Why the focus on so much extras and not on the actual game?

[quadkillgod]

Dear NADEO and readers,

I've been introduced to Maniaplanet a couple of years ago and I started playing ShootMania almost every day. I remember that even after months of playing I was finding 'new things' to do such as spending planets, new manialinks, tools, ... It seemed great at that time although I never actually used so much of 'these things'. You could say I'm just here for the games and occasionally when I'm bored I find myself in the mapeditor which I close again after 30minutes. I guess most of the maniaplanetarians (is that a word?) are like me and are just here for the games...

After spending some time ingame and here on the forums we all noticed that it has been going downhill. Lots of players left the game, people want more frequent updates and content, people explore other games and are drawn away from Maniaplanet... I'm sure some of those players will come back to check out future updates/changes... But if we are all honest it is pretty safe to say that ManiaPlanet has not been at its best the last years.

NADEO obviously knows this and I'm sure they are working hard to give us what we want, but it's taking its time. And to be honest it is taking a bit too long. I know that I'm sounding impatient, but after 3years I guess it's a bit understandble to have lost my/our patience.

So I started thinking : " Why in the fak is it taking so long for them to come up with new stuff, bugfixes, features etc? "

I'm not a coder or developer so I dont know what's happening at the NADEO offices, but it seems to me that NADEO is spending a lot of their time, precious time, on things that are not the actual games... :
- QM
- Maybe another game
- Maniaplanet portal
- Manialinks
- Maniascript
- Mapeditor
- Manialink editor
- Action Maker
- Replay editor
- 3D modelling tool ( dont know the name )
- I read we will be able to make our own map editor
- Automatically generated website if you create a titlepack
+ loads more

I'm not saying these tools/editors/features arent great. I'm sure something great will come out of these tools someday, but they are not the answer to the shrinking playerbase. Or are they? I'm just wondering if this is what ManiaPlanet needs right now. Some tools will only be used by a handful of people so why go through all the effort of building them when your playerbase is shrinking every day?

Dont get me wrong : I want these tools, but I want something else first : players, better gameplay, bugfree matchmaking, ...

So what is the reason that you, NADEO, chose to focus on tools/features/extras and much more outside of the actual games?


Would it be so bad if MP only had the following :
- Buddylist with party-system
- Leaderboards
- Statistics
- Achievements
- Central Store for content aproved by NADEO : Horns, Avatars, Skins
- Player Profiles
- MatchMaking
- Team MatchMaking
- Map editor
- Replay editor
- Official titles
- The thing I forgot
- Interaction on forums and social media
- Support for customers
- Documentation in 1 place
- More frequent updates with faster content

Everything would be extra polished ( Something MP also really needs ) and extra bugfree because you have more time on your hands. Would this honestly be so bad for MP? I know it's not the philosophy of ManiaPlanet but who cares? Things can change and it's okay to evolve and change strategies. #pokemonstyle



Some other things that I want to put here that came to mind :
- Imagine you have a playerbase of 1 000 000 players. How much of those would actually want to create their own mapeditor? How much of those want to use the official badass mapeditor developed by NADEO? So why make this possible and why dont you focus on something else that matters more! Something we actually need...
Why support the 1% if you can make the 99% happy? ( I know I'm over exaggerating. Just trying to make my point clear. )

- We currently barely have any players. Newly created titlepacks have no players. So why would you spend your precious time to give new titlepacks their very own automatically generated websites? Why?

- Domino probably made the best titlepack ever. I bet he used sooooooooooo much of the capabilities MP has to offer, yet nobody is playing his titlepack ( no offense domino , you rock! Keep doing what you are doing )... So why do you invest more time in the development of these tools and stuff... I'm sure Domino will be very happy because he can create way way more... But guess what? He ( and all community developers ) would be way more happy if they could create something that actually would be played. The truth is that Domino made his brilliant titlepack for NOTHING. And if there is one thing that would make him happy then it would be : PLAYERS. And not more possibilities to make his dead titlepack even better.
Titlepacks are splitting this small playerbase up even more resulting in making the game feel more dead... And by making it easier to create better titlepacks you are actually promoting to split it up even more.

- You dont have to answer all of my questions/thoughts but at least consider that I might be right. We need quality updates now with fresh content, bugfixes, polishes. The quality of what is currently there needs to be increased! A new tool wont change a thing.


Thank you for reading this. Sorry that it was in a bit of a random order. Just writing down my thoughts^^.


PS : I suspect that most of the replies on this topic will be about "hey dude, we like the tools and we want more." but I know that most forum users here are the ones using those tools. I wish actual players could see this topic too, because I'm sure they'd agree with me.

[OrecaShadow]

+1

[i7mean]

This is THE debate of ManiaPlanet/Nadeo these past years...

But ManiaPlanet 4 update is coming so you'd better wait (because we all know it's gonna take a long time...).
I think it's too late now regarding the future update, but Nadeo should really consider your statement after ManiaPlanet the same way you should re-consider it after you see what will be done in this update.

[quadkillgod]

This is THE debate of ManiaPlanet/Nadeo these past years...

But ManiaPlanet 4 update is coming so you'd better wait (because we all know it's gonna take a long time...).
I think it's too late now regarding the future update, but Nadeo should really consider your statement after ManiaPlanet the same way you should re-consider it after you see what will be done in this update.

I agree and I know what their plans are and all we can do is ,indeed, just wait.

I'm just trying to figure out how MP4 will solve MP's biggest isue : Playerbase and happyness... And sometimes it feels like they (NADEO) have all the time in the world, but almost all players that I know have lost their patience as well. So I wanted to create this topic to question what they are doing. And to suggest that they could postpone their work on tools/features/etc and focus on the core of MP : The game itself, basic features and a way to make this game apeal to new players and bring back the old players.
If they planned it like this from the beginning then maybe we could have had the update a couple of months/years earlier or something... I'm 200% sure lots of players would have stayed if they felt that this game was going somewhere. Unfortunately absolutely nothing happened during the last years. (except behind the curtains ofcourse)

Maybe after MP4 NADEO could reintroduce the POWERUP-plan for their game and really focus on what is already here, but make it better!

[Demented]

I know you said you are a SM fan but this is still a bit on topic...
Trackmania and it's map and media editors are the only thing that keeps my interest. It's the ability to create your own tracks with a large variety of good building blocks that attracted me to TM more than 10 years ago. I don't know of any other driving game that lets you create racing tracks to the same extent. But, you right, it's getting hard to wait sometimes. I got excited last fall when I thought Lagoon might be released before the end of 2015, but here we are mid summer 2016 and there is no real hint of when it will come. I would loved to have purchased TMT, and could have tried Lagoon on that platform, and seen the other new content, but I refuse to use Uplay, Steam or any other third party launcher (simply my preference) so, I wait, patiently, hoping someday soon I will see that Lagoon is still coming to MP.

[i7mean]

TM Turbo is pretty much dead on PC (it lived 1 month tbh). Believe me you don't miss many things. I don't know people's opinion about Lagoon... so much people disappointed by the gameplay of it (although the environment itself is beautiful) but at the same time so small number of player... I don't know how it will be with a bigger amount of player like in MP. To be honest I don't expect it to be more popular than Valley

[quadkillgod]

I know you said you are a SM fan but this is still a bit on topic...
Trackmania and it's map and media editors are the only thing that keeps my interest. It's the ability to create your own tracks with a large variety of good building blocks that attracted me to TM more than 10 years ago. I don't know of any other driving game that lets you create racing tracks to the same extent. But, you right, it's getting hard to wait sometimes. I got excited last fall when I thought Lagoon might be released before the end of 2015, but here we are mid summer 2016 and there is no real hint of when it will come. I would loved to have purchased TMT, and could have tried Lagoon on that platform, and seen the other new content, but I refuse to use Uplay, Steam or any other third party launcher (simply my preference) so, I wait, patiently, hoping someday soon I will see that Lagoon is still coming to MP.

Hey Demented! Thank you for your feedback. The tools you mentioned are indeed very nice. But if you read my topic you'll see that I also wanted to keep those^^ ( MAP EDITOR + VIDEO EDITING TOOLS ) Everything else just needs to have a lower priority now. That's what my topic was about ^^

[Dommy]

The classic "+1" to whole article, especially the title pack section ^^.

[HYPE]

- QM

lmao

I agree with nearly 100% of what you said. I don't need updates but I want more players (back).

Well, lets hope NADEO will show us what we want to see in the previews of their work. Maybe they are also working on stuff which is not particularly metioned in HP #6.

[Demented]

The tools you mentioned are indeed very nice. But if you read my topic you'll see that I also wanted to keep those^^ ( MAP EDITOR + VIDEO EDITING TOOLS ) Everything else just needs to have a lower priority now. That's what my topic was about ^^

Oh yes, I did read and understood that. There are a lot of "Bells and Whistles" that most people will never use.
I think you make good points and I like that you expressed your concerns in an honest but constructive way. I think that is the best way to be heard by the dev's and better progress can be made.
I halfway feel that we are very near a big flood of updates and new content but at the same time I've kind of felt like that for a while now. Maybe because it is needed and I think Nadeo is quite aware of it.