NINJA TOWER: Musings from a Veteran Player

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Maybe they’ll increase it to 100 stages. And the players with the skill to avoid curses can advance further than others with comparable rosters. Then we won’t have the situation where the players completing stage 43 get the same final prizes as some of the players completing level 50. (So they only missed out on 35 emblems and 21 coins.) Strap in.> Blockquote

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Not sure that would be a realistic solution, 100 floors might be pushing way too long (unless the event lasts over a week), 10 stages per day was actually the right amount I.M.O. , it requires some time investment but it’s not an outrageous amount.

One Idea that seemed good was “Completion Rewards” every ten floors, that by itself is enough to solve the “floor 43 getting same rewards as floor 50” problem

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Not being able to replay stages is, in my opinion, one of the sucesses of the tower, “Play smart and efficient the first time around because you only have one shot at it” seems to be a good moto.

Tower should be comming back in december, right?

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Everyone wants to parcipate, and they can. That doesnt mean everyone should be able to finish it the first time it comes around (Hence my personal example with Grimforest) and specially not everyone should be able to autoplay it for the rewards (which seems to be wanted by a vocal minority) like what happens in rare quests such as mount umber.

As I said, I had ZERO heroes blocked due to being cursed. Having mutiple heroes allowed me to adjust my teams according to the boss, it’s not like I got 30 cursed heroes and plowed through using the rest.

To be more Specific, I brought Tarlak on all 50 stages, I brought either GraveMaker or Mitsuko on my position 5 according to the level (if there was a blue boss or not), besides those 2 slots I always brought 3 heroes to be strong against the bosses so I used a total of 16 Heroes throughout the entire tower (Including the 3 I just mentioned).
Yes, I played with 5* heroes since stage one, The only 4* I used (by choice) was a Costumed Rigard that’s talented up to 19.

About your time here specifically… Well, I only got my first 5* hero on my 8th month playing, the Grimforest incident I originally mentioned was in October 2018, it was my Eleventh month playing. As I said, I couldnt finish it. Next time it came around i had gotten stronger and managed to. Progression should be a part of every game.

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I’m happy for who enjoyed Ninja Tower and I found it interesting too, but… I DEEPLY disliked the specific token that forced me to play more time every day, about 1 hour more per day and even more: I don’t want to become an addicted player so, now that I tried it, I’ll stay away from Ninja Tower or decide how to spend my game-time sacrifying others game-activites.
I want to be clear: It’s not about rewards, nor gameplay… it’s about the INCREASING TIME that we have to spend in the game in order to complete all the tokens (WorldEnergy, Raid, Titans, War… and now Ninja).
THIS IS A WAY TO GRAB PLAYERS AND LEADING THEM TO PLAY MORE AND MORE.
BE CAREFUL, PLEASE.

Small Giant please re-think this aspect.

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OP: Great assessment of the Ninja Tower.

I enjoyed it a lot as well … great event. I think the emblem prizes were ok, but getting a 4* ascension prize, in addition to the emblems, would help make it even more interesting. @Jabarj

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I am happy for those who enjoyed NT. For me, the root of the problem is that I didn’t enjoy it. It was a monotonous grind. It was like watching my screen saver for 6 hours.

I do not mind that heroes could get cursed and eliminated. I did not mind the difficulty. It was just that it was the same thing, over and over, for 50 levels. The curse mechanic meant little strategy or game play other than matching curse tiles on the last 5-10 levels. That made the monotony worse, not better. The enemies were a blur.

YAWN. 50 levels. YAWN some more. Look a blue ninja this time. YAWN.

I finished to see if I could do it. If I didn’t feel a compulsion to complete things I start that I probably need to discuss with a therapist, I would have quit half way through. I did not enjoy the trip, so won’t be repeating it unless there is a reward that makes it worth this same mindless boring marathon next time.

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It is never about being able to finish…but when you bring about a new event everyone should be able to compete… Even the monthly events not everyone is able to complete legendary… But they are able to do Rare and feel competitive…And with a big arsenal you always have the choice to form team according to the bosses and also rely on other heroes incase you get the Oni curse… The same does not happen when you have limited good heroes and a curse would only make it worse for them…So basically when a new event comes it should be rewarding for even those who worked hard though they had limited heroes…and not everyone is lucky with the boards…having a limited arsenal means longer battles and longer battles mean more chances of Oni Curse…

A gameplay should be able to reward risks… Maybe I could not complete the event no issues…
But atleast being the level I am… I made it to 42 so I should be rewarded for that effort… Which happens in the monthly event atleast I am able to compete fully in rare segment and I get rewarded for it accordingly…

There can be big n small rewards… That is all right… But you need to reward at different levels so that someone can put a target and try n achieve that… Just putting out 50 levels out there and having no reward for completion at any level basically is only competition for the top players… So simply you cannot say it is an event for all…

Do your survey ask people who have been playing for less than 9 months whether they enjoyed the event and you will get your answer for it.

I am not denying anything you has said…but then every player has a different version and it looks different from where he stands…I can say this because I have invested 7 months in this game and the Ninja Tower din’t feel right for me atleast…

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For me personally, it’s one of the best events, finally the rewards for playing it for 2 years, I haven’t spent a lot of items so I’m extremely happy, definitely better than a pub with which I have nothing.

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A Situation such as these is excatly for when i saced my tornadoes and diamonds, at a moment like that i pushed my emergency button to have the biggest number of tiles cleared possible and try and get tiles of the color I needed to come up.

Thanks for the feedback, it’s always nice to find more people that liked the event (and I am finding lots after I decided to post this), in the beggining I was seeing so much negative feedback about the tower that i found it really odd. After posting so many people reached me to say they liked and they are eager for the event to come back, and also a lot o people has contacted me to say that they didnt play it this first time but are now eager to try two months from now. Made me really happy.

I didn’t mention summons on my post, that was intentional. I Agree that there could be more coins for summons. If you look at Tavern, you complete 10 levels to get 2 summons, in the tower you had to complete all 50 to get enough coins for one. Once again, the adition of some completion rewards every 10 floors with some coins could be a nice solution to that.

THIS!
My understanding is that hey will overlap, we usually get christmas seasonals lasting he entire month of december and the tower should be 5 days on the third week, no biggie.

You had me at “YOU” :smiley:

I Like the Tavern gameplay, first time it came around I had to put my heroes on an Excel Spreadsheet and assemble my teams (assembled them starting on lv 10 and comming back to 1), but I just think it’s not enough, I usually complete it on day one and the other days the event is simply there In my quests doinging nothing, it would be fun to have new levels unlocking each day (used heroes could get randomly unlocked to allow playability on those stages) and on this I found the tower to be far superior, I had levels to play each and everyday of the event.

I’d like to have a conversation about tile algorithms (and aout the game’s RNG as a whole) as I have a few Theories of my own, but this topic does not seem to be the apropriate place.

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So Happy to read that Samatha ^^

There a lots of valid strategies, yours seems nice.
Friend of mine told me he monoed the last 20, replacing any cursed heroes for another of the same color and after that chaging for a mono of another color once he was unable to replace heroes.

I prefer my “Thanos Challenge” approach, but I see all 3 as valid strategies.

Probably the most intelligent thing I’ve read in a long time! “You don’t HAVE to do it, you also dont have to BASH it!”

I Mentioned in one of my comments, one of the heroes I used was my Costumed Rigard, and it was purely by choice, I have other option, but I really like the Hero.

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The event was ok. Not great, not terrible. The reward payout is decent. It was a bit monotonous. I was unable to finish the event, even at 2+ yrs and a lvl 69 player with deep benches.

I ended up getting frustrated with the rate of Oni stones the RGN decided I needed to get. 50 to 60 some levels. It became almost impossible to clear them when you had stone and 1 tile on the board of the matching color. 3 well planned moves later, still not another matching tile. This became the norm as the levels progressed. I discussed with several players in Line and Discord and they agreed I was getting a much higher rate of stones than they were. I took and posted multiple screen shots of stones with either no or just 1 matching tile.

In the end, I will try the event again. Hopefully the outcome will be different. I do appreciate the attempt at adding new content, but perhaps this just want for me. To those of you that did enjoy it and finish it, a sincere good for you!!

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I Ensure you I Wouldn’t Complain

I didn’t find the Ninja tower very fun this time and it felt more of like a chore than anything. Sure the mechanics are new but its not something extraordinarily interesting for me. Sure you get emblems but the overall rewards don’t at all match the effort. I think it is geared towards players with an extensive roster of 5* heroes. How many maxed 5*'s do you have?

This is all luck. Either you got lucky with the tiles/combos or you have extensive enough roster where you can just bench heroes who are 1/2 cursed. I know people that spent damn near 100 tornadoes and still had cursed heroes.

I’d honestly rather have ToL every month than Ninja tower.

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My time constraint is my job and RL responsibilities so yeah, twice a day occasionally 3. Usually for an hour and a half total. As I said, that would be fine if there weren’t other things to do in the game like titans / wars / hero feeding / etc. I could see for me the Ninja Tower using up a major chunk of that hour and a half all by itself. And no I don’t even WANT to spend more time than that on the game.

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I used a total of 16 heroes, 15 5* and 1 4*, not because I didn’t have other 5* to use, but by choice.
I took Tarlak on all 50 stages, he finished 1/2.
I took a red on my slot 5, it was always either GM or Mits (Mits when there was a blue boss around), GM finished 1/2

In the other 3 slots I always tried to take heroes that would be strong against the boss that I found more problematic so the combinations were those:

Evelyn, Kingston, Delilah
White Rabitt, Drake Fong, Delilah
Zimkitha, Marjana, Delilah
Costumed Magni, Finley, Ariel
Guardian Panther, Kageburado, Costumed Rigard

Evelyn, Kingston, Delilah and Drake all finished 1/2
I had no hero blocked due to curses.

Would I have been able to replace those heroes should they get 2/2 on curses? Yeah, I would.

Do I agree that changing from 2 curses to 3 would make the tower more accessible? Yeah, I do agree.

Did I personally need it? No, I used a total of 16 heroes.

Might be… Mr. Spock also said my experience was colored by luck as he had around 30 cursed heroes before finishing… I dunno what to say, I already said that I understood it was a curse managing game, I accepted it and played around the oni tile all the time. Don’t know what else I can add…

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You’re not obligated to do the tower, I did because I had fun doing it. If you’re not finding it fun or if you prefer to spend your time elsewhere it’s completely OK.

I didn’t think the time to finish it was much higher than the time to finish all 3 difficulties on challenge events (not even sure if it was), but as I said, if you don’t want to do it (or don’t want to do all levels) it’s nk biggie.

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I never said it was a biggie, I was just offering my opinion as a (somewhat) casual player (which the vast unheard majority in the game are). Most of the opinions we hear on the forums are from dedicated players who invest a LOT of time and/or money into this game. But they represent a minority of the actual players who play the game. I try to inject a different perspective into the discussion. Yes, you can just ignore the tower just as you can ignore the balloon or the legendary challenge levels or raids or war etc etc etc.

For me personally it is hard to let things go in the game. Heck, I still do most of the basic low-level quests even though farming 8-7 gets me much more for the effort. But that is MY issue, not the game’s. Still the amount of content recently added can be very daunting for casual players. That shouldn’t be ignored.

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I agree. The oni gems was a great challenge and it’s impossible just throw stones and hope for the best or 5 heroes charged.

I’m a level 62 player with almost 2 years and awful luck. I played the tower with 4* heroes and some of them without emblems. Hero roster it’s not a problem, it’s manageable. The tower demand a strategic play style.

In the end I received 25 emblems, using Sartana and Lianna 3 times, Sif 1 (50th floor) and Bai Yeong 5 times. 1 to 45 only with 4*s. Even LJ costume was useful. The tower tested my skills and I’m very happy with the result.

The troubling point it’s the time spent within the event. Every night I played 10 floors and it’s kind exhausting after a long day.

Overall I really liked the challange.

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I disagree. The tower it’s skill. Sure if you have a ton of 5*s to burn great, you could play without concern. For the rest of the people? It’s skill, patience and strategic planning (don’t pop every diamond and dragon, leave there, make center stones after a oni gem, etc).

I have Telluria, Puss in Boots, Arthur, Frida, Alice, Vela, Panther, Lianna, Sartana, Sif, Bai Yeong maxed. And I only used Sartana, Lianna, Sif and Bai in the last 5 floors.

I received 25 emblems, using Sartana and Lianna 3 times, Sif 1 (50th floor) and Bai Yeong 5 times. 1 to 45 only with 4*s. Even LJ costume was useful without emblens. Gullinbursti, Kash costume, 0 emblems. The tower tested my skills and I’m very happy with the result.

Using just bombs in the bosses and mana in the end. Tornadoes I used in 4 floors and that other hunting lodge item I took in the last floor (my lodge is in level 3 by the way).

3 heroes cursed and some with 1 curse. And pretty awful boards from 31 to 40, the rest was normal.

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