Originally Posted by
William
ahah tell us ur perspective, why not!
Alright I'll give this a whirl.
At the beginning of Toribash, people played Judo, Aikido, and TK a metric ton. Aikido probably because it was the first mod two players who knew nothing about Toribash could play just by a simple clap and you're off to the races. But TK and Judo most likely because Toribash was advertised as this game of ultimate carnage and massive dismemberments, and people were bad. So the only way they were getting decaps were when the threshold was paper thin.
In that similar ideology, the first wushu was born. The engage distance was super small and it had judo sort of thresholds, meaning the entire emphasis was on openers. This is where players like Amok shined. The oldest of old school wushu type players, which were more or less judo players.
What happened next, in my opinion, was an incredibly popular position. Two people would launch at themselves like judo, there would be no conclusive winner (no DQ or DM), and maybe 250 frames of the two players being very close to each other, but they passed each other. And there's 250 frames to kill. What do they do now? The natural answer excitingly became try to launch back. But it was frustrating to learn how to do that and often there weren't enough frames for it to matter to this class of players because almost everyone at Toribash still sucks.
With an interest in this newfound situation, a trend started. The engagedistance would get slightly farther away, putting less emphasis on the judo level of openings, the thresholds would increase for less RNG explosions, and more match frames were added. This is the Wushu that spawned the two very different and polarizing ways to play: Style vs. Pragmatism. To put it into clan terms, RelaxAll and HUNG vs. Alpha. There would be private meetups to enjoy this game in rooms with amalgram names like ralphung or ralpha or whatever insinuating if you're a known wushu player come here. Some players like Shezcudio took pride in the creation of incredible openers that were impossible for newer players to copy and understand, some players loved to improvise, helicopters were all the rage, and players like TIcux and Odlov started jumping backwards for the first time which is seen as unintuitive. This is the KamiKo, Sahee, Odlov, type of hayday. I think most people agree KamiKo was the best player in wushu and maybe toribash at this point of time.
The first time these two ideologies are finally met at odds with each other are clan league, 2009. You have two figure heads that represent the exact opposite of how to play wushu, but both of which are fair play players - Odlov vs. Sahee. Sahee is known as the guy who is all about movement and improvisation, trying to flow by using as little joints as possible, an old school exciting nuanced RCarey if you will. Odlov is often held all, concise, disguising attacks, more or less knowing how to win. 2009 CL is played in lenshu3 only, and Alpha and RelaxAll meet each other in a de-facto clan league finals since they were both favorites. Alpha beats RelaxAll, and some people take that as a sign when RelaxAll's non-practical helicopter attacks are losing to very simple openers. As part of the result. RelaxAll's best players leave for Alpha or retire. Sheczucido, Maldiluna, etc. go from RelaxAll to Alpha, Sahee quits toribash, etc.
The trends go as they have been, Alpha loses a ton of activity, HUNG dies and some of its ashes despite missing SlipAnc, BDO, AMB, etc are revived in fl0w. Really one of the only active players left in wushu from Alpha is Odlov. Now in public servers, you always had tons of people getting into wushu from 5th dan and below who just had no idea what to do, so they'd do the same youtube type openers, most unmistakingly, the sweep kick. And I don't know what possessed Odlov to do this, but he started noob clapping. The funny thing is, he was getting massive streaks in public wushu doing this. Sort of turns a lot of heads with players, not knowing what the future of wushu would be if he could win without a real opener against these beautiful and intricate helicopter kicks. This starts moving people a bit into thinking "hey maybe wushu is sort of...broken?" but that idea subsides quickly with an explosion of different playstyles. The engage distance gets further again, the thresholds even larger, openers matter even less, it's all about the comebacks now. That's the glory that's the gold that's what is exciting, comebacks. With more matchframes even further, looking at you brushu, comebacks are happening and consistently and it's exciting. You have players who play for flow and style like Deprav, style and winning like Begotten, all out aggro like RCarey, defensive clapping like myself trying to imitate a now AFK Odlov, and unintuitive and hard to predict like Logic. This in many people's minds is the golden age of wushu. Team wushu becomes a thing, there are tier lists of different players, people actively wanting to get better, it's pretty massive.
Simultaneous to all of this is two very polarizing opposites when it comes to the state of "competitive" wushu. People start joining two camps - Wushu is all about fair play and is competitive, or wushu can't be competitive and is inherently broken. Most people are shades of grey, but the black and white of this argument are Snake vs. Culapou aka TheGod. Snake keeps pushing for more realism, improvization only without the use of any openers, comebacks no matter what, etc. and Culapou keeps looking for ways to break down the idea of these styles of mods.
Then comes a tryhard revolution. Prior to this day, Clan League was an event you tried to win with your own clan's talent. But after this clan league, clan's would intentionally manage their rosters in an interest of formulating teams designed to win the event as a metric of being the best clan. After this clan league you'd see wushu clans like Alpha add in TK players like BlueEvil and RelaxAll unfortunately adds FistofLife to aid their situation. In 2013, the last clan league to feature wushu exists. And many of the hardcore duelers, im talking snapkicking shoveling running away all that matters is money and winning duelers are interested in clan league for the first time. It just so happens that many of them all are actually cool friends who enjoy hanging out with each other for the most part, this is TGS imo (they might not agree). Just as an aside, they weren't going to be DQ'd because of bad manners, the controversy was they let a player not on their official roster at the time play two inconsequential games in a match. And something ironic starts to happen - when WINNING is what matters, the wushu clans don't do so hot. Fl0w and RelaxAll and even to some degree Alpha get destroyed in wushu by a bunch of non-wushu players. I want to say at one point TGS won like 4-0 against RelaxAll in wushu. Now of course, the seasoned wushu player veterans knew that the meta as entirely different, these guys were playing to secure an advantage and not let the other player get a chance to win, but it meant a lot to the community that the bastions of wushu were getting their shit rocked by non-wushu players. I want to say it was deprav who famously got decap'd in a absolute bruiser of a wushu game that sort of made everyone cringe. The other problem was the non-wushu players who were winning against the wushu players were bored. They explained how dumb they thought the mod was, how broken it inherently was, etc.
After this all goes down, a straw that breaks the camel's back was the infamous CulaPou backplant in ninjutsu. He made a thread explaining if all you did was fall flat on your ass in ninjutsu, a wushu player's enjoyable striking mod alternative that had public servers, you could just wait , sticking your knees out for safety, and never lose. He boasted astronomically high win streaks doing this, so much so the staff had to intervene and say well I guess the mod is broken then and removed it. Not satisfied yet, he went into public wushu rooms, calling himself the best to have ever played. His opener was simple, raise a shoulder and contract an elbow to block his head, lower his shoulder and contract an elbow to protect his torso, and contact a knee. Turns out he could score some points and run the hell away and secure some pretty nasty streaks in public wushu. And with how long those matchframes can get when the other people is playing like that, wushu basically begins to die. You can't attract new crowds to play your mod if you're losing in it to the most boring gameplay imaginable.
In comes mushu. And mushu blows the hell up. Literally and figuratively. It's not seen as any kind of competitive mod, just something fun new players can enjoy as an alternative to judo that allowed them to have some of the creativity of wushu but the explosions and dms of judo, sort of like old school wushu. People enjoy the new interest dynamic of adding grabs and skeet shots into the match. Tournaments are held, and I think where wushu players desperately overplayed they hand was they fed the troll. They were made upset by mushu. They were onto think "oh no this is the enemy and theyre coming to kill wushu". So wushu players got pretentious, trying to deny mushu's existence, and that only put fuel to the flame. Eventually they add a box which "fixes" the mod in the same way people proposed fixing wushu years ago, and it's a massive success. Degenerate gambling starts taking place because it's a fun mod with a unique skill set, and now it's becoming a "dueler's mod". With people actually being able to create massive streaks in it, but newer players still getting the satisfaction of exploding people now and again despite knowing nothing about the game, this marks the absolute death of any and all wushu. Boxshu mushu just looks like it's a superior mod that bridges the two communities of wushu in a way only old wushu could - give the new players a way to have fun and get cool replays while giving the skilled players a new set of strategies and challenges. RIP wushu, we loved you.
Last edited by Bodhisattva; May 6, 2019 at 04:29 PM.