iceman23 wrote:I think most of this discussion fails to target the real issue at hand and instead is focused on the unavoidable bias that comes from being a competitive player or a developer. Without a growing general population playing the game, Trackmania will never grow as an eSport. From the developers perspective, after thousands of hours on minute details and features, it may be hard to recognize faults on a greater scale. Likewise, from a player perspective we have the same problem - after putting in thousands of hours into one game it is very hard to separate oneself from the attachment that has grown over that time. In the end, the biggest problem facing Trackmania (whatever the environment may be) is that NO ONE knows about the game.
Regardless of the direction you take Nadeo, please realize that you MUST advertise the game, you MUST make it known to large online communities and you MUST make the game easily accessible to the newcomer who finally realizes the game exists. I feel all of these aspects are sorely lacking in favor of the addition of many small features that the casual player will never use or care about. Honestly, I can count on one hand the amount of people I've met outside of the Trackmania community who have actually heard of the game - even hardcore gamers who have played FAR FAR more titles than myself. An eSport community that supports itself is not sustainable - we are seeing this with the dwindling Nations scene and the Canyon scene which has contained the same extremely small group of players from the start. Note I am not speaking of support in the manner of tournaments and prize-money: these things do NOT create a successful eSport. Take DOTA 2 for example; the very first tournament offered a gigantic cash prize, yet it still fails to attain anywhere close the eSport success of LoL. Why? LoL has millions more players and because of this, many more will be attracted to the already existing competitive scene simply by nature of exposure, regardless of the "competitive quality" of the game itself (which is in fact far less than others in the genre like Heroes of Newerth or Dota 2). If you really want Stadium to be a successful and growing eSport on release, start by doing everything you can to GET PEOPLE PLAYING THE GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE.
After a long ride through this topic, this is the post that I find the most legit. Alongside with miraculix and frostbeule (and a few others), these are the users who tried to contributed to a healthy discussions here. It's strange, because the CEO of Nadeo has posted countless of times, but what have I gotten out of this thread? Let's have a look.
- Hylis clearly has a weak spot for criticism and reflections around their development and game design/marketing. If you don't include smileys and positive feedback in your post, then you better get out of this forum. Instead of meeting the community with clear answers and solutions, his way of dealing with these topics is usually to close it off, with a final word that basically gives nothing. Example
here and
here. Neglecting healthy discussions/reflections and failing to realize your own mistakes is one of the most destructible forces within a company.
- Frostbeule has made many vital points about Nadeo's chaotic marketing strategies (if any) and has pointed out several logical explanations to why eSport is failing to grow within trackmania. What response does he get? Almost personal attacks and gibberish sentences by the very own CEO. I've never witnessed anything like this before. One starts to wonder why he reacts like this?
- Hylis/Nadeo have failed to follow up on their successor in stadium which has been their definite strongest product. Their move to maniaplanet destroyed a lot of what they built up in Stadium and it's user base. With the introduction of maniaplanet, they've taken too much over their heads and it's resulting in a greedy concept with slow development and unfinished products. The fact that they initially weren't going to introduce stadium in maniaplanet and haven't utilized more of stadium is mind blowing.
- We've heard about this built in competition system and it has been mentioned in this topic. Where is it? Who uses it? It seems that most of these aspects have been finished for shootmania, but not for trackmania? Where is their loyalty to the die hard stadium fans? Where is the innovation for their most successful title of all time?
To many of the others: I feel pity on your naive minds, not being able to reflect the situation but rather just going with the flow and accepting whatever comes out of Nadeo. You won't come far in life with that mindset.
Hylis wrote:Players who complain all days are lowering the passion of others and the ability to see an strong international community establish itself, while our history is based on constructive players that are making what other players are finding awesome. ...but it's still players creativity, intelligence and building spirit that makes the place awesome.
A classic last quote from the man himself that is often used in situations where negative feedback is posted. He is clearly confused about complaints and constructive feedback and has a strong tendency of taking it personal.
I wanted to make this post as brutal as possible to see what the responses will be like. Let's see if people can grasp the meaning instead of just being offended. Remember, after all it's just a combination of 8-bit unicode posted on a forum.
