[MUST READ] Easy fixes, basics missing & main problems

[syzygy]

I'm afraid I'll also have to weigh in here. The matchmaking server ladderpoint limit has apparently been set to 100k. When you get to 100k however you receive no reward for it, no new echelon. Infact you have no sign at all; it's just totally blank. Aswell as that you can exceed the 100k 'limit' and when you do so, your lp's are removed. I remember having 111k lp and waking up the next morning to find I was down at 98k. 13k lp removed which is probably a few days of play and with no explanation. The fact that you can exceed the 100k limit just seems like sloppy work from my point of view. I mean up until now any limit set was enforced and you could not go above the stated limit.. If you increase the limit to 100k, atleast take the time to do it properly and give people a reward for playing the game for hours to reach it. The fact that I and many other players have gone about 100k and had our points removed has just led to customer dissatisfaction and I would like to see this fixed. It has been this way for a long time and you have been informed about it but sadly nothing has been done.

Novation and sadzealot raise some great points here, albeit in a manner that can come across blunt and at times disrespectful, but it just goes to show the frustration here at the neglect players feel from nadeo.. Fair enough, "Theres no point fixing these small things when an update will happen sometime in the faraway future that will make fixing these small things pointless as it will be covered in a complete overhaul of maniaplanet," but even the Y axis not being fixed.. do you intend to remove the y axis completely or why couldn't that have been sorted in a heartbeat? even if only to show players that something is infact being done and that players opinions are being taken into consideration? It was the same with the anticheat and not releasing logs or anything. "We should just trust that things are being done and be quiet" This is even more evident in the screenshot posted by sadzealot about how valve and the cs;go dev's work on improving the game. Personally I enjoy shootmania and feel I'm an active player and I can say that personally, these small "bugs" don't REALLY bother me but I have to agree with a lot of what's been posted on this topic about the neglect that appears to have been shown by nadeo towards players opinions and feelings about the game. It has been evident since the start with the 'fence issues' and continuing into b3 and indeed the first eswc mappack.. Players seem to be the last thing nadeo have been worrying about and it just seems very counterproductive. You'd think that with the release of the free demo, you (nadeo) would have tried to clean up the game and the aspects of it which were faulty in order to appeal to the new players that would download it.. Either way.. Eagerly awaiting a new update or atleast SOMETHING which can be seen as a move forward rather than an excuse. Shootmania was also ignored in the ESWC speech, something which again, a lot of players are feeling disheartened about. Why do you ignore the shootmania community so much? we love you really, but we just want to see the game improved upon..

Also can we not forget that myself and most of the people writing on this forum have paid money to play this game, so it is to be expected that we act in a negative way towards the developers and to ignore comments for such reasons is just a petty excuse to get away from them. Needless to say it is entirely your own fault.

[TMarc]

Shootmania was also ignored in the ESWC speech, something which again, a lot of players are feeling disheartened about. Why do you ignore the shootmania community so much? we love you really, but we just want to see the game improved upon..

Well, ShootMania was not really ignored, but there was not enough time to tell much before the great final there, as it start was delayed, and no other additional talk event had been planned unfortunately.
Btw. even in the TrackMania speech there was not much said about the new features, only vague indications.

Also can we not forget that myself and most of the people writing on this forum have paid money to play this game, so it is to be expected that we act in a negative way towards the developers and to ignore comments for such reasons is just a petty excuse to get away from them. Needless to say it is entirely your own fault.

On one side you're right, we have paid for games, which we expect to work to our satisfaction.

But even having paid for a game that is not perfect or not finished is by far not a reason to get as mad as some are getting here.
Many people purchased the game during the beta, and it was obvious already there that the release in April would not be the final release, and that there would be many improvements and updates in the future.
Some people tend to expect things they know and love from other shooters and they try to force Nadeo to blindly copy those things, not knowing if it actually matches to the strategy and the implementations Nadeo has.
The expectations to the game are the wrong.

Nadeo does everything possible to improve it with the capacity they have, but we have to accept their decisions, and have to be patient until they make it. They talk to us, they tell us to wait.
Did you really look at all the feature requests? Many of them, and also many bug reports aren't even commented by Nadeo, despite they're in the right subforum.
So what? We have to remind them, check with next release if they are still there, and remind them again, without need to get angry or upset.
Admittedly, the wishlist is a unconventional try to get a feeling for what the "community" wants, but also there, not everything can be taken into account.

We have the extraordinary chance to see the evolution of the game nearly life, we have the chance to influence it to some extent, to modify the customizeable sides, but everything really takes its time.

To say time is not the issue, but the choice is, is simply wrong. Because both is together: the right choice at the right time makes it.

We users can ask for features. We users can give feedback.
But we cannot expect things so badly that it gets so mad.
And we cannot dicate Nadeo how to do their job and how to use their ressources.

Without having the necessary technological backround, go try and tell Apple how to build better iPads, or try to tell Porsche how to build better cars... they will all send you packing, since they are doing it already for years, in case of Porsche even years before most of us were even born.

Perhaps it is about time that Nadeo tells more about the internal development process, like how long it roughly takes to implement a few exemplary features and bugfixes, from the time the reports appear in the forum, to the time they get released.

------------------------

It's really a pity that his thread has turned into some kind of absolutely unnecessary Hylis-blaming and Hylis-hating-debate. Only because of strategically evasive answers? I can't beleive it.

Apparently it's getting a bad custom that a few cannot stop blaming Hylis whatever he is doing or writing, just because he is not doing and not telling what those few expect.
And it's also apparently getting a bad custom that every thread with debates about specific things is turned into general debates to bring up again and again things that have been discussed somewhere else long enough already.

It's getting much to serious and much to stubborn.
Seriously guys, you miss really a lot of respect, fairness and discussion culture.
You want to get good, precise and fair answers, then please also be good, precise and fair.
Novationx started with a quite nice and calm opening post, and what do we have now?

To have a different opinion than others have, is OK.
To stand for positions, is OK.
But to argue like it happenend in this thread and fight with methods going below the belt (like assuming some are treating others as idiots or assholes) is absolutely not OK.
You would never talk like that to any other person, especially not to any other CEO, so why are you doing that with him!?

Certainly he has not the wisdom of the whole world, and certainly he makes errors, because he is human like everybody else here.
But especially because Hylis is the CEO and the genious head behind everything we have here, you have to accept the answers is giving, and not unnecessarily fool around about his answers.
It's again a matter of respect. Some apparently have still to learn it.

If you absolutely can't stop continuing like this, sooner or later he will stop telling whatever to us, and rather release things when he - and only he - thinks they are ready.
Do you really want that?

Please do not forget this is a game and games are there for fun.

Please think about it... and calm down, all together.
Thanks.

P.S. Novationx, you habe a PM

[TMarc]

After a very kind and nice PM (no pun intended!) from novationx and internal discussion, the thread will stay open,
but as written before, please get back to the main topic and avoid unqualified and inappropriate side blow.
Thank you!

[n0face]

I completly agree with the main post

I gave up this game.
In my concern, I would come back if a ELO system, possibility of lowering the FOV and modifying the UI as people wish were established.
Also make it clear about the titles. It's impossible for people to know that "Speedball" actually exist. One of the title I had the most fun with, unfortunatly the servers were always dead empty. I was lucky enough to find it googling random things.

[novationx]

I completly agree with the main post

I gave up this game.
In my concern, I would come back if a ELO system, possibility of lowering the FOV and modifying the UI as people wish were established.
Also make it clear about the titles. It's impossible for people to know that "Speedball" actually exist. One of the title I had the most fun with, unfortunatly the servers were always dead empty. I was lucky enough to find it googling random things.

ty.
The speedball story is another good example.

[plopp]

Another thing with the title packs is that if you try to join a friend in a title you don't own it'll just say:

You don't have the title (titlename) installed

Nowhere in this message is there a link to get it or even anything stating how to get it.

I don't want to offend anyone, but this is not a very effective system.

[andrus]

I totally agree. Nadeo started a huge project with few people and what we have now is a half-finished, bugged and not newbie-friendly game which has not enough players online to make it fun.

[Wabbitface]

I totally agree. Nadeo started a huge project with few people and what we have now is a half-finished, bugged and not newbie-friendly game which has not enough players online to make it fun.

Don't beat yourself too hard, I think Nadeo have done a pretty good job even though they made a hard choice in the beginning to add many features to ShootMania instead of focussing on pushing it as an Esport title.


I like the fact that Nadeo are pushing the feature side of things, I mean community content creation is a big thing nowadays as you can see with Minecraft (I usually compare the two sometimes as there are similarities) Gamemode creation, replay editor & map editor all encourage the players to create the content instead of the developers but I find the downside is the learning curve to even use these features, so far I have not come across any guides from Nadeo and I think if they chose to do that things would be far easier for players to use Maniaplanet to the fullest. Even that in it self would push guide creators to write up more detailed guides.

If I can take a guess I would estimate 70% of sm players want a better Esport title and the other 30% more focused on the features and better content creation. But I would say "why not both?" ok development will take time, and I am personally ok with waiting - but only if the bugs that the community bother to report get fixed in the best possible way.

A lot of people here might think not enough bugs are getting fixed, but you are wrong as I have posted numerous bug reports with suggestions and they too have got fixed 'eventually' (usually a month later). It's a bit slow but it gets done

Audio always stays on even on focus loss (when you tab out of game) - Added
Screenshot can be saved as .jpg or .png and not .bmp - Added and gave us the choice
Combo (gamemode) weapon change using mouse wheel - Added
Player page Ladder Servers Improvement - Fixed
... and many more I can't remember.

But defiantly think Nadeo should get to work on all of these next issues for the next update as they shouldn't be that time-consuming to fix:

Quick Fixes - First Priority bug fixes

1. Y-scale = default 1.0
--> New players will have a better first impression about the game, because they can actually aim better.
2. Accellaration = OFF by default
--> New players will have a better first impression about the game, because they can actually aim better.

These 2 fixes are so easy to change. Open the file;change 0.4 to 1.0, change the accellaration boolean to "FALSE", save the file & voila. Done.

3. Add back the defender counter and make it an option to display it or not.
--> How long can this possibly take to do? What is the possible harm in bringing this back?

• Remove the Favourite Server Limit
  Without this limit, players can easily check if any of their favourite servers have players in them, if you limit this then this isn't that effective.
• Fix the Ping Display bug between players topic here.
  So we can easily tell who is causing the lag, decreases the dispute time before an important cup match

Secondary Fixes & issues - These might be a bit of work

- COPY/PASTE/SCROLL/MULTILINE in all chats. + Chat history with option for timestamps.
--> The userinterface already looks bad, the chat only makes it worse.

• Add Filter Fields in the Server Browser
  For easier browsing
• Add the show-ping functionality for players ingame
  Keep it disabled for spectator so it doesn't look distracting for livestreams
• When joining a full server - 'tell the player the server is full and ask if they want to join as spectator' - yes/no buttons.
  Instead of just telling players its full and sending people back to the server browser
• Being on the right title pack for map editing is a bit awkward.
  Especially for new players as they won't know what is causing their map to not validate.
• Player description / Server Description has a harsh character limit, consider increasing it.
  Want to share information & links such as official website, Teamspeak, social media, Fragmovies etc
• Rework of title 'Latest Activity', Server Browser Bars and reduce hight so you can fit more text and see more listings.
  I've always thought these were too chunky and it makes people think you can play the game on a tablet. (it's all tablet friendly imo)
• Rework the Ladder - I would suggest Zechs's post on this current topic here
  Pretty robust Ladder system and I totally recommend it
• Add buddy functionality still not great
  Add button doesn't work & need game restart.
• Crosshair select button
  Not that obvious and there is that bug when you goto interface settings and its reset to default
• Crosshair size - needs a value so I can easily share what size of crosshair I am using.
• Try players crosshair [Edit] Check out this topic for details
  Make it easy to download from player and share like skins/models
• and last of all whenever Nadeo changes or releases an update - Write up a changelog (Developer Blog) and add mini-guide in forum with a link from the article about something that might be complicated that just got added to Maniaplanet.
  This would be a major step in the right direction for all the players / map editors / server programmers / gamemode designers etc. You can even structure the changelog into those groups so the readers can choose what they want to read.

That's what I can remember from the top of my head
But the good news is we know those issues so we can fix them!

[Pile0g00]

Great suggestions, but a list like this should always include netcode. One player with a poor connection should not have such a dramatic effect on the whole of the players connected to the server

Also the tri-laser

[djhubertus]

Great suggestions, but a list like this should always include netcode. One player with a poor connection should not have such a dramatic effect on the whole of the players connected to the server

Also the tri-laser

Yeea, I still can't play normally because of ping, snap etc. (4 Mbps) Bring back beta 1.3e netcode or create new system similar to valve games. (I don't know how it's called but in cs or tf2 i have ping 35, in shootmania 60-15000)