The Downfall of Trackmania Ranked?

[@Jnic]

Notes: 1) If you are gold and get matched with a silver player, then the match will be played on the lowest ranked player's map pool. 2) According to "Augustin "Darrek" De Vita"'s personal twitter account, these updates are subject to change! A little unfortunate you have to follow a producers personal account to get important information about major updates in the game. Here is the tweet - twitter.com/ugustindv/status/1611154862833651715

[@Jnic]

Important to note that since the tweet is from a personal account it is not official. The official Trackmania socials have not posted anything about changing any of this as of yet.

[@b005t3r]

Those changes are actually pretty good. The only thing that makes no sense to me is the quarterly ELO reset, puts beginners with intermediate/advanced players every three months and makes it much harder for the less experienced ones to go up the ranking ladder (since they are forced to play against stronger opponents).

[@LDVjirs]

It's only for a week or two that pro players compete with the casuals. I think it's a good idea to have the start of the competition on the campaign, so that those players actually play the maps not just on release

[@b005t3r]

@@LDVjirs no, it's not only two weeks and it's not about the pros only. For much longer you have gold level player or high silver level players competing with complete beginners, easily outperforming them and pushing them down the ranking ladder, so an average beginner has to first drop down below their level just to be able to climb up later (and lose it all at the next reset). This is a complete nonsense, you don't need any resets if you have implemented the ELO ranking system correctly, as it will balanse itself out and it will stay balanced.

[@elpred0]

Agree, we need more people playing, not scare them. They are more harsh now in how elo goes down, so a big reset does not make sense.

[@LDVjirs]

@@b005t3r it's been only 12 days and it's almost normalised for me. Yes I had a huge drop at the start of the season. I'm normaly S1 or S2 player. I'm bronze3 playing with people of my level. I'm having fun and don't care about the actual rank. Give it 1 more week and you should be able to reach your usual league

[@b005t3r]

I might even give it a week or two this time, but I'll need to give it another few weeks each campaign, that's the issue.

[@Haski5]

I just don't understand why these maps aren't officialy shown in any of the tabs. Like next to the campaign or something.

[@ergergzbhzefer]

Yeah I expected them to change that, it’s so weird that you have to search for them.

[@elpred0]

Another good idea.

[@Aiscence]

For me my biggest problem is that the free access can play ranked, like standard and they have no way of practicing those TMGL maps :/

[@GOATMENTATOR]

10 euros for a year is very cheap, if you can get gold+ than you play enough of the game to definately have amazing value from standard access

[@wroomwroomboy123]

For some of us, we've played since TMN / TMNF. We still wanna game once in a while, but not enough to wanna pay for the extras. But we are good enough to reach the top tiers with a bit of map repetion. The answer when I meet other OGs is always the same. "grindin for interesting games?" "lol yup" With this update, we'll just stick to TMNF, because we can't train top rank maps. Some of the Free Access players are colossally talented, we're talking occassional TMNF/TM2 wr holders. Few people who joined after TM2020 know this - non-cut Nadeo hunters are notorious for having an unmatched consistency in rounds mode (Think of players like Racehans). These guys are what you in CSGO call online-warriors, the very best guys who occassionally beat the pros online, but with some effort they'd absolutely be professionals.

[@GOATMENTATOR]

@@wroomwroomboy123 bro 10 euros a year is very cheap. you can't afford to pay 85 cents a month? by the time you wrote the long paragraph you already could of earned some money to play for couple weeks :D

[@wroomwroomboy123]

@@GOATMENTATOR I just won't bother - that is all.

[@dudi2478]

@@GOATMENTATOR the game is cheap indeed. However, there are some regions where you cant even buy the standart or club access so if you grind your way to gold - good luck on the maps you have 0 access to

[@marciturani6416]

My only gripe with this system is that you need to pay for access on the tmwc maps, while free to play players can play in ranked. A fix could be that those maps can be played and practices for free, just like the campaigns. I think that would motivate a lot more people to try them out and in turn play the ranked gamemode.

[@gramfortey9338]

Maybe they can add a World Tour campaign alongside with seasonal ones. It would motivate players to learn them.

[@Aiscence]

Yeah because free access can actually play ranked and they have no way to practice those maps :/

[@kaiserandvlad]

maybe they could make it that once you get all ats you can play the world tour

[@spike1613]

in order to be good enough to actually play TMWT [E] maps in MM you have to play a lot. I would argue that is not asked to much to actually pay 10€ when you have played the game for hundreds of hours. The TMWT Campaigns should have a better visibility in the game tho

[@gkoble]

or maybe people can pay $10 for a game they've spent dozens of hours in cauz if they're gold then they probably spent a lot of time on trackmania

[@skaterplusboardz]

i think the point of TM is to master even the difficult tracks and eventually get better. I don't see an issue with raising the difficulty especially at Gold level where everyone should at least be able to get Author medal at the campaign maps. And the new maps are easier versions of the WT maps, they're playable and raise awareness for the esport, I'm personally happy to learn them, without the ranked I probably wouldnt bother.

[@dovos8572]

it should litterally be impossible for a new player or a casual to reach gold status without getting good enough to play the WT maps, so it isn't that bad that there is a skillcheck like that that humbles the players that think that they are good just because they know 25 maps to the general imput.

[@ravifennec]

Take away the identities and yeah. It becomes easy. I especially hate Gyroscope and Freestyle.

[@adlynadhif]

Putting the map on gold is still too early tho. Even tho you can consider people who can reach gold good and can competitively play on tournament. But the map its self are still consider hard even if you compare it to other competitive map. And even player as good as jnic still can't finish the map consistently

[@giuseppec.956]

I have standard acces and i just hit gold1, i have no way of learning these maps, unless I pay, so we can safely say that trackmania ranked is pay to win if tou hit gold

[@nikarmotte]

Your analysis on the gold rank map pool is spot on. I'm exactly in the category of players that can breeze through silver to gold. Then, I had to spend about 10 hours to feel comfortable queuing for rank again, only to get sent into a bronze lobby and play 04. The next match, as a Gold 1, I got to play in master 2 lobby on airwalk. Mega lul.

[@eBusinessjma]

Minor detail: As bronze players can still get matches with silver players, and silver players with gold players, you can still get matches on maps of a lower category. When different ranks are matched together it is the lowest ranking player that determines what pool the map will be picked from.

[@isfoo]

Are we sure that's the case? I remember in previous system it sometimes happened that silver player would play black tracks (21-25) even though technically it shouldn't be possible.

[@PhDTM]

@@isfoo yes Nadeo made it clear that's how it works now

[@elpred0]

When it changes to 2v2, that would be a rare case.

[@Thunderhorse007]

Found this video after I got to Gold rank. For the first two days in gold rank the maps were all from the Spring Campaign, and then suddenly I started getting into matches with these World Tour maps. I guess I'm an okay driver, but definitely nothing more. I can get like 60% of author medals in the campaign. I have zero interest in learning these pro maps. They don't seem fun and they're way to difficult for someone who barely stepped into Gold rank. So I guess ranked is ruined for me.... They should introduce those maps to players on way higher ranks, most casuals will hate these maps.

[@j-swag7438]

I really like the idea of playing TMWT [E] maps in MM since it makes this competitive side of trackmania more accessible to all players. I do think there are things that should change but this shouldn't be considered "The Downfall of Trackmania Ranked" by any means. Since Nadeo has put TMWT [E] maps and part of the TMWT circuit into matchmaking, the issue now is that there's a divide between players, and it's impossible to make both sides happy within the same MM queue. For people who want to play TMWT maps, they need to slog through many hours of campaign maps before they get to have fun, and the people who like playing the campaign have their fun ended upon reaching a certain rank. This is just what happens when Nadeo try to force "a clear linear progression" in a game that doesn't have one. Here is my list of things I would change - Make 2 seperate queues for MM (and possibly separate ranks like how rocket league does it?). don't know how this would affect queue times but it would solve every problem and I think would be worth a shot. - Make Identities on TMWT [E] maps even easier or just remove them while keeping the main route the same as regular TMWT maps. Without the identities, the difficulty of TMWT [E] and even the normal TMWT maps aren't really any harder than black campaign tracks imo. I think it can be misleading when you hear people say how insanely difficult these maps are when it's really just the identity that boosts the track's difficulty to these levels. - Give a clear overview in the MM menu of which tracks are played in which ranks. You shouldn't need to search for a month old twitter post or discord announcement to find this - Give the TMWT [E] maps their own spot on the main menu alongside seasonal campaign and TOTD. - Let free players play these maps. Thanks for reading my essay

[@n0us.]

Little after the vid came out but... I have around 250 hours in the game and I get ATs up until blue for discovery(usually about 2-3 hours) and then go for gold on red and silver on black(2-3 hours). I completely skip all ice maps. So I'm like on the mid-upper end of new players at this point, not good enough to get good divs in COTD for example but able to consistently do better than other Bronze rank players. All maps with ice in the first 10 are completely fine for me, and I'm thriving right now carrying games in Bronze 2, but I really dont want to move up to silver because of basically just map 20, map 22, and 25 because they all feature ice predominately and are complex compared to 03, which is my worst map out of all I play in matchmaking. Once I do get to silver, which is probably going to happen in a few weeks, I don't think I'll be able to drive things like 20, 22, and 25 consistently. And the TMWT E maps there is no way. I watched some of the best players from regionals struggle and have super spread out rounds by 6+ seconds in the regional tournaments after training the maps in preparation for the event, and me with only about an hour a day to play who is much worse than them has no chance whatsoever. Even as I get better(because lets be honest, I'm not getting gold this campaign), I still wont be at a level to compete in gold later on. I feel like it jumps wayyyy to far into the deep end way too quick now, compared to last season, which was by far the best in terms of the experience of the majority new playerbase. Wow what a rant TLDR: ranked map difficulty scales too fast for most players and makes us less motivated to improve our rank

[@ArenSpace]

they probably have it planned already, but they need to add different gamemodes. like how warzone has solos, duos, trios, quads, they need ALL OF THOSE. i think these changes are just to test the waters and bide time until the console release brings enough players for those to be viable. there also needs to be different versions of ranked as well, like how you said the map pool changes as your ranks go up, after more players are introduced to the game, you should be able to choose what maps you want, like, oh i feel like playing the main campaign, maybe only the easy maps today. or, hey i feel like a challenge, so lets queue up in the world tour queue. they definitely dont have it figured out just yet, but i feel like this is the first step towards fixing it

[@elpred0]

You explained perfectly. I think they would get a backlash for how step are the changes and how FAST you go up in bronce and silver. Pro maps needs to be in master, not in gold. And when the 2v2 format goes live it would get much worse than it is now. Because now, as the system picks low playeres because lack of playerbase, you have some transition from map pool to map pool.. but in 2v2 it will be a full punch in the face. If I had to play this when I started ranking 2 years ago, I would never played ranked mode.

[@ravifennec]

I too think that Gold 3 should be the rank that starts including WT maps.

[@elpred0]

Reasonable

[@gokrezy]

I think they overdid these changes. Also why am I, a peak silver 2 player with 100 hrs played, getting matched up against, and with, past golds and masters... It's not fun, I often get stomped.

[@Geppty]

I have peak silver 3 with 300 hours and yes, that is relatable. At the start of this season i got vs an all evo top 1000 team and got demolished lol

[@criticareful]

For me the most important part is that this makes matchmaking not really free anymore. Paying customers have a clear advantage since they can practice the maps outside of matchmaking, while free players really can't (except for arcade rooms. but they are inconsistent)

[@Techstrobe]

its beyond me that the TMWT maps aren't strictly for Gold III+ or even just Master+. The interest for Master for many casuals is gone, Gold is the new Masters for a very large portion of the playerbase (which in a sense isnt a bad thing, but the map pooling is awful).

[@LDVjirs]

I think the idea of the change is really good. And as I understand your concern about new players and TMWT maps, I don't think it's so relevant as it is already hard for a new player to reach gold. If you do so, it means you trained a lot, and you are probably willing to commit to more training on difficult maps. That said though, I think the map pool should be more incremental, and that there should be a possibility for players to not play the TMWT maps. Like, a pro gold/master and a casual gold. Players who choose to compete in the pro ladder would have TMWT maps, and players who choose the casual ladder would have campain maps only. That way if you managed to get to gold by the end of the season, you don't have to face players who trained the maps for weeks, unless you actually want to. The game remains fun for everyone

[@laserwastaken]

great video but i feel like some of the points you made didnt make much sense; 1. When the players find the time to q up mm rank up from bronze to silver or silver to gold, i dont think its that difficult to try and play at least 15 mins of each of the new maps. 2. The TMWT maps are difficult, yes, but at this point i wouldnt call you a casual if youre already in gold. Also its not like theyre trial maps, i would rate them slightly above black maps difficulty 3. The "stomping" could be caused by the rank reset and the really good players arent in their usual elo (M3-Trackmaster). Im sure it will even out as the time goes

[@speq1]

i love you laser

[@IchiqoKurosaki]

Video was out 1 month ago, but still: I got to Gold last season, and wanted to try to reach gold again this season. I am clocked at around 240 hours. I despise Ice maps, and after hitting Silver just now (competing on map 1 - 10), I got thrown into a Gold lobby on 25 which I haven't practiced at all. I got stomped really hard, and thought to myself, that there'd have to be a possibility/option to ban certain maps in matchmaking, at least one or two maps. And I think there should be more ranks then just Bronze Silver Gold (Master): I'd rather have White Green Blue Red Black Master, where, depending on your current rank, you can't get maps above your rank, and an increased probability for the maps from your rank. This would make SO much more sense. Also: The format is still 3v3, it seems like they didn't implement 2v2 as of now (yet).

[@deathwingdt]

Over all, I like the idea behind the changes, but I think a bit of tuning would be nice. Bronze 1-10 is fine. Silver could be 6-20 or 6-25, both seems reasonable to me. A full gold lobby can compete at maps 16-25 + 5 TMWT maps, with a weighting towards the offical campain maps. Give good and motivated players an idea about competing on the easy versions of the TMWT maps, but du not limit them to only these maps. Keep the "only TMWT maps queue" for the best players, so master rank matchmaking is the only rank to compete on the 10 TMWT maps.

[@chiller49]

Coudnt have said it better Jnic, Im one of these casual players who liked to play ranked already before the update. But Im a bad casual player haha so playing 21-25 in MM when I reach Silver (currently Bronze II) will kill my spirit. Not even mentioning the world tour maps.. they are just too difficult and I dont feel like grinding 10, 20, or 30h just to be able to play ranked

[@Remyria]

if the TMWT campaigns were put forward a lot, like a second button, maybe right of campaign, above library and give rewards for completing/getting medals on them, that'd be great...

[@errorfound8377]

What surprises me the most, regardless of the blatant throw of difficulty from regular maps to TMWT maps is that not only they introduced the ranked mode, but significantly improved it a good deal over only less than two years (correct me if I'm wrong on this). This actually gets me hyped, maybe because I launched the game again and reached gold and discovered those, making me want to grind even further, but after listening to your explanation about how high you can go, matchmaking, regional, challenger and so on, this is very promising in my opinion! Nadeo just... Never made things in the regular way. I'll give you that. Also, one major downpoint in my opinion is that starter access won't have any way to train the TMWT maps. And you should not pay to be good. You should tryhard. This always has been the TrackMania philosophy, but they cut through it this time, which I find quite sad.

[@BunkeredGaming]

This change is stupid. No gold player is going to be even slightly close to competing in the World Tour. Here's my opinion on what the maps should be per rank: Bronze - 1-5 (really easy introduction to the game, gets you engaged in the gamemode) Silver - 1-10 (starts to introduce you to slightly more difficult maps while still not being too difficult) Gold - 1-15 (if you've made it this far, you are good enough to start learning slightly more difficult maps) Diamond (new rank) - 10-20 (at this point, you're good enough at the game that the white maps become annoying to play) Master - 15-25 (you've mastered the entire campaign, no need to white and green maps) Trackmaster - TMWT[E] (you are the highest rank possible, compete on these maps for extra points that won't give you another rank) For this to happen, I would presume you'd have to make climbing a little easier.

[@LDVjirs]

Without rewriting the ranks completely, just make it incremental Bronze 1 : 1-5 Bronze 2-3 :- 1-10 Silver 1 : 1-15 silver 2 : 5-20 silver 3 : 10-25 Gold 1 : 15-25 + 1-5 TMWT E Gold 2 : 20-25 + TMWT E above : TMWT E

[@BunkeredGaming]

@@LDVjirs I guess, I just feel that if you could climb i little faster in the game, it would make more sense to introduce each color to a different rank

[@IroAppe]

I agree, we need more granularity in the system. That's the easiest way to avoid frustration.

[@Luke__28]

In my opinion it would be better if only Masters had the TMWT E maps in map pool, probably into something like this: Bronze: 1-15 (and here lets say only Bronze III would have the ability to play maps 11-15 with the first 10, to make it easier to newcomers, not to throw them straight into blue maps) Silver: 6-20 (again the same, Gold II or G III would play 6-15 + 16-20) Gold: 11-25 (here it can be all for the 3 divisions, at gold you could be consideres good and good players have to be masters at everything to step up to master rank) Master: 16-25+TMWT E maps (I would even consider only 21-25 + TMWT E maps, but whatever, even red maps are difficult enough to be a slight challenge)

[@Denniss..]

I think Nadeo hinted that this current map pool is just to test the system, to give time to players to rank up to master rank, while lots of gold players are still interested in playing the TMWT maps already. I'm sure once the ranks have settled a bit (because of the rank reset from the new season), those TMWT maps will move to master rank.

[@MitchCollins15]

All for it! Let's be honest, the casual player isn't a gold mm player. Matchmaking was kind of dead before this season, so it's nice to see them at least try to do something about that. Wether it revives or not remains to be seen.

[@ewentanguy1273]

Imo, they should maybe think about making a harder campaign not for white green blue, but at least for red and black, it would be harder and harder until TMWT maps and when you finally make it to TMWT maps, you’re used to play hard maps and ready to train

[@Thrano]

I think people underestimate how hard it is to slog through bronze and silver league. Over the last two seasons gold has been increasingly hard to reach. Coming from Gold 3 in Summer 22 I only made it to Silver 2 last season despite being reasonably good and consistent on the campaign. I believe the players that only casually play MM and don't compete on the harder campaign maps and now the TMWC maps will just not get to Gold and drive these maps.

[@QFireball]

I hit gold, i dont enjoy ranked anymore. Was in Master the season before. Dont have time for a second campaign.

[@logarhythmic6859]

I think this affects a relatively small slice of players. If you're new or casual, it's very unlikely you'd grind to reach gold in the first place. If you're at the top of the game, you'll be playing with other people at the top. It's really only the people who are just breaking into playing ranked that would be affected. That being said, maybe it'll act as a "dam" where more and more people get up to that point, and then give up on ranked, preventing the top level from growing.

[@GueshFujiwara]

And ofc, we need to play everyday for not losing ours points..... its totally weird

[@adlynadhif]

The tmwt map should definitely at least on the master difficulties. The map is just too hard to be played for gold player. And i think for silver i think it would be better for them to play all the map (or probably without the black) and then on gold they just cut it to map blue and red. Also they should make tmwt map accessible for free player and put it on the solo menu so more player will try the map

[@robertmosley1188]

No new player is going to get anywhere near gold. Having to grind world tour maps 10-50hrs shouldn't be much of an issue for gold players. Still think they should allow access to training world tour maps on starter though

[@WayTooAwesome]

From my perspective there should be about 80% of players at least playing campaign maps and then the rest play TMWT the maps are crazy difficult and most players aren't squeezing out the max potential of a map, so campaign maps make sense

[@eclipseeffigy]

The rank reset is much too aggressive and there's not enough bonus rating gain for very high skill players to quickly separate them. The differences between the mappacks you play on is really big. The reward for tiering up is having to learn new maps, that are vastly more difficult to drive (consistently). It seems very unappealing to get into ranked if you're not confident you can get to masters already; then you can breeze through the campaign packs without much concern, and focus your studying on the tmwt maps. Overall I think the gamemode is too unappetizing to play for the masses, which will mean there won't be enough low-mid skill players to push the high skill players up; combined with the big rank reset this will make bronze-silver wayy too filled with players too high skill for those tiers, which then also deters players from entering into ranked.

[@eclipseeffigy]

Now I don't personally mind this as I think TM has a large amount of good content to offer. Bear in mind the consequences of all this is mainly just that the mode is unappealing to the masses. Which is fine-- it's an optional competitive mode, not the primary form of pvp, as ranked is in many other games. It won't do much to hurt the game or the playerbase if ranked is inaccessible. For the proper ranked grinders who want to go hard on it, imho the tmwt maps should be f2p. Other than that, the only problem is maybe they won't have so many players to play against, but I think that is what it is. Tl;dr ranked has problems but they are not problems for the game per se, so it might all be fine.

[@Simon.Trackmania]

As much as I love seeing competitive maps in matchmaking I really think they should have removed the identities from the maps its makes the map way too hard to regu without too much training as learning some identities can take as much time as learning a map.

[@JoppeCream]

Nice video Jnic😁

[@Jnic]

Glad you enjoyed!

[@bcraiders11]

I dont think a noob or casual player will make it far enough for it to even matter. Im 100% noob and dont touch ranked

[@SL-vr9ee]

Ppl complaining about having to pay 0,83€ per month for ton of contents on a game they spend hundreds of hours on is beyond my understanding.

[@maddogmike9982]

Is this game worth getting into now? I've been watching a lot of trackmania content and I'm interested.

[@giuseppec.956]

I have standard acces and i just hit gold1, i have no way of learning these maps, unless I pay, so we can safely say that trackmania ranked is pay to win if tou hit gold

[@kregman6928]

am I completely confused or did they not change this at all yet? ranked still the same as it was 2 years ago

[@lewis6465]

Wait till its on console ima grind thias

[@iRWQFSFASXCi]

i guess Master 1-T and GOld 1-3 have same maps

[@no1normal750]

new player here thing #1: trackmania has ranked!?!? thing #2: why is it in teams? I don't understand why you'd force people into teams in a game that has zero cooperation, just each individuals skill

[@MH-ru8sv]

Well that stinks, I was looking forward to Ranked this season and I definitely don't have the time to devote to a whole new campaign. Instead of having 3 tiers in each league they should just have more leagues and progress slowly through the map pools. If 6 leagues they could have a 10 map pool and slowly progress through the 5 campaign map levels and 2 sets of 5 on the fancy other campaign. ie Bronze plays white and green. Silver plays green and blue. Gold Blue and red, platinum red and black, diamond black and 5 of the grand tour campaign, and then master/grandmaster plays just the 10 grand tour maps. Simple progression, easy to implement.

[@ZipzZzzz5]

Casual players will never reach those maps. So its a no problem. If u reach those map, u are not a casual.

[@stanlopez1722]

i was master 1 last season because i tried to hunt all of the campaign maps but now i guess i have a huge disadvantage Trackmania is getting pay to win :(

[@PhDTM]

It's not even a f2p game, starter version is meant as a demo+. If you like it enough to play that much you should buy access.

[@olegsova6920]

You're rught in every way

[@MrSventraDuck]

That's what happens when you drop a stupid campaign full of cuts and not planned tricks which keeps player from hunting the maps.

[@shadow-pu1oh]

common jnic w