| Title |
| a rock and a hard place |
| a rock and a hard place | 13 Jan, 2012 |
| Jet777 | (7 comments, 1012 views) |
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Hey guys,
it's likely that most of you are new here or don't know who I am, so I'm sorry if what I say doesn't really make sense to you, but I wanted to get this out there. This is gonna be kind of long, so let's see if I can do it without being too much of a drama queen... I've been playing this game for what feels like forever now, so, as lame as it may sound, it means something to me. I found TMO, the first installment of TrackMania, in an elementary school book-order in 2004 (I was eight at the time) and loved it from the start. I've been through a whole slew of nicknames since then. Johnnyboy. Pteradactyl. 013 for a little while (that became my permanent TM United login name so i kind of regretted it  ,) Maniac after that, and finally Jet777, under which I published my first track in 2009. It was then that I finally started to become a real part of the TMX community. I've met a lot of cool people on that site.
As much as I like the TM-series, there would always be times where I lost interest and stopped playing a few months. My point here is that right now feels a lot different than those times in the past. The difference between my old TM-breaks and this one is that everyone else is TM-breaking too, and I'm not sure if it will stop... For a while I really enjoyed playing Canyon. I bought the game as soon as it came out, and even was lucky enough to be one of the 10-or-so people in the US who played in the closed beta of the game. There was always something that concerned me about the release of TM2, though: TM1 would suddenly become old news. And it did - after the release of Canyon the United TMX got a lot less popular. What I hadn't considered was that a lot of the community would get lost somewhere between TM1 and TM2, and that's exactly what happened. Through the final months of last year, all sorts of old TMU guys made posts just like this one, about how things didn't 'feel right' in TM2 and didn't want to stick around to see the game decline. Back then I ignored them, commenting that that can't be true, because Nadeo was flawless, right? And now here I am... haven't released a track since October. At this point, if you look at the recent tracks in the 'Find Tracks' section, the front page dates back to nine hours ago - this is far longer than normal. Less people are around now, both at TMU and TM2. There was a time where hunting for that best-of-the-week slot would've been enough for me. As entertaining as that is, I'm left wanting a bit more than that... tldr: I've always said that Trackmania is nothing without TMX, and now TMX is a lot quieter. I'm a little concerned about the future of the game. If I know you from before (you know who you are) I'd love a quick PM. I do check into this site a lot, although I haven't made a post in forever. Maybe if you come back, i (and some others) will too ^^ peace + keep on tracking, jet 
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| eyebo writes ... | 17, Jan, 2012 |
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Canyon suffers from the popularity of United Forever and Nations Forever. Everyone expects Canyon to be as well baked and finished as United Forever was, even though United Forever is the result of years of tweaks and improvements to the engine, the environments, and the interfaces.
These changes took place slowly over the course of 7 game titles that were released over a period of almost 5 years. Expecting Canyon to have the same level of polish is like expecting a five year old to write a thesis on bioengeering. Your expectations are just too high... and it leads to disappointment. From my perspective, TM2 is really a reboot of the franchise... albeit one with much more complexity right out of the starting gate. In some ways it builds on the old games, but it also starts fresh in other ways. It's clearly grounded in the history of Trackmania... being very familiar and easy to jump into... but also offering new things and improved graphics. I wish everyone could imagine Canyon as the first TM they ever played. You'd be far less jaded and far more excited about all the possibilities and fun this game offers. |
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| Cxom writes ... | 16, Jan, 2012 |
| To tell the truth, this is TrackMania 1 1/2 | |
| Enai Siaion writes ... | 15, Jan, 2012 |
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It's pretty simple: TM2 is garbage. It is not competitive, has too many useless blocks, no variety, you only get one environment for the price of seven and the next environments are not even discounted. The whole ManiaPlanet thing was nothing more than a way for Nadeo to copy/paste a lot of code between their titles so they can make them on the cheap and turn a profit regardless of how poor sales are.
It is interesting that Hylis posted a cheery thread on the official forum that the game sold better than TMU - orly? Those are all the players who bought it on day one. Actual player count, however, is dropping like a Russian submarine, unlike any other TM in history ever. As for future perspectives, Shootmania is pointless, nobody cares about custom maps in a shooter. Questmania has the potential to be an awesome "story creator" like Neverwinter Nights back in the days, but knowing the new Nadeo they will make it as cheaply as possible and waste its entire potential. In the end, Neverwinter Nights was a work of love created by a top studio with the intention to set a benchmark in community created content whereas Nadeo is now nothing more than a money grabbing game mill. So to answer your question where the community went: probably the same way I went. Trackmania was fun for many years, but the disappointment is just too great and soured me on the series as a whole. Guess what, it is a lot easier to peel oneself off TMUF after not playing it for 4 months. So I'm playing other games now. Thanks for everything, TMX and MX, and good luck with future projects. |
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| Jet777 writes ... | 14, Jan, 2012 |
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+1 zipperke
At first I thought it would be nice to have environments released over a long period of time but instead it's just lost my interest. |
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| zipperke writes ... | 14, Jan, 2012 |
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it all takes too long
where the hell is valley? only one environnement gets boring after a while i'm afraid that it all will bleed to death there are many other games around |
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| SPIDER writes ... | 13, Jan, 2012 |
Forzyy says: i haven´t seen a single donation button except in the frontpage at the beginning of mx i think. ? 
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| Forzyy writes ... | 13, Jan, 2012 |
You know what else is concerning? The future of TMX and MX. Lack of donations and poor income from ads is putting us in a difficult situation. 
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