Hey,

Something that's been on my mind for a while and that I've been meaning to do is having a conversation with the community about what you all would like and what changes you would want to happen.
We can also address any questions or concerns you might have or general things you want to say to our team to improve our communication.
I feel throughout the years the divide between the players and staff has gotten greater and would like to see the connection between us be improved.
This thread is going to, for a while at least, act as a basis for improving community-staff interaction.

Some things that I personally want to improve on and hope will happen:
- Communication
- Game activity
- Game enjoyability
- Events
Along with anything else that might be brought up in this thread.

Let me explain what I mean by improving communication:
There is a giant divide between staff and players.
I understand how frustrated the community might be with staff over things like not being informed about the clan system change and about prizes on events.
We're staff of this game for the players and we’d like to make this more obvious and visible through our actions, and to make sure everyone feels included.

We get a lot of feedback in the form of backlash and banter.
I want to change that and focus our discussions on what the game needs more.
The staff team will listen to any suggestion brought up and try our best to respond to everything.

Regarding game activity:
We all know that the Toribash has been losing players for a while now.
However, there are usually way more beginners online than there are people on the forums if that is any consolation.
This is why we are planning to move even more events client-side soon.
There have already been some very successful ingame events:
- Free Run Frenzy
- Hole In The Wall
These events have gotten amazing participation from everyone, and we want to do more events like this.
We believe that other events whether competitive, art-related, single-player, etc, will benefit greatly by being advertised and run in the game client.
Our main focus will be events focused on beginners, which will hopefully keep beginner retention up.
There are also some plans to make new items which are accessible to and aimed at beginners.

I'm interested in knowing what the community thinks about this.
For the time being, there will still be events held on the forums but as soon as we can get some dev work done to bring everything to the game client, we'll do that.

Regarding game enjoyability:
This is something that we need your input on, this is your game, and you're playing it.
- What kind of changes do you want to see?
There have been some ideas which could change up the meta a little bit in mods like ABD,TK,JF, and particularly lenshu.

If anyone remembers LesDuncan and what he was doing with TPL, it's sort of similar to the martial arts community now, in the way they've hosted fightnight events and they make new mods.
LesDuncan made a version of ABD in which lifting was still viable, however there are walls and a ceiling that prevented it from being a huge difficulty.
This mod is not perfect, but I would like to see what you all think about it.
In particular, what (if anything) would be required for you to consider it a competitive mod?

About Lenshu:
I believe Kane and fl0w have done an exceptionally good job on their winpoint lenshu mod.
When I mention TPL, this is the kind of mod that I'm imagining.
The running issue has been fixed, and a new feature like winpoints were added.
The communities reception on this event has always been good and in a competitive scene most people prefer this mod to normal lenshu3ng.

I'd like to ask everyone a question: when you play the game does it still feel rewarding?
Do you have anything you want to do in the game still, do you want more purpose?
There are ideas like a free battlepass, just quests for rewards.
Another one that we've had is automated tourneys with different rewards, starts at 10 people in the lobby, could be more TC than usual, or rewards from magicalsack(like an automated etourney but with worse rewards) but like stated previously, we're unsure what we should do.

My vision would be making adjustments to every competitively played mod and hosting events in them.
Just with slight adjustments, the way we play these mods is changed and it makes it more fun.

Regarding events:
Historically, prizes for events have rarely been amazing, and I know that there have been players complaining about prizes not being the best and I agree.
There has been a huge lack of competitive events, excluding clan league and WC, there haven't been any competitive multiplayer events hosted in a while.
There are some events that we're working on right now, and would like to get out soon, I'd just like to see what people have to say about TPL.

Summary:
In conclusion, the things that I want to work on are:
- Staff-Player interaction, keeping the community updated and asking for what the community wants
- More client-side events
- Working on different versions of the main 5 mods, seeing if there's any way to improve the competitive mod-list
- Better prizes and events, more frequent events
- Making the game more fun, adding new features to hopefully improve retention, new goals and a sense of purpose
- Any new content that is possible to do

I want to have a constructive discussion about these topics and address any questions or concerns you might have about anything not mentioned in this thread.
The OP will be updated if there's anything to update, and I hope this discussion will stick around for a while.
Thank you to everyone who spent their time on reading.
And if you want a shiai token, feel free to take this survey or spread it around in your circles
MS survey for the dueling community, feel free to take it for an ST. input is immensely appreciated.