Stadium is great, but I have two small complaints

[Slamtrain]

Hey all, just voicing my opinion on a few things about the game. I first discovered TrackMania when I saw a post on Twitter about the best F2P games out there, and TMNF was one of them. I downloaded it, gave it a good whirl, and largely enjoyed my experience there.

Enter TM2 Stadium, which I bought on Steam recently, and have also enjoyed for the most part. I do, however, have a couple small complaints about the game, both of which I'd bet won't have a thing done to them, if the past serves me right.

1) Wall Penalties

I have felt, since I discovered TMNF, that the wall penalties are a bit too harsh in certain situations. I know the game doesn't try to be realistic, but if I brush the wall with the hairs of my tires for a split second, I don't think my speed/momentum/what have you should be totally ruined if I come out of a curve just a teensy bit too fast, ESPECIALLY if I get off the wall before my speed even starts to be reduced. I'm sure it is in there for a good reason, but I feel like the slightest brush shouldn't reduce your speed by the amount it currently does. I can't say I know this for certain, but you might as well slam the wall and try to continue rather than brush it.

If someone rides the wall (or slams it), then yeah, they should get their speed killed, but a tiny brush of the wall? I don't think so. I do know for a fact that you can abuse the walls in some dirt sections of TM2S, for what it's worth. I don't know if you'll get an author medal out of it but I've found myself coming out of a few sections faster via the wall (unintentionally) than I did going in/out cleanly. They weren't high speed sections (think 150-200 range) though.

2) The 5-minute Wait

Ah yes, something that has been brought up quite a few times in this forum. I originally created this thread to express my frustration at the 5 minute wait time between official matches, because I blew up my latest attempt going into the first corner after running a very nice gold medal run and feeling quite confident about the track (and going back to it just now and losing it in the exact same spot for the second time in a row).

To be straight and to the point, I believe the 5-minute wait is a terrible thing, and I'll tell you why.

I'm the kind of guy who wastes little time in between runs. I don't finish runs I crash in, first and foremost, and I don't finish a run until I put a good run together, which means I restart a ton.

This is going to sound a little funny, but I don't try official runs until I've hit a gold medal time. NOW, before you tell me "That's the only way to do it, doofus" I know that. BUT, no matter how good you are at the game, I've noticed that you can't sleep through a gold medal time in this like you could through the bulk of TMNF.

Now, if you're somewhat like me, you like to grind out runs as fast as possible. Soon as I even sniff the idea of a wall or a missed jump or something, it's right to the delete key. (Just tried a run again on that same track, slid for some unknown reason on the gap loop, lost a ton of speed, finished 2 seconds behind my practice time)

For instance, the run I just had was good, but not as good as I ran before. I can certainly replicate the run I had before, or perhaps even better it, but why should I have to wait 5 minutes? Am I going to continue to practice on the track to better a run? Absolutely not. It usually ends with me watching my practice ghost go zooming on ahead.

Why should I be forced to keep practicing? I want to grind out hot laps that actually count. Sure, the 5 minutes "adds to the pressure" if you can even call it that, but really all the game is asking you to do is waste your time for 5 minutes until the timer is back up.

Since I don't spend the 5 minutes practicing, I end up forgetting the tiny nuances of the track, and then end up crashing a few times, which then turns into a half-hour affair. I also lose a bit of the feel of the car, since a keyboard does not translate car feelings very well.

Easy to say "Well if you want a high rank, you should practice the whole time, etc. etc." But I don't want a high rank, I just want A rank. A rank that properly reflects the skill and effort I put into achieving the gold medal time to even unlock the darn thing, not a "Oh, I crashed in turn 1, but I'll finish this lap and be 2 minutes behind" rank.

Some people want to grind, grind, grind their way to a massive SP earning, then good for you, but don't let that hubris get in the way of what should be fair to all players: an opportunity to grind ranked hot laps without having to wait.

Perhaps a wait is what Nadeo wants. Great. But 5 minutes? 5 minutes is about 4 times the length of an average lap on the average track, from what I've seen so far. Which means not only am I being forced to practice, which I don't do, I'm spending 4 times as long as one of my hot laps just sitting there waiting for the timer to expire.

Also, I saw some people suggesting you could "luck" a solid run if you could constantly reset ranked laps, to that I have two things:

1) You can't possibly luck your way through the entirety of 80%+ of the tracks in TM2S and manage a good time

2) I'd rather be lucky than good

Solutions

Obviously, a solution would be to just get rid of the wait time altogether, but why suggest that? Many games have ranked queues for their modes and the only difference is that your name gets plastered on a ranking. Why should this one be any different? It'd be like queueing for a ranked game in League of Legends and then, after your game is over, a timer appears that says 3:20:00 (3 hours, 20 minutes) and counts down. Since LoL games run about 40 minutes on average in their standard tournament mode, a 3 hour, 20 minute delay is proportionate to the delay drivers have after one of their minute-long runs.

Of course the comparison looks silly at face value, but if you run a 1:15:00 lap over and over for the course of an hour, you've accrued 4 hours worth of break time in between each 75 second run. That's 5 hours of playing for only 1 hour of actual record-bearing runs. And that's if they're all that length AND you ace them all!

(Note: The timer may start as your run starts. I can't remember. If it does, you have a total of 3 hours of break time with still 1 hour of driving. That equals far too long, regardless)

Gran Turismo, a fellow racing game, lets you run as many laps as you want within a certain time frame for their Gran Turismo Academy challenge, the one that eventually puts a driver in a legitimate race car's seat. The fastest one of those laps is which one is plastered to your name. Some of their time trials let you do that as well.

So I must ask, why include a timer? Including it essentially asks people to waste their time, especially when they've cleared all the tracks. What incentive is there to keep playing this game if the only thing left to do is wait out a 5 minute timer over and over and over? I haven't gotten to that point yet, but if/when I do, will I want to continue playing? I can't say I know the answer.

TL;DR

I bought this game on Steam, I like it, except for two things.

1) Wall Penalties - Too strong on slight brushes of the wall, in my opinion. Wall abusers should still be punished of course.

2) 5 Minute Wait - The 5 minute wait timer in between official runs was a terrible decision, because not everyone practices during the 5 minutes. It also, when stretched out, gives 4-5 hours of inactivity (if you don't practice) for every 1 hour of doing official runs, if you average a bunch of stuff out to where I am at this point.

[FifthStreet]

I totally agree with you 100% but you're probably not going to find any support here. It seems that this is an elitist game now, where they expect you to be able to do perfect runs in your sleep or else you shouldn't be allowed to post a good official time. They are going to tell you that your reasons for disliking the wall penalty and the timer are exactly the reasons why they are there. If you brushed a wall you were not perfect, so you should fail. And the 5 minute timer is meant to stop people from grinding official runs, because the elitists only want people posting times who are are so amazing at the game that they can be perfect 100% of the time, and not those of us who have to really work at it to get a good run. People like us are being nudged out of the game, and it's why I will not buy Valley or any other future MP game unless they stop being so elitist.

[GBH-M1SB1]

I also agree with you on those points but in a tiny different way :

I think wall penalties are more of a WTF problem. And to me it's directly linked to the physics of a car. For example, in Canyon, you drive a 2 tons car, and it feels like it : you have to make huge balance changes and bring it to drift after that. But it happens many times that you only touch a wall and you just take off in the air as if your car weights barely a couple of grams... Besides being over punished by a tiny mistake, this just screws your race up way more than it should, and also doesn't make any sense at all.

For valley, I still haven't noticed major problems yet since I played it only a couple of hours. I think it's a bit better but still, you have these freakin weird behaviours, as in Canyon when for example you touch a little tiny bit an innerside of a turn, or a rail, and your car instantly gets litteraly SUCKED by the wall. Even if you stop turning. Doesn't make any damn sense.

I think the behaviour of cars in those situations should be more precise, and thus avoiding those retarded situation where you jump of and ending road over a gap, and you hear this "shling" sound coming from nowhere but making your car spin like hell in the air for no reason...

[wiidesire-2]

I completely agree with you on the timer complaint. I end up minimizing the game, watching videos till I can drive the next time and the timer is really time consuming, so I have no chance against nolifers like riolu (sorry).

[Keras]

About 1: It seems like you are driving a different environment than I am. Imo valley is really forgiving for that matter. I can hit walls a lot without losing much speed. I can imagine that wallbanging and wallriding will be more popular here since it`s actually an easy way to do turns without having to worry about breaking.

I won`t say much about 2 since I don`t do official times but I can tell you why it got implemented:
It`s a better way to show what`s your real skill level since the best times most likely will not be just a lucky run but a time you can drive pretty constantly. I think those guys that do the world records don`t go away while waiting for the 5 mins to pass but actually use it to train to get consistent better times.

[wiidesire-2]

About 1: It seems like you are driving a different environment than I am. Imo valley is really forgiving for that matter. I can hit walls a lot without losing much speed. I can imagine that wallbanging and wallriding will be more popular here since it`s actually an easy way to do turns without having to worry about breaking.

I won`t say much about 2 since I don`t do official times but I can tell you why it got implemented:
It`s a better way to show what`s your real skill level since the best times most likely will not be just a lucky run but a time you can drive pretty constantly. I think those guys that do the world records don`t go away while waiting for the 5 mins to pass but actually use it to train to get consistent better times.

I totally agree on the first part, sometimes wall crashing is even faster than the normal way. It's good as it is right now, but the brakes should be straightened a bit.

To the second part : the timer totally destroyed the whole copper system. Coppers used to be a higher value. Now everyone has too much planets and doesn't know how to spend it. Now instead of removing the timer they introduced a shitty tax system, which nobody understands.

[riolu]

I completely agree with you on the timer complaint. I end up minimizing the game, watching videos till I can drive the next time and the timer is really time consuming, so I have no chance against nolifers like riolu (sorry).

Not going to start the same discussion with you again. Being good in solo mode like me or others doesn't mean you have to "nolife". To be precise I mostly don't need more than half an hour to drive an official world record - if you call that nolife, then everybody here is a nolifer as well.
The timer is meant to train your consistency: if you are not a consistent driver you can end up playing 4 hours without finishing an official run (maybe that's why you are complaining so much).

[edk]

The timer forces consistency. Consitency is one of the defining characteristics of skill. So it follows you have to be consistent to earn skill points. Otherwise they would be called luck points!

You don't need to nolife to compete. Experience, knowledge of the tracks, having a good strategy, these help the most.

[wiidesire-2]

To be precise I mostly don't need more than half an hour to drive an official world record - if you call that nolife, then everybody here is a nolifer as well.

that's what I call nolife. And this shouldn't sound insulting, it just means that someone is able to have so much time to play videogames. Whether it is that you have no Job, no other hobbies (and if you do sports, have a job etc. you don't have that much time) etc. It's just a lifestyle
63 tracks x 30 minutes each one -> 31,5 hours
Now add TM United (much more maps) and Canyon and here we go over 200hours, not everbody plays that much.
But I see your point - you support the timer - I don't - we won't get together. That's it

[FifthStreet]

Well, I wouldn't call people who can have consistent clean runs "no lifers" or whatever. That's a bit rude and makes a lot of assumptions. Those players are simply really good at the game. Maybe they have spent a lot of time playing, or maybe they managed to get a good wheel/pedal controller working, or maybe they were simply born with amazing hand-eye coordination. Whatever. The problem is the game should not be designed exclusively for those people and block out anyone who is less skilled at the game from participating at all.

The game is very unforgiving. It takes tremendous concentration and coordination just to make one clean run on most of the tracks, let alone to do it consistently. I think it's unfair to say for those of us who had to make many attempts to get a clean run that it was just "lucky" when we managed to do it. If that's true I must be made out of 4-leaf clovers, because I got "lucky" a lot of times before they made these rule changes. We are not "lucky" when we succeed as much as we are tenacious and determined. Now tenacity and determination have been eliminated from the game, and only God-given special talents or expensive wheel controllers are permitted to compete in Trackmania.