Greetings everyone!

I've been exited for Turbo for quite a while now and I'm looking forward to see how it all turns out. The only thing I'm worried about is that Turbo won't keep players interested in it for too long. Trackmania 2 Stadium was released in 2013 and today, 2 years later, there are about 1000 (correct me if I'm wrong) active online players. (650 while I'm writing this). If we look at very successful games like League of Legends that was released in 2009 still has 27 active players each day! So what is Trackmania missing?

I think that Trackmania is missing an important part; a good ranking system. For example Counter Strike Global Offensive has a good ranking system that keeps players in to it, while in Trackmania we don't really have that. We only have a Ladder point system for online play and Skill point for solo play.

The ladder system isn't that good in my opinion, it really doesn't say too much about the skill level of a player, only how much the have played on specific servers. For example it is easier to get points on Dirt and Fullspeed servers at the moment. Instead I think a league system would be better (and more fun). This could work in many different ways. There could be a ranked mode where players (or teams) join servers that are dedicated for ranked play for a specific league (for example Champions league). There they would play and depending on their server rank (local records) would be promoted or demoted to another league for the next season (new season every month or so). And if players are in the highest league, then prizes should be awarded for top 3. (planets or Turbo coins or whatever currency there will be). This way players could follow the top players in the highest league while trying to fight their way there. This would be more exiting than just jumping on to a server and farm points. It also becomes easier to get into the competitive scene. Of course there would be a casual mode and bigger tournaments should be organized from time to time.

The Skill point system is alright, the biggest flaw with it is that different tracks give different amount of points for holding the World Record. I know that it takes to account how many player you've beaten with your time, but when the difference is several million points it doesn't really work. Also the point system considers placement more important than time. A time of 22.60 gives 3.1M points if you're first and 1.6M points if you're second, doesn't sound fair right? Instead tracks should have the same amount of points for the world record and then give out points for the rest depending on how far behind they are. So if you have the second best time with -0.002, you should have just a little less points than the world record holder. (This is the way I like to have it)

Also something that is popular in other games at the moment is opening packs and betting. I heard in one of the trailers that they said "what you choose is what you get" regarding car skins. This could mean that you can only have the car-skin of your country (or something similar). So it would be cool if you could earn (and buy) something like packs where you could get different skins for tires, spoilers, helmets, pipes, car body and so on. Another thing that could be nice is betting. In Counter Strike Global Offensive betting is a huge thing, so why not try implementing it to Trackmania.

Also I hope that it will be easy to access the exchange sites and forums, especially for the console users. I think many would appreciate it and would hopefully make an active community. Hopefully the tracks in Turbo will be compatible with Trackmania 2 tracks, so that Turbo will have a big map-base immediately.

Hope this essay wasn't too long and I hope it will make some discussion!

Cheers, Clearvision

The question is more: is the purpose of the game to keep players playing for a longer period of time?
For LoL e.g., that's clearly the purpose, they continuously spend money on skins whatsoever.
Many other games do not have this aspect, which mostly includes games where multiplayer is more a gimmick than an essential feature or are fully singleplayer.

While I think Nadeo wanted a long-term playerbase on ManiaPlanet, I seriously doubt they aim for it on TMT. Compared to MP, I feel like the multiplayer will be much more lacking and not likely to keep people playing.
Multiplayer in Turbo is very likely lobby-based, map sharing through a built-in service and TM2 tracks won't be compatible too. Compare it with e.g. Trials, it works similarly.

TMT isn't being made to last, even Nadeo themselves claimed so. They hope TMT users will eventually migrate to ManiaPlanet.
I personally regard a solid multiplayer mode as [the] way to keep players attached to the game, anyway.