Darkseeker says:
blocks to the editor

Did not know about this! Thanks for pointing that out o_O
Although I'd prefer a few more transitional blocks, offroad tunneling seems quite interesting, gotta see if it's possible to implement it in a map =))

eyebo and others defending Nadeo:

Kudos to Nadeo for trying new approaches -- that's all good and fine, BUT - and here comes the big BUT:

1. We are customers, not lab rats. If a company wants customers to help with something, they need to ASK, they need to communicate clearly what is at stake, what it takes to help, how much effort is needed, what are the risk.

All I got was: "Hi there, there's an update, click here."

2. A lot of things can be tested internally without any need to involve customers. For instance, it is RIDICULOUS to release a software in which you click on a button that is supposed to launch something, that something needs some 5 or 10 seconds to actually launch, and there is no indication that your click was even "accepted". How come that YouTube is able to show their rotating loader symbol in the middle, yet Nadeo does not even acknowledge "Yes, you've clicked on Platform, please give us few seconds to launch it" ?

3. before MP 2, I doubleclicked on Maniaplanet on my desktop, and after a while, I was in TM2:Canyon's main menu, already able to start singleplayer etc. Now I have to do some crazy "drag screen right-to-left", then I have to click twice on a huge picture which contrary to Microsoft standard for Windows software does not even indicate that it's actually active button, and only then the game starts loading. 3 clicks where before there were none? How exactly is this BETTER than e.g. Steam's:

Left click Steam icon
Left click recently played game to launch it

=============
Simply, there are things that are quite annoying right now. After the game was released, people were complaining a lot about the 5 minute timer on official tries. There are still things that Nadeo hasn't fixed, such as very bad highlighting of active/inactive buttons (when you finish a race and the game asks you, when you click IMPROVE, whether you want official attempt or continue practicing, there are exactly two buttons, one of them white, the other black. It's absolutely not clear which of them is selected for Enter key.)

As such, people have a bit of gripe against Nadeo and when in such situation you mistreat customers, it's really bad practice.

You make some really good points Alcator. I actually agree with most of what you said.

Nadeo could definitely do better at communicating. They try really hard. Many of the developers spend countless hours answering questions on the forums and responding to issues. But when it comes to the communication within the game itself and during the update process... it's definitely lacking a bit. I've even made posts on ManiaPlanet forums suggesting as much, especially in regard to the labeling of updates. When Siege was released, it could have easily been misconstrued as being an update for Canyon, because users updating ManiaPlanet saw it say that Siege was added, even though they didn't even own SMStorm. Of course the problem is that the update screen is a blanket one and you see whether you're updating ManiaPlanet, Storm, or Canyon.

The UI of the ManiaPlanet menu seems to confuse a lot of people. Many in the MP forums can't figure out how the ManiaPlanet menu works at first, until someone gives them some tips to drag the menu over to reveal the stations and titles loaded into them.

Oddly enough, I think if ManiaPlanet had been released 5 years from now, more people would have been comfortable with it. Windows 8 is moving in the direction of a similar layout, and many tablet devices already share a similar feel.

But people familiar with the Windows 95 desktop and it's progeny (which is all of us, isn't it?) mostly find the new ManiaPlanet menu completely alien.

I think I said it in my previous post, but I agree on the fact that things in the game aren't perfect. But I also don't think everything can be fixed at one time. Some things may never be fixed. There's things in TMUF that were never fixed as well.

What I find disturbing is when people take on an abusive tone. That was really the subject of my rant on the previous page. I don't care if it's against the developers or against fellow users. People should show more respect, whether they think it's been earned or not. It makes life for everyone more enjoyable. There is a way to state your problems without acting like a whiny little child, which is how a lot of users came off in the update topic on MP forums when the update to MP2.0 first happened. Even if Nadeo was totally in the wrong with how they pulled off the update, the reactions weren't measured. Everyone was like, "Something new! Noooooo, put it back put it back put it back. Naooooooooooooo!"

Well, I'm not someone who will even complain at a restaurant if they bring me the potato salad instead of the soup I asked for. So perhaps I go to the other extreme of not wishing to complain or cause a fuss. I think time is too precious to complain at every turn and make other people's lives miserable or add to their stress.

I think the worst thing I've complained about in recent times is actually... complaining about people complaining. I'll try not to do that so much in the future. People will do what they want. I'm not going to pretend that I will change their behavior with a post.

so you don't even fight for your customer rights?..

Not when I don't have to. It's my right not to make an issue about something if I don't want to.

eyebo says:
Not when I don't have to. It's my right not to make an issue about something if I don't want to.

No! you must object to all changes that you didn't ask for!

Still, I can't complain about this MP update. For those of us who have been following TM2 since the beginning, we all knew that it was going to be part of a greater entity: ManiaPlanet. It was implied that all the environments of all the games would launch from a single client. With that in mind, I think they did a pretty good job.

eyebo, that's the nature of commerce. If you want money of your customers, you have to accept that it comes at a price :-) And that price is that even if the customer is acting disrespectfully to you, you have to swallow it to some extent and look for the MERIT of the rant/complaint, instead of the form.

The expression that is used is "defusing the situation".

"You are f****ing f**cs, the f*****ing application is not f*****ing working!"
"All right, sir, I would be delighted to help you get it to work. Can you describe to me what you see on the screen and what you're trying to accomplish? I will do my best to guide you through the process, I understand our radical interface change may be confusing."
"Grrr... all right, so... I'm at this screen, there's this stupid big picture of the canyon, I don't see that Platform thing anywhere!"
"Excellent, sir, thank you. To the right of that big picture, there's a small screen which says "Click to add title". Pick any of those three small screens and click on it, please."
...

See? What started with 4 bad words turned slowly into a minor groan and then cooperation.

So, like this.

Yeah okay. You win this round.

I still think people shouldn't act like that in the first place. But you're right, if they do, we just have to deal and try to defuse the situation.

Both sides are reasonable. One just balances out the other. The way forums have operated since their creation. I agree with nearly all MPs problems (I don't mind the new interface as much as most though). The first thing I thought after the MP2 update was "Where's the loading icon" when I clicked on Canyon.
The thing I have a problem with (and again I feel like I'm echoing eyebo) is not people's firsthand negative approach, but rather their negativity to a point of ignorance. This is not always the case. Alcator's argument was extremely well reasoned. But when it is the case it sounds to me just like complaining about the skin on your car. Go take two minutes and pick a new one.
I guess this has been retired. I don't mean to poke the bear. But I always have an urge to give the bystander perspective that's usually ignored. It's probably more like a Peanut Gallery perspective.

Here we go again ...

Yet another compulsory bloody update that's going to stuff my TM2 Unlimiter and I'll no longer be able to make maps until ARC_ makes another Unlimiter ...

Are they deliberately trying to destroy this game?

It still dumbfounds me why the hell the TM2 Unlimited function isn't in the game by default. We've got to rely on some 3rd party to redo this valuable tool every time we get a compulsory update - which btw happens far too often.

Its Saturday and in my time off I like to spend the afternoon map building. Guess I won't be doing that today ...

It simply frustrates me to fire up the game and see that I MUST UPDATE OR QUIT. And to be honest, I feel like quitting.