Heres my disjointed and haphazard opinion to something thats been bothering me for a while.
Lack of growth is whats killing this game.
Not from development, but from the community.
We have always been a community driven game, running pretty much everything toribash related. But the community engagement hasnt evolved.
Our streamers get like 15 viewers. Our youtube vids get 50 views.
We used to get more spectators than that for our clan meet up RAWRgys.
We still use irc and the only people there are people that havent played the game in years.(Perhaps an exaggeration)
Where is the community engagement? Where are we supposed to get that engagement from?
Its 2017, not 2009.
Forum events only go so far.
Where is the media? where is the marketing?
Where are our event commentators? Our personalities and characters?
When was the last community meetup? Did anyone think to take photos? Take a video? Post to instagram? FB? whatever?
Developer commentary?
I watch vids of gamers, cosplayers etc going to pax, E3 etc to play games, to meet up, do things etc.
Will TB next be at something like that?
When the Wii version came out, a few of the forum and games biggest personalities got a chance to meet up and hang out.
When gman ran the promo team, people used to die for a chance to get their sets on the new promo item posters.
Old Torinews used to have THINGS to talk about.
Wheres the 2017 version of that?
Does Nabi not have a social media manager? someone who oversees the image of the company and its game? Who watches over what the community is doing to their game?
The closest thing Ive seen to anything official sounding is the Q&A posted by hampa in the announcement, and it wasnt even a Q&A, it was a FAQ.
Q&A suggests community interaction.
Mostly, where is the ambition that made old toribash great, that made the current most popular games great?
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Toribash Next, on paper, sounds great. (I havent been following the news, but people seem scared of change)
But from an art perspective, it shares the same flaws as the current toribash.
there is a point where its just not worth it anymore.
Simply looking at how many artists have left is a testament to that.
Art is getting better and better, then people leave, because the better it gets, the more effort it requires. and theres a point where that effort is better spent elsewhere.
And that is due to the nature of the game, every character being completely customisable.
Every set takes hours, days to create, but then at the end, you sell it for a few hundred thousand TC.
250k tc is 100$ in the shop, using that as a base:
Who is going to spend 100$+ on a toribash set?
Who is going to sacrifice a weeks free time for less than 100$?
Ive been here for over 10 years, and Im no longer the same 16 year old I once was.
The time investment isnt feesable anymore. The time required to texture has gone past a simple hobby, gone past the point where Im just trying to keep up with my art stuff , fill some time or just have fun.
The decentralised economy is potentially a good step at making things feesible for the background stuff in toribash.
But no one will know untill it gets here.
The potential for that economy to be underpopulated, abused and trolled into the ground is pretty high.
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Also, looking at the current state of the art board... wtf is up with that?
I used to get 10 new threads and hundreds of posts a day in the art board alone.
People used to make art, now I dont look at the board for a week and theres no new threads, no new textures, videos etc and maybe 4 new comments.
The showcase hasnt been updated in years, the galleries are dead and even the organisations are dead.
Because of no interaction. No one respected saying "good job"
Nothing to aim for. The most successful texture event Ive ever hosted, and best that I can think of off the top of my head, was the last event where the GATA texturers worked WITH the entrants.
Engagement.
Art was a major driving force in the community.
And its been allowed to stagnate and wither.
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Anyway, like I said, disjointed.
Im no expert on anything Ive mentioned, just things that Ive felt have been lacking.
Last edited by BenDover; Nov 7, 2017 at 01:18 PM.