I really don't understand your reasoning. People play games to relax not just to "get good" Calling people lazy for being bad at a videogame is one of the most moronic things I've ever heard. Also being good at an unpopular videogame and getting a degree are completely different things.

Now on topic.

Toribash as a whole hasn't really changed in however long I've been playing. The game doesn't change but the people do, I used to be able to go in game and find 10-15 servers with people I know well in them, now I'm lucky if I find 1.

In my opinion, toribash needs to change a bit to stay on it's feet. Game mechanics haven't changed in nearly 10 years and they kind of need to if this game is to become a seriously taken competitive game. I'm not talking e-sports because you need a large community, a large sum of money and interested semi-pro players to warrant a game being an e-sport.

Adding things like grab-breaks will make a positive change, I think.

I think that the idea about grab breaks is a really good idea! When I said we need to get a few Youtubers to play Toribash I didn't mean semi-popular Youtubers I mean BIG. Though small Youtubers help Toribash I think it would take a very well known person to get Toribash known. In the Indie game world we are very secluded, we tend to keep our game to our small community and not branch out. I think there could be room for change and more players.

NerdCubed and ChimneySwift are the only ones with 1kk+ subs that I can think of.

It temporarily boosts new players but they tend to fall into obscurity.

Heck, I joined because of a video ChimneySwift made in like 2012.

The main reason why I joined Toribash was because Mocucha's videos. I saw how easily all the people made it look and I wanted to do that, so I joined the community!

On another note, I feel kinda sad about a lot of the old members of Toribash leaving or becoming inactive because of the ancient clans dying out. Now honestly there are a few of the old clans that are becoming totally inactive. But some of the other clans have members that lurk around the forums and are still there.

Problem is Toribash has an emmence learning curve, we really need to make an effort to teach new players the basics as soon as they pick it up. New tutorial is also a must in my eyes if the game is to survive.

Also there needs to be a stronger link between new accounts and the forum.

If someone is playing around in single player the occasional line of text saying something along the lines of "Stuck? Check out forum.toribash.com/whatever" could go distances.

Capture the new players, capture the future of the game.

(That was not a paraphrased Hitler quote I swear)

oh look, someone joined for the same reason as I. I searched for that doublekatana mod for ages.

Anyways, once the "New, innovative" kinda vibe of toribash gets worn out, you are left with an another fighting game. Of course, its different, but it isnt going to last forever. Toribash probably wont be seeing much incline in publicity or changes, it will probably just stay as it is and eventually die out.

The thing I love about this game is that it rings out the people that truly don't care to become better. This game is the hardest game I've played but I truly loved it when I first played to the point where I've almost played it every day for 2 years and now it's the funnest game I've played. I feel like the newcomers being called noobs is a culprit, but people mostly leave because it's hard. All in all I feel that change would be nice, just make it really subtle and not too big of steps at a time. As far as tutorials go, there's a whole section of them on the forums and if they need them that's what they're there for.

We have gained more items for in game and what not. But nothing's changed. I feel like some time, everyone will abandon the forum and the game. I hope they don't. But people aren't as active as they used to be.

I think that this game is going to gradually go down over the next ten or so years. I think it's going to go down because this is such a small game with such a small community and a small out reach to new players. Once all the oldsters die out then there will be no people to teach others.

But it's a niche game, it's unique ; which means there's no other game to turn to if you want to experience something like Toribash. New players will always come and go, some old timers will stay, some won't etc... I don't see the community getting smaller in the future, it can either get bigger or stay kind of stable and renew itself constantly with new generations of players.

Plus, the game gets better as time passes, slowly but surely we'll reach some point where the competitive scene becomes more interesting with a fair meta-game and mods evolving in the right direction, new features and such...

Edit : The more enjoyable it will become to watch, the more players will feel inspired and join for good. And imo, that could happen if striking mods were more present in events, on the competitive scene, or in youtube videos. There's much more movement and eye candy attacks with pure striking mods (lenshung, rk-mma, wushu, ninjutsu...), it's much more impressive to watch, more "public friendly".
But we need some meta-game changes to have wins based on a goal to reach, forcing players to fight, instead of wins based on points advantage and time wasting. Like aikido which goals are to put the adversary out of the dojo of pin him down on the floor, making time wasting matters way less ; striking mods need the same kind of goals : reaching a given amount of points, some kind of "lifebar" to empty.