Maniaplanet after 5 Years - What does the community say?

[hackie]

I don't

Yeah, yeah whatever. However, it is still far from perfect. In addition, it is "objects" rather than blocks!
These types of blocks in the Valley does not*. Hm, I noticed (roughness, I realized that it is) "experimental mode" solves most of these problems. But we need to move on not stand, constantly enjoying something one thing. ManiaPlanet - a world of impressions. Where is this all? If we draw inspiration only from 2* environments?

Show me!

An excellent solution, but without this objects, map is broken.
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* By the way these blocks remind me of the Canyon. If so, it is either new "objects" or mods to the original environment.
* I do not consider "Stadium" because I overplayed enough on it in the previous Nadeo games!

Bad example cause that title pack is not working as it should be. ( nothing to do with Nadeo )

[Lorisa]

Bad example cause that title pack is not working as it should be. ( nothing to do with Nadeo )

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More?

True. But still it would be wiser to create a storage unit, for download and use "objects" on the map. You don't longer have to worry about it. If there is block in the Title Pack or not. Since all this is in Store ManiaPlanet. Just Download and play. Would it not be easier?
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You know this is at all very uncomfortable when you launch the map and get an error with the lack of a block or object, and then you start to look for it on the internet reading all mountain tutors and learning all this stuffs for simply play a map. It was initially incorrectly built. The rather strange title of packs sold themselves. I'm not arguing that it's cool to create your own personal mode, filling it with different contents of objects and weapons, to all kinds of triggers and blocks, along with the mod, to create a sense of a common atmosphere of the game. But realize, the concept breaks down if I simply can't run the map without + any additional parts, blocks, objects, items, skins, mods and so on. All this "tails" mistakes developers. He simply just do not have the desire to do it all more orderly and compact.

Also, Why do I need all of this objects?
I understand that it's great that I have the opportunity to use their own 3D object on the map. But why it is implemented so curve?

[hackie]

There is a storage unit ingame , called the "shop".
There you can choose titlepacks.

But this title pack you showed misses some files , or whatever.

Most title packs from the shop ( ingame ) work as they should, so its already there. ( the store maniaplanet or what ever you call it )

[Lorisa]

Generally. This is the reason why I did not create a map with objects items, title-packs (with the same environment 3x) and other new "Innovations by Nadeo." Because simply elementary, I do not want to lose my map!
All thanks. I'm going to bed.
Bye.

[TMarc]

Additional points:
Carefull mappers should always place a comment on ManiaExchange that their maps only work with specific titles or blocks - if MX can't detect this during the map upload phase.
And server hosters will certainly not use maps for titles they don't have.

[meuh21]

I see a conflict between creators and players,

I don't think so. It's just a conflict between a few negative people and some people who take time to make some posts to react to bad behaviour.

60 people have played PMC yesterday and have fun with new Tipii items. But just a few of them post here because they are playing or maybe they are upset by bad behaviour or not just not interested by forums. Of course many creators are in this forum because it is more interesting and useful for them to share tips and informations than for lambda player.

I'm sad to see only one player with bad spirit polluted this forum and this topic. it's really uninteresting to read Lorisa posts. I just post here to defend Nadeo because this guy is a shame for us. For the whole community, creators and players. And we can help moderators, it's also our job to say "Stop".

Lorisa is not the community, it's just Lorisa

[saywhat]

I see a conflict between creators and players,

I don't think so. It's just a conflict between a few negative people and some people who take time to make some posts to react to bad behaviour.

60 people have played PMC yesterday and have fun with new Tipii items. But just a few of them post here because they are playing or maybe they are upset by bad behaviour or not just not interested by forums. Of course many creators are in this forum because it is more interesting and useful for them to share tips and informations than for lambda player.

I'm sad to see only one player with bad spirit polluted this forum and this topic. it's really uninteresting to read Lorisa posts. I just post here to defend Nadeo because this guy is a shame for us. For the whole community, creators and players. And we can help moderators, it's also our job to say "Stop".

Lorisa is not the community, it's just Lorisa

And you, meuh21 is not the community neither. You are someone who obviously LOVE the tools that nedeo are providing to "create" and code, all basicallu for youre own pleasure as theres just a small bunch of driviers driving these game. I am not saying this is bad, lucky you, enjoy, i understand you are fighting for you interest but please, also understand those who are not coders and just wants to log on and drive a good servers with lots of people.

Not to say that that the job or the work you do for the communiti is poor or bad but i believ that there need to be at least 10 times the amount of drivers only for each creator in order for this game to be successfull. Now its the other way round, there more creator then driver wich makes unbalanse.

i belive that this maniplanet went wrong from the start, Nedeo took some shortcuts hoping it would work out but it didnt and now they dont now what to do, hence the long period without updates or information And on top of this they have started a silence campagne which juste make the dissaster even bigger.

Things need sto change and be improved to atlist what they should been from the start. I give this maniaplanets 6 montsh, if nothing change, closed doors.

[haenry]

At the beginning I thought what a great topic this was, but then I saw many pages of posts.

However I still want to give my opinion about the recent years of Maniaplanet discussing a few topics:
-Why am I still playing?
-Situation in United
-Situation in Maniaplanet
-The block layout in Maniaplanet
-The arcade feeling of united
-Lack of simplicity
-Maniaplanet and new players
-SM vs TM

• First of all I am still around, which implies that Maniaplanet has something that makes it worth to stay. I'm afraid to say it, but the number one reason for me to stick around are all the people I got to know. Staying in contact with them via skype, Teamspeak or Mumble is really a thing I like to do. Usually it has not so much to do with actually playing the game, but instead discussing about Maniaplanet or mostly totally unrelated stuff that happens in the world. The from time to time there are the moments we play Maniaplanet together: At least every month at PMC, but usually a few times more at the MX KO. But besides that, I don't race on servers anymore and building a map has become exceptional for me too. It really is the friends that make me stick around
  
  Why is that?
  It is partially related to less time I have available to spent, but mostly it is due to the game itself.
• In United I loved the simplicity. Finding a server was easy. There was one list and you could scroll through it and simply pick a good server. I knew that friends would usually join the same server because envi-wise they were all kind of equal (usually all 7 envis). Building a map was easy. I just had to open the editor and instantly I had all I ever needed. The only decision I had to make was picking an environment.
• Now in Maniaplanet it is completely different. All titlepacks are different and people do not join the same server because many times they want to play a different environment. If it is a TM2 envi server, the probability for them to join is higher, but there are not many crowded servers.
  Building a map is more difficult. You have to think about objects to download beforehand to use all possibilities. The block sets of some environments alone are sometimes just not enough to build a creative map.
• Canyon has a few blocks that are very difficult to use: Cliff roads, tunnels and especially split tunnels. One general issue with canyon is the big block size, which lowers the amount of combinations possible, especially cps are sometimes very hard to fit in. In valley the blocks are smaller at least, but the block set itself is very poor. Many basic blocks are missing and the offroad forest is a pain to build. It seems that the set of blocks in Valley is not thought out well. Furthermore I do not understand why the draggable roads are not used in the editor anymore. They are already implemented for stadium, so the feature must be there, and they are very comfortable to use. Tunnels in Bay were really cool because they were draggable and allowed intersections.
  Furthermore you have to decide for a titlepack because players, who do not own the same titlepack, can not play your map.
• Furthermore I miss the arcarde feel of the cars from United. They were super sensitive, which allowed for insane driving routes. Especially Snow was a blast. Stadium, which was my most hated environment in United, is my most loved one in Maniaplanet because it has still a very sensitive car compared to canyon and valley. The more inert movement of canyon instantly reminded me of a Need for Speed title. In my opinion these inert physics do not match with wallrides. In Canyon and Valley loopings and wallrides are just terrible compared to United environments. Or do you know any good and crazy wallride and looping maps in valley/canyon, which are as easy drivable as in Stadium, Island or bay? Btw, I would love to see a noslide environment like island, rally, coast, snow or bay again. Heck, even Desert was a no slide enviromnent
• I already spoke about the lack of simplicity above, but it is one of the crucial reasons for the lack of new players.
  So what does everyone expect, when they play Maniaplanet for the first time? Instant fun.
  People like simple things that just work. Here are a few examples: many apple products, although I am not a fan of them and their customisation options are rare, but their products "just work" and look nice (but screw that market behaviour from apple - disgusting). Music streaming services eliminate the problem of sorting music and buying stuff. Just type in a song name and you can listen to it. Successful apps on phones are simple, too. Whatsapp just needs your number and then you can select the contact you want to chat with. There are many more examples, but the really successful products are easy to use for beginners (or niche products, which are just super powerful and mostly out of competition).
  I am afraid to say that, but Maniaplanet is not easy to use. Instead of one editor, there are many different editors in many titlepacks. There are many different serverlists. When you open the game to play online, you cannot just hit "matchmaking" and wait for the round to start. Instead you need to search through many lists of servers to find a server with enough players and the right maps/mode you like. There are so many other games around, which offer an easier system and less steps to start a round, that it feels very uncomfortable for new players.
  Additionally, many other games have good ladder systems and usually a tutorial to start with. In Maniaplanet there are a few arrows pointing at buttons you can click and a ladder system that is 'okay', but not rewarding at all.
• The Maniaplanet system is not user friendly and especially not for new players. Maniaplanet is basically like an OS around the game, which you want to play. It adds up more clicks and make everything more confusing. The biggest issue is the lack of ingame explanations. Maniaplanet is complex and not easy to understand because it has a lot of features.
  That is why it needs explanations in form of help texts, pop ups or mouse over texts. Back in united there was at least a real manual you could read through. We have a wiki, but it is not that easy to find as a book in the box and it is not as detailed as a manual (yet). There are a ton of hidden tricks and features you have to discover yourself or ask other players. Yet there are even features I just discovered recently and I bet there are more I never heard of. Furthermore it takes time to learn how to embed objects or create titlepacks and why you need them. We cannot expect newbies to just know everything. It needs to be explained to them and not in long wall of texts, which nobody will read.
  I know that it is really hard to make Maniaplanet user friendly, but I think it is a necessary step. I have only seen one poor attempt from Nadeo to fix this issue ingame in the past years: The arrows that point at buttons on the first start ups, which I mentioned above. I cannot remember that any update ever tried to do a lot for user friendliness.
  (there are the documentation and the wiki, but nobody wants to read those before playing)
• Besides that there are many little issues, which are annoying and don't seem to get fixed, even after years. Many bugs that were reported were never fixed (Maybe a bug tracking software could help?).
  One particularly annoying issue is the slow start up of the game. It is obvious why it is annoying, and it is even worse since you have to restart maniaplanet, if you add new cars, custom objects or media files for the MT to the maniaplanet folder in .../MyDocuments/. Before I bought the SSD, the game took 1,5mins to start up.
  A few of the implemented features or updates are only half finished but pushed to the game anyways. The menu update only changed a few things and made everything more inconsistent. Planets are kind of worthless. There is a competition manager I never saw being used. Maniacode and maniascript sound nice at first, when you hear the idea, but when you try to code something the limitations are annoying and it is impossible to even access the current position of the car. An own scripting language is very complicated and a lot of work to create and I think the little developer team Nadeo aimed too high with that. (something external like lua, could've worked better maybe.)
• Regarding Shootmania. I only played it a bit at the beginning, but found out really quickly that shooters are not my type of game.
  But one thing that annoys me as a Trackmania player: The SM development seems to cost a lot of time and some of this time seems to miss for the Trackmania development. I have no problem with waiting, but the progress in Trackmania is very very slow because you concentrated on SM a lot. But if you concentrate on Trackmania a lot, SM players will start to complain. It's a two sided sword.

This turned out to be a long post and it seems very criticising, but I wanted to stay honest and I tried to be as constructive as possible.
There are also many good things about Trackmania. I had a lot of cool experiences and fun plying the game, but I wanted to focus on the current issues of Maniaplanet in this topic. It is already too long anyways.
Keep working Nadeo. Maniaplanet is not lost yet.

Peace out

[meuh21]

And you, meuh21 is not the community neither.

You're right. I'm just one and that's why I talk about the 60 people who played PMC yesterday, have fun and thanks to organisators, trackbuilders, title and items creator and of course Nadeo.

In fact, conflict is not between creator and player, it's maybe not between negative and positive people, it's between people who think they are better game designer than Nadeo and people, like me, who know Nadeo have a dream team.

Some people here and before explain to Nadeo how to make a gameplay, how advertise, which strategy they should have, etc. Shootmania players explain something and TM players another thing. But Nadeo team is professionnal and they are much more implicated than us. I can understand Hylis have to think carefuly before taking a decision because a lot of people and families could depend on this decision. I think we should respect this.

We miss more players. And you really think Nadeo don't want to sell more games ? Don't you think they work hard ?

Feedbacks from players are useful and could be very constructive and interesting. We can disagree with some Nadeo decisions (in fact for now i can't, because i don't want to be on the forum dark side). But, for my part I trust Nadeo is the best team to decide what is good for Maniaplanet. They are expert, they have experience, knowledge and they are 100% (maybe even more ) IN Maniaplanet.

Negative post with pseudo expert advices split the community. So i choose my side. I am with people who love this game, with people who play this game, with people who create beautiful stuff with this game.

And if I react here, and especially about Lorisa posts, it's because I don't want Nadeo think this kind of people represent the whole community. I'm just one but I don't feel alone : viewtopic.php?f=8&t=31007

[saywhat]

to long post to farking quote

No, i dont think nedeo is working hard. If they do they are understaffed. hell, it took shorter time to to do BF4 which is a hell of a lot more complicated/advanced game than what TM/Nedeo is.

I belive nedeo is just a way for ubi to save some taxes by deducting income vs the loss of nedeo/tm. They all seem quite incompetent right now, tm is nothing more than an import of TMN which is almost 10 yrs old already.

But hey, i am not the one who is at loss here. Hilis and nedeo is. Soon there are no drivers driving their game anylonger, it will only be them and a few drivers who drew tracks and cars and they will all be sitting together telling each other how great this is and how much they enjoy it.

I will always find another game to play or another car to drive, no problemo for me. i wish you all the best of luck and for the sake of god, dont forget to "create something for the communiti" I guess there will be you and mavbe 2-3 more people cheering you lol.

Maniplanet and tm is dead already, time to relaise this and move forward, Grazie,