ModNation Racers -- General Info and Discussion

^ That would be great. Didn't know there was going to be a patch for bad racers like myself. LOL
I'll have to Google and check it out!

EDIT: found the info

  • Load Time Improvements: While there are still loads, you will see decreases in load times throughout the game.
  • New “Casual” Difficulty Mode: We’ve added a “casual” difficulty setting in the options screen.
Super! Just a couple more days. So very glad to hear it! The two things above should allow a casual like myself to actually accomplish some things.
 
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I recorded some times pre and post-patch and they're all pretty much the same, so I'm confused right now. I'll give it another shot in a bit to see if it was just first load jitters.
 
[quote name='FriskyTanuki']I recorded some times pre and post-patch and they're all pretty much the same, so I'm confused right now.[/QUOTE]


I'm not noticing a huge difference either. There's maybe a 25% decrease in load times?

The load times have not really bothered me that much, but I am glad they've added the ability to skip the intro screens and go directly to online/create/modspot from the main menu.

I'm glad they removed the Devastator challenges, although there's a still a couple of other challenges that are BS or still too difficult. I really hate having to complete the challenges AND get 1st place. Some of them should be no higher than 3rd place. I spent nearly 45 minutes today trying to complete the 4000 wallride points, and I still have about 8 challenges left to complete.
 
I got a 0% change in every part but online multiplayer, which dropped from 30 to 20 seconds.

At least I got a bunch more XP to jump past 5K and get the 1K/5K trophies.
 
I got no positive change in load times, and the online multiplayer is completely non-functional.

I posted the following on GameFAQs and I'm posting it in both MNR threads here. I am beyond pissed off. I'm done with this game unless UFG does something miraculous in the next day or two.

I posted something here in the first 2 weeks of the game being out and it was moderated. Some people apparently could not distinguish between trolling and legitimate complaints, even though I talked about how fantastic the creation options were and how much I enjoyed the actual gameplay. Hopefully, that won't be an issue this time.

I know it's long, but please read and understand that I am a player who loves the gameplay, but is incredibly frustrated- justifiably so- in the complete catastrophe that is the online portion of the game. I am attempting to achieve resolution and not to incite arguments.

When the game first came out, I couldn't connect to the online portion. Well, not the races, anyway. The game would not automatically sign in once I entered my modspot, and repeated attempts to sign in would not work. The whole time, I was clearly signed in to the PSN Network AND all the top mods, karts, coming attractions, etc. were displaying, so clearly, I was connected to the ModNation servers. I could download anything and everything.

I even returned my copy and got another one. Same issue. I tried it on a different system as well. Eventually, after 2-3 weeks, the game started working. Except for a few hiccups, the online modes worked fine for em after that. That was until today.

I downloaded and installed the patch, which took 10 minutes, whereas a download of the same size would have taken 30 seconds on the Xbox. But that's a PS3 problem, not a MNR problem. However, the load times actually got worse. Instead of getting stuck on 65% and taking literally 3 minutes to load the modspot like when the game first came out, it gets stuck at 71% and then takes at least as long.

The game initially connected to the servers, giving me a yellow globe icon. I checked my messages and then received an invite from a friend to join a casual race. Remember that- casual, not even XP. When I accepted the invite, I got to scrolling, "Joining game..." at the bottom of the screen, followed by a white check mark in a blue box. Then... nothing. I hit the circle button and my globe icon was red. Repeated attempts to connect failed.

That entire time, all the downloadable mods, karts, etc. were displayed and I could download them in seconds. The game would never connect when I tried, though. It randomly connected twice more over an hour plus span, and each time I tried to join a friend, accepting the invites disconnected me. Isn't that the opposite of what's supposed to happen?

After my friends signed off, I managed to get "connected" one more time, with a yellow globe. I went to join a casual online race. As I waited for it to load, it just stopped. Red globe again. I was "offline". Any attempts to "Connect to Online" after that resulted in the word "Connecting" flashing up top by the globe for a fraction of a second, then nothing. It wouldn't even attempt to connect. Unbelievable.

As I said, the creation options in this game are unparalleled. The actual gameplay is very fun and rivals Mario Kart. But whoever is responsible for the online portion of the game should never be allowed to work in the video game industry again, and I mean that with all seriousness. I have never seen the online portion of a game come close to this level of broken, and that covers the Dreamcast, Xbox, Xbox 360, and PS3.

The most telling thing is this: Yes, they released a patch, so apparently they've been doing something, even if they did fail miserably. But neither their official site, their Facebook, nor their Twitter has been updated since June 21st.

I am going to contact the company via e-mail tonight, and via telephone tomorrow using the number posted on their site. If they don't offer to remedy the situation, I'll look into what other options are available to me. But there is little to no chance that I will ever consider purchasing a game created by UFG in the future thanks to this debacle.
Click to expand...

EDIT: More wackiness: I still had the game on, so I tried career mode. I figure I might as well finish that since it's the only part of the game that works. I finished a career mode race, and then at the race selection screen, I received an in-game message from another user. So, I was "connected", right?

I exited career central to the modspot. Red globe. Can't even attempt to join an online race. Clicking "connect" does nothing. Same stuff. I don't know what is going on.
 
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I picked this game up about a month ago from one of GoHastings sales, but have only played it a few times because of the ridiculous load times. I debated whether or not to just sell it, but held onto it once I read about the patch. I haven't downloaded the patch myself yet, but hearing these reports that it essentially fixed nothing is tremendously disappointing.

What's not terribly surprising though, is that San Diego Studios worked on this game. Yes, the same San Diego Studios that made MLB: The Show. The same San Diego Studios that needs 3 patches every year to fix the problems that The Show launches with. So, what we have are two incredibly gorgeous games with solid gameplay, with a few game breaking bugs and mostly horrible online play and servers. This just further supports my belief that this is a studio that has their heads completely up their asses with a "look at what we can do" attitude, and doesn't seem to care or even notice how functional the product actually is.

It's crazy how similar Modnation is to The Show when you look at both of them closely. They're both so damn good looking and slick that you feel wrong saying anything negative about them. But under the surface, you have all these instances of things not working like they should. And at the end of the day, you're totally confused because you have a game that SHOULD be enjoyable...but just isn't. In all honesty, it's flat out RETARDED for a game that looks this good to have stability issues of any kind. That should be the FIRST priority. Who the hell cares about a pretty game that doesn't run properly? But for whatever reason, that seems to be San Diego Studios' calling card.

EDIT - Matt, I was just thinking, with all the craziness and letdowns that have happened with games and their online play this spring/summer...between having to restart our MLB league 3 times, to UFC's servers sucking really bad, now to Modnation barely being playable, part of me just wants to fucking play hockey again. Maybe it's just being away from it for awhile, but I just want to turn a game on, load up quickly, go to the "locker room", find a match, and play. None of this "connecting...re-connecting...searching for opponent...waiting on opponent" shit that takes 20 minutes to set up a damn game. Sure, NHL 10 had glitch teams, but at least the freaking game worked. I'm completely stupified that online gaming seems to be taking steps backward.
 
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United Front Games made ModNation Racers for the PS3. Sony San Diego made the PSP version, which doesn't have these issues. You are so obsessed with them that you want to derail this thread for no reason?
 
I had no idea you got it, or else I would have invited you to join the CAG nights or play some other time, since the game was working for a while. If you still had NHL 10, I'd say we could play hockey now. Magicking's been wanting to do so lately. But I guess we only have another month.

EDIT: To be fair, the San Diego Studios logo is next to the UFG logo on the game case and is in the loading screens, so if that's true, he probably didn't know. I myself thought they were involved in some way.
 
[quote name='FriskyTanuki']United Front Games made ModNation Racers for the PS3. Sony San Diego made the PSP version, which doesn't have these issues. You are so obsessed with them that you want to derail this thread for no reason?[/QUOTE]

What Matt said. And you're so obsessed with defending them, you'd think you shot them out of your vagina. Most anything with their name on it is broken in some way. If you want to dispute that, do it without insulting me. Otherwise, fuck off.
 
[quote name='FriskyTanuki']Obsessed with defending them? Your entire rant is complaining about a developer fucking up this game when they didn't actually make it.[/QUOTE]

Why have their name on the PS3 case art and in the PS3 loading screen then? Whatever, buddy. I guess it's easy to be an apologist for every game under the sun when you get your copies for free. Those of us who pay for them just expect more.
 
Because they worked on the PSP version and they probably didn't work in a bubble when they're porting another team's work to another platform. But hey, pointing out obvious flaws in your brilliant logic obviously means I'm defending them and an apologist when I'm not defending shit. Keep up the good work, Einstein.
 
[quote name='FriskyTanuki']Because they worked on the PSP version and they probably didn't work in a bubble when they're porting another team's work to another platform. But hey, pointing out obvious flaws in your brilliant logic obviously means I'm defending them and an apologist when I'm not defending shit. Keep up the good work, Einstein.[/QUOTE]

You want logic? Ok, yours is that the game was ported...from PS3 to PSP, right? Sure, that makes sense. Wouldn't that mean that the UFG logo would be in the PSP game and not that SD Studio would have theirs in a PS3 game that they allegedly had nothing to do with?

http://mnrworld.com/tag/united-front-games/
Another week has gone by and here comes another OFFICIAL ModNation Mondays update from UFG and SCEA San Diego Studios. Ramone Russell from SCEA San Diego has confirmed that the upcoming and not yet confirmed release date patch will have LOAD TIME OPTIMIZATION! That is only 1/3 of the key features that has been addressed.
Click to expand...

Why did they have ANYTHING to do with the patch if they only had their hands on the PSP version? The name you see there, Ramone Russell, is the same guy who relayed all the patch information for The Show. Believe whatever you want, goombah, but SDS has their name all over this thing. And it's yet another product with their name on it that doesn't work properly.

Why does stating simple truths like this bother you so much? You're like the cashier at KMart who gets offended when you say that the company sucks. How does a negative opinion of them affect your daily life? Are you a stockholder? Why do you care that I think they're garbage?
 
Because he's the PR/community guy. I didn't say they didn't have anything to do with it, I said they didn't make the game. But if you'd like to know what their role in the game is post launch:

[quote name='http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/06/14/modnation-monday-ufg-is-listening/']Our friends at Sony San Diego Studio officially launched community.modnation.com so you can stay connected to the ModNation community from just about anywhere.[/QUOTE]
They maintain the forums/community site and all of that good stuff, so they would be bringing the ideas for what new patches need to fix and UFG puts the work into fixing them. UFG fucked up with 1.02, so they will be working on a fix.

Also, you shouldn't quote fansites as your proof when they don't know anything more than you do about who is working on the game. From your link:

On top of optimizing load times, one of the things a lot of you have asked for is the ability to play with your friends in XP races. Well, I am very pleased to share with you that UFG has added this feature and it will be available in the upcoming patch as well. The patch is nearing the final development stages with UFG working hard to iron out some bugs before it will be ready for release.
Click to expand...

Where is Sony San Diego mentioned in that statement? Oh wait, could it be because they didn't actually work on the patch. They're just writing about it on the blog because they're monitoring the community. I wonder where I got that idea from? That's right, it was from United Front Games themselves, not a fansite.

United Front Games didn't touch the PSP game, so why would they have their logo on the box? Just to be sure, I checked the back of the Daxter (Naughty Dog franchise/IP) and Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters (Insomniac franchise/IP) and neither of their original creators got their logos on the box because they didn't actually make those games. Pretty simple idea there.

Once again, you're making stuff up here with me being offended by you shitting on a company for fucking up a game they didn't make. Once again, I'm not defending anything but the truth that makes your entire rant nothing but a waste of space. If you want to find legitimate reasons to complain about them, do it in the right thread and for the right reasons.
 
I don't even play online since you guys are all sleeping when it's time for me to play, so I couldn't care less about it.
I'm just so disappointed in the fact that the "casual" patch seems to have made the career mode even more difficult.
Basically, they are forcing me into selling the game or breaking the controller out of sheer frustration. Obviously selling the game keeps my other games playable, so I may as well go that route.
 
I'm awake when you're playing, more than likely. I go for long periods of time with no sleep.

How has the patch made the game more difficult for you? I am curious. I did play 3 or 4 career races, I believe in the 5th area/set of races, and I felt that casual difficulty almost made things too easy. I had no problems taking first place, with the exception of the last track I played, but that was mostly due to the fact that it had many twists and turns and I kept banging into walls and falling off cliffs and bridges.

Anyway, I posted on the forums Frisky linked to and I e-mailed the address on UFG's site, so now I wait... but not patiently.
 
[quote name='Matt Young']I'm awake when you're playing, more than likely. I go for long periods of time with no sleep.

How has the patch made the game more difficult for you? I am curious. [/QUOTE]

Here are a couple posts I made in the MNR forums:

fuckthis game.

Seriously.

I have the new patch, changed it over to casual and proceeded to be blown up at about 200% of the previous rate. Yeah, the AI is not nearly as aggressive... Until the last lap where, once I started keeping track, I was blown up an average of 6 times on the final lap of every race. Even timing the shield well, I simply don't have enough to stay in first AND fend off all the attacks.
This game is seriously ***** me off.

I used to get 1st place easily in the market (tour 2 I think) and decided to go back since I was missing the destroy 10 stalls portion. I finished 1st ONE TIME in 14 races... Of course all 10 stalls weren't destroyed. Literally, the second 10 stalls were destroyed, every time, the AI unloaded on me.
Tour 4 is still ridiculously difficult. That's when I started keeping track for the above. I raced The Island track (can't remember the name) so I could finally beat that challenges, beat Aloha and get the ponytail (FINALLY!) but NO, After 10 races, I have yet to finish higher than 3rd. Again, due to the AI unloading on me. I can be in first for the majority of the race, and as soon as we get to the gauntlet, suddenly every AI controlled racer has triple attacks built and fire them one after another after another after another...


One guy keeps claiming it's slower and it's because we can't drift right anymore, so I posted this;
Click to expand...


Doesn't seem any slower to me at all. Seems exactly the same as it was when I played it just before the patch. The biggest difference I notice is way more weapon spamming. Even if they made it slower, how is that supposed to make it easier when the weapon spamming is so prolific?
Last night, someone questioned me saying that maybe it was because I was going for challenges rather than racing. This morning, I fired it up and just raced. Even races that I used to get 1st place in 9 out of 10 times in tours 2 and 3 were difficult to place top 3 in most of the time due to the barrage of fire throughout the race and, specifically, in the final stretch.
I'm not saying that you are wrong as I don't have any way to measure the actual speed, but I am not feeling any different drifting or anything. Only now, I am getting checked into walls and off the course as well as bombarded with every weapon known to mod.







----

He responded that I was not very good at the game basically. :booty:
 
Not to dismiss UFG's servers, but I believe most of us have had few issues when connecting online. Are you behind a router? If you are, try opening the following ports to see if it helps any:

TCP 10000-11000
UDP 50000-56400
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When you contacted UFG, I hope you included your ISP, router and/or modem model. Otherwise, I would imagine it would be difficult to help you and there's a likelihood they won't reply.
 
I mentioned my ISP, but not my modem. It shouldn't matter what kind of modem I have. Pretty much every other game works fine online, and my NAT is set to Type 2/Open. It's not my connection. I saw that you CAG guys were online, but I've seen hundreds of posts of people having one problem or another connecting or staying connected since the patch.

dv8mad, I actually recall reading what you posted. That was on GameFAQs, right?
 
[quote name='Matt Young']I mentioned my ISP, but not my modem. It shouldn't matter what kind of modem I have. Pretty much every other game works fine online, and my NAT is set to Type 2/Open. It's not my connection. I saw that you CAG guys were online, but I've seen hundreds of posts of people having one problem or another connecting or staying connected since the patch.

dv8mad, I actually recall reading what you posted. That was on GameFAQs, right?[/QUOTE]

I don't go to GameFAQs, so apparently I am not the only one with an issue.
I posted in the official MNR Sony Playstation forums.
 
Did you try deleting your game data and installing/updating again to see if that fixes it? I didn't see that mentioned in the post you made above, so I don't know if you thought of that already.
 
Nope. Would that require deleting my career mode save and my mods, or is there a way to only delete the install data and reinstall? Because I am not deleting all my progress and creations. If I do that, I may as well get rid of the game altogether.
 
It's just the install data and DLC from the PS Store, which is in the Game Data Utility folder at the top of the Game tab on the XMB. Your user-created stuff is in a different file, so you won't be erasing that. You'll see one titled "ModNation Racers" that should be at least 3 GBs (delete this one) and one called "ModNation Racers User-Created Content" that is much smaller (don't delete this).
 
Okay, thanks. I will look into that here in a bit. But, like I said, lots of people are experiencing issues now. The most prevalent problem seems to be XP races not working for a lot of people, but others are having connection problems like I am.

My e-mail has not yet garnered a response, and I got no answer when I called the number on the UFG site.
 
Does anyone here need the air raid DLC code? I got it from the contest but don't plan on buying the game. So PM me or something and I'll give it to you for free.
 
http://blog.us.playstation.com/2010/08/09/modnation-monday-xp-races-remedied-and-ufg-insights/

A new update is coming:
Greetings from Vancouver, Canada! My name is Scott Nielsen, a producer at UFG and I’m happy to report some good news.

Last week an issue was introduced with the release of Title Update 1.02 that affected XP Races and XP Series resulting in situations where players were unable to load into the respective XP Races. This issue has been addressed in Title Update 1.03 which we are currently scheduled to release during our regular maintenance window tomorrow morning (Tuesday, August 10th).

I’d also like to take a moment to try and provide some insight into our game and hopefully some clarity surrounding the load times in ModNation Racers. This is a subject that both our fans and the team are very sensitive about and we want to assure you that a lot of work has been done in order to address these issues. We have made some significant strides to improving the user experience in ModNation Racers with the release of the Title Update.

Custom Creations means A LOT of Data
As you know, ModNation Racers can’t be compared to most racing games as it lets you create your own experience. That means we have races where each Mod and Kart are all different. Each of these creations are made up of hundreds of individual textures that are fed into our compositing system to create the final creation. As there are up to 12 players in a race, each with a Mod and Kart, we need to do this 24 times for a single race. That’s a lot of data!

Making Tracks
In regular racing games, track data is packed onto the disc for loading, but ModNation is not a regular game. One of our focuses on ModNation Racers was to make it incredibly quick and easy to share your tracks online. To enable this, we store tracks as blueprints for rebuilding, which are very small on disc. To build a track in the code, we have to first load up this blueprint, then we need to generate all of the additional data for the track and then start compositing. Both these steps are not simple, but they are necessary to bring our tracks to life.

So as you can see, there were a lot of tradeoffs involved in creating a game that allows creating and sharing. We tried to strike the best balance we could between all of the competing priorities. Creativity is so important to us, and the ModNation community, that we didn’t want to sacrifice the amazing flexibility that we have made available.

Breaking Down Load Time Improvements
It’s important to note that we made a number of significant changes to the game flow in order to improve the user experience in ModNation Racers. We focused our efforts on making improvements to high-impact areas of the game; specifically when doing Career Races and Online Races. In fact, the biggest improvements you will see are when doing multiple Career Races or Online Races.

You should see a reduction in time when loading from Career Central into a Race, plus significant improvements when returning from a Career Race to Career Central. What used to be around 30 seconds now takes about 6 or 7 seconds. Online Racing sees very similar benefits when returning from a race to the Gameroom. Changes made to the flow of XP Races have significantly reduced load times when returning to the Gameroom from an XP Race. What makes this great now is that when you find a group of people that you are enjoying XP Racing with, you are able to stay matched with them as opposed to returning to the ModSpot and having to get matched into another XP Race with different people.

We’re confident these changes provide a more positive user experience for the ModNation community. With a game like ModNation Racers, we thrive on the strength of our community and we want to do everything to make sure you have a great time with our game.

A big thanks from all of us here at UFG for supporting our game!
Click to expand...
 
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I just got this game the other day so I never played before the patch, but it is already pissing me off. I was doing ok until I got to the final race on circuit 2. Took me about 10 tries to finally pass it. I'd be in first place for two laps, then just get bombarded with weapons. I can't believe this is casual difficulty, I swear I don't suck that bad. ;-)
 
Looks like we'll finally be having those XP races on Wednesday night. We were going to do XP races last week, but for some reason the game prevented us getting together. Hopefully it works this time... :)
 
I deleted and reinstalled the patch, and it allowed me to connect manually after the game booted up. However, anytime I tried joining even a casual race (this was Saturday) I was disconnected and unable to reconnect.

Supposedly, according to the MNR community, there is a problem between the game and Westell 7500 modem/routers. That makes no sense whatsoever, especially since I have played online with that router before. But I called and asked Verizon about upgrading. They sent me a new one... another Westell 7500; exact model number I already had. And UFG still hasn't answered shit. Worst customer service ever.
 
Finally beat all the career challenges tonight. I've never seen so much BS in my life. Who the hell designed this shit?

The majority of the races don't have a continual visual update, but rather give you "milestones" on how many of the challenges you completed. You have no idea how well you're doing until you actually hit a milestone that notifies you. Not to mention that often times you may be doing well only to have several level 3 rockets or level 3 shockwaves come your way to screw you up.

I'm glad I'm just done with it and can focus on creating tracks and playing online now.
 
Is the online still really laggy? Sorry, didn't feel like reading the rest of the thread to try and find it. (Too lazy to use the search function, which I think could mess up and get me a bunch of other threads instead...)
 
[quote name='BlueLobstah']Finally beat all the career challenges tonight. I've never seen so much BS in my life. Who the hell designed this shit?

The majority of the races don't have a continual visual update, but rather give you "milestones" on how many of the challenges you completed. You have no idea how well you're doing until you actually hit a milestone that notifies you. Not to mention that often times you may be doing well only to have several level 3 rockets or level 3 shockwaves come your way to screw you up.

I'm glad I'm just done with it and can focus on creating tracks and playing online now.[/QUOTE]

so what youre saying is, the patch didnt do shit in terms of difficulty? i have yet to pop mnr back into my ps3 and download the new patch.
 
[quote name='8bitArtist']so what youre saying is, the patch didnt do shit in terms of difficulty? i have yet to pop mnr back into my ps3 and download the new patch.[/QUOTE]


I don't know. I completed all the races before the difficulty option was added. Other than that, they changed two of the challenges to be a bit easier. I still feel there's a few left they need to make adjustments too in order for the game to be less frustrating.
 
After a lot of frustration I recently finished the challenges as well. First thing I did after I completed them was make a back up save so I never have to endure it again. I would say the difficultly was toned down just a little, I even did a lot of challenges in expert mode post patch cause I couldn't do it in casual mode.
 
OK so I just got this game recently and went right into career mode finishing the races, challenges, and whatnot . Last night I probably was about halfway through career mode before I decided to call it a night and turned off my PS3. Today I decided to give it a go so I booted it up to play a few games. To my surprise career mode started me off to a completely new place in career AND my mod racer was changed to something I haven't seen before. I thought it was a little strange so I restarted the system. When I finally booted it up the game took me to the very beginning where my career progress has been reset! Even the mod was back to default.

I honestly don't have the motivation anymore to go through with the whole thing again. Has anyone gone through this before? Is there anyway to get my progress back?

I don't think it's my hard drive as all the mods I've created were still still in the system. It's just my career mode has been erased :bomb:
 
I know I'm raising this from the dead, but seeing as it just went GH and may be more accessible to people than before, I wanted to post my take on it. The gameplay is pretty fun and what you'd expect from a kart racer. Searching for things that other users created is pretty damn easy and intuitive as well. I got to the last race of the second round in SP and the AI was pretty unforgiving at that point.

The problem is that this game felt like a CHORE to play. There were 7 patches and then the game install.. I think it was 30 minutes between popping it in and playing for me. Beyond that, the load times are atrocious and I lose all momentum and attention any time something is loaded. (Damn you 90%) It was to the point where after a few hours I said F it and put it back up on goozex for trade. If you have more patience than me, godspeed, but I couldn't take it. I came to this thread to see if I was being whiny but I was relieved to see that I'm not the only one that feels like the game was plagued with loading.

I know they push the hell out of the game still in the psblog and it would definitely be a MK killer if they could clean up but maybe their next go at it will be the definitive kart game of this generation.
 
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