As someone who never played stunt before in older games, everything you explained is exactly how I felt playing this gamemode for the first time. The fact there is no in-game leaderboard to watch other ghosts or to compete with others is the single biggest reason why I stopped at map 4 and never played again...
Hey, PhilDeFer here (top 5 in the stunt leaderboard 0:43). I was almost exclusively a stunt player back in the TMS / TMUF days. Sooo I was really hyped when this mode came out in Tm2020. But now I must admit I have mixed thoughts about it. One part of me fully agrees with everything you said in this video. The main problem for me is the fact that the multiplier affects the next jump PLUS the fact that triggering a CP does not reset the multiplier. Another stupid thing you didn't really mention is that respawning reset the multiplier AND the penalty for doing the same stunt multiple times. This. This is crazy because it guarantees the perfect run mathematically can't be done in one take... The best thing about the stunt mode back in the days was precisely that: when the stars aligned on a single run and you had to keep calm and finish the run properly without throwing it away. That being said, another part of me enjoy these broken rules. And especially the fact that Nando seems not to have anticipated the rules abuses. Because this adds something very interesting: you have to think and plan your run to find how you can trick the game. Find the most unintended way to score the wr is very fun. But only the search is fun: actually doing the run is another thing. TLDR: I mostly agree but thinking of how to abuse the rules is very cool
Classic Ubisoft NIVEA approach: > put old cars with their old physics and even sounds into the game (this is fine because i loved TMO and TM1.0) > rework a stunt mode and make it complicated. I remember playing stunt mode in TM Original, and I was 9 when game came out. Stunt mode was super easy to understand even if there were things like chained or master stunts. But this. Bro it took me 3 hours to understand that. And You're right, first two maps are just trash and don't explain literally anything. What should they change to make it playable? I have no idea. This mode is way different than the original version that I can't find a solution for this problem so far. I stopped playing it after Cancer A08 map. Great video. Cheers!
Honestly I think the big problem with Stunt is that they tried making something entirely new instead of just making an updated format of the original Stunt mode. I instantly lost all interest in playing the mode once I read about the park mechanics.
@@RubenFedop I don't know if changing nothing was the solution, like giving players points for wheelies in the desert car, or other maneuvers, heck even the parks could be a cool idea if they added bonus time or gave you better multipliers for a set amount of time... so long as you still have the global timer the incentives don't break and encourage multi hour runs. Like, honestly, they could have sat one systems designer down and been told within a few hours that the incentives are totally messed up here. Especially when there are no parks the lack of a timer means that like practically speaking it's worth doing a über bug on ever run or a dragon yeet if you're in the stadium would probably work and just repeat until you get one epic landing into many spins🤦♀️
it's a shame they didn't look at the previous stunt mode to take inspiration from - the online community in TMUF is still active due to the mode itself being very fun to play, simple in prinicple, but difficult enough where your skill and the time you put into the mode matters. I was looking forward to this, hoping that they would mostly stick with the old format, but with the new trackmania some bugs would be fixed and all the cool new blocks and mechanic would allow for very creative mapping, but this is just dissapointing. Thanks for the video Edge, the OG stunt legend. I'm ultimately hoping for a rework of this mode before putting more (if any) time in myself
This is the voice Ive been waiting for. Probably the number 1 person who this mode was made for and you didn't even like it. Hopefully Nadeo listens to you.
Reduced free campaign tracks, added old cars with crap handling, added stunt mode where the only stunt you do is gaslight yourself that youre not wasting your time. Nadeo is really falling off in the past year.
The very first map should have included arrows and be a free level like have a preset path where precise jumps which also happen to give you points and lead you through the obstacles with every car. I also think that the map creators still criminally under utilize the media editor like set a trigger in a corner with a GPS and arrow sign leading to it and show how its done either because a ghost appears or your camera perspective is changed to have a more "cinematic" action focused path. and if you add a second trigger as a turn off button then the ghost can stay there and you can drive after it learning the mechanics..........
Nando will never learn, the game has so much potential but they prefer to waste it on stuff nobody asked for as well as completely failing communication
Could be better if nadeo coders write the algorithm to cut unneeded parts from the users replays before storing it. But they decided not to try that hard lol
Man, I can really feel your disappointment with this one and as someone who spent thousands of hours in United stunts I have to agree with basically everything you said here. This video may seem harsh, but I was hyped as fuck about this mode as well (I bought TM2020 just for this) and it really is terrible, especially compared to the old stunt mode. If anyone wants to see what could have been, please have a look at the TMUF stunt mode. Our community may be small but we're still very active. :)
Old TMUF stunt player here (Magicuba). I used to play a lot stunts with Edge, and recently picked up TM2020. I have to say I did not enjoy at all the new stunt mode. Really wished they took the same mechanics as the old game, that would have been great.
I don't actually actively play trackmania, I just watch the content. I do not have the time to invest heavily into the game and so never saw the trackmania 2020 version worth the cost. However, after watching a lot of the streamers playing through the stunt campaign, it just seems devoid of life and a grind being a worthy rival of runescape for mundanity. It is a shame as the concept seems so cool of good trick ----> good points, but with other complexities to keep it novel, but it just seems executed so badly and seemingly pushed out so rapidly to hit a internal deadline, therefore making it just does not seem fun. I was considering buying access to the game to play stunt when it was announced as it seemed very cool, but I shall definitely hold off now. Good video tho :)
woah woah woah. runescape's grinds are generally low attention which compensates somewhat... here you need to be focused at all time. it's not just a "rival"; it blows runescape out of the water(if you ignore mage training arena)
If you'd still like to try out trackmania I'd really recommend TMNF. Actually playable on keyboard for new players ((I'd rather connect an xbox 360 controller to my laptop than learn to use "action keys" and I'm a fukin touchpad "gamer")) Free with no ingame buying Is a complete experience, even though it is a TM United lite basically.
I don't want to be that guy, but this feels like Royal all over again, it wasn't perfect at all but still had a relatively small and active community that was passionate about the mode with ideas to improve it for everyone. It's comparable to if TMUF stunt had been a part of the game, but from one day to another it was replaced by this without notice. In both cases we get a worse version of itself that feels unbalanced with some very poor design choices, very sad to see. I hope this time around they will actually do something and not give it the same treatment as Royal, empty promises of "working together to improve the mode" and "keeping a close eye on player numbers" while 6 months have passed with complete radio silence, every attempt at communication being shot down or ignored. Great video summarising and highlighting mostly the bad but also some good aspects! Really hope that for once things will change for the better over the upcoming months.
This speaks to a game design adage: "when given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game." From what you say, they clearly failed to make a game mode that incentivizes doing the most fun things about attempting car stunts.
fun fact about 14:31, i researched TMUF a while ago and found stunt stuff related to "grinding" in the game EXE, which apparently would've been scored based on how long you've grinded (on a rail or similar presumably) and it would show the amount of seconds you did it for, but i never saw anyone talk about this before also, 16:12 is technically not a new feature, trails are present in TMUF (and maybe older games) whenever you had the potential to do a master (ie. no input changes), but it is barely visible - i'm glad it's much easier to see in the new game though either way great video, i agree with most if not all of the things mentioned ^^
The park timers could be fixed with ONE change. Only activate the park timer once per park, respawning at a checkpoint will not restart the timer. Therefore, you are forced to continue onto the next park. Although it is exaggerated much more in Stunt, getting a really good score in one part of a track has already been a thing in Trackmania, it just depends on what you do after.
I honestly feel like some intern copied the stunt mode from an older game, adjusted a few things, shipped it out and called it a day. No love put into this game mode. Sad.
I can see the Checkpoint mechanic working if you have a small park with multiple "entry points", but that only works for very small events that are like, centered around one big jump or so. Which this mode isn't about.
Oh wow no way it’s me 12:16 Edit - Totally agree with this entire video. Nadeo is really not my favorite anymore. They need to step their game up, most of the stuff they’ve done over the past few years has just been half-assed or not fun for one reason or another.
Weirdly, although I never played the original stunt mode (or any other Trackmania game than Tm2020) I actually really loved this gamemode. Your video is amazing. You talked about every flaw I saw with the mode. The reason I still liked it is because it's basically a puzzle mode in one of my favourite games. I like that I had to discover the maps, look at what I could do and make a plan for achieving the "AT" score. I personally think that if the developers watch this video and this time finally decide to actually do something good for the community, this could be one of my favourite modes. Especially considering that although this campaign is horrible, I imagine that the TM community could make amazing "puzzles" and stunt maps with this. (For this I would prefer is there was only 1 park but the mapper could decide the duration. It would make way more sense.)
While I will never not cynic out hard at people going "Relaxed?! Well on the highest level it's not!", I will say that they should just make it that every park can only be attempted once and if you reset, you reset all of them. Like, I get it. You can make 'action bubbles' which chain together in one map, which honestly is a cool concept, (a bit like trying to finish trial maps without resets) but then that map you showed immediately messed it up in the worst way anyone could possibly have imagined. And being able to replay a single one while keeping the other scores is honestly so dumb I can't even wrap my head around it.
The stunt maps in sunrise extreme was the most fun I had when I was 10 years old. Would be so amazing to have something similar, switch it up and add more tricks. This game has so many more building blocks and the potential would be huge.. The game has just gone downhill for me, as also adding the 3 most boring car types in my opinion, having me and my friends learn to use them on all surfaces has just become too much of grind. I guess the old games were just more simple and fun.
Well spoken Edge. I've enjoyed grinding high scores in this game mode. But I agree with everything you said and think Nadeo fell short in a big way with this one.
i think whatever nando does they should just focus on what really matters, which is to encourage creative stunts. whatever game mechanics they'll add or change should accomplish just that and it will be fine
There's still some weird things too. The stunt features from united (Chaining and Wrecks) are still in the game, and still affect your score, but you just can't see them displayed in the new stunt mode...
@@EdgeTM the chain mechanic is still there, along with the bonus points you get (the point bonus is hard coded) the new stunt mode does nothing to the points other than mutliply all stunt points by 10 and the perfect/master/epic multipliers. Though, it works slightly different than in TMUF. Basic jump and wreck stunts do not increase the chain counter
@@zai-tm hmm I would need to see some tests to check this myself. It would make sense that I didn't even notice that chain is still there because with just 12s timer it would be difficult to lose it xd
I was so confused and continued to feel like i dont understand how it works, then i realised i was rank 7 world.. oh.. thats it. You really dont try to do anything fancy, just the same set of spins and ignore all the interesting obstacles. I have NO IDEA how the scores above me got that high so i cant even TRY to improve, double or triple my already excellent score. Half the tracks are rubbish, feels more luck based than skill - yet you have to also be too perfect for it to just be casual fun. Its real bad when you dont even understand how you got such a high score sometimes.. I got world #1 on map 15 after landing on my roof, how does it make sense?!
It's a shame Nadeo have tones of passionate player and they seam to never ask them playtest before lunch or even make them involved in the design process of game modes... It's a community focus game and they never get the community involved basically.
When I first heard of the stunt mode (having no idea what that is) I imagined something cool like Flatout back in the days where you would have to actually do cool shit with your car like "play darts" where your car is the actual dart, or playing bowling with the car, or actually making use of the driver model and implement ragdoll and launch the driver and see how far can he land, or jump, or do that with your car, highest jump, longest jump, and other stuff like that. Instead we receive a gamemode where you're being punished for pressing buttons while midair LOL.
so hitting a checkpoint doesn't reset the multiplier, meaning that the best way to play is to cheese the multiplier before crossing the checkpoint. Hopefully it get fixed to reduce the time wasted on cheese. Not sure why it's even solo, make it a 100 player server with 5 teams and 10 minutes limit and see which team can make the most points so there's at least a sense of competition and urgency while limiting the grind. Probably would still be sad to play but it'll be something.
programmers probably spent a lot of time making the stunt detection system, it works really well. but it all went down the pipe when they added other features. the park system is really weird, why should there be multiple tracks in a single track? the best way to go would be a single park per track, so when you start a track there wont be a timer but when you start a park the timer starts. devs probably just added i the stunt gamemode in a few days, because it feels unfinished: replays dont properly work, there is no tutorial, maps are low quality.
6:36 BWOAH it's me! Lol Agree with most things you said. It's a shame because some of the better maps are actually kinda fun to route out and try to perfect, but most people won't even get to them because the first few are so bland and boring (and some others like the A08 style one are just a clusterfuck luck dependent nightmare). Forget which one but there's a map with a rally car dirt park where you have to be creative and plan all the tricks in advance and if you do you can reach this one big ramp in the back and get an epic just as time runs out and that one actually felt really rewarding and fun to grind. But for every one of those moments there's 10 "smash into this and pray" strats required for a decent score. There's a lot of potential, and for me it was enough to get hooked on grinding some good scores (currently 6th in the campaign lol), but ultimately I think it's a majority of maps being boring or plain bad and the fact you have to do every park over again to improve your score even on the good maps that really kills the replayability.
I oooonly played stunt mode in TMU and was so hyped when I saw the announcement and then equally disappointed when i saw how they implemented it :( Also tried convincing an old tmu friend to join because of stunt. Too bad it wont happen. Also: I want to play this on servers!
9:51 what do you mean by « full rotation » ? Greater than 360 degrees, multiple of 180 or 360 ? Because at 11:05 there’s an example of an epic stunt despite only 180 degrees
By full rotation, I mean multiple of 180, might be a bit unclear here, but later i give an example where I mention 180 degrees as full rotation as well ^^
@@EdgeTM - I'd have said that 360 is a *full* rotation, 180 is a *half* rotation. Is 180 = full established terminology in the TM stunt community or something? If not, I'd suggest saying that jumps have to be some number of half rotations. (It gets awkward to say "whole number of half rotations", though.) Maybe the clearest thing is to say that you have to land without skidding, wheels aligned with the direction the car is moving, if that's true. BTW, you can get a "perfect" with a straight jump, no rotation. I recently watched Wirtual's video about trying out the stunt mode, and on the first map he used the first ramp for a no-spin jump to get a "perfect" or maybe "master" to set up for the second jump. So jumps have to be some multiple of 180 to get perfect, including zero apparently. Not that you have to rotate.
@@Peter_Cordes I thought Edge said it in the video that the multiple of 180 is needed for master and epic only Perfect can be achieved without rotations
I feel as if even just making it so that you cant reset to checkpoints and have to do a full score reset would make it better, that way, it'd incentivise making one fluid course, and making the gameplay about doing stunts without going back, actually getting good and consistent with mechanics, and invalidating tricks like going backwards to recollect a checkpoint with a multiplier.
Man, old stunt was a lot better. Just finish within the time you have, do whatever you can, and bonus points of you chain them quickly or doing it without having to correct your rotation.
Edge z tym że nie zalicza niepełnych obrotów to chyba ci się pomyliło bo mi normalnie siadały 180 jako epic, poza tym sam na samym początku filmu na tej mapie quarterpipe robisz 180 i ci zalicza. Taka mała uwaga tylko. Ciekawie jest zobaczyć jaką ty masz perspektywę na ten tryb, fajnie się oglądało :D
My honest opinion is, that if they would just copypasted the Stunt mode from Trackmania Sunrise it would be the best. They could build like 20 maps (5 per each env) with time attack and do everything what you want. And after 3 months build another maps.. You know, when you have 1 attempt,. and you have to score as much as points as possible in like 3 minutes for example, that was the fun i was getting. But this mode in TM2020.. I dont know. Its just boring. Play map for 2 hours and wait for Epic/Master jump.. :( Or play with 3 car i like and 1 car i dont want to play in 1 map I am just sad that Nando fcked that up... I was so hyped i even listened to TMS soundtrack, but when i saw whats stunt about, i just left... i hope Nando will rework that.
2:50 one word i never thought edge would say lol 7:37 yea edge really hates this doesn't he 9:49 i thought master is better than epic bcos master means like a master and epic is like a plain word brooooo 15:29 i did not know that
Holy shit, I only watched a couple people try the mode and didn't even bother trying it myself, but wow that is even so much more pointless than I thought lol
7:24 Explain to me how by any standard or any common reasoning THAT landing was perfect?? Like come on “Perfect” should be reserved for I dunno at least a landing where the car lands with all four wheels on the ground 😂😭 oh my
Haha Edge, you're funny. But as an old player myself I agree, this was really bad. I'd rather play all slowmo campaigns on stream than to play the Stunt mode again. Good video.
I didn't especially like or care for stunt mode in tmnf, but I was still intrigued about it being in tm2020. maybe it could be something cool, but after watching a little bit of how it works, I concluded it's just kinda shit. :(
@@EdgeTM Distance is successor to Nitronic rush by the same team. Stunt mode in Distance is a 5 min of sandbox. Do you think if format like this is possible in TM? Would it be better if Nadeo made stunt mode as time limited sandbox with cumulative score count?
Sounds good on paper, but to start a dragon yeet, you need to make a basic jump which will reset your multiplier + landing whatever jump you make flat and with correct rotation is probably not going to happen
I dont have much hope for tm after this anymore, dont see how the game could be turned around. Eveything nadeo does just seems soo uninspired. Like they make things just for the sake of content and not out from inspiration or passion
