Firstly, let's get this straight: ModNation is, in my opinion, potentially one of the most fun games in the PlayStation family, if not THE funnest. Great gameplay, presentation and customisation tools. This in itself would be enough for me to purchase the game. However...

I bought ModNation racers first day mainly because I thought it would be an amazing online experience like LittleBigPlanet was before it. But there is absolutely no one willing enter a ranked race or race series. Everyone (and by that I mean the very few people online) plays in player races where they just get plays on their own track.

Then there's the creating and downloading. No one really downloads anything unless it's copyrighted stuff like Mario costumes or the Knight Rider car. My track has had zero plays, zero ratings and zero downloads from 5 days of being uploaded. One of the trophies is to get 250,000 Create XP. I have 7. I'm pretty sure a lot of other people are having this problem with ModNation whereas with LittleBigPlanet, if you wanted to get your level 'out there', you could if you put the effort in. I put the effort into my track. Nothing has come out of it... so far.

The best online experience I've had is the Hot Lap which changes daily, but it gets a bit pointless after a few hundred laps of trying to get to the top and already having the hot lap trophy.

What's wrong with ModNation online?

The game's online capabilities are region locked, can I not find anyone because of where I live (in the UK)?

Is there hardly anyone playing for XP because people who own ModNation are a younger crowd who don't care for competitive onling gaming?

Or, sales-wise, has it been a poor opening week for ModNation?

Will no one download mine and other people's content because everyone who plays ModNation play for themselves and only themselves in that they create and share their levels, but aren't willing to play on other people's creations?

Anyone else having these problems? What's it like in your region? Do you think the game has sold well? What do you think?

Sorry for asking so many questions... just wanna get the most out of this game ;)

This is a good thread. I see the problems that your having and I would just be aware that because it hasn't been out for long people haven't yet ventured into the online aspects of the game. It hasn't even had a christmas release and this time of year isn't traditionally fashionable for purchasing games. (MGS4 being an exception)


I wouldn't be surprised if it's a slow burner for people. After many complete the Single Player mode then they will attempt the online. And (as you stated) the younger crowd may be intent on completing the Single Player in it's full aspect prior to even looking into the online.

I will add you as a friend, therefore I can play and try out your level when I get my copy of the game.

I haven't tried online yet in UK but will probably later tonight. If the online is region locked I'll be annoyed because racers always (Mario aside) tend to start small and they're basically limiting their own game if they do this.

Surely UK would have access to European players at least?

Right now I've just played a few of the campaign maps to get a feel, and played with the editor a bit, but online is next on the list.

Wait, what?

So I can't play with people from US if I'm from UK?

A few of my mates over the internet live in US and we play games online all the time, this was going to be one of them, but if that's the situation, then I'm not even going to bother buying this...

hey FBF i havn't seen you in a while. but yea. spot on. i started a thread asking who was going to get this game but i think it only got about 4 pages witch is like 40 people. i havn't got it yet but i do plan to just hold on man. it's going to take some time. good thread.

this is an interesting thread.

i'm not a young gamer, but still i want to unlock as many mods as possible before creating my first "serious" track and avatar. i've only had it for one evening and have only had time to complete 3 career races... so here's hoping i find some more time.

in the short term, until more people pick up the game, my suggestion to you is name all your tracks and avatar "batman".

I have played around 10-15 games online, all of them running on the other people creations. I created my own track, but I dont think it is yet good enough to share.

In my openion, everything looks fantastic, except for loading time. I can also say that loading time offline is longer than online !!!!

What I also hate about online, if I raced someone and didnt like his track, I cant jump to another user track. I have to exist that user track and get back to the mod nation area again and connect and find other people tracks, and this is very annoying since load time is longer than it should be.

I have had one cart download and 2 character downloads so I can understand the frustration. I made a venom character not expecting to see any and there is like 30 of them. I think the issue is there is just so much already to download you need to talk to people and have them check out your stuff.

I also have not had any issues getting XP races so maybe it is just a regional thing or the wrong time of day

A word on load times as I don't think people are aware of why they're that way.

Unlike I'd guess most Kart/Racing games, Modnation Racers uses an approach where the track is basically 'built' every time you play it from a file containing the info on what the track should look like.

this was to ensure super fast upload/download of tracks and support the editor aspect of the game.

While I'm sure they'll patch it and may manage to make them a bit smaller I think people need to be realistic about the design here.

As I understand it everything in a track exists simply as coordinates and a flag for what it is. The long load times are in fact the engine reading the file super fast but then having to build the track from the info before you can play.

This means very quick sharing of assets in support of the Create/Share aspects of the title (and I have to say the speed of sharing is fantastic) but the downside is that the time taken to essentially create the track from the file is sure to result in loads that are longer than more traditional engines where the assets may actually be large but the load and play aspect is fast.

The problem with traditional racing engines is that sharing content would be slow and could be horribly slow with slower connections.

So in summary, the load times are tied to the engine and the design being built around sharing and rapid transmission of assets as well as the play aspects.

Just like LBP I'd bet every developer level was built in the editor using the same tools. I suppose the developer could have used a hybrid where official levels were created and loaded differently, but this would have created a big split with the experience for user created levels and would also have complicated the engine design.

I'm curious how they'll approach this. The obvious answer will be too try and further optimize the code around creating the level from the instruction file, but given the retail code (for those not aware) seems to be faster than the Beta I wonder how much time they can really optimize code they've clearly been trying to optimize for a while?

Personally for the most part I've found the load times haven't been too bad - 30 to 40 seconds mostly, and given I intend to split my time between creating/racing it has less impact for me too.

If you're just getting this for the racing then I'd say go ahead, just be realistic you're going to trade really fast loading for access to what is sure to be a huge number of tracks, karts, etc. and a fun experience.