I'm not the only one talking about the plot - for example, this thread. And I quote:

"I have never seen a game fail so hard at retelling a story from the source material as I have with Naruto Online.

The story jumps all over the place, there is very little explanation for what is occurring on screen and most of the time what is occurring on screen has nothing to do with what occurs immediately after. The game doesn't even get the story right despite copying the fact that they only have to copy the manga or anime or the Naruto games. The missions jump from one part of the story to the next with only the barest of material to vaguely link the story instances together, even though that is frequently missing too. Sometimes the story loops back on itself and very frequently events happen without any context or explanation.

What made the original story so good was the fact that it made the viewer become emotionally attached to the characters, to their plight, to understand their hopes and dreams, to become emotionally invested in the story. But you don't do any of that because your story is a completely disjointed, undeveloped, poorly translated mess. You don't bother trying to flesh out the characters, to understand the story, to develop a connection between the story and the player. You simply jump from one event to the next and hope that the player's memory of the anime/manga/better Naruto games are enough to carry them forward."

One guy replied that “While one point I agree with is that in its current state the translation has quite some errors and issues, the team is aware of this and is working diligently to get them fixed.” This thread was in 2016. It’s 2018 and there have been no changes. Now that's what I call "working diligently to get them fixed".

Several more argued that people came to this game to use their favorite ninjas in scenarios that would never occur in the real Naruto series because they already know the story. Now of course, I can’t do that because my favorite ninja ISN’T PLAYABLE YET. But that’s beside the point – as I said in my second case, this judgement that people already know the story is invalid.

A while back in 2017, a guy called NarutoUchiha came up to one of my groupmates, MasaHaru, and asked to trade accounts with him. MasaHaru decided to troll this guy a bit by asking him random Naruto trivia questions to see if he was “worthy” of owning the MasaHaru account. But the guy said he hadn’t watched Naruto and as such couldn’t answer the questions. This took me completely off guard.

And, like I said in Case 2:

"A while back, I was quite surprised to learn that only a certain percentage of people who play Naruto Online have actually watched Naruto. There are a good chunk of players who have never watched Naruto in their life, and as such are completely clueless about the storyline, characters, etc. To them, the Naruto Online plot might be the only exposure they have to the regular Naruto storyline.

This is even more important due to the endless amounts of ads that Naruto Online has on the Internet. I can ask practically any of my friends who aren't Naruto fans about this game, and they will tell me that they have seen a Naruto Online ad somewhere. Clearly this game has HUGE coverage and a lot of people know about it. This makes it even more important for Naruto Online to be reflective of the Naruto storyline, or else you're not fully representing, or worse, even sullying, the creative work Masashi Kishimoto put into this series.

As such, it should be Naruto Online’s role to provide the best representation of the Naruto storyline that they can, to show all of the intricate thought and detail that Masashi Kishimoto put into the storyline and each of the characters."

This is the kicker. This game is a huge influence on people, and the fact that Dosu is portrayed as a bland and forgettable villain in such an influential game is really heartbreaking for me. It’s why I’ve been pushing so long for change like this, even if it may be hopeless.

And again, while it IS unfair to compare a browser game’s story to a gacha game, let me once again quote my Second Case:

"You don't necessarily need to align the game's storyline EXACTLY THE SAME as the manga. You just need to portray the same characters and the same storyline. It's fine if the actual storytelling is a bit lower quality, as long as it still points towards the same results."

I even provided an example of another game doing a good job of that in less dialogue than what you did! It wasn’t stellar, but it was still good and portrayed Dosu’s personality way better than what you guys did.

Calendars/Event Plans

I see a fair amount of games like this release something like a schedule that explains event plans and such. Or at the very least, there are games that release info on any given week’s new content a week earlier.

For those of you oldies who remember, waaaay back in the day they used to do a thing called Event Plans – which they would do monthly to outline what they planned to add within the month. There were no given dates/times, just promises of what would be added this month. They were vague, just like Kaiji Tang’s statement that I mentioned above. So they shouldn’t have been breaking anything.

What happened to the Event Plans? Is it because the plan to put Mood Scrolls back into the lucky wheel never came into reality?

I’m a N-O veteran. I started on the beginning stages of the game – S47. I remember old forum users like JeremyKohBS, BroJimin, Kouka, ProtoZero, Dym, AkashaMoka, PraiseLuka, the P2W elitist sk8erboil, the level-cap elitist Jinseoyun, the Ninja Profile guys Ywan and Yeize, and Triggs, the guy who did my old forum signature of Dosu. Even old mods like Sanamabits, Yuusuke, and Azuna-chan. Even more obscure people like Praise Jashin, Belerephon, TCOdelt, TakafumiNaito, Madafakers, and Aokawa.

Even if I barely play these days on my old server and I have no idea what the meta is these days, I’ve still watched on the forums, patiently praying for my wish to come true. I’ve been vouching for this ever since my first ever forum post, in which I proudly declared that Dosu, along with Kidomaru and Aoba, were my favorite Naruto characters.

I also think it’s funny how all the Event Plans were deleted, as far as I can tell. I tried to find them on the forum but they’re all gone. The only remnant of this is a Kongregate link here.

And I haven’t forgotten. Do you guys remember the “Polls” section? Never mind, I’m getting off topic here, that has nothing to do with Dosu or my issue.

Okay, time to wrap up a bit.

When I saw Dosu in the game, one of the first things I did was go onto an “Ask Oasis” thread and ask whether he was playable. My hope was torn asunder when I was answered with a resolute “no”; at that moment I promised myself, and my groupmates, that I wouldn’t spend a cent on this game until Dosu was added; then I’d whale my @ss out like there was no tomorrow. Sure, it was a bit of an exaggeration – I don’t have the money to whale big-time. But I’d definitely start spending as much as I could, so I could become at least a decently ranked player who still got wins with Dosu.

The lack of concrete response to my inquiries as to when he will be added – this state of being completely in the dark – is completely demoralizing. It’s really a tragic story that one of the few games who even acknowledges Dosu is so unwilling to communicate about him. I told you guys in one of the other Cases about Unlimited Ninja, a Naruto ripoff game that basically is a watered-down version of Naruto Online that probably came out around the same time as the CN version. I despise that game with all of my being since it replaced Team Dosu with an “Iron Armed Sound Ninja”, “Sound Secret Attacker”, and “Sound’s Brain”.

Naruto Online isn’t like Unlimited Ninja. This game has potential. It could be an amazing game. The concept is solid and the design is pretty good, but with some polish 1t could be made great. But this transparency issue is a huge blockade between that. Player suggestions are either forgotten or ignored. I remember way back in either spring or summer 2017, if I recall correctly, when someone suggested a Swimsuit Chikushodo to Tobei. He argued that Chikushodo needed an @lternate form since she was severely outclassed and needed usefulness, and Tobei said that it was actually a pretty cool/neat idea. Yet nothing has come of it since, even in the CN version.

So I won’t waste more of your time and get straight to the point. Nothing has changed in forever and it’s making me feel empty and hopeless inside. The lack of progress concerning Dosu and the sheer absurdity of many of this game’s practices is really frustrating me. I know I’m not the only one, since others – some of my friends on the forum, like Tiami – have left Naruto Online because of absurdities like this.

I know I’m not alone in this matter. There are quite a few people who want to see Team Dosu playable as well. Heck, in the survey I did a while back, 60% of the takers wanted to see Team Dosu playable. It’s not a perfect survey since there are way too many servers, but it had a decent amount of representation and it definitely can’t be ignored or written off as fully inaccurate.

Again, there's another post coming, please bear with me.

Team Dosu has not been forgotten. And seeing so many people agreeing with me... to all of you who’ve agreed with me about my Dosu argument, who’ve put up with all of my ranting – thanks. I love you guys.

...and in typical forum fashion a bunch of the images broke.

Tiami x2

I am not alone.

So I’m going to ask the mods some direct questions regarding Dosu to help clear up this fiasco. Some of them kind of overlap with each other, so please bear with me here. And I apologize beforehand if anything I say offends you – I'm trying to share my perspective on this issue here.

Question 1: What reasons do the devs have for NOT releasing Dosu?

Is it because he won’t be profitable? So what? Just release him with some P2W events! Introducing Dosu as playable won’t lower your income AT ALL! And it’s not like you have a limit to how many events you can do, right?

Is it because Tencent won’t let you? Why won’t they? Why can’t they? I learned recently that Dosu was actually playable in the Chinese alpha/beta version but was removed for unknown reasons. Why?

Why did they remove Dosu? I can’t think of any logical reason why.

I mean, it’s not an issue of resources. They have all the Dosu sprites they need. In another Tencent game that’s China exclusive and uses the same graphics as Naruto Online, Dosu is a fully playable character and has waaaaaay more sprites than Naruto Online uses.

So why make him playable in one game and not the other? It's absurd.

Question 2: Why wasn’t Dosu released at the beginning of the game?

As far as I can tell, you guys’s general pattern with releasing content is vaguely chronologically. It’s kinda like FGO, in that characters are released in a pattern that follows the story.

In N-O, first came Sage treasure, then Kage, then Edo Tensei and Lightning, et cetera et cetera. If this was the case, then Team Dosu should’ve been playable right at the start.

Why weren’t they?

Question 3: Why is Zaku the only one playable in the international versions?

I’m talking like in CN and Germany. Zaku’s the only one playable and that leaves me completely confused as to what the devs were thinking. Why release Zaku and not the other two? As I keep saying, again and again: it’s so bizarre.

Question 4: Mods, when you said that you “passed my suggestion to the developers”, did you just tell them that “a guy on the forum wants you to add Dosu as a playable character” or did you tell them my entire arguments?

You guys are moderators. It’s your job for Kami’s sake to communicate between the developer team and the players, and if you aren’t passing down everything…

Well, I don’t expect you to copy/paste the entire thirty or so pages of arguments that I’ve already written. But, at the very least, you could provide a synopsis or TL:DR of what I said, just to show that I’m taking this very seriously instead of just randomly suggesting something without thinking.

Question 5: Did you guys even pass along my suggestion to revamp the Plot Instances? Did the developers even read the suggestions I left for changing Dosu’s, Zaku’s, and Kin’s dialogue, or did you not show them that? What reasons do they have for not fixing the grammar and how characters are presented, and for brushing it off like it’s not an issue?

As I stated above, Daiske’s initial statement makes it sound like he didn’t even report my suggestion of editing the plot. I can’t help but worry that my entire argument isn’t being communicated accurately.

One more post...

TL:DR:

I’ve been waiting patiently for a year and the complete lack of follow-up on my Team Dosu suggestion, plus many other aspects, is making me concerned and frustrated about the issue of transparency. These issues in particular are bothering me:

-The feeling that they saw me as “just another thing to be dealt with”, as if they were trying to quiet me down and make me think they were considering it.

-The sheer absurdity/bizarreness surrounding Dosu and his team. They’re very easy to add because they’re already programmed into the game as playable characters, as shown in the alpha/beta screenshots. They’re villains from very early in Naruto, so they should be playable already if we really were going in chronological order. And don’t get me started about how Zaku is playable in CN and not the other two...

-The absurdity surrounding the Plot Instance script. I’m very confused as to how a developer team can look at the translated mess of a Plot Instance script and approve of it, along with why the writers can only fix it “when they have time”. Isn’t it supposed to be their job to manage the writing?

Overall, my entire battle to get Dosu playable is just a huge example of how oddball these policies are and how flawed the transparency between players and developers is.

That's all I have today. Dosu out.

Lord Oasis... or rather, Oasis, now do you see? I'm more than a mere puppet.

Also, an attempt at reposting the broken images. Never mind, I'll just quote them. Hang on...

"I was wondering why didnt Team Dosu put it in the game as a ninja... They have the ninja in plot Instance... So i dont think it was hard to put it as playable ninja. They got no love from the developer." - Real_Himawari

"Oh man, you really spent a lot of thought on this. I guess that's how you always are though. I agree!" -Scarbucks Coffee

"Dosu is cool who knows why he is forbiden from being in the game. where is suggestions at? I will make that post no reason why oasis can't do this one." -RokkuAoi

"I was always a fan of team dosu when they came out in the anime but they got shafted in all the games :(" -Shotgunman!

"I personally wanted to see Dosu longer. His character had so much potential." -ilovetoeatpie

"Dosu was awesome." -Saskyle

"well, i don't know much about naruto since i haven't watched it in a long time now, but i have to admit – if someone like enma is playable, then why can't dosu be playable?" – Lord Akira of Heaven's Gate

Perhaps I didn't make it clear – that part wasn't written by me, it was something that someone else said that was never acknowledged. I tried to ask about it and it did not get answered, which is an example of the transparency issue I'm trying to point out to the mods here.

I consulted some people before putting this up and they basically told me the same thing. So what's the solution then?

At the very least, can't Oasis/Tencent provide an explanation or reasoning behind all of these bizarre broken patterns and whatnot? As I said over and over and over, it makes no sense.

First of all, thank you for the very detailed response. I was unaware that you guys were swarming in suggestions like that. For the suggestions point, I guess all we can do for now is keep throwing darts at the suggestions board, hoping one of them will eventually st1ck.

I always took the filler characters being in CN as bad news and just another thing to be frustrated over to be frank. I never thought of them in that kind of way you pointed out. Interesting...

As for my own absence @Do I Care?, I felt like the Dosu thing and this game in general had began to negatively impact my real life in other ways and I took a short breather to let things settle down.