Review after 11 years Trackmania

[McBain]

Dear Nadeo,

Im an active trackmaniac but i was never very active in any related community . After MP4 Update i feel a big need to write down my thoughts because i fear maniaplanet is going to the wrong direction

What is the worst?
1) MP4 Update seems to reduce number of active players instead of increasing it... This is an absolute killer in the long run in my opinion even if the community sticks quite long to the game there have to be more new players being infected by trackmania. How you reach this i dont know but i would give Stadium for free to make people join maniaplanet and try to really unite the community on maniaplanet. Btw: channels are an ok idea for me but the nochat was absolutely annoying in demo mode.

2) The community was so much split over the years and you always failed hard when you tried to unite it again. TM Turbo would have been a killer if it wouldnt have been such a fail on computer
3) I played lagoon in demo mode 3 weeks after release. After 30min of playing i was ladder 300 and after 1 hour (2 weeks later) Im rank 50. This lets me guess not even 50 players have played it more than 1 hour. This has to be a joke! By the way: even if it was meant to be nice - giving lagoon for free for the ones that were able to install this beta (i tried and failed because i didnt want to invest one hour for root cause). It was something that nearly made me not buy it at all.


About my story:
I downloaded TM Nations in 2006 and i was absolutely addicted to the game. At the beginning it was the variety of the tracks built by the community and later my interests changed. The good thing for me on trackmania is that i always found something interesting.
One important points at this time: I did not pay a single dollar for this and i was really grateful. I bought TM United not because i wanted to play that game but since i liked TM Nations so much. However by the time i also started to like the old environments i got with TM United. The Forever Update was something of the best i ever got for free and it increased the reputation of Nadeo even more in my eyes. And in my opinion it was great to give nations forever also for free. Maybe it was a fault to keep the old TM Nations alive because it split a small part of the community away for the first time.
Looking back to 2008 and 2009 it was the best time for trackmania in my opinion. It was also due to the fact that the tools for dedicated server have been improved much by the community: FAST, Xaseco and never forget Dedimania were great inventions. Also blockmix was a great addition to the game.
The fails began in my opinion with the communication of TM2 plans: Canyon started great but i didnt participate. I stayed in Forever because i wanted to buy a full TM2 with several environments. 6 years later its still not really possible and i fear lagoon was the last environment while TM2 is slowly dieing, maybe even faster than TM Forever dies which is now becoming also just old (btw: [FreeZone] does not bring anything also if you ask me but maybe check if you sold more games after FreeZone). Still i bought TM Turbo and now i also bought the rest of TM2 environments just because i was profiting a lot with demo mode since 2013. For now i will not invest more money unless i really get something for it.
I dont know if Maniaplanet was just too ambitious or you dont have enough developers or the wrong focus. The amount of content is at least going down every year. Most content i used in the last 5 years came out of the community. Cool Tracks, cool mods and cool tools.

My personal table (the amount is zzzzzz is quite high since start of Maniaplanet):
2006 - TM Nations
2007 - TM United
2008 - TM Forever
2009 - StarTrack Update
2010 - zzzzz
2011 - TM2 Canyon
2012 - zzzzz
2013 - Stadium (hum not very creative) and Valley
2014 - zzzzz
2015 - zzzzz
2016 - TM Turbo (would be nice to play together with consoles but no)
2017 - MP4 and Lagoon

I see a lot of tries on Nadeo side to give something to the community and make it more alive again. However with the current strategy i feel like every action makes it worse instead of helping. In my opinion it was lucky that TM Turbo was not successful on PC and online servers are already close to empty. Only that prevented us from another split of the community.
If i would be you guys I would seriously start thinking about where Maniaplanet shall go and how you reach this (and how you earn money with it). And never forget: you need also people to play because otherwise its useless.
To close this: i probably would have left TM2 because of MP4 Update already if Chase Mode wouldnt exist because for me personally there is not much more interesting in TM2 (and im one who is not interested at all in Shootmania).
A larger player base will help to hold motivated community members. Many dont want to create cool things for just 3 people and go to another game.

[adamkooo2]

Great review, I agree with almost everything

Nadeo should allow the chat for demo users too. They should put some info about the tools that are ingame for new and demo members. I spent year to get to into all tools.

It would be also nice if they relase a free environment for each game (TM & SM) to get a bigger playerbase. The Stadium doesn't have to be free, because what do you do with players who already bought it? The environment should be easy playable (for example as stadiumcar). They should label the environments difficulty. For example(TM):
Very Easy- The new (free) environment
Easy - Stadium
Normal- Canyon
Hard - Valley
Expert - Lagoon

They should also create monthly competitions for creators such as Title of the month, Item of the month, Mod of the month with some prizes (planets). Players would be then more creative.

[745]

Well said

Last time I could get >10 friends together was in the first weeks of Pursuit mode, back in 2015. There's still 2 or 3 former clanmates around, everybody else quit long ago.

TrackMania is the same for ages and people get bored. Today's TM may please a few diehards like us but the majority of players don't participate here in the forum, they just quit the game and move on. An Online game depends on network effects, so this is very harmful.

What could be done:

- Another viral like TMN ESWC. But more Stadium or time attack mode won't do. Go for officially supported Pursuit or Stunts modes.
- MP interface really needs to be more straightforward.
- Let other game studios work with MP engine and release games inside MP.
- Stick with one good demo format.
- I can enjoy short maps with tricks, transitions, blockmixing, etc. but this is nonsense for newcomers. TMN had only one road block set and was the game responsible for making TM popular. Complexity is not necessarily a plus.
- Why the server controllers have to fill half screen with ranks? And spamming useless information like the environment I'm playing? Just a few buttons for map list, map info, records and help are enough.

[Demented]

I know this has been said before but the one thing I've personally seen turn more people away than anything is the difficulty in controlling the cars. Stadium and Canyon are easy to control and fun to play. Valley and Lagoon look so beautiful, but literally every single friend and family member that I've showed those to won't play them again because in their words "it's too hard to control". I understand wanting a challenge, but let the challenge be in the tracks not the vehicle control. Thing is, we often don't hear about this because people who try it and don't like it simply leave without saying a word and never come back.
I assume it's intentional, but I'm not sure I will ever understand the logic behind this.

[Dommy]

Damn, I really should go back and finish Pursuit...

Anyway, that's a very good summary you have there.

[undef.de]

I know this has been said before but the one thing I've personally seen turn more people away than anything is the difficulty in controlling the cars. Stadium and Canyon are easy to control and fun to play. Valley and Lagoon look so beautiful, but literally every single friend and family member that I've showed those to won't play them again because in their words "it's too hard to control". I understand wanting a challenge, but let the challenge be in the tracks not the vehicle control. Thing is, we often don't hear about this because people who try it and don't like it simply leave without saying a word and never come back.
I assume it's intentional, but I'm not sure I will ever understand the logic behind this.

100% +1, but... I can't say it here.

[McBain]

Thank you guys for the supporting Feedback!

I dont want to talk too much about content because still I think the overall content is ok even though I miss seeing a development forward. I personally have my ideas but I know that my taste is not mainstream and for recruiting new players there is probably a need for a bit more mainstream. I saw many very positive Feedbacks about MP4 here and I fear there was a lack of criticism here in the forums. When I go ingame i see a totally different picture.

When i talk to other people a lot of them joined later than me to the game and a lot started with a free title to use and were after open to invest money for the game. I also have the impression that a full package of all games together would help (maybe even including upcoming TM2/SM titles if any are really in work). If you start now: all titles as single are extremely overpriced and nobody will pay ~100 euros+ for everything as the current offer on maniaplanet.

As I tried to point out in my first post: recruiting new players might be the most important thing.

[i7mean]

I know this has been said before but the one thing I've personally seen turn more people away than anything is the difficulty in controlling the cars. Stadium and Canyon are easy to control and fun to play. Valley and Lagoon look so beautiful, but literally every single friend and family member that I've showed those to won't play them again because in their words "it's too hard to control". I understand wanting a challenge, but let the challenge be in the tracks not the vehicle control. Thing is, we often don't hear about this because people who try it and don't like it simply leave without saying a word and never come back.
I assume it's intentional, but I'm not sure I will ever understand the logic behind this.

I can confirm this. Valley and Lagoon are just not fun to play. Problem with Valley is that it misses something in the ground, something like in coast where you can't go too fast without losing control. The handling we got is just stupid for me, sorry. On dirt, everyone knows what's the problem with Valley and globaly with all the new MP enviros (Canyon and Lagoon offroad), it seems like they forgot how to do it like in Stadium for example. In Lagoon is more or less the same, the handling is just... really bad. Your car is glued to the road you can turn 180° fullspeed this is just stupid. On the rollercoaster, I don't need to talk about it, you already know...And the beach gameplay uhhhhhh, literally worse than Valley dirt.
The problem is not that I say it's bad because I suck at it, no no and no. I say it's bad because it's not fun it's very different. When I started TMUF I sucked at every enviro except Stadium because I had nations, but they were still fun, and I kept playing, and I became better at the game. I don't want to keep playing Valley or Lagoon because no feeling...

[TMarc]

Here I partially agree. Canyon and Stadium are OK to drive. Some will say "too easy!". On small roads, Canyon is also sometimes too fast.
Valley and Lagoon are much too fast. Maps need to be designed very very carefully to either not allow speed at all, with lots of turns, or that the speed is not broken. But then one cannot enjoy nature, landscapes, the map in general.

I would wish a map specific setting for gravity, acceleration, maximum speed and others. But that's probably only something for MP5...

[tcq]

The problem that we have is, that none of the environment is distinguishable from another. They are all more or less the same. If you have a look at TMU, there you have everything. Island/Bay/Coast or the TMO set Desert/Rally/Snow. They are all different in the car handling and fun to play. If you played on a server, with all environments, you had to adjust anew to every environment when a new map came. On MP, you have canyon/stadium/valley which are more or less all the same (haven't tried lagoon yet). It's just this lack of diversity that makes, in my opinion, players leave the game. We have nothing that feels extremely different like coast.

I would wish a map specific setting for gravity, acceleration, maximum speed and others. But that's probably only something for MP5...

Here I agree and disagree at the same time. It would be lovely to have this parameters to be set manually. But then there is the problem that with the current player base, all people will be divided in another subset of title packs, making the game look even less populated.