[Miyamoto Ikana]

I personally feel as if the matter of rank being the sole factor into taking consideration of a Shinobi's skill seems to be a bit of a strange thing. Especially seeing in the world of Naruto as we know it, rank is not necessarily the sole measure of a Shinobi's strength and capabilities. Yet, for the forum, mechanic wise, it is. This is taken into consideration with the scale of SA, chakra amounts, and a vast number of other things.

When in reality, I feel as if the relative strength of a ninja should be based on the merit of their experiences and their effort to reach a higher level of training or quality, not the rank they hold. Especially because there may be characters that train incredibly hard and vigorously, but may not necessarily have the inherent goal or ideal of reaching a higher rank. Alternatively, it could very well be that a ninja may have more skill or talent than those above them, and have no ambition to further climb the Shinobi hierarchy for various reasons. 

My general idea is that the Shinobi strength system could be reworked so that based on threads of merit, total amount of experience, and otherwise, that a character can appeal to reach the next level of strength or prowess. That way, rank doesn't become a blatant correlation with power or strength but rather authority and amount of respect a Ninja might hold within their village. Ranking up could still provide justification for higher tier equipment, requirement needed to take higher tier missions, and otherwise, but also provides greater autonomy and privileges within one's village. As well as more potential to influence their village with said ranking.

Potential logic being.

All Elite Jonin are skilled. But not all skilled ninja are Elite Jonin.

This isn't super fleshed out, and I do have ideas on how to implement such a system, but was more so just posting my general thought on this, mainly because it always felt very strange to me. 

My thoughts can be elaborated, but I imagine that rank can still be important for a number of things. Such as the maximum rank of jutsu that can be trained for, rank of missions taken, etc, but I imagine that general strength of a character should be independent of rank.

Some might make the argument that it might create a situation where people could make genin and be as strong as Jonin or such. However, I'd argue that it would only be if staff allow such. That in order to reach that level of strength and power, the Genin must still put in the work to reach that level of strength, and get it approved by staff via appeal. Regardless, this isn't meant to be a rant, and I've taken into consideration various counterpoints, and would love to hear other members of the community's thoughts. 

I generally thought this up, not necessarily because of the direct powerup that comes with ranking, more so, I don't want to feel like my character's personal growth and effort is meaningless because a rank is in the way, acting as a sort of glass ceiling. That no matter how character trains or puts in work or effort, they can't be better or surpass another because, "I have a higher rank, I'm better than you."

[Mibōjin Kiho 昆™]

If this is the kind of thing you're looking for I can DM you to a sight were you can "grind" as a Genin and have the power of Hashirama if you dedicate enough time into "building them." However, this is not the site for that, and while I can see exactly where you are coming from this kind of talk should not be entertained here; because what will end up happening is that were going to get a shit ton of players "grinding" their Genin to a level above their rank and having to non stop hear about it.

I'm telling you right now, that talk is ANNOYING as hell. This place is supposed to have a balanced experienced with an emphasis on story over things like combat. The site give you more than enough to work toward if you're someone who favors that, but it should not become the focus, and with the amount of ego I've seen come and go here adding a system like that would destroy a place like this one. We have enough issues as it is, and once again scenarios like this one should not be a priority.

On this site if you want the strength of an Elite Jounin you can simply start out as one. Simple as that, but if you're looking to be like Toru Kaguya ( Jounin/Mizukage/Daimyo all by 14 ) then you need to put in the work to get there. I feel like Hans characters are the perfect counter to this argument to a better degree. Yeah you'll still need to promote, but if you're looking to build a character whose well above the people in his class THAT is how you do it. No system change needed. Just put in the time when building plots, doing missions, and whatever else is needed to get to that level.

[Yoritomo]

I will just throw a quick comment in here that way back when we were first getting the site off the ground, we did discuss having it along the lines of:

Rank:
Combat Rating:
Position:

and as far as I can remember the other early staff members mostly shot it down with the reasoning it could potentially encourage people to just sit and rank hold so they can punch down effectively. It wasn't the only reason, but it is the only one I can remember offhand. Regardless I do think it would be a bit difficult to convert at this point as well. So many systems tie into rank, so many characters have progressed under the idea of rank correlating to some level of strength and so many outcomes have been decided with rank as a factor in those decisions.

I wouldn't necessarily be staunchly against such a change, but at this point in time I don't exactly see it as a practical change to try and make either, although other staff may feel differently.