Review of Manaiaplanet & TM2 in 2017

[tongsten]

Trackmania 2 is at its core still as fun as it was many years ago. I still like the Trials-like-ish gameplay. About 10 years have passed since I discovered the Trackmania series. While I don't play it nearly as much as I used to, I continue to enjoy it.

The development of Trackmania and Maniaplanet is questionable to say the least. Maniaplanet is to this day broken at it's core. Despite the new efforts of the newly released fourth major update most issues remain.

The UI still speaks many different design languages, creating only confusion.

I still can't play TM² with a gamepad without having mouse & keyboard in my reach.

Instead of one "main" game with additional DLC with new environments, we have seperate games, confusing every new player what to buy. Then TM Turbo popped up, causing even bigger confusion and splitting the not so great playerbase even further.

A limited "Titles" mechanic of Maniaplanet artificially limiting the installation of user made mods, campaigns and tools. Entirely counterproductive to a community content driven game.

It's own "Internet" called Manialink nobody needs. Sites like Mania Exchange etc. should be a centralized place for user content. Or even better integrated into the game itself in a Steam Workshop manner.

Each server can set it's own UI. Sometimes I ended up with dozens numbers, times, UI screens, voting gadgets, etc. on screen. I barely could see my car and the track. It's more clutter than most engineering and simulation software combined. All those widgets should work like Assetto Corsas app system for individual UI preferences.

Users can still use a billion different colors and symbols in their user names, creating a visually annoying experience.

FXAA Anti-Aliasing is not satisfactory at all. Using Bloom with low car reflections makes the game look inacceptable.

The gap between Valley and the upcoming Lagoon is 4 years. Way too much for an episodic game.

Many things in Maniaplanet 4 are broken, splitscreen, hot seat selection of campaign maps, intros of maps etc.

Shootmania is still being supported without having any meaningful number of players. In times of Titanfall 2 and other great FPS games, I question who cares about such a simplistic game. Especially if it didn't manage to gain any proper market share.

Considering how few games Nadeo has released over the past years I really do wonder about the future of the company.

I think the core game is good, but the UI needs to be completely thrown out of the window and redone from scratch.

[Dommy]

Shootmania is still being supported without having any meaningful number of players. In times of Titanfall 2 and other great FPS games, I question who cares about such a simplistic game. Especially if it didn't manage to gain any proper market share.

Trackmania is still being supported without having any meaningful number of players. In times of Forza Horizon 3, Gran Turismo 6, Project Cars and other great racing games, I question who cares about such a simplistic game with one car for everyone. Especially if it didn't manage to gain any proper market share.

[tongsten]

Well, when I tested Shootmania a year ago. There were about 10 players online in games. That's not interesting. Trackmania on the other hand is way different.

[Siannath]

I feel exactly the same since Maniaplanet was first launched. Needless complications.

[ppgbarc]

The UI speaks exactly one design language, and it's exactly the same as TMU's.

There is no playerbase "split". There's people who obsess over Stadium and people who don't. The entire reason the environments were split is because of the obsession with Stadium. Otherwise we'd have a situation like United, except instead of not buying it, people would not buy it and also complain about having to spend so much to get Stadium that was previously free. People already complain that TM2 Stadium has a pricetag at all. Nations was a huge mistake and Nadeo will never recover from it.

Turbo is a completely obvious product that causes absolutely zero confusion unless you are intentionally trying to be confused. It was never meant to be a PC title and only is because if it hadn't been, there would be twice as many angry people who feel that they have been denied a new game.

Manialink is one of the reasons anyone cared about TMU. It was insanely easy and interactive to share things, and it still is.

Every server can do that, and that's exactly why people like this game so much, for some reason. I actually agree with you here. But that's not even a TM2 problem, that's a TM problem in general. The same goes for username colors. Again, all of this is in TMU.

Lagoon was never supposed to be released, at least not in its current state. We likely had a very different fourth environment that was then turned into Turbo. Besides, I thought more environments were bad?

Why must you deride the AFPS so?

[tongsten]

TMU had a single, coherent design language. TM2 however, does not. I will try to make this point more clear with a few screenshots next week.

Take BF3, 4 and 1. You had one huge base game and each additional DLC/map pack split the community each by a bit. TM2 basically consists only of those DLC chunks, worsening the issue. I also don't understand your point what Stadium's popularity has to do with the decision to release seperate environments instead of multiple in one bigger game.

Turbo is not at all "obvious" if I take into account all the questions appearing over the internet on reddit, steam and other platforms. There are also big question marks what Lagoon does differently to Turbo for those threads appearing.

Manialink itself is interesting, but not the part with those "websites" or whatever you like to call them. They feel like a time travel to 90s website design. And none of these have anything more to offer than Mania Exchange etc has.

A TM problem is also a TM2 problem, so absolutely something they should care to address.

My honest opinion of Lagoon right now is: While it looks good and the rollercoaster part is awesome, the rest of it feels more like a gigantic expansion to Trackmania Sunrise's - Bay environment. After such a long absence of Trackmania, slightly disappointing, even if it does get me back to the series and will keep me entertained for hours.

More content is for sure not bad, but splitting is meh.

All in all, when I think how much Assetto Corsa has evolved over the years, Trackmania does disappoint me, even if they are different genres.

I just don't see much of a future for Shootmania and don't fell any appeal to it, that's all.