Tribes: Ascend Review

[Fat Hippo]

So Justin is one of those dirty backstabbing infiltrator rats!? For shame!

 

[RazielXT]

I still think UT2004 was best, but nice game nonetheless.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Well yeah, but they have to go pretty out of their way to do absolutely nothing. Tribes is a resources game, and if one of your team mates is keeping two enemies busy, you're ahead on "player-advantage".

It is far harder to be completely useless in Tribes, than it is in TF2.

If you're not capping or defending the flag, there's a high chance you're being useless. Going for the generator and doing nothing else can lose you the game as though you weren't even moving from spawn. I've found it's way more easy to be useless in this game than tf2 - sometimes, no matter what you do, you don't feel like you've contributed at all unless you upped the score yourself, and only the pathfinders and the doombringers on the flag have any real worth.

Then you have no idea what you're talking about. If all you're doing is gener-hating, not only are you keeping forcefields down for your cappers, but if 4 or so techs decide to run in to repair the generator, you're distracting 4 times the number of people on your team who are down there. It only becomes a problem when 4 of your guys are down there. As I said in my previous post, Tribes is a resource game, and your resource is players.

It's pretty simple, actually.

Distractions = openings
Therefore, distracting those 4 techs when they could be defending the flagstand creates 4 more openings for your team. I've single-handedly kept 8 people busy in the gen room with nothing more than a few stickies and some good jetpacking. If that isn't helping your team, then nothing is.

Not feeling you've contributed =/= not contributing.

Let's say you pick up the flag at medium speed and know you won't make it back to your base. What do you do? You move a reasonable distance from the enemy base and bring the majority of the defenders and chasers with you. Then you drop the flag on one of them and keep them busy fighting you. Suddenly Mr Speedy PTH has a flagstand clear of enemies and chasers busy killing someone else. Free cap!

I'd argue that Tribes has been the best game in years to provide a sense of worth to people who only facilitate objectives.

Yeah, but can it compete with TF2? (or brink, but we never talk a out brink)

It's really good. A lot of the time in TF2 a game is won by around 3 people on the team and everyone else's contributions were basically nil. In Tribes, everyone is doing something that actively furthers your goals.

Oh, trust me.

People find ways to be useless.

Well yeah, but they have to go pretty out of their way to do absolutely nothing. Tribes is a resources game, and if one of your team mates is keeping two enemies busy, you're ahead on "player-advantage".

It is far harder to be completely useless in Tribes, than it is in TF2.

I dunno about that... due to the fast nature and projectile weapons, it can be pretty easy to be useless in a match. More often then not if an enemy just can't hit me (Playing as Juggernaut too, so it's real easy to hit me) then I just fly past them; if they come to a sudden halt, I just drop an explosive on their head and keep going as well.
It's quite possibly the first Online Shooter I've played where you can actually be considered a 'non-threatening combatant' by the enemy team and get completely ignored. Of course this works in your favor as well sometimes, like luring enemies in for a cheap kill then scoring a Triple Kill with a single Mortar...

I've never seen anyone completely ignored. More often than not, bad players get swamped by 3 or more people looking for easy credits. So even if you're not doing anything at all, you're keeping people busy.

 

[SL33TBL1ND]

Yeah, but can it compete with TF2? (or brink, but we never talk a out brink)

It's really good. A lot of the time in TF2 a game is won by around 3 people on the team and everyone else's contributions were basically nil. In Tribes, everyone is doing something that actively furthers your goals.

Oh, trust me.

People find ways to be useless.

Well yeah, but they have to go pretty out of their way to do absolutely nothing. Tribes is a resources game, and if one of your team mates is keeping two enemies busy, you're ahead on "player-advantage".

It is far harder to be completely useless in Tribes, than it is in TF2.

I dunno about that... due to the fast nature and projectile weapons, it can be pretty easy to be useless in a match. More often then not if an enemy just can't hit me (Playing as Juggernaut too, so it's real easy to hit me) then I just fly past them; if they come to a sudden halt, I just drop an explosive on their head and keep going as well.
It's quite possibly the first Online Shooter I've played where you can actually be considered a 'non-threatening combatant' by the enemy team and get completely ignored. Of course this works in your favor as well sometimes, like luring enemies in for a cheap kill then scoring a Triple Kill with a single Mortar...

I've never seen anyone completely ignored. More often than not, bad players get swamped by 3 or more people looking for easy credits. So even if you're not doing anything at all, you're keeping people busy.

It's not a common thing in games, but it happens now and then. Medium classes, Brutes and Infiltrators get a fair amount of attention regardless of player skill, but Sentinels, Pathfinders and Juggernauts get ignored when they can't do their jobs properly (I.e. Pathfinder that moves slowly/avoids flags, Juggernaut that can't hit anything, Sentinel that can't headshot).
Doombringers can get ignored dependent on the game, regardless of their skill - I've often seen Capture the Flag games where a good Pathfinder just grabs it straight out, all base defenses still intact. If the Doombringer has terrible accuracy, doesn't lock onto air targets and forgets to set up proper base defenses... well, it's like they barely even exist in the game.

Sentinels I understand, because they literally don't do anything if they aren't being played well. With other classes, though? I always see someone try to take them out. If a bad PTH is near your flag, you kill them so they don't set off your claymores or destroy your forcefields. Also, heavies are just fine as long as they stand on the flag. Even if they don't shoot anything, all they need to do is just stand there.

 

[Zhukov]

Checked it out. Was not terribly impressed.

The maps are huge and everyone moves fast. Sounds good, but the end result is that most of time you feel like you're firing at gnats.

Also, trekking across said huge map every time you die feels like a waste of time.

You are too slow. These are the complaints of a slow person.

Uh... no. Being fast in the game is not hard. Hold down space and jetpack up inclines. Rocket science.

My complaint is that everything is so spread out. The empty open maps combined with fast movement mean that combat takes place at really long ranges with relatively slow moving projectiles. So you spend most of your time taking potshots at distant specks on your screen.

It's not just me. I've noticed that enemy players have an awful lot of trouble landing hits. Especially noticeable when I'm running off with a flag and there are four people miserably failing to hit me.

Hell, just look at the review video. He landed all of four hits on moving targets in the whole thing.

 

[The Mapper]

A jet pack wearing love child of Halo + Unreal... very cool.

yer but the originals were very similar it and they were on the PS1 so realy it took Halo years to catch up...

 

[Zhukov]

Then you and other people suck ass. Deal with it and get better.

Or go play some game that makes use of hitscan, and have fun with that. But dont come bitching about how you actually need to *gasp* practice to get good in Ascend! What a terrible thing!

Ah yes, the "you just suck" defence. Always a classic. I like the "everyone sucks" variation though. Don't see that too often.

Anyway, I'm awfully sorry I'm not stricken with awe by your darling game. It's just not particularly good.

...

PS. Tribes has hitscan weapons.

 

[Excludos]

Then you and other people suck ass. Deal with it and get better.

Or go play some game that makes use of hitscan, and have fun with that. But dont come bitching about how you actually need to *gasp* practice to get good in Ascend! What a terrible thing!

Ah yes, the "you just suck" defence. Always a classic. I like the "everyone sucks" variation though. Don't see that too often.

Anyway, I'm awfully sorry I'm not stricken with awe by your darling game. It's just not particularly good.

...

PS. Tribes has hitscan weapons.

it does. But they are also the worst weapons in the game. Like the shotgun, which does decent damage, but needs melee range to do any..

Theres a pistol too which i ok to get those pesky people on low hp. But its not really comparable to a spinfusor to the face.

Should also note that at lvl 1-5 (I think. Might be 1-4) you only play against people on your own level, aka rubbish people. This is obviously to ease you in a bit. But tactics, teamwork and general skill level rises a lot once you pass that point. So the "everyone sucks" arguement isn't technically wrong

 

[GeorgW]

I've been playing it since open beta and I'm enjoying it immensely. Some of the weapon unlocks are ridiculously over-priced, but it's balanced, skilful, fast and a lot of fun.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

Then you and other people suck ass. Deal with it and get better.

Or go play some game that makes use of hitscan, and have fun with that. But dont come bitching about how you actually need to *gasp* practice to get good in Ascend! What a terrible thing!

Ah yes, the "you just suck" defence. Always a classic. I like the "everyone sucks" variation though. Don't see that too often.

Yes, a classic, and one that holds true in this particular case.

"I am not to stricken with your darling game because I cant hit shit and modern FPS are usually so easy you can dominate within the first 5 minutes but I cant and it makes me so frustrated whaaaaaaa" - you, just now.

PS: The hitscan weapons do something like 5 HP damage per shot. Have fun needing 3 magazines to kill someone.

Hitscan weapons are of varying power, and often suffer from severe fall-off (reduced damage over range). The eagle and sparrow pistols are both extremely weak. The nova colt does good damage, but needing to reload every six rounds weakens it considerably. The shotguns can consistently get at least some damage (they're, like, 50 HP per pellet) in at short range, but are useless beyond that, and slow weapon swap speeds without the Quick Draw perk make even their situational use tricky. The sniper rifles do relatively little damage compared to other games, but they're the only scoped hitscan weapon in the game, and there is very little in the way of cover. Bad snipers are useless, great snipers are godly.

But yeah, there is some truth to the "you/your opponents are just bad" bit.

 

[Terrible Opinions]

On generators (from the perspective of the flag heavy): defend them to the death on Sunstar; that forcefield is worth two men all on its own. On other maps the generator's relevance is fairly minor. My deployable forcefields get wrecked pretty quickly on most maps, so the main thing I get out of the generator is warnings from turrets and the sensor, which... y'know, hand, but not essential. I like having it on Arx 'cause I can block side-to-sides with one well-protected forcefield, but I can still do my job without it. Above-ground tech turrets placed in good spots (that is, not right by the flag 'cause they'll just get blown to hell) can be surprisingly helpful when I'm getting overwhelmed.

EDIT: Oh, and then there's Raindance, where a few jugs can hold off the entire enemy team indefinitely in the generator room. Great place to hold the flag during standoffs, but I wouldn't be surprised if the designer added another entrance.

 

[KILGAZOR]

I totally agree that it's a really fun game, I just think it's a little unbalanced. Cuz of the unlock system, however, I'm boycotting spending any money on in-game items, at least as long as I can stand playing Technician with the crappy submachine gun instead of the grenade launcher. After buying multiple CoD and Battlefield games, I'm just sick of this unlock crap and I don't want to put any more money towards it than I have to.

The weapon/armor upgrades barely take a few matches to unlock (few extra for the final ones, but you still won't be a "veteran player" by the time you get them).
The Technician SMG is widely considered overpowered in open areas where you can avoid explosive damage. And if you can aim it properly it's insanely powerful in close quarters too.
The unlock system is a way for them to make some money out of the game, and I don't know if I can fault them for that. They made a game worthy of at least a 30$ purchase and distribute it for free. "Boycotting" (I like how people are now using this word instead of "i don't want to" to make them look like some sort of videogame activist when they're in fact just being stubborn) will just make those unlocks all the more painfully slow.

Then they should have made the game a 30$ purchase. Yes, they have to make money, but it would be nice if they could do so in a way that didn't require them to unbalance the game.

 

[OldNewNewOld]

Might have to dial it down with the game for a few days, though - I think it's a sign of playing too much when your reaction to a real-life mishap is exclaiming "SHAZBOT!".

But... but... but SHAZBOT! is the answer to everything.
my friends which don't play the game give me the "da fuq is wrong with you" look when I yell SHAZBOT! after I own them in a game (be it DotA or TF2).