Over all great read.

Me personally, I had set a goal a long time ago, get as many ninjas as possible before I get a new PC. Then when that happens I'll leave the game and play WoW again. I never cared about rankings in games so I never found myself to get as much power as possible. I like the fact that you can collect a lot of ninjas (I have pretty close to 150 ninjas). I also love doing shenanigans in the game such as using Normal Asuma with Itachi for essentially an infinite mystery despite being terrible.

I have gotten myself to 140k (on power team or 135k with Edo Hiruzen) and another character to 144k and a 3rd to 80k with the latter 2 focusing on power.

Everyone else on my server is 150k+

I never really bothered with SWB, Matsuri, or even Bonds. The only PvP I do is Arena, 3v3 and GNW which is the only PvP that matters to me. Only reason I opt out of SWB/Matsuri/Bonds is because I refuse to feed higher power players in those events and I know I will face them. Meanwhile doing say 9tails and Jin can still let me get the resources I need (although slower than people who do participate in SWB and Matsuri).

Because of these things I have never really needed a break as I focused on myself rather than who gets what. So currently, I'm saving to 20k to get another 20k ninja or so. Maybe, it will be Madara GNW (white mask obito), or I'll pick up Edo Itachi, Edo Minato, Rinnegan Sasuke, or even just save for Jinchuriki Madara whenever that is released again. No idea, though I really should work on upping my refines a bit on edo hiruzen so I can have him a bit stacked since I played this game keeping all my power spread out.

Hell I have an ingot only ninja (Tenten [Cheongsam]) which I grabbed when it was in Fate as a redeemable.