Beating The Developers Hardest Author Time - Summer 25

You should watch me live: / wirtual
Maps featured: Summer 2024 Track 25
Main Channel: / wirtual
Clips Channel: / wirtualclips
Twitter: / wirtual
Edited by
/ buckleyspants
Thumbnail by
/ danu_png
#Wirtual #Trackmania #campaign

[@doubleideas3075]

That one nadeo employee that waited for them to add the desert car, so he can validate his skills

[@EEEEEEEE]

E

[@baconguy47]

tona

[@SasquatchAgario]

he could do the same with any other car and probably didn't even hunt this AT for more than 30mins xdd

[@Doihavetochoosemynam]

Yup I am still missing gold medal on 2 those. Can't even play 21-25 yikes. Haven't tried not making it to last levels yet and without beating a single author time lol. I'm washed

[@jsharpvideos1861]

It feels like the devs took the DD2 challenge as a sign that players wanted more

[@EEEEEEEE]

‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎‎E

[@zekkavo9904]

E

[@_f_r_]

500th like

[@Male_Parent]

Seems fine to have author medals this hard, I love having the 'can you beat the dev' type of challenge. As long as it's actually nadeo setting the author times I don't see a problem.

[@poruzu]

Yeah same. I feel like people started thinking about author medals like they are gold, yknow starndard medals. But in my eyes its always been just "can you set a better time then the author of this map"

[@henningklaveness7082]

Yeah I love unlocking hidden achievements for beating the devs, like the base jump and ragdoll ones in the Just Cause series. I'm not a TM player since it would rapidly consume both my life and my sanity, but IMHO "beat the devs" type challenges should be just that, not some artificially lowered bar that leaves you wondering how well they actually did.

[@jakub4388]

It's fine to have hard ATs, but this one looks straight up impossible for 95%+ of community... And as far as I know AT was set by Tona, ex pro player

[@grimreefer213]

I’m fine with the challenge but at least be consistent about it. Next time Nadeo drops an ice map it better have a cooked AT so players like me can actually be challenged in the campaign instead of ice ATs being piss free like usual

[@murk3608]

@@grimreefer213 Couldn't agree more. Tona needs to cook a bit more on the ice medals if he's gonna cook the alt car medals like this.

[@W4TH3JE5U5]

4:48 "Not that bad, it's like maybe 30 minutes?" Wirtual underestimating the track and overestimating his learning speed, name a better duo.

[@Lo-qd3qk]

Yeah I came to the comments to look for this, he said “maybe 30 minutes” then the video cut to 20 minutes later with no improvement lol

[@kiweping5]

En aften ved svanefossen and “Then Hefest got this run”

[@Laksamdotcomspecial]

Huh​@@kiweping5

[@kiweping5]

@@Laksamdotcomspecial that’s the song Wirtual uses whenever a special run happens

[@false_icons]

@@Laksamdotcomspecial he named a better duo

[@noecleenewerck769]

Perfect video to watch at 2.30 a.m.

[@Freddepadd]

Or 3:52

[@rosia7598]

3:52 am too

[@maxheadroom5532]

Or at 4 am.

[@LilianCRE]

4am here 💀

[@fredrikjohansen7771]

4:32😢

[@emelineclank9448]

I see AT as the best time possible that has been done by the devs. IMO it should be as hard as the devs are able to make it. If it was just a speed target, then why not just name it "Platinium medal" or something like that ? No, it's the AUTHOR's best time ever. If it's unbeatable, then that means you are not as good as the map's creator, which is totally fine to me.

[@RobinClower]

I mostly agree, but throw on the caveot that each "color" of map should limit the amount of grinding. White, they should only be able to grind for 30 minutes, then 1hr for green, etc. Or something like that.

[@tarpeg]

@@RobinClower No, that is stupid. Autor time is autor time, no limit for grind.

[@Zilican]

@@RobinClower Apparently they already do that, the black maps for example were all set based on the best time after Tona hunted them for 20 minutes.

[@Psychomaniac14]

author time should be whatever the author thinks is best for the track. If the author wants it to be not too hard then they can make it easier, if they want it to be a true test of learning, skill, and patience, then they can make it as god damn hard as they can make it. No singular solution fits every track

[@Zaq-yo2gu]

I think author metals should be good enough to establish you mastered the map but not good enough to be unbeatable. Some maps are more difficult to master so some author times should be more difficult to get.

[@uku5840]

Eh, 22 is technically more difficult than 25. The issue is just that Wirt and many other pros don't have any experience with the car. If no one had any experience with fullspeed that would have taken days, not hours. Whether or not they should make alt car AT'S challenging. IDK, I don't think it's bad to have them at the same level as the other maps in the same color.

[@uniquename6925]

idk, maybe just get good? There's no prestige in an AT that's easy. If the prestige doesn't seem worth the grind, don't do it. That just makes the people that can do it even more impressive. In the end, AT's are only there to give an extra challenge. It doesn't make sense to ask them to be easy. You don't lose anything by not getting them.

[@Zaq-yo2gu]

@@uku5840 I mean that's kinda the thing tho isn't it, the difficulty of mastering a map depends on ones own skill sets. Wirtual points out that some tech maps might actually be more difficult ATs but because he has more experience on them, they weren't as difficult for him. Yeah a lack of experience would make mastering a map seem more difficult, that just means you need to get more experience on that type of map to get author times on those types of maps

[@SylviusTheMad]

As Granady and Mudda demonstrated, 25 isn't actually that difficult for desert players.

[@jonathanmacdonald9609]

The campaigns are specifically broken up into maps of different difficulty. You want someone who's semi-new to be able to get gold on the easiest tracks, but it would be ridiculous for them to be able to get gold on the hardest tracks. I don't see why the AT's should be any different.

[@vdqm]

"guys i only spent 30 minutes driving this car and i might double that on this map alone" Streamer spelled quintuple wrong xdd

[@mixalis295]

As a united competitive player from back in the day I find it absolutely both outrageous and hysterical to attempt to play this fucking car on keyboard, I applaud this man and his patience. I also want to see him play island and bay LMFAO

[@cmtrv]

Beat me next

[@vdqm]

And then, Wirtual got... this assault charge

[@unconnectedgaming8299]

@cmtrv dfym?

[@mubisco]

Dang bro chill

[@jackconnell8319]

crazy statement😭

[@MisterODark]

ARE U ACUSTIC?

[@Cryolemon]

Top 4 of Granady, Scrapie, Spam and Marius, and they're the only ATs at that point. Yeah, that's when you know it's going to be hard 😂

[@SylviusTheMad]

"I might double my time on this map alone." Proceeds to quintuple his time.

[@EnGIsNowhere]

I believe author times should be consistent across all maps. They should pose a challenge, but the challenge should come from the maps themselves becoming more and more difficult and not from the author times getting harder and harder on top of maps getting harder. I would either prefer if they'd all be really hard and I'd have to choose my battles or all achievable. For example if I play a massa campaign, I expect to get silver medals and maybe I'll push for gold on some that I found nice, that's perfectly fine, the author medals are all consistently crazy strong. On the other hand, if I play a Maji campaign, I will try to get all author times and it would piss me off if Maji asked like Chroma to set a specific author time on an FS map and all of the other ones are achievable. I myself also don't play with the plugin because for some reason there seemed to be some kind of memory leak that would crash my game over and over after an hour if I had the plugin installed and so I play without knowing author times. Whenever I see that I get author times on the first 10-ish maps after a small grind, I tell myself "alright, I'll go for all author times". The problem with that is that I get baited into setting an impossible goal for myself and then when I spend out of nowhere 15h+ on a map without getting author time I close the game and I don't open it again until the next season. I tell myself every improvement "oh alright now this is probably author" and I can tell you that after telling myself that dozens of times in a row (especially because of how easy author times were in other maps), I just get discouraged. If the campaign is made by a single author, I expect that author to set times that match their skill level, which should necessarily be consistent. As such I believe a "Nadeo" author time shoud mean something (even if in this case it's not a person, but it's still a single entity). I have especially little patience with the new cars that I think just make the game experience worst in every way, it's like they're forcing me to play another shitty racing game that handles like garbage and I have no clue who those updates are for. That was my rant, thank you for listening to my ted talk!

[@brandonedwards6119]

Snow car was kind of cool but rally and desert are literally making you play a different, worse controlling, game.

[@NoNameFrezit]

I believe author time should get harder thru the campaign (not crazy hard). This gives better players a challenge so they don't beat the campaign in 45 mins. This gives new players a challenge on beating the map without crashing and then go for the author time. This helps new players find their max and make them learn new tricks beside just driving a clean run and beating the author time.

[@MozzarellaWizard]

tl;dr Difficulty of Author Medals should be from the map itself rather than hunting to get a difficult time. Easier medals early on can give an inaccurate idea of the later medals. Less people have experience with cars other than Stadium.

[@raldrid8264]

Imo i think its good if its an increasing difficulty. The medals should be playing clean in all maps in a good time efficient way, because harder maps are harder, the clean efficient lines are harder, thus making the final time harder. And as you can see wirtual slammed it with a .200 lead over it. If you are behind by 2 seconds in this final map its maybe 20 turns. You are losing .1 of a second in each turn.

[@yuuki2]

Yeah, I have pretty much the same opinions as you. I kinda hate the new cars as well, particularly the desert car, it's so unwieldy and the tilting makes me tilt. Like, it's already pretty difficult to master the stadium car and now they want us to master 3 other, worse in every way, car? It makes me mad. I also hate Camera 3 perspective in the new cars, like is it too hard to ask for me to be able to see more than half of my screen when in camera 3? I want to see where I'm going, not the hideous car they made.

[@NotSkander]

before the green timer jumped to 4hr you should have had a 8s compilation of bonks that forced run reset to make it relatable

[@HitanBot]

I feel like it's pretty good actually that they made author hard, because its understated that they also made gold hard for an average player so that they have achievable but difficult goal still. They're giving more of a range of achievable goals and the only problem would be people who have historically hunted author medals feeling like they can't and being upset over that.

[@ben_1]

someone please @ me once these stupid special cars are banished into obscurity and i can install the game again.

[@Sekowon]

here's a thought, don't play the levels that have the cars.

[@CalculatedRiskAK]

To your question about author times on the official campaign, I would say that author medals should increase in difficulty as you progress in the campaign. If all author times are easy, what's the point for skilled players, but if all author times are difficult, it's discouraging to new players. Make their difficulty progress so newer players can still achieve some times and have something to gauge their progress as a player on.

[@epilog80]

Yeah, I like how they basically did that

[@adnanassaf350]

Yes but this is a champion medal turned into an author medal, I get that it should be difficult but only top 100 players can get this, it'll take the average player who has 200+hours in the game atleast 20 hours on the map to get it

[@beargrylls6135]

​@adnanassaf350 +10% of their overall playtime on single map 💀

[@adnanassaf350]

@beargrylls6135 yea, it's very unrealistic lmao, but that's the only way I can see them get it

[@gragigi7055]

Not sure the average player with 200h could even get this. I got about 300h and would probably lose my sanity before I got close to this AT 😅

[@5khop]

My wife hates when I slide out…especially when she recommends I go full speed. But I have been following Wirtual’s advice and I have been finishing in record times. Thank you!

[@GrimaceTheCat1]

That cracked me up lmfao, I slide out often. Try to go slow and still end up finishing in record time.

[@cobusvanderlinde6871]

I think an author medal should be representative of good execution on the author's vision for the track, so it should ideally be set on a run that has no [major] mistakes and includes every line, technique, and "trick" that the author imagined while building the track. Every speedslide, every ice 360, every bugslide envisioned by the creator of the track should be necessary to match and beat the author time. This necessarily means that a highly skilled author with good intuition and a highly technical vision should be handing out much harder author times, and it's okay if a low-skill player builds fun maps with easy author times that any competent player can get in just a few tries if not on the first attempt.

[@Nightroast]

I completely agree that campaigns should have consistent difficulty in author medals as it is made for the general public of the game. Any other track, however, it does not matter how difficult it is. It only matters that the author of the track set the target time. That is the entire point of the author medal and it should only be out of your reach if the player who made the track is much better than you. The author medal should not be consistent because the author is not consistent.

[@imos_theos]

8:00 I feel like that's what gold medals should be. Author should be the best that the author is willing to put in the grind for.

[@codetaku]

Scrapie: despair also scrapie: one of the first four players to get author time

[@1990erre]

I don't get it, surely gold should be the medal everyone can get, not author medal? Why should everyone be able to get that? Author medal should be the best time the author of the map could get.

[@johnreiland9180]

"Do you do, uhhhh... I think you do the thing, right?" -- One for Wirtual's pro strats guidebook

[@riccardolodi4456]

The hardest tm author medal is actually Coast-C5 in trackmania turbo: build to race for the nintendo DS, which is 6 tenths faster than the WR because of a bug

[@morde24]

On the author medal talk, I dont really play trackmania so much, but I know that there is a champion medal plugin, that is made after a week of times, maybe making that official would be a good way to keep author medals readily attainable but add in another kayer of challenge to the campaigns

[@jvrcreativedesigner2680]

I only know trackmania from youtube. Never played it and probably never will but I enjoy watching and developed an interest in the game. For the longest time I didn't even know there are other cars in the game. For me TM was stadion car and that's it. If it would have been this wonky desert car when I first saw the game I doubt I would have stuck around for more.

[@thebeef7238]

i can say, the first time I played trackmania I had no indication that there was any author time past gold. I was absolutely not good enough at first to stumble upon the existence of author times until i started watching trackmania content.

[@GrimaceTheCat1]

I watched wirtual play for over a year before I ever played. I play on ps5 so I watched content before it was possible for me to play. I got author times my first day on the game, because I had visually learned so much already. It’s a good tool

[@Myclutchisgone]

As someone who just started playing, I'd say gold medals are for understanding the track and driving it cleanly, and should all be achievable (with ease if you're a pro, with some level of grinding if you're new), and author medals are for optimizing the racing line to shave off seconds and eventually using advanced tricks (wiggles, quantum slides etc.). Personally, I'd feel satisfied if I managed to get all the author medals of the first 15 tracks (this is the second campaign I'm playing and I'm working on the five middle tracks), and I don't think every author medal should be achievable.

[@FKProds]

The amount of struggle that was cut out in this one is insane xD It was the right thing to do for the video, but still!

[@Febivian]

In the first place, an Author Time is not about setting a certain level of difficulty but about competing with the mapper and how well he could drive his own creation. Also I dont think the ATs of red/black maps should be very doable for new players, since the Author you are competing against is not a new player either. Plus, the ATs are hidden without plugins anyways. I think the difficulty of the black maps is totally fair as they are meant for you to show the mastery of certain mechanics and styles you've learned against the Author.

[@klooger28]

Agree with what wirtual said, author medals should all be the same level of difficulty, if they are all insanely difficult that's fine, having them all varied is a bit weird. Too easy is also really boring.

[@jonathanmacdonald9609]

I don't think it's weird to have the maps that are marked as harder have harder author medals. All the medals are far easier on the easier tracks. It would be bad game design to make all the medals the same difficulty on the maps specifically made to be easier or harder. I don't see why ATs are any different.

[@klooger28]

@@jonathanmacdonald9609 The "harder" maps are more complex, doubling down on that by making the medals harder to achieve too isn't right imo. But everyone is entitled to their own opinon.

[@jonathanmacdonald9609]

@klooger28 I think something got lost in translation here. In my eyes, if you have a 2 min track and it takes wirtual 30 mins to beat the AT, that's a very hard AT. If the track is only 30 seconds, since the track is simpler, I'd say the AT is the same difficulty if it takes him about 20 mins to beat. By that metric, I'd say the ATs on the final tracks should be about that hard, probably a bit easier, but the ATs on the early tracks should be much easier. I would expect the middle track ATs to be possible for someone with a decent amount of time in the game, but if they were that hard they often wouldn't be.

[@klooger28]

@@jonathanmacdonald9609 I don't think anything was lost in translation, I am good enough to get some black map ATs, usually not all of them, often 21 is harder than the others. If the AT on all maps was exactly that difficulty and I was only able to get ~15 of them that would be fine by me, infact I think it would be better than the earlier maps having significantly easier medals. Imo the reason for having 4 different medals in the first place is for covering those different skill levels, adjusting them for each set of maps is really weird, and I don't prefer it.

[@Dendumi]

Wirtual: "Should take maybe 30 minutes to get this" 1h45m later he actually got it

[@Chizypuff]

I have all ATs in Trackmania Nations Forever When I started trackmania 2020 I played through all the existing tracks to gold, then started going for authors starting with the first 5 of every season etc My goal was to eventually get all ATs. I got to the point where I was only missing a handful on old tracks. Now I think I've given up. New cars, harder author medals, harder blocks, I'm just getting less and less consistent and not having fun hunting anymore. Neon White has a system of bronze/silver/gold/Ace- then the actual developer times can be very hard. As it is in trackmania, all golds is not a satisfying goal and all author medals is unobtainable.

[@BleydXVI]

That was a grueling 30 minute hunt, but I'm glad Wirtual pulled through

[@tim..indeed]

Wirtual needs to bite the bullet and play the desert car maps with a controller/massive joystick/wheel. Action keys won't make it.

[@vdqm]

Someone doesn't know how desert car works xdd

[@beargrylls6135]

Tapping on joystick 💀

[@LoopInnovation]

That car is a pain to drive on controller, I just hate it.

[@brunom.a3725]

It’s quite simple, I see the green timer, I watch the video.

[@erisch126]

14:28 Of course the run that gets the at is the one where he says something memable This will be my go to for giving maximum effort from now on. "boys, put your hole into it!"

[@AntonBGaming]

I hate these new cars, especially on keyboard. It’s why I uninstalled. You know it’s bad when no one likes the campaigns anymore and even wirtual is struggling to use this one.

[@soapfrfr]

I love these new cars, we have: cracked turning on road, bad turning on ice, and then we have cracked turning on road, ok turning on ice, and then we have cracked turning on road, bad turning on ice

[@thealmightyspoon957]

First campaign i played 15 was my goal, i think that's a good point for it to start requiring more advance mechanics, it gives players incentive to seek out videos and get more involved in the community

[@bramweinreder2346]

It really is a missed opportunity that you didn't play DC campaign, it's a good one!

[@lilstonerdiva5235]

Wake me up when we get a stadium-car-only campaign again

[@fastertthanyou8805]

Honestly I tried this game and I really got into it but to get better I tried to 100% Tmnf and I have every author time except the last 5 and one other map and I rage quit because of that map. So yes I think author medals can be challenging but don’t make me grind an easy dumb map… or in other words IF I EVER HAVE TO PLAY A06 OBSTACLE AGAIN I AM GOING TO SCREAM

[@over_dsbdsbds]

Wirtual: Trying to beat the hardest AT ever in campain One guy in chat that probably never played this game before: still this map?

[@SlimedogYT]

Honestly hate the other cars. I get they're trying to add cool new stuff to the game but to have the campaigns REQUIRE the use of the car is annoying. I don't want to play with them and I don't want to skip cool tracks just because they use them. And the new wood blocks are terrible. I guess I could simply buy the full game and play older maps.

[@MicheleWolfe-g9g]

The thumbnail said only 106 people get this author time, but wirt said 350. I wonder how that went down... *buckly* I want a refund.

[@johnshort9315]

Wirtual I love your content but I hate the way these new cars look. The excessive tilt is misleading and gives no real information on what's happening. Nadeo, why? Wirtual, halp

[@heartofdawnlight]

do i think that all authro times should be achievable for new players? YES! but not in a means of it being easy, but by means of them not requiring hidden tech like speed slides to obtain I remember the first trackmania game i played on Xbos a decade ago, i got my first green medal, i didnt even know they existed. and it was such a hype moment. it got me excited & made me start grinding maps for the rest of the night i hung out at that friends house!!! Im also fairly experienced with racing games, so like, for racing gamers that are new. yes.... for an average average joe. probably not. theyre should be a skill goal to strive for!

[@Swarm_]

They should just add a training campaign that actually teaches these mechanics. Cause they 100% should be needed to get author on black maps, they just shouldn't overcook a map with a new car though. 25 is moronic levels of misunderstanding the AT difficulty by nando.

[@rootaccessgranted]

The Author Times on this campaign are WAY too difficult. It's like I've installed the Champion Medal Plugin for the Author Times. I've been grinding Track 13 fro 98 minutes now with 225 resets. My PB is 40.591 and the AT is 40.465. I have no idea where I'm loosing time. I've watched other runs and my lines look identical. I get that some people like the challenge, but with the way you have to "unlock" the tracks with Gold Medals now, the Gold Medals felt like the Author Times last season. Maybe I'm just getting too old for this game, but I swear I'm driving the best I've ever driven and in this campaign the best I can get is within 2 tenths of AT for most tracks. I know Wirtual would say something like "You feel such a sense of achievement when you meet your goal", but when you drive the same track over and over again with no clear indication of why you're not going faster, it feels like just pure random chance. Because of that I don't feel any achievement, just bitterness towards the campaign. It's like playing Kacky but it's not Kacky. I'll get the Author Time for Track 13, that will be my 13th Author Time and then I'll probably just wait until next campaign to play again because this just isn't fun this time around, the Author Times are just too difficult. You should be able to drive clean racing lines with good speed to get Author Times and it's just not that way anymore. You have to be Wirtual, Granady, Bren or another top tier player to get Author Times now and that skill check just isn't fun. Author Times have become over hunted before maps get published. I started playing TM2020 because of the concept of Author Times, and it's ironic that the same concept 3 years later will probably make me stop playing. Rant over, regardless great job @WirtualTV, keep up the great videos and I look forward to your next stream.

[@jimihenrik11]

Not sure if this an unpopular opinion, but i really dislike the other cars. To me trackmania is where i play the station car. Randomly switching mid map to different cars with different handling is just not enjoyable at all. If they had special campaigns where you play the other cars die the whole maps it would be different.

[@Midbooze]

Author medal by itself should be an achievement and not just an endorphin feeder, all black maps should feel like that, rather than a malder. Not many people understand that

[@WR_WR_WR-uw7vt]

I don't like these cars. The stadium car is the best. The rest should optional. They are ruining the game with these must take changes...

[@gridgaming_]

this desert car is doing 0 desert activities with how easily it rolls lmao

[@reNINTENDO]

As a newer player (relatively speaking), I feel like having easier white/green author medals makes some sense from a gameplay perspective, but I wish they were harder. I think the bigger thing though is I wish the gold medals were harder, without making some of the harder author medal times harder. Sometimes I'll beat a campaign track's gold medal easily, but then the author medal is vastly more difficult, and the gold ghost is borderline useless in terms of teaching me what I'm doing wrong or how to improve.

[@tatopolosp]

Pay Granady to do all author medals. They will be consistent, right?

[@kingofstrike1234]

all of those new cars just points out that nando didn't care about KB gameplay at all

[@kju-uu8me]

If the author medals get progressively harder you kinda get a sense for your skill in the game. If they can keep authors consistent over different campaigns for each color that might be a different kind of progression where you see yourself getting a few more with each campaign.

[@valfareberbork8088]

7:37 New player here: achieving seemingly impossible stuff is the best in gaming, so Author Times should be hard. (i didnt get any in red and black in the last and for me first campaign)

[@JustSomeGoy]

The Red and Black Series should have the really difficult ATs.

[@kikisdel8]

never been so early before, I DEMAND THE TIMER!!!

[@uku5840]

I like how it starts out with the bold claim of 2h30! Which if it was referring to map 25 alone he would have beaten with 33min to spare 😂

[@WhytefangYT]

I've only played about 5-10 hours of TM (quit because I didn't enjoy the control scheme), so grain of salt from a mostly-watcher, but I think that ATs shouldn't be achievable for a *new* player right off the bat, but an average player definitely should be able to expect to get them all with some effort. Definitely not in 10 minutes per map, but seeing an extremely strong player take the same amount of time to get this map's AT as it took him to get almost literally every other AT in the campaign is a real signal this is set way too steeply imo. To compare it to Celeste, a game I have a ton of personal experience in, the base game (including all sides and strawberries etc) took me something like 40-50 ish hours iirc (though it's been years so like plus or minus 10-20 hours) and the only room I spent more than an hour or even 30-45 minutes really was the final room of the final chapter. It had a great difficulty curve, and while a lot of stuff later in the game felt very hard it never felt like it had an unachievable level of difficulty. Community content fills the gap of extremely hard content with stuff that the best players struggle to complete, and I think it does a great job of doing that. From what I've seen from the videos put out on this channel, TM's community does a very similar thing with tons of difficult community content put out by highly skilled creators to challenge players, and I think that sort of thing is much better left as an extra you can wade into once you get the basics down in the reasonably achievable difficulty stuff that is the base game.

[@Flammefaen]

I started playing the game in just over 1 year ago, started the campaign this week and just got to 25, played it for an hour or so and got to 1.13, gonna be a grind to get the AT.

[@FlamingFalconMan]

I think the key thing about author times. Is that every track in the same “difficulty barrier” is somewhat similar in difficulty to obtain. They don’t all need to be obtainable, it just needs to be understandable from the interface why it isn’t just because they suck.

[@aprophetofrng9821]

The author times this season are exactly what I want. They're meant to be the author's best time, not a slightly harder medal than gold. They shouldn't all be attainable by average/mid players. Previous seasons have been a little bit of a letdown for me with the author times, as it wouldn't take me much time to get them. Grinding author medals is very fun for me when they're hard. My first season I got all of them had a very hard tech 21 map. And it took me like 10 hours total to get the AT. But getting it was glorious.

[@wileecoyotegenius5955]

I think developer times should never be "designed," it should be the actual best the developer could do in the time they had. Growing to the point where you can go faster than the person who made the freaking game is what makes beating a dev time so satisfying, and it takes away from that if they go easy on you.

[@MarkPentler]

I'm an old trackmania player, took time off, came back to the new version. Author times should be hard but require no cuts/tricks. That's basically it, I think a fair enough definition that is simple to work with.

[@UniBlend_Art]

Would have been faster with Mayo Lube

[@fb19700101]

every time there is a car gate, I switch off

[@kennytrytek]

Happy that Undertale was part of the winning strategy.

[@nevermind5657]

now know this people: there are people trying to make each campaign into different styles of tracks the entire way. like there has been full road,full plastic, there probably has been new addition with full wood but i am curious on what kind of insanity people are driving on full ice.

[@FPRobber]

As a semi new player (

[@petrjara7559]

I think Author's should be grindable for new players. I love difficulty of TMNF authors - above green seems everything impossible but in a week or two you just get it. So if a completely new player can let's say in 100 hours build a skill to complete all 25 authors before they release a new campaign then that's a good campaign.

[@chriss4855]

as a new player that grinded out all tmnf authors, i loved the difficulty there as well. started by knocking out gold times on all tracks, then went back and grinded out the author on each and not only did this feel incredibly rewarding, i think it also led to a great skill progression, kinda like it was serving as one long tutorial for getting new players to the starting point of the climb to game mastery personally i don't mind if there's a bit of a difficulty curve in author medals in a campaign (especially since i feel like tmnf author medals had a bit of a weird difficulty curve, where some early maps were unpleasant to grind) but having insane jumps in difficulty in an official campaign is kinda ridiculous if expert players want to goals to grind for, i totally get it, 'easier' author medals can't serve that purpose, but isn't the leaderboard already perfectly suited for setting goals to grind for? grind for top 5%, top 1%, top 500, top 100, etc and before someone asks why newer players can't do this as well, it doesn't really work as a goal-setter for newer players though, not nearly as well as official author times do. at those early stages, top 25%, top 5000, etc are all pretty nebulous since they wouldn't have developed the inner metric to gauge those results by tldr: author medals on official campaigns work great as both as benchmarks and rewarding goals for newer players, more experienced players should have game sense and experience to define their own goals with the leaderboard system

[@petrjara7559]

@@chriss4855 More of a problem with top X is that anyone just can't do that. Only Top 100 players are Top 100 and the later you come the harder it is. Author time is constant so anyone can come and beat it anytime

[@zezimaownz432]

should every author time be achievable if you put in the time? maybe. for a brand new player though? i dont think so. if they get all authors as a new player then they wont feel as much pride in the accomplishment imo. start off with easier ATs in white and make them harder as you go up (pretty sure nando already does this). a brand new player should NOT be getting all ATs without a pretty decent time investment.

[@To1ne]

"You should watch me live" If only I knew whenver you are live???

[@joshuaw8873]

I don't think author medals should have any particular difficulty. They should be whatever time the author can get on the track. They're not even visible so by design the game isn't asking anyone to go for them. Turning them into a super gold instead of a competition with the creator makes them less interesting.

[@jensenni1]

As a brand new player that started halfway through the spring campaign, I don’t mind the new campaign. I do think author medals should be slightly more difficult as I’ve already gotten a few. My singular wish for the game, is that they provide some training or tutorial to give a foundation to begin from. Just diving in and playing random modes and maps feels wierd without any guidance.

[@GrimaceTheCat1]

Their “tutorial” is severely lacking in the actual mechanics needed to do well on the game. I still don’t full understand speed slides on any surface, I don’t know how to initiate a Neo slide or really understand what that is, and I don’t get wiggles at all for controller. Someone help me please Jesus

[@chaosmagican]

@@GrimaceTheCat1 If only the tutorial would have ghosts for the medals at least, that way you could at least attempt to "monkey see monkey do" but without any clue it's kinda useless, if I hadn't watched some TM before I would have been quite lost on some of them

[@InsertNameHere-th5nt]

@@GrimaceTheCat1 you can find tutorial for speed slides in the community section (Dont remeber what it called) type fullspeed beginner should find it. there is a map that shows a graph of optimal sd at all speed, essentially on road above 400 speed the skid mark should overlap about 40 - 50ish percant and the faster you go the wide the overlap has to be for optimal speed. dirt and grass you need wide overlap. i don't know how to neo slide myself but at low speed you can't drift normally but by doing some quick input (don't really remeber 100% what they are like i said i never managed to do it myself) it possible to drift at low speed and that what neo slides are in the comunity section you can also find straight map to practice wiggles on different surface

[@davidblauyoutube]

My (very rough!) targets would be: 1 hour playtime = every bronze, some silvers 10-20 hours = every silver, some golds 200-400 hours = every gold, some ATs 4000-8000 hours = every AT

[@dp0456]

I think in TM nations eswc the short author times are much harder than the long "harder" tracks. The first maps you have no margin whatsoever. On the last you have like 3 seconds to spare as an average player like me

[@Smung]

after just listening to kubbi on its own its a strange feeling of familiarity to hear it used in a video

[@LyndanTylor]

I'm sorry, am I the only one that thinks it's the dumbest thing to make the player switch their car mid-race??

[@TheMotlias]

Nadeo: here's a desert car that feels like it's from 2005. Me: thanks... I hate it

[@ZFshmN]

I like having a challenge in the author medals in the campaigns, I just want the level of difficulty to be the same each season. For example, I want every white track map in every campaign to be the same level of difficulty for the author time, same for green blue, etc. I judge my skill based on if I can get more author medals on harder tracks as time goes on. So I don't want them to all of a sudden make the red and black map author medals really easy, but I'd rather them be a challenge until I am just really good at the game

[@kushin5212]

Well, I always struggle with the last 2 maps and when I see this, I don't even want to grind it

[@GrimaceTheCat1]

I recently got a WR (my first) on an Ice track, I’d like to see how easy it is for you to beat since I know it’ll be beaten at some point and I’m not a top player.

[@CrawlingPanther]

Im new to Trackmania (second season) and took me a few days to realize what author medals were and yeah, I wanted to immediately set a goal of beating every one of them. But to your question - should new players be able to beat them. I say no. I like the frustration and difficulty for some.

[@waiitwhaat]

7:27 As a guy who has been watching (binging is a better term) your content since deep dip 2, I downloaded the game literally today and I personally believe Author times should be random. Some easy, some difficult, some pyramidori. The randomness of ATs adds a fun element to the game. Edit: WYSI

[@JonathanScarlet]

There is no such thing as a "too-hard" author medal (that isn't hacked in, anyways), but I do think it's acceptable for there to be official ATs that a complete newbie can't get. Multiple, even. Obviously not the entire campaign unless you say upfront that this is meant for the experts/hardcores, but the black label tracks could all have ATs that would be near-impossible for a complete newbie to get and I wouldn't have a problem. Besides, from the outside looking in it seems like 1-10 are supposed to be the newbie medals (with 1-5 being the easiest of the campaign), 11-15 are tougher but still doable for newbies, 16-20 are on the edge of possibility, and then 21-25 require either years of prior experience (someone like Wirt) or at least 20+ hours learning the game to even approach much less obtain them. And the 25th is the hardest of them all. That's just my opinion, but I'd be fine with that.

[@swaderable]

Bro none of the author times are achievable for a new player. I've been playing casually for two years and maybe get 6-8 per campaign. Half the time I don't even unlock 20-25... There's usually one map that just fucking blows for how I enjoy the game so I end up giving up. Don't like that they changed the way the campaigns work

[@Zohve]

As a newer player myself.. id rather have a bigger challenge getting the AT then anything. Because 9/10 I ask other people in the community for tips, then I'm learning and also getting a milestone (and making friends that's always a bonus). I feel it should be achievable with at least a decent knowledge of the game.

[@piotrk2639]

Campaign with desert car 7/10 without 9/10. Additionally, I feel that access to black maps blocked by gold medals is very unpleasant. I feel forced to grind a map I don't like in a car that irritates me just because otherwise I have limited access to maps.

[@NerdopolisIndustries]

As someone who had just started getting into the black tracks and has been playing for about a year, I think having the Authors be achievable by 20% of the player base would be reasonable. Like the one chatter said, they ARE hidden by the developers. If you look at TM as a game to BEAT the campaign, even if you get an AT early on, I don't think you're going to grind them out if you just want to say "I beat this season."

[@VOID73737]

Last

[@Darkitz69]

i usually played for AT. Now im playing for gold. It feels kinda bad. But it's really understandable to have AT as the max possible challenge.

[@fqed]

As someone who doesn't play the game very much, I don't think the AT's should be achievable by me. I go for gold and will hunt AT on maps I like, and it gives me something to aim for while trying to improve. If I was just given all the AT's, my carrot would be taken away and I'd probably play less.

[@Shift2101]

How the heck is this even possible? I just got Gold after like 10 hours on this track☠️🙃😂Puts me at Gold on everything, but Author on first 11 tracks so far

[@Nartinan]

I have no issue with Author Medals being arbitrarily hard. As the name implies, the mapper should do their best to set a time. If the devs are more skilled than most of the player base, most of the player base shouldn't be able to get ATs. I think some related issues are, that gold medals have lost their value and the difficulty curve is too steep from white to black. Firstly, make ATs be hard to get all the way from white maps to black maps. Maybe not too hard, give the mapper a limit/orientation like 30 minutes or 30 runs to set a time and thats it. Secondly, make early gold medals a bit harder and later gold medals maybe a slight bit easier. The raised difficulty should come from a longer, more complex map, not simply from a tighter time. At my skill level I can barely collect all golds after many days of trying through the season. And while a few days of campaign once a season is good fun I usually complete white to blue without much issue and get stuck on the later maps. I'd much prefer to spend more time perfecting earlier maps. Have gold be an achievement on every map. This way author times wouldn't "need" to be achievable. Or as others have suggested, introducing platinum medals would also allow ATs to be harder.

[@GelberDracheLP]

To the "Author Medals" I think a consistent difficulty for the Author medals in the official campaign in not bad, because with the latter maps the difficulty of the maps already is getting harder. But her is then the point of what difficulty is good for it... And i personally have the feeling that they put this time such hard maps, becouse more and more people where complaing that the ATs where to easy I think a plugin like "The Nadeo Medals" could be possible, where they can set the time of the Nadeo Medal to the best driving time from Nadeo