Game Experience

[Dinodarwin 1]

Level 1-52 Thoughts

I understand there's a patch coming out soon and many things that I have concerns about might be fixed, if that’s so then I will update this at the bottom.

        I want to start this off by saying that I do love this server and the potential it has, but many things concern me and new players need to realize what they're getting themselves into. Reason I am starting to write this now is because I feel like at level 52 I have done if not most of the content, other than weekly bosses.

        When starting out you are in an academy and are learning the ways of the shinobi which is amazing and fun. You will get a quest and get lost and not know where to go. This is the main concern I have and hopefully the new patch will fix it. When you are a new player you don't have a guide or anything to tell you where to go or what to do. You get a quest that is just meet this person, rinse and repeat. Once you realize what to do and where to go the game will feel fun, combat feels okish, movement is really really nice once you get the feel for it. But once you get out of the “starting area” (which is just kono) you won't really know what to do after that. The quests are lacking and boring, 90% of the NPCs in the city that have quests are just titles and nothing else. If there is a quest then it doesn't chain and if it does it will only chain once or twice with no reward. As a new player I was confused on where the quests were and what to do, with lack of quests and stuff to do you will start losing players. After playing a bit I got bored, confused, feeling like this game has no sense of direction.
        That’s where one of the positive things happened. When I was looking for Jiriah (he was glitched and invisible), I ran into someone and he was willing to help me. He showed me how to do dailies and where to go, he showed me different things about the game. This is stuff that I had no idea about that the game lacked in telling me, this made me like the game more. I was adventuring off with him and he was showing me the world of Shinobi Story. After seeing most of the map I was shocked that the map was this big and there was a lot out there. But as a new player I couldn’t have known about this, if it wasn’t for him I would have quit and never touched it again.
        After adventuring off and doing some dailies, I asked him how I could level, at this point I was level 15 or so. He told me killing robbers until level 25, the scorpions until level 40 then going for the spiders or vultures until level 60 (max level). Again which is a common theme in this, I was confused. So only 3-4 different creatures in the game are actually worth killing, no quests, no pvp, nothing else to do in the meantime. This kinda made me not want to play the game, the reason I joined was to walk through the Naruto story as myself, to be Hokage. But knowing that 95% of the game is just grinding creatures and not doing quests and not adventuring helping other Shinobis out, made me not want to pursue this adventure. But, obviously I kept playing, the more jutsu I learned, the more fun I was having.
        I chose the sword mastery first and I fell in love with it, it was fun, strong and not slow. But what I wish for new players is that they will implement something where for the first 15-20 levels a mastery reset was free or maybe 50-100 ryo. I learned new players will join and choose a clan mastery first because they watch the anime and want to choose their favorite clan. But the clan masteries as your first mastery is not beneficial because the CDs are insanely long and you don't really do much but auto attack. Since you are level 10 or whatever level you are and you realize this, instead of buying a scroll from the cash shop you will just make a new character and choose something else. What if that thing I chose isn't good? How am I supposed to know? Why are new players getting penalized for choosing something they have no idea about? They will just quit the game and wait for another Naruto-like MMO to pop up, since the beginning is boring, confusing as hell, and grindy.
         Once you choose your mastery that you like (hopefully you chose it right the first time around), you can finally start the game and work towards your Chuunin, or grind. To work towards your Chuunin you need slips, this is done by completing dailies corresponding to the rank you need. For Chuunin you need 25 C slips and 35 D slips. This is really easy to do if you know what you’re doing. But as a new player, this will take forever, to find the garbage, carrots, cat, vegetables, milk, ect will take you awhile. Why is the vegetable crate and milk in as a D rank? As a new player I don't want to have to walk 30 mins every day to get these items? Yes you can buy multiple vegetables and milk so you can make the trip once, but as a new player you don't have much money you can’t do this. So that’s 2 slips I am missing to reach my goal. Let's say you do want to walk all the way over to the farm to get everything, how do I know where to go? Follow the road and hope you get there, because the signs don't help much at all without a map. You will have to rely on the map that players drew to get you there, and that map isn't the best too if you don't know the layout or city names. 
In between getting your Chuunin you will be grinding to level up since quests don't give you any exp to level up. Quests will give you about 5k exp or less but you need 100k+ to level at a low level. When you are killing robbers, wolves, crickets, whatever you will want to loot them so you can get as much money as you can to afford the milk and vegetables at the farm. But constantly looting them will leave your bags so full that you will need to throw so many things out (potentially losing money). Why do creatures drop so much stuff? Why do robbers carry a hammer and a staff with them when you don't even see them hold it while killing them? When looting something it shouldn’t drop 6-7 unique items, especially at a low level. These low level people are just starting the game, they’re not sure what is good and what isn’t. Their bag space is so low that after killing 3-4 different creatures their bag is already full. To upgrade the bags you will need Koban which is from dailies or killing mini bosses essentially. But you can only upgrade them once because anything past that you will need to spend $5, since your bags will always be full because everything drops so many things. 
          Once you farm a bit and get enough slips to be Chuunin, you just buy the recommendation and the application form, talk to the Hokage and you’re done. You are now Chuunin, which makes you stronger. My concern is that, why isn’t there a storyline to be Chuunin? Getting Chuunin doesn’t feel like you accomplished anything, unless the accomplishment is surviving the endless boring grinding. But you do get a vest that has no stats at all and you will need to put cards in the sockets to get any benefits of it, you wouldn’t know that because you are a new player, you don't have any cards. I just wish there was a storyline, like once you get your application and form, Jiriah gets taken by someone and you have to go save him or the village is under attack and by completing it the Hokage sees the potential and gives you the title of Chuunin. 
Once you get Chunnin you will realize, what do I do now? You have the same gear, same weapon, same everything since you started the game. You will be looking at the professions and seeing what you can make. You realize that mining is a thing to make your T2 weapon. You get mining and start mining Bronze. It takes 5 bronze to infuse to make 1 metal, and you will need 100 of them, making you mine 500 bronze for 1-2 weapons. Why will it take me hours and hours to get a T2-T3 weapon as a new player? It’s because there’s no other weapons in the game but those, you will be using the same weapon from 1-60. That’s where everything is lacking. You don't get new gear, you either upgrade it or have the same thing. If the development team was so focused on creature drops why couldn't they make more weapons? The weapons are all the same with the same names and stats. And with mining you can get silver but thats until you reach 150 mining which by then you will have your T2 or T3 weapon. Leveling up your mining takes forever and not worth it. For bronze you will stop receiving a profession point really early so you will need to get 5 bronze ores and infuse them, then hope you gain a point. Same goes for silver. Silver isn't common, the respawn time is 15 mins, and once you get to 220 mining or so, you will stop getting profession points unless you infuse 5 silver ores and get lucky, the next thing to mine is at 350. 
Another thing to do is PVP, which feels great and is fun, when it happens. For PVP you will need 8 players to queue up in a BG. The BG looks great, it's fun. But you can sit in the queue all day and not get one BG, or sometimes multiple days without a BG. This is where it's lacking, if you want to keep players, especially level 60s from playing, they need to figure something out about PVP. They are so focused on PVP but don't do anything to improve on it. Why is it 4v4? Why not add bots? I ran a WOLK and MOP server at home for guildies and friends to log on and have fun in, I had bots. The bots were advanced enough to the point where you were struggling or you couldn’t tell if it was a player or not. If Shinobi Story wants it to be PVP focused then why isn't there anything else but BG since that rarely happens? You could argue World PVP (WPVP) is a thing, but there’s no benefits in doing it? No EXP buff, no items, cosmetics. So players never have that turned on. There are parts of the world where WPVP is forced but it's in areas that you have to farm or bosses you have to kill for slips. Why force players into something that they don't want to be a part of? If I am going for my slips I don't want to be worried about dying from a level 60 and losing 5% of my ryo. Yes, you lose 5% of your money if you die in WPVP, including forced WPVP areas. I understand a WPVP area, and having it for people that love WPVP, but make warmode something worth doing, like if you have warmode on you gain more honor after every player kill. Something simple to get players to leave that on. It's like the developers have this fluid combat system but just ignore it and dont do much about it.
The other aspect of the game is PvE. Which to me is my favorite part in every game. Shinobi Story is in the right direction but lacks entertainment. There are bosses scattered around the world for you and buddies to kill, which is fun. The boss fights look cool and mechanics that aren’t too bad for a world boss. But with PvE there’s quests, and if you have been reading that’s where they lack in. Quests aren’t worth doing, they give you nothing, barely any exp, no item, no cosmetic. I understand the development team doesn’t want to give out cool cosmetics because they need to fund the server. But when there aren't any updates, no developer update, no showcase or anything it makes new players wonder if the game is being worked on. I just wish the quests had some meaning around it and a chain. A quest is supposed to tell a story. Even if you’re helping a random woman make some ramen, you could make it about her sick kid at home, so you will need to make some noodles and pick up some flowers on the way to see the kid. Just something for the player to read, to make the environment feel more alive.The environment feels dead, it has no personality in it. There’s rocks that don't have a hit box, disappearing trees, you can see through the map at times. Just seems like I am not playing the Shinobi Story I read/watched, but the Shinobi Story in someone else's mind. The quests should have a chain, even if the chain ends at level 60 and you started the chain at level 5, at least it gives the player a reason to keep playing. Give the quests some rewards, T1 weapons, cosmetics. Make a whole chain about team Guy and helping Lee overcome stuff, and through the chain you are slowly getting his outfit, slowly unlocking his feeling and passion. Just stuff like this I wish to see in the future. Quests right now are just boring.
         To wrap this up, Shinobi Story has so much potential in it. There’s a great community behind it. But There’s a lack of motivation and passion. I don’t wish to see the server die but in the path it's heading it will happen soon since new players get bored and quit at around level 20-30. I am willing to help, to write quests and implement them. But it seems they have a different vision. Thank you for reading this. 
 

[mastery reset enjoyer 4]

This is good feedback, on behalf of all the new players that silently left I thank you for writing up a concise review of the new player experience. A lot of great perspective in this write up. Hopefully it can be considered and help to strengthen the game.