Stadium eSport Development

[w1lla]

Romain42,

Here is the link to create a competition: https://player.maniaplanet.com/competitions/
we have work to do to support, educate and make that everything works fine, but that's the principle

Well, i planned a tournament since few weeks and now it's ready. Unfortunately, the "competition" ingame tool disappeared, or maybe it is just elsewhere. I can still access my competition through the Player Page (the link you mentionned), but all the competitions disappeared ingame. Maybe i missed a news, could someone tell me?

I can understand you are working a lot on Maniaplanet nowadays and it's probably normal to have frequent updates, but we need a stable environment to organize competitions. How do we do if everything is supposed to disappear suddenly? (Don't get me wrong, it's not intended to be offensive, i just wanted to explain a need here )

Try in the browser this:

http://livemenu.maniaplanet.com/competi ... g=TMCanyon

or SMStorm or any other title

to find multiplayer just replace competitions with multiplayer

[Romain42]

Thanks for the tip. It works, although there are some graphical glitches (white letters on white background, kinda hard to read... ).

I wonder how average players are expected to find it. My goal while using this system was to make my tournament easy to access for everybody. With such a link to type, i think very few people will browse it, thus it still doesn't really comply to my goal, although it allows me to check if i properly used the system. Will it be publicly restored soon? (I mean accessible from the main page of the game, without having to type a link?)

[w1lla]

I think so... There is 2 versions... One for Dev team and one for the main stream players like us.

Currently the livemenu script has it disabled i guess for some tests before wednesday but it also can be moved out of it and into maniahome.

[Romain42]

Ok, thanks. Then i'll check again on wednesday.

I think the competition menu like it was, was the best option. An acces through maniahome would be less interesting because it would flood it among lots of other information.

[iceman23]

I think most of this discussion fails to target the real issue at hand and instead is focused on the unavoidable bias that comes from being a competitive player or a developer. Without a growing general population playing the game, Trackmania will never grow as an eSport. From the developers perspective, after thousands of hours on minute details and features, it may be hard to recognize faults on a greater scale. Likewise, from a player perspective we have the same problem - after putting in thousands of hours into one game it is very hard to separate oneself from the attachment that has grown over that time. In the end, the biggest problem facing Trackmania (whatever the environment may be) is that NO ONE knows about the game.

Regardless of the direction you take Nadeo, please realize that you MUST advertise the game, you MUST make it known to large online communities and you MUST make the game easily accessible to the newcomer who finally realizes the game exists. I feel all of these aspects are sorely lacking in favor of the addition of many small features that the casual player will never use or care about. Honestly, I can count on one hand the amount of people I've met outside of the Trackmania community who have actually heard of the game - even hardcore gamers who have played FAR FAR more titles than myself. An eSport community that supports itself is not sustainable - we are seeing this with the dwindling Nations scene and the Canyon scene which has contained the same extremely small group of players from the start. Note I am not speaking of support in the manner of tournaments and prize-money: these things do NOT create a successful eSport. Take DOTA 2 for example; the very first tournament offered a gigantic cash prize, yet it still fails to attain anywhere close the eSport success of LoL. Why? LoL has millions more players and because of this, many more will be attracted to the already existing competitive scene simply by nature of exposure, regardless of the "competitive quality" of the game itself (which is in fact far less than others in the genre like Heroes of Newerth or Dota 2). If you really want Stadium to be a successful and growing eSport on release, start by doing everything you can to GET PEOPLE PLAYING THE GAME IN THE FIRST PLACE.

[Romain42]

I think most of this discussion fails to target the real issue at hand and instead is focused on the unavoidable bias that comes from being a competitive player or a developer. Without a growing general population playing the game, Trackmania will never grow as an eSport.

I think i already said something quite close, but anyway, i agree...

Nevertheless, i think it's kinda hard to reproach Nadeo to not do enough to have people playing the game. Selling more games is also in their interests and if they don't make more advertising, it's probably because they can't. It's allways relevant to emphasize how important it is, but i think they worry about that at least as much as us.

Furthermore, you can as well have lots of players but few eSport players. 42 teams in the last Stadium Team Championship is not much, considering there are over 5 millions of accounts in TMNF (if i remember well). It's about 1 player over 10000. This ratio could and should be improved as well.

[iceman23]

I think most of this discussion fails to target the real issue at hand and instead is focused on the unavoidable bias that comes from being a competitive player or a developer. Without a growing general population playing the game, Trackmania will never grow as an eSport.

I think i already said something quite close, but anyway, i agree...

Nevertheless, i think it's kinda hard to reproach Nadeo to not do enough to have people playing the game. Selling more games is also in their interests and if they don't make more advertising, it's probably because they can't. It's allways relevant to emphasize how important it is, but i think they worry about that at least as much as us.

Furthermore, you can as well have lots of players but few eSport players. 42 teams in the last Stadium Team Championship is not much, considering there are over 5 millions of accounts in TMNF (if i remember well). It's about 1 player over 10000. This ratio could and should be improved as well.

Apologies if I have missed similar sentiments you iterated, coming into this large thread late it would take me hours to closely inspect each post. Anyways, I'm not blaming Nadeo particularly, in fact I suspect the resources to pull off a necessary advertising/community involvement campaign would largely rest at the behest of Ubisoft. I doubt Nadeo would or could reveal the sentiments and inner dynamics of the Ubisoft organization, but it makes little sense to me from the perspective of a business model to purchase a company such as Nadeo and then fail to utilize the resources available to such a large company in expanding sales (or downloads in F2P model).

Also I think it's more beneficial to look at active players rather than total accounts, especially in a game that was active for so long (in fact I think 42 teams is quite exceptional considering the current state of the game).

I don't know if you are able to comment on this Hylis, but I think it would be very interesting to hear why Trackmania is not marketed in the United States where I live (of course one of the largest potential userbases), and, as far as I know, the Asian countries (also a massive userbase). From my experience working in software and hardware development at the corporate level, I honestly doubt you can tell us your true feelings on these matters, but it definitely would be interesting to hear nonetheless

[zarexz]

Well, since just about everything is still in beta why launch a mega expensive campaign if you have nothing solid (yet) to offer? Looks rather silly doesn't it?

[iceman23]

Well, since just about everything is still in beta why launch a mega expensive campaign if you have nothing solid (yet) to offer? Looks rather silly doesn't it?

My post was in reference to the entire Trackmania series both past, present and future, which renders this comment moot. Regardless, it's this type of sentiment that makes me want to bang my head against a wall. How many top selling games are advertised heavily before final release? NEARLY ALL OF THEM.This creates hype, speculation and word of mouth among online communities. I'd argue that waiting to promote the game until after the release is silly. Secondly, how is there nothing to offer currently? Advertising a new game may draw people to check out previous installments to see what Trackmania is all about.

[zarexz]

it's this type of sentiment that makes me want to bang my head against a wall.

Sentiment? I call it realizm.

I'd argue that waiting to promote the game until after the release is silly. Secondly, how is there nothing to offer currently? Advertising a new game may draw people to check out previous installments to see what Trackmania is all about.

There's nothing SOLID (YET) to offer. The game isn't released yet either. As far as I know Nadeo want's a couple of things very very solid before they really get on.

If you see how many people gone angry because of the Stadium beta. How they will tell their friends NOT to buy the game bacause whatever dumb reason they find in the buggy BETA version.

How will this translate to people who have no knowledge of the game at all. I think they all run away and blame Nadeo for a waste of their 10 or 20 euros.