Maniaplanet Update #3 - wishlist

[Pedal]

1: Sound issues.
http://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic. ... 63#p155963

2: Graphics quality / Improved AA
http://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic. ... 18#p162218

3: In-Game Lag/pauses
http://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic. ... 64&t=19238

4: Revert back the "old" chat (what the hell where you thinking??????????)

[mistertl]

There are two points on my personal wish list (not necessarily in Update #3, but for the future of MP):

1) Multi-title servers - Please make it possible again to drive around in Canyon, the next map in Stadium, Valley, etc.
I don't think that a ShootMania-TrackMania server will be used often, but multi-environment within TrackMania and ShootMania would be great.

2) Better user interface - With all respect for the developers, but the current UI is not a great one. Personally I like the idea of Akbalder (http://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=20890). Simple and intuitive.

[Maurice_TM2]

Hi there,

when we double click on a replay in windows explorer, Maniaplanet shows off a little window with the buttons "Play against" and "Watch replay". Would be great to add an third button to edit the replay.

Thanks.

[Alcator]

1. "Admin rights" and "Firewall exception" messages should NOT be modal dialog boxes, they should be displayed on the first screen in-game in the form: 'If this screen gets stuck, you need to use ADMIN privileges and/or open Firewall exception for MANIAPLANET. These are the two reasons why the game can get stuck on this screen." During the pre-Valley updates, I went through 6 full game restarts and each time, I had to click 2 different dialog boxes away.

2. This is a no-brainer: Allow Trackmania map makers to record 4 ghosts (Author time, Gold, Silver, Bronze) just like for the official campaigns, and pack them with the map, so that players may select opponents. While there are ways to fake this with mediatracker, it doesn't work if you need mediatracker clips during race (loop cameras etc.). I mean, GIVE US THE TOOLS TO MAKE AWESOME EXPERIENCE!

3. Tool Tips and Proper documentation to the elements and things in Mediatracker (and elsewhere). There are SOME community-made tutorials to things like 'Hermite' and "AnchorRot', but (a) it's difficult to locate, (b) there is no guarantee that those tutorials are correct, (c) they are spread through many sites, (d) there is no quality control on them. What does "Edit cut" do?

4. "Conditional" camera switching: Generally, Far rear view >> Close rear view >> Bumper camera in terms of visibility. Therefore, player should have the option to OVER-RIDE mediatracker clip that forces a certain camera angle by one that is even more strict. This is especially annoying if some trackmaker forces the "close rear view" camera on a loop or wallride and I'd like to have bumper cam.

[Zell]

PLEASE:

1. Implement separate in-game profiles for the different titles in Maniaplanet. (meaning different tag/nick/horn/etc)

2. Implement separate graphics/sound/p2p/game settings for the separate titles that already exist and will come in the future on Maniaplanet.

[sadzealot]

Apologize in advance for epic quoting and long post in general

Shootmania / Maniaplanet related as I only play SM:
sorry for big post but I have never given much feedback before and I've played for a long time

1) Better Clublinks, Team page & competition 'Manager' (Check Dreammy's post)

2) In-game settings to be improved
- A lot of the settings look too simplified, e.g Crosshair bar could use a value, input mouse settings (sensitivity & Y axis don't really make sense to a new player.
- [Bug] When you click on interface settings your custom crosshair you set previously clears and you are left with default. This happens only the first time you click on settings and works every other time until you restart Maniaplanet. I usually go on these settings frequently to change crosshair size & team colours.
- add the option to clear cache in-game
-Maniahome even log could use with settings so you can filter irrelevant info such as whenever your buddy adds 'another buddy', 'Favourite Server' 'adds a server to mania exchange', 'bookmarks' etc. as this can be irrelevant to most people. (I don't use this as I have over 125 buddies and the log is full of them adding other buddies)

3) Buddy list & instant message
- in-game it seems chunky, try shortening the hight of each buddy, increasing the number that you can see. (I don't want to have to skip so many pages to find someone.
- add the option to delete buddy from in-game
- show the last 20 messages received from that player. I keep finding myself when I restart Maniaplanet that I lost what I last said to a specific buddy. [This could be a log-file added to the cache which can be cleared]
- reduce the size and the vertical padding between lines of text in instant messaging
- remove the resize function if you type too much in one line (looks really cheap)
- copy/paste functionality (please add this to in-game chat too while holding Left Alt)
- easy scroll with mouse wheel, please just make this more efficient to use, right now I prefer tabbing out the game and use an external chat program like Skype, TeamSpeak or IRC (in-game Steam seems better actually)
- Make buddy slots cheaper and add a discount when you buy the slots in bulk.
- When your buddies are full, please let the person know that they can buy the slots in bulk for a discount on the player page, have a link to the player page from there too)

4) Improved Rank & Ladder System
- I know very strict thing but I am not happy with it. (Pro teams never usually play public which means they only play on private and receive no LP. A high ranked player only shows public activity because of this reason)

I also want the same as above, but a small (turned out to be long) comment on this last bit about the ladder system and Echelon.

As long as servers with passwords don't give out LP (I believe this to be the case, I was told so by Munglo. If this is wrong, my bad) the competitive scene will not be a part of the ladder. I refer to this post from Magnetik regarding high level lobby/matchmaking in Shootmania - http://www.reddit.com/r/Shootmania/comm ... ite_lobby/

My post (baz-hash) sums it up nicely. The current system simply does not work if you want a functional ladder and to have the competitive scene use the possibilities in the game. It has to change and I suggest you look to other games for inspiration. Personally I liked the ladder system in Starcraft 2 which is the one I'm most familiar with. Not only did you both lose and gain points, but it also had divisions and a system based on MMR (match making rating), not amount of points massed up.

So to do it easily, this is what I think has to happen.

- When in the menus, just let us set people from friendslist you want to play together. If it's just 3 indivudals, use their indivudal MMR to calculate the teams MMR. (MMR is only gained when choosing match making, not random public play)

- If it's 3 people who are all part of a Maniaplanet team (I have no idea what all this is, it's Munglo who is the guy who does everything in Bazinga But I'm part of team Bazinga on Maniaplanet atleast, you probably know what I'm talking about*) then there should be a MMR for that team, which is based on how the team has done in matchmaking matches (random public play on servers can not be part of this. 2 different systems is the best solution in my opinion if you want a proper matchmaking system)

- Let us just hit 'find game' from the menus, don't make us join a lobby to search games. It's a massive detour having to do that.

- Make a system that finds the most neutral server based on players locations. So if 1 from norway + 2 from sweden faces 3 french guys, find german server etc

- Allow us to vote "find another server" since one or two players might have a bad ping and cause high snapshot etc. This tends to happen a lot in Shootmania, however I have not seen the bug where 1 player randomly gets a high ping on servers for quite a while.

- And yes, in match making make sure you make something like different tiers/divisions (I believe this is the new Echelon system you're working on?). It's better to fight to go up in tiers than massing points. You should also be able to go down tiers and lose points (as long as there is points)

Maybe you can find a good way to only have one system that allows for the current LP system to worked and have a functional and proper match making system ingame, but I feel it would be easier to just make a separate system for match making.

In all honesty I would just like to see you guys steal good ideas from other games and implement it. There's so much wasted potential when you guys insist on finding your own ways to do things. Yes some of them are extremely good and it's the only way to innovate, but you also have to listen to feedback regarding bad ideas. And I believe I'm not the first to say that the current system is less than acceptable.

And from what I read about the Echelon system so far, it doesn't sound it'll be satisfying enough as long as it's based on LP, you still don't lose points etc.

5) General efficient navigation
-This is quite a big problem I'm finding, from launching the game to playing in a server
1: launch 2:Play 3:Login 4:Accept any notifications (buddies are annoying as I don't know most of players-names aka add more info on them rather than just their MP ID) 5: Select Title 6:Click Title 7: Multiplayer 8: Browse Servers 9: [numerous clicks Filtering]for searching please don't use the button to pop up a window, just make the text-box visible above the server list 10: Click Server 11: Click Join

OK so 11+ clicks is not bad but you have to consider the delay time between clicks. Server list Filtering could to be improved drasticly, like other games.
- Small improvement - If whenever there is a popup text-box that appears, please have it so the text-box is already highlighted so we don't have to click on it every time. This goes for passworded servers, search filter etc.
- Double clicking a Title does not open it, please make this a feature so I don't have to click them a 3rd time.
- Instead of using the mouse wheel to zoom out, change it so it scrolls horizontally like in Windows8 Start Menus (The reason is the title interface is very similar to the Start menus in Win8 & we don't need to zoom out)
- [Welcome to Maniahome] This does not act like a popup as it is intended, a lot of players ignore Maniahome because of this.
- Validation Code is a pain for most users, please remove or come up with another solution for other players (I know this might be a problem but this is a stressful situation for most players like trying to reset it.

6) Player Profile in-game Information
- Echelon status & level (make it small and the name 'Echelon' doesn't make any sense, over 5 people today asked me what this is, why can't they find out easily for themselves? Please don't allow players to be in a situation where they have to ask others or go on the Maniaplanet forums to find out things like this, there are so many things in the game that are weird )
- Description needs more space / Smaller Text so we can add a 'Description'.
- [Major Bug] Getting numerous bugs involving players with arenaplayerdefaultskin but appear to use camouflage or another skin.
- [Avatar] If not downloaded use national flag (having no avatar looks buggy) a very visible bug that everyone can see, I am surprised you haven't fixed it by now!
- [Minor] If last game recieved 0 LP please state why (lost, no hit-points or d/c) btw if someone times-out they don't get any LP even if they rejoin the game and finish it.


Other less important wishes:
- Long black notification bar in-game is the most distracting thing in the game, please do something about it like only have access to in when you press ESC (Like new most games). [visual bug]This also covers the Elite Timer now
- hit shot accuracy 'The three dot system' please remove it. I'm personally getting so much feedback and I know you guys as well on the complaints about if I shoot him perfectly from a distance, that player must be eliminated. Randomising things in competitive games can be a good thing but please not accuracy. Reward accuracy in this game, don't put it to 'rolling of the dice'
- Overall scaling of text is ridiculous in this game. Make it small (its like the game is supposed to be played on a tablet, an FPS oh dear!

- [Tutorial] with bots with stages (practice & learn movement (why? because this game is different, teach players it, flick shot on guy (fix sensitivity) jumpads, railpads, capturing a goal etc
- Elite & Royal Free to play! I know it's planned so sorry for bringing it up!

I also agree with this. Especially the bug about camouflage/partially seethrough skin. Played ESL for the first time in a long time last night. First game: Camouflage skin.

So Hyllis, my wishlist for shootmania is:

1) Bugfixing

2) The tutorials to new players. Explain how every single block works, how movement works, the walljumpsystem (see #3)

3) Please decide on one walljumpsystem and stick with it. Personally, stick with B2, but just find one system. There are players out there saying they don't know or can't tell the difference in walljumps. Which I personally think is hilarious, but really it's kind of sad.

And explain how the walljumpsystem works. We need to know the basics that decide the outcome. The nuances we'll find later on, but the basics need to be explained.

How can players learn anything if they don't know how it works. There are players out there who can do magic with walljumps and it's a beautiful thing to watch when done right. And there are players who can barely walljump because they don't know how they work.

4) The rest of this post that isn't about the abovementioned

[Alexey85]

Make replays look more similar to gameplay if it is possible:
1. Add crosshair.
2. Add armor, ammo, stamina.
3. Add capturing the pole, including percentage.
4. etc.

[ancora]

I would strongly appreciate it if..

1. The old cam-2 for stadium from beta to be re-added.. cam-4?

After playing this game since eswc (2006?) and being so excited for the new stadium, to find out that the new camera was REMOVED and replaced with the old one. To be perfectly honest I haven't played stadium since, money well spent
whywhywhywhywhywhy

[BigBuddha]

1. Increase Buddy slot limit for multi title owners.
If you own more titles you should be able to add more buddyslots, as you will make for friends. I hate it when Maniaplanet tells me: You have too much friends^^ Increase it by, for example, 20 per title. First title: 50. Second title: +20. Third title: +20 again.
2. Do the same with favorite server limit (Though I'm not at the limit there^^)
3. Free demos (for each envi).
I know they come for Storm and Stadium. But I think you should consider them for each envi. I know many people who want to try it, but don't want to spend the money on a game they end up never playing, because they don't like it. Limit it to the most basic things. Only white solo, no official. Limited Multi. Simple Editor. Just for example.
4. Different profiles for each (main) title.
This includes nickname, avatar, horn, skin, keyboard settings.
5. Next map button in solo.
It is there already in platform title, but why not everywhere?
6. Buddy chatlog
Save some messages when you quit the game, like the last 10 or so. Can even be stored locally so you don't have to put it on your masterserver.
7. Fix the 600 Planets bug.
8. Add possibility to add maniaplanet account to this forum. Remove forever account instead. This forum isn't even about the "old" Trackmania at all, it's about Maniaplanet.
9. Action maker.
Judging from the videos we've seen so far, it looks nearly finished.
10. Info about next Shootmania in autumm.
11. give us some small info about Questmania in winter. Just a small teaser or whatsoever.

[qweytr]

1. Ghost editor
2. Puzzle mode
3. More blocks for Canyon and Valley