Why am I asking for this?
Well first, in my opinion, title packs are just a blocker. Why? They need to be found by the player, then downloaded, then added to a station, then you can play it by entering the station. This causes a big problem, everything is fragmented. In fact, you wanted ManiaPlanet to be something that includes all game in one big gaming platform to not separate the community, but with title packs, it's totally the inverse.
The community, as small as it is right now, is even smaller for each titles, because some are in the elite gamemode (wich could be in storm because it doesn't need custom content) while some are in storm so this divide players even more.
I can understand that title packs are used to separate environment and game (ie: storm, canyon, valley, stadium), but even for this, shootmania, trackmania and questmania only should be in 3 differents title. But that's not the goal of my post.
Why is my request better than title packs?
Everything would be faster and easier for everyone.
I am quite skilled with computer and I love to explore so it's easy for me to understand how title packs work, but if I take my brother who's not like me, it's quite different. When I talk of a new mode (ie: obstacle), he can't join me in my server rapidly, because he needs to install the title pack. The problem is that he doesn't know how.
I'm pretty sure that my brother isn't the only one who can't do it. When going on the game, it should be quite easy to join someone or to play a new game mode that you saw in the server list.
Back on the question. In other games where there's custom content made by the community, it's always easy to download it and play it. One of the best example is the way Valve do it. When you enter a server with custom content, you download it at the load screen. Right after the download is complete, you can play in the server with your custom content. In my opinion, this is a great way of downloading the custom content. As I said before, it's easier for the player and also faster.
Now you will tell me that in some case, it's not faster. I know that sometimes, mods or other things could be a problem, but these can be downloaded while playing in the server. They are not needed as soon as the player want to join the server. On the other hands, custom actions or weapons aren't big files and can be downloaded quickly.
How could this work?
I will base my examples on shootmania for this part. All servers should be in the storm station, even elite, obstacle, etc. one. You should add next to the server name or mode or whatever if it's a server with custom content or not. You could also show the size of the files and if the player already have them in the cache or somewhere.
When the players would join the custom server, it would first download the files in the load screen, then load the map and then he could play.
For servers with files that are let's say greater than 100 mb, it would be possible do download files in parallel while playing on another server or while doing something else on ManiaPlanet.
To finish
I seriously don't get how title packs are useful. Yes we can have a separate ladder, but there's not enough advantages to benefit from title packs.
I am now questioning myself for my custom game mode. I am currently developing a gungame mode with custom weapons and I have a server up and running. For now people add the actions in their personal folder, but some of them ask me : why are we obligated to download them and add them manually to be able to play? It should be done via the game. Then I tell them that I need to create a title pack if they want to have that "feature". When they hear this answer, they tell me that they don't get it. "Why should you put this in a title pack?" they said.
My game mode only requires custom weapons + the script to run the mode. This is like 1mb. Why couldn't they join my server, it downloads required files and they're in having fun in my mode. No, they need to add my useless title pack in a station to play in my server.
Title packs can be useful for solo play with campaigns, but for my mode and many mode it's 100% useless. My dream is that one day, downloads will be much more easy and that everything will be at the same place to have only one great community.
