Hi Toribashers, I'm very curious with how you learnt how to play and how effective you think it was.
I'd also like how many hours it took you to reach your skill level (estimate if you're on standalone) and maybe some replays or videos to demonstrate your current skill OR peak in skill (specify which please) in which case let me know if you've gotten worse since your peak and why/how you've gotten worse if you can.


If you think you could have learned quicker via another learning method I'd also like to hear that and why you think it would have been better compared to other methods.

there wasn't any unique techniques i employed when learning i just played a lot

of course it is an age old saying "to get better play more" but really that is all there was in my case. ive sunk maybe about 2.5k hours at this point; that number could have increased exponentially, but ive played much less in recent times because i have no real drive anymore, and that of course placed a roadblock in my improvement. had i continued at a pace similar to my older days who knows how good i could have been

these are my oldest and most recent replays that i have posted in my thread, a 3 and a half year gap. i think ive grown to be an ok player, probably

i think learning realism is the most transferrable skill to practically anything in the game

the more knowledge you have about the mechanics of the game it becomes a lot easier to tackle any mod in multiplayer regardless of gravity

unless u wanna be like me and play multiplayer only for 10 years and only be half decent by year 7

lolz

Really impressive replays, especially the 2023 one.
Did you start off learning Ukebashing? (is it called Ukebashing?)

sparring helped me understand tori control, ukebashing refined it

it took Haku a week max to become top 1% of lenshu using the realism knowledge he already had at his disposal

not only that, he also had the GOAT Static and other comp players to help him out along the way

i think having someone to play against teaching you the basics of the mod helps out a ton too

the only issue is finding someone who cares enough and will take the time out of their day to assist a beginner

we see a lot of people joining tb discord willing to learn from people personally i think we should make an effort to help out

i started doing realism stuff in 2019 and my first tricking replay is the one called it. after that i played a lot with shoddy and asked a lot of questions and kinda peaked like 6 months later. i played on and off for about a year after and made 2021 before not playing till a couple weeks ago. 2023 is a replay i have and probably will not finish but its recent so yea. 2023 spar is a random spar from the past couple weeks.

i plateuad pretty hard in 2021 as far as skill goes and since coming back i've improved quite a bit, i guess the break did a good job for me. maybe i was burnt out before or i needed a different perspective.


absolutely true, if you think otherwise you are dumb


also very true, i mainly improved as fast as i did because i played a lot with shoddy and asked and got good answers to questions i had and tips to improve. recently i've been helping out jostene in a similar way and he's had some massive improvements in just a couple weeks.


tbh as a complete beginner you need to show some initiative yourself. my 2019 replay was made with i dont think any assistance from anybody and was already better than 90% of tricking replays mainly because i looked at other tricking replays i could find on the forums and tried to replicate the tech people used and it came out looking fairly decent but with pretty poor form.

the best way to learn realism (tried and tested) is to copy tech from other good players replays, be able to use it yourself, then expand your arsenal and add your own "style" to it. unfortunately its difficult for people to understand that there is an optimal way to do things in this game, and if you are not doing it that way, its objectively bad most of the time. this is why all good trickers/realism players get told they look the same as each other. style in my opinion when it comes to realism is less about how you do something, but when you do it.

this is probably garbage flow to read but idc

oh yea and hours. i have like 1500 on steam since 2014 cause thats when i first started to play. i probably have 500-600 on standalone id assume. a very large chunk of those hours is afk, spectating in lobbies, or me playing abd though so its hard to find a correlation.

i also added an ukebash i made in 2015 and my first attempt at it since probably 2016

Yeah, learning realism is the way to go, at least for me. Played around with parkour and tricking a bit, and although I never really mastered them, I still learned the basic movements of the tori through those experience. As for my peak, it really depends. Sometimes you just feel “it” when playing and at that moment you play your best. Even after long breaks, I sometimes play my best toribash compared to when I was playing it daily.

No idea how many hours I have in this game it's probably a lot

https://forum.toribash.com/showthread.php?t=531980

I opened this thread as I started making replays in 2015 and kept it up to this day, you can flip through my whole progression

I really started to improve around that time when I randomly met a bunch of friends who I still know to this day (shoddy, cboh, etc) (clen) and we would get dumbass ideas for shitpostcore replays and try to make them happen while dying laughing in the skype call. We wouldn't really worry about making insane/cool stuff but i'd ask for advice from them on specific stuff I wanted to do while we were playing, ended up getting good by accident that way.

could I have learned faster? definitely, I've seen people get good at this game very quickly, seem to remember a handful of players ending up with some solid looking replays in just a few months of trying, from constantly getting feedback on specific moves and what to do next. The issue is, with replaymaking specifically, it's a creative thing at its core and basing your approach to it completely off advice from others (based on their own view of the "right way") can lead to you making stuff that doesn't really stand out in any significant way.

You can definitely curate the cnc you get and decide what's objective widely applicable advice about how the physics work and stuff, and what's just personal preference from the person giving feedback, I think that's the best way to improve and goodly replaymake, just make what you personally wanna see and what you think is cool/funny.

It's also probably a lot easier to improve nowadays since players are just better and are able to give you that useful advice


I don't know, I just clicky joint

Honestly it was mostly just meeting people with specific interests, and then learning from them.

I think I first started sparring because of Haze. This was like 2014, got mad inspired with all the Ninja Warrior events. Flash was there to coach me too, they were real tight together. Somewhere along the timeline I started some bad ukebashing, dig hard and you'll find the replays. I really didn't come back to sparring until some time around 2022, mainly because of the TANG clanmates. Since then and now is a huge difference, basically years of playing made me better understand how joints work and how to gain momentum to really be the spinny boy I am. Honestly nowadays the person that pushes me the most is Xioi, he's always around to give some solid pointers and will always find the time to spar (sorry I ghosted you last time). Shoutout RC, best replay reviewer ever fr.

Around 2015 I started duelling a lot, was blessed with guidance from Swaves and Dragon. When (Cheat) was made I was appreciated enough to be invited, and back then it was basically the real definer of being a real dueller (until a month or so later when clanmates duelling one another got out of hand lmao). I remember spending days watching duels, make fun of boxshu_mushu_v2 being a real mess with easy dq if you launched too close to the point between the wall and the floor, or even worse when you'd get stuck on the roof. I mean back then the duels were like an arcade version of what it is now, people would literally only clash and it was all about having the right counter for what someone made beforehand. ABD? Lenshu? JF? Yeah sometimes, but it was all about BM. Oh yeah, I mean I wasn't as around for a few years, but would always come back for the summer, and check on the scene by getting punished by not keeping up. I think my real peak was a few years later, around the start of the pandemic. Got too much time at home and somehow ended up being one of the better duellers around 2020, still would never compare myself to the legends, but I'd say I was still pretty decent. All the fl0w vs AS drama, the whole insanity of 2020 WC, spending days grinding out duels to even get a taste of who I'd be facing against in the WC.

As for a better way to learn. Honestly I started out when there was no real tutorial and the only way was to get bullied by alts in beginner rooms. I still feel like joining the game with somebody is the best way, or even just meeting someone on a similar level. I guess if I had to learn everything again I'd spend more time in singleplayer just figuring out how joints work, because I really only learned it properly a few years after starting out, by analysing replays from duels.

I think duelling and bet servers were the real enabler, the excitement that came with it, as well as the raised stakes were enough to make me spend extra time learning the minute details of the tori body, and how to adjust to the meta and learn even how some players played at that time (Loxun was the real G, we'd spend far too much time duelling, me getting scammed was another thing though...)

this isn't my first account though B)