Tribes: Ascend

ambershee · Jun 19, 2012

It's a problem with both Tartarus and Raindance (and to a lesser extent Crossfire) - the problem is pretty simple and breaks what is IMHO a fundamental rule of level design.

Each of these generators has only one route to it; in the case of Tartarus and Crossfire the structures have two entrances, but the generator is still housed at a dead end. When heavily entrenched, it can become pretty impossible to get at it. Bella Omega was removed for the same reason, but it doesn't looked like the development team has learned.

Katabatic and Sunstar both have great generator room layouts - note how they never get camped in except by dedicated generator defenders, and even that is occassional, However, both design still present space for one player to prevent access using motion sensors, shields, mines or turrets (or any combination).

Edit: I both agree and disagree with the article, but it does highlight some of the problems. A large part of the rest of it is rant.

I'm thinking a ladder set of servers for CTF and a non-ladder may work well; Halo 3 was a moderate example of this, with ranked and unranked TDM.

Vaskadar · Jun 23, 2012

New patch is out

Details in link below
http://www.egmnow.com/tribesascend/tribes-ascend-update-6-stonehenge-version-1-0-1016/

Tribes Ascend Version 1.0.1016 is expected to be deployed on Friday, June 22. The servers will be down for several hours while the patch is deployed. Below are the preliminary patch notes.
Major Highlights

Added support for “lock to player view” while spectating players. This allows you to see what the spectated player target sees. Press ‘L’ by default to lock the view to the player’s viewpoint. Mousewheel in for a first-person perspective.
A new TDM map has been added to the list of maps in the Quick Play rotation. (Miasma)
A new CTF map has been added to the list of maps available to play on Custom Servers. Stonehenge is a remap of a classic Tribes map. The map is currently in a “beta” state and will be added to the Quick Play rotation after it goes through testing on Custom Servers.

Weapon/Balance Items

The Pathfinder’s Light Assault Rifle will now fire bursts from just holding down the fire button, rather than having to repress the fire button for each burst.
Increased Rage Perk activation radius by 50%.
Decreased effect radius of Raider’s Whiteout grenade by roughly 8%.
Decreased damage on Shrike Rockets by 22%.
Increased Shrike Rocket damage to armored targets (ex. base turrets, beowulfs) by 30%.
Decreased damage on Technician’s Rockwind SMG by roughly 8%
Slightly increased the distance from the reticule required for the Spotted command to work.
Increased the distance Raider’s EMP grenades can be thrown to match most other grenades.
Decreased explosion radius on Pathfinder’s Compact Nitrons by 13%.
The Phase Rifle’s downscope reticule has been tweaked and crosshairs added.

Raindance: A new route has been added into the generator room.

Additional Items

With the help of community feedback, we have reworked some of the mechanics of the emergent gameplay of “rock-bouncing.” The mechanic is more lenient than the last major patch:
Bouncing off a rock at an extreme angle is possible again, but the player will lose some of their speed.
The “grace angle” for a bounce that loses no speed has been widened
We will continue to adjust this feature as needed.
FIxed an issue where some Accolades were not being awarded with some of the new variant weapons.
Fixed an issue where the Determination Perk was not applying its health boost correctly.
Fixed a situation where XP was not being given if the player had left the match early.
Fixed an issue where a player could zoom and fire with weapons that don’t allow zooming while firing by holding down zoom through a reload sequence.
Fixed bug where the Raider’s NJ5 Reload and Retrieve sounds were not playing.
Fixed bug where the Infiltrator’s Remote Arx Buster Reload and Retrieve sounds were not playing.
Tartarus High intensity music added.
Fixed an issue where the Rage Perk would sometimes not apply when it should have.
Fixed an issue where Technician’s Long Range Repair tool was repairing vehicles too quickly.
Fixed an issue where rapid projectile fire wasn’t replicating to a spectator viewing the player who was firing.
Fixed an issue on Deal of the Day that was incorrectly showing an XP tag.
Fixed an issue with the Twitch streams that was causing not all of the active players to be shown.

Juggalo Kyle · Jun 23, 2012

Downloading the game right now. A Co-Worker of mine has been playing Tribes since the first, and won't shut up about this one, so I'm going to give it a shot.

Juggalo Kyle · Jun 24, 2012

Well I played a bit of it yesterday. Got my status up to level 5 or 6. So far, I'm enjoying the Soldier a lot. Been playing mostly TDM, and adding the flag holding is pretty cool. It's gotta be my favorite thing in TDM, just holding the flag and skiing through the maps.

So far, so good!

Kantham · Jun 26, 2012

Every game resumed in a jpg.

They scream "Rank doesn't have to do with skill."; I add "Playtime has to do with knowledge."

I am on and off about Tribes, and the only reason of that is the team balance, do something about it, Hirez. Even if it has to split the community, those who desires rank-based teams should have the privilege.

ambershee · Jun 26, 2012

I played a game at lunch time today with what were obviously six players who've been playing from the start, stacked onto one team and were communicating using VOIP.

Six top-level infiltrators with jackals - it was painful to play.

Kantham · Jun 27, 2012

In one of the key-features listed on Steam:

Don’t Fight Alone: Friend-list allows you to link up with others and establish supremacy online.

Establish VOIP teamstack supremacy online?

Are you fucking kidding me?

"Swat team vs Random pubs is where it's at man"
-Hirez

Rambowjo · Jun 27, 2012

Oh man people teaming up with friends to stomp pubs, this is outrageous.

ambershee · Jun 27, 2012

I'd mind less if it wasn't a daily occurance and there were more than about two servers (in the aforementioned game, we were playing CTF, they were playing 'don't let the enemy team leave the spawn points').

Today I had to contend with 'spawn point disco rave party', which I must admit is creative. It involves putting Brutes on each spawn point and dropping fractals on them constantly (need to call down inventory station for it to work) -on Crossfire it's a nightmare!

Kyllian · Jun 27, 2012

And people are giving Uber a shitstorm for trying to keep pub-stomping teams from pounding on pubbers in SMNC

Bi()ha2arD · Jun 28, 2012

It's cool that they put it on steam and all, but why does it still need the launcher and background service...

ambershee · Jun 28, 2012

because some people don't use Steam.

Vaskadar · Jun 28, 2012

INFLUX OF THE CASUALS!

Also: Quick play is broken right now

ambershee · Jun 28, 2012

I'm waiting for StoneHenge to make it into the main lists. That map is so broken it's not funny (you can cap the flag and return to your own in less than 10 seconds).

Vaskadar · Jun 29, 2012

What they did was ported the layout. I'm at least pretty sure they did.

Juggalo Kyle · Jun 30, 2012

Stonehenge isn't that bad. It's fun for a quick CTF match.

ambershee · Jun 30, 2012

Very quick given you can back-to-front it in less than a minute

Edit: Found it on Youtube - flag stand to flag stand takes about 4 seconds, which means the game could be theoretically over in less than a minute xD - that's worse than pre-patch Katabatic where you could do do it in under 8 seconds.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gz1xKCBe80o

Vaskadar · Jun 30, 2012

Just load up on landmines, force fields, and some good old fashioned HoF splattering. A back to front run should be pretty easy to stop. Plus the field will be a lot more condensed with enemy fire. You gotta think about what happens when the player count goes up. More chaos, more discs, more rockets, and more grenades flying through the air. Not to mention if you do choose to use nitrons and spinfusors to get going that fast, you only need take a few stray rounds to die. Theoretically, you could do a flag to flag run in 5 seconds, but it's extremely risky trying to do it like that. You might also encounter llama grabbers or brute grabbers. Games might not go so quickly.

Juggalo Kyle · Jun 30, 2012

Cleaver way of Skiing. You gotta admit, that was pretty impressive.

Anywho, I can't wait until Hi-Rez releases the UED. Huge Terrain maps? Yes please! They said that they want to build a community first, but I think mod-ability would help create the community they are looking for.

Rambowjo · Jun 30, 2012

Have they really said they're going to release the UED? That is amazing.

Tribes: Ascend

Nimbusfish Rawks

It's time I look back from outer space

Sup brah.

Sup brah.

Fool.

Nimbusfish Rawks

Fool.

Das Protoss

Nimbusfish Rawks

if (Driver == Bot.Pawn); bGTFO=True;

Toxic!

Nimbusfish Rawks

It's time I look back from outer space

Nimbusfish Rawks

It's time I look back from outer space

Sup brah.

Nimbusfish Rawks

It's time I look back from outer space

Sup brah.

Das Protoss