Nin Online 2022 Recap


Ueda

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 Nin Online 2022 Recap

Yet another year of active development!

It's a little late, but I don't want to miss out on the annual chance to flex all the work that's been put into Nin Online. The past year has been riddled with challenges, but thanks to you, we worked out hundreds of long time issues that were reported by players in our issue tracker.

In 2022 alone, we resolved over 300 Issue Tracker Bugs.


Player Growth

In terms of Nin Online's player base growth, in 2022, we saw 10548 new registrations across both NA and BR servers. Although this number wasn't as high as last year's, we did see a higher number of registrations that actually made it to at least Level 10 in-game.


Balancing

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We put a lot of emphasis on balancing in 2022. Starting the year attempting to balance Nin Online with the help of balance surveys that collected statistics on what players felt about each part of balance in-game and give feedback on various areas of the balance.

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We used this data to attain a much more reasonable balance state before handing over the responsibility of balancing to the Player Balance Team spearheaded by @Raitou.

The balance patches were a struggle to get out at first, balance patches needed to be vetted heavily because of demands that weren't possible, would break the balance entirely, or require entire new features. Some of those new features were added as a result of the requests from the balance team (eg. Life Steal, Chakra Steal, Fortitude Buff Reworks, Jutsu Stat Scaling Options etc.)

Players complained that the balance team was doing it's job by telling me what to change, but I wasn't implementing them. Not knowing that the entire time I was actively in discussion with Raitou having the back and forth to come up with the list of changes that can actually be used. So at one point, I released our entire chat log on Discord to show what was going on behind the scenes.

Overall, despite it's ups and downs, thanks to the balance team taking over, a lot less time was spent on balance by me personally, and more time to focus on adding features to the game engine.


Content

In all honesty, new content took a bit of a backseat in 2022, with more focus on enhancing, streamlining and generally improving the existing gameplay experience. But we still managed to do quite a bit in that area, here are some of what we did (including improvements)

Level 40 Story Arc Release

 

 

Story Arcs streamlining
Story Arcs were hard to locate for new players, so we made them all begin and end in the Mission Assignment Desks.

Sub-bosses (Angry Larva etc.)

Trophies, including boss trophies

The following changes were actually features that had to be added to implement as content, but I'll put them here simply because it fits neater into content from a player POV:

Horoscope/Charms Rework
Cloning Technique
Life Steal & Chakra Steal on Weapons and Jutsu
Fortitude Buff Rework
Status Cleansing Items/Jutsu
Jutsu that can destroy projectiles
Exploding NPCs/Mobs/Summons

Antidote Maker, Bandage Maker, Bee Keeper and status cleansing items sold by them
Jutsu Stat Scaling Options, Jutsu with multiple stat scaling, scaling %


Other general stats
100+ Items Added
44 NPCs/Mobs Added
6 new hairstyles added
3 new jutsu
17 new furniture
30 new maps


Features

Team Automated Tournaments

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Our automated tournament system that was added late in 2021 was expanded to include Teams and Team Brackets.

Automated Tournaments start being scheduled

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We turned the automatic tournament system even more automatic by scheduling the server to automatically host tournaments every 6 hours! These tournaments vary in team size and arenas to mix things up.

Minimap System

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Quick Login system

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NPC movement rework, A* Pathfinding, NPC running, smooth NPC wandering

ImGUI added to engine and used for future UI

Map requirements system, this was quite internal, but a major rewrite to how content was organized, and made restricting maps to certain people, like leaf ninja in leaf hospitals, clan members in clan houses, all done in one place.

Player Mail

New Player Right Click Menu / In-game Profile

Fame System

New Friends System
Including the new Friends Menu and Social Settings

Game Guides (came with adding GIF support to Nin)

Instance Map Warps (Solo Instances, Team Instances)

New Mission Log and Mission Tracker

Death Rework

Fishing

Reworked HP regeneration system that uses chairs, beds to start regen faster

New Buff UI

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More use of Lighting Effects (Projectiles/AoEs)

https://www.ninonline.org/forum/uploads/monthly_2022_04/aRKzM6p.mp4.3e13a8f323c434200cf182d8f5ef576f.mp4

Other notable features
Exile cooldowns
Blessing Messages
Lighting Effects on Jutsu
Client-side anticheat against tampering files
Upgraded server to .NET 6
Death animation/sounds
Camera Button
More Menu
Moved more content to Cloud Database (MongoDB) including Animations, Titles, Ranks, Villages, Emoticons, Missions, NPCs and Shops.
Invite Only Event/Tournaments
Seasonal Tileset Graphics
Hair Y-Masking Feature to cut off hair nicely for hats
Hair Color Intensity slider for hair dye
-Camera controls for events/dialogues
-Animated Furniture
-Item Packs / Gacha Packs
-Improved Buff Durations, forever buffs, settings for buff to dissappear on death and on logout.
-New Kage Menu
-Partially implemented Auto Chunin Exam, In-Game Rank System (Still WIP)
-Emoticons Menu
-Equipment Lighting Effects
-Furniture Lighting Effects
-Max Piercing for Projectiles. Previously we only had piercing or non-piercing projectiles, we added number of pierces before they get destroyed.
-Proficiencies Menu
-XBR Upscaler Option


Notable Bugs Fixed

Buffs application by Jutsu were entirely reworked to fix debuffs appearing randomly on wrong target
Buffs reworked to be applied by Jutsu properly, was hacked together in the past. This was big feature and necessary change. Before this, debuffs could sometimes appear on the wrong player because of how badly coded it was.

Fixed chakra charging being interrupted by traps

Fixed a bug that was causing wonky Boss AoE range

NPC Aggro Bug fixed where NPCs suddenly just stop aggroing players


Notable Quality of Life Improvements

Colorblind mode

Revamped Buffs/Debuffs HUD + Buff Descriptions

Chatbox was reworked, twice
First time it just had the fade, then it was completely remade with new features like emote selection and click to PM, dynamic resizing.

Stat reset warnings
people accidentally used stat resets a lot before 2022. Confirmation prompts were added for a lot of things people accidentally did too, like leaving corporations.

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Hairstyle previews in cash shop previews

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Rotatable characters in hair dye and shops

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GM Tournament/Event hosting panels
Before, GMs had to type long text commands to host events. We added a panel to streamline it.

Silver Ninja got silver chat bubbles as requested

Reworked on screen HP Bars, adding colors for alies, team members, enemies, zones and also

Consistent server time based on real world clock

Trade Requests and Party Invites reworked to be notifications instead of appearing under old chat box

New Damage Number Messages (It used to just move upwards jankily)

A lot of UI moved to ImGUI
including Esc Menu, Run Indicator, Options, Cutscene Screen Flash, Report Window, Login Status UI, Tournament Brackets, Developer Editors, Confirmation Prompts, and one of 5 UI systems deprecated (WolfUI)

Trade Requests no longer require you to stand beside tradee

Plus 1 daily mission

Hovering Item Drops for Names and keybind to reveal all

Reduced Rain Effects


Back End Improvements

Improved server boot time by 100%

GM Tournament/Event hosting panels

GM Accountability features, like announcing all actions

Improved Logging heavily

New Map Editor Features

Puppeteer Feature for admins to control other players (for debugging/testing mostly) But could be used for more in the future


R.I.P Robin Perris (1991 - 2022)

My game development partner, Nin Online's co-founder, mentor and my dearest lifelong friend, Robin Perris, left the world in late 2022. He was the backbone of Nin Online in a multitude of ways. Whenever a technical issue was too much for myself, Wolf, Seth, Abhi, Eddie - Robin would be the person we go to. He was my mentor in managing projects and set me on the right path to work on Nin Online back in 2013. He took over the project completely from 2014-2016 when I was in National Service. Robin Perris meant a lot to Nin Online, and Nin Online meant a lot to him as well.

When he was a kid, he worked on a project named "NarutoRealm" that was the entire reason I started wanting to make Nin Online later. He taught mentored by through UI/UX, Programming and even Art at times.

Robin was talented beyond his years, and was ahead of everyone in our community because he loved creating games and game engines to the point of obsession.

Nin Online will never be the same without him.

Rest in Peace Robin <3 I'll never forget you, and I hope everyone who plays Nin Online at least hears your name once.

For those who don't know the history of Nin Online, I'd like if you could take a few minutes to read this article. This video also explains a lot about who Robin and myself are and how we grew up as game developers.


Conclusion

Nin Online had an outstanding 2022 year of development, with probably the most features implemented in a single year since the start of the game's development. Thanks to the balance team, we also managed to reach a much more enjoyable state of PvP and PvE that players can (mostly) agree on.

We ironed out a lot of major player reported issues, and added a ton of quality of life updates that players had been asking for. Look forward to a 2023 report with just as many or more updates as always!

This article only sums up some of the development in 2022. There is a lot more that isn't covered. For the full patch notes, you can start on Page 34 of our Patch Notes.

Unfortunately, we lost one of the most important people to Nin Online, my dear lifelong friend, Robin Perris. Nin Online will never be the same without you buddy. But It'll always be part of your legacy as much as it is mine.

If you like Nin Online, you can support us by sharing Nin Online to your friends and family, buying cash shop items or telling your favorite YouTubers to talk about it!

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