the rest of the world is free for all.
We are also lifting the permanent death feature, but still keeping defeat punishments such as capture, break arms, legs, break jaw, rob, etc. We don't see permanent death as a sustainable feature and so we are moving away from it. Nothing will stop players from deciding to willingly kill their characters if they so choose to do in their roleplay. Team Members will still be able to host events, but not at the significance they previously were at. I know this may disappoint some of you, but for the health of the game we are transitioning to a RPG, similar to World of Warcraft & Runescape.
We are taking a unique approach, however. We will never be a "min-max" game, and no stats will be present on gear. We are working on cool new ways to progress!
We Need Your Help
We are recruiting in these deciding times- do you have any artistic experience? Do you know how to 3D model decently? Do you have previous experience in wow modding? We want to hear from you!
We are looking for:
3D modelers who specialize in lower poly 3D models
People who are able to texture 3D models
People with experience in WoW Modding (3.3.5)
Web Artists who are able to bring new life to our forums/website and hone our art style
Community support staff
If you think you have what it takes, please send a message to ModMail on our Discord, or PM me directly on here!
Thank you for reading this, and your continued support of Shinobi Story!
Vlad
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