Hi-Rez buys Tribes IP; plans MMO

[Gets]

I'm not an old Tribes player, I used to play the Quakes in my youth instead. So you can imagine I wouldn't have coughed up money for VIP status if Tribes Ascend didn't have instant hit guns, because at least those suckered me into believing I was good at this game because I could frag a couple of dudes to form a killstreak as Ranger. After trying some of the other classes I found out how wrong I was. Seeing more experiences players grab the flag and cap within half a minute baffled me at first, but I can't say there is anything I could gripe with. Vehicles seem iffy, maybe, but at least I don't feel bad about unlocking the Juggernaut when once in a while an enemy vehicle comes too close.

But yeah, when everyone else is skiing across the map like deadly angel ballerinas I'm falling against hillsides into near fullstops and breaking my legs. Forever on generator repair duty, I guess. Oh god another Infiltrator VDG VDG!

[Malakili]

I'm not an old Tribes player, I used to play the Quakes in my youth instead. So you can imagine I wouldn't have coughed up money for VIP status if Tribes Ascend didn't have instant hit guns, because at least those suckered me into believing I was good at this game because I could frag a couple of dudes to form a killstreak as Ranger

I'm sure this is exactly their reasoning for being in the game, ubt the other side of the coin in that people are can ski with the best of them AND have quake-like hit scan accuracy are just godly right now.  There is no reason not to play Ranger or Raider right now with exception of pathfinders running the flag.  Everything else is just that shitty by comparison.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Flag defense was hopeless in vanilla

You could chase most runs with the exception of a few extreme back-cap routes, and this is also what the laser rifle was for if your inventory stations happened to be up and your ping happened to be low. But generally a disc-jump and decent skiing of your own would allow you to chase the flag off most routes. It was definitely much easier to kill the capper by throwing a mine and exploding his face directly on the flag, but it was not the only way.

Also people eventually got good enough with the chaingun to take out cappers pretty efficiently while chasing, despite it being horrible innaccurate in general. Apparently the assault rifle is not quite so innaccurate.

Personally I miss the existence of proper insane back-cap routes, but oh well.

[Gets]

Today, after making my last reply, I played a bit and discovered the obvious reason instant hit guns turn into a boon in first person shooters. Aimbots.

[Fordel]

I'm not an old Tribes player, I used to play the Quakes in my youth instead. So you can imagine I wouldn't have coughed up money for VIP status if Tribes Ascend didn't have instant hit guns, because at least those suckered me into believing I was good at this game because I could frag a couple of dudes to form a killstreak as Ranger

I'm sure this is exactly their reasoning for being in the game, ubt the other side of the coin in that people are can ski with the best of them AND have quake-like hit scan accuracy are just godly right now.  There is no reason not to play Ranger or Raider right now with exception of pathfinders running the flag.  Everything else is just that shitty by comparison.

Which turns me off because I played Tribes because it wasn't a Quake-like game.

Though I did used to get a kick out of the guy who would be circle strafing in the middle of a map in total irrelevance because JumpJets, how do they work! 

[MahrinSkel]

Today, after making my last reply, I played a bit and discovered the obvious reason instant hit guns turn into a boon in first person shooters. Aimbots.

And now HiRez finds out why T1 had only one hit-scan weapon, and that one had major drawbacks.  Counter-Strike and Quake aimbots were legion at the time, and they made everything but the laser rifle a projectile as a way of immunizing Tribes against them (it was a subject of some discussion, as many people disliked T1 for this feature).

I had assumed they had done something clever, maybe involving the protected memory features of the newer versions of Windows.  Apparently not.

--Dave

[Malakili]

Today, after making my last reply, I played a bit and discovered the obvious reason instant hit guns turn into a boon in first person shooters. Aimbots.

And now HiRez finds out why T1 had only one hit-scan weapon, and that one had major drawbacks.  Counter-Strike and Quake aimbots were legion at the time, and they made everything but the laser rifle a projectile as a way of immunizing Tribes against them (it was a subject of some discussion, as many people disliked T1 for this feature).

I had assumed they had done something clever, maybe involving the protected memory features of the newer versions of Windows.  Apparently not.

--Dave

To be fair, aimbots can be made for projectile weapons, hell, thats how the base turrets currently work 

Seriously though, fuck that shit.  I've seen aimbots and speed hacks now, my reaction is just to quit, hopefully there is some plan in place for dealing with this.

[Malakili]

But yeah, when everyone else is skiing across the map like deadly angel ballerinas I'm falling against hillsides into near fullstops and breaking my legs. Forever on generator repair duty, I guess. Oh god another Infiltrator VDG VDG!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUhv_3n0_tI (Skiing 101)

[MahrinSkel]

Today, after making my last reply, I played a bit and discovered the obvious reason instant hit guns turn into a boon in first person shooters. Aimbots.

And now HiRez finds out why T1 had only one hit-scan weapon, and that one had major drawbacks.  Counter-Strike and Quake aimbots were legion at the time, and they made everything but the laser rifle a projectile as a way of immunizing Tribes against them (it was a subject of some discussion, as many people disliked T1 for this feature).

I had assumed they had done something clever, maybe involving the protected memory features of the newer versions of Windows.  Apparently not.

--Dave

To be fair, aimbots can be made for projectile weapons, hell, thats how the base turrets currently work 

Seriously though, fuck that shit.  I've seen aimbots and speed hacks now, my reaction is just to quit, hopefully there is some plan in place for dealing with this.

The turrets have the advantage of running on the server.  Tribes also short-circuited the hacking urge by allowing extensive scripting, but locking out the information you'd need for an aimbot from the client-side scripts.  I think it's underestimated how much that kept the kind of player that can't help but fiddle harmlessly occupied (usually harmless, there were some script-based game-breakers but they never got too out of hand).  The only part of my T1 client that was stock was the main render window.

--Dave

[Fordel]

I played my Tribes stock, well I did have a custom clan skin I suppose 

[MahrinSkel]

I played my Tribes stock, well I did have a custom clan skin I suppose 

I had all kinds of stuff.  I used a Saitek Cyborg joystick in my left hand as a keyboard replacement (this was before the Speedpad, which I got one of the original Belkin N50's of), and wrote a bunch of scripts that were linked to it.  XY axis control was the replacement for the WASD, with 96 discrete zones (32 directions and 3 speeds of movement).  Hat switch controlled my grenades (down) mines (left) sniper zoom (up, also custom, opened inside the regular window with a 90X extreme widescreen) and quick-reverse (down, spun me 180 degrees in 1/50th of a second).  I had a loadout manager script that I selected my active loadout from the keyboard and I could just walk into the inventory station, it would never even open the screen, just spin me around in my new kit and I'd walk right back out.  Trigger was ski-mode (jump every 1/10th of a second).

I had scripts for waypointing the location of the flags every time anyone on my team saw them (and marking the last 10 seconds of tracked movement on the tactical map).  Another that would record my path for the last 60 seconds with 1/50th of a second accuracy, when I found a particularly clever ski route I'd save it, then practice it on empty servers until I could do it blindfolded.  I had scripts for mortaring particular points from particular other points starting from a known aiming point, I had custom reticles for every weapon and a script to change them automatically.  My health and energy bars were 1 pixel wide and 20 high, placed just below and to each side of the center, and my ammo number was directly below.  When I equipped the laser rifle and brought up my zoom window, the tactical map opened in the upper right corner zoomed to my location and everything within 300 meters would be visible (nobody was going to sneak up on me),

Some of those I wrote from scratch, the others were extensively modified.  Yes, I was hard-core (ranked 144th at one point, and I'm pretty sure most of the people ahead of me were using compromised servers because around number 80 the stats became literally impossible in vanilla, number 1 supposedly had 3000 kills  and 80 flag caps in 30 seconds).

--Dave

[Malakili]

number 1 supposedly had 3000 kills  and 80 flag caps in 30 seconds).

--Dave

Pfft. Casual.

[Ice Cream Emperor]

Wait, what -- what ranking was this, that was based on... individual kills?

But yeah, one of the major selling points of Tribes 1 in competitive play was that it was nearly impregnable* in terms of hacking, but extremely moddable. It's hard to imagine how many keyboards would have been been broken worldwide if not for the creation of ski-scripts, for example -- I still remember hammering away nonstop on my spacebar, no doubt planting the seeds for carpal tunnel syndromes of the future. And of course the Prestopack inventory management and flag-targetting stuff was crucial as well. I never went in for the crazy UI-reskins and reticle-mods and the like, but a lot of them were definitely awesome.

And I still remember the day Presto released his april fool's 'aimbot' script, and you could go around on the public servers and see random dudes standing in open fields swinging their spinfusors around like they were having a seizure.


* Some notable (and memorable) exceptions, of course, like the flag-finding hack that replaced the client-side textures for the flag with a new version like a thousand miles tall, and similar mods for deployable inventory stations, etc. I still remember the shitstorm when that hit the competitive scene. T:A at least has that one covered by just letting everyone see the flag location at seemingly all times.

[MahrinSkel]

I forget the name of the site that did the rankings, it polled the servers and used that data to rank players on kills and caps.  After I went to Renegades it was useless because there were three different versions it couldn't tell from each other (Renegades, UltraRenegades, and TribesRPG).

Yeah, the PrestoPack was a lot of it, I added in the history-tracking for his flag auto-waypointer, then realized the same thing could give me ski-routes.  Somebody else made the base sniping window script, I refined it and combined it with a modified version of someone else's tactical window script (ate framerate like crazy, but I had good hardware and only used it for sniping or quick looks to check out the flag history to see which way they were heading when they disappeared), making it a narrow strip let me see most of the standard window while still easily scanning for targets.  The auto-mortar script was someone else's, I just tweaked it a little.  I wrote my own joystick support script because I didn't like the standard one (only 8 directions, and only full-speed).

Other than that, I found or made UI replacements that took up minimal space and put the most critical information (health/energy/ammo) where I didn't need to look for it.  Unobstructed view was the key, if something stirred in the distance fog I didn't want to even have to *think* before I knew what it was and sent a disc or a grenade that direction (I was *nasty* with a grenade launcher).

Never got into clan play, just didn't have the patience for the politics and after disc-jumping heavies started to dominate vanilla, I switched to Renegades.

--Dave

[HaemishM]

I tried this the past weekend and I can say I was not impressed. It's pretty but I am super shitty at the game and not really sure I care to get better. I was never very good with the spinfusor anyway (I KNOW HERESY RIGHT?!), but having to get like 18000 tokens to unlock a class that doesn't use the fusor AND doesn't suck it like the Ranger when I'm getting 30-50 tokens a game because of how hard I suck? No thanks. I don't think this is something I can dedicate myself to enough to enjoy the game.

[Malakili]

I tried this the past weekend and I can say I was not impressed. It's pretty but I am super shitty at the game and not really sure I care to get better. I was never very good with the spinfusor anyway (I KNOW HERESY RIGHT?!), but having to get like 18000 tokens to unlock a class that doesn't use the fusor AND doesn't suck it like the Ranger when I'm getting 30-50 tokens a game because of how hard I suck? No thanks. I don't think this is something I can dedicate myself to enough to enjoy the game.

Just buy 5 dollars worth of tribes gold and buy the Raider, all your problems will be solved...until they nerf him at least.  That being said, I think your point is actually right on - this game is probably not worth playing for free for a lot of people simply because of how long it takes to unlock things.   I did buy the pre-order and I'm quite happy about that. Otherwise I would only have one new class after playing daily for nearly an entire month, and it would be one either Pathfinder or Juggernaut since they are now reduced in price.  The exp/token gain without a booster is absurdly slow, and if you are going to spend money on a booster you might as well just buy tribes gold and unlock the loadouts you want in the first place. 

Also, just as an FYI token gain isn't related to performance, just game length, so thats just how fast you get them, for anyone.   There has been some discussion on relating it to performance on the beta forums, but there has to my knowledge been no developer statement on the matter.  Frankly, I think the rate needs to be increased across the board, or they just sell the game in a box and be done with it.  It irks me a little that I bought Tribes 2 for 50 bucks when it was brand new, and got the ability to customize my loadouts any way I wanted, AND didn't have to level up my "loadouts" in order to make them better - they were just as powerful as they were out of the box.   Now, if I were to seriously want to own all the loadouts in the long run I'll end up having to pay MORE money than I did then, and get a lot less in return for it.

I don't regret the 30 bucks I spent on the pre-order, but there is a good chance I'm never going to spend another cent on the game.

[Mrbloodworth]

Unlock time is my major complaint too. They did just lower the price of two classes in the last patch however. But the time between getting new stuff is long, and everyone likes new stuff. I do have faith in Highrez however, they have shown that they can try things out and change direction. GA went threw at least 2-3 monetization and high level game play changes and is a rather successful product ( Funding 2 other projects and has paid for itself. 20mil$ Dev investment ). They have already done it a few times in the short time I have been in beta, big fans of iteration and testing. I bet they can do it again.

However, a great deal of beta testers on the forums seem to think every patch is the final one, and instantly create some nasty posts. Even though there is a nice huge post about the process they are using. I'm not sure the various tribes community's are doing them any favors, the noise level is way to high, thankfully, other than some things, they don't seem to be paying to much attention to them, and are going by data, Pro-playtests, and match info on the servers.

[Malakili]

However, a great deal of beta testers on the forums seem to think every patch is the final one, and instantly create some nasty posts. Even though there is a nice huge post about the process they are using. I'm not sure the various tribes community's are doing them any favors, the noise level is way to high, thankfully, other than some things, they don't seem to be paying to much attention to them, and are going by data, Pro-playtests, and match info on the servers.

I think part of the issue is that there really are some fairly major things that seem to need changes, and when they decide to tweak something by a few percentage points but leave everything else intact, it doesn't feel very impressive.    It leads people to believe they are more or less happy with the state of the meta game, for example.  Its almost impossible to defend the flag on the flag stand, and its quite common to see both teams just camping each other's base, hoping to get a timely return so their capper can cap before the flag is taken again.   Its just very messy.   Maybe they are counting on private servers to "fix" the game for people that want something different.   

So, while I really dont' have much objection to any of the specific changes they've made with patches, it feels like there are fundamental issues which they just don't seem interested in addressing at all. 

[HaemishM]

Also, just as an FYI token gain isn't related to performance, just game length, so thats just how fast you get them, for anyone. 

That is... unwise. That would make more sense in a subscription game than in a game where you want to incentivize many micro-transactions. The rate needs to be increased a great deal (like 5x or more) AND add bonuses for performance. If you're worried about winners becoming bigger winners, make the guy with the most deaths get the same bonus too. I think they missed the draw of the COD/BF2 type of unlock system. Lots of early dings makes you work harder for the later dings. If I haven't even gotten close to some kind of unlock ding within the first 2 hour playsession, it's too slow. After I've gotten an unlock or two, then you hit me with the hard long grind. As it was, I had no desire to spend money to improve, I just went back to LoL.

[Gets]

I unlocked the Juggernaut already with tokens and I haven't played much. Saving my booster for the holiday season. Then again I have been through the World of Tanks tier 10 grind so my perception might be skewed.

[HaemishM]

Then again I have been through the World of Tanks tier 10 grind so my perception might be skewed.

Yes, it is. 

[Malakili]

New Patch incoming today:

The Team Deathmatch gametype is now available for play on two maps (Drydock Night and Crossfire). Upon the first death in the match, a flag will spawn. Your team earns a bonus for each kill made while the team holds the flag.
Added a “First Win of the Day” Challenge that rewards additional XP and tokens upon your first victory in a day. The "day" begins at 09:00 UTC time.
Added the “Orbital Strike” call-in (default bound to "3"). It is similar to the Tactical Strike, with a much wider radius and higher credit cost.
Reduced the token amounts required to unlock classes.
Settings: “Reduce Weapon Size” option has been added along with many others, including an option to disable help messages and an option to disable framerate smoothing.
Matchmaking: Very basic match-making segmentation to help lower ranked players play with lower-ranked players.
Fixed a number of bugs that caused sudden speed drops when skiing or jetting uphill. Other issues may remain. Please report as you find them.
Increased both the time before health regeneration begins and the duration of the regeneration.
The credit reward for a kill assist has been increased.
Brute: The Fractal Grenade is now available for testing.
Brute: The Heavy Spinfusor now does more damage to vehicles and base turrets.
Doombringer: Minor improvements have been made to the missile tracking on the Saber Launcher.
Juggernaut: The Heavy AP Grenade’s damage to players has been increased.
Juggernaut: The Heavy AP Grenade’s damage to generators has been reduced.
Raider: The Grenade Launcher’s damage has been slightly reduced.
Ranger: The AP Grenade’s damage to players and generators has been reduced.
Survivalist Perk: Reduced the health and ammo gain to 20%, down from 35%.
Several crash fixes
Variety of modifications to existing CTF maps for balance and visuals.
Code was added to fix/prevent the “godmode” damage bug that sometimes occurs.
The loading screen has been updated to include map name, game rules, and various gameplay tips.
The Rabbit scoreboard has been improved.
The class screen now highlights the Pathfinder and Juggernaut classes (the least expensive) if you have not unlocked them.
Summary window may be closed at match end to allow for chatting and VGS use.

I'm fairly shocked the Raider SMG didn't get a nerf but the Grenade Launcher did.   Everything else seems fine.  Most notably a general decrease in tokens required to unlock things. 

[Mrbloodworth]

See, they do care.  

Good stuff in that patch.

EDIT: As predicted forums are going apeshit like its the end of the world.

[Malakili]

See, they do care.  

Good stuff in that patch.

EDIT: As predicted forums are going apeshit like its the end of the world.

Yeah, I read the first 3 responses to the thread in which they announced the patch and then just stopped bothering.  I do maintain that I wish they would address a few of the bigger things (although depending on just how much token reduction there is, it may help one of them a lot), which they've been quiet about.  But oh well.

[Mrbloodworth]

This is not meant to be a major weapons balancing patch. The grenade changes were actually just to correct an initial mistake in configuration and are modest tweaks, as are most of the balancing changes.

The meaningful "game balance" changes in this patch from our perspective were:

1) Slower health regeneration.

2) The skiing fixes, which I think we will find have made the game "faster".

-HiRezStew

Its sad he has to keep saying that.

[Malakili]

Here is the new Orbital Strike in action: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Z8UZo7y0z8

15000 credits seems like a steep cost, that is 6 tactical strikes, for comparison.

[Sky]

I just got an invite to this. Am I reading correctly that silliness like aimbots and speed hack already exist?

[Malakili]

I just got an invite to this. Am I reading correctly that silliness like aimbots and speed hack already exist?

Yes, but if it makes you feel better they turned on some anti cheating system last week and I haven't seen a cheater since.

[Gets]

I have more beta keys to hand out. PM me if you would like one.

[Severian]

Never mind, keys gone.

[Viin]

I got to play Tribes Ascend last night, pretty fun. Brings back good memories without the god-awful graphics.

[Malakili]

We've already banned scores of cheaters, nearly all through automatic detection. We continue to strengthen and improve our anti-cheat mechanisms each week -- and utlize a variety of techniques, not just one, to help identify and eliminate cheaters.
Many cheaters have been banned within the first match they joined (although others are banned at random intervals following detection).
The anti-cheat tools in this game will be state of the art, multi-faceted and better than or on par with probably any shooter on the market.
That said, 100% automatic detection is probably not possible. Unfortunately, the world is full of assholes.
So spectator mode, demo mode, votekick and improved "cheat reporting" features are coming very soon, which will give the community better ways to help weed out cheaters as well. Private servers will have additional self-policing features.

Good deal.

Edit:  Unrelated but it looks like Tribes: Ascend is going to be a part of NASL Season 3's line up.  Not sure when season three is slated to start, but it unless they intend to use the beta for the tournament it looks like the game is coming out before the start of season three.

http://nasl.tv/News/Article/2011-12-04-tribes-ascend-to-make-esports-debut-in-nasl-season-three

[Malakili]

http://www.viddler.com/explore/massively/videos/493/

New gameplay trailer.  I think most people who care here are in beta now, but figured it was relevant at any rate.

[Sky]

Most times I would enjoy the beta. At this time, I just don't see myself playing it at all. Between Skyrim, Minecraft and TOR...I'm good. All others can form up a queue that I won't get to for quite a while.

[Viin]

Its a good game to drop into for a little FPS action. It's filled my action-oriented game play need while waiting for SWTOR to come out. And I imagine I'll be playing it whenever the servers are down too!

Or in 60 days, whichever comes first.