This was originally written to be a video, but I never bothered to record and edit it. It is still useful and I want to post it here, as it is a complete overview and argument as to why (I think) the nadeo seasonal campaigns are bad for the purposes they fill, why nadeo does it on purpose, and what they could do to be better.
Benjamin franklin once said that only two things are certain in this world, death and that every time a new trackmania campaign comes out everyone will hate on it for a week. You really don’t have to look far to see an abundance of memes, complaints, critiques, and the general use of the campaigns as the butt of jokes. As soon as the seasonal campaign rolls out, almost every streamer can be found playing it, and usually giving it a horrible or at best mediocre rating when prompted.
A pretty common sentiment you’ll hear from the more involved circles and experienced players is that the campaign has been made the way it is because of new players, which is reinforced by nadeo even stating this at times themselves. However, nadeo isn’t exactly a paragon of consistent and reasonable decisions especially when it comes to maps, and there’s never a shortage of distaste from newer players either, at times I have noticed this weird dynamic where experienced players are pointing the finger at nadeo making the campaign only for newer players, and new players are saying the opposite. Who is actually benefiting from the way the campaigns are? What is the purpose of the campaign? Why do so many people consistently dislike it? If you enjoy the trackmania campaigns, don’t let me stop you, they’re like bad movies, you can still like them. That said, if you want to understand why so many people don’t, or why the campaign might not actually be simply for players of a different skill level than you, I’ll hopefully be able to provide some answers.
In order to evaluate the quality of anything we need to understand it’s goals. Traditionally the trackmania campaigns were the main solo mode, released with the games. The tmnf campaign had 65 maps, ™ sunrise and united environments also all had a bunch of maps. These tracks generally just seemed to simply consist of whatever the developers thought were cool, I’m sure there was more thought put into it than this, but it’s really hard to tell almost two decades later, even user made maps from the time didn’t age well. Speaking of user made maps, along with the solo campaigns these games other main attractions were a map editor for users to make their own tracks, and the ability to play them on servers or locally. Over time these became the main things to do for players who stuck with the game, trackmania exchange was created to share maps and replays, and high level competitions like the trackmania world cup and prestigious team events were held on community made maps. In this context the purpose the campaign served would have been to be the main form of timeattack competition, with players competing to have the best times, as well as the default game mode for new players.
Later with trackmania 2 this state remained largely the same, and trackmania turbo went all in on the campaign without much else to do. However, with the release of trackmania 2020 the nature of the campaign changed, it is no longer a permanent fixture of the game, and instead release seasonally in batches of 25 maps. Another important change was that starting with the second campaign of the game, the maps were no longer entirely made by nadeo, as they began to recruit community mappers for the job. With these changes the campaign map quality seemed to increase, and today the first tm2020 campaign is widely regarded to be one of if not the worst of the seasonal campaigns. It is worth noting that a lot of players were upset with the change of the campaign moving to a seasonal format, as part of the draw for them was an eternal (and eternally relevant) leaderboard. There were also players who had stuck with and enjoyed the janky and often shortcut ridden nature of the maps nadeo had made themselves. While this latter group was definitely a minority, it is understandable that they were upset by the loss of something they enjoyed.
TM2020 also launched with a training campaign, which is the closest thing we have to a tutorial. It consists of 25 short and very basic maps, without any actual instruction on mechanics or information. This campaign also hasn’t been updated with the new surfaces as they have been added, and nothing about the maps really prepares you for how campaign or track of the day maps are built or driven. Safe to say, the training campaign is a disaster. Most players forget it even exists, it doesn’t function as a proper tutorial, and it’s completely outdated. Because of this the seasonal campaign still seems to be the default for new players, at least after they spend half an hour driving the training maps, and nadeo appears to understand this.
In spring of 2021 nadeo added matchmaking (later renamed to ranked) to the game, the basic system functions how you would expect a ranked mode in a game to work, and players play on random campaign maps in 3v3 matches. This mode was fairly well received by the community, and along with cup of the day was probably one of the best additions tm2020 has had since launch. The biggest complaint players had on launch was that it was on campaign maps, despite the spring 2021 campaign being seen to this day as one of the best campaigns made, and in my opinion the best campaign for matchmaking. {teams was also a contentious choice, and I agree it was somewhat of an odd decision, but I do not think it had nearly the same impact as the map pool, and there were significantly more people supporting the decision for the mode to be team based.} That is to say, even the best campaigns were not very good, especially in the context of this mode.
Not sure where I’m going to put this part: Quite recently ranked shifted to being played on the trackmania world tour maps when all players in a match are at a very high rank. However, the campaign maps are still used a lot in this mode, and depending on when you queue you can often end up with one player in the match at a lower rank resulting in playing on the campaign maps still anyway. Also the world tour maps have their own issues but that isn’t particularly relevant to campaign discussion.
It should be pretty clear where I’m going with this. Currently the campaign needs to work as a seasonal timeattack competition for players of all skill levels, the default experience for players new to the game, and the map pool for a team rounds based ranked mode. This is.. A lot, and I would argue that it does all of these rather poorly. I don’t think it’s anywhere close to impossible to make a campaign work decently or even really well for all of these purposes at once, but it may be more difficult and require better direction from nadeo.
{campaign as a timeattack solo mode / competition}
This is where most of the campaign opinions come from, evaluating it as a timeattack solo mode slash competition. Here we need to satisfy both experienced players and relatively new ones.
Good players are looking for well made tracks in a variety of popular styles, such as tech, dirt, fullspeed, random offroad stuff like grass, maps of varying speeds, etc. Things that are generally considered to be important are the maps being well calculated, having nice flow, good visibility, being fairly smooth, and generally being enjoyable to try to improve and get fast times on without having frustrating inconsistent sections. Some of these concepts are more abstract and hard to explain, but calculation generally revolves around the map working properly even with fast lines, and flow is mostly based on how turns and directional inputs work together to create a map that feels good to drive, and usually results in a map that is easier to learn and more intuitive as well.
Newer players are usually interested in maps that are relatively easy to finish, and enjoyable to try to improve on. Good visibility and intuitive lines can go a long way to ensuring that an inexperienced player doesn’t need to memorize an entire level before enjoying it, something that people with the ability to predict what is coming next based on thousands of other maps they have seen might take for granted. Newer players can often struggle and become frustrated when maps have many sections that are difficult to pass without crashing, as it extends the process of learning the map before trying to set a good time, or simply be outside their skill set. Less skilled players are disproportionately affected by elements of tracks where the difficulty lies in not crashing rather than going fast. While a good enough player will almost never fail such sections, resulting in other parts of a map being more important as they involve saving more time, a worse driver may have 80% of their otherwise personal best runs killed in the same spot.
Another important aspect for mapping for inexperienced players is ensuring that the player understands what they are supposed to do. A new player isn’t going to know how to ice wiggle into a bugslide sd noslide zoop bug, and while it’s important to understand that a better player will still be faster even in an absence of such mechanics, you also need to realize that sections of track entirely based on them may not work very well for those who don’t understand the mechanics, or worse, could become inconsistent as the player tries random inputs and only achieves the correct one occasionally.
A really good example of this is the start on map 25, it’s just 9 seconds of straight driving on ice. If you don’t know how to wiggle on ice, this is 9 seconds of literally nothing happening at the start of a map, adding 9 seconds onto every reset. Not to mention the fact that nadeo updated the ice surface in an attempt to get rid of ice wiggles a few months ago, which caused collateral damage that made the ice mains upset, but hey at least they all but deleted ice wiggles from the game. Except oh wait, nadeo has managed to do build the one possible thing that can still result in ice wiggles, a NINE SECOND STRAIGHT LINE OF ICE {idk just cut in the edit}
The end of map 25 is also… questionable. It consists of driving at extremely high speeds onto a checkerboard pattern of ice and tarmac platform blocks. Because of this, the grip is constantly changing and you need to try to avoid the ice to keep some semblance of control over your car. After this long straight, you need to jump blind into one of a few finish lines. If you are a new player, it’s going to be difficult to figure out what the fuck is going on, and difficult to hit the finish without crashing because you can’t see it. If you are a good player, you are going to be asking why there is this long ass straight line at the end, why it’s filled with random ice blocks, and why you need to try to jump blindly into the left edge of this finish ring, as the left side is closer so it’s going to be faster except you can’t actually see it.
This type of design does not benefit new or old players, good or bad players, it just sucks, and it didn’t just start with the newest campaign, it’s been around for ages.
This is summer 22 map 19. This track has a lot going on but i want to focus on the end, which is a wet wheel zigzag around some poles, meaning that you have very little grip. If you are a new player, this is going to be difficult to not crash in and ruin your run at the end, and if you are a good player, then congratulations this part becomes uncalculated and annoying at high speeds. There’s even shit like this no brake block on map 23 of the new campaign, it doesn’t affect the fastest line at all because either way releasing would have been faster than braking here, but the no brake block takes away a control from the player that could otherwise help them to not crash. I have no clue what purpose this block serves other than to make people who aren’t already very good at the map struggle more than they otherwise would.
I could go on and on listing these instances in campaign maps where the tracks are built in ways very different from most other player made tracks in a way that manages to screw over both new and experienced players, but I think I’ve gotten my idea across and made it clear why I don’t buy into this whole ‘campaign has to be this way because of X player group’.
Nadeo, or at least some number of people working there with control over the direction of the game, seem to have a very strange and delusional view on what players like. I’m gonna be honest, I have no idea why hylis is convinced that the summer 2023 campaign is what new console players needed, but I do have some insight on these so called “expert situations”.
Historically, nadeo has had a very very strange relationship with difficulty. They seem to want to ensure the maps are engaging for the full 3 months of the season by making sure players don’t get too fast of times too quickly, or too close to the “limit”.
This idea is it’s own can of worms that I am just going to ignore for now so this video doesn’t become 2 hours long, but trust me, it’s really dumb (fs example).
For a long time nadeo said they weren’t going to include a fullspeed map in the campaign because the fs players would just max it right away and then it would be unplayed for the rest of the season. Why this same reasoning couldn’t also apply to tech or any other style is beyond me, but it just doesn’t make sense. These top level players who would be able to do this care a lot more about the map they are playing than whether they are .3 or .2 from a theoretical tas time, and I guarantee you if there is an actually good fs map in the campaign the fullspeed players will play and enjoy it, and I see more fullspeed players going back to play old maps from over a year ago than players of any other style. The whole idea of worrying players will max the tracks too fast is very strange and I don’t think I’ve met anyone who thought it made sense, and yet it seems to govern more than just the style of maps nadeo includes in the campaign. This thinking seems to lead to nadeo trying to include very wacky, inconsistent elements that are meant presumably to be hard to get perfectly. Now players have been building their own competitive maps for 20 years, but they don’t tend to do this, and why?
The reality is that if you make a shit map (or more accurately, one that does not appeal to what skilled players are looking for in a competitive map), good players aren’t usually going to want to play it competitively. {it is worth noting that this is a bit different in the context of a hunting campaign vs a map to be played in rounds, here I am talking mostly about timeattack still} If your solution is to add even more bullshit, you aren’t going to be winning anyone over even if it makes it a bit harder to get the next tenth of a second of time save. It doesn’t improve anything and only makes even more people who would otherwise enjoy the map hate it as well.
A major reason for the strong dislike the community has had for the summer 2023 campaign has been the lack of variety. Almost every map is fairly high speed, there’s only a couple drifts in the entire campaign, and a lot of the maps are built in a similar wide open platform style. This lack of variety obviously isn’t going to be well received by players who don’t only like playing these kinds of maps.
And that’s only issues pertaining to the campaign as a timeattack solo mode / competition, as we look at it through the lens of a tutorial/training mode and the ranked matchmaking mode, all those issues still exist but we add even more.
The ranked mode is in a rounds format, and in each round players drive one attempt on a map. This is basically like a normal pvp race you would expect in any game, except there is no collision. Once one team has won enough rounds they win the match. This basic formula is how most competitive trackmania events have worked for ages, and it rewards consistent and fast driving. Because of this, maps designed for such competitions have historically been built to be driven very consistently by players of the target skill level of the event, and have many relevant sections for time gain. On top of this, much everything that mattered for timeattack still has the same impact here.
The campaigns have been very hit or miss when it comes to delivering this consistency and skill expression. For the first few seasons of ranked, certain maps would be removed from the map pool, usually the first few maps of each campaign, as these maps tend to have only a couple turns, which isn’t ideal for a rounds format and most players didn’t enjoy getting them in ranked. Nadeo would also sometimes remove a few of the later maps, likely because they thought they were either too inconsistent or too hard for matchmaking players to drive consistently. This wasn’t a perfect solution, but it was certainly better than just leaving the maps in the pool. However, at some point they stopped doing this, and didn’t change the design of the campaign at all to compensate. This has resulted in shitshows like bullshit bouncing down a hill maps being played in the competitive ranked mode.
Now, as a tutorial and introduction to the game for new players the campaign… doesn’t really teach you much of anything, you’re just kind of left to figure everything out on your own. I’m not sure if it’s better or worse than the training campaign, but I also don’t think that really matters much because they both suck and don’t giv emuch information to people who just downloaded the game.
So how do we fix all of this? There’s a lot of problems so there’s going to need to be multiple solutions, I’m going to spend the rest of the video suggesting what I think is best.
If nadeo actually cares about new players they should add a real tutorial into the game and update the training campaign to include maps that are actually representative of what you might find in the wild, just toned down to be very simple and easy. As far as what a tutorial should teach you, I think what the game is about is a good place to start. After that basic concepts on how to go faster would be useful, such as reducing airtime. It should also teach basic mechanics such as drifting on road and sds, and maybe even common racing lines to take on the different blocks.
Matchmaking is in a weird spot, as I mentioned in currently uses campaign maps at most ranks and world tour maps at the higher ones. {The world tour maps are their own can of worms, but if you care about the higher ranks you probably already know exactly what i think of those.} This on its own is fine assuming the campaign maps improve significantly. However, even if the campaign improves on it’s own, if it’s going to continue to have maps unfitting for rounds, then nadeo should really bring back the removal of certain maps from ranked. Alternatively, nadeo could create a separate seasonal map pool for the ranked mode, more focused on delivering a competitive rounds focused experience. I think this could potentially be an even better solution, at the cost of requiring more maps to be made.
As far as the campaign maps themselves go, nadeo was on the right track with commissioning community mappers. These people know what they are doing, and they already understand the vast majority of what I talked about in this video, they are experts at their craft. Nadeo ended up removing half of the campaign mapping team last year, including a number of highly regarded mappers, which left a lot of us scratching our heads. Despite that, I’m not going to try to prescribe a list of mappers, what I will say is that you are getting experts to build for you nadeo, because you are not masters of building maps. You chose these individuals because you believe they are the best for the job, once you have done that, just let them build. There have been numerous stories about how nadeo has altered maps after receiving them from mappers, such as by adding poles, or forcing the mappers to make questionable changes to the maps, and this is obviously just stupid. If you did not make the map, and you are not an expert, then you should not be guessing at what changes could make the map better, because you do not know what you are doing or why the map is the way it is. You do not know better. Nadeo’s role in this situation should be to ensure the overall direction of the campaign, and clearly whoever has been doing that has a very unpopular view of what that direction should be. As the organizer of the campaign you need to make sure that there is variety, and I know how this is, or at least has in the past been handled, nadeo makes a short prompt for each of the 25 planned campaign maps, and then the mapping team builds them. This is a fine way of doing it, but it also means that whoever planned out the summer 2023 campaign had full control over and deliberately ruined the map variety and likely pushed for a lot of the stranger design choices as well. Whoever is making these prompts also needs to have a certain level of understanding of what works in maps and in the modes they will be used in for obvious reasons, and I kind of doubt that is the case as well. As I pointed out in my twitter reply to hylis, nadeo has recently hired scarzor as a manager, scarzor is a mapper himself and has organized community campaign projects in the past, so I would suggest having him or someone of a similar skillset organize the seasonal campaign creation.
I hope as a viewer you learned something, and I hope nadeo will listen to myself and the many others who have been pointing out similar things for years. Thanks for watching, and subscribe for more trackmania.
Some notes from when this was written to be a video:
- {stuff in curly brackets is just info for editing}
- Needs restructuring & revision
- First 2 paragraphs take too long to get into the video
- Note: include multiple finishes thing?
- Note: include hylis’s twitter thing?
More: TM Theory