Maniaplanet Forum

So, yet another community member who likes to judge and silence people who have different concerns than they do..

Look, I wasn't even first aware that TM2 Lagoon beta licenses expire on Maniaplanet 5. Nadeo staff mentioned that several times which means they have decided to do that and they've said that explicitly, not wishing it to happen/not happen. Since they have set the time frame for that, they most likely have decided what happens for sold TM2 environments at that point too and that's all I'm asking here. I just want some transparency.

I want to hear if they will expire the previously bought environments or not. That's not badly spirited or absurd thing to ask, paying customers deserve to know what they are buying.

meuh21 wrote: ↑27 May 2017, 07:43 There are not bad or good questions / answers / feedbacks. But as we can see there is bad or good spirit.

With constructive spirit we can build nice players and creators communities. And we don't need to reconcile community and Nadeo because our relationship is very friendly and productive (fun moments, great creator stuff, etc) for a long while. I don't like also when people want to talk for the community. Nobody can say he represents the community. Because TM community is multiple. My positive voice or Tcq one here (and many others in otehr topics) are supporting Nadeo work We are also the community and I don't want Nadeo people read only unfair rage comments. Take a breath

I think also it would be good to lock this topic because it's a bad spirit one (and positive players don't have time to answer systematically to this kind of topic). Also because I think I offered a understandable answer to a non constructive question. In fact here there is not really a question in this topic but just a way to create a contreversy. It's not fun, it's not fair and it "cost" Nadeo and Hylis time for nothing. I prefer much more if they use their time to create games or to explain us their passion.

So you don't like it when people speak for the community, but you literally just spoke for the community when you said, and I quote, "our relationship is very friendly and productive (fun moments, great creator stuff, etc) for a long while". I can't say I'm a particularly big fan of hypocrisy. Oh, and you should maybe check out some of the recent reviews for TM2 Stadium on Steam. "Friendly" and "productive" aren't words I would use to describe how they feel about this relationship at the moment.

I've tried my best to make a point that most people have made a point of completely missing: I love TrackMania. I want it to be great. But greatness isn't achieved by surrounding yourself with yes-men and doing whatever you want. It is achieved by understanding your flaws in addition to your strengths, and constantly seeking to improve yourself.

Does Nadeo have a dedicated PR team? It sounds a lot they are juggling working on the game and public relations at the same time. I can see where that would be difficult, and even straight-up exhausting. So I would humbly suggest recruiting a dedicated PR team (if you don't have one already that I don't know about) so Nadeo and Hylis can work on the games, and other people who are probably more qualified to deal with people like me than they are can take the wheel, so to speak.

rizu wrote: ↑27 May 2017, 17:09 So, yet another community member who likes to judge and silence people who have different concerns than they do..

Look, I wasn't even first aware that TM2 Lagoon beta licenses expire on Maniaplanet 5. Nadeo staff mentioned that several times which means they have decided to do that and they've said that explicitly, not wishing it to happen/not happen. Since they have set the time frame for that, they most likely have decided what happens for sold TM2 environments at that point too and that's all I'm asking here. I just want some transparency.

I want to hear if they will expire the previously bought environments or not. That's not badly spirited or absurd thing to ask, paying customers deserve to know what they are buying.

Took the words right out of my mouth. With this response, you've done a much better job of communicating our concerns in a constructive and concise manner than anyone else I've seen, especially me. I am unworthy.

Why is everyone making such a fuss over Lagoon, mp5 is years away!
I know there were "promises" made but can we just accept the facts and move on.
mp5 will include awesome new stuff that could make the purchase worth while
It will be cheap during steam sales on stuff like that, its not like a triple A £50 game anyway.

iamajellydonut wrote: ↑27 May 2017, 17:34So you don't like it when people speak for the community, but you literally just spoke for the community when you said, and I quote, "our relationship is very friendly and productive (fun moments, great creator stuff, etc) for a long while". I can't say I'm a particularly big fan of hypocrisy.

If you quote all my message maybe you can understand "With constructive spirit we can build nice players and creators communities. And we don't need to reconcile community and Nadeo because our relationship is very friendly and productive (fun moments, great creator stuff, etc) for a long while." I don't speak for the whole community but i know some parts of this community, or small communities if you prefer, have a long and friendly relationship with Nadeo. So when you wrote community need to reconciliate with Nadeo, I think it's not true. But maybe I wasn't very clear in my explanations. I apologize for this and for my english also.

iamajellydonut wrote: ↑27 May 2017, 17:34Does Nadeo have a dedicated PR team? It sounds a lot they are juggling working on the game and public relations at the same time. I can see where that would be difficult, and even straight-up exhausting. So I would humbly suggest recruiting a dedicated PR team (if you don't have one already that I don't know about) so Nadeo and Hylis can work on the games, and other people who are probably more qualified to deal with people like me than they are can take the wheel, so to speak.

If people don't wan't to buy Nadeo games even if they spend hundred of hours it will be difficult for Nadeo to pay for a PR team

OwenJ wrote: ↑27 May 2017, 18:24 I know there were "promises" made but can we just accept the facts and move on.

I think we all are accepting the facts.

I know I am, which is why I'm not buying Lagoon.

iamajellydonut wrote: ↑27 May 2017, 17:34 Oh, and you should maybe check out some of the recent reviews for TM2 Stadium on Steam. "Friendly" and "productive" aren't words I would use to describe how they feel about this relationship at the moment.

To give Nadeo credit, most of the reviews on Steam seem to be about people who can no longer run the game, because they were using a setup that isn't DX11 compatible/becomes too weak under the new features brought by the improved renderer.

Which.. is a legitimate complaint, maybe Nadeo should have kept the old DX9 renderer in for these people. But I don't think this should be a big problem as by now a large majority of consumer PCs on the market are running on hardware that should handle the new renderer with no problems. Time for an upgrade, I guess. Also, some negative reviewers are complaining that they can't get the game to run anymore because they're still running on xp... which is just lol, I can't sympathize with anyone still running xp.

meuh21 wrote: ↑27 May 2017, 20:55 If people don't wan't to buy Nadeo games even if they spend hundred of hours it will be difficult for Nadeo to pay for a PR team

I'd argue that it makes it much harder for people to want to buy Nadeo's games if they don't have a PR team. The PR team is responsible for marketing the game, setting up events with the community, explaining Nadeo's rationale for certain business decisions, and preventing PR disasters (like the one that happened earlier this week) from happening.

It is of my understanding that Hylis is currently handling both PR for the company and running it as a CEO. It is also of my understanding that English is not his first language, and although his sentences are very coherent and understandable, I feel like I'm going to need a dictionary at hand every time I read any of his posts in the future because of his use of words hanging solely on their definition, and not what they usually mean when in certain contexts. I probably wouldn't feel this way if Nadeo had a dedicated PR team.

On the "If people don't want to buy Nadeo games" part, it's hard to sell this game in it's current form. From what I've read in articles online like this, the reason for splitting up the environments was to make it possible so that each one could be massive in their limited scope - a sound idea that has yet to be seen in the games. I searched on Google to the best of my abilities and found that Canyon has received 3 major updates (I'm defining a major update that has added content to the game that can change gameplay. Updates that are just bug fixes, or updates that add new car skins/models don't count) since its release 5 years ago. How am I supposed to encourage my friends to pay $20 for Canyon using the argument that "It's $20 so that they can pay for significant updates to the game"? They're seeing an expensive game that doesn't have a community or a dev team to justify the price. What can I do in this situation? What can Nadeo do in this situation?

I love Trackmania and want to see it succeed. It's a series that easily has the potential to be recognized worldwide on the same level as say, Mario Kart or Forza. The future of this series starts not with people buying these games, but by Nadeo giving a good reason for players to want to buy the games - and that is something that requires a PR team to properly advertise and market the game, and Nadeo altering their business strategy to one that doesn't sound terrible the moment you try explaining it to a customer.

My sentence about PR team was a joke with this icon

I desagree on many points with you :

drakargx wrote: ↑27 May 2017, 23:28How am I supposed to encourage my friends to pay $20 for Canyon using the argument that "It's $20 so that they can pay for significant updates to the game"? They're seeing an expensive game that doesn't have a community or a dev team to justify the price. What can I do in this situation? What can Nadeo do in this situation?

I don't have time to spend ours to list for you everything what community and Nadeo team provide for the game. So just a few examples : mods, cars, tracks, videos, new blocks, script possibilities, title packs, game mod (platform), etc. Maybe about game price, it would be nice to have a pack with all environments at a discount for new players.

drakargx wrote: ↑27 May 2017, 23:28It is of my understanding that Hylis is currently handling both PR for the company and running it as a CEO.

I think it's a huge chance and a great privilege to get the possibility to talk with the Nadeo CEO. We saw with Turbo how work a PR team. Of course it's easier to understand because we read always the same message. It was interesting at the beggining but after 2 or 3 interviews or press release it became boring. We never had the chance to go in depth with developpers. Here it's the opposite. The message is not always calibrate but we have the big chance to go a bit inside the game "engine". It's very interesting, and personnally i've learned tons of things. It's facsinating to discuss directly with developpers also. I' ve always improved my knowledge when they've shared their professionnal skills ( Fix). I think many Maniaplanet experts here in this forum need and like the possibility to discuss directly with Hylis and his dream team. And experts create stuff for players.

We are just at the beggining of a new chapter for TM. Channels are a big step and a wonderful tool for creator. As always with new possibility, it just need time and i guess it will be a great success.

While it was not what I meant this thread to cover, I agree 100% with previous people here who suggested that Nadeo would benefit for having stronger PR effort. Issue all along is the transparency.

Even in the Lagoon beta discussion we never got a straight up answer why they changed plans and what was the actual issue. If they had given a straight answer, it would have at least given people something to reason with. I'm also sure people would understand if there were a fundamental/technical issue that prevented them from doing this but since they could (somewhat) handle it for beta, they obviously could have made it happen for everyone. With the info we got, we could guess it was some party outside of Nadeo core staff (Ubisoft marketing/shareholders/?) that made that call as Hylis was really clear it wasn't up to them. But even if it wasn't up to them, it's just not a very responsible to blame others for things that they started themselves (it's makes situation even worse if he really is the CEO of the studio, I wouldn't know if he is).

Usually it would be up to a PR team to handle things like these. If they had announced the change of plans properly, they would have made a sticky note here explaining why they couldn't make the thing happen and promise they will try to make it sure they'll not mislead the customers again. They sure took the credit for the hype when they announced their plans so it would have been least thing they could have done.

There's also no real explanation given why they limited the free beta key to maniaplanet 4. This leaves lots of questions open, like the one I asked in the original post here and what the thread was supposed to be about. For all we know, they could plan to sunset whole perpetual trackmania ecosystem and indeed go to subscription model.

rizu, why do you absolutely need to discuss the same (Lagoon beta for free topic) again ?
This does not lead anywhere actually, please stop it.

However, I think I can give you the reason why the beta key is only there in Maniaplanet 4 because 1. they don't support Maniaplanet 3 anymore (its there but only for some content creation purpose) and 2. because they can handle the beta/demo keys there themselves, without going via Ubisoft or Steam or any other reseller, that's all.

TM² is TM², and as long as Maniaplanet supports TM² or is compatible to it, I don't see why TM² titles should not work anymore with MP Verison 5.
MP 5 will only be the next evolution of Maniaplanet.
But as long as nothing is known about it (Hylis will certainly start a new topic "wishes for MP 5" if it is not already there) we can only guess.

People thought that Turbo was TM³ but that's only a sidebranch, like in older times the DS version of Trackmania.
TM³ is something as uncertain as QuestMania at the moment

I don't work at Nadeo, nor do I know what they actually have in mind, but I can almost guarantee that BOUGHT environments will remain in ManiaPlanet 5. It wouldn't make any sense to just remove what people paid for already. It wouldn't make any sense from a standpoint regarding keeping the community alive (which they're currently struggling with). Also, there'd be huge legal trouble. They said from the beginning that Lagoon's special beta would be for MP4 only, so there's no false advertisement there. Could they have made it more public? Yeah, they could have, but to be honest the special beta itself wasn't very public, so there's not much more they could've done.

If Nadeo were to take bought titles, they would go under in no time flat. They just aren't wealthy enough to take dumb risks like that. Everybody needs to calm down and realize that they gave you Lagoon for free for a pretty decent amount of time. It took a while to get to MP4 what with Turbo and all the other stuff they added. I probably am not too far off in saying you'll probably have Lagoon for a year or so.

TMarc wrote: ↑28 May 2017, 16:22rizu, why do you absolutely need to discuss the same (Lagoon beta for free topic) again ?

I wasn't going to and it's not why I made the thread but since PR issue came up on this thread, I wanted to give my opinion on it (it's discussion forum after all). PR issues go beyond getting Lagoon for free (although it's not really even free when you've practically paid for it).

I know you're going to hate me for this, but since you refer me going back for getting lagoon for free topic, I just want to make clear that Lagoons price has never even been my own point here. I don't care for the price tag unless it's something absurd or game simply isn't good, but we all know Trackmania is or at least was a quality franchise. I have 130+ racing games on Steam/Origin/Uplay and I do want to support devs that are doing a good work, meaning not only that the product is solid but also that they stand by their words. I've even bought games / extra copies to support devs who have given or offered free keys for their racing games. So no, this has nothing to do with getting some game for free, at least not for my part.

TMarc wrote: ↑28 May 2017, 16:22However, I think I can give you the reason why the beta key is only there in Maniaplanet 4 because 1. they don't support Maniaplanet 3 anymore (its there but only for some content creation purpose) and 2. because they can handle the beta/demo keys there themselves, without going via Ubisoft or Steam or any other reseller, that's all.

Neither of your examples make any sense, they've sold TM2 on various places, even today they sell on their site, Steam and Uplay. The source doesn't matter as their games has to ultimately be recognized on the platform which they develop themselves (maniaplanet). Therefore, it doesn't explain why free beta keys are expiring on Maniaplanet 5 as it's totally on their own hands now (they've generated the rights to TM2 Lagoon themselves).