Why no good Stadium 2 servers?

[mattlambertson]

Every time I log onto TM2 Stadium since I bought it last week, there is nothing available but 100s of people playing public A1-10 tracks, which gets boring pretty fast, and then a few people playing impossibly hard tracks that I can't even finish once, which also gets boring pretty fast. Why are there no popular moderate difficulty servers like the DIE Mania Cs servers in Stadium? There's almost no point in playing multiplayer at this point, but that's why I bought the game, I wish it was as popular as Nations, but of course its not free

Oh well, at least Valley is good.

[Rots]

Not free but not expensive either...

[GanjaRider]

I've had patience with TM2 Stadium for quite some time but also I went back to TM1 Stadium. They should make TM2 Stadium free and close TM1 Stadium. I know it's harsh but it's the only way I see TM2 Stadium back in business.

Edit: Im not talking about skill level as i can finish all tracks i see online but im talking about the lack of crowded servers, especially for full speed.

[mattlambertson]

Today I found a well populated server that claimed to be for beginners but the tracks were still way too hard. Maybe I just suck at Stadium but only about 1/3 of the players finished each track and the one time I finally was happy to finish, I finished last of the finishers and got no ladder points. Why not give ladder points to everyone who finishes, they still beat all the people who didn't finish...?

I think maybe most of the people who play Stadium a lot are so good at it from playing Nations that they think hard tracks are easy...so in other words this game has a very steep learning curve to be good at multiplayer. No wonder most people are playing the public A1-10 servers. They would rather beat people than discover new tracks. But I am here to discover new tracks so I don't want to play the public servers. So I will keep trying and hope I eventually become good enough to finish these hard "beginner" tracks. I guess I'm still a beginner even though I have been playing TM since Sunrise...

[Romain42]

You're not the first guy who reports this issue.

When i came to TM (it was TMS ^^), i was rather critical to the maps i found on the main servers, and that led me to create maps. Maybe you should try to create maps and to show what is, according to you, a good map for online gaming. Also, there are probably servers with good maps but they need more advertising, maybe.

I've had patience with TM2 Stadium for quite some time but also I went back to TM1 Stadium. They should make TM2 Stadium free and close TM1 Stadium. I know it's harsh but it's the only way I see TM2 Stadium back in business.

Without reliable long term revenues, a free TM2 Stadium would just lead Nadeo to bankruptcy. Of course, in the perfect world everything is free and one can live on love alone.

[GanjaRider]

Without reliable long term revenues, a free TM2 Stadium would just lead Nadeo to bankruptcy. Of course, in the perfect world everything is free and one can live on love alone.

Dont forget my second point. And since TM2 Stadium wasnt planned Maniaplanet shoud be able to stand on its own feet. But you're probably right about that perfect world.

[Romain42]

I don't know if i understand what you said... Is your second point "close TM1 Stadium", while the first would be "Make TM2 Stadium free"?

I think we can't copy-paste the economy of TM1S to TM2S. TM1S has been developped years ago and Nadeo earned reliable revenues from it during years (until Microsoft stopped the advertisement and the freezones appeared to solve the problem). As far as i see it (it might be a mistake), the earnings Nadeo gets nowadays thanks to the freezones (= incitement to buy TMU) might be just enough to pay the bills for the variable costs (while the investment has been offset during the golden days). I'm not sure the same business-model could afford to make TM2S profitable (for which there is still an invest to recover).

Furthermore, it seems some TM1 Stadium players just hate the changes that happened with TM2 (Cameras, Shadows, and so on). Maybe some of them would just leave if TMNF disappears, instead of moving to TM2. But it should be a minority, most of the players being attracted by the price, i think (that's why Stadium was said better compared to other environments during the TMU period, it's funny to realize how well it compares now in a paid version... paid version that's still cheaper than the other environments).

[mattlambertson]

You're not the first guy who reports this issue.

When i came to TM (it was TMS ^^), i was rather critical to the maps i found on the main servers, and that led me to create maps. Maybe you should try to create maps and to show what is, according to you, a good map for online gaming. Also, there are probably servers with good maps but they need more advertising, maybe.

I wish I had time to make maps or make a server, I definitely don't, too many other hobbies. But I agree that there are probably many servers with good maps. There are servers with great maps of moderate difficulty in Canyon and Valley, that are often populated, it just seems like Stadium has only hard servers. I understand that, because if I had played Nations for years and got really good I would want to do really hard tracks to challenge me. But it makes it hard for a person of average skill like me to get involved. I'm sure there are enough people like me who feel the same way, I wonder how we could all get coordinated to join the same servers at the same time, lol.