Maniaplanet

[McBain]

I think I already said it on Discord, but to be more precise, we are working on UI of the free experience to welcome in a better way new players on Maniaplanet 4, as well as improve advanced users one on channel along the way. We can not call it Maniaplanet 5 since it's smaller than previous update, but it's still a key and strategic milestone for us and a small group of people are working on it.

And yes, like TMarc said, it's really difficult to discuss without being able to say things, and it's logical that we have to keep them secret. So, about the future, I can only talk about it when it will be revealed much, much later. Until then, I can only say that we look forward providing something great for mania players, have new ones or ones that come back as well. I believe a lot in the power of the players and we will do as much as we can to make the next step right.

Thank you very much for this clear statement! I also wish you and whole Nadeo Team good luck with your secret project!
However please put also some focus in doing real analysis what went wrong in the last years. I think it's the right strategy to stop changing everything and step back, analyze the survey and consider some inputs. I read here already some statements about "something big" being announced very often with afterwards some misunderstandings. To overcome the problem with expectations maybe you can leak at some point a rough direction getting concrete really only at the point you know the project is really mature (no questmania communication).
Also when i look at MP4 as the latest example i think you were close to the so called "Development Hell". I can imagine that the effort to create this Channels Feature was quite high (much higher than Lagoon I guess) and the result was ok but the effort to impact ratio was rather bad. I hope you can improve this and bring back the focus to fun for the players and also stop this tendency of endless splitting up the community for which channels was an idea to improve but only partially worked.

[Hylis]

Good post. Giving rough direction is difficult since speculation start from where you leave it. Maybe I can explain my vision of passed things to help understand our ambitions:

Before, we led the way in creation & competition in racing. Then we went for multiple challenges at the same time : create a platform with Maniaplanet, discover a new genre with Shootmania, work on a Trackmania², expand the team, install in new offices, work for consoles and all of this in a new company at Ubisoft (great by the way) It was quite a heavy lifting to do that only made it difficult to have everything running at players expectations.

Turbo succeeded a lot on many areas like: sales, good user scores at 4/5 and visibility in many places like USA or in the world, with 5 millions players. It was not a game for the PC community and scores on Steam at 3/5 are accordingly. Would we had not released it on PC, it would also been an issue since some core players could not even have played it and this is why I insisted to release it on PC.

Maniaplanet 4 was a deep work for many things, including invisible ones, like the online architecture complete update, blocks optimization, script API, engine parallelism, Direct X 11, 64 bits, possibility to switch from games to games in Steam, reduce the loading times, makers etc. By doing so, we had to let things behind as well, and it's more visible for people that were used to it. We will continue to fix some more or less visible bugs: a release is scheduled in less than two weeks, and others will be after.

Now, we need to innovate a lot, to give them the feel to be in the best place, the most advanced solution for gaming in one of it's significant area. So, our strategy is:
Short term: to polish the free experience in MP, using the channels, and makes them good for advanced players by adding key features. The goal is to both learn on these topics and provide a good environment for players to help us connect with players who want until next long term release.
Long term: come back with something big, also for core mania players, since creation & competition are key to our brands to make them shine more than others.

I hope it helps you understand our past choices until now,

Florent

[null8fuenf10]

Very nice explained, Hylis. Thx for this!

Now, we need to innovate a lot, to give them the feel to be in the best place, the most advanced solution for gaming in one of it's significant area. So, our strategy is:
Short term: to polish the free experience in MP, using the channels, and makes them good for advanced players by adding key features. The goal is to both learn on these topics and provide a good environment for players to help us connect with players who want until next long term release.
Long term: come back with something big, also for core mania players, since creation & competition are key to our brands to make them shine more than others.

I hope it helps you understand our past choices until now,

Florent

Here i agree with you fully! My thoughts today goes in the same direction. Especially about the channels. At first, i thought that the channels are a bad idea. But now my sight of things have changed.

I think Channels are the Future of MP. And adding key features for advanced players, i think you mean Dedimania and some stuff, is the right way.
And maybe in (near or far) Future, there will be more (full) channels and less (empty) servers. Demo Users have access to one Demo Channel and advanced/paying Users would have access to all channels.

Make it maybe like in TV! When the series have many viewer, the series advance and there would be new Episodes and Seasons, when not the series would be dismissed.
And for MP this would be mean, less or no players - the Series will be dismissed, more players the Series continues and there will be more Episodes/Seasons and many players the Series get an own Channel/Server (24hr).

But thats only a thought, i had today. Bad idea? Or what do you think?

Greetings
null8fuenf10

[McBain]

Thank you for this post it sounds promising to me. I will wait the outcome of the survey and I hope you will find a good opportunity at some point to better advertise Maniaplanet and hopefully we will get back some more life to this game.

[Zenith]

Thx for this explain post Hylis ; )

[killerboye]

Maniaplanet 4 was a deep work for many things, including invisible ones, like the online architecture complete update, blocks optimization, script API, engine parallelism, Direct X 11, 64 bits, possibility to switch from games to games in Steam, reduce the loading times, makers etc.

[Demented]

Thank you Florent for the insight.
That was a great way to let people know what is happening without giving away any secret aspirations.
I think it helps those of us who love Maniaplanet and wonder what is happening and even why certain things are done the way they are.
For many who get frustrated, it's not because they hate the game, but because they love it and want to see it succeed and progress that causes tensions at times.

I wonder if it would be possible for you or someone on your team to give a "Monthly Report", maybe around the first of each month, letting us know what you can about recent progress or plans. Just so people know you're still there. I think it's often the not knowing that seeds frustrations that fester over time.
There are bugs that I'm not even sure if the staff is aware of because there has never been any acknowledgement of them other than from one other user, and when it's something that has a big enough affect on game play that you stop playing it can be hard to just sit patiently and wait and hope.

Thumbs up to everyone there at NADEO. Keep up the great work. Trackmania is still my favorite "creation" game and I look forward to the future.

[tm2_stadium_beta]

Long term: come back with something big, also for core mania players, since creation & competition are key to our brands to make them shine more than others.

[wazerti]

And... what about the interview of the 13th of February ?

Did Hylis postponed that or it is just cancelled ?

EDIT: I know I ask this question a little late but I ask it anyway

[Florenzius]

It took place and we got some amazing insights about their current development, but noone made a to;dr for the forum yet