Hunters as a gametype is OK. But even back in the Quake days, straight through to this Tribes implementation, I've felt that the gametype suffered because of the lack of player survivability. It was OK as a team mode (though that inevitably fails for the reasons it did in T2 - that'll be my next post), but as an all alone battle, it tends to degrade into a silly/strange deathmatch, or a camp fest, where someone stays near the flag and whores down the field winner for mad profits. Hunters sounds good in theory, but in practice, the players who win are not the players who are the best fighters with the best survival rate. The emergent gameplay of Hunters since it's Quake days has rewarded the jerk who reams the heavily damaged, flag laden bastard who has worked hard to earn his points.
A gametype which has been more successful in allowing the better players to win while still having the fun aspects of cutthroatting and camping in Hunters, goes something like this.
Imagine a gametype in which the players earn a point for one kill straight up, two points for the second kill in a row, three points for the third kill in a row, four points for the fourth kill in a row, etc. When the player himself is fragged, half (maybe 3/4ths?) of his points go to the man who killed him, and he has to start over. First to an arbitrary number(say 100) wins.
This gets around the problems of Hunters by making the points inherent to the player. Now it is the person who kills you, and NOT the person who camps around a Nexus, that benefits from your death.
This rewards fighting, unlike the current Hunters model.
Pickup and play relates to the dedication required to play the gametype, and the map dedication required to win a map.
Tribes has two skillsets: killing and movement. They are interellated in several ways, but one can frankly learn to play Tribes well without being a good skiier, and a good skiier can play Tribes well without being a good aimer. A great player, can do both of these things.
A game like CTF, TR, or Hunters, has no pick up and play ease. CTF and TR require both skills, and dedication to learn the maps. Plus, you have to play a map from the start to have full impact on the game.
Other gametypes, Duel, DM, Arena, King of the Hill, etc, require only one skill type: killing, and require no map dedication to have an impact: you can join in at any time and find yourself even with all the other players.
To win Hunters, you either have to be godly good at killing compared to everyone else (which is a difficult situation to find oneself in unless you join a newb server), or you have to camp a common spot on the map and pick off flags to go cash in. It is a gametype requiring you to be dedicated during the entire map. Not only that, but it does not reward the best fighter very often for his skill.
But that's just my opinion. I think Hunters is a badly designed gametype. I already mentioned the sort of gametype I think it should be (to orient it back at being about killing people, and not camping about for flags).