Maniaplanet Forum

The problem with the current Elite Demo is that is so limited that does it really encourage anyone to want to buy this game without spending lots of time figuring out what the rest has to offer? Probably not, and if it does it only does for very few people.

First of all there are major flaws with the current Elite Demo:

1) Forced onto matchmaking only

Elite is no the best or most fun gamemode for random public games. It just doesn't work very well as it is heavily reliant on proper communication and teamwork on defence, something that you cannot do very well with random people through matchmaking. Not to mention some people might want to play seriously and others might just be there to play like they want without any regard to teamwork/teamplay whatsoever.

2) No voice-communication ingame

This is related to the above-mentioned as well. Proper communication cannot and will not happen with the ingame pingsystem alone. Why the game was developed with no regard to ingame voice-communication I have no idea, only Nadeo can answer that one but to say the least, to release a multiplayergame in 2013 and no ingame voice-communication? Come on, stop kidding yourselves.

3) New players thrown right into the competitive mode

This in itself isn't such a big deal, but when you throw players into a game without any kind of tutorial or explanation of the basic concepts of the game you're left with a feeling of "WTF is this game? How can he do that? WTF, that is possible?". The fact that no tutorial-maps has been created yet considering how easily this can be done in the map-editor with triggers and mediatracker just proves that Nadeo as a company developing games are lackluster in so many ways (I'm not trying to be insulting here, I'm merely stating a simple fact).

I suggested ages ago (before my posts became nothing but insults to you) that you do this. I also said that you could maybe outsource this to people from the community if you didn't have the resources to do it yourself, as long as they got credited ingame for this work (I know had I been asked 6 months ago I probably would've been up for this. Now? For mere credit ingame? No thanks, not worth the time).

I've said time and time again that Nadeo needs to steal good ideas from other games and adopt them instead of insisting on always having to find their own twisted way of doing things. Sadly these words seem to go unnoticed by their radar like some kind of stealth-suggestion.

4) Match-making only again

People who come from the Elite Demo cannot compete in proper leagues/tournaments as they're forced onto matchmaking only. Now, maybe this is how Nadeo is trying to get people to buy it, by hoping that those who want to play it competitively will buy it solely to do this, however I don't see that happening for several reasons.

First of all I don't see how anyone who's limited to matchmaking only in Elite would want to get more involved with the game because they don't really know what it has to offer (This then comes back to having to google the rest of the game, just like new players have to google what all the blocks etc do)

Secondly the obnoxious P2P-netcode making everyone lag because one player is spiking in ping just makes the game look and feel horrible. Why this was done in the first place you can ask Hylis, but he'll probably come on and tell lies about how the current netcode removes the need to play with best ping etc (something I can prove is a lie. The best pings are still heavily favoured in terms of syncronization between what you see on your own client and what goes on server-side and I'm getting increasingly annoyed with lasers hitting players and not getting kills or rockets hitting from 2 meters behind).

And again, lack of voice-communication makes it really hard to get to know people online. When I started playing CS:S back in the day I found a great community and made a ton of friends through this alone. (believe that if you can ) It is key to bringing people together, text chat will only get you so far.

I could go on and on, but all these things should be blatantly obvious to any developer, yet it's not obvious to Nadeo it seems.

And that's the really scary part, that they need to be told this (and probably ignore it as they have done every time these points have been raised. And no, I'm not talking about you not replying to these posts of mine, I'm talking about you never actually adopting a single point I've raised).

But I won't derail the topic about this. You can move the post to your own topic if you will, but what good will that do if you're just gonna ignore the points raised as usual?

*EDIT*

Regarding Wabbitfaces suggestion about transactions for cosmic stuff etc, how about this: You make many gamemodes Free2Play (None of this matchmaking only bullshit) but still limit stuff like map editor, replay editor, custom horn, custom skin etc. And then sell these individually?

Imagine if you got Storm + Elite + Royal absolutely Free2Play but with these things restricted? You'll probbaly get a ton of people buying access to the replay editor for £2, a bunch of people paying £2 for the map editor, a bunch of people paying £1 for custom skin/custom horn and suddenly you've made enough money that would've been 1k sales of the game at full price?

Not to mention you'll get a ton more players in general, which will get the game increased exposure in terms of more tournaments, more viewers on stream, more streams in general, more videos on YT etc, which will in return get more people involved with the game, or simply downloading and playing the game.

And then those people will pay for stuff like map editor, custom skin/custom horn etc.

How is it not obvious that this is a far better way of approaching it than your current restricted Demo system? Again, you guys seem to be living in your own little world regarding how things work.

I'm not saying that it would be easy for you guys to do this now, but frankly the game should've been developed from the start with this in mind. But you didn't... Why? Only Hylis can answer that and frankly, no answer apart from actually doing it is good enough.

definitely support the actual relevant facts like throwing new players directly into the competitive mode
just like i already said in the thread introducing the demo

sadzealot, you would be taken more seriously if you wouldn't always start with the same boring stuff over and over
especially your netcode worrying.. that doesn't have anything to do with the way the demo is realized

steeffeen wrote:definitely support the actual relevant facts like throwing new players directly into the competitive mode
just like i already said in the thread introducing the demo

sadzealot, you would be taken more seriously if you wouldn't always start with the same boring stuff over and over
especially your netcode worrying.. that doesn't have anything to do with the way the demo is realized

+1 , also +1 with the last part.

steeffeen wrote:[...]sadzealot, you would be taken more seriously if you wouldn't always start with the same boring stuff over and over
especially your netcode worrying.. that doesn't have anything to do with the way the demo is realized

Wait, he didn't bring up B2 walljumps this time? Now this is a progress.

It would be nice if we can discuss in this topic about "The problem with the current Elite Demo", instead of bringing up old stuff. Off topics as well as personal attacks will be removed from now on in this thread. Thank you.
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sadzealot wrote:The problem with the current Elite Demo is that is so limited that does it really encourage anyone to want to buy this game without spending lots of time figuring out what the rest has to offer? Probably not, and if it does it only does for very few people.

First of all there are major flaws with the current Elite Demo:
1) Forced onto matchmaking only[...]
2) No voice-communication ingame[...]
3) New players thrown right into the competitive mode[...]
4) Match-making only again[...]

I would say that being forced on matchmaking is not such a nice way to increase the fan base of the game and here I agree with sadzealot. I think the majority of the players will want to play more causal and just for fun. For example, I played Elite in the beginning but then left it as I really like battle waves way more. If you set players to come into the game as demo players, they only see one side of the game and if they don't like this side they will be gone forever. As I didn't played the demo, is there any mentioning for demo players that there exist other game modes which might interested them more? Maybe a match making for the different game modes, that a player can play the game for 1-1/2 hours a day, but try different game modes in the first week and then should decide the mode that he is most interested in and his account will be locked to this title? Nevertheless, I agree that a demo should be limited, but there should be done some more fine-tuning in showing what the game has to offer and how the user is to experience it.
Just one question, does the demo allows network play or only online play? If it allows both, anyone tried to play it over a private network (e.g. hamachi) to advertise it to friends? This was at least how the TMSdemo community survived for some time before we migrated to TMS

steeffeen wrote: sadzealot, you would be taken more seriously if you wouldn't always start with the same boring stuff over and over
especially your netcode worrying.. that doesn't have anything to do with the way the demo is realized

So I should just "leave it out" in order for NAdeo to take me seriously? Sure, if Nadeo needs to be catered to like little children regarding feedback, maybe what you said was true.

However, when I feel the netcode makes the game look bad and awful and that it's holding back growth, I'll say it out loud. For you to sit there and say that "You'll be taken more seriously if you left out A, B and C" is nothing but absolute riddiculous to say the least.

I mean, are they not a developer of a game?

Watch this video that was just released, go read their forum and notice the difference in how they as a developer approach the development of their game compared to Nadeo - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caA7w3N_u9g

If anything, people like you who hold stuff back because "I want to be taken seriously by Nadeo" is part of the problem here. By not saying out loud what you actually feel, Nadeo gets the impression everything is fine apart from a few sole voices. And maybe that isn't good?

If someone does something bad you tell them that it's bad and why in hope that they change.

you didn't get my point

or maybe i didn't get the point of this thread

the title says "... elite demo"
not ".. the game itself"

so what has the netcode (which is relevant to the complete game) to do with the elite demo?
imho talking about the way the demo is realized should focus on the demo itself and not about the complete game
you could also say that the demo isn't successful because the complete game has too few players..
that just doesn't make sense, right?

i played with quite some players and invited 5 of my real life friends to play with me and nobody ever mentioned something similar to netcode implementation

my actual point was that in almost every of your posts you mention stuff like netcode and trilaser
i didn't ask you to complete stop mentioning it
actually i'm quite sure that nobody but you understood me in that way, no idea why you thought i would to that

i was asking you to focus on the relevant facts

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back to the topic..
imho:

a shootmania demo should show the wide variety of creative content like the over 40 game modes and not show JUST one of them

Steffen You are missing the point 2 time in your last post.

First of you don't get the point of the problem with demo is that it won't achieve an increase of playerbase and under that definition it is fairly obvious what netcode have to do with it.

You say you have never heard complains about it? Well every single one I met and played with on a regular basis concur with the opinion that the netcode is poor at best. Then we have a bunch of players I've played many other games with that just won't even spend time trying the game since they already on now about problems like netcode.

Secondly you...
"a shootmania demo should show the wide variety of creative content like the over 40 game modes and not show JUST one of them"
This is about the Elite demo. So kinda got stuck with your foot in your mouth there with...
"you didn't get my point

or maybe i didn't get the point of this thread

the title says "... elite demo"
not ".. the game itself""

Just pointing it out.

okay you're right there
i kind of "extended" the topic as well
from pure elite to sm demo
my bad

nevertheless i can't believe this netcode thingy
i never ever think "this damn netcode" when something happens (whatever it might be)
and i play the game since 15 months
i just simply don't get the point of shitting on it all day long
of course it could be improved
but there are games that do way worse in terms of netcode

well we're getting off topic, i'm sorry @ mods
i'm going to stop now ^^