Crom's T:V Impressions from GDC

Thrax Panda said:

Fair enough, but If I want to sell a million coppies, I need the unwashed masses to play, don't I. So how do I do that without cleaning up the many rough edges that the previous two games had?

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I don't disagree with you here at all. I realize changes will have to be made, and it's got to be a tremendous thing to try to balance the old with the new.

Crom said:

here's a thought....

cap routes that INVOLVE the oob bounce

hmmmmmmmmmmmmm
mmmmmmmmmmmmmm

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OMG no. Part of what made Tribes great was the open terrain, and the feeling you could ski anywhere.

I could never go back to playing in the boxes that everyone else played in after that.

Just read KPs post on some of the various items but I really didn't read the whole of the thread.

Disk jumping sounds OK so far. From the sounds of it it sounds completely normal for lack of a better word. Am I wrong? I'm interested in these jump pad things. Could be fun actually. No mine disking = bleh but we've already run the gauntlet on that one so I won't go there.

Taking out the repair kit I don't agree with at all. This "counter intuitive" aka "think of the stupid noobs" argument you guys are putting forward as your excuse for removing items like this and the TL is depressing to say the least. They're such simple little items that all vets know about and use but they're getting the heave ho here. I'm sorry but I really don't buy the argument that they're counter intuitive. You guys ARE planning on including a manual with the game yes?

Thrax Panda said:

I have. Repeatedly. You just can't/don't/won't listen. Don't blame me for your shortcomings.

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So far the only justification I've heard for removing the repair kit is that it isn't intuitive for new players. There are a million posts addressing this(hints flashing on the repair kit icon, toggleable autouse, etc..).

You've also mentioned the repair pack as replacing it, but KP said the armors were given extra protection in place of removing the repair kit. Making you go to your teammates for repairs is a way of forcing teamwork, not encouraging it.. and not in a fun way.

Edit: I'm glad the issue is still open (unlike your initial posts on the TL), because there will be a hell of a response from the community during open beta in favor of the repair kit.

RegisteredFruit said:

Perhaps you should present a new argument AGAINST repair kits. So far your "not intuitive" argument has been chewed to pieces and is clearly not justification for removing it. If you agree with shoddy's idea, why not present it to the team? It sounds great to me as long as it's toggleable.

You posts almost seem to agree that there should be a repair kit, yet you won't go as far as to say it.

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I got your new argument right here RegisteredFruit. You say the HK take skill to use? I disagree. Anyone that's half decent at the game uses their health kit when there supposed to. There is no curve to it. In other words, nobody ever says "Holy Cow, RegisteredFruit is the best health kit user I've ever seen! He is altering the course of this game by health kitting well!"

It is a mundane boring task to hit the H button when you need to. I have absolutely no need to wait to use my health kit other then to use it to it's maximum potential when it will heal as much health as it possibly can. I would much prefer to have the health added on top of my pre-existing health permanently so that I never have to worry about it because it's just one more key to hit in a game where there are already PLENTY of buttons to push.
I have zero need to decieve anyone into thinking I have less health then I do.

But the real argument lies in that the Health Kits slow down the game...
That may seem like a strange statement at first but think about it. How many times have you killed somebody while skiing, and stopped skiing to turn around and loot the body of the person you just killed? If there were no health kits, you would have had no reason to loot and you would have kept on skiing and shooting. There is still the looting for ammo part, but without the health kit, body looting is going to be cut down by like 80%.

Another point... Body looting takes little to no skill. Body looting is not fun. Nobody ever says "Holy Cow, you are the best body looter I've ever seen." Any fool can walk over a corpse. The only skill lies in controlling the area around the corpse when an enemy nearby knows your going after the loot,
which is a miniscule aspect of the game that wasn't very exciting, again I'd
rather be focusing on controlling the area around the generator or the flag,
not a stupid corpse on the ground with a doggy treat.

Now you could say it takes skill to have the Knowhow that you need to loot corpses for health kits, but WHO CARES? I'd rather be playing the game. I'd rather being skiing fast, I'd rather be shooting at people, I'd rather be moving the flag, I'd rather be flying a vehicle, I'd rather be doing ANYTHING besides walking up to a dead person and hitting H. It is not fun. In essence, it is an aspect of the game that is slow and boring because while you are looting this corpse, you aren't skiing fast.

Passing health Kits to the HOF was a cool thing, but PRESTO the new and improved repair pack will hook up the hof up np. And since there is no pack restriction on the sniper rifle, you can repair the HOF and still snipe.

All in all, the health kit isn't at all necessary because you can just stack the health on top of the health bar and presto, it's exactly the same (this has already been said by many people I realize). This will give more purpose to a PACK in a game where packs SHOULD be emphasized.

Not only that, but please please please give me one reason how HEALTH KITS were fun, cus I'm just dying to know one. I mean who is out there going "Wow, did you see when I used that health kit man? That was sweet!"
"Oh my god! I just used a health kit, it was a killer way to do it too."
"oh man, I love it when I do that with the health kit."

It's boring, lame, and there is no need for it whatsoever. Wouldn't you rather be skiing? I would.

The only thing that should be discussed is the advantage it gave to base rapers. This, in my opinion, is the only real issue with the health kit. Even as a base raper, I would give up the health kit in a heartbeat because, as I said, I'd rather be playing the game, getting into position, shooting at people, or skiing rather then walking up to a corpse for the billionth time to see if it has goodies.

I'm also shocked. With all those "We need spawn invincibility!" threads, I was expecting more people to be in favor of the health kit going away as it would make it tougher to base rape. Making it tougher could be cool though, you'll have to work to stay alive longer, could make base raping more of an art.

Sleepy time for PK. Night Night.

I'm sure it will be a good game but with everything I read about it my hopes get smaller and smaller. What they are putting in is not proportional to what they are taking out imo. It's still early though, I think I just need to stop following its development.

Hopefully if they stray too far away from the original vision of the game some other company will come along and re-invent it under a different name.

I was probably too rash in saying I wasn't excited for T:V, that's not what I meant. I know that it's a new game, so at times I seem to find myself being a little hesitant with some of the changes being made. Only because I loved T1 so much and am hoping to see the community embrace T:V similarly to the way we did with T1.

But that doesn't mean change shouldn't happen, I just hope the right changes are being made.

You clearly have not read the posts discussing the use of the rk. It may not take the most skill to use, but there is strategy to it. Removing it is just another way they are dumbing the game down.

KineticPoet said:

We discussed and debated this for...days? Weeks? I challenge you to come up with an argument that we didn't already consider.

I agree that it takes a certain amount of intelligence to decide when you should use a repair kit. This was the main argument for keeping it. I'll even one-up you with another argument.

I often "pretended" to have already used my health kit, especially in duels. This lured my opponent into thinking I was more vulnerable than I actually was, making him more likely to be over-aggressive and make *himself* vulnerable, at which point I could use my repair kit and take advantage of his over-aggressiveness.

Alas, neither these arguments nor any other so far has out-weighed our team's perception of repair kits as being generally clunky in Tribes 1 and 2. They require an extra key. They're not intuitive to new players. They give a big advantage to players that know about them and a big disadvantage to players that don't. Worse, there's a feedback loop because when players who don't know about them die, they give their repair kits to the players that DO know about them. All this because of one little key and nugget of information. How much skill is in that, really? Those are some very big X's against them and none of our arguments in favour of repair kits have been enough to tip the scales.

As Thrax has suggested, it would be a fairly simple change to add them back. But it would have to be very clear that their removal has negatively impacted the game. If this really bothers you that much, or anyone else for that matter, you can suggest alternative repair kit systems that might be more intuitive. But we already considered a bunch of those, too,
KP

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I really don't understand this. Almost ALL FPS games use repair kits of some kind, whether it be power-ups or for the more realistic shooters, actual, uh, health kits.

I don't see the issue. I can go right now and play Q3 and everyone intuitively knows what the health packs do. I can go right now and pick up Urban Terror and everyone knows about the kits. I can do the same in Battlefield:Whichever. What is so counter-intuitive to pushing a key and getting a bit more health back from a kit? Alot of games use that, games that have been MUCH more popular than T1 OR T2.

Seriously, maybe you guys should try to REWARD intelligent players?

the skiing feels great, the controls are already responsive and tight, it looks great and so on

that is more than 1/2 the battle

all this stuff is only a small piece of the puzzle. the big peice they ALREADY have right.

Ben Reed said:

On the subject of two things:

-The omission of repair kits - While I can understand the logic behind omitting repair kits to keep people at inventories from constantly tossing rep kits to HoFs, I still think that repair kits in an altered form should be retained. I think a repair kit that can only be used by the person who carries it, and that does not exist in a material form to be tossed, would nerf such inv-spam techniques while still allowing the strategic use of rep kits for stuff like disc jumping and prolonged flag defense by light or medium defenders.

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I think this could work, because the "h" key could activate your "Single Charge Integrated Armor Repair System" and therefore, would allow only each player to use the "kit," as you said.

KillerONE said:

You've already discounted ANY change from how you currently play Tribes. You people that are ALREADY gonna make a mod so you feel "comfortable" annoy the hell out of me.

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They already did it to T2, what makes you think V will be any different?

I happen to be in their boat, however I don't think a mod could fix the issues I have.

The Pumpkin King said:

But the real argument lies in that the Health Kits slow down the game...
That may seem like a strange statement at first but think about it. How many times have you killed somebody while skiing, and stopped skiing to turn around and loot the body of the person you just killed? If there were no health kits, you would have had no reason to loot and you would have kept on skiing and shooting. There is still the looting for ammo part, but without the health kit, body looting is going to be cut down by like 80%.

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Using their argument against them, and you in this statement, all the noobs will loot. Every single one of them.

It won't go down, nor will it go away, unless they take that out option too.

Crom said:

the skiing feels great, the controls are already responsive and tight, it looks great and so on

that is more than 1/2 the battle

all this stuff is only a small piece of the puzzle. the big peice they ALREADY have right.

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Tribes was much more than skiing.

Thrax Panda said:

What is amazing to me at this moment is that the guy who played the game is saying "wow, it was great" and all you guys can do is focus on a few things you're paranoid about.

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Well, to be fair, we are Tribes nutballs, and we are hoping for a game we'll enjoy playing for several years. Not many games can stay enjoyable for that long. It takes nuances.

Funny you should mention Planetside. Planetside was actually very fun for most people for several weeks. Then they started feeling that "there wasn't any there there", that it was repititious.

By all accounts you have a great movement system. That's huge. I and I think most are excited by that and anxious to try it out. I think what the paranoid people are worried about is the loss of nuance in other, non-movement areas that may be necessary to keep the game from getting stale a year or 3 down the road.

forgive me if this has been said, I read the first 12 pages...

but how about possible putting in two out of bounds grids? so when you go through the first, it will seem like you are "going out of bounds" when you actually have another 50 clicks to go? from what I have seen in tribes 99.9% of people never leave the oob grid by more than 50 meters. It just gives them that feal that they are out of bounds... now there is the .01% that will buy a havoc and when it is fully loaded, they head out of bounds the wrong way and see how long it takes for every one to either ctrl-k or suicide by disking them selves to death... I'll be glad to be rid of that crowd.

but you could fake the extended play area feal just by adding in a second OOB grid that you could cross.

Wulfen said:

Tribes was much more than skiing.

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thanks. that was deep.

but seriously, if the core gameplay is there (which, IMO, it was already great in the build i played), that is a HUGE step forward. so huge. a super-ultra early build with great core gameplay is so damn inspiring it makes me less worried about the things you are all arguing about...sure, i was shocked about no rep kits, the med. becoming more like a light, the weapon changes, and so on...but the game was ALREADY FUN.

that is why i am damn excited for beta.

Shoddy said:

Well, to be fair, we are Tribes nutballs, and we are hoping for a game we'll enjoy playing for several years. Not many games can stay enjoyable for that long. It takes nuances.

Funny you should mention Planetside. Planetside was actually very fun for most people for several weeks. Then they started feeling that "there wasn't any there there", that it was repititious.

By all accounts you have a great movement system. That's huge. I and I think most are excited by that and anxious to try it out. I think what the paranoid people are worried about is the loss of nuance in other, non-movement areas that may be necessary to keep the game from getting stale a year or 3 down the road.

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To add to that, the guy was playing a brand new game, never seen before, and he gets to see it up close. Of course he's going to go, "Wow!" But how much did he get to play? Did he get to see everything? Did he get to play 10v10?

And yeah, I'm not going to pretend that all they have to do is get skiing in and I'm going to love the game.

Wulfen said:

What is so counter-intuitive to pushing a key and getting a bit more health back from a kit?

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I dunno, but the design team is right on this. My tribe recruits people regardless of ability, so ours is the first tribe for a lot of our members. The vast majority of our recruits, even the ones who have been playing for months fail to use their repair kit consistently. So as far as I'm concerned, they have empirical evidence backing them up.

Cruncher. That idea is stupid. a fake grid.. then 50 m out a real one.. Why not just move the real one out 50m.

And why do you want people to feel like they are going out of bounds..