ShootMania - How active this game REALLY is.

[Ozon]

I just want to give a heads up to all the shootmania hardcore fans here. This topic feels almost like dejavù from a previous trackmania discussion on this forum. But first, I would like to give all my hate towards shootmania and its community, because this game is probably the biggest reason to the split up and dying trackmania community. Hope you feel great about yourselves supporting and developing such a successful fps title, when clearly trackmania was not successful enough to be prioritized 100% (yes, sarcasm).

This is dumb. You hate on the community of Shootmania because they play a game they like? How rich are your parents?
As the Trackmania community, the SM community consists of their players, their volunteers in mapmaking, content creation and else. The Trackmania community has almost exactly the same hierarchy.

Shootmania is not the reason Trackmania "dies". It is their developers. And this is not meant to be a "ugh the devs are bad"; rather it is the fact that NADEO has to maintain development, community work, advertisement, esports and activity with under 30 people (is it under 30?). This is not profitable at all. Less devs = longer development time. Less community managers = less sales. Less esport = less long-time players.


To the rest of your post, I believe, as harsh you exploit, that these are some valid points. Trackmania is the reason why TM² happened, and why Shootmania has the current "popularity". I believe, that without Trackmania, Shootmania as a standalone wouldn't have been that successful, except if all the company's capacity would be in that game 365 days a year. For a small studio like Nadeo it is rather exhausting to maintain the contentness of the playerbase over two-three games. While Maniaplanet strives to connect those players together, it rather just organizes a one-night stand for each of their playerbases (example: ELITE players who play ELITE all day and decide to just do something different once).

Atleast give the people the feeling as if there is something going on everytime I open the game. The UI is good as it is not by the way.

[rzn]

Hello, firstly, sorry for thread bump.

Now, some of you may know me as moviemaker for CPLAY and occasionally competitive player in ShootMania. I've been competitive gamer for more than 11 years, including COD1 and 4 and quake/cs and others. That in mind, I now want to repeat myself about the real issue here. I've said this numerous times and I shall repeat once for all and say why I stopped playing.

What is Shootmania (in my view)?

ShootMania is an arena shooter with unique movement style and futuristic environment and weapons. It's mostly based on skill for an individual player and teamwork of 3 people. Great movement and positioning on the map is crucial for the round, and teamwork for defense is also very important.

Shootmania comes with few modes, most of which are never played at all and never will be. Elite was main breakthrough concept. Royal is very interesting indeed and joust but it lacks, well, it lacks something I'll say in a minute.

What did developers do good?

Now that's a good question, what did they do good? Let's face some facts here, they made outstanding replay editor, probably in top 3 of any game out there on market, replay editor in ShootMania as well as in TrackMania is one of a kind experience and provides you with alot of freedom. They also made map editor which is incredible, player has alot of freedom but in the same time, simplicity and ease of use. It's basically for anyone which is awesome.

That, is about it they did. Besides the fact that SM is well optimized and they you know, made the game obviously.

What did developers do BAD?

Where to start... Let's just start by saying that ShootMania is not an indie game, it's publisher is Ubisoft. THE Ubisoft. They had alot of money to work around with. Let's talk marketing; This is an actual promo piece they posted on official website: http://blog.maniaplanet.com/wp-content/ ... cebook.jpg

Personally as an actual graphic designer in real life, I have to say, honestly, this picture sickens me and shows great lack of commitment towards game promotion and it's very dignity. This is cheaply made, beveled and outlined text, unprofessional work made in literally 40 seconds. And it's not some random art, it's THE promo art for open beta, it should get people interested. Would you be? Probably not. Same goes for other designs in game. HUD is just trying so hard to gain that "futuristic" look. It failed. It looks bad and unprofessional, once again, SM is not an indie game.

Menu and everything looks, cheap. Let's just face it, C H E A P. You've had your money for gods sake, excuse my language. They add little to nothing in game every month. Since it's beta release, you can argue all you want, they added nothing, before you say, "OH BUT THEY ADDED T..." NO, they didn't they did not add anything, it's all minor things.

Game lacks motivation, music is repetitive, gameplay is repetitive, LP and ladder rank is only progress in game. Where are achievements, where is skins that I have to earn not make, where are addons, where are unlocks, where is a reason to come back and play. I'm not trying to make SM a CS:GO or TF2 or COD or whatever. I'm trying to make this an experience, a game that gives me reason to come back time and time again.

This was said by Florent Castelnerac aka Hylis


You aimed too high man, too high.

Whos fault is it?

The playerbase? Or developers, who comes in when it's time to blame?

What did community do? In my eyes more than developers did. Countless of players promoting the game, giving away free keys, making cups and tourneys. Promoting the game with videos, designs. Everything.

The fact that developers still think that game hasn't failed and it's going great is mindblowing for me. Devs defending the game as it has 12,000 active daily players. Go on, log in, and count me those 12,000. Ever heard of game called Cube 2: Sauerbraten? You haven't of course. The game is not that good, it's like quake, it's from 2004. The game is ALOT more active than SM. You could just log in and find countless of full servers.

It's pretty clear to me that developers are those who are responsible for games failure.

Why did I quit?

I didn't quit gaming, I moved on. Like I did few times, why did I quit COD1? Cause it's dead, as ShootMania? Not at all, COD1 community is extremely active compared to SM, trust me I checked. Many cups and enough active servers. But I moved on, it started to die out. I moved to COD4 in 2008, then stopped in 2011/12. Why? Because there were no LANs and pro scene died out from it's original fame. Is COD4 dead? Absolutely not, infact, COD4 is so active it beats most, if not all of other COD games, and probably many many active FPS games that I will not mention for arguing reasons. From COD4 I moved to SM because I saw a scene, I saw potential, great future. It was never there. I did not waste my time in ShootMania. I've had my 5 minutes of fame, I made few movies, met great people, hell, I even got SM shirt, mousemat and other stuff. Had a sponsor. It was great, sure. I tried to make SM popular, a certain friend of mine that I will mention soon did too. What makes people come back to the game? Gameplay? Please, it's true for few weeks, after that? What's the reason to come back? No playerbase, no unlocks, every month the game looks the same for you.



Once SM couldn't sell anymore they switched to Steam. Ofcourse.

Conclusion

I will come back to ShootMania in case 300,000 people play the game suddenly. Even if 12,000 daily players was true (which is not) that's nothing, That's a dead game. Other random FPS games that you don't even know about have 100,000 daily players. I can name 50 out of my head. So basically, no, I won't come back, I'm waiting for new chance, I enjoy LoL currently, waiting for GIGANTIC, that game has some future. I'll still play Trackmania for my own amusement and Shootmania, if I can find a server with 5 players in it, to chill out.

Final Words:

I would publicly say sorry to novationx aka DREAMMY. We had a fight about the delaying my movie and many stuff, that's in the past, I had no motivation for the game with no future and knowing 12 people will watch my video and the game is useless is making me do other stuff. So yea, sorry for Dreammy. We all have our bad times.

To Nadeo, you tried, not enough. you lack motivation and professional staff. You don't know how to market the game. You ruined a great idea, a concept that could take over the gaming world in it's category or even more. I might add some EDIT notes later on. And hylis, don't try to defend ShootMania by quoting parts of my post, I've seen enough.

[novationx]

Dont make this post about me as this topic is not about me^^ .
I do accept your apology. Forgive & forget, right.

Anyways with GO4SM, CPS, PARAGON(!!!) and the KRAZY League things will get a bit better. So thats nice.
So NADEO is on the right track again. In the meanwhile I'm hoping for some good updates in the -near- future.

Tuts, stats, everything in 1 place (documentation, poses, maps, crosshairs ) & professional coverage on social media with advertisements will do wonders for this game.

EDIT: and spoilers/teasers.

[Hylis]

Rzn, You are wrong about that 12000 number since it was about Maniaplanet. It's 18500 now, higher than usual, but Elite is not the only one in Maniaplanet if you look at the picture of yesterday night, it's 9.5% (258/2709)


Yet, the negative Elite players were the source of much more than 9.5% of the negative post around, and still had the biggest support from us. It's now improving and that's why we are still making support for the positive ones, the true Shootmania players. Paragon are making an amazing league, the 32 teams of yesterday would probably tell you so. And this is the type of things we can support even more.

Seeing to which games you compare Shootmania shows that I did not aimed too high. It's just that the time to reach this situation is going to take what it needs to do. Shootmania is still 1 year old. And when you will look for solid gameplay, instead of fake fame based on unlocks, come back to make really nice things as gameplay actions, replays, maps, tournaments, constructive post like your is in some way here etc.

Like I said, more and more negative people are leaving and the percentage is getting better. I just wish that it does not contaminates the new ones too much. And I know who is helping and who is not. And since Rzn already said his final words, I will call this an end of topic in order to avoid confusion about the original post like novationx just said.

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