I think that the veterans have already long since left TM in droves. Looking at the TM2 Canyon and Lagoon Steam forums for the first time in pretty much ever, I have seen people expressing in topics on the first page of their forums, all the things that I've complained about here the past couple of days:
http://steamcommunity.com/app/228760/di ... 414960343/
"I'm just having trouble even beginning a "race." The menu is confusing as hell."
http://steamcommunity.com/app/228760/di ... 221444331/
"Where is the "Platform" mode ???
Since the last update I don't manage to play Platform anymore. I just cannot find it at all. Does anybody knows anything about it? This mode was pretty cool. This is really a pity they seem to have removed it..."
http://steamcommunity.com/app/600720/di ... 569529493/
"They should never got rid of Platform, Puzzle and Stunts, those were really fun TM gamemodes. They removed those players from his playbase on the new TM2 games..."
If these remain the common themes so many years after TM2 first came out, then my views are clearly a qualified assessment of what TM has been, and what it is now.
I know that French people have particular, different tastes than others - leaning towards designing things that are quirky, colourful, playful. Sometimes it works out awesome, like with the movie the Fifth Element, or with the early TrackMania games, or with certain aspects of the newer TrackMania games, like the anti-gravity roads. But sometimes it is done without regard for creating a sense of purpose to the design, and ignoring impracticality of it - such as the whole Mania Planet launcher, its lack of organization, its absurd restrictions, such as limiting how many games a person has paid for and owns they can have installed at one time (and making the ability to have more games installed at once something to unlock by earning "Planets"). Those are things that, when done wrong, result in lots of people not playing a game - and yet they're things that are easy to do right.
TrackMania has by far lost more in quality than it has gained over the years since TMS. What is now called TrackMania is a hollow shell of what TM originally was. And if Nadeo thinks their current presentations and models are what people will be most favourable towards, then they're out to lunch. The TM Steam reviews show that people aren't overly excited by the race-only format.
A lot of companies fail at interpreting user data of their products, and make poor company decisions based on their misreadings of compiled usage data. Race being the most engaged mode doesn't mean that people only need the race game mode to stay engaged in TM. Also, TM2 Canyon's Platform game mode was released long after TM2 Canyon was initially released, and it was barely reported on or known about. And to install and use it wasn't straight-forward, either. I would have expected its release to not make a big splash, because it was released at a time and in a manner that obscured it, and after TM veterans not interested in race had already written TM off.
Without more modes than Race, and a proper front-end, TM seems like a novelty thing to play for a few minutes and go 'that was neat' before playing something else that has a fuller package and offers a fuller experience, IMO. It certainly doesn't seem like a serious presentation effort.