Tribes: Ascend

[Ralith The Third]

Apparently this is being put out - beta is open, just have to like their FB page. Very fast paced, very reminiscent of multidodge servers on UT2004 - quite fun. Link is here for the studio, tab with the beta is down a bit.

http://www.hirezstudios.com/hirezwp/

Disclaimer - cannot compare to original tribes, as I never played it.

[coolguy5678]

This game is awesome and you should totally play it. I'm able to enjoy it even with constant 250 ping, and once dedicated servers are in, that problem will be solved (assuming we get a playerbase in South Africa).

I actually disagree about TA being fast paced. Before you call me an idiot, I define "pace" by how fast you have to think, react and aim. While you can certainly move very quickly, you do so over wide open spaces so it sorta cancels out. Weapons have a really long reload speed, and I find you're encouraged to take your time and line up your shots carefully.

Disclaimer: also never played original Tribes.

[elminster]

I've played all the tribes; loved 1 (Starsiege: Tribes) and 2 (Tribes 2), but 3 (Tribes: Vengeance) was a bit dull in a way. 1 was very fast and open, 2 wasn't quite as fast, 3 just felt slow.
From the look of the trailer, they've gone back to something more like 2, but with a slightly closer level of action to 1. Note that "Freedom of movement" was one of the only game specific things they mention in the trailer.

I'll definitely be trying this out. If they really gotten the spirit of tribes back, it should be good. Hopefully they provide even more access for modders.

I also tried out Legions: Overdrive, which is like a tribes clone made by people who worked on it before it got cancelled. Isn't worth playing really, lacks a lot.

[broken_escalator]

I only played tribes 1, and I have very fond memories over all the different options for base building and what not. If it is anything like that I will definitely be giving it a whirl.

[Dthen]

I've been playing this on & off for a while now. I've never played a Tribes game before, but as a newcomer to the series, I have found it to be one of the best FPS games I have played in recent times.

[elminster]

Ok, first impressions:
It was just as I hoped. Played a few games, it put me on the edge of my seat. It's far more like the feel of the first and second... however...
They chose to go with an exp/cash persistent element where you have to buy upgrades, weapons, new classes with exp/cash. Issue being, cost is set so high that you'd need a huge number of games to actually get everything.

I've seen a lot of games go this route recently and it's rather disappointing they chose to do it with tribes. Sure, I'm one that would grind more than most people, but that shouldn't make a person automatically better. It's not a role playing game, it shouldn't have any major persistent elements beyond achievements, graphical things, and very small game play changing elements.
I don't know exactly how much the upgrades will play into the game, but it shouldn't make aspects of skill redundant.

[Derek]

Ok, first impressions:
It was just as I hoped. Played a few games, it put me on the edge of my seat. It's far more like the feel of the first and second... however...
They chose to go with an exp/cash persistent element where you have to buy upgrades, weapons, new classes with exp/cash. Issue being, cost is set so high that you'd need a huge number of games to actually get everything.

That's kind of the idea of F2P. If you could unlock everything easily, no one would ever buy anything.

I've seen a lot of games go this route recently and it's rather disappointing they chose to do it with tribes. Sure, I'm one that would grind more than most people, but that shouldn't make a person automatically better. It's not a role playing game, it shouldn't have any major persistent elements beyond achievements, graphical things, and very small game play changing elements.
I don't know exactly how much the upgrades will play into the game, but it shouldn't make aspects of skill redundant.[/quote]
You could always just buy the things you want. If the game wasn't F2P, you would probably be looking at spending $50 for it (at launch) anyways. For that price you could probably unlock most of what you want, and it also permanently increases your experience gain (I think). While I certainly sympathize with your complaint about upgrades, the F2P model depends on people making purchases. So I look at these games as "How much would I spend on this if it were a retail game? How much will that get me in the in-game store?" And one of the nice things about F2P games is that you don't have to make a $50 bet on whether or not the game will be good. You can play most of the game for free and decide if it's worth an investment or not.

[Dthen]

Open beta! Woo!

[elminster]

Ok, first impressions:
It was just as I hoped. Played a few games, it put me on the edge of my seat. It's far more like the feel of the first and second... however...
They chose to go with an exp/cash persistent element where you have to buy upgrades, weapons, new classes with exp/cash. Issue being, cost is set so high that you'd need a huge number of games to actually get everything.

That's kind of the idea of F2P. If you could unlock everything easily, no one would ever buy anything.

Well, that's the thing... from looking at the costs to upgrade, you'd have to spend considerably more than the cost of a full game to get most things. You get 5500 gold for £35, around the price for what it would retail for. Now, with just the free classes I did a rough total of gold required to unlock the available things and it came to 10880. Considering it's less than half the total content, yet would cost roughly twice as much as the game would retail for.
So even if I wanted to pay four times what a game would retail for, I wouldn't even be able to unlock it all.

Some items at the moment cost 100k exp, given that you gain maybe a few hundred per game, you're looking at a few hundred games just to unlock single items, before even upgrading. The total exp required, is probably into the millions, requiring thousands of games to unlock.
I liked games like tribes partially because of the lack of grinding. I've had my fair share of grinding in mmorpgs, I don't want to have to play for months simply to grind stuff to be comparable to people who do, nor do I want to pay stupid amounts to unlock content that should come with the game.

Although... League of legends requires probably 2000-3500 games to unlock all.

[Derek]

Well, that's the thing... from looking at the costs to upgrade, you'd have to spend considerably more than the cost of a full game to get most things. You get 5500 gold for £35, around the price for what it would retail for. Now, with just the free classes I did a rough total of gold required to unlock the available things and it came to 10880. Considering it's less than half the total content, yet would cost roughly twice as much as the game would retail for.
So even if I wanted to pay four times what a game would retail for, I wouldn't even be able to unlock it all.

Some items at the moment cost 100k exp, given that you gain maybe a few hundred per game, you're looking at a few hundred games just to unlock single items, before even upgrading. The total exp required, is probably into the millions, requiring thousands of games to unlock.
I liked games like tribes partially because of the lack of grinding. I've had my fair share of grinding in mmorpgs, I don't want to have to play for months simply to grind stuff to be comparable to people who do, nor do I want to pay stupid amounts to unlock content that should come with the game.

Huh? I just ran through all the unlocks for the three starting classes and I only came to about 4500 gold. Extrapolating to the remaining six classes would be 13500. This doesn't count perks because perks are much easier to unlock with experience (the experience/gold ratio is much better), but they would only be a few thousand more, I think. In total it would certainly cost more than a retail game, but in practice I don't think you would buy all of it. You would buy what you really want, and unlock the rest. Keep in mind that if you make a purchase you'll gain more experience from then on, and you can also buy boosts (I don't know how much you would have to play to make boosts worthwhile versus buying gold).

From my experience as a free player you get about 500 experience per game (each game lasting about 20 minutes), plus 1200 per day (that you win at least one game). So at that rate it would take about five weeks to unlock one of the expensive weapons. I feel like this rate is enough to make me seriously consider buying a weapon that I really want, but without making me feel like it's absolutely necessary. Which I suppose is probably the ideal for a F2P game. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I feel they've struck a reasonable compromise between trying to make money and not making the game unfair to free players. (FTR, I've only unlocked one weapon, the Soldier spinfuser. I used experience.)

The real catch is that they're going to keep releasing new content. Or at least I think that's their plan. So it will be a constant game of catch-up.

Although... League of legends requires probably 2000-3500 games to unlock all.

Guess what game they're trying to copy.

[elminster]

Although... League of legends requires probably 2000-3500 games to unlock all.

Guess what game they're trying to copy.

Yeah, I can tell.

Well, at least in league of legends you get to try out new champs before buying them. Despite owning just over half the characters, I've played basically all of them. With tribes, I don't even know if a new weapon is something that I would need or like. It sucks if you've played for 5 weeks saving up to find out the weapon you buy isn't something you want.
I mean, when private servers come out I'd imagine people would be able to hack the game to try that stuff out (Possible could do it now depending what's client side), but you shouldn't have to do that to just find out what you're buying before actually buying it.

Also, I don't have an issue with League of Legends doing it so much because you can test things and/or find optimal combinations pretty easily. The main gripe I have with League of legends charging is for rune pages... which should just be a feature of the game. Most games don't charge you for just having ability to select between what you already bought before a game starts... thing is, you can change it outside of the game for free so it's really quite pointless to charge for it. It's more of an introduced inconvenience than extra feature. The previous code they had could have scaled, so it's not like they're charging for significant development time.

I did include the perks (Admittedly a lot, at 16x 160 per class) and cost to buy the other classes (Couldn't include any further costs since I don't know what they contain, but I can imagine).

[Bhelliom]

Yep, saw the ad for it, got excited, the saw that it had a huge smelly "Free 2 Play" turd smeared across it. Goddamn. Micro-transactions are more like micro-gouges. The entire F2P model can go to hell. If this game was released as a $60 retail game they would have had a sale purely from the Tribes 1 experience I had.

[Derek]

Well, at least in league of legends you get to try out new champs before buying them. Despite owning just over half the characters, I've played basically all of them. With tribes, I don't even know if a new weapon is something that I would need or like. It sucks if you've played for 5 weeks saving up to find out the weapon you buy isn't something you want.

This is a good point, hopefully they'll add some sort of trial system in the future.

I did include the perks (Admittedly a lot, at 16x 160 per class) and cost to buy the other classes (Couldn't include any further costs since I don't know what they contain, but I can imagine).

The perks are global. When you buy one, it's unlocked for all classes. I don't remember how much the classes cost, when the big patch came out a few weeks ago that completely overhauled the interface and unlock system I had enough experience to unlock all the classes with plenty left over. Before that patch the primary thing you unlocked was classes, and as a result I only had about six cheapest of them (out of 12 at the time). So I think classes are pretty cheap to unlock with experience now, but honestly I don't remember how much they were.

[Koa]

So, this came out, and I'm finding myself addicted. It's the most fun I've had in a multiplayer FPS since the olden days of Quake and CS.

The F2P model is fine. It can be frustrating to find that a specific unlock that worked really well in a specific scenario will take maybe 20 hours of gameplay if you aren't interested in opening your wallet, but everything can be eventually unlocked without paying for the game. The game is also very skill based. It's not like an MMO where you can buy a better weapon that will undoubtedly increase your DPS and give you a much better chance of success. The more skilled player will almost always win. The unlocks hardly matter in that regard.

[Larry]

Ah, I was wondering if there was a thread for this. Easily the most *fun* I've had since TF2 first came out.

To my eternal regret, I never played much of the first 2 Tribes games. You had to really get into them, be active in the community, and practice practice practice. They were fun, unique, and so far ahead of their time it was just... amazing. I'm determined to give this one a go, especially while the player base is still a bit noob.

It seems they've made skiing even easier, as I can spot a halfway decent route and get the flag at a good speed most times. Feels great sailing past all those deployable turrets.

As for the F2P thing, it actually works really well. For $30 I unlocked just about everything I wanted (though I may shell out another $10 to see if the Jackal really is OP). AAA titles in Australia are $90-110. And the money you spend is definitely not pay-to-win. It's more like pay-for-more-gameplay-variety. The 3 free classes are probably my most played classes. And upgrades can only be bought with XP, so if you had lots of cash and no skill you wouldn't be able to buy yourself better. I reckon they've nailed it. Except that it comes at the cost of having completely customisable loadouts like you had with T2.

Oh, and if you go to the 'target practice' training map you can select any class & weapon you like to try before you buy.

[Derek]

(though I may shell out another $10 to see if the Jackal really is OP).

It's pretty fucking OP.

[Koa]

I don't think the jackal is that bad until it's combined with the looter perk and smoke grenades.

[Derek]

I prefer stickies to smoke grenades. Take out a generator in three seconds or kill a heavy in two? Yes please. With safety third you can carry 5(!) at a time. But I'll certainly admit that the smoke grenades have their use.

But the Jackal is pretty crazy powerful. It's like if TF2's Spy had the Demoman's sticky launcher, but without a detonation delay. On the ground it can deal up to 1500 damage in one volley. In the air it's an undodgeable 250. This easily puts it on par with both spunfusors and SMGs in their strongest areas. Its also great for traps and flag defense. There is just no other weapon with nearly as much versatility. The only things it can't substitute for are the sniper rifles and mortars.

[Koa]

The way it functions makes it more of an ambush weapon, which is why I'm more inclined to say it's too strong when one can instantly stealth at will. It's probably still on the strong side, but if anything is clearly too powerful it's the plasma gun.

[Derek]

If you think the jackal is primarily an ambush weapon then you don't really know how to use it. Its certainly an excellent ambush weapon, but its also an excellent anti-ground, anti-air, and indoors weapon. As I said, its ridiculously versatile. I haven't had much experience with the plasma gun yet, I've only seen one person using it, but a lot of the weapons they've released recently have been leaning towards the OP side.

[Larry]

but a lot of the weapons they've released recently have been leaning towards the OP side.

ugh, I really hope they don't start doing that. You know, any more than they have already.

One thing that's started to irritate me is the lack of depth, around bases and vehicles. Inventories and vehicle pads can't be destroyed, turrets are pissweak, and the radar sensor things don't seem to do anything. Repairing the gen isn't a big deal as you spawn with whatever loadout you choose. And repair guns don't repair players.
The vehicles are a solo affair as well. I thought Tribes was all about team-oriented stuff.

[Derek]

ugh, I really hope they don't start doing that. You know, any more than they have already.

Agreed. I think what they had after the big update back in February (before the infiltrator update) was really good. Most of the unlocks were fairly balanced while providing good alternatives to their classes (although a few of those are sketchy as well, like the technician Thumper). But the infiltrator and raider updates have been awful.

One thing that's started to irritate me is the lack of depth, around bases and vehicles. Inventories and vehicle pads can't be destroyed, turrets are pissweak, and the radar sensor things don't seem to do anything. Repairing the gen isn't a big deal as you spawn with whatever loadout you choose. And repair guns don't repair players.
The vehicles are a solo affair as well. I thought Tribes was all about team-oriented stuff.

I agree with a lot of this. I think I would like to see the Beowulf tank require both a driver and a gunner, with maybe a little more HP to compensate. And I definitely want to see generators become more important. I think there is some hope though: Sunstar is a map where generators are important, and if you go to the custom server browser you can play naked CTF, in which you spawn as a weak Pathfinder (default weapons, no upgrades, no grenades) until you visit an inventory station. Sensors are already very important though. They're hard to keep up, but they make it much easier for your HoF to spot incoming cappers so he can chain them down on the way in. I would honestly rather have my sensors up than my turrets.

[Will]

One thing I think would be really good for vehicles is to allow people to get points for repairing them. That would give Techs more incentive to jump into the gunner seat on a Beowulf every so often.

[Derek]

One thing I think would be really good for vehicles is to allow people to get points for repairing them. That would give Techs more incentive to jump into the gunner seat on a Beowulf every so often.

I think some of this could be fixed by another thing that I think this game desperately needs: Voice chat support. The VGS system is nice, but no one is going to hear "Repair the vehicle" and actually respond to it. But if you could actually say "Hey, can you repair my tank?" you'll be much more likely to get a response. This applies to a lot of other things too: Calling out flag grabs and passes, asking for help on defense, or requesting specific help. If you're ever on a good TF2 server with all-talk off, you'll hear constant communication, and that's really where the teamwork comes from. This is what Tribes needs.