Maniaplanet 4 - Previews

[Florenzius]

Guys, let's stop that discussion here. It's pointless to do that in this thread and you know - the messages won't live for a long time...

[Hylis]

I can answer on the pedigree of the Trackmania if you wish, from my point of view. Everybody has it's own right to think what it is or should be.

1. Trackmania is made for players, and therefore should be at top level in it's competive quality. The question of the 'bugs' is then legitimate and I had this discussion a lot of time. By the way, the first competitions happened even before the first release, thanks to the demo. I was second to FredoLeDingue I think.

2. Trackmania is made for creators. The 2.0 dimension behind this is the new dimension you have, like when games went from 2D to 3D to online and then to online 2.0. Denying this dimension would be, for me, damaging for Trackmania. It's probably difficult to see how and why creation is so crucial, even for competition, but keep in mind that the biggest so called esport success in our history originated of used made creations, like dota/lol & CS. Maybe I will take time to explain how I see this as going together, but take music as an example: remove composers & look for top level performer with an audience: that would be boring.

3. Trackmania is made for spectators. We should be able to share a culture of the game, videos to share, events to happen etc. And spectators, they could enjoy some sort of features and you can find them on the streaming or youtube channels. We first released a spectator mode in 2005, with a Mediatracker to make videos and good replays files.

All these three pillars of Trackmania are part of Trackmania and in our plan. Some years we can concentrate more on some aspects. This year, it's true that we looked after reinstalling Trackmania in a creative perspective and the last preview have some elements for this. You can add the editor to create 3d models as another key step we are working on.

It's does not mean that we intend to stop our development on competitive aspect of things and you may even have good things in Maniaplanet 4. I have to make it to the conditional, since it in my perspective and not sure we share all the same on the competitive aspect of things.

What are the bigger plan? We have to hide some information for two reasons: one is that when we have to adapt our plan and change the plannings, there is too much frustration when things where announced before and the other one is that communication somehow requires it. I am not too sure of the second point and it was not my cup of tea, but even some players told us it would be better to do so. So, we intend to stay silent until we announce or release some stuff, a little like Valve just said last week:

Q: Hi GabeN, Why does Valve not talk to its community about the games/apps its developing as much as other companies?

Newell: Because our decision making is way more conditional than most other companies. The one thing we won’t do is waste our customers time and money, which means we will cancel or change stuff much later in development. Tracking our choices would be annoying and frustrating.

[Newell added this in a separate reply.] Another way to think about this, and the way we talk about this internally, is that we prefer to communicate through our products. We are all pretty devoted to reading and listening to the community – everyone here believes it is an integral part of their job to do so. And when it comes time to respond, we generally use Steam – shipping updates that address issues or add functionality. Obviously this doesn’t work for everything. Working this way imposes latency on our communication – it takes longer to ship and update than to do a blog post. This can lead to the feeling of an echo chamber, where it seems like Valve isn’t listening. We’re always listening. So sometimes the latency is rough for everyone, including us when we want to address issues quickly. On balance we think it’s usually worth the trade-off.

[hackie]

Nice to see you here , thanks Hylis

[Toninus]

One of my posts hads been deleted with the cleaning of the last page, but I'd like to repost some points, that make, to me, TM and Maniaplanet less attractive than it used to be in the previous (TMU and before) era.

- MANIAPLANET : having a lot of game modes, editors, and stuff is good. But having everything in one single .exe ecosystem is not. Nothing really stands out and it's complicated for beginners to chose where to start, to know what's the big official mode or the small title pack with no players...
On that point, TM Turbo was a great improvement : a prettier, cleaner interface design, and easy to go instant fun. Plus some other cool ideas like tracks upload (which could have been improved, but it was going the right way...)
IMO, all the editors should be available on an editor menu, with a different .exe or at least a clearly different screen in Maniaplanet. There should in fact be 4 screens :
- Official titles, ranked by numbers of players. Shouldn't be a lot of them, just enough to have different experiences.
- Custom titles, sorted the same way.
- Community page, with news and stuff.
- Tools and editors (except map editors included in title packs).
+ A design that uses all the screen, clearly show titles in small spaces, fast without animations.

- SHOOTMANIA :
Instead of adding collectibles and cars, I would have loved a focus on the gameplay : making it both more deep and more accessible. I'm still unsure about having different weapons and different ways to use them (items or not) in titles is a good idea. It makes the game confuse and nothing really stands out.
The base idea, having 2 life points and one shot weapons, ins interesting in a pro way, but too much skill focused. It was like if Unreal had only the instagib mode. There should be like 3 predefined weapon configurations, and no way to customize them in special titles (except maybe ammo), so gameplay would be more easy to get for all players :
- rocket only instagib-like mode (with 2 life points)
- classic mode with selectable weapons that have a bigger damage area and progressive life points (UT or quake like)
- original mode where the weapon depends of the block you're on.
And nothing more. Plus a focus on simple and enjoyable game modes. And an official carriable item like a flag or a ball in the editor.

- COMMUNITY :
Small but regular official content updates keep the game alive. More than user created content, because it's official, polished, and brings siomething interesting. Looks what happens for Astroneer, Planet Coaster, or even Minecraft...
Having like a little set of blocks added every 2 months could be something nice...


Sorry pour le pavé,

Toninus.

[Demented]

The new blocks in the Preview look like a lot of fun. I'm very excited to play around with them and can't wait to start building some new tracks using them. Also Looking forward to Lagoon in MP4 in the future.
Will there be a new version of the TM² Title Pack so we can still choose the car physics for environments?
Also, will the current saved replays be compatible with new ones in MP4?

[TMarc]

Demented, not related to your post.

General information:
This topic is about the previews and discussion directly related to them.
For wishes and new ideas there is another topic. https://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic ... 26&t=28511
Anything else will be splitted away or deleted.

[Haganu]

-snip-

IMO one of the main issues here is the whole title system and segregating every environment/gamemode in its own title.
I think we need to segregate less instead of more. Player-made titles as it is are very niche, and the same goes for some of ShootMania's official titles (like Siege, which was much better when it was part of Storm).

What does it result in? A title becomes less playable at certain times of day, and becomes less appealing for the average player. It's just bound to end as unplayable no matter what the time of day is, because no one would bother to play it anymore.

In general, I can't wait to test out the new blocks. I hope I get to stay more active and come back to this game after so long. I'll hold my breath on this update.

[Palteza]

Unless (a big) something is done to increase dramatically playerbase/make the TP system (at least) clear for beginners, and that something may come in the futur (who knows), this update and the possibility to easily create more TP will increase the dividing/segregating effect of these TP, effect already at work since TP creation.
I remember Hylis talking about update on the platform capable of putting all these divided/divising parts together in a smooth way, so yeah, waiting for this crucial issue to be solved.

And as djhubertus asked :

Will we get some sort of preview about marketing plan from ubisoft standpoint?

[Hylis]

This is the topic of the next preview and the start of an innovative and intense aventure of iterations ^_^

It also includes something to help provide visibility through 2.0 medias.

We kept it for the last preview and will take time to explain it as much as required for the players looking forward to understand.

[i7mean]

I am looking forward to it. Sorry if I said bad things that maybe don't help you right now but had to make sure to make you realise the situation as seen by a simple player.

When is the next preview ?