Before we begin, I want you to provide you guys a general idea of what I’m talking about:
“Pirates, Ninjas and Politicians: Your wealthy, thriving communities will draw the attention of the dread Order of Applied Equivocation. Unlike the straightforward aggression of goblins and trolls, these new enemies will cheat, kidnap, and blackmail their way into your citizen’s homes… and coffers.”
-Stonehearth Kickstarter Stretch Goals
Okay, now that we have that cleared up, here’s my suggestion: a name change for Ninjas. I’d like Ninjas to be renamed Assassins. What causes this change? Well, the word “Ninja” itself is much less broad than Assassin. Ninjas, in my OCD afflicted mind, are much less broad than assassin. Assassins are the universally accepted term for hired mercenary SOB’s who wreck, infiltrate, and assassinate people, hence the name, assassins. I hope you support my name change preposition and if you don’t you’ll be at the wrath of my powerful OCD!
My understanding is that Ninja’s and Assassin’s are actually two very different orders with completely different backgrounds and different skillsets. Both of course, conducted assassinations, but as far as I know Ninja’s were more like a covert ops group of the time? Whereas Assassins primarily just assassinated?
I might be wrong there. Anyway back to the matter at hand. Ninjas are different to assassins and I believe the name should remain.
You are right @Geoffers747. Ninjas had tasks which have been broader than simple assassination. They where also used for sabotage, scouting and as spies.
Depending on what role the devs see for the Ninja, naming them assassins might not be appropriate.
at its simplest, all ninja are assassins, but all assassins are not ninja…
the ninja serve a feudal lord, who provides direction (beit assassination, espionage, etc.), and typically employ tactics of stealth and close range work… while an assassin merely kills one or more targets for money… the particular method employed can range from the stealthy to the Michael Bay…
I thank ye for not attacking my ears by making “Ninja” plural. Everyone else is in trouble!!!
Like a few people have said, Ninja were not people dressed in black clothing who simply ran around killing people as is romanticized today. Ninja, also known an Shinobi, were basically spies and mercenaries hired by warlords to gather intel on opponents by the use of stealth or blending in with opponent troops. Ninja are also known for performing assassinations on warlords and political officials.
All in all Ninja is basically the Japanese term for assassin so neither is really more broad than another. They are basically the same things from different parts of the world.
I’m both a Japanese nut and an Assassins Creed junky so both terms work for me. In my opinion the term “Ninja” brings along a lot of the romanticized and supernatural stories along with it and adds a little bit of flair to the game as Stonehearth is fairly European based.
Well I’m definitely not an expert on the matter! I just have a love of Japanese culture and have access to unique sources of information. I’m just glad I can make use of it here on the discourse.
I just hope everyone finds it interesting instead of my boring them to death.
I’m perfectly fine with ninjas, it’s simpler and easyer to say. plus, if you want to go by terms of hirees for dirty work, mercenaries would be a better work sense that word is even WIDER than assassins, sense assassins…well…assassinate, while mercenaries is still wider.
Ninja are different they are samurai intelligent dont just kill mostly actually spy for you as monks farmers entertainers or even court samurai ninja are different they are more then just killers
Well, I was thinking of the assassins as something closer to the assassins in Assassins creed. A group of people who follow a code, and you come into conflict with that code. So their response is to take over your city and gain influence by recruiting your citizens and by killing your guards and military units, in order to weaken your power in both the and political, and military category.
Edit: Of course, an anomaly like this would probably not happen until your city was a pretty decent size.
I realize that in Japanese, there is no way to make things plural so I’m technically saying it wrong. Still, it just sound “right”. And a good side effect is that is ticks you off!
@Geoffers747 Right, but Assassins are the universally accepted term for people who kill other people stealthily. I assume that their only use is to kill people stealthily, and Assassins are a better word for it. Ninjas do a whole host of other things, which you pointed out, and we also need room for Politicians and Pirates.
@LordNevs Yes, that’s what I thought of as well. Also, I hope you could hire a few to get rid of a few “troublesome” goblins/enemies/politicians.
@Swift_Cube please be so kind and start editing your existing posts if you have something to add and nobody else posted in between. This helps to keep the threads clean, posts a bit more content- and meaningful and overall looks a bit nicer .
The edit option you can find at the bottom-right of your own posts. It is an icon showing a grey “pencil”. If you edit your post this has also the side-effect that the thread is bumped.
I hope you don’t mind me merging your posts, just keeps the place tidy
Well yep there is that, but we don’t even know what the ‘ninjas’ will do yet!
It’s difficult to call for a name change when their behaviour might well fall outside of the remit of ‘assassin’.
If the ninja’s did absolutely nothing but assassinate people then I’d be with you on the name change, but it’s looking like they might play a slightly larger role?
Have to agree with you @Geoffers747. At the moment we know about the idea of having Ninja in the game but not what they are for. Based on my understanding I would assume that they are not simply killing workers. I could imagine that NPC factions might even send in some Ninja into your city to investigate it. If they find out that you have a lot of food but no guards… here comes the invasion. This way you could even prevent spionage by finding the Ninja.
Just a thought to show that this can go into a totally different direction.
Right, this is the weakness of any pre-release suggestion, you don’t know the game mechanics yet. However, the main reason I suggested it was that I just like Assassins more than Ninjas. The word itself just sounds more “right”. (That’s my OCD flaring up again. Please ignore it.)
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