I see myself improving because ive been playing fuckhead mod like joustingfixed in early 2013-2014.
I'm decent at abd tho yet im not the best :^)

I'm always improving :P. To prevent getting 2 mlg and becoming the most powerful and influential toribasher ever and totally having people look up to me as a god of this game, I do personal challenges like no grabs, only using one arm, one-limb-per-turn battles, and touch-screen challenges. I don't think you can ever reach a peak in toribash, because there will always be an infinite number of scenarios and fights and skills and stratz and mods. :P Runon sentence much?
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Even after you become pro at toribash, you still can go up the ranks in the community itself. Go for GM, make an official clan or organization, do epic art, or even become a tLegend!!! Then brag about how awesome you are.

Nobody's reached their limit till they can beat me consistently!

The reason %99 of players don't get good and why duelers are so far above everyone else is because the way players are matched in toribash.

All the lobby's are 1 half decent player vs terrible players THIS is why you are never improving. You can only learn a tiny amount if you only play in public lobbys, You will find that custom belts are not much better than 5th dans simply because of this reason.

When you duel you learn rapidly and are always improving as you are forced to be vs very strong players. The way humans learn is from being against people above or close to there skill and being challenged every single time.

People in this thread who say they can't improve anymore are saying what they think is true. You can't learn from noob bashing, only way to learn is to duel since the rank system is total shit.

If there was a REAL rank system then the skill of toribash players would get higher and higher. Instead the noob bashing mentality of toribash has kept %99 of players at the same level.

I agree that you can find ppl with lots of qi but lack of skill. And noobashing is quite common.
I believe I have improved quite a lot since I started but as regards aikido I cant actually improve much there, I feel IM still a noob at it

Yeah, the pubs are always empty, and if there are people playing they're usually below brown.
I think it's a bit more complicated than a rank system though. The real problem is that there are no high-level players online most of the time, and if there are, you can bet they're not in the pubs.
See everyone's looking for a motivator, but I don't know if that even matters to people. I only go in game to have fun, and I think most people are like that. The rank system shouldn't be the truck that makes people play the game, the game should be fun in itself. And it would be, if not for the bullshit of long waiting times and not getting matched with someone whose skill level is equal.

Kind of went off on a tangent. I do agree that your opponents affect the way you play though.

Public servers aren't what they used to be.

I'm clearly improving as the skill bar is lowered. Casuls

mm good question and i would say yes i'm improving but in a wierd way coz i get a point that i stay the same at for like 1 or 2 months and then somehow i learn a ton of shit in 1 night and the day i would really think i have improved alot should be when i have a completely unique style and high skills level (even more then swexx and large) thats the day i will feel good about my skills at.

This game takes time and practice to get skilled.
But no matter how skilled you get, you can always become better.

You can litterally always improve, even Nuthug and Oblivion can improve