Open Letter to Nadeo: Make ShootMania Great again!

[Dmark]

Hello,

First of all I want to say something about me. I am 21 years old, play Trackmania since 2006 and changed to ShootMania when it was in Beta.
I really love this game, mostly because of his hugh editor and great game modes. The motto of the game is „Easy to learn, hard to master“. Its kind of minimalistic. No blood and other stuff like in other Ego-Shooters.

Shootmania wasn’t a famous game from the beginning, but it had a good community. But many people left, because no big changes were coming. I know many people who changed to Counter Strike or to Rocket League.

Everyone thought: Nadeo will do something that will make ShootMania popular. But nothing ever came.
ShootMania is in some kind created by the community. All maps, most of the game modes, the server controllers, cups and leagues, everything important besides the „main structure“.

I am a „Speedballer“. That means, I mostly played SpeedBall. Its one of the greatest game modes in ShootMania. Very competitive. But after some players left, we had a small SpeedBall community. The SpeedBall Servers are mostly empty now. If Paragon hosts Cups, some days before the Cup is running, there are some players on the servers. But only to train for the cup.

And I think that is a problem in many game modes. Look at Jailbreak – another really great gamemode. Dead. It was dead in Mp3 and now there is even no running server. But a server for what? No one will ever join it.

And now – MP4. ShootMania is dead since then. Around 380 Players in last 24 Hours. Around 70-80 Players are playing right now. If you look at SteamCharts for Counterstrike you can see there are about 570.000 Players online right now.

MP4 for ShootMania is very bugged and unfinished. No ranks, sound problems, hard to find servers for new Players, many have got light issues.
And the main changes are what? Most of the stuff (Blocks for example) is for fun modes like Infection. Or the new game mode Over Running? Really? Cars in ShootMania if there is no playerbase?
Sure, ShootMania need to have fun modes, but only if there are existing more active players. Even Elite has got only 1 to 3 Servers where are players.

And why use fun modes in Channel Program at „Prime Time“? People need to see how good competitive modes are. Many players never saw SpeedBall. And everyone who played it some times loves it now.

I think Nadeo, you need to make big changes in ShootMania.

20€ for bugged MP4 will no one ever pay. You need to do it Free to play. But the problem in the demo was – there were many children who doesn’t understand English sentences and just insults. I know it from Infection.

In my opinion, there are two options:
1. Change nothing – and ShootMania will die
2. Do some big changes
Like make the code open source, give it to the Community. And let them develop. Every bug need to find out and fixed, clearly separation of FunModes and CompetitiveModes. No more titles, just game mode, a server controller directly integrated, new maps from beginning. I think Dommys Galaxy is a nice idea - new UI, new menu design. Like a restart of the whole game.
If every developer works on his / her own its like now – many game modes, which are not even played. Just let them work together on the whole game.

After that it should be possible to advertise for the game. Many people didn’t even heard about the game. If it is free to play, no bugs and clear structure, I think many new people will come.


I know that it is a hard decision to make it like this. But you know how many people play it now – and that should make you think about the game and future plans with ShootMania.
I really hope you will think about it. If no stuff will be changed, I think me and many more will leave the game.

Thanks,
Dmark

[janfo]

I want to express my support for Dmark here

I think its a question of will there be a future or not.. I still think the game has great potential and I think it has one of the best communities.
Sure its a small community now but what they do in terms of servers, cups, plugins, items, maps etc. is phenomenal.
The whole concept is still great and I think it is also interesting for new players although its some years old already.

The problem is that you have old maps or nadeolabs maps that are mostly not good on most servers and currently the schedule is mostly "fun" modes no serious ones (pls remove overrun from schedule ) I like how King of the Hill (Galaxy) is programmed though and it shows the potential of sm.

People love playing user created maps and user created modes its just they are not advertised like Dmark said Speedball. It has a good community and the servers and everything was updated the day the update came. We (sb community) rly think about this mode and its very suitable for e-sport cause its about teamplay more than any other mode Imho.

I'd wish that the community gets much more influence on what the scheduled modes are since they are the ones that play

Also another problem is the price. I'm sure there are still interested players but when they see the game on steam for 20€ and look at commentarys that the game is pretty much dead they think ok, 20€ is too much for that. If it was cheaper of f2p they'd surely download and try it out. I know some guys, too that would buy it if it was cheaper.

In my opinion the only way to break through the spiral of fewer and fewer players is price adjustment. But please fix the bugs before you do that.

I think many players are still loyal even though the update was really a pre release and you still have the chance to increase the playerbase by listening to community and the players that really care about this game and its future (many invested much time in it)

thx for reading and I hope for the best

[HYPE]

I can understand you very well. I also am a ShootManiac by heart and it would really be more than just amazing to experience ShootMania with a big community.
I also agree with you when it comes to "fun" modes at prime times. NADEO should choose very carefully which gamemodes should be scheduled at the evening when most players play.
However there is an easy answer why ShootMania is buggy and unfinished at the moment. Because it was a pre-release. And as far as I know NADEO is still working to fix this bugs at the moment. So I hope it will be less buggy in a few weeks but even then ShootMania won't be finished. Hylis said often that NADEO is following a long term plan. You mentioned the UI and new menu design for example. I heared that this will be the goal for mp5. I know this is not really satisfiable but I guess we will have to wait much longer until ShootMania really is finished. Will there still be players left then? I really don't know, but thats how it is.
Let's hope for the best and try to support the game in every way we can.

[pmyth]

I fully share the Statements mentioned in the open letter.

As part of the Speedball Community and as a supporter of this great game I ask Nadeo to reform their business model in Shootmania and make it free to play. Even 1,5 years ago, there weren't many player online at once but at least there has been a core community in modes like Battle, Speedball, Elite... According to todays standards I would say it was enough. But even back then I was hoping for a change-over to a f2p-model, just to see more players.

I really like Shootmania. It is a fine competitive shooter with a great community and it deserves way more attention. But the game seems almost invisible regarding to other potential players. There is no publicity for the game and the already small proportion of players has become even smaller. Now it is almost a dead game. Price adjustment isn't enough anymore.

MP4 has made it worse. I don't want to go into detail because I don't know anything about programming. But for me, MP4 seems confusing and not accessible. I think new players would not get along with the channels. And some of the new game modes are unfitting or not well-conceived.

I hope the game gets a revival with a bigger playerbase.

[Equilibrium]

Good post dmark. All good points I agree with.

I can understand you very well. I also am a ShootManiac by heart and it would really be more than just amazing to experience ShootMania with a big community.
I also agree with you when it comes to "fun" modes at prime times. NADEO should choose very carefully which gamemodes should be scheduled at the evening when most players play.
However there is an easy answer why ShootMania is buggy and unfinished at the moment. Because it was a pre-release. And as far as I know NADEO is still working to fix this bugs at the moment. So I hope it will be less buggy in a few weeks but even then ShootMania won't be finished. Hylis said often that NADEO is following a long term plan. You mentioned the UI and new menu design for example. I heared that this will be the goal for mp5. I know this is not really satisfiable but I guess we will have to wait much longer until ShootMania really is finished. Will there still be players left then? I really don't know, but thats how it is.
Let's hope for the best and try to support the game in every way we can.

I hope so too. But for now I am out, hopefully only for a few weeks until this is fixed. The sound changes alone are enough to turn me away. Sounds as if you are underwater or in a pressure chamber... I just can't play longer than 5 minutes until I get too annoyed by it. No idea what was the thought behind this change. Or why it didn't come up in the beta, assuming the sound was as bad then.

[HYPE]

I hope so too. But for now I am out, hopefully only for a few weeks until this is fixed. The sound changes alone are enough to turn me away. Sounds as if you are underwater or in a pressure chamber... I just can't play longer than 5 minutes until I get too annoyed by it. No idea what was the thought behind this change. Or why it didn't come up in the beta, assuming the sound was as bad then.

To be honest I don't have any sound changes at all (or I am really good in ignoring it ). But you are not the only one complaning about it, so I guess there must be something wrong with some sound settings.

[Hylis]

Come on Dmark, you just ask for a Speedball program on Friday, and yes, we said we will put it live this week.

Look at the opportunities. With mp3, it was unlikely to have new players on new modes, since if you open a server you still had to advertise it, and if not enough players would come, you would not be able to have the minimum number of players.

Now, you can have people be welcome in your mode. With Trackmania beside, it makes for a constant stream of players coming into the platform and potentially interested by testing it out, like you did in the past.

If you look at the top 5 of most played games on Steam, they all come from mods historically. So, it's pretty much enabling this more easily to happen.

You had this cup made on TM by a french streamer and it made 30K simultaneous viewers only with french. He designed a good formula, ten years after the release of Nations.

Now, of course, if some players start to be negative again, insulting like we have seen already online, it will be more difficult to raise Shootmania from it's current status.

Adding new possibilities like gravity, shields and missile could help bring a little more diversity to modes.

I will not enter this debate here again and I will lock the topic to make myself super clear about the purpose of this forum. We intend to make Shootmania popular one day, there is work to do and it's really useless to spend days and days talking.

We brought the best thing could happen to advertise SpeedBall and we are going to make it live this week. It's already a big step. And there will be bigger in the future. We care more about Shootmania that you even probably do anyway as we created it and still expect and wish it to be a major FPS one day even if it should take us years.

Thanks

Now, we should focus on making things.