Maniaplanet Forum

It's a lot easier to acquire a taste for Lagoon after playing TrackMania United. Some of the cars in that game, especially the SnowCar and BayCar, have very small turning radii like the LagoonCar does. The thing that I personally found the most difficult to get used to on the Lagoon environment was the fact that the fullspeed turning radius is small while the drift/offroad/slick turning radius is larger, totally backwards from all the other TM2 environments. But the game pays homage to classic TrackMania in this respect as well, especially to the Snow environment. The turning radius when driving on snow was much larger than when driving on asphalt. With the way ice was implemented into the Snow environment, it was pretty much impossible to correct your trajectory at all while driving on it. You absolutely HAD to get your trajectory just right before driving on ice, otherwise you were guaranteed to miss your mark. So Lagoon actually allows the player much more control than Snow in this respect.

If you are having a hard time driving offroad or on slick roads, simply lift off the gas when in doubt. Especially when learning Valley and Lagoon, lifting off in these situations allows more immediate control without costing you too much momentum, but don't be afraid to brake if things get hairy. It's also important to note that your turning radius becomes smaller as you go slower when you are drifting, driving offroad, or driving on slick roads. And don't be afraid to be twitchy, even if you are using analog steering.

Trial and error has always been a defining aspect of TrackMania. Realism isn't TrackMania's strong suit because Nadeo doesn't want it to be. Personally, I am fine with that. But I would agree that the handling model for the new environments introduced in TM2 have a lot of subtleties that make the learning experience pretty frustrating, thus hurting the game's "pick up and play" reputation. But it's arguably more fulfilling to play when you finally figure out how everything works because of how difficult it is to learn. The way I see it, play TrackMania United if you are looking for a more casual experience, or play TM2 if you are looking for a more hardcore experience. But take note that just because United is easier for casual players to learn, that doesn't make it any less relevant to hardcore players.

Good points from both Filipe and Jellydonut, and good advice for people wanting to learn and fine tune Lagoon driving techniques.
Myself, I will keep playing it and I will get use to it, but it still doesn't change the fact that very likely half of the people who try it will not like it and will never come back to it. A new user will probably not take the time to read forums to learn how to drive it or to adjust their controller to the point of nearly completely removing all sensitivity, they will simply go away and not come back. I let a few of my friends and family play it without saying anything about the handling and all of them didn't like it and wouldn't keep playing it.
I would say that 80% or more of the driving games I try out myself I don't care for the physics or handling in and therefore I never play them again.
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Lagoon feels a lot like Bay and Bay was one of my favorite environments (especially for stunting), but the roads in Lagoon are narrower and the changes from one surface to another are so dramatic I've actually gone from a drift in the grass to pavement and had the car spin into a pirouette. It did make me laugh out loud, but it also made me say "What in the bubbling fish farts just happened?" ...and I've still got sand and grass in my underwear from that one.

It may be the case that this environment will just be meant for a smaller group of players that prefer a difficult experience and that's ok, but as I said I do fear many will just drop it and not come back.

similar to bay , too similar

meow81 wrote: ↑

31 May 2017, 19:23

similar to bay , too similar

I would respectfully disagree with you about Lagoon being too similar to Bay for the following reasons:

-While the LagoonCar's turn radius is very small like the BayCar's, the actual responsiveness of the LagoonCar's steering is more loose.
-The LagoonCar doesn't slide when turned too hard, unless you drive on a bit of road that's a little too convex.
-Sliding in Lagoon is much more sluggish than when sliding in Bay.

If anything, I'd say that the aesthetics are probably the most similar thing Lagoon has to Bay. But even then, Lagoon's aesthetics seem to be a combination of all the TrackMania Sunrise games, mostly Island and Bay.

I like to think of Lagoon as the son of Bay and Island, you get to have the urban environment of bay, fitted in a tropical paradise of island, the car is a lot reminiscent to bay in many aspects, being an SUV and have perfect grip on tarmac, but it slides on wood and sand, not as responsive as Island, but the fact that drifts there reminds me of it.

So everytime I play Lagoon I get that feeling of Sunrise nostalgia, especially if you play musics from TM Sunrise and use the Bay Car model.

Bay + roller coaster + grass + skid unplayable wooden plank + lagoon background . 20 eur for this dlc is expensive, i'll see steam sales discount. For now i've played in demo channel.

Lagoon is nothing like Island or Bay. On Island and Bay you have immediately turns and you can decrease turn angle using analog. Here you have delay - small, but still, which makes it much harder to control. It's like Canyon and Valley - the same method of driving with few variables changed. So no - you have no improvement over keyboard when you're playing Lagoon on gamepad. It's even more frustrating because that small turn delay.

And there is no point to complain about sand, better control etc. All these problems was reported on TMT forum and nothing happens over a year.