Tribes: Ascend

[Lu]

I PM'd you a key like yesterday, man.

Edit: Fuck, something went wrong, apparently! My bad! Check your PM now.

[Murdoc]

Damn the beta is going on? How dare the devs not give me a key!

Ah well, hope it's awesome.

[brkl]

I'm definitely interested in trying it. There's a high probability I plain won't have the skills to really play it though. Thanks a ton, Pirate

[Lu]

Damn the beta is going on? How dare the devs not give me a key!

Ah well, hope it's awesome.

You could buy it for 30 dollars to get instant beta access, but I don't know if that is worth it to you.

[Orv]

I have literal piles of beta keys if anyone else is interested in T:A.

[Gwardinen]

I'm somewhat interested. I never really played the older Tribes games, but I'm curious as to what all the fuss is about. Do we have ways to play together, so that I can hide my noobitude behind other people's noobitude?

[Drath]

I've been pretty much luke warm with this one until I seen the gameplay trailer a couple days ago. I played the original very briefly, but after seeing the openess, speed and timed shooting, i'm really surprised this really hasn't been how first person shooters eventually went. I guess it's similar to Halo in terms of landscape, but gameplay wise, most shooters you are a static grunt on the ground. This takes me back to the Quake 3 and Half-Life Deathmatch days of speed and precision and I love it. I'm in!

Video in question:

wAwt-hMNFlw

[Patters]

I have literal piles of beta keys if anyone else is interested in T:A.

I paid in, playing a ton of it.

Entry is now free if you have a Facebook account http://www.facebook.com/tribesascend?sk=app_126443417467788

I'm loving the combination of hit-scan and projectile based weapons, though the sniper and juggernauts seem to be killing machines compared to other classes. So if any EU people are in and want to play I will.

[Murdoc]

SIGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

It kind of feels like a tribes game, but god damn do I HATE leveling in a FPS. At least give me the three basic classes to choose from.

So far I have not seen place-able turrets, force fields, scanners, cloaking, laptops, and the game mentioned packs, but no idea where those are so I can at least spice up my one fing class until I play 10 hours(exaggeration...?) a bit.

Very disappointed that I'm old.

edit: there are a lot of things I can vaugely remember wanting in Tribes 1-2 that aren't here, but nothing else seemed to have replaced it except some modernization of the fps and payment model(gold, tokens? xp?)

Which is strange because Im sure Global Agenda had a lot of the neat things I wanted for Tribes 1-2 that they could have used for this... somehow, flawed as it was, Global Agenda felt more like what I would want Tribes to be today then Ascend.

[Patters]

I paid in, playing a ton of it.

Entry is now free if you have a Facebook account http://www.facebook.com/tribesascend?sk=app_126443417467788

I'm loving the combination of hit-scan and projectile based weapons, though the sniper and juggernauts seem to be killing machines compared to other classes. So if any EU people are in and want to play I will.

More has been played, more has been enjoyed. I love how the Hirez have listened to the player base and made changes accordingly. Most recently:

• Making all Automatic weapons be projectile, opposed to hitscan (they have a travel time)
  
• adding momentum to projectile speed, i.e. sppedy thing shoots forward, disc is faster than if the player were stationary.
  

[Thrik]

Well, it certainly looks like Tribes. I absolutely loved Tribes 2 and spent a borderline disturbing amount of time on it, so I'd love nothing more than for this to deliver the kind of experiences I enjoyed in that game.

To those unsure about what Tribes actually is, the video above sums it up pretty much perfectly but it's essentially Team Fortress on a really big scale. You capture flags from each others' bases, except those bases are often quite big and full of things like generators to take out which disable the bases' automated turrets, force fields, etc; also the bases are often separated by large expanses of land, Battlefield-style. Add to this an old-school emphasis on projectile weapons and fast movement, throw in some jetpacks, and you've got a simple yet awesome formula.

Here's an overly dramatic Tribes 2 video that shows how it played (it's actually kind of mid-boggling this was out in 2001):

With that said, I'm not interested in the beta because I'd rather let them get all the balance tweaks and everything else out the way; also, I'm coming to this from a very cautious place because I got excited about Tribes: Vengeance and it ended up being a massive flop. Not actually that bad a game, but a flop nonetheless. Tribes without a strong community is no Tribes at all.

I do have a beta key though, so if anyone wants it you'd better get PMing me.

Edited December 16, 2011 by Thrik

[Orv]

Oh gods, that shitty spinfusor skin in that video haunts my dreams.

[Thrik]

Haha, I hadn't noticed that. I do recall having some weird skins in Tribes 2 myself, though.

[Orv]

It was the only skin I ever installed for T2, because Diamond Sword has always been awesome, and it just bothered me so much for the week or so that I had it on that it kept getting me killed. Took it off, did a lot better again.

[Gwardinen]

Anyone still playing this? A friend of mine mentioned he fancied trying it so I think I'm going to give the beta a go.

[Thrik]

I'm still holding off for the final release. Apparently they recently changed loads of stuff and there seem to be almost weekly dramatic changes to weapon balance and such, so I'd rather just wait until it's all figured out.

[Orv]

I'm still playing near-daily.

[Chaddicus]

I have been playing Tribes: Ascend a lot lately. It seems to be picking up steam, especially since it is now in Open Beta.

I actually watched a couple competitive matches on nasl.tv last night and found it more entertaining than I thought I would have. I doubt it will ever be as popular an e-sport as StarCraft II, but I love that the game is still in Beta and it already has a competitive scene.

[Gwardinen]

Well I dunno how solidly implemented any community stuff is yet, but my username should be Gwardinen if anyone wants to add me (if that is even a thing yet).

[Orv]

It's basically friends list and joining on friends at this point. I'll add you next I'm playing.

[Thrik]

OK, I am now officially 10,000% sold on this game after seeing this:

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Katabatic was my absolute favourite map in Tribes 2, and seeing it reproduced (I didn't even know old maps were featured) in a pretty faithful way along with the old sound effects and everything has twigged at about a million nostalgic memories of playing this map to death in my younger days.

What seals the deal is that the video doesn't show much action, but shows a flag grab-and-return that's pretty much exactly the same route I always used to take.

[Chaddicus]

Chaddicus here. Add me up, thumbs!

[Thrik]

A final release date is upon us. April 12th. They've also put out this Dead Island parody, even includes a bit of dub heh:

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Although this is the one that really shows what Tribes is all about (Projectiles!):

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Can't wait! Might delve into the open beta before then seeing as it's now going to be in a reasonably final state, we'll see. :cool:

[Orv]

So after much internal and external deliberation, T:A is not Tribes.

What it is is the best thing we're going to get after the financial and reception fiasco that was T:V.

The maps are too small, the physics make no fucking sense (can expand on if you'd like), the classes don't bother me as much as they once did but are still restrictive, generators don't mean anything and a host of other problems.

Do I wish someone would just wholesale port T2 over to Cry3 or UE4? Sure. Is it going to happen? No. So I'll continue to play T:A as my FPS of choice for the foreseeable future. I can't promise I'll play a lot of it when MechWarrior Online rolls around though.

[Thrik]

I have actually been playing it a little and I would agree that the map sizes seem a bit unsatisfactory. Some of my fondest memories of Tribes 2 involve exploring the maps, finding unusual new attack routes, and just generally immersing myself in the environment. With T:A all the maps are very small and more akin to Tribes 2's smaller ones, which I rarely played. There's no real sense of exploration at all, something I like in any FPS I play.

Physics-wise I'm not completely sure whether or not I'm happy with it. It does seem like energy is quite scarce and so you can't be as airborne, and when you run out of energy you drop like a rock — I recall Tribes 2 being more 'soupy' and I preferred that, although as I understand it most Tribes 1 fans (who are spectacularly vocal) were totally turned off by Tribes 2's physics.

Weapons and everything else seem pretty faithful, although admittedly I've not really touched vehicles as I can't see the point with the maps being so small. Within my first 30 minutes of playing all my old spinfusor skills came flooding back and I basically owned the whole server.

So for now I'm going to probably take a seat and see how it evolves, because as it seems a TF2-esque F2P model is being pursued I expect that new maps and adjustments will be made with time. Indeed, halfway through Tribes 2's lifespan the physics model was completely changed so I'm used to things being mixed up.

Basically if they get bigger maps in there and maybe be a bit more generous with energy (at least for the lighter classes), I'll be happier.

I agree though, I'd love to see Tribes 2 essentially just brought up to date and re-released. Unfortunately a lot of the Tribes community wants the same thing, but for Tribes 1. So I guess the best we're ever going to get is a mish-mash of what the two audiences want, potentially pleasing nobody completely.

I guess PlanetSide 2 is likely to be the next sci-fi FPS I truly get into.