I'm Xirdrak. I've started playing Trackmania in 2008, stopped in 2012.
I'm now a Shootmania player since early 2013.
I'm here to talk about many things, it may looks like a miscellany of every questions and remarks i had since i'm a fan on Trackmania and Shootmania.
First of all, i came in peace.
I want to talk first about the fact you dudes made a hard work, sometimes a really good work, sometimes less good but you worked hard. And i really appreciate this. Thank you.
You have made something awesome, you've accorded people to met other countless people on your games, creating communities, teams, etc... People met in fun, in competition or both on your games. There was always an exchange between people, you created a community around you, supporting you and helping you. And that was incredible.
Secondly I would like to talk about something that makes me sad.
There is less exchanges between people, your community is decreasing slowly. I remember the time when there was always many people doing awesome things. There was always movement and something greater than ourselves at work because of all that bunch of people exchanging.
To continue on my launch, i would like to underline some points.
- Why is it so hard to create a simple server ? Why do we must change our NAT settings? This slows a lot of people creating server and exposing their maps.
- Why the game's interface isn't more fluid and intuitive?
- The lambda player needs more informations about the game IN-game. The wiki page and the forum is great. But nowadays many people have abandoned Forums (generally).
- Where are the begginers servers?
And so many other points... I don't have to tell you everything, it is not my job to do so. I know a lot of people have made their feedbacks.
And to finish, I want to talk about something that makes me kind of angry.
I've worked really hard on the map editor since i've played on trackmania. That is the main point I love so much in your games. The map editor is simple and cool. So, on shootmania i've tried too. I've tried for now three years to do my best on the map editors. I made more mistakes than good things
but i mainly progressed. I've always aimed cups and ESWC. I wanted so much to see my maps being played. But when nobody gives you a feedback because there is nobody, when you can't run a personal server without paying it and when at last somebody try your map and you get a "lol wtf map", "shitty map" or just vote "---" and leave without playing it and the website saves the vote on the map. Just because they don't know the map... It happens so much. And the mappers will aggree.
I've never abandoned,always trying to do my best, inspired by other mappers and maps. When I saw my maps were going the right way, they were played on few new cups but no ESWC annonced until it was annonced out of nowhere with a map list just chosen by hardly a few people when your game is normally a community game. Even if it is not your fault. I just want to stop. Right now. And go make something else better in my life than trying to do something good but just wasting my time for nothing.
So i'm leaving the ship. I was a silent fan for years, a piece of the submerged part of the iceberg. And didn't have any pleasure in creating maps for a long time now, so i'm leaving.
Thank you guys for everything.
