Co-op title of the century.

I've been playing this game since its release and the Trackmania series as a whole since December 2007.
Don't get me wrong, this game is by no means perfect or accessible to beginners, but I cannot agree with all the negative reviews of the game stating that the payment model is predatory, a scam or even worse.
I'll go into more detail about the different payment tiers below, but I want to talk about my experience with the game first and foremost.

Trackmania is challenging. It's not as easy as it looks. Don't expect to download the game and immediately being able to drive world records. I've seen this naive way of thinking for several years now from new players and it's gotten worse ever since the popularity of Trackmania exploded on YouTube and Twitch.
The game doesn't do much in terms of explaining the mechanics, the Training campaign barely can be called that, because it really doesn't explain you much, but it at least gives you a feel for some of the special blocks and surfaces you'll encounter in this game.

Now, if this already demotivates you. then I implore you to not give up and just stick with it. The more you play the game, the more you'll understand how the car behaves in different situations and the more fun you will have. Grinding for author medals in the campaign, improving your PBs on a challenging community-made map, all of it is very fulfilling.

However, the best "feature" of the game is by far its community. The vast majority of people in the community are very friendly and welcoming to beginners and there's several that have no problem with spending hours teaching you about certain mechanics or styles if you ask them kindly.
Join the official Trackmania Discord or maybe one of the community discord servers like Evo and you'll find lots of wonderful and friendly people to play with.

So, let's talk about the actual controversy that is being discussed here a lot, the payment model.
I will defend it by saying that the game developers (Nadeo, owned by Ubisoft) have been working on the Trackmania series for years and have always sold their games under value (in my opinion).
For the amount of hours you can easily sink into this game (I have about 1500 since launch and easily 10x that in the previous Trackmania titles over the past 15 years), a subscription model works the best, because it allows the developers to fully focus on continuing to develop this game instead of having to churn out a new game every 1-2 years and charge you again for it. This was one of the main gripes many people had with the Trackmania² titles, they complained that they couldn't get a simple package like Trackmania United Forever with all the environments in it,
Well, let's face it, it's not 2008 anymore, TMUF was in big parts ad supported and ad revenue back then was way better than these days. Economy is also in shambles, so a consistent stream of income through a subscription model means consistent updates and improvements for the game (which it had since July 2020) and ease of mind for the developers so they don't have to constantly work on a new game and immediately abandon the old one as soon as it releases. It's also better for the community, because fragmenting a comparatively small player base is never great.
Why not microtransactions you ask? Loot boxes? Season passes?
The developers are strictly against these. They think they're predatory and don't want them in this game and have stated so publicly in the past.

Okay, now that that's out of the way, I'll explain what you can do with each access since the existing "overview" graphic is very convoluted and not easy to understand.

The game offers a lot of content, even for those that don't purchase any of the prepaid subscription tiers.
I'll explain in more detail, so let's dive into it. What can you do with Starter Access?
- Play the current seasonal campaign offline and online against others on an online server.
- Play the training campaign
- Play a rotation of multiplayer servers with community curated maps.
- Play Royal / Super Royal (Team-based Battle Royale Fall Guys esque mode)
- Access to the map editor (Simple Editor only for now, access to Advanced Editor when console versions release)
- Watch/play against Pro Players'/Content Creator's times through VIP keys - See Reddit Wiki for more information
- Play on Local Network servers (no map restrictions) (can't create one, only join, but you can just host a dedicated server on the same PC and you can join that)
- Play Hotseat Mode on any custom map (several players take turns on same PC)
- Create/view skins via Skin Editor (cannot use them though, but great for artists to check their work ingame)

With Standard Access (1 year for $10, 10€, 9GBP, or regional equivalent), you get rid of most of the restrictions from Starter Access.
Below are all the additional things you can do with Standard Access on top of what Starter Access allows:
- Play the current and all previous seasonal campaigns. (These stay unlocked after access runs out)
- Play the current and all previous Tracks of the Day. (These stay unlocked after access runs out)
- Participate in Cup of the Day knockout tournaments which happen three times a day (19 CET, 03 CET, 11 CET)
- Play on all public servers (club rooms that don't require you to join a club) in the Arcade section - this includes password protected servers that get used for community competitions etc.
- Build maps using the advanced KB+M editor (Stays unlocked after access runs out and will become a part of Starter Access as soon as the console versions are released)
- Subscribe to and use club item collections in the Advanced Editor (custom 3d models to use in your maps)
- Submit your map to the map review server and have a chance for it to be picked for Track of the Day.
- Host a Local Network server for you and your friends from within the game.
- Use the World Records widget to check the current world records or regional records and see how much you need to improve to beat the next best player in your region.
- Play all user generated maps locally without weird workarounds.
- Play all user-generated custom campaigns in the Play -> Solo -> Library section. These feature a wide variety of maps including better training maps than those that the game provides, challenging and difficult maps and everything in between.

For club access, there's only a few additional things that you unlock, so this is more of a "I really want to get good at this game, involve myself further to grow my community/grow my brand or give more money to the devs" kind of access tier.
It unlocks:
- The ability to create and join clubs. Clubs are the central hub for all community features in the game. They're required to create and host your own publicly accessible servers, they're required to host skins and use them.
In Clubs, you can create servers that are hosted on the devs infrastructure for free by just uploading the maps to them and selecting your favorite mode and its settings. Or you can choose to host your own dedicated servers and extend their feature set with so called server controllers - external programs that add useful stat interfaces ingame, track local records, allow you to have a map karma system, etc.
- View any record ghost immediately and drive against them. This is probably one of the killer features of Club Access and the most compelling reason to get this if you want to really grind your way to the top of the ranks. Being able to just look at the lines the world record takes and learning from them is very beneficial to many. You can do the same with lower access tiers by downloading the ghosts manually from websites like https://trackmania.io but you won't get the same level of convenience.
- Equipping custom car liveries/skins to represent your own brand or your team.
- Using club tags to represent your own brand or your team.

Tons of content, lots of polish, updated for free for years after its release and a great, active modding community.
What's not to love about this game?