Toribash
Original Post
Community Outreach
Hey,

Something that's been on my mind for a while and that I've been meaning to do is having a conversation with the community about what you all would like and what changes you would want to happen.
We can also address any questions or concerns you might have or general things you want to say to our team to improve our communication.
I feel throughout the years the divide between the players and staff has gotten greater and would like to see the connection between us be improved.
This thread is going to, for a while at least, act as a basis for improving community-staff interaction.

Some things that I personally want to improve on and hope will happen:
- Communication
- Game activity
- Game enjoyability
- Events
Along with anything else that might be brought up in this thread.

Let me explain what I mean by improving communication:
There is a giant divide between staff and players.
I understand how frustrated the community might be with staff over things like not being informed about the clan system change and about prizes on events.
We're staff of this game for the players and we’d like to make this more obvious and visible through our actions, and to make sure everyone feels included.

We get a lot of feedback in the form of backlash and banter.
I want to change that and focus our discussions on what the game needs more.
The staff team will listen to any suggestion brought up and try our best to respond to everything.

Regarding game activity:
We all know that the Toribash has been losing players for a while now.
However, there are usually way more beginners online than there are people on the forums if that is any consolation.
This is why we are planning to move even more events client-side soon.
There have already been some very successful ingame events:
- Free Run Frenzy
- Hole In The Wall
These events have gotten amazing participation from everyone, and we want to do more events like this.
We believe that other events whether competitive, art-related, single-player, etc, will benefit greatly by being advertised and run in the game client.
Our main focus will be events focused on beginners, which will hopefully keep beginner retention up.
There are also some plans to make new items which are accessible to and aimed at beginners.

I'm interested in knowing what the community thinks about this.
For the time being, there will still be events held on the forums but as soon as we can get some dev work done to bring everything to the game client, we'll do that.

Regarding game enjoyability:
This is something that we need your input on, this is your game, and you're playing it.
- What kind of changes do you want to see?
There have been some ideas which could change up the meta a little bit in mods like ABD,TK,JF, and particularly lenshu.

If anyone remembers LesDuncan and what he was doing with TPL, it's sort of similar to the martial arts community now, in the way they've hosted fightnight events and they make new mods.
LesDuncan made a version of ABD in which lifting was still viable, however there are walls and a ceiling that prevented it from being a huge difficulty.
This mod is not perfect, but I would like to see what you all think about it.
In particular, what (if anything) would be required for you to consider it a competitive mod?

About Lenshu:
I believe Kane and fl0w have done an exceptionally good job on their winpoint lenshu mod.
When I mention TPL, this is the kind of mod that I'm imagining.
The running issue has been fixed, and a new feature like winpoints were added.
The communities reception on this event has always been good and in a competitive scene most people prefer this mod to normal lenshu3ng.

I'd like to ask everyone a question: when you play the game does it still feel rewarding?
Do you have anything you want to do in the game still, do you want more purpose?
There are ideas like a free battlepass, just quests for rewards.
Another one that we've had is automated tourneys with different rewards, starts at 10 people in the lobby, could be more TC than usual, or rewards from magicalsack(like an automated etourney but with worse rewards) but like stated previously, we're unsure what we should do.

My vision would be making adjustments to every competitively played mod and hosting events in them.
Just with slight adjustments, the way we play these mods is changed and it makes it more fun.

Regarding events:
Historically, prizes for events have rarely been amazing, and I know that there have been players complaining about prizes not being the best and I agree.
There has been a huge lack of competitive events, excluding clan league and WC, there haven't been any competitive multiplayer events hosted in a while.
There are some events that we're working on right now, and would like to get out soon, I'd just like to see what people have to say about TPL.

Summary:
In conclusion, the things that I want to work on are:
- Staff-Player interaction, keeping the community updated and asking for what the community wants
- More client-side events
- Working on different versions of the main 5 mods, seeing if there's any way to improve the competitive mod-list
- Better prizes and events, more frequent events
- Making the game more fun, adding new features to hopefully improve retention, new goals and a sense of purpose
- Any new content that is possible to do

I want to have a constructive discussion about these topics and address any questions or concerns you might have about anything not mentioned in this thread.
The OP will be updated if there's anything to update, and I hope this discussion will stick around for a while.
Thank you to everyone who spent their time on reading.
And if you want a shiai token, feel free to take this survey or spread it around in your circles
MS survey for the dueling community, feel free to take it for an ST. input is immensely appreciated.
Last edited by ancient; Feb 4, 2022 at 07:12 PM.
pm me your questions or applications

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dance with my dogs in the night time
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Originally Posted by Blagen View Post
If 4 player fights are added for multiplayer, it would set in stone the epicness of this game for all of time.

i agree
Hello, I’ve said what I needed to say in ur little survey so if you could send me that 1ST that I desperately need it would be greatly appreciated thanks a ton.

ppl gotta eat and ur out here starving a brotha from some shiai tokens
Originally Posted by Blagen View Post
The system of earning credits per fight for the full customization of your character seems pretty basic yet rewarding. But once you reach a point of being satisfied with your design, all that's left is the gameplay, as you don't tend to care about credits anymore.

I notice beginners don't know much about a lot of the features in the game, like setting bounties, emotes, looking at the stats of players. All little things that really have you appreciate the gameplay. Is there a tutorial that highlights these features for them?

The classic mods can get boring after playing them for years. If there were more variations added, or "fun mods" in public servers, it could spice up things for all players. I miss fighting with giant swords and playing joust flying at each other. Perhaps a public server that can cycle through mods?

hey! thank you for your kind words. i don't think there are any tutorials when just opening the game that explain how to use the interface and what's up and stuff like that. i'll pass this message on to the developers and see if a tutorial like this is possible to be made.
also while on the topic of tutorials, there was an in-game client tutorial being made by a few pro players about lenshu and movement and physics and all that stuff. some of them have went inactive but it should come out sometime. would anyone be interested in helping? Iris and Static were working on it with the help of Haku iirc.

classic mods truly can get boring and i agree with you on that. would you prefer the mod rotation to switch up every month or bi-monthly? what mods would the community want?
another thing i was thinking of was making it easier to obtain TC for beginners, but i'm not sure how to approach that. maybe raise the TC you get from public lobbies? raise the daily log-in TC? raise the tc from quests. just throwing out ideas

Originally Posted by thekill666 View Post
focus on making new ppl enjoy the game and advertise the game.
maybe a collab with pro toribash players sharing tips on one place inside toribash

right now, the only advertising this game is getting is from instagram reels, posts and tiktok's. the toribash tiktok page has like 23 million views last time i checked, which is insane for this game. i think a lot of people check it out and then get bored or it's too hard for them so they give up. maybe the interface tutorial would be a good idea.

Originally Posted by piss View Post
I think it’s already known that the forums are an integral part of the game’s longevity, and there are multiple players who have been playing the game for 4-5 years and have only 30 posts or less. Wether or not that’s an issue with the forums or the player I’m not sure, but what I do know is that there is also a clear divide between people active in game and people active on forums.

Practically any change that would combat this issue would improve the amount of activity, at least in theory. I would suggest rewards for achieving a certain number of posts; giving a unique un-tradable item could be sufficient enough.

it's been statistically known for years now that the majority of the player-base don't actually use the forums, most of the players in this game play in public lobbies and barely touch the forum. adding more client based events and making the forums accessible from the client(like the market, clans, etc) makes those people that are unaware of the forum be able to do everything they need to. it increases activity in events when they're held on the client, which is why we are trying to move a bit further away from forum events and hope to one day be able to have tournament brackets etc all held on the client. the forums likely won't go away, but nowadays people don't care about forums and would rather just play a game.

an award for receiving a certain amount of posts may lead to the forums being spammed. i'm not too keen on this idea personally.

Originally Posted by Froog View Post
what if toribash was on mobile. think about it read it 6 times

Not too sure about this.

Originally Posted by SmaBOOOOOOOris View Post

There needs to be more focus on in-game improvements and in-game active staff with vision for a change, because as it stands the game is still wayy too dependant on the forum, and old players don't seem to have an issue with that.

this is what we're trying to do right now, we're working on in-game improvements and right now i would say our staff team is stronger, fairer and smarter than it's been for a long time. there are many people that i've run ideas through, brainstormed with and talked to about what would be best for the game. everyone agreed that there's a huge divide between staff and player-base, now we're trying to remedy it.

i mentioned above that we're trying to move away from the forum.

Originally Posted by dyingderp View Post
thoughts about the mma community? ik you cant really hold etournies with high grav mods due to their length but has there been any other ideas brought up amongst staff about them?

personally i don't know much about the mma community. the only time i hear about it is when we receive reports about mma players being toxic towards each other so i would say my opinions on them might not be the best. i am impressed however, with the events the community has put together for itself and ES would love to support you in any way that we can. from what i know, staff haven't talked about the mma community much and if you would like to talk to some of us, feel free to shoot me or Typhon a DM.

Originally Posted by Blagen View Post
If 4 player fights are added for multiplayer, it would set in stone the epicness of this game for all of time.

https://forum.toribash.com/showthread.php?t=652672 there is work being done on this, it might be coming to multiplayer soon, we're not sure.


thank you to everyone who took the time out of their day to talk to us. i'll be sending shiai to everyone who did the survey so far, have a good night!
Last edited by ancient; Feb 3, 2022 at 03:20 AM.
pm me your questions or applications

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dance with my dogs in the night time
cash to burn
For one, when sassy and I were hosting OFL 2 (Orc Force League second season), it was hard to get ES support or something was an issue from what I remember back then. It had to do with technicalities. Making clans has become ten times easier, posting on the forums without crazy rules has become ten times easier, however, our new platforms like discord are not being utilized enough especially since this game is HEAVILY reliant on staff participation. I feel like discord is widely ignored and used a lot more as a support platform than a community platform. We’re stuck in like 2010. TAs and ES members should be encouraged to try and engage in there imo.

I also find that there is a huge grudge match in online communities that can go in for years. IG: I got banned from a rocket league discord 4 years ago for having a similar name to someone who made a terrorist joke, and all my attempts to get unbanned were futile. I feel like toribash does this particularly well tbh, but I know it still exists here. I’ve made my mistakes, been trying to do good for a long time now, but I digress lol.

Competition: Where is it? Toribash used to be extremely competitive and I really don’t see why it’s a huge issue right now to enable that competition. Like, I’m not tracking any community support or engagement for big events anymore. I tried to do something with the OFL, but other examples, like adamantium head phones vs shutter shades and the whatever submarine got people going hard. I miss these things. I can leave for a year straight and feel like I’m not missing out on anything. That may be a me problem, idk

Hopefully nothing here is too incoherant. Ty for reading
Chickster: I literally don't know why I did it.
As someone who has been taking a course related to CS/IT, I'll be straightforward and say that all we do is steal each others ideas. To improve this game, just steal common ideas you see from other games. You don't need to think deeply about it... if most games do it, it means that it has been proven to work.

I'll talk about 2 things about this game: 1) UI/UX: Getting the new players hooked and 2) Enjoyability

1) UI/UX: Getting the new players hooked
To get the new players hooked, Toribash needs to focus on the game's USER INTERFACES and USER EXPERIENCE. I asked some guys (absolute beginners in the game) about the current interface and they said that it was kind of confusing. If we can create a good user experience, players will definitely play the game more.


Think about this, lets say you have 2 applications that are similar, but you use one app over the other. You're probably using that application because the interface is very simple or usable to you. You can see this in multiple applications, but you don't realize it... they focus on the interface and try to make the application easy to use.


I have some experience creating UI's with the UI Manager and would be down to redesign the interface of Toribash once I'm done with some irl stuff :^)


- - - - -


Another thing to get players hooked is MONEY. If players knew that they could make money off this game by playing or making art, there'd be a LOT of players who would be down to play the game.


==========


2) Enjoyability
To make the game more enjoyable, I highly suggest having a ranked season and battle pass.


If you look at games such as "League of Legends" you'll see that they update the patch every two weeks. You can do this by starting out with normal abd, lenshu, and tk then every week, you could "buff" or "nerf" things. For example, decreasing the dojo size in lenshu to nerf running, or increasing the dojo size in abd to nerf lifters.

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Toribash Season 1 Rank 3 | Ex-ES Artist | Ex-Mascot of [Alpha]
CLAN LEAGUE 2019 WINNER
Originally Posted by dyingderp View Post
thoughts about the mma community? ik you cant really hold etournies with high grav mods due to their length but has there been any other ideas brought up amongst staff about them?

mma community has proven capable of organizing events. if you want to go for a larger scale type event, ES are happy to work with you and sponsor you, just as we sponsor Endurance Onslaught
ナゲット
First of all admins have to(!) remove all banhammers from all stuff and give the powers only to someone who can use it using a brain! Spam - ban, annoying - ban, seems(!) player goes with scam - ban. Ban ban ban. Wtf? If the player get a ban he leaves the game forever! I don't think that all staff members need a banhammer!!!
I'm TC seller pm me
Discord: mellicape
Hello, I believe that one way we can improve the overall player engagement levels within the game is to implement the old ranking systems. I've brought up this topic before, and it seemed to be quite well received by the community (although the sample size is small).

I went more in-depth on why I believe the addition of the old ranking system is a good idea here:
https://forum.toribash.com/showthread.php?t=647453
Originally Posted by Link View Post
For one, when sassy and I were hosting OFL 2 (Orc Force League second season), it was hard to get ES support or something was an issue from what I remember back then. It had to do with technicalities. Making clans has become ten times easier, posting on the forums without crazy rules has become ten times easier, however, our new platforms like discord are not being utilized enough especially since this game is HEAVILY reliant on staff participation. I feel like discord is widely ignored and used a lot more as a support platform than a community platform. We’re stuck in like 2010. TAs and ES members should be encouraged to try and engage in there imo.

I also find that there is a huge grudge match in online communities that can go in for years. IG: I got banned from a rocket league discord 4 years ago for having a similar name to someone who made a terrorist joke, and all my attempts to get unbanned were futile. I feel like toribash does this particularly well tbh, but I know it still exists here. I’ve made my mistakes, been trying to do good for a long time now, but I digress lol.

Competition: Where is it? Toribash used to be extremely competitive and I really don’t see why it’s a huge issue right now to enable that competition. Like, I’m not tracking any community support or engagement for big events anymore. I tried to do something with the OFL, but other examples, like adamantium head phones vs shutter shades and the whatever submarine got people going hard. I miss these things. I can leave for a year straight and feel like I’m not missing out on anything. That may be a me problem, idk

Hopefully nothing here is too incoherant. Ty for reading

i definitely feel your sentiment when you say you can leave the game for a year and feel like you're not missing anything. i hope this will change as we get the survey results and make new events. such fun arguments as you've described could only work when the community is bigger i believe, and that also works for the people saying that staff suck etc. as we are a wayyyy smaller community than most, and every staff member is a volunteer, grudges are held onto easier. like i said in my post last night, staff have definitely become better.
we have the same amount of active people that don't leave the game that it's hard to pick new members.

about ofc force league: i've only found out that an event like this happened just today, and looking at the 45 wins someone had throughout the duration of this event, it seems like everyone enjoyed it. it's definitely a fun idea. i'm not sure what ES's stance was back then regarding sponsoring for events, and i'll repeat what i said yesterday, if you have any event ideas or any fun ideas in general, please don't hesitate to DM any ES with your idea. i'd love to work with the community on events and make exactly what they want.

EDIT: i was interested so i asked Lillian who was staff at the time, it seems that the community is not aware they can ask ES for anything in regards to events. Lillian said they had to approach you two and ask if y'all wanted an item. if you're running an event and you want a custom item, or need help from experienced people or a forum header, TC, you should message ES before hosting an event.

Originally Posted by Karstnator View Post
2) Enjoyability
To make the game more enjoyable, I highly suggest having a ranked season and battle pass.


If you look at games such as "League of Legends" you'll see that they update the patch every two weeks. You can do this by starting out with normal abd, lenshu, and tk then every week, you could "buff" or "nerf" things. For example, decreasing the dojo size in lenshu to nerf running, or increasing the dojo size in abd to nerf lifters.

i've heard people complaining about the UI before, this is something that i would have to talk to the developers about because i think(?) making a new ui would take a lot of work. earlier i discussed perhaps making a short tutorial that teaches you how to use the interface, i will look into this if it's the only option we have, our devs are very busy with TBN right now.

about ranked season: currently we are working on a 3D item set for the next ranked season. i would say the next ranked season is a month~ away.
about battlepass: there have been ideas but we haven't talked about this much. would you have anything to recommend?

about patches: did you read my part about lesduncan in the OP? that's something that i've been thinking about, removing the pad in the middle and removing dq timeout outside the dojo and seeing if that sticks. lower the engage distance to 90-95(it's 100 on TPL and 80 on ABD) that slight change makes most drop down lift openers useless and players would need to look for new metas/openers. giving small adjustments to mods every now and then would be fine, however i'm not sure how our small community would handle it and i'd rather avoid the few people that still play competitively leaving. do you have any ideas?

Originally Posted by Rizle View Post
First of all admins have to(!) remove all banhammers from all stuff and give the powers only to someone who can use it using a brain! Spam - ban, annoying - ban, seems(!) player goes with scam - ban. Ban ban ban. Wtf? If the player get a ban he leaves the game forever! I don't think that all staff members need a banhammer!!!


this is a bit of a silly post but i'll bite nevertheless, what would you recommend we do to people that break the rules? we don't randomly pick users and decide to ban them. everyone that gets banned does something, in most cases ban cases, serious. right now, TA(the staff group that handle reports) are all excellent staff members and i've never encountered any unjust bans in my year of being TA. i would argue that toribash is way more lenient than most games with their bans. if anyone else wants to chime in they're welcome and we can have a discussion about moderation.
seems(!) player goes with scam - ban. Ban ban ban. Wtf?

are you suggesting that we let players off with duel scamming?

Originally Posted by Loona View Post
Hello, I believe that one way we can improve the overall player engagement levels within the game is to implement the old ranking systems. I've brought up this topic before, and it seemed to be quite well received by the community (although the sample size is small).

I went more in-depth on why I believe the addition of the old ranking system is a good idea here:
https://forum.toribash.com/showthread.php?t=647453

hey!
i've just read through the thread and i have to say that i do agree with you. however, while we are working on the new ranking season, what would you want us to do? do you want the rooms now if possible, or do you want to wait until the new season is out?
if everything would go according to my plans, the seasons would run one after the other, the same way it does for every game. the reason it wasn't done like that before was because sir had to work on other things, and ES never bothered to make any new seasons and item forgers didn't have anything to create that would live up to the last ranked rewards, like the demon tori and diamond tori. the new item being made right now looks pretty good so far and i'm happy with it's progress.


if i missed anything in all my replies, please let me know. thank you to everyone who posted!
Last edited by ancient; Feb 3, 2022 at 07:24 PM.
pm me your questions or applications

https://i.imgur.com/X7cZZtS.gif

dance with my dogs in the night time
cash to burn
i definitely feel your sentiment when you say you can leave the game for a year and feel like you're not missing anything. i hope this will change as we get the survey results and make new events. such fun arguments as you've described could only work when the community is bigger i believe, and that also works for the people saying that staff suck etc. as we are a wayyyy smaller community than most, and every staff member is a volunteer, grudges are held onto easier. like i said in my post last night, staff have definitely become better.
we have the same amount of active people that don't leave the game that it's hard to pick new members.

Yeah, I feel like the community is hesitant to use its resources since it was somewhat big for several years. Basically, for something really good to happen, something drastic needs to change. Unfortunately, jusy doing the same things better, I doubt it will cut it. That’s why OFL was good I think. We literally bought the market out of orc forces and inflated the price to about 1k for a couple weeks. I’m pretty sure orc force became the new cool for awhile. People were wearing full Orc and such, couple maxed out servers, etc. We have great great tools to do super fun things. Ill totally reach out again when I have time to do the next league. Specifically, a lot of toricredits are necissary. The staff would have to be ok with funding something for the purpose of buying out the market lol.
Chickster: I literally don't know why I did it.