Maniaplanet Forum

Alcator wrote: But on mania-exchange, you will find many tracks picked as "Best of the week" or winners of the Monthly Track Competition which are just full-speed madness and only few, if any at all, checkpoints in those are respawnable. Which means that until you pixel-perfectly memorize the only correct path, your learning consists of constant restarts

And your point here is exactly what? Everyone should build respawnable tracks now? Even TMX ARC for example that's made for pure hunting purposes should have respawnable CPs because a few beginners can't finish them? (RPG Excluded) Because CP blocks don't come in all shapes and forms you can't just smack one in anywhere you like for a respawn, and even then you'd have nightmares of making the track drivable until the next CP.

You have to know if the tracks purpose is to be a hunter, you won't need a respawn anyway, and that's completely fine.

There's a lot of beginner friendly tracks out there, but not all have to be that way.

tcq wrote:For example, what is the most common questions inside of TM?

1. How do i change my name?
2. Can you see my car?

I'd say beginners rarely come back because there's always ''that one guy'' who will say ALT+F4 or CTRL+W or ''write /bootme in chat'' to get color menu.
You do have a point anyway, ManiaPlanet could have the color code table in the profile editor. Something like http://kc.jfreu.com has when you click on the small square with 4 colors in it.

If you take a look at the most-played server in TM2 you can find one speed server. The speed server is just madness for new players. If you are not used to the game you can't even finish these 40-60 seconds fullspeed tracks in 6 minutes without (!) crashing as they are not doable with a crash. I still don't understand why these servers are so actively played but I doubt that it is positive for their motivation to the game. But there are also LOL servers. LOL was always an important part of TM. Easiest and most rewarding style you can find as a beginner. Why? Because the maps are short and easy to finish. The best way to get people into the game itself (excluding basic stuff like nick-change, skins, general information which is missing!) would be to give them the opportunity to play all different styles on short maps because they can finish them! Easy speed maps of about 20-30 seconds you can easily master in 6 minutes TimeAttack even if you crash, mixed up with LOL-maps for the joy and short-mini dirt/tech to introduce other styles they have to learn.
What is the aim of a racing game? Right, finishing your runs and get faster time by time.

Well it is just an idea and would need a server including short maps of those styles. And the people have to join the server so it will be seen on the top of the server-list. Name "Beginners Welcome!" or "Welcome to TM2!" might be positive and encourage them to join. If this could be done we might have a huuuuuge step for the beginners imo

As a newbie myself, I can say the whole interface, workflow, and even getting into it is very hard.

I thought to download, install, play. Instead I had to register with:

https://uk-maniaplanet.nexway.com/
http://player.maniaplanet.com
https://trackmania.com
http://eu-games.nexway.com/

plus this forum.

It's hard to know where to start, campaign, solo, online. Whats the difference between ranking for medals, ranking for SP, ranking for times....

What's with planets, and scenes etc? that's all just foreign right now

I went on one multiplayer game, and had no idea what was happening, not to mention the plethora of on screen information that made no sense at all.

I checked out the wiki, but it's pretty useless. I can't even see how to pick a car, and there's no real "what it's all about, and how to get started" documents.

would like to see something about how to get set up, how to start and learn to drive, what each path means: solo vs campaign vs official scores, vs mulitplayer, vs servers etc...

I'm totally confused, but playing (hot-seat for parties, solo for me).

Definitely not new user friendly.