No, I doubt that it would solve this issue. What Trackmania needs is something refreshing, something completely new, an ''evolution'' to attract new players.
Trackmania Nations Forever achieved success due to several reasons:
- The social aspect I've mentioned earlier which was mainly caused by the mass of players
- Competitive environment (not a lot features, only reduced on the very neccessary things)
- Gameplay was easy to learn but difficult to master
- Nadeo's clever game concept of ''Player creates content'' so they don't need to push new content within regular updates. They were able to save a lot ressources (time, money) which could be used for other stuff.
-
The simple but powerful track-editor:
That was the ''Wow-effect'' for nearly everyone out there who never heard of Trackmania's previous games before. Building your own tracks which would be played by tons of people on servers or even on competitions. That was ''
the evolution'' which attracted a lot of people. Furthermore, the map-editor was fairly easy to handle which made it even more popular.
- On top of all this, the game was free to play and the access to the game was there,
unlimited
In fact, not everyone joined TMNF due to the map-editor, they probably only wanted to play competitively. It depends on what each player wanted but a considerable amount of players were simply amazed by the fantastic map-editor. At least in my opinion, it was ''the evolution'' and
one of the core reasons (besides the social aspect) why TMNF succeeded.
TM² needs a
new evolution. Embedding objects is great, developing your own TM-modes is great, playing every 2 years a new environment is great, but Trackmania 2 needs a new evolution. Somebody could assume that all these new features which I mentioned in the last sentences is the new evolution. Well, to a certain extent they are. But
today's playing community is hard to please because firstly, the gaming branch has gained grand popularity since the last decades and thus, more games with great content are on the market. Secondly, developer studios realised that Nadeo's concept of ''creating your own content'' is very popular and they implemented in their games too. So, Nadeo's concept isn't very unique anymore and they shouldn't rely on this advantage any further because other companies do it as well.
However, Nadeo got my respect to manage with their small budget to become such successful.
I admire them for creating such beautiful games as well, so I'll stay here. But, as I probably said 100000x times, Trackmania needs something
completely ground-breaking instead of releasing new environments which will be most likely characterized by empty servers (as titlepacks) as Valley with its mind-blowing graphics and car physiques has proven, unfortunately.
If Trackmania has reached this new evolution, then I would suggest to focus on advertising by Ubisoft as well as by the community (streamer, You-Tuber etc). At least it's my opinion.
Regards,
Soprah
