i try not to check this forum but when you work on a computer all day, it's really hard not to. i tried to get this account banned so i wouldnt type essays like this but oh well.
if you don't give a shit about me (and i don't blame you) skip to the "###" part.
anyway, i do miss the community sometimes and (skiing around in) the game but it's clearly been a lot better for me and this community since i stopped coming around. when it got to the point that i take this game so seriously that i cause more harm than good it's better to just let go. dare nailed it really well when he said how this is such a close-knit in-bred community that we're literally too familiar with each other, and its like siblings in a big family, its impossible to not constantly bite each others heads off. that's how it felt for me anyway, and that's weird.
in case anyone missed it, i gave crow my login to the community and he's a stellar admin with a crazy good track record and amazing coding chops so if anyone can keep the t1 base community alive it'll be him. he's level headed to top it all off. my only request crow is that you don't let the community go the way of argh's duel, where a select few of in-crew people have a bunch of admin features. for example, everyone should be allowed to smurf check. don't put hit sounds / notifications only for certain players who know about it. make it so that either everyone knows that they're being observed, or no one does. i don't know how the anni server is, but for the community please keep it as vanilla and unmoderated as possible. if i ever learned anything from that failed server i tried to run, it's that people don't really need anything other than a place to play. it's far more important to not touch what people have voted with their feet that they're happy with.
i'm sorry to all the people i've snapped at and thanks to all the people who were friendly with me despite it. i appreciate the people who could put my rage in the past and still be cool with me. i've had dinner with tribes players, lanned together, went to gaming conventions, and even went to raves (and got fucked up gg) together. i've made some real friends irl and that's pretty cool. i have to take a step back when my internet rage probably makes them question being friends with me. every single person i've met in real life was even cooler than they are online, and i have a feeling we're all somewhat like that. like, i met cael in college through this forum and now we're basically best friends. we worked together 60+ hour weeks in the same meeting room for a couple years. cael is so obscenely smart, funny, humble, and a nice guy, if you guys could ever find out about the real cael you would never regret it. whenever i'm feeling like shit he always has my back. i still try at every opportunity to get him to come up to california so we can work together again.
im not trying to a gay shoutout to all my homies, just these people cause i have something to tell them at this time:
rtcll: im a liar. here if you don't already have it:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/3172732/tribes/trabbit.zip
dare: if you find my new reddit account, let me know. we might as well make a game of it. i don't have any of your chat logs or pics (i recently wiped my phone) anywhere / anymore
fire: playing tribes with you at PAX and teaming up on everyone was the most fun i've had playing the game in so long. try not to let the elitism here get to you, you're a nastier fps gamer than pretty much everyone here (you play quake ffs). this can't possibly be overstated - but
tribes desperately needs people like you.
###
Archetype Studios | Developers of Project Z
The World of FPSZ Games
lastly and probably most importantly i want to say, whether or not you like the people working on project z or if you agree or not with their vision of the game or if you think i'm a huge faggot that should die as soon as possible - if you really want tribes to stay alive (or even if you're at that stage where you struggle to find new games to play), you should support that project. they're talented, motivated, and organized - they're the best chance we have at ever coming back under a single title again. we're getting older too, so our e-sport careers of studying and analyzing metagames and honing our mechanics are likely coming to an end.
give your feedback, share your opinions, show interest, show excitement, they'll listen - fire and i know, we met them in person at pax and they're all genuinely passionate and love the game. i might have been the only t1 player there, and mabel was literally over my shoulder asking me constantly what i thought and if i was happy, and he grilled me about the skiing nuances. upward normals going uphills and air strafe control, projectile speeds across the tribes titles, the pros and cons of t1 vs t2-like skiing, the intricate nuances of the physics (friction, speed and directional boosts) right after the player touches the ground, to make dodging ground shots easier, etc. - literally as nerdy and technically as i could likely understand. these people REALLY CARE (and know what they're doing).
it takes nothing for you to follow them on facebook, on twitter, their blog, on reddit. the people at archetype studios aren't invisible stone internet personalities hiding behind screennames and a faceless thousand person publisher. these are real people like you and me, with real ups and downs, setbacks, bad days, frustrations, ruts, self-questioning, and they're working thanklessly hard. it doesn't feel good if people tear into their work for no reason but simply because its easier to - think seriously about why you'll tear into someone else's work when it's honestly something you want to succeed too. it is so exponentially more difficult to create something and build something to please others, especially as the internet gets more and more interconnected and everyone has an unsilenceable voice.
where will you be if project z fails? are you really going to be happier telling people "i told you so"? don't let a negative minority drown out the silent and supportive majority. be vocal, enthusiastic, supportive - it costs you nothing. make reddit smurf accounts if you're so embarrassed, but do something. you actually have the ability to make people happy with your posts and potentially influence your tribes future - why wouldn't you at least try?. people have legitimately invested huge amounts of time and
money to make the project a reality.
most of us can't contribute monetarily (in any significant amount) or with game development talent, but passionate interest can fuel their team when motivation wanes working on a project with no public releases and harsh criticisms of a game that hasn't even been played yet. for all we know your positive energy might be what it takes to get their team through a bad week or is the difference between them cutting corners on a feature or implementing it as elegantly and future-proofed as possible. it could be the difference between carving or disc jumping feeling a little off or "just right". making a game of any decent scale isn't a sprint, it's a really long marathon that never has an end but still manages to have deadlines in an extremely competitive market with users with very high standards.
i think it needs to be understood that tribes 1 is not only a minority but an extreme minority of the tribes player base. we have to accept that there have been several tribes titles with their own communities and histories and competition that happened in the last 15 years long after t1, and it's living in the past to pretend like our history or our opinions count as more significant.
remember, at this point of its life, this is what tribes should be like:
this is probably as real of a post that you'll ever get out of me