Tribes: Ascend Review

[Alexnader]

snip

Firefall has no aussie servers, this looks to be short-lived. I'm sticking to what I kniw is good

Firefall's still in beta. Oceanic servers were TBA last I heard.

Firefall has no aussie servers, this looks to be short-lived. I'm sticking to what I kniw is good

Think about it this way: Tribes is entirely free to play. It costs you literally nothing but some harddrive space to download the game and play it.

Then you can decide if you like it or not.

Same goes for Firefall and TF2. We can try them all for free but which one will reign supreme?

I'm not so confident in Firefall but I really hope it does well because the devs sent me a free signed poster. Tribes is crazy fun but they've borked the "micro" part of microtransactions. TF2 is just right but it's old and after more than 1000 hours I've moved on.

snip

PS. Tribes has hitscan weapons.

No it doesn't, the conventional weapons like assault rifles fire projectiles that follow the rules of velocity inheritance that apply to grace weapons like spinfusors. So in order to peg that Pathfinder with your flag who's zooming away at 300 kmph you've got to learn deflection shooting.

*I'm not including Shotguns because at the ranges they're effective at it hitscan is an effective approximation for projectile behavior. I think that leaves Eagle Pistols and Sniper rifles as the last functionally hitscan weapons. Pistols are only good for finishing off opponents and rifles have... other means of making things hard for the operator. (Also Nova Colt, bleh) The point is for almost all practical purposes Tribes Ascend is not about hitscan.

Droppin' truth bombs all up in this shazbot!

 

[F'Angus]

Well I'm getting this then.

Enjoyed the old Tribes games and this looks just as good.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

It's all very simple logic. Less players actively defending the flag means less people in the way of your team capping. I don't know how you don't understand this. I'm not saying everyone should be running for the gen, that's ridiculous and goes completely counter to what I said about Player-Advantage.

That may be true in competitive, organized games, but it doesn't apply much in random pubs which is what most of us are playing. It's entirely possible for you to do everything your class does well (destroy turrets, sensors, the generator, shell the flag stand for example) but still lose because there's no good pathfinders on your team. That's when you feel you would've done better at least trying to play PTH or defense and generally feel useless.

There's no strategy in pubs for any game. So complaining about a lack of strategic play in pubs for a specific game is pointless, it's a given.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

There's no strategy in pubs for any game. So complaining about a lack of strategic play in pubs for a specific game is pointless, it's a given.

I'm not complaining. The argument was about the feel of usefulness doing the game's various objectives when compared to other games.

Which is really well done, when playing with good players. Other FPS'(s?) in similar circumstances don't do nearly as well at making a role tangentially related to getting an objective done feel rewarding. In pubs, however, there's nothing to compare with other games because they're all uniform in that respect.

 

[NightHawk21]

God do I hate the Jackal. As the review it was pretty good. Just wondering how did you do that melee attack? I haven't seen that one before.

The Assassin skin either has a custom animation or it's part of a fully unlocked Close Combat perk, hence how I was able to one-shot mediums.

No I have close combat and I have the standard melee attacks I think. So its probably part of the skins which is very neat, and I'm glad they did that.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

Yeah, that's the assassin's melee attack (I think the mercenary has the exact same attack, too). It's irritating, 'cause it's a lot quieter than the regular melee attack.

 

[Excludos]

Sucks that it's completely shameless pay2win though.

Which is exactly what it isn't, if you've been paying attention. I regularly top the charts, and I haven't payed a scent nor played any of the other previous tribes games.

 

[n19h7m4r3]

Sucks that it's completely shameless pay2win though.

What are you talking about?

You can unlock everything with XP bar cosmetic skins, it's easy to do it as well.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

Sucks that it's completely shameless pay2win though.

...

You sir are a disgrace to the International Fraternity of Lumber Barbers. I'm afraid I must insist that you return your axe and comb to your chapter head immediately.

 

[harpst3r]

Three words: BLUE PLATE SPECIAL

Serve 'em up day and night.

PLAY THIS GAME and you will not be dissapoint.

Use my referral link http://goo.gl/Cdp2F

 

[Terrible Opinions]

Sucks that it's completely shameless pay2win though.

...

You sir are a disgrace to the International Fraternity of Lumber Barbers. I'm afraid I must insist that you return your axe and comb to your chapter head immediately.

Sucks that it's completely shameless pay2win though.

What are you talking about?

You can unlock everything with XP bar cosmetic skins, it's easy to do it as well.

Sucks that it's completely shameless pay2win though.

Which is exactly what it isn't, if you've been paying attention. I regularly top the charts, and I haven't payed a scent nor played any of the other previous tribes games.

Spoiler

doesn't it take a ridiculous amount of XP points to unlock most items?

Classes and upgrades are cheap (and upgrades can only be purchased with EXP, not money, though you can use money to buy a booster to temporarilty increase EXP gains). Weapons are varying degrees of expensive (something like the soldier's eagle pistol is pretty easy to get, but the technician's thumper will take quite some time). Most of the weapons aren't really "better", though; they simply make the class better at a certain niche (exceptions exist, of course). Most technicians prefer to use the unlockable thumper because they like fighting indoors and the impact explosive works better there than their SMG, but the SMG is still a total beast and makes them awesome for supporting the HoF on the flag stand. Chasing/light defence pathfinders often favour the unlockable bolt launcher or its higher damage, but capping pathfinders who use their own weapons for rocket jumps usually stick to the default spinfusor to increase their survivability.

I've spent zero dollars and my doombringer doesn't suffer any for it. Made sure to unlock those land mines first thing, though. Doombringer grenades are turrrrrible.

And regardless of both EXP cost and strength of unlockable items, "pay to win" means that there are items locked behind a pay-wall. The only things that applies to in Ascend are skins.

 

[n19h7m4r3]

doesn't it take a ridiculous amount of XP points to unlock most items?

No it does not, only some replacement primary weapons cost a lot, 100k each. Classes and everything else is extremely easy to get.

There's also no point in going for a 100k weapon if you haven't played all the classes to know just which one you're exceptionally good at.

As a result you can have a nearly fully upgraded Technician class, and then decide to unlock the Thumper, which is a projectile explosive weapon, which replaces the sub machine gun.

It's not essential to the class but gives you rhe chance to play it a tad differently.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

Heh. The patch they're introducing tomorrow looks pretty not-good, though.

Two offence-oriented updates in a row? Whole bunch of new stuff for one of the best classes in the game? Awwww yeah.

 

[flying_whimsy]

wow, it's like somebody looked at tribes, looked the tf2 surf maps, and decided the world needed a little more awesome in it.

 

[Doom-Slayer]

Spoiler

doesn't it take a ridiculous amount of XP points to unlock most items?

To unlock new items it takes a lot yes. T upgrade anything, it takes barely any xp at all. And 99% of the items you can buy are just there for customization, they are actually balanced very well. The only unbalanced pay to win gun right now is the Plasma gun, but that got released yesterday, so it'll be patched soon.

TO be honest Tribes is possibly one of the better cases of free to play. They provide a decent amount of good content when you start, offer free gold if you like their FB page, and you can get a ton of free XP for inviting friends. Essentially the free gold you get from just liking their page, will unlock you a new class or a new perk entirely for free. Its actually balanced very well.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

Don't spend that free gold on a new perk or class; the gold:exp ratios are terrible on those. Spend the free gold on a weapon. Much more efficient.

 

[yayforgiveaway]

http://youtu.be/mkGfYMQdq8A

 

[punipunipyo]

As a pathfinder, that flagcap was painfull to watch.

maybe it's an "E-grab", no?