It feels like trackamania is getting carried by the core gameplay which is really good. I showed this game to a friend recently and he was massively confused by the UI.

At least the f2p players can play the 25 maps of the campaign.. Wait... Oh noo 😮

I think the training maps should be pretty basic looking. After all they're... training. All they need to do ia make the TM SCHOOL campaign highly visible for new players.

Is funny how TM Sunrise, launched in 2005 have a MUCH better UI than TM20

Trackmania is tough for beginners. While one can learn all the tricks and mechanics by following good players, many new players will never try to learn through KZfaq or Twitch because well people have other things to do. This barrier should be eradicated by giving easy access to training maps with explanations of what you are learning and why you are learning. Campaign should be an application of those training tracks (at least majorly).

to add on to the console issue: my assumption is that Nando didn't expect console players to put as much time into the game, or take it as seriously as a lot of us do, as someone who can reach around div 4 on a good cotd map for me, its so infuriating being put at such a disadvantage. Its not just basic plugins that we can't access, there's no way to bind specific camera buttons, instead you have one button that scrolls through all the cams in a seemingly random order. As a cam 2 player, that means if there's even one ice slide in a mixed map, its basically unplayable for me, as I can't change camera while moving. The map editor is also extremely basic and lacking in features, to the point where its almost impossible to make a good map by todays standards, among many other issues

I think you missed an important one, but one that you may not have experienced. Certain tracks for console players make the game crash every time you attempt to play them... For example, the new club/tracks they're promoting every time you open the game (Laserhawk.. or something).. We literally can't play the stupid tracks that infect my game launch every time I open the MF'er. Another problem for console players is that you have to restart your game after a certain time spent playing, otherwise you will not be able to 1. watch world record times while playing a map (nothing happens when you click on a player). 2. You aren't able load/play other tracks (nothing happens when you click on a track. It brings you back to the selection screen.) 3. You can only look at so many club skins before the game decides to no load them anymore (it's a very small amount before this happens.. within a span of 5 to 10 minutes of searching). Last but certainly not least.... WHY CAN'T COSOLE PLAYERS SEE AUTHOR TIMES!!!???? or any of the medal times for that matter. This can't be that difficult to add. It's so frustrating to try and push for an author time when you have zero clue what the actual time is that you are hunting. Why do I need to a separate website for this?

I think the absolute downfall of Trackmania are the new pricing changes after January 1st 2024. And I say that as a person that's been playing TM for a few years. My club access ended in july and I was just thinking about buying it again when they announced the changes. I personally HATE subscription-based model and that's why I didn't want to buy another year of club access, but when they announced that starter access will only have access to 5 (FIVE) maps I knew I'm not buying a game from a publisher that doesn't care about it's players. If they really proceed with these changes I probably will uninstall the game since there is no point for a free-to-play player to even have it on PC just to play 5 maps (plus 25 training maps that are outdated by 3.5 years by now). And before someone says that Trackmania will now be like the rest of Ubisoft's demos, tell me, which subscription-model game doesn't have a free content in it, and which demo is for a subscription-based game. The amount of new players after January 1st will probably drop by a lot, since getting to know the game only by shitty 25 training maps, shitty UI and 5 actual maps will NOT get you into it.

I casually enjoyed Trackmania Canyon years ago, but sadly I discovered the game reallly late, I think Turbo was coming out soon after I found Canyon. I still boot up Canyon sometimes, but I couldn't get into the reboot. Playing alone was boring and the tracks were boring. I tend to hate free to play schemes, and when I tried to play online it told me I had to pay a subscription, so I just uninstalled it. Canyon is still great to play, I don't now about the competitive scene but as a casual enjoyer of arcade driving games Canyon seems like the best.

I hope that with the new price hikes that they can make some progress towards some of these. I would love the ability to browse user maps in game, and it would be a great boon for console players who can't download and play maps. Sub well earned.

to be honest, your video's keep getting better and better. Really, really, really loved this one as well. Keeping a positive vibe while cirtisicing a game.. great job!

you just listed pretty much all the points that made me stop playing TM2020 and go back to TMUF after 20something hours. nice vid, hope the devs can take inspiration^^

Totally agree... I am a pretty average player, I am lucky if I can get an AT in any cotd map (only the easy ones). In that sense, I find it often frustrating when viewing the maps via the club interface because so many of them seem to be sort of difficult, trial maps, super precision, really hard ice stuff, etc. I actually find Cotd is the most reliable way for me to find decent maps to play at this point. I have the plugin that lets you browse user created maps and often find the same problem there, since all the featured / highly rated stuff is super difficult. It's hard to find maps that are good for average let alone beginner players imo.

For me the price hike will or be a big blow to the game or allow to have more ressources to make those. There is literally 0 marketing toward the game, unless you find a video, a stream or someone tell you: you will never hear about it; Steam being very close to being "mixed" (which will probably be the case after january) will make it even less pushed forward on top of discouraging player to try it. For people to sub (and it was already a hard sell for most to make them buy a 10 euros sub to play the game, people that paid are generally people that were already very interested), you'd need something really showing you the game and all the things in it, but with the campaign now being locked past the first 10 tuto/bland tracks: it will all fall on having a good tutorial showing the game ... which unless they put A LOT of effort into it won't ever make people want to sub, but knowing nadeo, they are more of a "we'll try to get the money now, and fix the thing later" which is pretty bad, which is showed in your video, they prefer to release console (with a half baked editor, no plugins etc) while maybe fixing that later instead of focusing on making the game itself better.

If they just added a TMX button ingame it would be much easier for new players to browse maps.

Youre so right! Im playing Trackmania since 2014 and havent touched tm2020 since its Release anymore because those reasons. As a player you dont feel connected to the community unless youre in the right discords or following streamers. You have no idea when theres new events launching, and so on....

It's even worse because of their new subscription model...

Fantastic feedback for the devs

In the Trackmania Discord is announced that there might come a new training campaign.

Trackmania is amazing and it's my favorite game! At it's core it's a level editor and a car, supported by one of the most devoted and awesome communities ever. It's damn near flawless. The only real problem it has is Nadeo. A single map might cost someone hundreds of hours to make. If these people worked for a game studio they would get high end salaries as level designers. Then there's the free third-party tools some of which are fundamental to the game experience by now. The people who make these are programmers who could easily pay the bills doing exactly this type of work. Tens of thousands of people putting in hundreds of hours of work per year FOR FREE. What does Nadeo do for these people? Nadeo asks them to pay rent.

Yeah, Nadeo could be doing more.

Can you do a map building tutorial on good transitions and what to avoid. Currently I try to get more creative by breaking up the track I build every 7 blocks by adding something different or keeping the track shorter.

I have been playing TM since 2008, It's like they took the TMNF/UF UI and thought, how can we keep it just as terrible, but pretty? I swear TMNF took me 20hrs to learn to navigate until I found TMNF-exchange and solved all those issues. But the Devs really need to stop relying on the community to build the features they want. I could not believe how many things console players simply don't get access to, I thought it was just openplanet, but no! There's more. The cool Lazerhawk collab campaign and animations are cool and all, but it feels like the BAREST of bare minimum updates. They don't even have to create game content since the community does it for them(and always has). The LEAST they can do is implement some of the giant list of QoL fixes.

Actually very good summary of all the shortages of current state of TM. To add to the ranked point, id say that some prestige to ranks like wheel skins or just something you can flex would be motivating.

at least you are talking and making noise about this . Thanks for your effort and openign up this topic. thanks for sharing this one , good luck for your future ones.

Fwiw I just got into the game maybe 3 weeks ago and tonight just got the standard access and I see heaps of awesome content for me personally.

Someone send this video to Nadeo. I think about at least one of these problems every time I play the game! Thank god for plugin support

what the heck the subscribe button got highlighted how did you do that

8 months later, this man is still absolutely f*cking right

if they made a one time payment for club access i would buy that

Agreed, like watching the game but everytime I try playing I just feel stuck cause of a bunch of things mentioned in this video

I once tried to open the events tab to find a tournament KEKW

I totally agree with making user created content easier to navigate/access. I'm still very new and barely know how to find stuff in clubs. I've been finding maps by searching styles so far and it feels completely random.

Dunno if it’s a good idea, but as someone who missed out on the old trackmania games I’d love to a a portal mode like battlefield where you can play to old games too, the videos Wirtual made about the rivalry on TMNF made me love the game but I don’t have pc 😢

you make some really good points, i especially agree about making the user made tracks possible to find in-game. having to go online, download, then restart the game when you find a new track is kind of a hassle

I'm still playing trackmania turbo and nations forever how could you tell (gigachad move)

Ranked in TM aren't attractive for a simple reason. Unlike the other games you mentionned (rocket league, apex, etc.), where the "unranked" part of the game truly doesn't rank, TM does! You ARE already ranked in the campaign, and in single every map of the game. Because it's a game in which you race against time and against other peoples' times, not directly against other people. I'd rather see my rank go up in the campaign, because it's in actual numbers. How could "being gold" compare to "being top 100", even if it means the same thing. Numbers are just more straightforward about your position in the ranking, and thus more attractive to people. The only thing I like about ranked is that it is actual multiplayer. You can make a team and actually play with friends, unlike the rest of the game where even if you're playing "with" friends, everyone is playing by themselves, without any influence on each other.

They need to make more tracks available for free players. Ubisoft's answer: 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

I would add Hot seat to the list... It does not even keep the actual score...

It's nice that you used No Man's Sky music on the background, that has a completely opposite payment method to this Trackmania, lol. And they also constantly update the game without asking for a penny from the players who have already bought the game.

The barrier to entry is so high you have to have a gluten for punishment to start at this point. Gears change the way you drift, after 8+ months of casually playing I don’t know if my break is going to drift or just slow down. So I don’t ever use break. Pressing it even .02 seconds off can turn an early drift into a slow down. There are 140 different ground textures and they all act different and different in different gears. Then the map creator is like “I know what will make this map challenging, 1 snow block, 1 boost, 1 dirt block, 1 platform, a reactor, and back to snow. Repeat 4 times” and then the ground looks like you shatted on it and drives like it too.

I just wanna join servers with a couple of people on them.. they had the perfect UI for that in United

Can i add, that for a game about arcade racing, and especially creativity with the ingame editors, there is also the same music playlist since the release? Couldn't even get like a single new sound track? Aight.

The only reason I know where to get the UI mods is because of watching you or one of your TM friends' streams where it was mentioned it's called openplanet.

I agree with most of it. I am really for adding more things to customize, like you mentioned, titles and ranked rewards etc, but I do feel it's a bit extreme to say it's causing a "downfall". UI is a little cluttered, but you get used to it very quickly.

I feel like the only reason why I didn’t just completely abandon the game after trying to play for the first time was because I had watched a bunch of KZfaq videos so I knew how to navigate and where to find good maps. I can just imagine the confusion of someone who never even heard of the game trying to understand the menu

I'm so glad that Trackmania is doing so well that these peculiar details are what yall have to talk about to say anything bad about it, I wish I didn't swap from Trackmania to World of Warcraft in 2019 XD - Drpzor

Worst thing is Ubisoft by far. Most people who know how terribly badly coded ubisoft connect is won't waste their time, I've seen multiple people quit after realising how much of a pain it is to join your friend. I remember being happy it was on steam, then realising it just opens ubisoft connect anyway. Ubisoft are cringe asf.

Jnic Training Campaign, pls

the ui looks like it was designed for mobile devices or touchscreen devices

what heavily annoys me is how without buying anything you were once able to play all the campaign tracks but now you're limited to only 10 or so maps. I know they need to make money but that just feels greedy and could even discourage new players from buying the memberships. You cant even race against previous replays without membership or bypassing it with offline mode.

I'm curious if Hylis is an Alcoholic and if there's bad morale in the company. It's something I have a hunch about. The older games all seem like unfinished projects to me, where they did the essential work and then dumped it without actually finishing the entire game. It's like the motto is "Create physics engine, create campaign, give fans abilities to make their own tracks, make simple UI, DONE". TM2020 seems unfinished to me, similar idea, where they did what they needed to make the game function and kind of let the fanbase carry it on from there, with occasional updates. If you play the Xbox One version, you're paying the same amount as the computer version, but you're limited more. Create a track mode is bare minimum, gets me pretty ticked off.

love this video!

I watched Wirtual for a while. Tried the game myself. After 2 hours I am done with it.

Nando doing Nando things

great video!

@04:38 Bear with me , - so most important thing for me is privacy which is paywalled in the game I mean that shoudl be first thing implemented right in native game settings but no you cannot hide your region or name or skin (default one is based on your country / geography inspired and very commonly idenfiable. That shoudl be very first thing they should consider privacy of players, with some respect and bake it iin game as native setting turned on by default. - There are certain things liek experiencing new maps, yes we can play GBX files donwloaded from exchange directly and i played midori jjust like that despite having starter acces, but there are 2 things in live section arcade mode, one is campaign maps being played with other multiplayer experience, (yes in starter access) along with one random map selection next to it to experience new maps and now there is also a section where you can play cup of the day maps for longer duration just like these arcade campaign modes withuot the pressure of performing for live tournaments like COTD . So those are some good moves for exposure to new players. - Ui part is clearly very unlikable (was going to use hateful but unlikable conveys the feelings) .SO agree to you on UI part. Changing sound (input output devices ) is buggy . - Plugin devs and community is highly under appreciated (by nando as game dev / production house, not by community / people). - training that is just a joke right in our face. No messages, no tool tip, no instructions, just plain old surface go figure yeah that is literally what nando says to players. - oh one more thing which is good and they did so is that they added starter acces to be able to chat in game which was not possible previously, so now actualy people share feelign on map then sometimes celebrate small pbs as well as tips from good players who ususaly griond less runs and then spectates others and hel (thanks to those players as someone helped me too) 😊 - Annoying part you cannot reposition UI , the splits are right on you screen in the middle staring at you saying "WE WILL NOT LET YOU SE THE PATH AHEAD" from god knows how long adn people have made noise about it but no solution yet, some say hide ui using * but that hides every thing also we do not want to hide the info we just want ti to be not in our way where we need to see whaere we are going. Is that common sense so uncommon that highly paid game devs or even the game designers cannot think of since the first time they released a game (tmnf) from 2007 like they never learn. _ last part they are doing somethings good but it might be too little too late , community is closely bonded and now with multiplatform things are gettign exposure to new players but then profanity filters in game or moderation for servers need to be strict especially when you aalow public access to all. nando never takes community feedback, its apis are still (for devs) needing some upgrades for some data / info access , so yeah instead of releasing new titles (games) they shoudl just optimise this or one of theor games fomr some major developments and finishing INCLUDING community feedback including comunity devs for plugins or maps or anything. Everyone has their own story but mostly the bottom line is they could give happy ending to all or many because of these changes which I do not understand how they manage to overlook till now. Sorry if this was too much but that was my rant about issues or good stuff in game .

TM just released a massive update... TM Turbo is back!

Anyone on Xbox starting to get annoyed of the continuous looping soundtrack? Not to mention, you get no creative freedom on Xbox when making a map, and half the time the game will crash when you press save and you lose all your progress.

jaa man MatDTO is working on a new begginer campaign!

you can make skin but you cant equipped them what?

People become extremely hostile when I say tm2020 is worse than the other games. And seriously, it took this long for someone to point it out...

I feel like trackmania in terms of community made stuff, should take inspiration from Geometry dash. You can browse and sort by difficulty, downloaded, trending, etc.

The map discovery thing is big. I play on Luna and as far as I've been able to figure out there's not actually any way to play a user map that isn't in a club.

GREAT VID

The DOWNFALL OF TRACKMANIA.... 4min video... Well at least, i do agree with all your points

I mostly dislike the design philosophy of the campaings. You get a couple of good maps on each stage, but often also really weird ones. For me, nadeo exaggerated with effects, surfaces, etc. and I don't get what they want with the desert car at all.

you didn't mention the trophy system ;)

What about cam 7 on console :(

my most concern is the fact that a new player has to pay to play maps what if trackmania just made it where you can play 100 or 150 maps besides the campaign ,royal and training maps daily they can keep the CODT to other subscriptions of trackmania but should allow starter access players to play any 200 maps the second thing am concerned about is the fact that matchmaking and royal is the only place where a new player can meet up with their friend and team up or even compete against each other when they have starter access why cant trackmania make it possible to make your own server for free it would attract more attention to the game because of more things possible to be done with starter access that's the most I want because for me who uses starter whenever I want to play with my neighbor trackmania I have to invite him to match making where I cant even race against him so trackmania please fix your game please and good ui though i have brought over 62 players into the game just by showing them some gameplay

And now just add a bit of input fine tuning to it, because new surfaces and cars are coming and the game just becomes slowly harder and harder and of course any tweaker is considered illegal, which I understand, but this game is now not the same as back 20 years, there is a thing called esports, much more people want to play it and so on, so yeah nadeo really needs to thing these through, before they crumble under everything. Lemme add something more: They need, really need to get out of this idea, that a 3 GB game is okay... You can make it bigger and by that you can avoid shit like wood surface for example. We are not using floppy disks anymore, just go with the time and use more resources for textures etc...

I hope they see this.

You cant use the skins though

I always wondered why they never implemented TMX into the game itself. I played alot of Trials Evolution and Trials Fusion back in the day and you could just browse every map ingame and sort them from difficulty length and style. I always felt trackmania was a bit to complicated in this topic particularly the old trackmania games. Why do i have to go to an external website outside of the game to download maps.

I feel that they can improve the leaderboards system a lot, ranking is fine, but I feel like there should be more in the multiplayers servers like in tmnf, I like the idea of the trophies system, but there should be more ways to get them (like best time of the month/week/day in each map based on the amount of players/hours played). Adding to that I feel like a sliding window of trophies owned in the last 365 days is not a very satisfying way to really grind for that, they should have more ways to get trophies, they should be more fair, and I think a season based rewards and a trophie count reset each season would be a better idea.

I feel like Trackmania is getting more popular and the tutorials get the job done. yeah, the menu UI does need improvement.

3 years since release, it has felt like paying for nothing. We were supposed to get constant updates, so far the only real update I've seen is royal. Is this game supposed to be community made? Should the community do everything? idk, it seems like anyone could make improvements to any part of the game in 1 week.

My biggest pet peeve with the game is the lack of content that you're given with only Starter access. Sure, the campaigns are pretty well-constructed, and every season now gives you ten-yes, count 'em, *_ten_* free COTD opportunities to test your mettle publicly... but what do you do when you've exhausted all that? Sure, you can play random maps online, but you better hope that the *_singular_* publicly available server is hosting a map type you like; otherwise, you better hope the next hourly cycle has something you enjoy, like speed-tech or an RPG map, and not maps with Kacky-level difficulty by a really obnoxious creator. Personally, I don't _need_ to prove myself against the world's best and repeatedly come up short... but if, like people in Standard access, Starters got access to a limited number of Tracks of the Day that they could play exclusively offline... something that would allow us to really savor the different map types and learn and practice the innumerable techs pro players have discovered... well, I think that'd be just swell, personally. Standard access users get a year's worth of tracks to (re)visit; would it be too much to ask that Starters get, like, a *_week's_* worth-something to help me temper my expectations, and make an informed decision of _-"do I really want to be paying as little as $14 (CAD) or as much as $80 for this if I'm not going to enjoy it?"-_ For god's sake, the quarterly campaigns are only twenty-five (25) levels long, and that's essentially all you're ever gonna get; what's my incentive to not go back to TMNF, where I can get sixty-five (65) campaign levels for free* _(some conditions apply),_ plus a far more robust online tool that allows me to pick whatever online server I want, playing whatever style of map I fancy at the time, or even pick and choose whatever _specific_ map I want to play as a means to challenge myself whenever I so choose? Also, just as an aside... you know how the taskbar at the top of the game screen has a local system time display? Would it be too much to get a second clock as a CET comparison against my own time zone, since most events in the game are kept track of in the Central European Time zone? *EDIT:* Just learned that Ubisoft is planning to streamline both Standard and Club access into one single tier that lowers the overall cost _($20 USD instead of $10 and $30 respectively),_ but no word on if they're keeping the reduced 3-year pricing, going into effect January 9th. I think if that's the case, I might just nut up and pay the $10 USD for Standard access sometime in the next few weeks, save a handful of dollars before the change goes into full effect, especially if it gives me access to all the campaigns that I didn't have access to earlier since I'm a Steam user.

i feel like in previous trackmanias i used to play on cool, diverse, and fresh servers.. in tm2020 i only seem to play nadeo maps, cotd, and some maps i saw a youtuber play. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i loved playing rounds servers. tm2020 is a bit stale... :(

For a game like this, not being able to do runs on a map while you queue seems stupid

I always get bored with looking for certain map and just go with whatever looks good for me… but as a begginer I really enjoyed short rpg’s and short campaigns like „TOO LONG” (fun maps). I see a lot of wasted potential with this

The word "downfall" implies that it das been better in the past. But pretty much all the problems you mentioned existed already in TM2.

TMNF is still a superior experience.

Good points :)

this is why you play tmnf instead

Hey, try some of the older titles of the series as well! You'll notice some, things that you complained about here were, done better in older games in some way.

I despise TM2020 for number of reasons: 1) the subsciption model is fucking ass. Like you can't basically do anything without it, which is a step-down from TM Nations. Also, I don't get why you can't basically own a copy and why you must keep paying for being able to enjoy what makes Trackmania2020 a Trackmania. 2) Even tho this is my subjective taste, this game has the most boring and ugly artstyle of the entire series. That overly minimalistic artstyle makes the game look like some Roblox type shit made of plastic stuff and billboards, logos etc. are just boring to look at. If the team decided to add some Turbo-esk styling, I would say it could have been better, but that's just really my subjective taste. I also know TM was never known for having a ground-breaking artstyle, but this is just lame. 3) I don't know if that's just me, but I feel like TM2020 is broken and doesn't function properly. I guess that's due to the heavily modified Maniaplanet engine, which has some age and I don't think it was made for this level of live-service game. 4) This game is not the traditional Trackmania experience. Like I don't know why did they add a shit to Stadium like the ice surface, reactor boosts or why track elements and decorations are just items in the editor instead of full-fledged blocks. I like items, but relying purely on them just makes the editor unnecessarily overwhelming at the first glance.

you know french mapping? now we have french UI...

Personally I think you're smoking something real good if you think the UI is that bad. As someone who has seen plenty of godawful UIs, Trackmania's is absolutely gorgeous, both visually and from a UX perspective. Yeah the settings menu could use some reorganizing, and the skins are just about as hidden as the were in TMNF, but nothing is perfect and it can always be changed

Hard agree with all your points. Good stuff.

you forgot wheel on ps5 😭

The game is more popular right now than it has ever been so they are obviously doing something right

really good points

NIce

Video is overly negative especially the title for my likings. I played tm 2021 and rediscovered it 1 week ago. The free content is amazing and the new rank system very fun. All the small details how to drive the fastest are not really beginner friendly but I think if it would be it would take something away from competitive aspect. Only thing I would want 100% is a model for my gears since that's one not beginner friendly thing and actually no real help from the game to master a core technique.

MAP REVIEW

Bro woke up and chose violence. Nice video, You constructively pointed out some big issues. Yeah, Trackmania isn't perfect at all, but which game is? We should be grateful for the great community, that we meet every day at 18:00 to play COTD, for creators, etc. I think there is much more to like about the game than bragging about how awful the menu looks.

Yes yes yes yes yes

real rap

True!