Planning to keep Storm/Elite/Heroes/Joust separate titles?

[FrivolousSam]

I only just recently worked out this was a thing, I was wondering why I couldn't find any elite or heroes games in the Storm client. I think it's kind of silly to have a single game mode be an entire title.

[anvolcano]

Wait, Heroes is a separate game too? What on earth?

This makes no sense, especially since you have to change your input settings in each game. What awful design; I can't think of any logic behind it unless they wanted to sell Joust and Elite separately later at some point (which would of course be terrible and divisive to the community).

[Omnixor]

it's made mainly for keeping fine multiplayer ladder rankings I think.

[kalstrams]

Yes, for purity of the ladder.
Also, I think, for the purpose, that Joust, Elite & Heroes are less modable than Storm.

[anvolcano]

I guess that's admirable, but you'd think they'd just change their ladder system instead of this weird workaround to a solvable problem. It's not like ShootMania is a mod; they have the power to change how ManiaPlanet internals work too :p

If the issue is about allowing mods in some game types and none in the other, they should split it into "ShootMania Storm" and "ShootMania eSports," or whatever you'd call it.

Eh. It's certainly not a big deal, and it didn't exactly keep me from instantly preordering this morning, but it's still not optimal.

[kalstrams]

It is optimal from the concept of ManiaPlanet 2.0. Titles allow you to prioritise whenever part of the game you want by configuring your dashboard's layout. The issue is the different contingent of people wanting different parts of the games, thus they want to have as much people as possible, yet to pertain having those 'e-sport' modes.

Modding/ladders/ponies/whatever is the consequence of this fact, not the cause or reason for title system.

[anvolcano]

It is optimal from the concept of ManiaPlanet 2.0. Titles allow you to prioritise whenever part of the game you want by configuring your dashboard's layout. The issue is the different contingent of people wanting different parts of the games, thus they want to have as much people as possible, yet to pertain having those 'e-sport' modes.

Modding/ladders/ponies/whatever is the consequence of this fact, not the cause or reason for title system.

Can you seriously think of a reason why the titles being split in that manner would be preferable to having an in-game menu to choose game mode? I'd much rather just have "TrackMania 2" and "ShootMania," with single configurations for each and a single list of favorite servers in each. I mean, seriously, having to reconfigure my mouse for each of the four ShootMania entries is insane. And what happens when they release a new environment? Is that going to double with ShootMania: Cryo?

It'd be like if TF2 had separate entries in Steam for Payload and CP, or if CS:GO had separate entries for Casual and Competitive. Unnecessary and inconvenient.

[Kitsunin]

I do think they should make it more obvious, however, what you need to do to play Elite etc.
I was just in a game where several people thought those modes weren't released yet.

[kalstrams]

I don't know. I like it the way it is.

[FrivolousSam]

It is optimal from the concept of ManiaPlanet 2.0. Titles allow you to prioritise whenever part of the game you want by configuring your dashboard's layout. The issue is the different contingent of people wanting different parts of the games, thus they want to have as much people as possible, yet to pertain having those 'e-sport' modes.

Modding/ladders/ponies/whatever is the consequence of this fact, not the cause or reason for title system.

Can you seriously think of a reason why the titles being split in that manner would be preferable to having an in-game menu to choose game mode? I'd much rather just have "TrackMania 2" and "ShootMania," with single configurations for each and a single list of favorite servers in each. I mean, seriously, having to reconfigure my mouse for each of the four ShootMania entries is insane. And what happens when they release a new environment? Is that going to double with ShootMania: Cryo?

It'd be like if TF2 had separate entries in Steam for Payload and CP, or if CS:GO had separate entries for Casual and Competitive. Unnecessary and inconvenient.

My thoughts EXACTLY, and pretty much why I've always been worried about the whole subtitles thing since Trackmania 2: Canyon was released and there was talk of Trackmania 2: Valley. No doubt Valley is going to be a whole separate title as well, which kind of bugs me. I would much rather there just be one Trackmania 2, one Shootmania, and one Questmania. Having different titles for separate modes of a game just so extremely ungainly. Even with what anvolcano said, there's no excuse to not just have "Shootmania: Esports" as a sub-menu of the Shootmania multiplayer menu.

It's not as ridiculous as it seemed before maniaplanet 2.0 when I thought each of what is now a "title" would be a totally separate game client with a separate install directory and whatnot, but it's still a mess.