(i still think single player was a big factor in the failure of t:v....not that the single player was bad, because it wasn't...it was decent/good. but the fact is, tribes should always have been about the multiplayer. thats what its known for.
The single player was the only of the game I actually enjoyed. In fact the only part of the SP that I didn't like was the part that forced you to use the grappler, and the ending that felt like a CTF match with downs. I actually got a good laugh at the irony of playing an 8 year old girl beating the crap out of a bunch of seasoned warriors, it was like a scene out of a Tarantino movie.
The MP isn't horrible, but it wasn't Tribes. And yes the Grappler killed the game for the core vet community, I don't care whose idea it was. Grappler guns are the kind of fan created mod content that consistently makes people cringe. I respect that there are a few die-hard T:V fans that love it, but the truth is that the vast majority hated it.
But the grappler is just a minor piece of a bigger problem, Trives:Vengrances is NOT a Tribes game. The skiing was completely artificial and took NO practice whatsoever. There were only 4 packs, one of them (speed pack) being another of the fan-mod variety. The packs and the jetpack ran on a separate energy system, making them over-the-top powerful. Deployables were extremely limited. It didn't even LOOK like a Tribes game, at the very least it should have had the look of a throwback to Starsiege, but ended up looking like exactly what it felt like, an Unreal mod. The only thing done right was the noticeable absence of a cloak pack.
The best game play was by far the original. The best visuals were no doubt in T2, say what you will about relatively low polycount, but the game looked gorgeous. I can't think of anything that T:V had over T1/T2, it was literally LESS of everything that was in the first 2. T:V would have been FAR better off being released as a totally different franchise, probably as a console game.
An enormous investment in time, effort and genuine talent went into the game, and I completely respect what the guys tried to do. On its own it's a solid game that had a lot of potential to be fun if there had been another patch. But the game they put out wasn't Tribes, and was depending on a core fan base that wasn't going to accept it, and once the Tribes community abandoned it, so did the publisher.
From my view, one of the biggest mistakes surrounding the whole debacle was the creation of the Tribes Talk forum. Separating the original community from the development that way imo was a bad move. There was hardly ever any news about T:V in GD, the most active part of the site, and the GD posters didn't go to TT because the level of stupidity there at the time made the eyes bleed.
To Marweas credit, he did an amazing thing. He temporarily resurrected a franchise that most of the stuffed suits at Sierra/VUG thought was dead. If there is to ever be another Tribes game, it will NOT be successful unless it is done with an atmosphere of independence. VUG just does not care about it, and why should they? Comparatively it's never really given them the returns their other big franchises have. But for all the talk of Tribes being a "niche" franchise, there is so much untapped potential in the series that another Tribes game is inevitable, but it will never be a successful franchise unless it's given room and time and resources to be fully realized.
Anyways that's my 2c.