End of June

[TMarc]

Please read correctly... it's about Hello Planet, on the Maniaplanet page blogs: http://blog.maniaplanet.com/blog/category/maniaplanet/

[oliverde8]

#6? But you didn't released #4 and #5 yet!
Hylis, what is going on here?

Basically #4 & #5 was just talk, and maybe #6 will be something new.

I am simply expecting nothing really new, hope I am wrong, but the last years have been disappointment after disappointment so I try and stop getting Hyped.

[quadkillgod]

Calm down guys. It's just a wall of text...

Last time they said :
- Our studio is bigger than ever
- Updates coming soon
- SM power up
- Long term / Short term

1/2y later all we get is another blog post.

I'm really looking forward to the actual update, not to this text. Sorry

[Hylis]

You are right. The Hello Planet is more about the studio, the concepts, technical stuff and wall of texts. Big announcement about games should be made apart and considered in their own timing.

Two major things happened that made the past two years complicated and I am sorry of all this.

First is that TMT took us much more time than originally designed. The reasons are multiple and while I can not get into all of them, one example was that the initial spirit was to have more a solo (with online rankings) & local multiplayer game on console. And many more added on top of that and made the game longer to finish and release. On the long run, I think it will be a benefit since millions of players will have tested it (1.5 million so far) and that some of them will join the future in a way or another, in addition to the kick to make the team bigger, stronger and improve some key elements in the tech that has to be done anyway (will probably talk a little about that in HP6)

Second is the negativeness of many people. Sorry to come back again on this, but it really made me stop the work on Power Up two years ago when we were trying to bring some improvements & experiment to the Siege mode and that we had to face conservatism or negative attitudes (it's when we introduced doors instead of poles at each checkpoint, for example) But it is surely not related to the siege players specifically because we went toward them because they were in fact more positive than Elite even though they had more our attention. On Elite, we saw this too much while we were trying to bring new things like laser denial of rockets, auto focus, progressive jumps, stamina depending of the direction changes, insta reload on hit etc. I told this to some people at PGW 2014 and it was clear for me that we were losing time in that spirit. The negativity of some players also impacted this place where some are complaining that there is less sharing, but it's obvious that the developers does not want to have to support this. And this is why I started to be much more thought on these type of behaviors recently, to prepare their comeback. We understand that there could be frustrations of some updates, of the waiting and many other things, but the negativity is just making all of this worse and more frustrating. It can even prevent taking risks of improving stuff by avoiding experiments or deny the ability to identify good improvements by some players that would rather stay negative instead of acknowledging good improvements or good side of features. And all of this is even small compared to the fact that the future most important players that create activities for others are less likely to get involved and be part of the future. And asking to bring more players inside the same negative posts: "invite new players so we can tell them how much they should leave!"

For the ones that only look at features, I understand their cold welcoming of such posts. Would they know that features come from a stronger team & a positive place to share and welcome new players, it would make them get more interested in these topics and see how much the negative ones are cutting the seeds of what they are waiting for.

And this is why I am also so confident in the future. In spite of all this, and the lack of updates for two years, Maniaplanet is still there with as much players as before and with cool things happening all around. Of course, it's thank to the players (AND the features that the dev made to make this possible) but it was just to say that once we resume with updates & positive attitude, I think we will see a tremendous increase in the quality of the activity around as a probable consequence, of the features and then the audience.

And rest assured that it will not be the topic of HP6, since it's much less of an interesting post that moving forward and seeing what we can do together. And this is why I preferred to make a post there. HP6 will have some strange concepts that some players will understand and be interested in, and that some others will think that it's useless ^_^ And while I understand the frustration, try to stay constructive and at least wait for what other players will be able to do with that stuff once it's released!

Cheers.

[maxi031]

Looks like you need to find some positive players i guess.

[oliverde8]

I am probably part of these "negativeness of many people"

I don't do it to be negative, I am trying to put forward my fears for this game. I loved TM, since sunrise. It is the game I have played most and in which I have invested the most. I have even bought SM, even through I don't like FPS. I probably didn't play more then a few hours:)

I really don't won't to be negative, there has been some great things since Maniaplanet came out, we have environment mixing, multi environment server. Those are great improvements to MP, but it never was a woow factor because we already had it on TMU.
It probably was a great challenge for the developers to make it work, and I am really please to have those features.

We have had great additions since TMF, even through I don't like Maniascript it is a great step forward. The ingame chat and many more great additions. The game offers infinite possibilities for the community. I am not denying that.

But still MP feels unfinished, I am not talking about SM, but MP & TM. There are cool features like relay servers that are there but just not working properly. The most difficult and long part of a project is the polishing. MP gives the impression that new things are added but the polishing is never really done.

I really used to love this game, and would like to hope for something that will make me love it again. Hopefully it will happen, and my pessimism is useless.

I just want to apologize if my pessimisme has caused anyone of you to loose motivation. Hoping for a better game, with more players.

Edit : I know you wish to experiment new thinkgs in MP, but we also wish to have a good, stable game. Right now when I try to get a friend to play MP, he simply feels like it's a to complicated game. He get's lost in the menus, he doesn't understand the time limit things. It's probably about balance, or having longer beta sessions so that the product that is played by "everybody" is a finished & excellent product.
I don't know if I want you to experiment new features or to simply polish the game. I simply feel something is wrong and therefore the game doesn't appeal as much as it used to.

[Dommy]

> Improve the game by adding new gameplay techniques
> Ask Elite retards for their opinion
> Wonder why there is negativity on forum

Because giving "pr0s" something new in this game is like triggering fire alarm on live performance on tv.
"Pr0s" didn't accept walljumps? Look how many players are there on Obstacle.
"Pr0s" didn't accept progressive jumps? Almost everyone is using them now.
"Pr0s" didn't accept bullet destruction with Laser? It's now possible to defend yourself from attacker other way than camping.
"Pr0s" didn't accept stamina usage improvements? You can run faster and gameplay is much more dynamic.
"Pr0s" didn't accept gates in Siege? Siege maps are finally griefing-free.
"Pr0s" didn't accept Charged Rocket? Power walls give ability to shoot players behind corners.

This list could be longer and longer, but I don't want to remind everything that was added and these retards were complaining - and the game wouldn't look like it is now without these additions.

Like I'm doing with my modes: balance everything as much you can, add new gameplay features and let the players use them without complications. And if someone is complaining about my work, I just say "heh, no, gtfo".

[Hylis]

Thank for you post oliverde8.

When we design new features, we take into account various things for priorities and various type of players. The thing you describe as good additions are less likely to be ones for others, and some that you doubt about are must have for others. It's a consequence of widening a lot with having a platform to do in addition to Trackmania & Shootmania (and with TMT on top off all this, it made it frustrating)

Polish is better done once a product is finished and this is why Turbo has more polish that MP for example. MP is in constant evolution and it's less efficient to finely polish things that are still moving a lot. This being said, MP3 is already quite more usable than MP2, and I expect MP4 to have some features to help and MP5 to be much better. It was the same with some other softwares, like Steam or Windows (with ups and downs ^^)

Depending of what you like, you can see for example that some components explained in Hello Planet could have been something positive for you:
"items will directly be usable in any title"
"With Maniaplanet 3, we made mixmapping"
"You can now reach the station menu directly from the home button in the system bar, you can browse servers from the overlay of stations or the buddy system keep your messages received when offline etc. "
"With Maniaplanet 3, we had to make the distribution platform with some known features, like the Store, but with less known like the Content Delivery Network that save the bandwidth and improve the players quality experience when they want to get an amateur title, or to update the inside files to help manage new versions by creators and decrease download size for players."

Agreed that these are not woow factors but they could be useful if you look at the ZrT cup for how much mixmapping is used ^_^

And yes, there will be major features in the future. Some I will talk in HP6 and among which some may be easier to understand the impact and some others that will rely on the ability of key players to make them shine at their maximum like it often happens.

Thanks for your post as well Domino. Some players were happy nonetheless, but the most angry are often more vocals and try to bring their buddies in their demonstrations. We will see how you react when we will change your expert features Haha, end of june seems further now.

[HYPE]

First of all thx for the statement hylis.

I was always cautious when it came to updates in SM. But in the end I think I liked all of the stuff you added to the game. One example would be the new textures with MP3. Nearly everyone hated them and were crying about them. But now you don't hear anybody complaining about it anymore, except of a few guys who always want the old stuff back and don't like any updates. But seriously I can't imagen ShootMania wihtout micro jumps and wall jumps.

One other good example would be the gates in siege you've mentioned before. That was also a point where I was very cautious and many players didn't like it. There were many reasons for it. The old maps were gone and needed to be completly updated, the gates didn't really fit with most blocks of the game and they had to be placed at the wall obviously. This changed the gameplay on some of the old liked maps very much and also created limits for new maps. On the other hand prerush was finally not possible anymore. You solved one of the most annoying problems in siege. In the end a few players figured out how to link checkpoints to gates and so we had the old structure of siege maps back without the nasty prerush.
Why am I saying this? Cause this example show exacatly that most players might be negative in the beginning but they will get used to it. And in the end NADEO and the community will find the best solutions for all kind of problems. We just need some time.

I do really look forward to MP4. Not because I need updates in this game, but because I hope that players will come back. I think I really am a optimist after all but even I see a big lack of players in SM atm.

Whatsoever... to have some more positivity here, I love the game and the updates you've made so far. Thanks a thousend times for that!

[Miss]

Thanks for the post, Hylis!

Game development is indeed a very un-thankful job, and not many people understand that. That's why it's important for a community to have an open mind for changes and the vision of the developers, especially if the developers are so close to the community. Such a relationship between developers and community isn't unheard of, but it's getting more and more rare.

So to everyone reading this who are wary of changes.. have an open mind, try a change or new feature for a while first before you give your constructive criticism, and of course thank the developers for supporting the game and community! Negativity just destroys motivation and doesn't help anyone.

Thanks Nadeo <3