My thoughts (Personal Opinion!):
Menu:
- The Menu looks too overwhelming with it's too big elements and the background doesn't seperate the foreground enough.
But I guess the menu will see some big changes in the future anyaway as it looks more like a concept in the demo.
Game:
- Making things simple is fine, but this goes a bit too far:
- The supports below the trackblocks look too simple and too massive/big. I guess they can be disabled by using mixmapping so they are floating as they are when you're building above another track but that sounds laborious. I find it much better to handle it like in TM²S with floating track and let the creator handle the supports.
- The white barriers around every track blocks make everything somewhat look the same. Overall I think the blocks are missing character and i'm not a big fan of the ramp design at the end of the demo track (preferred the grid look from the old games).
- The car model is... a matter of taste i guess. I hope we'll be able to still use custom 3D-Skins (?) or maybe you even provide the classic model.
- Respawning with the same velocity as you passed is a nice addition, though i would change the system to tap respawn once for simple respawn and double press for the new variant to keep it more intuitive for those who played Trackmania before.
- Gridless placing of blocks is a great addition, i actually posted that back on the MP4 wishlist, so nice to see it being added.
- The Logo looks more like TN than TM
My Questions:
- Will the old bugs, nowadays actually known as features, stay or will they be removed? I'm talking about stuff like Nosebug, Grasslide, Speedslide, (Neoslide (Probably not even really a bug),) and so on.
- What was the main intention for this game? Rebuild the System behind TM to get rid of problems, redundancies and other flaws? Because I don't see a need for another Stadium remake since TM²S is mostly.. perfect I'd say. The biggest Problems I had with it were ManiaPlanet related.
- If you're trying to make things simpler again, will we loose features for customization or creation? Gamemode/Scripting, ManiaLinks, Skins, Mods, ... (I think that would greatly be against the spirit of TrackMania/ManiaPlanet)
- I heard rumors that you are trying to get rid of wallbangs in competitive TM and maybe the reason for the new rampdesign is also that you're trying to get rid of tricks.
IF SO (and I wanna make clear that this is an assumption): Why? getting rid on individual lines, styles and tricks would only lower the skill ceiling. The Mapper should be responsible to block unintended lines. If this is just a rumor without any truth to it, feel free to ignore this.
- What about backwards compatibility? (Maps, Skins, Mods, Modes, Replays, ...)
- Will this be ManiaPlanet or Standalone? If Standalone: What will happen to ManiaPlanet and TM²S? Will we see these improvements (for example gridless placing of blocks; core system improvements) in ManiaPlanet? Or will ManiaPlanet potentially be based on this new TM in the future?
- Will this come to other consoles? Maybe even (hopefully) with crossplay? I could even imagine this on Mobile.
Conclusion
There is
not a lot of information we can get from what we've seen so far. The main aspect I can see in the demo is a drastic change in (visual) style - which is quite striking and might not satisfy everyone - and an effort to make everything simpler (again). The Demotrack(s) only showed the raw track which doesn't look that beautiful and might set some people off. It would be helpfull to see a fully mapped out track with decoration to get a feeling for the style of the game, but if I remember it correctly you said that there aren't all the blocks in yet so I can understand that if that's not possible yet.
Many Players are confused about and fearful for what this will mean for the future of ManiaPlanet, so please give a clear answer to that topic sooner than later.
If you're doing this thread to get feedback I would like to see an official Statement in the upcoming weeks actually answering the most important of the questions asked here. We can't give a lot of feedback when all we have is a preview on visuals and a rough explanation/suggestion of new features.