Maniaplanet Forum

Trackmania is a name that will be recognized almost imediately when mentioned in the gaming community. Everybody knows it as that good old game with fast cars and crazy stunts. In that regard, the name is incredibly popular. Nowdays, the game itself, not so much. But let's go back to 2008, with the release of TrackMania Nations Forever. It is the game that pretty much pushed the whole franchise to the mainstream. I am not aware of the size of the player base pre-2008 (even though I started playing in 2006 but not online), it probably was pretty big then too, but TMNF really blew up. I found that there is a huge, huge number of people that started playing TM in 2008 with Nations Forever, and nowdays are very important members in the community. TMNF was the perfect game to attract a great public. It was simple, straight-forward, accessible, fun, and also had plenty of creative possibilites.

There are 3 main categories of players in TM. There is the mass, that just enjoy hopping on a server (or solo campaign) and playing some tracks, the creative part, which you managed to satisfy (mostly) with editors and the other tools found in MP, and the competitive part, which also has potential to be satisfied.

So my idea to save the franchise is to implement a total free to play model for all the games in ManiaPlanet. How it would work in my head: There will be Free accounts and Premium accounts. The free accounts would be able to play online forever, with no time limit and maybe a small part of the Solo campaign (All white tracks maybe?). The premium accounts will be able to access the rest of the content: Map Editor, Replay Editor, Skins, Avatars, Custom nicknames, Full Solo campaign. Basically, everything besides online servers are locked for free accounts. Buying an environment will give you access to the respective environment's map editor, replay editor, solo campaign, access to planets and the other premium features.

The next step is to simplfy the current ManiaPlanet interface. A clean, simple and modern interface would benefit a lot, and I do mean A LOT. My idea would be to ditch the current title system and just have only two main interfaces, the TM menu and the SM menu. I made a concept (for fun ), and while it is definitely not the best thing ever made, I think it shows my general vision http://imgur.com/a/ZzmhT . Redesigning the UI alone would probably bring a lot more people to the game, as it definitely can be made more accessible. I believe Nadeo is actually working on this, as they stated in HP6.

Last step would be for Nadeo to hype up the update, and get as much media coverage as possible, in order to inform people that a new release is happening, and definitely a cool trailer to show what the game is about (gogo SuperBowl ad )

In short, I believe that a model similar to this will be able to bring ManiaPlanet, ShootMania and the new generation of Trackmania to a really big number of people. The more I think, the more I see that Nadeo has most of the "ingredients" to turn TM into a great success, they have good graphics, they got fun gameplay and just needs a bit of an overhaul. The keyword should be Accessibility.

I kept thinking about this for a long time, and thought that maybe sharing my thoughts here would be good. Fingers crossed Nadeo will not only be able to attract a lot of people in MP4.0, but also keep them. I don't mean this thread to be taken as a "hey, go do that right now!" but more of a way to discuss possible methods to re-popularize the Mania games. Thanks a lot for reading!

+1 I think it would help alot

Agree but not on all of your post.

A lot of people have said that the ManiaPlanet main menu is complicate. The ManiaPlanet menu looks like an alpha game menu and... yeah, it can be disruptive the first time you open ManiaPlanet because you have so much titles and you don't know what are all those things that appears at the screen. But finally, it's like Blizzard and Battle.net.

They should maybe simplify the menu like Battle.net but finally the menu isn't so bad : It's like an operating system and you choose your "program".

In your example, there is too much menus imo. I prefer the current one.

CrAzYdriv3r wrote:Last step would be for Nadeo to hype up the update, and get as much media coverage as possible, in order to inform people that a new release is happening, and definitely a cool trailer to show what the game is about (gogo SuperBowl ad )

So agree

For the rest of the topic, almost everything you and quadkillgod said have been said a lot of times in the past but there was no update since. We have to wait & see

Nicely said CrAzYdriv3r. I think that is the way to have your opinions heard.

I also agree but I wouldn't call it free accounts and Premium accounts, because that kinda sounds like pay to win (eventho it isn't ).
Why not just call it demo and full game?

If they reskin MP3 and call it MP4 I will uninstall this game forever ahah.
No seriously tho... Ofc I wont, but I really hope they change the menus COMPLETELY and dont forget the details.

In the current MP3 you can see menus of MP2 in that 3D-style. It's just not finished. I really hope they do it right this time from A to Z and then some more. 2016 worthy. MP3 never looked sexy either.



Everything else I read in this topic sounded great! +1

Menus for ManiaPlanet 4 will be completely reworked, more intuitive and way better looking. Nadeo did replace current menus done the "legacy" way with new ones, using manialinks and ManiaScript, the same way Turbo has been done.

Also, the tools provided within Turbo will allow title packs creators to greatly improve own custom menus, for example by allowing to create custom submenu with editors and map selection, plus it will allow to run local play in solo or splitscreen with any mode or config.

POST THIS EVERYWHERE!

well, not everywhere, but in alot of places.

We already have this with demo and paid accounts except time limit which imo doesn't exists since nobody is playing(except stadium which always have 500 peak)