So as far as I'm understanding it, leveling up, cultivating, and awakening any of the ninjas you own boosts the power of your current team, but the only thing that boosts initiative is actually upgrading the stars of ninjas in your collection, correct? The other boosts seem to just be to all other stats.

I'm not really too bothered about the new layout of the ninja recruitment/exhange interface, it's easier to search for individual ninjas and the caps for now many frags you can redeem have gone up. It may not be as "aesthetically pleasing" as the collection scrolls but it's more efficient imo, and to me that's more valuable.

I do agree with SetANickname about the annoyance of going back to grinding elite instances for many ninjas now. Imo, they should have increased our stamina cap by 100 alongside this update since we now are going to have to be sweeping a lot more to a) get frags to upgrade ninja stars and b) get awakening materials since awkening is now more important. It is now much more frustrating to choose between which to prioritize, frags or awakening materials. Previously, I had starred up most of the ninjas I cared about so I was just stockpiling awakening mats with the stamina I had. Now I'm gonna have to do both.

Overall I'm not mad about the update, but I do think it could have been implemented a bit better.