Elite, arrogant community from "Pro" players

[anonymousplayer]

Just wanted to register and post my thoughts here.

I own multiple Nadeo games and I've played a lot online. Now when Elite demo was free as well, I thought I give it a try.

I've enjoyed it quite much and I've been able to climb my ranking <3000 during this time.

I am quite busy family man with a job and two small kids, therefore my gaming time is limited.
I have basically played my whole life, also on "Pro" level on games which were released ~15 years ago (Quake, Unreal Tournament, etc).

What I feel really disappointing is that community is very arrogant toward players who are >2500 ranked.

This comes most often from players who have <500 rank.

This is the behavior what I've seen when I've played on servers with "pro" players:

• They will "force" you to change team
• They are laughing at you / abusive comments
• Your name gets mentioned but in foreign language (I don't speak French)
• You might even get kicked from some servers...

I can admit when I was "pro" and younger, I was a-hole as well.

But this needs to change now. Average age of players are increasing and we 30+ people have limited time, even though we enjoy gaming. We do understand we can't compete against ~20 years old which have much more time.

What was Nadeo's goal with ManiaPlanet 3 update? Here is quote from blog:

The goal is really to empower the players and to open the access to Maniaplanet to increase the number of players.

If "pro" players are acting as they are, it doesn't come as a surprise game doesn't gain new players. Who would want to play a game where you don't feel good and have fun?

This and all other gaming community should learn from self-defense sports, there higher ranked/skilled players act as a Mentor, teacher, helping, sharing tips. Not kicking them down because they are "new".

If community keeps like this, old saying "It's Lonely at the Top" will be cold fact. Left is only handful of "pros" competing against each others. Is that what Nadeo wants as well?

[novationx]

How exactly would you solve this?
Just ignore this behaviour and raise ur kids in a different way so they wont do it later :p

[plopp]

You can't ban people for being pricks unfortunately. The only thing to do is ignoring and keeping on playing. There are lots of nice people in the community as well, you just have to find them. (If the nice people leave because of the jerks, there'll be nothing but jerks left)

[blablub]

You said you played a lot of games on a higher level back in the day. You should know how toxic/terrible communites are. This game (like most other competitive FPS games) is full of arrogant players that take themselves and the game too serious. It's just in the nature of competition.
This plus the problem of the language barrier doesn't make for a good community. If people can't understand each other properly there will be more conflicts. Just gotta deal with it and only play with people you know or try to ignore the chat.

Also, look on the bright side: I'm sure you now know twice as many French insults than before.

[anonymousplayer]

How exactly would you solve this?

That is a very good question and one of the reasons why I submitted this thread. I was hoping someone from Nadeo would caught this and have some ideas.

One idea could be, as an example, since game is developed actively, there would be reputation in-game, then if you act like arrogant, you will get minus reputation, and the opposite if you are considered as a friendly.

Then if you have good reputation you could get something extra, maybe earlier access to a new version? Or other advantage.

Just ignore this behaviour and raise ur kids in a different way so they wont do it later :p

This I will do of course

You can't ban people for being pricks unfortunately. The only thing to do is ignoring and keeping on playing. There are lots of nice people in the community as well, you just have to find them. (If the nice people leave because of the jerks, there'll be nothing but jerks left)

Yeah, there is a lot of friendly players as well. But the problem being, like you said, is that currently we could consider game issue is low amount of players. And if community is arrogant towards new players, they will quit and switch to another game. Battlefield, CoD, Titanfall and other "mass games" are there.

Currently based on Serverviewer page, there are less than <200 players in Shootmania Storm and 125 of those are in Elite.

I would say currently it's quite "prime time" for gaming in Europe. Also Elite is currently offered as a free version. If you release something for free and you can only "catch" ~120 players at whole Europe, something is seriously wrong. You know UT'99 has currently more players and it's 15 year old game...

You said you played a lot of games on a higher level back in the day. You should know how toxic/terrible communites are. This game (like most other competitive FPS games) is full of arrogant players that take themselves and the game too serious. It's just in the nature of competition.

Partly I agree, but on another hand, "pro" level gaming is quite new still and we should take different approach. 20 years ago, there wasn't YouTube or eSport events like there are now, players like Fatal1ty was basically first generation of eSport/professional gaming. And yes, he is "old" like me.

I don't remember myself kick voting someone because he is a new.
Of course Elite is different due one player can cause "damage" more when compared for example to regular FPS where you can always play yourself. Now in Elite some turns you just have to wait and look how the newbie is doing.

ShootMania is different, positively and I love it. Now we need to work with community so people can feel they are appreciated and welcome even though they aren't the best players.

All "pro" players should understand newer players and look at their own in-game statistic hours. If you have played >400 hours as an example, what do you expect when someone has played 10% of that, 40 hours?

Friendly, active, helping community should be vision for game developers; how to achieve that? How to maintain it?

Nadeo needs to take this as a top priority, game is barely 1 year old and volume of players are decreasing. If anything isn't done, final nail to the coffin will be when Epic Games gets new UE4 engine based Unreal Tournament ready.

[plopp]

One idea could be, as an example, since game is developed actively, there would be reputation in-game, then if you act like arrogant, you will get minus reputation, and the opposite if you are considered as a friendly.

Who will rank people? If players rank each other there is stopping the jerks giving nice people bad reputation. And trust me, the "pro" players are not only arrogant and rude to new players.

Currently based on Serverviewer page, there are less than <200 players in Shootmania Storm and 125 of those are in Elite.

I would say currently it's quite "prime time" for gaming in Europe. Also Elite is currently offered as a free version. If you release something for free and you can only "catch" ~120 players at whole Europe, something is seriously wrong. You know UT'99 has currently more players and it's 15 year old game...

UT99 was already a big game back in the day. So it's still a big name. Shootmania hasn't become big yet(i still have hope) and I think advertisement is partly to blame. Most people don't know about the game and lots of people who knows about it stops playing because of the lack of players. It's a vicious cycle.

All "pro" players should understand newer players and look at their own in-game statistic hours. If you have played >400 hours as an example, what do you expect when someone has played 10% of that, 40 hours?

I think some of the frustration from these players come from a lack of a working matchmaking system. The laddersystem and the matchmaking is questionable right now, but this is another discussion that has been talked about over and over in this forum.