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.
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.
Tutorials
Tutorial Overhaul was attempted at least several times, but it crumbled every time due to how much effort it actually requires. Staff has to write scenarios, do storyboards/moodboards, and all that has to be good enough to replace the old tutorial. Most staff are not committed enough to spend hours of their time doing something like that, especially because you can't even be sure if it will ever be implemented or if it will fail like all the other times.
The furthest we've ever gotten is scenarios, but it just stopped there because literally no one is willing to sit there for hours thinking of engaging storyline and writing it at the same time, just too much work for unpaid position.
Streams
Generally people will only start watching a certain streamer judging on what games they play. Only the biggest streamers can attract attention by playing any game they want. And generally you won't get a popular streamer to play your game unless you pay a 5 digit sum.
If a streamer is not popular, then by streaming an unpopular game he won't get any audience growth whatsoever, meaning it's pretty much useless for them to stream it in the first place.
Tutorial Overhaul was attempted at least several times, but it crumbled every time due to how much effort it actually requires. Staff has to write scenarios, do storyboards/moodboards, and all that has to be good enough to replace the old tutorial. Most staff are not committed enough to spend hours of their time doing something like that, especially because you can't even be sure if it will ever be implemented or if it will fail like all the other times.
The furthest we've ever gotten is scenarios, but it just stopped there because literally no one is willing to sit there for hours thinking of engaging storyline and writing it at the same time, just too much work for unpaid position.
Streams
Generally people will only start watching a certain streamer judging on what games they play. Only the biggest streamers can attract attention by playing any game they want. And generally you won't get a popular streamer to play your game unless you pay a 5 digit sum.
If a streamer is not popular, then by streaming an unpopular game he won't get any audience growth whatsoever, meaning it's pretty much useless for them to stream it in the first place.
Originally Posted by WeppetKo
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).
I'm always down for stuff like this. If someone sends me a script I'll send you a recording.
Originally Posted by Solax
I'm always down for stuff like this. If someone sends me a script I'll send you a recording.
maybe more efforts with publishing Toribash Channel would be really good. If he ^ is down for it and someone can take responsibility for the editing, maybe more videos like that (and videos like ConCon makes) could bring more interested faces to the community/game.
Toribash has a lot more to avail in Youtube context. Channels like Mocucha's, ConCon's and this one also had good payback in my opinion. There's the Matarika's channel that also is emerging, so that makes me think it would work.
Maybe focusing more in videos in generall would bring some good result to the game popularity aspect, even better if there were a lot of videos directed towards newbie community
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Watch my Replays!
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Originally Posted by Smaguris
Tutorials
Tutorial Overhaul was attempted at least several times, but it crumbled every time due to how much effort it actually requires. Staff has to write scenarios, do storyboards/moodboards, and all that has to be good enough to replace the old tutorial. Most staff are not committed enough to spend hours of their time doing something like that, especially because you can't even be sure if it will ever be implemented or if it will fail like all the other times.
The furthest we've ever gotten is scenarios, but it just stopped there because literally no one is willing to sit there for hours thinking of engaging storyline and writing it at the same time, just too much work for unpaid position.
Isn't the tutorial included in devs' job or at least something worth getting paid for? For a normal game it doesn't even come from the community (yes Toribash is one of a kind). As Lionet said there are some very good video makers in the community, with an adequate prize and a little team working on it I'm sure the result would be great. Obviously they'd need to be paid, I mean the tutorial isn't a marginal aspect of the game since the first impression for a player is huge. But then again, I don't know how much Nabi can afford to pay.
Originally Posted by Smaguris
Streams
Generally people will only start watching a certain streamer judging on what games they play. Only the biggest streamers can attract attention by playing any game they want. And generally you won't get a popular streamer to play your game unless you pay a 5 digit sum.
Define popular. How many viewers on a daily basis? Are you making these numbers up or do you know it for a fact?
Originally Posted by Smaguris
If a streamer is not popular, then by streaming an unpopular game he won't get any audience growth whatsoever, meaning it's pretty much useless for them to stream it in the first place.
Depends what the streamer is known for. If a small streamer has a certain number of viewers on daily basis because he tries new and unknown games then chances are that it won't be a problem for him to play Toribash too.
Originally Posted by Solax
I'm always down for stuff like this. If someone sends me a script I'll send you a recording.
It's great man, I really hope this goes somewhere.
