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Original Post
Different tutorial approach, sponsoring streamers and disabling hotkeys for beginners
So, while watching this ConCon's video, a couple of ideas came to my mind.

Tutorial Overhaul

I know it's already been remade somewhere in the past but I still think it fails to deliver what Toribash is about. I played it all again to see what it focuses on and it's strictly about gameplay. If this game was only gameplay it wouldn't been dying, but dead since 2010 probably.

What I'm suggesting is taking it with a different approach: keep the gameplay tutorial obviously, since it's necessary, but press a lot on the community aspects. That means a general look at what Toribash can offer, like bet servers, the market, duels, tournaments, clans, customization, the possibility of drawing buying and selling your own textures (this isn't obvious at all, I've seen newer players wondering about it ingame), the whole forum and all of the events from ES squad. And more that I can't think about right now.

That would be a lot of info to soak in the first time, but I think that a simple, direct tutorial video with a voice explanation would be great and effective (i suggest Solax's voice). Toribash is so much more than just plain matches in a lobby and I'm sure that more than at least 90% players that tried the game never knew about it.

Sponsor streamers

Bare with me now, I have no knowledge whatsoever about how this works. I'll just throw this idea in, if you know more about the topic your opinion would be appreciated.

What I have in mind is sponsoring twitch streamers to play the game. Streamers have an huge influence on gaming community and having toribash as an highly streamed game would bring a lot of people here. At the moment there is simply not enough of that, we have a few fellow streamers but no matter how much effort it's hard to even reach 5 total viewers. Toribash seems to be invisible outside of here.

A streamer that plays toribash has the potential of bringing hundreds of players to make an account if he even just asks them to join his server to play during the stream, since it's free to play. Yes, I'm aware that many of them probably wouldn't open the game ever again, but some may like it and stick to it. Combined with my previous suggestion it could bring some change to the state of the game.

Problem: it requires money for the sponsor and it's obviously completely up to the developers to see if that's affordable or not, i have no idea about how much you'd need to pay neither how much money they actually make out of the game. It could very well just be counterproductive.

Another small beginner friendly idea: not feeling like making a new thread for this, but I came up with this yesterday after watching a stream of a new player. There are currently a lot of shortcuts that at the beginning you don't know about, so this guy was playing and accidentally clicked "2", activating the free mode cam. He didn't know how to fix it and started hitting random keys messing stuff up. In the end he had to restart the game while raging.

Now imagine a player that isn't streaming and tries for the first time the game on his own, he might very well just say "Screw this buggy game" and quit. What I'm suggesting is an option, by default activated, that disables all shortcuts except the most basic ones like movement. Newer players wouldn't use them anyways, since they don't know about their existance, and if in need they could activate them from the options menu.
Last edited by WeppetKo; Aug 22, 2018 at 05:30 PM.
Originally Posted by Icky View Post
Hey cool didnt see this thread until now, am currently trying to put together potential tutorial ideas with a focus on progressive learning of the game to go from SP to basic MP.

Im watching this thread now.

That's awesome, so someone is still working on it. What do you include in "basic mp"? Because the current tutorial kind of introduces pvp fights with Fight Uke, but that's basically nothing.

Another small beginner friendly idea: not feeling like making a new thread for this, but I came up with this yesterday after watching a stream of a new player. There are currently a lot of shortcuts that at the beginning you don't know about, so this guy was playing and accidentally clicked "2", activating the free mode cam. He didn't know how to fix it and started hitting random keys messing stuff up. In the end he had to restart the game while raging.

Now imagine a player that isn't streaming and tries for the first time the game on his own, he might very well just say "Screw this buggy game" and quit. What I'm suggesting is an option, by default activated, that disables all shortcuts except the most basic ones like movement. Newer players wouldn't use them anyways, since they don't know about their existance, and if in need they could activate them from the options menu.
Disabling some hotkeys would be counterproductive because player would never be aware of their existence. It's better to just implement a "controls" table with all keys displayed there and make it easily accessible from gameplay window.
Originally Posted by Smaguris View Post
Disabling some hotkeys would be counterproductive because player would never be aware of their existence. It's better to just implement a "controls" table with all keys displayed there and make it easily accessible from gameplay window.

Is any of them really necessary at the beginning though? Keep the most important ones and put apart cam modes and keyframes for example. A simple chat message that goes like "Keyboard shortcuts are disabled." when you start game would both inform you that you won't mess up anything and that shortcuts do exist. Combined with a checkbox in the options menu it would make the life easier for newer players.

Agreed that something to show all different shortcuts would help a lot.
err... the problem is not the lack of tutorials, (there are tons of them, including some high quality ones), but the game itself, more precisely the control scheme, as it is archaic and much more cumbersome than any 3d animation, hence the barrier to entry is beyond any logical expectations for the current day and age

aaaaaaaand there is always a solution
http://forum.toribash.com/showthread.php?p=9308099
tell me about aikido
~referencing Dark Souls in suicidal threads since 13/01/15
Originally Posted by snake View Post
err... the problem is not the lack of tutorials, (there are tons of them, including some high quality ones), but the game itself, more precisely the control scheme, as it is archaic and much more cumbersome than any 3d animation, hence the barrier to entry is beyond any logical expectations for the current day and age

aaaaaaaand there is always a solution
http://forum.toribash.com/showthread.php?p=9308099

I'm not going to discuss here why I like or not that other suggestion, but that's another game. You can't really change the core mechanics like that punishing all those players that spent years learning how the current system works. You'd more likely lose those players that are still playing other than gaining new ones, so at the moment we have to work with what we have and even TB Next is taking the same approach.

Currently there are tutorials ingame, yes, but that's not the main point. We need to give players an incentive to actually spend time and learn the game, a difficult but rewarding game. A newer player the most of the times knows nothing about all the features I talked about in the op and probably just consider the game like an indie that you play for an hour, have fun and leave. There's no incentive at all in spending time in it if you know nothing about the community, hence my suggestion.
the concern you have been addressed in the IK thread, and to be fair the sunk cost (time) fallacy is a ... fallacy


but if we stick to the point of the thread - the problem is not a lack of tutorials, but it's accessability


for example i've been asking to add link to these videos into motd of aikido rooms for ages
http://forum.toribash.com/showthread.php?t=606404


so people will have a better idea how to play, but even this tiny proposal that does not require any coding to be implemented was turned down


i guess the quality of those was sup-bar, lol
tell me about aikido
~referencing Dark Souls in suicidal threads since 13/01/15