Server browser: what are we doing, and why

[gouxim]

Dear community,

We are currently testing our new server browser. It was rolled out yesterday on the stations overlay. The plan is to display the exact same browser inside the title, in place of the "legacy browser". I believe it will be deployed tomorow.

* The first phase was to fix some technical limitations that we had. This is done.
* Now we are working on the functional aspects: having the right information, filters, behaviours, etc.
* Then once features are more stable, we shall improve the design.

Detailed feedbacks might not be very useful at this point ; but feel free to tell us what bother you the most ; at worst we're working on it ^^

We will get back to you here with the latest updates. We are iterating fast!

[MrA]

First feedbacks

Search
Seems to work on the raw server name, rather than displayed name.
Example, if I search for MrA I find nothing, if I search for Mr$8f0A then I find my server.
Would be more user friendly to be searching on the expected display name.

Modes
A little paradox, is that we (many of us) ask for everything not to be separate in maniaplanet, yet when I use Storm server browser, I am flooded with elite.... I know if I want elite where to go and find it, so something to filter some modes in or out perhaps... I think of 'favourite modes' but I don't want users to miss new things by only seeing what they liked once, so I can only think some kind of 'exclude' mechanism, I don't have the answer.. 'hide major modes which have their own station option' ^^

Ladder
I think many players do like to see what level the server is (80k, 90k), but nothing is prooving that what server owners put in the server name is really the true level of what you join, and nothing is showing the level of servers which don't put it in the name. I think some players will miss knowing this.

Favourites
Let me list all of them, even offline ones, and let me remove some from the list here if I want.
Going to my web player page is one way, but I would prefer to do it here in the game.
Also, the current Favourites list is not even showing all the online ones I have, if I compare to the web based listing there is more.

Trackmania Modes
I have to find a Rounds server before I can list rounds servers, which means looking through a lot of TimeAttack first. If there is other modes than Rounds & TimeAttack, it will take a lot longer, so some kind of shortcut mechanism for mode selection would be better. - Also applies to Shootmania, if I am interested in rare mode, I must search until I find one example to click on in order to see the others.

Lobbies
My lobby is advertised as being 80K, how can anyone know all the match servers I add are 80k?
We should be able to list associated match servers and see their actual level.

[Chevron]

When I click on all modes it just reloads instead of giving me the choice what it is supposed to do I guess.

[RamCUP2000]

Request #1: MAKE and USE (all) TRANSLATIONS ! (not english and french only)

[Omnixor]

agree with most of MrA's points. also, can you provide a possibility to disable the "feature" of sorting servers by "level" (those green/yellow/red triangles)? most of the time I don't care with which level of players to play with, I just want to find the most populated server, and currently it's not really convenient...

[steeffeen]

could someone post screenshots please?

[Omnixor]

http://i.imgur.com/MmTXIqv.jpg

[magnetik]

agree with most of MrA's points. also, can you provide a possibility to disable the "feature" of sorting servers by "level" (those green/yellow/red triangles)? most of the time I don't care with which level of players to play with, I just want to find the most populated server, and currently it's not really convenient...

That's a great feature. We need to add "header" of each column so we will add the filtering by clicking on this.
Since the loading of the data is asynchronous is will be much easier for us to do.

We need also to do the persistence of filters / sorting.

[edit] about the screenshot: we will update the look of the server list during the week

[Omnixor]

We need to add "header" of each column so we will add the filtering by clicking on this.
Since the loading of the data is asynchronous is will be much easier for us to do.

[novationx]

We need to add "header" of each column so we will add the filtering by clicking on this.
Since the loading of the data is asynchronous is will be much easier for us to do.

+1