I am very dissapointed right now. I've just read this in the KO-Thread:

"Hylis" says: About multiple environment servers. The way it is done today in the architecture, mid term, it would be with enabling the creation of multiple environment titles. We would eventually do an official unified environments that includes the three environments and let the players make only dual environment if they wish. But it is mid term.


For me, Servers with different envis are very important.
In TM1 I always played on multi environment servers (MES). It prevents one envi from getting boring. But that's that just the tip of the iceberg. Without MES I probably would have played Island all the time and no other envi. I never liked Rally or Coast in the first years. But on MES I got "forced" to play them; and I learned to love them as well. I remember Marcel's Drive me crazy or Alex' Coast tracks as eyeopeners. Oh and talking of these guys, I would have never met so many nice people (or at least other), when playing only Island.
The worst thing that could happen is, that everybody only plays his/her favourite envi, ignoring all others. There is a great danger of the community beeing divided. This would have been THE chance to really UNITE the community.
And this is also probably the death sentence for PPO.


@Nadeo: Why should I buy Valley? Please, squeeze out the money and force me to buy it, because all envis would be needed on a multiple enviroinment server.

Buying Valley now, is like changing to a new game, not expanding the existing one.


Am I the only one feeling like that?
Is there some contrary information that could cheer me up?

Hans

honestly, don't get your problem.

I completely agree with you hans!

Making multi environment servers such a hassle is just idiotic. In theory, this titles thing could work extremely well since the idea is good but unfortunately the execution is appalling.

Nadeo needs to stop, take a days coffee break at the office, and think through where they are going with maniaplanet. At the moment it feels like they just add stuff for the sake of it.. "hey guys wouldnt it be cool to have this in the game.."

All enviros should be compatible however you want
Gamemodes should not be separate titles - will completely kill off less popular modes


Meanwhile im really gaining more interest in TMU again..

Tuta says:
Nadeo needs to stop, take a days coffee break at the office, and think through where they are going with maniaplanet. At the moment it feels like they just add stuff for the sake of it.. "hey guys wouldnt it be cool to have this in the game.."

this

Completely agree with Hans, too!

I was always a stadium player and really disappointed with the United-Environments after buying the full version and playing the solo campaigns. Only MES like PPO and Mistral which "forced" me to playing other environments opened my eyes for the beauty of these.

For me, MES are a MUST for the long-term success of TM2. I definately prefer to wait another year for Valley and Stadium² just to get MES immediately implemented.

There is more discussion about this scattered on the maniaplanet forum. I think alot of people have been surprised by this and just presumed things would be the same as in united.
I can understand there may be some technical limitations (or much longer load times when changing enviro) due to the increased size and complexity of the tm2 game engine, But for me (and others like tcq) this is bad news. I can only hope when they say long term it may change, that they realise the importance and change it sooner.
All server admins, alot paying for hosting out of there own pockets are not going to pay for seperate servers for each enviro, so some will stay as canyon, others will change to valley or stadium, and there will be less servers.
Serious competitions like those from ET-gen , or even our own fun KO, just cant be done multi enviro.
Players will be divided, it was bad enough on united with stadium fan-boys who own united, but never played united. But TM2 will be worse split 3+ ways.
For most TM is fun and the social greatness (due to the good mindset of most tm players) will be diluted when players are split across different enviros at any given moment, enjoyment will go down, then interest and playing numbers will go down

But it still seems like they plan to implement it in some way, and though it could perhaps be a hassle for the first months, I doubt it would go unimproved. I also feel as though that's they way many game developers have always worked; feature experimentation, that is. Hylis has pointed that out as part of his mentality as well. "More can always be added later" (about blocks in SM). That too, is one of the better sides of Nadeo; they actually listen to a quite fair portion of the, "No, that'd be horrible"s or the "Yes, can't wait"s.

I'll admit I'm curious how they'd implement multiple environment servers when each envi is a different title, though

Edit: And now that I've read the other posts, you must remember that it's not just the game that binds the majority of the community. MX is not going to be split up, after all.

I understand why Nadeo made separate titles and title packs. It allows users the freedom to not only make some tracks, but also customize the full experience of other players. That having been said, I'm not particularly fond of the idea of title packs and how everything is so separated. I'd personally prefer a simpler experience. But now that it's here, we might as well make good use of it.

I do feel like the simplicity that I've always enjoyed about TrackMania is starting to fade. Some things are still easy, but the game has gained a lot of complexity that it didn't used to have. Some users love it I suppose, but I'm sure many others probably find it frustrating.

But, the question at hand... is Nadeo dividing the community?

No.

I don't believe they are.

The entire idea behind ManiaPlanet is to bring everyone together under the same system. The concept behind how environments/titles work is different than we experienced in previous iterations of TrackMania, but the idea is to bring everyone together using the same version of the same tools. Besides this, people developing things for ShootMania can have a direct benefit to people who play TrackMania, and visa versa.

Nadeo tried, with TrackMania United Forever, to bring together everyone in the same game. Did it work? For some, yes. Some users played on multi-environment servers. But I also saw a lot of very popular "Stadium only", "Coast only", and "Island only" servers. There were also "TMO only" or "TMS only" servers. Users have always divided or separated themselves of their own free will.

What about the tens of thousands of TMNF users who bought United Forever, but refused to play it? They stayed on Stadium and proclaimed it the superior environment. Was that Nadeo's fault? No, it was just those users expressing their opinion and playing where they felt the most comfortable. I don't begrudge them that.

My point is... even if Stadium, Valley, and Canyon were all together on some servers, there would still be a lot of "Stadium only" servers. You know it's true! And I believe the same will be true of Canyon. There will be people who don't take to Valley and will return to Canyon because it's what they like best.

Nadeo isn't dividing the community. Players divide the community; they always have and always will. Nadeo is simply building these environments and these tools. It's the individual players that decide how active and devoted they want to be to each environment.

I see the lack of multi-environment servers as more of an inconvenience than any kind of effort to divide players.

eyebo says:

My point is... even if Stadium, Valley, and Canyon were all together on some servers, there would still be a lot of "Stadium only" servers. You know it's true! And I believe the same will be true of Canyon. There will be people who don't take to Valley and will return to Canyon because it's what they like best.

Nadeo isn't dividing the community. Players divide the community; they always have and always will. Nadeo is simply building these environments and these tools. It's the individual players that decide how active and devoted they want to be to each environment.

I see the lack of multi-environment servers as more of an inconvenience than any kind of effort to divide players.

I agree with you, that it would be the players decision; and that there always will be people only playing one envi.
I didn't mean that Nadeo is messing it up on purpose, but it might accidentally happen.
And sure I can decide what envi I'm going to play, but I have to decide. I can't say: "I get on a server and play Trackmania."
Individual players could still decide how active they get in each envi with MES.
I tend to specialize in one envi, too, but I want to play all; see all great ideas...

Hm... am I saying anything with this? Maybe I just want to acknowledge that there are players who won't be affected by this decision, but to me MES are very important.
(Would we have ever met on a server eyebo, if there hadn't been POO? I don't think so, and that would have been a pity.)

Edit:
And I agree with cxomtdoh. MX is probably the solid rock, holding together the strings of the community (yeah, and the other great sites, too).

PPO was indeed the reason I played TM online for a long time. So yeah, we may or may not have met if it hadn't been for PPO.

It would definitely be a shame if there wasn't a stable PPO on a MES somewhere in TM2's future. Also, what about the MX Knockouts? It would be a shame to have to confine them to a single environment, or switch between environments every week.