I use words poorly here, player agency is probably not the best phrasing for example. As usual with this website, don’t expect anything more than stream of consciousness Chatting.
Today an interesting post from the trackmania subreddit was linked in discord, and I have thoughts on the topic so I took the chance to write a response that covers how I feel about it.
The reddit post talks about how trackmania maps are designed with a specific line and actions from the player in mind, and essentially as far as I can tell the poster dislikes that this takes agency away from the player in choosing how to interact with the map, and it feels like you are just being told what to do and trying to execute on it. I recommend reading it before my response.
Here’s the post:
My response:
You’re going to need to look outside the mainstream maps if you want to avoid this. The thing is any decent player will pretty quickly identify the fast(est) line and drive it on all attempts (especially with the use of ghosts). The purpose of testing a map is to ensure that whatever you built the fast lines are enjoyable, because if they aren’t the map will just feel bad to play as soon as the player finishes learning it. Even if you try to build a general track with the blocks rather than a line in mind as you place them (which is kind of an interesting distinction to think about, I’m not even sure I could tell you which I think of more when mapping), you will still need to test the line and at that point what’s the difference. I don’t really know why you keep saying modern/new tracks, unless you’re exposer to old maps consists of nadeo’s tmnf campaign and as others have commented, not looked outside of the typical ~40 second tracks built for timeattack/hunting/whatever you want to call it.
I think you may simply not be familiar with the minute differences in lines on maps. If you look at the world record or top 5 on track of the day a couple hours after release and again at the end, there will be tons of tiny differences. If I am playing a map I will often deliberately choose to not take the line of the world record even if my goal is to beat it or come close, whether it’s because it seems not worth my time to learn at the moment or I think mine is faster or about the same. Even if I grind the map I’m building for hours and set an at that only a few other players will get, there will still be plenty of lines I had not considered that are faster than my own, because I am only one person. Most of the time this isn’t to the detriment of the track because the differences in lines are relatively small, maybe a short noslide here, or going slightly wider on that entry over there, etc. The first extremely difficult track of the day author medal was Mixta Via by Erizel, and he drove an incredibly fast run. Once the map was in track of the day, the lines were further optimized by many other skilled players. In the end Erizel went back and drove the world record (which still stands). His AT run drives it’s lines cleaner and faster, although the many minor improvements still make the world record ahead by ~0.14. It is also worth noting that on map styles like fs with more complex lines these kind of small optimizations will come up far more often than something like tech, and mixed is somewhere in between probably depending on the map.
Trackmania is not a game about strategy, it is not a game about interaction with other players creating interesting decisions in a match, it is about doing almost the same thing but faster than anyone else, with many small differences and the occasional line innovation as you become more and more familiar with a track. The game lacks almost any depth in strategy or thought compared to many others, it is based almost entirely in mechanical skill and knowledge of the physics & lines. This is not significantly improved even in live matches as there is still almost no player interaction. This is in my opinion the biggest shortcoming of the game and in a way an unsolvable problem. It is simply part of how the game is, and any attempt to change it would mean either a fundamental shift in the gameplay or failure. Many RPG maps for example manage this by focusing on the first discovery run, and you may enjoy them, but it is an entirely different experience to hunting a record or playing a 4 player cup mode match. There are also interesting puzzle maps with many possible routes, check out “CCC2 - Perplexed” if you want to give one of those a try.
Creating a wide platform and not testing the lines for it for example would be merely a change in aesthetic, there will still be a driving line that you will be forced onto if you want to succeed, possibly at the cost of it flowing and being well calculated once you learn it, and any decent player will find it fairly quickly still. It is possible to design maps where there are multiple similarly paced lines within a turn or small section, but it is more of a niche occurrence that you can sometimes try to make happen when mapping than something practical to focus on in all parts of all maps. These can provide an element of risk/reward if one path is faster but harder (only relevant for rounds competitions and if not balanced perfectly everyone will just go the fast or slow way every time, in timeattack you will always go the fast way no matter what. It could also be that the lines are of similar speed or the difference is uncertain and some players are just more comfortable with one line than another and will choose to take it instead.
Now lets imagine a dirt map with a turn where you can drive either on the outside or inside. Lets say the mapper mapper either intended the inside line or was unsure which was faster and didn’t care. Now in reality the outside line turns out to be much faster. This exact situation is extremely common (and often the edge line is very scuffed as you enter too fast, although mappers have slowly been learning to avoid that happening). Any player with a decent understanding of dirt will be able to quickly identify that the outside line is faster and will then drive it on all attempts, if the line is fine, then it doesn’t matter, if the line is bad, then the player will likely become frustrated. Either way, in this case the mapper may not be telling you what to do, but the map certainly is, and at least in the context of trackmania I see essentially no difference.
The bottom line I think is that if you care about player agency and not being ‘told what to do’ or stuck to a single line, you either need to get better at the game and learn to appreciate the smaller differences in lines, or accept that you will not find what you are looking for in ‘normal’ trackmania maps. Everything I said here is inherent to the speedrunning gameplay loop (imo), and enforced even more by trackmania being a racing game where you drive a car with momentum and racing lines.
Why did I decide to post my reddit comment to my website? I spent 30 minutes writing it and I don’t want to have to repeat myself in the future.
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