Original Post
Everything I personally think should happen with Toribash
Would like to start this by saying I am in no means trying to tell hampa and any other investors within Nabi how to run their company, this is completely from an outsider looking in perspective and customer/user perspective.
Everything needs a revamp, everything about Nabi studios screams side hobby instead of 12+ year old game development company and I hate it. I truly believe Toribash has the potential to do very big things just because of how unique it is, I believe the issue comes from lack of execution and possibly care by this point. So basically I just want to suggest everything I can in one little place and try to structure it as neatly as possible.
So starting off, the actual www.toribash.com needs a revamp(mcfarbo literally just suggested this but I've thought about making this thread for a while and his post just kind of pushed me more to do it) and the way we split that page and the forums using "www." for that page and "forum." for the forums I believe would have an impact on SEO and how Toribash is found from non-marketing efforts(which as far as I know are nonexistent). Toribash should be present on all social media platforms and have calls to those pages on the landing page. An updated promo video as McFarbo suggested should have been a no-brainer at this point. a breakdown of what all is possible through Toribash, explaining art, dueling, selling TC, replay making, legend status, etc. (feel free to further this list in your post to act as a reference for if any of this actually ever gets done). Also making sure to use the landing page to rank on more popular searches. The entire page is just garbage and irrelevant at this point, literally, anything would be better.
Secondly is going to be social media and someone to manage the social media pages. Now let it be noted I don't know Nabi's revenue and how much they can allocate to expand employee wise but the whole point of a company is to make money and you need to spend money to make money, but the point of social media is to get new users without necessarily marketing efforts, so this is pretty damn important. Social media pages are so easy to grow naturally if they're kept up with but as of now there's less than the bare minimum being given to them and it's a flaw on Nabi's part. With the release of TBN expected to be soon, I would hope pulling in new customers/users would be the ideal outcome of this and without being present on social media it makes marketing even harder which again screams side hobby instead of an aged company. Keeping up to date on events currently live within Toribash, giveaways to act as a call of action to not only keep the page alive and relevant but to further grow the pages through shares/retweets/repost/etc. You seriously just cannot go wrong with social media so it's stupid how little is being done with it at this point, any company is going to benefit from it and if given the correct care it can do an actual shit-ton for the company.
Next, I'd love to see more marketing efforts. TBN is supposedly going to drop soon and the only people it's going to attract are those currently active which in theory completely contradicts the point of allocating any kind of budget to developing a new game and if that budget is also nonexistent then I really worry for the future of Toribash and Nabi as a whole. Don't really want to get to in depth with this suggestion as I'd hope someone who's apart of Nabi would have a pretty solid marketing background but it would not surprise me if there wasn't so if someone important responds then I can come up with a marketing plan I believe would do very good things for Nabi if given a theoretical budget for its execution.
We also need to create a much better tutorial, again a no-brainer the only thing I ever hear on this suggestion is how difficult this supposedly is but the tutorial and introduction to the game is the biggest contribution to the turnover rate this game has. When a person joins they are given the most basic explanation ever, a vague idea of how the game works and sent on their way. I believe even if a player is flooded with more than necessary information they'd be more inclined to stay, compared to "contract this, extend this, hit space yay now go play the game" again going back to the website idea you need a much more in-depth explanation to get the players attention and have it all present so what isn't retained can be looked at again. I'm sure devs are aware of this issue it just comes back to the lack of execution.
Next would be, Nabi needs to be more worried about making an income. There are many ways for this to be done but for the most part, the only thing I can imagine is a new user joins, buys stuff because they don't know about the user market, and that's it. If they stick around long enough they'll learn that holy shit buying anything for USD other than QI is the dumbest shit ever why the hell did I do that and now you have a user and not a customer and from a company standpoint that's fucking horrible. This also leads to users selling TC, I don't really know what to do with this because it hurts the company but it's a big reason a lot of users stay. Only thing I could think of makes it possible to have users deposit a balance and when they purchase TC from another user, a tax/fee is taken for the transaction so it's some kind of income for Nabi. Also having some kind of interface for users to sell and buy TC through each other should make it possible to collect an average rate for USD to TC and use that average for Nabi to sell TC at a competitive rate so users can benefit if they sell below average for a while but Nabi can attract purchases by offering bundle deals or something along those lines, don't really know for sure what to do with this issue.
This is all I care to write about at this moment but if this attracts responses then I'll continue. If you can please leave a response and feel free to further these suggestions or create your own along the lines of bettering Nabi for the company's sake. Thank you!
tl;dr - revamp the site, social media, marketing efforts, better tutorial, better ways for Nabi to make money.
Everything needs a revamp, everything about Nabi studios screams side hobby instead of 12+ year old game development company and I hate it. I truly believe Toribash has the potential to do very big things just because of how unique it is, I believe the issue comes from lack of execution and possibly care by this point. So basically I just want to suggest everything I can in one little place and try to structure it as neatly as possible.
So starting off, the actual www.toribash.com needs a revamp(mcfarbo literally just suggested this but I've thought about making this thread for a while and his post just kind of pushed me more to do it) and the way we split that page and the forums using "www." for that page and "forum." for the forums I believe would have an impact on SEO and how Toribash is found from non-marketing efforts(which as far as I know are nonexistent). Toribash should be present on all social media platforms and have calls to those pages on the landing page. An updated promo video as McFarbo suggested should have been a no-brainer at this point. a breakdown of what all is possible through Toribash, explaining art, dueling, selling TC, replay making, legend status, etc. (feel free to further this list in your post to act as a reference for if any of this actually ever gets done). Also making sure to use the landing page to rank on more popular searches. The entire page is just garbage and irrelevant at this point, literally, anything would be better.
Secondly is going to be social media and someone to manage the social media pages. Now let it be noted I don't know Nabi's revenue and how much they can allocate to expand employee wise but the whole point of a company is to make money and you need to spend money to make money, but the point of social media is to get new users without necessarily marketing efforts, so this is pretty damn important. Social media pages are so easy to grow naturally if they're kept up with but as of now there's less than the bare minimum being given to them and it's a flaw on Nabi's part. With the release of TBN expected to be soon, I would hope pulling in new customers/users would be the ideal outcome of this and without being present on social media it makes marketing even harder which again screams side hobby instead of an aged company. Keeping up to date on events currently live within Toribash, giveaways to act as a call of action to not only keep the page alive and relevant but to further grow the pages through shares/retweets/repost/etc. You seriously just cannot go wrong with social media so it's stupid how little is being done with it at this point, any company is going to benefit from it and if given the correct care it can do an actual shit-ton for the company.
Next, I'd love to see more marketing efforts. TBN is supposedly going to drop soon and the only people it's going to attract are those currently active which in theory completely contradicts the point of allocating any kind of budget to developing a new game and if that budget is also nonexistent then I really worry for the future of Toribash and Nabi as a whole. Don't really want to get to in depth with this suggestion as I'd hope someone who's apart of Nabi would have a pretty solid marketing background but it would not surprise me if there wasn't so if someone important responds then I can come up with a marketing plan I believe would do very good things for Nabi if given a theoretical budget for its execution.
We also need to create a much better tutorial, again a no-brainer the only thing I ever hear on this suggestion is how difficult this supposedly is but the tutorial and introduction to the game is the biggest contribution to the turnover rate this game has. When a person joins they are given the most basic explanation ever, a vague idea of how the game works and sent on their way. I believe even if a player is flooded with more than necessary information they'd be more inclined to stay, compared to "contract this, extend this, hit space yay now go play the game" again going back to the website idea you need a much more in-depth explanation to get the players attention and have it all present so what isn't retained can be looked at again. I'm sure devs are aware of this issue it just comes back to the lack of execution.
Next would be, Nabi needs to be more worried about making an income. There are many ways for this to be done but for the most part, the only thing I can imagine is a new user joins, buys stuff because they don't know about the user market, and that's it. If they stick around long enough they'll learn that holy shit buying anything for USD other than QI is the dumbest shit ever why the hell did I do that and now you have a user and not a customer and from a company standpoint that's fucking horrible. This also leads to users selling TC, I don't really know what to do with this because it hurts the company but it's a big reason a lot of users stay. Only thing I could think of makes it possible to have users deposit a balance and when they purchase TC from another user, a tax/fee is taken for the transaction so it's some kind of income for Nabi. Also having some kind of interface for users to sell and buy TC through each other should make it possible to collect an average rate for USD to TC and use that average for Nabi to sell TC at a competitive rate so users can benefit if they sell below average for a while but Nabi can attract purchases by offering bundle deals or something along those lines, don't really know for sure what to do with this issue.
This is all I care to write about at this moment but if this attracts responses then I'll continue. If you can please leave a response and feel free to further these suggestions or create your own along the lines of bettering Nabi for the company's sake. Thank you!
tl;dr - revamp the site, social media, marketing efforts, better tutorial, better ways for Nabi to make money.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
~ raku ~ Team Girl Scouts ~ Clan League 2013 Champion ~ Duelist ~
Prince
Fucking
Ravioli
Originally Posted by Ronan
Unless the controls for maneuverering the tori are completely overhauled in the next version of the game - it will not succeed.
It is extremely difficult for the player to manipulate the tori to their will and create the moves and tricks they want to achieve - which will end up with them giving up the game.
This issue needs to be addressed first, there's no point focusing on lootcrates, website fixes, world championships and martketing and so on if the core game itself is bad and no new players want to play it due to that fact.
That's the way I see it.
-----
As snake pointed out -
32.1% of people who play this game play less than 20 games, that's a third of new players that install this game that uninstall it before even reaching yellow belt.
Only 7% of people make it past 100 games played.
If that doesn't prove there's something fundamentally wrong with the game itself I wouldn't know what to tell you.
While yes, this game is dogshit when it comes to being newbie-friendly game, if you look at any successful free to play game on steam you will see very similar numbers.
Here's Brawlhalla, quite successful game with around 10k people online at all times:
For the reference, reaching account level 10 in Brawlhalla would probably take you around 20 minutes
Stop using this "statistic" as a way to say that TB is inherently flawed because those numbers, even though on the lower side, are relatively normal for a free to play title.
-----
I sort of realised that this was an empty statement.
What I wanted to say is that Toribash is a good unique and engaging game that can succeed despite its learning curve.
More than anything, Nabi as company lacks management and promotion of their product and as a result it goes unnoticed by most gamers that would potentially be interested in a game of this genre.
Last edited by Smaguris; Sep 7, 2018 at 02:42 AM.
Reason: <24 hour edit/bump
Originally Posted by Mafia
As much as I hate participating in discussions like this because I know how pointless it is.
I still can't help but do it because I desperately want to see Toribash grow and stay alive for a long time.
And that thread title isn't clear.
"What Toribash needs to go from amateur to professional" would be better.
There's only 1 thing Toribash needs
I can't empathize enough how important this role is.
And I would never recommend you hire someone to work for free or cheap. Because your project manager will pretty much be the heart of the company, pushing motivation through everyone else and getting the best out of everyone. But even they need motivation themselves, and I can't think of anything else other than a good payment for this one role.
But the project manager needs to be Someone who "manages projects", Period. Not someone who manages projects and also codes.
the Dev's can't be project managers too. It's simply too much to see the bigger picture when you're working on small details.
until Toribash gets this role, Toribash will stay a hobby.
Completely agree, and also glad to see someone with a similar mindset because I hate to be the one who decides to make a discussion like this because it does seem pointless at this point but I just got to a point where I said fuck it, won't hurt to try. As for the project management thing I also agree, there needs to be more definition in all the roles as well, a PAID dev team, a marketing team, a site manager(who I'm assuming would be suo at this point), etc. all being organized, motivated, and given clear goals by the project manager. I feel as if there needs to be an outside investor to then play this role so hampa could act as more of dev team lead seeing as that seems to be his largest concern. Then we get to the issue of finances and how exactly we should get to this point and thinking of this pretty much gets me to the point of yeah this game is fucked. Figuring out how much it would cost to even hire people for a dev team member position alone and how long its going to take to even make that money back is worrisome because no outside investor is going to look at this game and offer any reasonable amount in hampas eye to help fund this because we've reached this point and it's scary, to be honest. From an investors perspective and just assuming figures I seriously can't imagine Nabi having an evaluation of more than $100k with IP and all things included, so if hampa is willing to open ~%10 of the company to investors then I couldn't imagine him getting more than $10k without fucking himself in the long run. With that being said, with $10k how do you go about getting to a point quickly and efficiently to make more money and get into a more professional structure? What new concepts are going to need to be incorporated to get players to spend more of their money with Nabi as compared to other users on the market? These are the kinds of questions I'd like to see as well as given responses on possible solutions.
As for the title, I feel like your title suggestion would give users the wrong idea, I'm just wanting personal opinions on what needs to happen as well as giving my own, had I just used that title and said what I said I wouldn't get the kind of back-and-forth suggestions I'm hoping to get and people would read the OP and been like "Ok this is what this guy thinks should happen, I guess I'll just say supported/don't support". I'd like more of an open community kind of thing going on considering we've all been here for a while and what we personally believe is wrong, I think our feedback as a whole should be useful.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
~ raku ~ Team Girl Scouts ~ Clan League 2013 Champion ~ Duelist ~
Prince
Fucking
Ravioli