Maniaplanet Forum

gouxim wrote:

coolsnake wrote:Place "filtering on skill level" in server filter instead of awkwardly seperating the servers by skill level.

Why do you say that the ordering by skill is awkward? It's been that like that for a long long time in TM and I've always found it efficient (the idea beeing that the first pages are servers at you're level). Can you try to explain what bothers your with this? So you want to be able to display servers with higher level for example?

It could be an option to filter by skil, but i think everyone would prefer sorting the servers by ping, as it is what makes you having a better experience as a FPS player. For me, ping is more important than skill-level.

It work in TM because it is a racing game and is less ping-based, but for a shooter the priorities are not the sames, in my opinion at least.

For now we cannot sort by ping, so we select the player's country as a default filter ; this behaviour is actually simpler to understand for newcomers (ping is kind of an "advanced" data, obv not for FPS players but for newcomers), and the concept of geographic location has other intersting aspects (culture, language). Maybe later will come more options regarding ping itself.

gouxim wrote:ping is kind of an "advanced" data, obv not for FPS players but for newcomers

who doesn't know what "ping" is? decide already, who are you making the game for...

Please keep a good attitude and language so we can have a constructive & positive discussion.

As stated many many times, one of our goal is to make ShootMania an accessible FPS. FPS players knows what ping is, but this concept is less used in other types of games. More and more, modern online gaming system uses the ping to do matchmaking and stuff like that on the backend without actually showing the ping or saying anything about it on the user interface (think StarCraft 2 for instance).

so for 25% of newcomers you make 75% of other players stay without showing it?..

gouxim wrote:

coolsnake wrote:Place "filtering on skill level" in server filter instead of awkwardly seperating the servers by skill level.

Why do you say that the ordering by skill is awkward? It's been that like that for a long long time in TM and I've always found it efficient (the idea beeing that the first pages are servers at you're level). Can you try to explain what bothers your with this? So you want to be able to display servers with higher level for example?

Hm so the way it is done now, you first get servers with equal skill levels, than servers with a bit higher skill level, then with much higher skill levels and then lower skill levels right?

This doesn't bother me in Trackmania but it does in ShootMania where I'd rather be able to sort by other means like gamemodes or number of players or ping like described in my previous post.

As to why I call it awkard, I'd rather have a dropdown box on the side that filters the difficulty levels than to have to browse through the serverlist and essentially have to check up to 4 different lists to find the server I want.
Example of how's it done in Quake Live: http://imgur.com/lLIsC
In the end I still have to go over 4 different lists even with the dropdown box but I would find it to be more readable if you get my drift.

e.g: I'm a big fan of the new gamemode called Speedball. There are only 2 servers with it now. I really don't care if the people on it are on the same skill level or not, I just want to play it. Same for the Infiltration gamemode. I have a bit of difficulty finding them because I need to browse through the high populated servers, then the less populated ones then high populated ones again etc .

coolsnake wrote:Hm so the way it is done now, you first get servers with equal skill levels, than servers with a bit higher skill level, then with much higher skill levels and then lower skill levels right?

Yes, exactly.

As for the other requests, I mostly agree with you. There is actually an update of the server browser coming soon (tomorow or early next week) with a new layout and a better filtering system ; don't hesitate to give your feedback here once it's online.

gouxim wrote:There is actually an update of the server browser coming soon (tomorow or early next week) with a new layout and a better filtering system ; don't hesitate to give your feedback here once it's online.

is it in-title one or in maniahome one?

I am talking about the one on the ManiaHome station.

Considering that I've never talked to anyone who actually uses ManiaHome, or anyone who is, uh, aware it exists except for being "that panel I never use next to the games I launch as soon as I start ManiaPlanet," hopefully the server browser improvements will be beta'd there before coming to the in-game ones that are what really matter?

(seriously don't understand the point of ManiaHome, but that's another thread entirely :p)