The Situation in ShootMania is... bad!

[booby]

Shootmania is still my favorite game, even after each update, and it was almost always playable.
But.. I agree we lost a lot of players, some bugs are really annoying, and updates are more what developers want than what players want and this is a mistake in my opinion.
It may be too late to bring more players on shootmania again, but don’t make it die ^^

[NJin]

Shootmania is still my favorite game, even after each update, and it was almost always playable.
But.. I agree we lost a lot of players, some bugs are really annoying, and updates are more what developers want than what players want and this is a mistake in my opinion.
It may be too late to bring more players on shootmania again, but don’t make it die ^^

It was already dead after mp4 update and when i see shootmania now it looks more like a zombie from a grave.

[Dmark]

I fully agree with Hype and the others who made comments here.

I just want to add some questions which would be nice to be answered:

Why not give us a realistic roadmap of what you wanna do (perhaps on yearly basis)? We can discuss if features are good or bad. We (the community) know what is good for the game

Why there is no existing release-management? What about an open beta before each publish? What about testing the updates on your own in EVERY gamemode before pushing?

Why not even fixing important bugs which were reported from the community?

Why not even fix your own gamemodes? RoyalSquad for example, which idea was great, but the implementation is just shit. Dommy made an own thread with many really good ideas. You just did nothing.

What are you working on right now?

Whats your plan for SM? The long-road idea with making SM great and very big after 10 years is just... shit. Maybe it would have worked in 1980 but not in 2019 where the consumers need to have anything new every 1-2 years. If you really believe it would work in the current world, you are lost.


I know some of the questions and stuff I wrote are written with bad mood. I am angry as well. I put much energy (and money for servers, cups,...) into the game.
I think the concept of SM is just awesome. But you just destroy my dream of this game with every new update and letting us falling more and more into a dark hole without saying anything (try to go to the mountains ingame )

I think SM is lost for now. Even a good community manager wont help anymore. Just fix the bugs and do a complete redesign for SM².

And for SM² (if it every happens), Think about all the questions I mentioned, Speak to the community, dont publish it unfinised, Speak to the community. And important: split it from TM. If you forgot: Speak and hear to the community.

I hope you Nadeo dont just close or ignore this thread like in the past when bad mood came up from the community. This time you will loose the last players who have some trust in you. Thats not a threat, thats the truth.

[gargan]

Sm2 :
-Free
-Fixed
-Nadeo's servers
-Money for cups
-ez win

[Hylis]

Dmark, appart from some language part, I agree that you are left in the dark. It's also though for us since we don't want that, but communication requires it's own agenda. We are still far from getting out of the tunnel, but we are working on it.

I really want players that invested time in our game to feel they did in the right place, and we intend to make both Trackmania & Shootmania very popular. This is why the studio is investing so much in the future. Recruiting, teaching, developing and such can take quite some time. Some other games are made in years, even if they are updates, while we tried to make update while doing the next steps. You know how wide are the features we support compared to other more classic games, and it's also quite a job to do. I am happy of it, because it means that the projects are ambitious, instead of just somewhat trying to be better than other games. And this also, it takes time.

Saying that we should do updates, you are also right. And we did a Maniaplanet update in November with even trying to make a new mode (that we can improve, of course) But if you don't acknowledge that it is still something doing this after 6 years of the release and a lot of negativeness around from the players, we will be trap for long in a misunderstanding. Yes, there would be things to fix. But we also need to work on the future.

Our games are also made for the players to be able to create their own stuff, and in the last update, we improved that with the mesh modeler, the script capacities and other things around. It's rather blurry as the impact it can bring to the game, but it's also significant over time to make players more powerful or us more agile.

The negativeness of various players really prevents me from having interesting open debates. I hope you understand this. I will go back to work on both Trackmania & Shootmania.

And yes, we will fix what we just broke. Sorry for the inconvenience.

++

[Monk9443]

The thing is that the current situation is not that simple. This is just an outrage at all the years of neglect.

Developing a game is no simple or an easy task. Bugs will happen, errors in direction will happen. That is all to be expected. SM is Nadeos' first FPS. Now with all that in mind, we should be able to talk more open about the game.

Of course some people will be harder to talk to, others will have more understanding. Some will think they know everything, some will accept their flaws. Still talking is very important.

Now, before i delve more into communication part, i do need to stress out the importance of not accepting criticism. It is not acceptable to guard from communication by accusing the other side of being negative. Frankly, that approach should never be taken as an adult.

What i wanted to say about communication is that it is important to learn whose opinion is worth how much. I do realize what i'm saying is offensive, but do hear me out. When talking to people, especially a large group of people, a lot of them will have their own opinion of a certain topic. Some of those people have developed good enough vocabulary and understanding of themselves to present that opinion very well in words. Others not so much. And because of that it is really important to figure out if what someone is saying is really what they want.

From the beginning of this thread i wanted to write a good quality post, but i have just been bereft of ideas. Many others have said what i thought to write, and it seemed superfluous to repeat it again. When i feel the inspiration i will try to write something.

To end the post i would like to translate a joke we have here in Croatia.

A group of kids see a bike in front of the church and one of them says "God, how i wish i could have a bike like that.".
Another then steals it and says "God, forgive me for stealing this bike".

Joke is based on a quote "It's better to get forgiveness than permission."

[keeth]

Saying that we should do updates, you are also right. And we did a Maniaplanet update in November with even trying to make a new mode (that we can improve, of course) But if you don't acknowledge that it is still something doing this after 6 years of the release and a lot of negativeness around from the players, we will be trap for long in a misunderstanding. Yes, there would be things to fix. But we also need to work on the future.

Our games are also made for the players to be able to create their own stuff, and in the last update, we improved that with the mesh modeler, the script capacities and other things around. It's rather blurry as the impact it can bring to the game, but it's also significant over time to make players more powerful or us more agile.

Great tools for players to produce content is awesome. However, i sincerely belive the game is too reliant on player created content. Currently, there is nothing official content for the players other than a new title every other leap year.

Bare in mind that there are a select few that even knows how the new creator tools work. Therefore i believe adding more creator flexibility and features isn't the best for the game right now.

Neither is more title packs. Unless they are well executed with new features and intuitive game play.
Lets be frank. More under developed titles containing the same features and gameplay that divide the player base further isn't necessarily the correct approach. Considering the size of said player base.

Also i feel like the community's frustration is justified. Update after update with nothing new but bugs for the average player is more than a valid reason to express critique. Even if it is delivered from a place of strong emotions.

[Miss]

Now, before i delve more into communication part, i do need to stress out the importance of not accepting criticism. It is not acceptable to guard from communication by accusing the other side of being negative. Frankly, that approach should never be taken as an adult.

You're right, it is a bit weird to say that, but on the other hand I understand it. With that said..

What i wanted to say about communication is that it is important to learn whose opinion is worth how much. I do realize what i'm saying is offensive, but do hear me out. When talking to people, especially a large group of people, a lot of them will have their own opinion of a certain topic. Some of those people have developed good enough vocabulary and understanding of themselves to present that opinion very well in words. Others not so much. And because of that it is really important to figure out if what someone is saying is really what they want.

And this, exactly, is why a community manager needs to sift through all the bad negative posts and the actual constructive posts in order to bring the message of the community in a clear way to the talented people at Nadeo.

But anyway, yes, back on topic.

[Monk9443]

And this, exactly, is why a community manager needs to sift through all the bad negative posts and the actual constructive posts in order to bring the message of the community in a clear way to the talented people at Nadeo.

I have to disagree with this. While community manager is a good idea, people still need to experience the current state of the community, be it a bad one or a good one. Separating messages into what your bosses wants to hear, and ignoring those they don't want to hear will not make a difference. That would be the same as current Nadeos' forum where negativity is discouraged, but in a way that it is not as transparent.

Sometimes people need a rude awakening, and a trouble with that is that you cannot do that to your boss, you get fired. (NB i'm talking about my understanding and experience, so it may not be true everywhere!)

Basically what i'm trying to say is that if done bad community manager will not be of much help, and it is really hard to do it right. As a community manager you need to go against everyone, but you are not in a good spot to do that.

Hmm, a good depiction of what can happen can be seen in south park, episode 5, season 19, safe space. Look at butters, that's a picture perfect extreme example.

[HYPE]

The negativeness of various players really prevents me from having interesting open debates.

You keep saying we are negativ. But you need to see what this negativity really is. It is nothing but frustration from many years of updates that brought almost only bugs for us.

You don't want to have a debate this way? Fair enough. Hire a professional to do it for you!

And this, exactly, is why a community manager needs to sift through all the bad negative posts and the actual constructive posts in order to bring the message of the community in a clear way to the talented people at Nadeo.

+1

In the end nothing changed once again. You stick to your plan how to make ShootMania popular without listening to our opinion. Just a few examples from your text, where many players would disagree.

And we did a Maniaplanet update in November with even trying to make a new mode

To be fair that mode is even liked by many dispite the obvoius missing features, but it really is not what we need and want. That is a phrase that I heared a couple of times the last year: "By now this game has more gamemodes than players". In fact a few of the most popular gamemodes were made by the community (Obstacle, Speedball, Infection...). A new gamemode is not what you should invest time in...

Our games are also made for the players to be able to create their own stuff, and in the last update, we improved that with the mesh modeler, the script capacities and other things around.

To be honest I don't know any ShootMania player that is using the Mesh Modler. Maybe there is one or two, but once again. It is not what we need. That's what many players say. Sure, you chould say they are for the future. Maybe one day when ShootMania has 100000 players, a lot of players will be thankful for this feature. But can't you make a MeshModler, when the game has so many players then?

If you just ignore all this, more and more players will leave and you will not be able to make a good game without players. At this point we are already too less to report all bugs, so how are you going to fix bugs that you are not even aware of?

I'm speaking not just for myself here. I'm voicing the opinion of the SM Community!