So, care to address the moratorium on Shinobi Conversation, Ubi? | Forums

[Ru_Bolton]

By your own assertions, the character has the lowest win rates and among the lowest play percentages of the entire cast in all game modes. By other's assertions, the character has been voted time and again the hero in the direst need of a rework, for time periods spanning even before season 5.

Since that time, the character has been subject to a series of knee-jerk-reaction, band-aid nerfs to quell the complaints from the playerbase. Now, you are well and truly out of things to take away from Shinobi, and the results are showing it.

So the question is, why - in a situation where the borrowed time allowed by the aforementioned nerfs has been completely used up, and the community has been demanding answers - has there been no comment whatsoever on the developer's side of things? It's almost as if, as the title of this thread suggests, there's a moratorium on the subject, like there's no appropriate response contained in the all-important Ubi pipeline, and so they're barred from talking about it.

I've been wrong before, and to be honest I'd be happiest in this scenario if I was again. But that can only happen with communication. So, what are you doing about our ninja-flippy-friend? Or, if no information is available to disclose right now, when can we hear about it next?

Shinobi could be so cool, and have such a high and rewarding skill cap. It would be such a shame to leave them as they are.

[Beyond_Paradox]

I am not going to talk on behalf of UBI here. They can answer with regards to lack of communication.

I guess I just want to get something out of my chest regarding this specific character. Shinobi is built around to be kinda of a long range glass cannon character with extreme mobility and relatively low health. Such concept would have worked out if the game design philosophy can handle and integrate such concept in the first place. Sadly it does not.

The entire cast is built around being short range characters with very few outliers like Shaman. The rest of the cast range from having average to extremely low range with no reliable gap closing tactics. This means basically that Shinobi can dictate his own game on all others with such advantage and just completely neutralize the game's spacing philosophy.

In short, the character is problematic by design and there is no easy answer with him. They have no other option but to completely remake him from the ground up (which will probably trigger all his fans) or he will easily just be a new source of extreme frustration and unbalance in the game.

[Ru_Bolton]

I am not going to talk on behalf of UBI here. They can answer with regards to lack of communication.

I guess I just want to get something out of my chest regarding this specific character. Shinobi is built around to be kinda of a long range glass cannon character with extreme mobility and relatively low health. Such concept would have worked out if the game design philosophy can handle and integrate such concept in the first place. Sadly it does not.

The entire cast is built around being short range characters with very few outliers like Shaman. The rest of the cast range from having average to extremely low range with no reliable gap closing tactics. This means basically that Shinobi can dictate his own game on all others with such advantage and just completely neutralize the game's spacing philosophy.

In short, the character is problematic by design and there is no easy answer with him. They have no other option but to completely remake him from the ground up (which will probably trigger all his fans) or he will easily just be a new source of extreme frustration and unbalance in the game.

Those are essentially the issues, yes. Issues I suggest would warrant solutions, but obviously these remain to be seen.

[Knight_Raime]

Slight nitpick but the data Ubi shows is flawed. The only truly viable bit of data they post is pick rates for full population. annnnd a little bit from wins on full pop. But everything else is invalid and cannot be trusted to be accurate. Aside from this we are told that Ubi doesn't only use this data to influence their changes or lack there of. But we're not privy to what other "data" they use to make decisions. We also cannot take their explanations at face value because we get conflicting instances. The devs put their foot down on light spam complaints ages ago. Yet most recently Hitokiri had her light chain touched because of said complaints. Anyway, nitpick over.


I can only echo what the first poster said as a guess. His design by default is problematic. Ubi wants to avoid changing a hero's identity when doing reworks/updates, yet the problem with Shinobi isn't that his ranged moves are strong/hard to counter in most situations. It's that they exist at all in a game that does not lend itself to mobility or ranged combat. They'ed have to overhaul the cast itself in order to make his design not a big issue.

I suppose the other plausible explanation is just there isn't enough demand to see his kit taken care of. Shugoki is a great example of a hero who was called out relatively early in FH's life time but it took them a hilariously long time to even acknowledge him. IIRC the first time reworks were even mentioned as a solution to problems the devs had flat out said there wasn't any current plans to rework him. Obviously my own experience doesn't speak for everyone but whenever I see people mentioning reworks the 3 heros I see brought up the most are Orochi, nobushi, and highlander.

[Ru_Bolton]

Oh, agreed entirely about the data, it just so happened to coincide with an existing issue which is why I brought it up. As far as problematic designs are concerned, if anything they should warrant priority regarding a rework instead of wilful ignorance, irrespective of the alleged difficulty of it. Whether demand is an issue I suppose is hard to ascertain without bias, but I guess the more threads and posts like this exist, the easier it is to argue, right?

[Knight_Raime]

Oh, agreed entirely about the data, it just so happened to coincide with an existing issue which is why I brought it up. As far as problematic designs are concerned, if anything they should warrant priority regarding a rework instead of wilful ignorance, irrespective of the alleged difficulty of it. Whether demand is an issue I suppose is hard to ascertain without bias, but I guess the more threads and posts like this exist, the easier it is to argue, right?

Personally I don't think identity should be kept on principal. I agree that it we shouldn't jump at the chance to change a kit's identity but I think it should always be an option. To my knowledge it's not one with the devs. Hence the problem. Regardless I would love a rework to him as well. There are aspects I like about him. I even made my own suggestions thread on how to improve him. It would be nice if I didn't have a single hero in this game that I disliked. But as long as shinobi and shugoki exist as is...

[Ru_Bolton]

Personally I don't think identity should be kept on principal. I agree that it we shouldn't jump at the chance to change a kit's identity but I think it should always be an option. To my knowledge it's not one with the devs. Hence the problem. Regardless I would love a rework to him as well. There are aspects I like about him. I even made my own suggestions thread on how to improve him. It would be nice if I didn't have a single hero in this game that I disliked. But as long as shinobi and shugoki exist as is...

I think identity preservation can be useful insofar as reusing assets is concerned; if an existing animation can be repurposed in a positive way, or modified in such a way that the aesthetics of it don't break immersion, then doing so can save company time and resources and make it more likely a transformative rework actually occurs. A few such animations come to mind, in fact a post in another recent Shinobi thread suggested retrofitting the old minion-clear combo as part of the main kit, which in theory could be adapted in very creative ways.