t1tan apparently you need to inform a bit more about Maniaplanet, which is not only ShootMania, it is also TrackMania, and there the planets are used a lot already.
The planets apply for everyone using ManiaPlanet games, there is no restriction to countries or continents.
They can be used for ingame purchases like skins, avatars, horns, maps, map packs, titles, and also for tournament registration, donantions to other players or to servers, etc.
Then, the planets are a virtual money for ingame payment system.
The only places where players have to pay real money is 1. purchase of the full game (for a price that is relatively low compared to other games) and 2. rent of servers (that money is not even going to Nadeo / UBisoft since ladder and lobby servers have to be paid with Planets).
Now back to topic:
How can you claim for servers at the same time you are telling there are not enough players?
This is a weird logic in my eyes.
Again, you can't blame Nadeo only because the NA players are apparently not able to organize themselves, even across timezones.
If you find ShootMania a good game, despite it's current issues, then it is also part of your personal duty to promote it and show it your friends.
Given the low entry price for the game and the money free ingame payment system, Nadeo certainly can't give any incentive to promote the game further. According to Hylis (he's da boss) last
"general status" message, the situation is good and promising for the future:
Hylis wrote:My focus on this update is really to provide players the ability to make their best into the game, in all their great skills. It could be for sharing thanks to the store, playing thanks to Shootmania gameplay or Trackmania new mode, creation thanks to mixmapping, mods or innovation through scripting etc.
Since it's providing more capacities to the player, it will probably takes time to really see the full power of the next update, even once it's released. But it also mean a long time span of things to discover from other players.
Our goal is to make Maniaplanet, Trackmania & Shootmania to be of top quality, whatever time it takes. We know that many would like it to go faster, but Shootmania is going toward it's first year of release, which is still quite young, compared to the age of the most popular multiplayer FPS series, such as CoD, CS, TF, BF etc.
So you can't say ShootMania will be dead "soon" (although it is there only since a year) only because their marketing is perhaps not as elaborated as other companies. Nadeo is a small company, and has a totally different focus on game marketing. It is a long term project. Ubisoft is supporting Nadeo with this proceeding.
They won't make big ads on Times Square anyways
Now please wait for the update (probably happens next month) which should solve some issues with the Matchmaking system.
In the meantime, you could ask the guys from the SSM team if they would setup one more server in NA, since their servers seem to be very successful.
Or do you have a better suggestion?
