On August 20 2011 02:43 Bibdy wrote: Have they explicitly stated they want this to become an eSport, or is this all just wishful thinking?
According to TB they listen to feedback from a competitive perspective (TB gave the feedback that competitive players thought the weapons were too big and according to him they said that they would do something about that)
but an esport is probably too much for a relatively small company
Yeah specifically I told them the biggest issue with it (we got to play and film a full match) was the size of the weapons, since they obscured a lot of the screen so asked them to put in an option to disable weapon models for competitive play and/or resize them to player preference. They were very receptive to the idea.
Well thats good. Now if only they'll let us increase the FOV....But to be honest my personal opinion on tribes is that it makes a great competive game and a bad esport game. Mostly due to the team sizes, but the action can get pretty hectic at times.
Yeah I mentioned the FoV as well. FoV was pretty good in the demo I got to play tbh and I'm usually fairly sensitive on the subject of FoV.
But that's not even close to the biggest issue with the game ~_~
So how about you tell us what is? Personally, I've actually played it and it's pretty solid.
The biggest issue with the game is that its fundamentally closer to Halo than it is to Tribes. The 2-weapon loadout system is utterly retarded and throttles gameplay significantly. None of the traditional roles can be played adequately with only 2 weapons, and the justifications offered for the decision by HiRez have been completely inadequate, and worse, completely wrong.
The number of Tribes fundamentals that are broken in the game as it shows up in the con videos is frankly astonishing.
I've played the game, and spoken to other Tribes vets who have as well, and it is a clear sign of a problem that every single one of us gets angry over the course of a T:A game purely because its been dumbed down to a ridiculous level. There's no room for skill anymore, except in the abuse of temporarily overpowered weapons.
[edit] And now we have confirmation from HiRez that they didn't promise anything with regards to weapon size or draw variables.
On August 20 2011 02:43 Bibdy wrote: Have they explicitly stated they want this to become an eSport, or is this all just wishful thinking?
According to TB they listen to feedback from a competitive perspective (TB gave the feedback that competitive players thought the weapons were too big and according to him they said that they would do something about that)
but an esport is probably too much for a relatively small company
I've been a part of the competitive tribes community for 10+ years, and still browse the forums where all the old tribes vets hang out. Everything I've heard is exactly the opposite, in that they AREN'T listening to feedback from a competitive perspective. The tribes vets feel like their feedback is being largely ignored, and there's a huge worry that the game is going to be some public server only happy go lucky fuck fest abomination.
I'll give in to the fact that the tribes community can be a bit stubborn, but we all fell in love with Tribes 1 and T2 Classic, and Hi-Rez is taking such a bold move in changing so much of the game that we've grown to like.
Hey TB, I've been hanging out on the T: A forums gathering intel on this sort of thing. There's a whole bunch of whining, but here are few of the bigger complaints
1) The biggest original complaint was loadouts with only two weapons. Presumably this is to allow for both F2P sales and ease of use on a console controller, but it really struck a nerve with a lot of vets. One of the key skills at supermad high level tribes play was weapon cycling and using a whole arsenal of guns dynamically and constantly. Since every player broadly had access to the same arsenal regardless of their job, players learned to specialise in skills and techniques, rather than gunplay. Removing that feeling of an even playing field gun-wise really hurt a lot of people's ideals of tribes as a game which was defined not by mastering the pew-pew, but the subtleties of movement, location, health and so forth.
Another comment I've heard is that it detracts from players feeling like supermen, which tribes always made them feel like in the past, flying through the air at a gajillion miles an hour dispensing obscene and proliferous carnage. the 2 weapon system, particularly since it's generally only one main weapon and a sidearm, can't do that so well.
That said, comments from the same vets who have tried out the game have been overwhelmingly turn-around positive or at least optimistic.
2) People hate having customisation taken away from them, especially longtime fans who want to dig deep. Even I admit this is not a 'good' thing, even if necessary. There was a surprisingly good idea on the forums that HR should sell a onetime custom loadout package that you equipped as you saw fit and then locked into a new custom class. It didn't receive any acknowledgement from the devs (who are rather quiet by today's standards) but a lot of support from rookies and vets alike, so it might see some development.
3) A lot are complaining that the skiing is a little bit slow, with some justification. Energy drain seems far faster than in previous games, terrain angles are shallower from maps we've seen, disc jumping gives less velocity from the few instances we've seen and there seems to be a built in speed cap. Competitive tribes was all about movement and ski routes so people are worried, especially since this is not something that can be toggled in map options like, say, regenerating health or generator destruction. It's not a woe is me style complaining, generally just some mumbled comments about 's'not like it used to be'
4) the big one that continues to this day is the predominance of hitscan/fast projectile weapons. According to the team there are actually no hitscan ballistic weapons, only the phase and sniper rifle are hitscan weapons. The bullet weapons still have travel time, but it's pretty crazy fast. Obviously this worry is out of fear that such weapons will make the skillful use of traditional weapons like the GL and spinfusor redundant- the tribes chaingun had slower projectiles and so you needed to be good at leading even with that, but people worry now that it'll become a game of spinfusoring people as they land and then cleaning them up with your pistol or what have you in the air. More reliable but less skillful.
Interestingly, a lot of vets have fixated on the arx buster (the 3 shot sticky grenade launcher) as a really cool concept. One of the forum petitions was to have every loadout include a spinfusor or arx buster, giving them the ability to discjump (or nade jump). In competitive play, heavy players in particular who couldn't get momentum by DJing were ridiculously easy targets outside of base, so some are worrying this will be the case in T:A, only those classes with fusor will be viable. It's not going to happen, but again, it comes back to this notion of movement skill being critical, which the current builds aren't showing.
The initial loadouts we were shown almost all had one projectile weapon (disc, arx, GL, missile, mortar) and one ballistic weapon (pistol, shotgun, SMG etc). People were happy with this, but they don't like classes like the ranger (in particular the ranger in fact) that seem to be essentially just a tribesified CoD class. I can see the value in giving new players to the franchise something a bit more familiar to get their teeth cut with personally, but many vets feel that in the hands of a good player, the potential to do reliable damage with both weapons is just too solid. To use a starcraft analogy, it's kind of like if we gave terrans the goliath back. It's not 'overpowered' per-se, but it answers too many problems so it would detract from strategic thinking and dynamic play. No gun in tribes was all purpose, you had to use a combination on the fly to get things done, which is where a lot of the gun-end of skill came in. You had a set of very contextually powerful weapons, but none that were reliably useful. Using them at the right time in the right place was critical and, for a spectator, spectacular.
In a sense the loadout system achieves the same purpose in that by limiting weapons it places players more firmly in roles that they can fulfill given their limited arsenal, but vets strongly feel if there's going to be an all purpose gun/class like the assault rifle, all classes should have it or none. In fact, most feel that all classes should have a spinfusor, period. That's probably just nostalgia though.
As to me, I really like what I've seen so far. I think the competitive aspect of the game is going to hinge far more on how HR implements game modes (16v16 is too big for Esports I think, they need a 5v5 -7v7 mode to fit the 'group of friends+ viable paid team' niche that Moba and CS style games show) than the classes within the game. I'd also like to see more creative classes, if limited capabilities are the order of the day. Most of the ones we have so far feel... dull? I dunno, but they lack the grace and charm some units in SC2 or heroes in mobas have. I want to see classes like a chaff-monkey who can smoke for their flag man on a run, a sapper who specialises in knocking out base defenses, a support class that can re-arm and repair an attack squad during prolonged sieges etc. These strike me as 'pick your flavour of how you kill guys' not 'this is a battlefield role in the greatest team shooter ever made'. it's a smart choice to focus your launch lineup on upfront carnage makers, but for a competitive scene to grow, more specialist kits need to be derived I think, at least for the big 16v16 games.
I'm going to give this a try, but I have a strong feeling that I will have to compare it to other modern shooters in order to enjoy it, rather than Tribes 1.
On August 26 2011 17:29 TotalBiscuit wrote: Explain why. A lot of the blustering I've seen so far from "tribes vets" has had literally no evidence to back it up at all. Why is this a bad thing?
What, precisely, do you mean by "this"?
On the assumption you mean the picture of the loadouts, here we go:
Fundamentally fixed loadouts add nothing to the game at best, and subtract from it at worst. I vaguely understand that loadouts are a good way to monetize a F2P game, but given that HiRez claims the loadouts were decided before the F2P decision was made, that justification is out, and nothing else remotely acceptable remains.
Why, you might ask, are fixed loadouts bad? Because Tribes is a game that is unique among FPS games in that, while players perhaps specialize into roles like LD/HO/Capper, no team can be successful or even effective with players locked into individual roles. In my time playing comp T2, I was almost exclusively an LD player - but I cannot count the number of times I had to grab a flag, disrupt defense, fly shrikes, or take up a midfield role simply because the game situation demanded it. This is even more pronounced for roles that aren't broad to begin with, like Farmers or HO - both of whom can, at any point in a game, be required to chase, dispute flag grabs, go on offense, grab the flag (less so for Farmers), etc etc.
Fixed loadouts, especially with the loadouts shown, mean that certain roles are impossible to play with anything like the versatility required. Now, in the interests of arguing fairly, I can't really bring the 2-weapon limitation into my argument against fixed loadouts, so lets assume fixed loadouts with the traditional 3-4-5 weapon system from T1/T2:
HiRez have stated they think that the loadouts add some strategy to the game, because people have to pick the loadouts they bring in to a given match. I actually agree with this, at least in theory - it obviously is an extra strategical decision. It remains to be seen if it actually adds fun decisions, but thats in the future. However, none of this is improved by having fixed loadouts that have to be purchased. At the end of the day, the comp scene will have the best players to touch the game. Devs, while perhaps good players, have rarely been at that level - so how the hell is the HiRez dev team going to ensure that they have all the loadouts that are considered necessary by the comp scene available for purchase immediately? They can't. Thats not even remotely as hard as having all the loadouts that are considered fun by the community at large necessary - I made some utterly retarded loadouts in T2 that were nonetheless barrels of fun in pub games, and I can't do that with a fixed loadout system.
The argument against the 2-weapon system is essentially similar - except significantly more powerful. You cannot play LD in the way that it has traditionally been played without a Disc/Chaingun baseline on all defenders. The 2-weapon system thus forces prospective LD to pick a specialized role - lets say a sniper. In the loadouts seen, there is no loadout with a Sniper Rifle and a Disc. Thus, against a competent player of any kind with a disc, an LD using this loadout is utterly incapable of prevailing without giving ground constantly to maintain range - and if you do that, you've already failed in your role as an LD, because there is no way you can maintain proper positioning to dispute cap attempts or chase cappers.
This has been written mostly from the perspective of an LD because, as said, that was almost all I played. However, Tribes as it has traditionally been played absolutely requires a Disc/Chain baseline on all players* - otherwise, players are so specialized into their roles that games become RPS-fests where each player picks a loadout to counter another player.
The end result is that every player is countered by another player - balance, right? Yes, but the fact that you're countered places a throttle on your gameplay options, meaning that the game proceeds in a balanced fashion, but the box of possible gameplay has been restricted significantly.
It is, I suppose, possible that fixed loadouts and the 2-weapon system have been fun in testing for competitive players, but I quite seriously doubt it. Until evidence of such is seen, it's foolish to assume the less likely of two alternatives.
Fixed loadouts are bad for Tribes, and 2-weapon loadouts are even worse. That is why that screenshot is, by itself, a massive indictment of HiRez and T:A's design team.
*There is one exception to this: MO, which is distinctly specialized towards interior combat and thus profits from dropping the chain for something else, like a plasma or nade launcher.
Originally Posted by Laundry View Post Here's my biggest complaint. HiRez is focusing on making Tribes Ascend into a "class-based" shooter. This actually makes a lot of sense, seeing as how 'classes' have implicitly arisen just out of the Tribes gameplay itself in the form of roles that people play. The big ones that come to mind are Capper, HO, LD, HD/HoF, and Farmer, as well as a myriad of less important roles.
So my biggest question is why are all of the classes that are in this game so ambiguous? The obvious classes are RIGHT FUCKING THERE! What the fuck am I supposed to do with a medium that has an arx buster and a pistol and a sensor jammer pack? On top of that, the class is named "Scrambler", as if that's somehow indicative of what I'm supposed to use it for?
It would make about a million times more sense if they had a loadout called "Light Defense 1", and then optional loadouts called "Light Defense 2" and "Light Defense 3" that I could earn or purchase. And of course I'm not really complaining about the names, as they could call those classes whatever the fuck RPG words they want as long as the roles of the classes were clear. But they fucking aren't.
Sigh.
The class based system, and limited weapon selections are pigeon holing players into extremely specific roles. In other Tribes games you could carry a laser rifle, disc, and cg, and be a LD sniper who could also chase and duel off enemy HO. In T:A, you can't even carry a laser rifle and cg, or laser rifle and disc. You can't chase with a pistol, you can't fight off enemy HO, you're a fucking sniper and that's that.
They're trying to add more variety to the game by adding all these different classes, but they're actually extremely limiting to the people using them compared to the old 3 weapon configurable loadouts we used to have.
On this youtube channel you cna find all the casts of the current tournament. http://www.youtube.com/user/SirCr4igS unfortunately the only one with my team on it we lost all 3 maps .
Whilst i had high hopes for this game, my hopes are sinking as each day passes
The dev team is not what it used to be
Pretty much, global agenda is royally screwed right now, and they are screwing tribes in exactly the same way. They don't listen to their community at all, and it is really hurting them
The game doesnt look bad, and I dont even hate the idea that I cant customize classes [wasnt that how starsiege was? I havent played since I was a kid. I still play t2 though ofc] but only two wepons is complete fucking garbage. Three minimum is required. How am I support to dog fight without a GL, chaingun and disc launcher? Completely ridiculous.
Nice, I didn't know someone made a clip from that :D Who are you btw kzn ;o you seem to know your shit, what was your tribes name?
I went by a variety of names in european T2, all of which I am too embarrassed to admit to publicly.
Ahah, yeah 10 years ago is a long time... no one wants to be remembered on the internet; for good reasons because we're all idiots. I read some posts I made in like 2003 or 2004 on other forums and I facepalm pretty hard. Stupid kids.
I'm calling it right now. This game is going to be awesome. I personally think 2 weapons is enough, I have no problem with the weapon reduction. Some people will like this others won't so yeah, not much to say about this. (My reason for liking this is pretty much that I find it less realistic to carry 3 things with you. I know it's a lame excuse, no need to tell me that, but that's something that really irks me, when you just randomly carry weapons up your ass lol. Main and sidearm seems just right to me.)
About listening to older tribes players, I'm pretty sure they are. On their facebook they posted a link to a vet talking about how he liked the game but thought it was perhaps too slow(although maybe he wasnt a REAL vet, idk), and that skiing need to be faster and so on. If they themselves posted that on their facebook that spells good things. And sure enough, when the beta was delayed, they stated that they wanted to add/fix some things and that includes the speed of the game/skiing and junk(would assume making it faster. I can't imagine it being made slower), so we'll see what they do.
Also people saying that it will only be servers through HighRes, I'm not sure that's true. I just watched an interview where it is stated that a planned feature to help esports, along with spectator modes and all that, are private servers. Yeah you gotta log in through hi rez to make sure you're not hacking and so forth, but you can then start a private server.
Interview:
The game will no doubt be different, the biggest difference imo being the whole class thing. The way I see it though, this will make the classes unique and playing with one class will feel very different than playing with the other. Seems to bring more diversity to the game and allow for very different skill types. Not saying the older tribes didn't have this, but I'm just looking at it though a very reasonable positive side. Classes will also encourage noobs to play their role instead of just going out and doing whatevers.
Idk, even though I'm pretty hyped about this game, I havn't been following it as much as maybe other tribes fans have. So if I'm wrong about something or maybe there's another change that seems bad that I don't know about, just let me know.
So it's been confirmed that they screwed up skiing like they did in T:V. Instead of bunny hopping you get 0 friction skiing along the ground. I aired my concerns about it on the top of the previous page, pretty sad it's now a reality =/ Tribes Ascend is like unwrapping a Christmas present that is the exact size and shape of the only thing you've ever wanted, and it turns out to be a punch in the gut.
EPT![[image loading]](http://www.nofrag.com/images/005e89.jpg)
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