[NEWBIE QUESTIONS]

[BoyBollox]

Hello all.

My friends and me have been in the gaming scene for a long time (started with gaming ROTT) and mostly played FPS games. Now it's time to change for us so we're looking at some fancy racing games and any other games then FPS. We checked out APB and really liked the designstudio, driving cars was ok, rest was crap so we skipped it.

No we're looking at Trackmania 2 Canyon and we like what we've seen sofar. Before we purchase we'd like a few answers to our questions:

• Is the game fully released yet?

• Is muliplayer mode active yet and is it free?

• When purched, do we have to pay(real money) for updates/new tracks/cars/paintjobs etc?

• When purched, can we host our own homegrown dedicated server?

• Skinning cars: PSD usuage?

• When purched, do we need to pay (real money) for new cars

I hope you can give me some answers to my questions. Thank you very much for your time.

[xis101]

• Is the game fully released yet?

It´s not released yet. It will be released on 14.sept.2011. But if you buy it now you get free access to the multiplayer beta until release.

• Is muliplayer mode active yet and is it free?

See first answer

• When purched, do we have to pay(real money) for updates/new tracks/cars/paintjobs etc?

You only have to pay once for TM²:Canyon. There will be more parts/environments of TM² that will cost additional, but you will never have to pay real money for tracks, car models, paintjobs etc. ^^

• When purched, can we host our own homegrown dedicated server?

yes you can.

• Skinning cars: PSD usuage?

For a really professionel skin, it´s recommended to use a graphic app like PSD, but you can paint your car ingame, too.

• When purched, do we need to pay (real money) for new cars

You have to differ between new car models and car physics.
Car models and car skins are totally free and every model drives exactly the same on the same environment (e.g. Canyon). As I said, there will be another environments in the future with other driving physics for which you have to pay.

[BoyBollox]

Thank you for your answers, I like what I'm reading here. One more thing: Will there be an anticheat or something? I'm from the First Person Shooters and it's horrible gaming against those cheaters, it's one of the main reasons we switch genre.

[Weeeeee]

TM never got big problems with cheating,its impossible to cheat in a match,in public it may be some cheaters tho,but they are easy to see.

[RypeL]

I you want a game where you dont have to deal with cheaters, dont look any further! I have been playing Trackmania in competions for many years and never ever was there really trouble with cheaters. There are many reasons for that including anti cheat protection and the fact that cheaters would be quite easy to spot for experienced players, especially in competitions. I have played FPS like UT and TacticalOps before and was in an AntiCheat Team for some time hunting cheaters in TacticalOps and im glad i dont have to deal with them anymore since i play TM.
That beein said there are "Boosters" though, who get Ladderpoints by abusing the ladder-system with some cheap tactics -> but that normally only lasts some time till they get bored or Nadeo banned them and secondly most people dont realy care about the ladderpoints anyway.

[Xymph]

I you want a game where you dont have to deal with cheaters, dont look any further! I have been playing Trackmania in competions for many years and never ever was there really trouble with cheaters.

Perhaps you're not aware of the 2800+ logins on the global blacklist and banned from Dedimania, but then you don't have a complete picture. Ditto if you're not aware of official mode cheating in TMUF

Yes, there is plenty of online cheating going on by (on average) five to ten cheaters daily, but their results are not very visible because the vast majority of cheated records in the Dedimania world database are being cleaned up daily as well.

I don't mean to scare off the OP, but let's not pretend cheating doesn't happen at all.

[RypeL]

Perhaps you're not aware of the 2800+ logins on the global blacklist and banned from Dedimania, but then you don't have a complete picture. ...

Yes i wasent really aware of that. I can only talk about the live-competitions i was in and not about Dedimania or other timeattack resultlists. I never really cared about those online rankings (but im sure there are a lot who care about them). But i just wanted to point out that in live races with other cars there were very few cheaters if any and that is very unusual among mutliplayer games, especially among FPS games so that it usually is a big plus for people like me who came from the FPS front.