Tribes: Ascend - FPS announced by Hi-Rez Studios. - Page 12

http://forum.hirezstudios.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?p=568530#p568530 wrote:
1) Hitscan: We have been looking at this item. In the latest builds we are playing internally, we have converted a couple formerly hitscan weapons to projectile (the Nova Colt and Chaingun). We've also been working on several things to make our projectile-based weapons feel better. We'll be watching the numbers closely to assess the impact of these changes and make further adjustments as needed. Right now, I believe the Sniper Rifle, the Infiltrator's SMG and the Ranger's SMG as the only non-shotgun (longer range) hitscan weapons in the game ---> and all of those still have distance limits and damage falloff.

2) Lack of Friendly Fire: We believe that having "no friendly fire" is the most "pub friendly" format for the game and most appropriate and fun for quick matches in public matches. I expect Friendly Fire to be a server setting once we introduce Private Servers --> so players can choose a server with the format they like and more competitive crowds can establish friendly fire rules.

3) Loadouts: I think once we get all of the classes in the game and feeling good, the general concept of loadouts will not be an issue for the vast vast majority of players -- and in fact we already see that many players (including some Tribes veterans) respond very favorably to the classes once they get accustomed to them. That is not saying that work doesn't remain to get all of the classes feeling and good and balanced --> that is a major goal of our early beta cycle. Those players that were in Alpha will already notice a ton of changes and adjustments that have been made to the classes in preparation for closed beta.

4) Speedcap: Throughout nearly all of Alpha testing, there was no real speedcap in the game. In our very latest internal builds (including the one that pre-order customers will get to play later this week), there are in fact some limitations that are imposed at a class level that act effectively as speed caps (with different classes having different caps). It sounds like heresy, and maybe it is in the eyes of some players, but establishing some effective caps on each class has actually allowed us to make the classes a lot more interesting and the game much more broadly fun -- and it seems to solve (or at least make much better) some of the problems we experienced in Alpha that made many players feel very sluggish at low speeds (which was necessary in order to keep a small minority of the player base from reaching game-breaking speeds) . Putting top-end speed constraints into the game has allowed us to make the classes much more interesting, fun and specialized that at least I as a player (and many others) enjoy --> and there are still classes that can still totally go Mach 5 with their hair on fire. This will still be an incredibly fast game by almost any standard --> and in fact our experience is that the game plays much faster for most people since we put in the caps than it did before the caps (since the caps have allowed us to make it much easier for most people to get to more modest speeds). The current thought is that Private Servers would have a flag in which they could tweak a "multiple" on the speedcap --> so if you owned a private server, you could set a multiple of 1.2 to make the caps 20% higher, or set it to, say, 3.0 (as an example), to effectively make the caps go away. [Before you hate on it, please at least play the game in the latest builds].

5) FOV: There is an FOV slider on the settings menu. Not 100% sure of the issue.

6) Health Regeneration: We are trying to balance health regeneration around the levels we feel create the must fun "pub" experience in the game. Private Servers, once implemented, will have parameters to change the Health Regen values on that server.

7) Maps: Our maps continue to go through iteration and I'm sure we'll find many things in beta to help make them better. The Bella Omega and Arx Novina maps have gone through major changes that no one outside of the studio has seen --> and all the maps are being continually tweaked.

8) Modding: Modding is not on our roadmap at the moment. What is on the roadmap is a dedicated, professional dev team that will be continually supporting and making improvements to the game. We think that will offer the most value to the most players over the long haul, and things like server flags and other tools will give players a lot of freedom to tailor the game for themselves. I'd never rule out some form of modding in the game's history, but it's not work being currently planned for.

9) OOB Grid: I think most players in the Alpha (even Tribes vets) found this a much bigger issue on paper than it winds up being in the actual gameplay. That said, we will look at tweaking the OOB boundaries where we feel it really help the gameplay (we have tech limitations from entirely removing them).

10) Weak Disc Jumps: We've made this better and will continue to look on a class by class level whether we should ramp it up more.

11) Demo Functionality: This is planned functionality.

12) Spectator Mode: This is planned functionality.

13) Weapon Size: In general, the weapon size "issue" has tended to much bigger from those people watching videos or looking at screenshots than from people that have actually played the game. WE had several people in Alpha that were very vocal on this issue prior to playing the game that later said they did not find it a problem once they played. That said, some models have been adjusted some and we'll continue to look for opportunities to tweak if user feedback warrants it on a weapon by weapon basis.

14) Drop Speed: Something we've been looking at. MIxed opinions both internally and externally on this, from what I have gathered.

15) Grappler: We have decided to add a grappler to every class.

16) Visor Crack: A lot of people like it. I wouldn't rule out putting an option in around removing that one day, but we have a lot of stuff to get in the game before we look at that (to be perfectly honest).

[just joking on #15 :lol:. I wouldn't totally rule out having a grappler on a class at some point in the game's history, but it's not on the current roadmap]

On October 19 2011 00:19 Thereisnosaurus wrote:
presumably so they can use it as another metric for balance purposes. From what I've heard TA is very heavily influenced by LoL as far as a model, which means they're going to be regularly patching and introducing new content. Having more variables to adjust means they have more options in that balance process than health (which would be messy to tweak) and weapon/pack effects. I don't know if I agree, but I at least want to play the game a bit before judging. The recent videos I've seen suggest you can go pretty freaking fast if you want to, so that's fine with me ^^

On October 19 2011 00:59 Tachion wrote:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KSTJ2NN8UQQ&feature=player_embedded

Shrike in T2 was awesome

On October 20 2011 12:34 xDaunt wrote:
Having now played the game, I'll tell you that it is Tribes. No, it's not exactly the same as T1 and T2, but it's close enough. The class system is interesting and not as bad as I thought it was going to be.

The NDA is in place, so I can't give any details. That said, the game has promise.

On October 20 2011 12:43 Coriolis wrote:

Really? Because I've had about 5 people tell me the game is terrible and has far too many hitscan weapons as well as the speedcaps being crazy low.

On October 20 2011 12:55 xDaunt wrote:
There's no pleasing the purists. If it's not T1 with better graphics, they're going to bitch and moan. The same thing happened when T2 came out. The community basically split because T2 wasn't identical to T1.

Then people get to play it and realize it's not even that, but some form of Halo/CoD hybrid /w "skiing" and a feature rap that looks more at home in a RPG than a multiplayer FPS.

On October 20 2011 12:55 xDaunt wrote:


There's no pleasing the purists. If it's not T1 with better graphics, they're going to bitch and moan. The same thing happened when T2 came out. The community basically split because T2 wasn't identical to T1.

All that I am saying is that T:A is close enough to T1/T2 to be considered a Tribes game. With some further refinement, I think that it will be pretty good in its own right.

On October 21 2011 00:03 Tachion wrote:

T2 was awful when it came out. The only thing that saved it was T2 Classic which modded the game to play more like Tribes 1, but a lot of people had given up on it by then.
When you look at T1, T2, and T:V, and see all the mods/games that failed and succeeded, there is a pretty clear cut picture for what works and is most popular with the community. Whatever HI-Rez is doing is not it.
It's pretty obvious that they're trying to pick up a new player base, hopefully for them it's bigger than the one they're losing.