T3: The Glide pack, and why movement packs should be included in T3.

Locke355 said:
I like the idea of vehicles being turned into an exosteleton, so long as it is a somewhat bulky exoskeleton and adds to the size of the player model.

As for a glide pack in the forms described here? No. And here is why. Enabling a capper to do this: "Circling above he waits until the flag is clear and then swoops in to grab it." will get old in about 5 whole seconds. Remember the scout in t1? Remember how annoying it was to have some tard with floating around RC or RD and all you could do is pray for a chain bullet to hit him, or snipe him? Now make it so that on any map you can grab the flag. Oh the fun.

Tribes is about fast movement in relation to the ground, not in relation to flying. There is a large difference between being a static height off the ground going over landscape and "skiing" through valleys and over terrain. The worst part about this glide pack idea is that it renders 1/2 the weapons in the game (weapons from t1 and t2) useless when it comes to killing the glider, especially if they are going at any sizeable speed.

Just my 2 cents.
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Hey Chris,

About the circling above the flag part, I don't mean he does it for an indefinite period of time. I was thinking more of a circling-freefalling pattern because he doesn't have any momentum to keep him in the air.

Very true about "fast movement in relation to the ground". The more I read the posts people have against what the Glide pack will bring makes me second-guess what I originally posted. Most of the fastest skiiers in T1 know how to hug the ground and know when to fly in the air.

Hmm, keep the posts coming!
 
I really dig the exoskeleton idea, but it opens a can of worms.

In essence, it's the same idea as Sir L's armor combination. It adds a whole new level of complexity to the game that might just clutter it. Further, thus far, you've only looked at this from an offensive side of the table.

What happens when a skilled ld gets his hands on a exoskeleton? Do you limit him to certain weapons while in his increased mobility suit (no laser rifle, for instance) or allow him full range? Do you give the exoskel a max speed, or make it dependent on the movement patterns of the user (a la skiing).

I like the concept of a capper using an exoskeleton and his current loadout to blaze around, but this allows the defense to do it right back at him.

At some point, we're no longer playing Tribes and we've started playing Mechwarrior. It's no coincidence that I'm also a fan of that series.
 
You also need to keep in mind how unbalanced that "pack" makes the game. As I said before, it limits you to two weapons with which to kill the enemy (chain and laser), or to elfing. If i am out in the map, and a flagger comes gliding at me, I should never be put in a position where I do not have a chance to stop him (and no, MAs dont count) unless he has done some SUPER skillful move long before. So basically, if for some reason I am not carrying 1 of the 3 weapons, I am SOL.

(I dont count missles as a weapon, or part of tribes. They are a dumb fuckin idea by a dumbass son of a bitch).
 
I don't like the idea of limiting the players movement, or limiting these movement "features" to particular players/packs.

I'd like to see players appear equal, ensuring everybody has access to these changes. Making sure that personal skill (call it cowboyism if you must) is a more important factor than which Loadout Joe-Pubber chose when he left his station, being the deciding factor of who wins a battle between him and Special.

i.e: Restricting certain players from using the grapple, or the glide pack will piss people off.
I don't want to have to use a particular pack on a certain map, just to do the most effective route.
I'd prefer to use the 2 or more alternatives given to me by having both of these options at my disposal at once.

I'm quite tired, and nothing I type is making sense to me, so I'll leave it at that.

edit: Locke's post is basically what I was trying to say.
Paper, Scissors & Rock (T2's method of balancing) isn't balanced.
Everybody having access to Paper, Scissors & Rock simultaneously is.
 
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Locke355 said:
I like the idea of vehicles being turned into an exosteleton, so long as it is a somewhat bulky exoskeleton and adds to the size of the player model.

As for a glide pack in the forms described here? No. And here is why. Enabling a capper to do this: "Circling above he waits until the flag is clear and then swoops in to grab it." will get old in about 5 whole seconds. Remember the scout in t1? Remember how annoying it was to have some tard with floating around RC or RD and all you could do is pray for a chain bullet to hit him, or snipe him? Now make it so that on any map you can grab the flag. Oh the fun.
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special, this is what i meant about the "flow". u'll spend half ur time trying to just kill someone cuz they can dodge everything so easily instead of actually chasing after them and killing them by catching up with them. i cant word things very well so ill go away now.....
 
I'm not too worried about the "aim" issues associated with a "glide pack." If somebody is gliding for too long, I'm sure they'll be sniper bait. If they're "gliding" close to the ground, a LD djing with an epack should be able to catch up unless the route is totally dope.

The idea of a glider pack has real merit.

Just as with the energy pack, however, I'd like to see some marginal glide ability "built into" the spawn armor. Just as an epack refreshes faster, a "glide pack" should let you glide farther. I could see the same thing being done with other "movement packs."

Depending on the "type" of route, I can see cappers changing their packs all the time.

Gliding + T1-style beacon stopping + grapple + boost = very cool.
 
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Well if it were balanced right, it could be cool. Just look at it as this, cappers that have an energy pack will be more susceptible to the disc launcher and grenade launcher while cappers with the glide pack will be more susceptible to the laser rifle and the chain gun.

Epack cappers will be able to vary from their routes more, while Gpack cappers will be able to stick to one set direction of their route with more speed perhaps. It could be really cool, but the developers would walking a fine line of balancing.
 
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Javelin said:
Epack cappers will be able to vary from their routes more, while Gpack cappers will be able to stick to one set direction of their route with more speed perhaps. It could be really cool, but the developers would walking a fine line of balancing.
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Do you have the packs switched?
 
Javelin said:
Well if it were balanced right, it could be cool. Just look at it as this, cappers that have an energy pack will be more susceptible to the disc launcher and grenade launcher while cappers with the glide pack will be more susceptible to the laser rifle and the chain gun.
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Yes Yes, lets make it so we need special weapons for normal situations.
 
I didn't read the entire thread. But one small problem comes to mind when I think of a glide pack:

Rocket Launcher.
 
Locke355 said:
I like the idea of vehicles being turned into an exosteleton, so long as it is a somewhat bulky exoskeleton and adds to the size of the player model.

As for a glide pack in the forms described here? No. And here is why. Enabling a capper to do this: "Circling above he waits until the flag is clear and then swoops in to grab it." will get old in about 5 whole seconds. Remember the scout in t1? Remember how annoying it was to have some tard with floating around RC or RD and all you could do is pray for a chain bullet to hit him, or snipe him? Now make it so that on any map you can grab the flag. Oh the fun.

Tribes is about fast movement in relation to the ground, not in relation to flying. There is a large difference between being a static height off the ground going over landscape and "skiing" through valleys and over terrain. The worst part about this glide pack idea is that it renders 1/2 the weapons in the game (weapons from t1 and t2) useless when it comes to killing the glider, especially if they are going at any sizeable speed.

Just my 2 cents.
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Obvious balancing would render a user of the glide pack succeptable to a rocket launcher (should one exist) as well as chaingun fire or other weapons introduced. Its flight duration could easily be balanced in artificial means as well. Not only that, but someone utilizing a glide pack will be much slower in the air than a fast-moving chaser.
 
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Special said:
Do you have the packs switched?
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I think he has a different conception of gliding than you. Javelin wants to be able to fly in one direction longer for an extended period of time without any material loss of speed, but that you would have less manueverability (given lessened jet relative to epack). I think your conception of gliding is that gliding would let you fly farther but also slow you down, thus increasing your manueverability.

How gliding works really would be a function of its implementation. I'm actually partial to Javelin's conception of the G-pack.
 
Flatscan said:
I think he has a different conception of gliding than you. Javelin wants to be able to fly in one direction longer for an extended period of time without any material loss of speed, but that you would have less manueverability (given lessened jet relative to epack). I think your conception of gliding is that gliding would let you fly farther but also slow you down, thus increasing your manueverability.
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... The restriction with gliding is that to pick up speed, you need to dive, therefore reducing your altitude. You should have fairly good maneuverability, as long as you can move your "wings." The thing is, maneuverability in the air with an e-pack takes a significant amount of energy, whereas gliding would merely be changing directions.

Could you still use weapons while gliding? It's a tough decision that would probably need to be tested. I remember the explanation for being able to fire a weapon, throw a grenade, and use the jetpack at the same time was because the jetpack was linked neurally, so I'd imagine controlling your wings could work the same way.

One thing that needs to be implemented before gliding is 3-dimensional flying as was suggested in the movement thread (or was it this thread, whatever). Being able to fly on your stomach and such. That is definitely a worthwhile addition. It makes you a smaller target from far away, but a huge target underneath. That may also suck though because usually a capper will get a decent ways ahead of the chasers, and CG'ing would be much harder.

It would need a lot of coding and beta testing on an unproven idea, so it'll probably never happen. But who knows? I think gliding may just be an "oh-gee" type thing. It sure seems cool on paper, but would it really contribute to the Tribes experience?
 
Natural said:
Obvious balancing would render a user of the glide pack succeptable to a rocket launcher (should one exist) as well as chaingun fire or other weapons introduced. Its flight duration could easily be balanced in artificial means as well. Not only that, but someone utilizing a glide pack will be much slower in the air than a fast-moving chaser.
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This still wont solve the problem homeslice. First.. fuck the rocket launcher. I am not going to base shit on that being in the game. If you reduce the flight duration from anything that doesn't require you to have one of the two aforementioned weapons, you are basically making a gimp ass pack. If you make it so they go normal speed while gliding for 10 seconds, i think you make the pack overpowered to a degree.

Making it slower is fine, but i think it will be ultimately lame. If you make it slow enough for the average user to be able to MA the carrier, then the pack user will be chain/laser fodder. Base it on chain/laser, and you are back to where my argument started.

Lastly there is the concern about hovering / gliding in the stratosphere. If hit a huge route, grab the flag and DJ, then at max height hit the pack, I dont want to have to go get in some shrike type vehicle to get you down.
 
Special said:
However as I thought more and more about it, I began to like the idea of being able to glide along. Natural mentioned some sort of wing flaps beneath the arms, others mentioned a glide pack. Well, I like the glide pack idea, a LOT. Here's why.

I think we've all come to the conclusion that Tribes is all about movement. Being able to ski a route perfectly is more fun than killing people to many. If you look at the current offerings for packs, one sees that only one of the packs leads to increased movement abilities, and that is the Energy pack. I say we need more movement-oriented packs.

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I disagree with your rational for gliding. However I'll start with what I agree with you on. I agree that the greatest strength of the tribes series is the overall mobility that it allows the player. Speed is also a large factor in tribes success. However those two strengths also create a weakness in the tribes series. That weakness is that the game is not as conflict oriented as other first person shooters. I disagree with your claim that skiing is more fun than killing, and I believe that is what makes other games such as counter strike and battlefield 1942 more popular than tribes. The problem is that the large degree of mobility and speed decrease the overall amount of conflict in the game. Tribes suffers in game modes that emphasize killing, where more popular games are equally strong in game modes that emphasize killing and game modes that do not emphasize killing. Now while Tribes shouldnt shift too much from its strength, perhaps empasizing a more conflict oriented game mode such as capture and hold (except with very few places to hold) along with CTF would attract gamers who enjoying the killing aspect of first person shooters to the Tribes series.
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Wildshot said:
That weakness is that the game is not as conflict oriented as other first person shooters. I disagree with your claim that skiing is more fun than killing, and I believe that is what makes other games such as counter strike and battlefield 1942 more popular than tribes. The problem is that the large degree of mobility and speed decrease the overall amount of conflict in the game. Tribes suffers in game modes that emphasize killing, where more popular games are equally strong in game modes that emphasize killing and game modes that do not emphasize killing. Now while Tribes shouldnt shift too much from its strength, perhaps empasizing a more conflict oriented game mode such as capture and hold (except with very few places to hold) along with CTF would attract gamers who enjoying the killing aspect of first person shooters to the Tribes series.
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Umm... less conflict / killing than in BF1942 and Counterstrike? We are talking about a game with just as much sprawling territory (save for the maps that dont have planes) that includes respawn timeouts and a game where if you take 1 headshot you are sitting on the sideline till the next round?

Did I hear you correctly?
 
Having the "Glide-Pack" run off the players energy would be one of the ways it can balance it's use... I can imagin a capper gliding away, but a few LD dj and swoop in on their own glide-packs and chain him down.

Interesting idea... I think it would add depth to the plane dj and chain scenario...


And I also disagree with Wildshots post. Tribes main strength is the ability to do what you want, and how you want to. Its not as limiting in Quake, which suffers from the point that it's mostly deathmatch, like Tribes.. which is mostly CTF.

CTF is not killing orientated, which would you want.. a great kill, or a flag capture? CTF is the best mode in Tribes, because of the expansive enviroments, and the customization of loadouts and positions. Just like Quake is really only fun when it's Deathmatch, and Counter-Strike is the same when it's Team-deathmatch.
 
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Locke355 said:
Umm... less conflict / killing than in BF1942 and Counterstrike? We are talking about a game with just as much sprawling territory (save for the maps that dont have planes) that includes respawn timeouts and a game where if you take 1 headshot you are sitting on the sideline till the next round?

Did I hear you correctly?
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Yes. While there may be wide open terrain and respawn timeouts, the main game mode in both games is more conflict oriented than Tribes CTF. The combination of wide open terrain, speed and mobility in the tribes results in less conflict. I'm not saying that those characteristics of the game should be reduced, I'm saying that the next tribes game should emphasize a conflict oriented game mode in addition to CTF.
 
Rosco-SS said:
And I also disagree with Wildshots post. Tribes main strength is the ability to do what you want, and how you want to. Its not as limiting in Quake, which suffers from the point that it's mostly deathmatch, like Tribes.. which is mostly CTF.

CTF is not killing orientated, which would you want.. a great kill, or a flag capture? CTF is the best mode in Tribes, because of the expansive enviroments, and the customization of loadouts and positions. Just like Quake is really only fun when it's Deathmatch, and Counter-Strike is the same when it's Team-deathmatch.
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The end of your post is the problem I'm trying to get at. If the next tribes game is going to become the top shooter, it needs to capture the audience that plays the more popular conflict oriented shooters.
 
Wildshot said:
Yes. While there may be wide open terrain and respawn timeouts, the main game mode in both games is more conflict oriented than Tribes CTF. The combination of wide open terrain, speed and mobility in the tribes results in less conflict. I'm not saying that those characteristics of the game should be reduced, I'm saying that the next tribes game should emphasize a conflict oriented game mode in addition to CTF.
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*sigh* You are wrong. I dont know you, or what you play, so you could be some t2 vehicle humper who flies around with a shrike for 25 minutes and never sees the enemy base, but at least in T1 there is more 'conflict', as in killing-action-death-destruction time than in either of your mentioned games. If you are LD, you are guarding the flag taking on constant cappers / ho. If you are O, you are destroying bases, clearing flags, and trying to cap. Now, if you are a repair/turret bitch, or are one of those idiots who sits at the start of some distant caproute looking at his command hud, then I can understand your comments.

Just because BF1942 conquest shit means you have to kill others near the flag to take control of it, and just because the only thing you do in CS is kill people (aside from rescuing the occasional hostage, if ever), does not mean that either have more 'conflict' in them. It just means that is inherently required in your end goal.
 
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