Tribes Ascend was patched again today, and this time a new map was added. I was hoping to see something change with this new map: Flag placement. Hi-Rez has it all wrong. Flags should NOT be out in the open. The gameplay has quickly devolved into a Pathfinder (one of the loadouts with top speed) only match focused entirely on spam capping the flag. No one cares about base maiding when a pathfinder can zip through and steal the flag before the Technician turrets even wake up.
Move Flags INSIDE Bases
Flags should be deeper inside bases. This forces teams to work together to disrupt base defenses, take out the enemy defenders, and get the flag out of the base before skiing to victory. On the newest map, the generator is buried deep inside the base surrounded by catwalk grates. Put the freaking flag THERE, not out in the open.  Put the generator out in the open instead.
Spawn WITHOUT Gear
The second biggest issue facing gameplay is spawning with loadouts. Players should NOT spawn with their entire kit. This makes the generator nearly worthless, and entirely worthless once you realize the Technician turret sucks and the Doombringer force fields are garbage. Despite the fact that this free-to-play game makes its money on players purchasing items to use, those items should not be available unless you visit an inventory station on the map. They’re all over your base. Just go up to one and you’re outfitted. To change gear, visit one.
Inventory stations are powered by generators. If the generator is down, people spawn as a light armored basic character with a machine gun or spinfuser. This encourages defense and slows the pace of the spam capping. Right now, no one cares about anything other than racing to the flag because they spawn with all of their stuff.
Someone send a link to this post to Hi Rez.
As a Tribes vet, I couldn’t agree with you more, Keen. There is no value in defense in the current iteration of the game because of the design decisions you point out. I know the Hi-Rez devs played Tribes, so it’s hard to believe they don’t see this flaw! What they put out there now is a plastic version of what a Tribes game should be and it frustrates me to no end. It’s such an easy fix!
you know if they fixed all that… then you would have the original tribes game 😛 witch i played all the time. Hahaha. To bad i dont think it will happen
100% right, and I hope they really look into this, its just a pathfinders game now. You can set up as much D as you want but nothing you can do, a path just screams by take the flag and boom score. Its just not fun right now.
Remember APCs?
Apparently Hi-Rez doesn’t.
As someone who regards the original Tribes as the greatest game of all time I wholeheartedly agree on most points.
The flag out in the open thing I could flex on depending on the map layout. Iceridge, Raindance, Stonehenge, Rollercoaster and Canyon Crusade were all good maps with the flag basically out in the open.
@Misaligned: I’m okay with having some maps be like this. Rollercoaster was an awesome map. Having them all be like this, though, changes people’s behavior.
Additionally, the maps are very small. This makes the issue worse.
As it is now, the only viable defense is having a heavy stand on the flag to bodyblock prospective cappers, and surrounding the stand with players, who all spam explosives at the flag just as the capper hits it.
Once the capper actually has the flag and is moving at speed, there seems to be little a team can do to stop them, due to the small map size.
Now, I dunno, I enjoy the above style of play, but the problem is that very few pub teams will organize in this way, meaning almost every match devolves into a race to see who can chain cap fastest. In contrast, a game of base invasion seems to be much more amenable to pub attitudes, and would likely result in higher quality matches on the whole.
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Ascend has a ton of potential, but there’s definitely something about the current implementation that makes it incredibly frustrating to play. And it’s hard to see it getting fixed when they spend their time making arena DM and TDM maps, rather than fixing the current maps or making larger ones…
the one problem i have though is the point of pouting the Gens outside. Right now turrets and Shields are based on those Generators (class skills) you say they are worthless and well i dont agree. If used correctly they can be very useful. Now maybe if they weren’t connected they it would work
Couldn’t agree more about starting with load outs. Because of this, there truly is no reason to take out the generator except to add some points to your personal score for the match. It really doesn’t help the team much if at all except on the one map where the flag is inside the base with the forcefield floor.
Good points…I remember on broadside the bases even had doors that heavy would spend time knocking them open, because the flag was inside..yeah..made D and O mush more teamwork involved.. Also..inv and vehicle stations need to be destructible. My biggest wish is for them to bring back c&h, d&d and siege game types..I would even be happy if they added some c&h objectives in maps that made sense in ctf game play. OH..and we need missile turrets for shrieks.
Spawning without gear is a terrible idea… basically, as soon as a (good) team takes out your generator, they can camp it and the match is basically over.
@Chris: It worked perfectly in Tribes 1 and 2. You spawn with a basic set of gear that is more than capable of killing people camping a generator. If, however, you end up on a team so bad that a few people can hold off the generator long enough for the rest of the team to cap the flag a few times to win it… then you deserve to lose.
@Chris
You know how I can tell you’ve never played any other Tribes games?
@Chris: In the original Tribes it was more difficult to destroy a generator because 1) they were deeper in the base in a defensible position 2) the defenders had better deploy-able equipment 3)people played defense because they knew they had to for the exact reason you point out. Generators were typically not off for very long, but when they did go down, it usually swung the momentum of a match one way or another. Whether or not the generator is working in Tribes Ascend barely makes a difference and it contributes to the one-note shell of a game Hi-Rez is trying to pass off as Tribes.
Seriously, in a pub match, you would routinely have nearly half the team playing defense and now it’s just a bunch of people skiing around like some racing game!
I’ve been playing the technician for a while now and I’m done with the game. It is just too broken.
the main annoyance is that taking out the generator takes almost no time, while repairing it, or killing the 5 people that camp it in every damn match all the time is impossible for my class without turrets.
the idea that player built turrets should go offline when the generator is offline is one of the worst decisions that have ever been made in game design. the technician has no AoE weapons, and the only gun I can use does no damage. I get one or two shot by invaders, and to use the only 2 turrets I have to proactively guard the generator defeats the purpose. not only that, but one shot can kill my turrets, while repairing them takes me 30 seconds.
to get a new gun takes 100.000 xp. that’s 150 20 minute rounds. and then it may still suck.
even as a level 1 light armored pathfinder, I can kill base defenses or the generator in a few seconds. repairing it as a technician with the uber repair tool takes 3-4 times as long.
I played tribes 1 and 2. games there were tactical, strategic, and you could take your time sneaking into a base and do damage.
this game is like a bad call of duty clone.
the worst thing is their mindset: they add expensive call down options for 10000 credits, but by the time you have 9000, the timelimit of the round is reached. the timelimit is so short, that planning or strategy is impossible. the only valid tactic is to rush the flag straight up. and if they defend, rush the generator and camp it.
After looking back at a round of Arx Novena, I realized playing HO and enemy gen camping did not much for my team. At the time I kept thinking to myself, “wow, I’m in their gen room and not a whole lot of people are coming to get me”. After the timer reset, I destroyed it again. Granted we won the round and I forced myself to think “ok, what I did during this round actually helped us win the map” but now I don’t believe it did a whole lot.
Even when my own team’s generator is down, I think to myself “meh, oh well I got what I need to play LD/chaser or HD w/mortar”.
As for flags inside the base, I agree. In fact I feel like there needs to be larger bases for that type of map though. They removed the underground level from Bella Omega (as of now) and that was probably my favorite part of the map. Broadside and Scarabrae had it right for me.
someone please port Meltdown 2 into this blasphemy called Ascend….
Yeah, i’ve given them a total of $48 dollars so i could be malleable to the games’ current state. The best thing about this franchise was making a difference, yet no matter I do (unless i’m a doombringer doing flag D), nothing really makes a difference. In its current state, I’d much rather a tribes 2 mod that updated the graphics.
The generator should be much harder to destroy, along with much better base defenses and deployables. Personally, I don’t mind map size (Crossfire and Raindance are my favourites) and the improved base assets should solve the problem. A buffer on technician explosive weapons would be great aswell.
this game is a joke its a ping to win pay to win the way they got the Assultrifles and chainguns set up onley a person with a high end computer and a ping under 50 can master and thats what takes over the game . the muzzle veoclitys of the disc and gernades turn the game into more jumping around then really hiting anything.