Forums are archaic in general, I won't say that they perform significantly better with other games. Modern games tend to have most or all the features (including communication) built into the game client, and with Toribash you're basically forced to go to forums to do even basic stuff like managing your inventory or selling items due to the lack of proper automated market. If not for that, forum would've probably died much earlier.

Its best days are long gone, you can see that even with Steam release in 2014 when we got the highest CCU numbers forum activity didn't change. I wouldn't even bother trying to attract players to forums that much now to be honest, other ways of keeping players in sound more promising if current trends are considered (proper matchmaking + ranking, SP/MP challenges, clans etc).

I think it follows that if those ingame systems are strong, especially social systems that necessitate use of the forums, the forums will see more use.

I do agree with most of the current plan, but I do worry that this is all a little too late. It's going to take a heck of a long time until those ingame systems reach an acceptable standard - Clans may be years away.

There's no use assigning blame to the current/past dev(s). But more output is needed. Things need to be happening faster. We're going to keep losing activity in all areas in the meantime. This can't happen on some 5 year scale, because the game will have 50 members by that point.

It's a pretty lamentable situation we're in.

like i have said in another thread,this was a part of the toribash appeal,
mods that you played for the fun of it,remember bar_fight for example?

everyone now is more focused towards the serious matchmaking
like its the only thing this game can provide,when it never was to begin with.

This,and ranks for all mods,but kept outside of the global rank

Ah, I think you guys think to much about this.

People are just moving on, it's been the same group of people for a long time and just like most of started around the same time we are also leaving at the same time.

5-6 years is usually a cap for most.

People need to share the game more tell people more about it.

I think that Raven is right, people will move on but the community we are left with is actually now very nice and full of regulars. You get to know the community better then thousands of people who you never see twice.
Start spreading the word and bringing this awesome game forward. <3

IMO updates killed this game. Rank update was too much for me and i didnt want to play anymore. Now i just check forums like few times a month and maybe join some server once a month. Nobody asked for bad updates!

as well as the disappointing 5.0 update..

Yeah, everyone was so hyped about that "5.0 leak" pic with more realistic looking "man" and when 5.0 came out, all they changed was a f**king font

Ok so firstly, promotion is not enough. Let's assume that you've promoted the game so people join. As I've seen in other posts, invited people just find the game too hard and they quit. Possible way of keeping the players in Toribash is making the tutorials better but this is the problem. Toribash isn't a game you can be taught right away. Only way of learning it is playing it. It's not a game like CS, CoD where you are able to do many stuff right away (you can shoot, walk and thing you gotta learn is meta and stuff). In case of TB you gotta learn from the scratch. You pretty much can't do anything decent without knowing how the joints would work in certain situations. I personally don't know how to teach new people how to play. I bet most of the players (if not almost every single one of em) just didn't quit the game and after some time they started to understand the game, and that's how tb gains new members. On the other hand there are some players that just quit because they find the game too hard. You can teach soemeone the moves but you aren't able to teach how to understand the game, it comes with time which some people don't want to pay for the game. Tl;dr for this point: Toribash is a game which requires quite a while to learn and some people quit quickly because they find the game too hard after playing for not so long.
Secondly, I see some people are complaining how disappointed they are with updates. Major changes wouldn't be good for the game. Imagine this, you're mastering your skills and then boom, new models, graphics, physics you gotta start from the scratch. Toribash's uniqueness is about how this game works right now and after giant changes I wouldn't call the game "Toribash". I'd be okay with models or graphics but not physics. To sum this up, changing the game details is much better than changing the way this game works.
Before ending this, I just want to say that I was talking about the game, because the game is what brings people to forums.
In theory there are some possible solutions to the inactivity like promotion, making the game beginner-friendly, but in practice it's not so easy. There will always be some players. The number of active players is going down because the game is not so new (over 10 years). It was much more attractive when it was fresh. Comparing old times to the present isn't really good because you gotta include the fact that the game isn't so new. Some of you may say "Then do some big changes ffs" but as I said above, it wouldn't be the good ol' toribash. Like every other game, it has more players when it's released. Toribash isn't the only game like that.

So here's the thing about Toribash: It's a niche game. There are very, very few games like it, and it follows almost none of the standard formulae. This means that, as Gruszex pointed out, you have to learn everything from scratch, since you can't really draw on any past experience. Picking up a new FPS isn't going to be an issue if you're already a Battlefield veteran and so on, but Toribash? That's like going from drums to violin, it's a completely different skill set.

I will say, however, that Toribash has fared MUCH better than a whole host of other indie games that aren't as unique in gameplay. I'm actually surprised it made it to 4.0, and here we are, past 5.0. Still, i believe the main problem is that it's just not a game for everyone. If you don't fall in love with the concept at first, you most likely won't ever, and if you DO fall in love with it, you might still get turned off by how difficult it is to get started. It's very difficult to do anything about whether people like the concept or not, and as Gruszex ALSO mentioned, it's also very difficult to teach people how to play the game without just saying "practice lol". I mean, like most other games, listing down the controls you use is trivial, but using these controls effectively can only really be learned with a shit ton of practice. It's similar to saying that you play the guitar by plucking the strings while holding chords. It's true, but not even the best teacher can get you proficient in a day.

Long story short, i'm surprised it isn't dead yet. Getting new players and getting them hooked is what's going to be needed, but alas, ragdoll physics aren't as new or amazing as they were 10 years ago, so i'm not sure that particular hook can be relied on any more.