Foobrother

Heavy Cargo

Sad to see that TMP is spending money to promote racing. I would have preferred tournaments about job deliveries within a certain time with the least damage, road/speed offences etc...

Firstly congrats and respect to all the people involved reaching such a big project. I appreciate the amount of work and energy to reach such a size. And everything I will say below can easily be understood and justified by the huge amount of dedication it takes to make this sort of project successful. Now, it was quickly covered by some other players above, if we are 100% honest and look in details, the picture isn't as bright as we would have liked (still pretty damn good for such an old project and game!!). 1M extra accounts between FEB-2021 and now. The problem is that when we compare it with the number of players during this period, the curve isn't going in the same direction: Since FEB-2021 the average number of players decreased from ~10K per day (until June 2021) to 5K per day. In comparison if we take the same duration (2 years) but for the period FEB-19 to FEB-21 we can see it increased from ~6-7K to ~8-9K on average: We all know that the main reason for the decrease of total players is due to the introduction of the Convoy mode in ETS2. But then why do we still have so many new accounts created while we have less players on TMP?! Well I can see only 3 explanations: Real new persons creating an account and not playing or playing for a very short period (because they probably not that attracted/interested/enjoying) + some players leaving Many players leaving while new ones arrive (but less than ones leaving) Same existing players deleting/not using anymore their existing account to create a new account. Maybe there are other explanations I don't see or can't see? But all the above explanations aren't very positive I'm afraid. The first 2 points would basically show that TMP is becoming less attractive (or other things appeared or became more attractive since FEB-2021). The third one would show that there is some sort of technical bug/problem making people create duplicate accounts? . I don't think there is any technical problem and it's mainly people trying to cheat/bypass something more than people who lost their password/email address/etc.... My guess is that we always had some proportion of people creating duplicate accounts and new players. But now we have less new players and maybe more people creating new accounts (many who probably try to bypass a ban or some other limits).

Regarding the topic, if you're honest but banned and still want to play there is already a legit system to bypass/cancel the ban called "Appeal". If your appeal got rejected (or you didn't even appeal) that means your ban is deserved. And at this stage trying ban evading is exactly the same as hacking and deliberately breaking the rules. The ban is your warning. Evading it is just deliberately and consciously declaring you don't care about the rules. So while I understand that banning people in a game for many years can be hard, these people should have a VERY LONG ban! I would do something like 10 times the current ban + 1 more ban in your total ban + the ban for evading shall never be ignored in the total (no matter how long ago the ban for evading was issued). i.e. you're banned for 1 week because it's your very first ban for a mistake, that means 10 weeks more for ban evading. You're banned for 1 month because that's your 3rd ban in 6 months, that means 10 months additional ban. Like in real life there are people who will change with time and other who won't (at least in the short-term). And it is fair to say that after x number of bans/offences in a certain period (3 bans over 6 months isn't the same as 3 over 3 years) we can admit that these people won't learn/change in the short term. The banning system does make a difference between players having many bans in a short period and ones with much more spaced offences. But it doesn't seem to consider that some players won't change in the short-term. Here is the current rule: only 30 days after 4 bans within less than 12 months?!! That's far too friendly. And, as I said in the past, we should be much harder on players getting many bans in short periods. Here are a few examples quickly picked from my recent reports list: Member since: 02 Feb 2022 01:37 Active bans: 4 Member since: 14 May 2022 00:26 Active bans: 5 Member since: 02 Nov 2022 20:36 Active bans: 3 Member since: 26 May 2022 21:39 Active bans: 3 Member since: 02 Sep 2022 12:31 Active bans: 3 Member since: 18 Jun 2022 11:30 Active bans: 4 Member since: 18 Feb 2022 16:40 Active bans: 5 All these players are already back on the roads or will come back in the coming weeks. Not fair if you ask me. They've already been warned several times within the last 12 months but still behave badly. I'm ok to be friendly with new players with no ban history or very light history (1-2 bans in 12 months). But we should be VERY HARD with the big offenders like the ones listed above or ban evaders.

I'm 90% of the time on the "General" and "ETS2" Discussions sections of the forum. But I assume the same rule applies to at least all the "Discussion" section?

WoT does have some interesting stats which could be used for ranking. And as a side effect, rankings could actually motivate people to drive properly!

Regarding the latest survey about the Forum & Discord, in my opinion, the way the forum is managed could be part of the reasons why people are moving to Discord. While I find the staff very open in terms of debate, I find the way few things are managed, not very motivating to make you participate even more. One thing that puzzled me very quickly when I joined this forum is that threads are very quickly closed once there is no reply for a few days. This doesn't help keeping the forum lively as you don't see many threads open and some discussions are not very developed simply because we didn't give enough time for people to participate. And one of the side effects from this mechanism is that people create new threads for questions/subject which have been discussed 20 times already. Instead of adding their view/question to the already existing thread. Many people probably get bored of these same questions and many don't even bother replying again and again. Another thing which I find not very "friendly" is the suggestion section and the way it is managed. It is super moderated and doesn't give much room for discussions/exchange. Personally it doesn't motivate me to post more suggestions. But I think that the main reason is just that Discord is one of the new ways for communities to communicate/exchange and generally people slowly stop using forums.

I've joined TMP in February 2021 (quite recently compared to some). It was a few months before the EU2 server disappeared. But from what people say, it sounds like even if you change the server names or settings, most people will just regroup on the same server because they want to interact with has much people as possible in a multiplayer environment. And that makes sense (they even regroup on the same road ). Maybe at some point in the past we had enough players to provide some multiplayer experience on both servers. But it seems that when the numbers went down, people started to regroup on the same server. With this history in mind, I'm not even sure if having 2 servers (one simulation oriented and one more arcade oriented) is relevant. We should maybe just have 1 server like Simulation 1, and 1 server with Promods (personally I would even go for just one server with Promods). No speed limit, but, as I suggested previously, we should make driving more challenging/difficult (in terms of truck stability/braking power) so that people who want to drive like maniacs on dangerous zones can't otherwise they will get an instant punishment (crash) even at lower speed then currently .

hopefully they will release AI traffic before it's too late.

We just have 21 results so far, but it's quite interesting to see that people who are looking for other players just go to C-D (nobody so far said they are going to usually other spots where there are players). So basically multiplayer is happening on C-D and, for the rest of the world, people just play in "solo" mode with not much expectation to see many other players

As I probably know even less than you about how the game works I won't comment on your input about that. But I hope you're wrong! Regarding the above I don't see a problem of "TMP dictating to you how to play the game". We are already doing it with the Simulation vs Arcade server and the various settings already enabled/applied for each type of server. Also, my idea was not to have everyone on the exact same settings. But to lower the capacity to transform your truck into a go-kart . People who are "hardcore simulation" player might still use more realistic settings than others. But the others wouldn't be able to drive at 100km/h in sharp turns with the maximum stability settings. Currently between the most realistic settings and the least realistic settings there is a huge difference!

Just done it. Would be great to be able to go back to the survey (in read-only mode) to go back to the information shared by the staff on this survey. I have to say that I'm a bit puzzled with the meanings/differences between: Collisions ✓ / Speed Limit ✓ / Road Rules ✓ (current Simulation server) and Collisions ✓ / Speed Limit X / Road Rules ✓ I understand that no Speed Limit means you can drive at 150+Km/h But to me if you have both "Road Rules" and "Speed Limit" enabled we should have the road speed limits enforced. Not allow "speed limits" higher than the road ones. Otherwise Road Rules shouldn't be really marked as enabled. Especially when you know that we are already not banning people if they don't respect the road rules and don't bother anyone (i.e. not respecting the traffic lights or not respecting road signage for overtaking someone). In my view, currently we are more in this situation "Collisions ✓ / Speed Limit X / Road Rules ✓". Being able to drive at 110Km/h on small countryside roads is equivalent to no speed limit for me. And "Collisions ✓ / Speed Limit X / Road Rules X" would be when you really have no speed limit (150+Km/h). That's just my opinion. I'm sharing it. Also, the survey mentions 2 positions they are trying to find a middle ground for: Allowing any speed (which would annoy hardcore simulation players) or set road speed limits (would be boring for some players). But what about removing speed limits but make the truck stability and braking settings more realistic so that people have to drive more responsibly if they don't want to hit a wall or go off the road on each turn? That way people from both sides would not find it boring: people who would be bored at slow speed would now be challenged to drive as fast as possible on twisty roads (but they would have to drive MUCH slower) but on motorways and straight line (non-dangerous zones) they would still be able to go fast. And hardcore simulation drivers would probably find it more interesting as people would drive less recklessly (otherwise they would get an immediate punishment/crash) and at lower speed in dangerous zones. That said, I have no idea if that's easy to implement?

Ah! Thanks for the heads up. I don't have time to go through it now but I'm very curious to discover it

I agree. Even if "racing" in the world of vehicles is linked to speed (I can't find an example of vehicle racing which is not about arriving as fast as possible). However I understand your example. Still I can see all the time people not slowing down or doing last minute emergency braking even if they see from far away that they are entering a dangerous/busy zone where speed limits are lower. Why? They want to arrive faster? If you prefer we could change the word "racing" by "sport driving" which isn't really a concept when driving a truck normally (except in truck racing). In real life driving a truck in a sporty way = dangerous and irresponsible (reckless) Thanks for sharing that post. I actually remembered it during our discussion on this thread. But couldn't remember anything about the split of types of reports. Now I know why It's a shame it was just including stats on the number of reports/appeals etc... Better than nothing, but hard to understand what's really happening in-game (mainly collisions? or just people blocking? which area? etc...). We can only assume

It sounds as if it was classified/highly sensitive data But I understand it and appreciate you don't want to break any rule. No worries.