After a recent update to Maniaplanet 4, I noticed that my favorite game mode, Hot Seat, has undergone some massive changes and frankly speaking, unless I'm missing something, most of them were for the worse. The things I consider as regressions are:
Selecting players
Previously one could choose from a list of defined accounts. Now, I have to type all the names manually, each time I start a new race.
Available race time
Previously one could provide an amount of time that each player had available for all their trials. This option is missing now. Furthermore, there's something off with the way the game decides when a player's time is up -- when the "progress bar" drops to zero, the player can still continue until some time later (which seems unpredictable).
Final results
In previous version, after the race is over, all players results were presented. Now, it's gone (the only information at the end is that player X wins).
If there's anyone who's aware of some options I didn't yet discover to handle these problems, I'd appreciate any hints. Also, if the game developers are reading this forum, I'd like to ask them to consider reverting at least some of the changes made to hot seat mode in MP4 update, as IMO they've enormously lowered TM2 playability. Hot seat mode was one of the reasons I bought this game in the first place and now I'm starting to regret my decision.
On the bright side -- new UI and graphics are really cool
Edit: if that makes any difference, I'm using TM2 Stadium purchased via Steam.