German translation can be found HERE

"Where have all the good tracks gone?"

There's no denying it: TMN has become less attractive, for new and old
players. Besides all changes in gameplay since 2006, something very
important has changed in negative ways:

The quality of driving tracks, being played on the servers: the heart
and soul of ever player's online experience.

State-of-the-Art
The massive amount of published tracks for TMN (~200,000) has led to an
accellerated evolution in trackbuilding, with questionable results:

2 main styles have evolved from this evolution: Speed and Tech. The
largest amount of all (seriously) published tracks, belongs to one of
these breeds or is a mixture of both.

The level of trackmaking within these 2 styles has advanced a lot. For
an ambitioned trackmaker, these 2 styles are pretty much the only
guideline and standard, to which he can rely on and develop his skills
until he reaches a level of trackmaking, which can be described as
"state of the art".

Only from that point on, he can join an exclusive, but well organised
club at TMX, which has the last word on what is "hip" and what is not.
In the past, it was just a lose bond of popular track authors, but today
they call themselves "trackmaking clans", nevertheless their ways
haven't changed: Members do get (deserved) attention on TMX and
awards for their tracks. Something, which every ambitioned trackmaker
would love to have.

The BOTW (best of the week) lists on TMX are usually crowded with these
"usual suspects" and their published tracks are mostly airborne and crazed
out jabberwocky, far away from anything that can be joyfully driven by
"normal people".

In arts, you call these products "avant-garde", extreme showoff cases to
get an idea of new possibilies... that phenomenon became a real problem on
TMX, when these track products regularly crowded the BOTW lists and slowly
became a mass produced standard, mainstream.

With every attempt to deliver some new, something exciting and
outstanding, many tracks exceed the limits of what is barely driveable
for people with lower and medium skills.

Alternative trackmaking
There are indeed authors, trying to make good and rookie-friendly tracks
and there are authors as well, who try to go different ways then making
tracks. But TMX is designed in a way, that non-mainstream productions
get rather little attention and therefor, alternative trackmaking is
chronically underdeveloped.

TMN Online
*** As soon as freshmen and rookies click the "suggested servers" button
and find their way to a server, on which BOTW tracks are played, you can
watch the following happen:

People will stumble and jolt around on the driving track, every few seconds
an insurmountable obstacle will occur and at the end of a round, about
10% will have reached the finish line at least once, mostly those who
are already familiar with the "respawn" function... as long as the track
supports respawning, which is not a safe thing to assume.

Summed up: 0% fun , 0% learning effect.

*** The results are predictable: People will instantly flee from the server.
But where are they going to ? Some people might deinstall TMN, other
might have the nerve trying to find a server, on which Nadeo- and other
beginner-tracks are played.

Or they may find themselves on a LOL server; where all those people
meet, who can't or don't want to build or drive the usual sort of
tracks. On LOL servers, everyone can be lucky, everyone can step on the
podium sometimes; short time fun without the need of excessive driving
skills to see the finish line...

And there are lots of LOL servers, most of them full to the brim.

*** Those people, who dislike mainstream tracks can be found on a few
small servers, on which very special maps are played (stunt, dirt,
hide&seek, formula/laps), but the lack of diversity in trackchoice
doesn't attract too many new players.

*** Last but not least, ambitioned league- and tournament drivers love
to stay among themselves on password protected servers. It's a pity
actually, because for normal drivers, it might be very educating, maybe
even exciting to watch them train their skills.

That's basically how the TMN online world looks like today.

Back to the roots
If there was something in old TMN, which glued together all the
different drivers with their different abilities and preferences, then
it surely was the large amount of diverse and well driveable tracks.
Rookies were able to explore TMN's driving physics without beeing
overwhelmed, while experienced drivers tried to find the optimum driving
line, fighting for every 1/100 second.

The sad truth is, that nowadays nobody would a track like "Moving Power"
(619 awards) or Rerun (375 awards); and if somebody built, it would get no
attention and never be seen in the BOTW lists.

It's hard to estimate, how many good tracks perished on TMX, how much
fun was ruined because of "overbuilt" tracks and how many new players
have turned away from TMN, but this much is sure:
The player community is torn apart, the different groups are as far away
from each other as never before and it's mainly the trackmakers' task to
reconsider their ways of authoring and designing their products, in
order to provide a basis for a collective gameplay again.

Change
Personally I believe, that a trackmaker's most noble goal is to make his
tracks be attractive and driveable for anyone, again.
Functional respawns and helpful track parts for weaker drivers should be
an inherent part of any track made, as long as the "idea behind the track"
allows it.

And of course, it's time for TMX to finally change its ways, away from a
solely award-based track hierarchy. The implementation of "online
ratings" (in terms of fun and difficulty) would be a good first step to
boost new authors' motivation and to let server admins quickly find the
right tracks for their track listings for a better online experience for
everyone...

February 2009
TStarGermany

Don't know if I should reply to this but I can only agree on that^^.
My track motto: Easy to finish, hard to nail...

That's right. Most of the tracks on servers are either speed or hard to drive. I like easy tracks, like no-slide tracks in eg. TMRS Island.

Probably that's one of the reasons I don't often drive in the internet and I've started making internal mods.

A big problem I think is because there are many servers and you don't know which are good and which aren't.

Aren't the beginners supposed to train with the Nadeo Tracks first? If you can finish them all in Gold the hardest Tracks online shouldn't be a problem. If there are really haard tracks it would be good to make an alternative easy route, for the beginners.

Why train first? That's boring.
Most people wanna play online and have fun first when they had installed TMNF

Support

I trained first.

i build kinda hard, but respawn possible

I'd say 90% of tracks on our server (LoveShack) are easy to finish but need that edge to win. Over 400 tracks made by one person The Zipster. SHE's quite a good track builder. Server never full but always have the same faces in there. She's got a few on tmx, check her out http://tmnforever.tm-exchange.com/main.a...1&id=10837

(02-07-2009 09:54 AM)Zarexz Wrote:  Don't know if I should reply to this but I can only agree on that^^.
My track motto: Easy to finish, hard to nail...

Easy to finish, hard to nail... I like that Zarexz, i will remember that

i think you are hitting the heart of tm's problem atm tstar.

another problem: nadeo/florent is pretty much into competition. what means that they are supporting pro players that are participating in tournaments (eg.: contribution of relay servers), but forgets to keep an eye on the newbies out there, not helping them to find a good start with tm...