This communities threads are completely dead recently and i want to know everyone's positions on the step fall recently

true, good job on giving insight about it, proud of you

this is why we can't have nice things.

op: yeah, i've noticed the decline for a while now. i think there's a few reasons why that might be, but it would only be speculation. i think it's sad.

Gonna give this some air in Discussion, but if the contributions end up being bad then I'll just move this over to Off-Topic.

Well this thread is a good example of WHY this community, specially the discussion, is going down.

People have a problem with something, but they don't take the effort to list, explain or research the causes/possible solutions. You are mentioning a step fall, I agree with that, but what is your point about it? What's the turning point between a good community and a bad community? What are good examples of discussions and bad examples of discussions?

Here are my thoughts

Toribash's discussion board is filled with people that have very clear behavioral patterns, some names were created by me for distinction:

The troll: This guy will always cross the line, he can and will offend someone even if they know he did it on the sole purpose of offending someone that might read what he just said, this one is all over the internet and well, the only viable solution is ignore whatever seems to be a trolling attempt. The price we pay for ignoring this guy is that we may or may not trigger false-positives and ignore someone that is actually making a point, in my opinion this is a fair price to pay in order to keep good conversations online.

The bullshitter: This one doesn't know what fact checking is, he is going to say whatever he needs to say to prove his point. A (fake or real) personal experience, some story created by someone, a common bias, a pseudo-scientific fact and even well-known and debunked arguments. This type of forum user is dangerous because he always feels the need to spread what he "knows" and an alarming amount of people will believe what he says without actually checking anything, then a monster is created.

The personal attacker: This fella right here is always aiming for the legs, maybe because he can't hold his own argument or he just got debunked by facts, his weapon of choice will be ad hominem - Attacking your interlocutor directly instead of keeping the discussion -, sometimes ad hominem is clear and easily spotted, sometimes it isn't, some personal attacks are so passive-aggressive that the discussion turns itself slowly into a rage war, sometimes with passive-aggressiveness in both sides. The solution for this one is quite simple, ignoring personal attacks, we're all human beings after all, some will rage, some will not, if you care about what's being discussed you will not avoid, but ignore this kinds of attacks since they are not productive at all.

The attention whore: Self explanatory I guess. This one will always try to shine in a discussion, most of the time trying to be funny or offending someone who is being bashed by the majority. Not that easy to fight against because most of the times we agree with his offenses/jokes, but after all this dude isn't any better than the other ones listed above, for a good discussion everyone must focus on the discussion, unless we're having a discussion about jokes, if you want to make a joke go on a wibbles/shitpost thread of some clan, go ahead and create an account on 9gag, 4chan or whatever, don't be that guy that deviates the discussion subject, and also don't be the other guy that feeds him.

These are just a few to name, I've left this community 1 year ago for a few reasons, one of them was that the game itself wasn't funny anymore for me, there wasn't anything new to do and everything seemed boring, the other reason was that I didn't felt comfortable to discuss with anyone, I mean, the environment itself does not instigate discussions, one of the problems I see is a consent that this is a game-related community and thus should be used only to such purposes, well it isn't. Another obstacle we all face is the average age of the community, we can't force a 12yo to discuss about Climate Change, but we as a community should be able to make this kid see something useful in this type of discussion besides posting memes and joking around.

Another thing that grinds my gears is when two people in a discussion start to quote each other at every single time going full "this line is bullshit, this one too, this one too and this and this and this". When an outsider sees something like that even the biggest desired to post and contribute with the discussion seems to get cut in half (or more). I've been into forums since 2001 or so and this type of behavior always makes the discussion look like an UFC match where we have 2 contenders and the rest must watch, and sadly whoever tries to engage is either ignored or attacked, this has been a problem in Toribash community for a long long period, and don't be fooled by my postcount.

Last but not least important is the overall engagement from admins and staff in general. The community gets all hyped up when hampa shows up and post stuff, the same happens (in a lower scale. obviously) when an admin/staff shows up in a discussion, we all at least should look up admins and staff, but we can count with our hands how many of them actually engage with the community and, well, if a staff member is not engaging, why should I? I, however, cannot be unfair and not name a few that I see/saw engaging the community in good way like Ele right here, hanz0, phail, Faint, Powas and a few others (don't know if any of them are still as engaging as before, I came back not long ago), but this should be done by everyone with a fancy and colored name, I mean, you do have something to discuss, maybe the economics of the game, maybe technical aspects of the game that improves or worsens some other aspect of the gameplay or the community itself, something that happened in your neighborhood, just something. I've seen lots of communities go down for some (or all) the problems I listed here, and I like (some) people that I interact with in toribash, it's sad to see so many people not wanting to use this space as a place of discussion and personal improvement.

Or maybe it's because the game is losing popularity...?

I didn't make this thread to ask why the community is falling. I just wanted to know what people think of the community's fall.

I guess I should've made that clear.

I think that the game is reaching its final days but, there will always be some people that've been here since the olden days that only stay around for the sentimental values.

I'm starting to lose interest in this game for the first time and I just cant leave the game for some reason.

Lightweight - Why did you even post here? did you receive an infraction for that shit post?

Mallymkun - Yeah.. its sad.

IIInsanEEE - Uhh, what? I dont even understand your post. First, you say its people like me that're killing this community. Then, you talk about people that're "Why the community is falling". I appreciate your reply though.

Valterain1: Our points can coexist, and in my opinion yours is as valid as mine.

Soon: You said you wanted to know what people think of the community's fall, that's exactly what I did, I presented my position and added some points I found interesting to mention. I never said people like you are killing the community, I don't even know you, never saw (or don't remember) any post coming from you, therefore I'm in no position to judge (and I didn't). What I said was that this post was a good example for the downfall reason; people complaining, but not really engaged in doing some improvements, then some attention seekers, some wannabe funny etc. I just presented discussion material, if you're not up for discussion that's perfectly ok.

As of this month or so, a lot of people have been going back to school and are rightly devoting more time to it. It's normal for any game to drop in players around these months and they will rise again steadily.

Now if you mean like in general, yes the community has gone down drastically since its high point what it needs is a reboot like a youtube commercial or something or pay a larger youtuber to play the game and talk it up to make more players join. If a Youtube personality like Jacksepticeye were to make 1 episode on it the player count would sky rocket.

Overmoderation kills communities because it's just too much of a pain in the ass to post. There is plenty of activity but any active threads get locked and people get infracted. In the end no one wants to post because it's no fun. Just look at offtopic if you want to see the cancer that is staff.

Also in discussion people just want to talk shit instead of having a proper discussion, they think it's all about winning and force feeding their opinion to others. You end up with shitters arguing asinine and irrelevant points just so they can feel "right".