So Nadeo announced a new Trackmania game for this spring. This time it is a remake of trackmania Nations from 2006. According to Jeff’s wiki update, there hasn’t been much announced about the title. One thing we do know is that Nadeo is going full “live service” this time, which makes sense for a game like this.

So, is anyone else hyped up for this release? This is easily the game I am most looking forward to this year. I have been playing Trackmania for almost fifteen years now, and Trackmania 2: Stadium has recently passed Skyrim as my most played Steam title, so I might be more excited than most though.

My wish list for features:

• An update to the progression system - The multiplayer in 2 gives you XP based on your performance relative to the other competitors. That means the lower rank you have the more XP you get. My problem with the system is that you can accumulate XP for so long that I eventually reached a point where I was so much higher rank than everyone else that I stopped getting XP entirely. Even just a tweak that awards the player 1-10 XP for making it into the top 5/10 players would be a welcome addition. That way I can still feel like I am progressing even 5 years in.
• The VR mode from Turbo - I was surprised at how much I liked the VR mode. I really think that it would work for every track without much issue and is a feature that would add a ton of value for me, as someone who has a VR headset and loves Trackmania.
• better multiplayer server capabilities - I love deadamania but this has to be the version of Trackmania that finally builds that functionality into the game. Hell, I might even be cool if they just added a mod browser into the game, Skyrim style, but it all depends on how it is implemented.
• A better UI - If they build in Deadamania features into Trackmania then maybe they can make all the info look nicer and less cluttered. I know you can use keyboard commands to hide that shit, but it would be cool if it looked better.
• Tutorials - I would love a gamemode, or quest system that taught me how to build tracks that don’t suck. The dev’s mentioned that they want to make the tools easier to use while offering more flexibility for the advanced users, but that statement is usually an oxymoron. I feel like a good tutorial that is fun to play is the best option.
• Allow advanced track design features without having to resort to scripting. I love that scripting is included in the editor, but some things that can only be done using their terminal should be modifiable in the editor with a UI.
• The ability to turn off FPS view. My friend is sensitive to motion sickness and doesn’t like the first person view in racing games. He bounced off Trackmania because the switching from 3rd person to 1st person was always jarring for him. I don’t know how they would do it, but the ability to play the game without a dramatic switching of perspective would be neat.
• this might be controversial, but I have always preferred the handling of stadium to the other handling models. The other versions, like Canyon, make the cars feel a little too squirrely for me. So I would like to see cars more consistently handle like the ones in Stadium do.

Is anyone else here a fan of the series and excited? or maybe you are someone who bounced off the game, what would it take for you to get into this Trackmania?

Edit: There is a handicam version of the trailer on Youtube. Here it is

I dip in and out of Trackmania - I think I look forward to this, obviously there's not much to go on other than the live aspects and being built around the Nations model. Weirdly, I'm the guy that like to mix it up with the different classes (and I also got quite into Turbo) but outside of the Stadium and Canyon the more casual races are so often empty when I hop of for a game. However, I'd take the single car type if there's a bit of track variety and at the more casual level there are more people in races.

@stantongrouse: Yeah, i felt that splitting up the games really hampered the online experience. Basically everyone likes Stadium so not many people played the different varieties online. This is one of those games that would benefit from a larger playerbase so collecting everyone under one roof will benefit the game. ALso, I wonder how "live service" the game actually will be. Like, I really think the game could benefit from being f2p but then again I doubt I would put as much time into the game if there was a f2p barrier in my way.

@monetarydread Yeah, although if they can keep people playing and hold the pay wall behind cosmetics it could work out. Ubisoft have done well keeping players with their paid live service games more recently, like Rainbow 6 for example, so I could see them wanting to have similar retention levels across other games. Trackmania, for me, would be great to drop into once or twice a week knowing there will be some new bits and bobs are rolling out. I'm still of the older mindset that paying for a game would make it better over time - but I'm also the idiot who's humped lots of money into Destiny and drop off very quickly, so maybe I should trust this sort of game release a bit more.