i think midair (as with most tribes successors) misses capturing the difficulty curve of the first tribes game that got most of us addicted in the first tribes game. the game was so hard to pick up initially that it attracted a very specific type of gamer that was drawn to the challenge, and drove away the rest. the same generation that grew up playing incredibly difficult NES games with unforgiving permadeath mechanics. the gamer thats drawn to games like super meat boy or rocket league - the kind of game that isn't afraid to put your head on a stick a hundred times in a row, but can be tamed and even mastered.
but instead, midair (like other tribes successors) decided to modernize the most difficult and iconic thing about tribes, and lowered the depth of the movement mechanic. sure tribes has minor aim skill and simple timing between teammates, but it's all trivial and uninteresting unless you're trying to do it all while hopping on one foot with one eye closed and a hand tied behind your back. what's hard about shooting at players moving in parabolic arches throughout the sky with no cover? what's difficult about timing attacks with 30 seconds of setup? how can this compete with the twitchy mechanical ability required by games like cs or quake? how can this compete with the pixel by pixel millisecond teamwork demanded by games like league or dota? why pretend that tribes is about the things that it's weakest at, instead of focusing on its strength, the skiing? why don't developers double down on the skiing mechanic and make it even more rewarding?
here's a terribly biased hypothetical scenario - suppose a group of friends got together to invent "unicycle polo", where people play polo while riding on a unicycle. initially, the game is impossible and nobody can even stay on the unicycle for more than 5 seconds, goals are almost never scored. as months pass, most people quit, but some keep at it, and those that stick with it eventually get the hang of it after a few months and fall in love with it. later than that, someone new joins and decides that the unicycles are too difficult and adds training wheels and calls it "unicycle polo 2.0".
this new version of "unicycle polo" attracts more people since it's way more approachable, and unicycle polo 2.0 has twice as many players as before! the game is faster since balancing isn't an issue, and players are able to aim better and do things that the first players couldn't even have dreamed of! the old generation mutters their discontent, but the new 2.0 players reassure them that the spirit of the game is still there - you've got teamwork, you've got polo, you've got a unicycle. but the first group of players - the ones that stuck it out - can't put their finger on why it doesn't feel quite the same and most of them walk away. well, who's right?
...maybe both? i think part of the difficulty of making a "modern tribes" is just that tribes as a series had so many different generations which each fell in love with something else. maybe some people liked the freedom of exploration going to the edges of the earth looking for easter eggs, while others liked the teamwork and coordination, maybe others liked the large scale war simulation and strategy with refined roles. some people liked the quake e-sporty aspect of the game, the others fell in love with the moddability and openness of it all. some people wanted to compete, others wanted to play goofy ass mods all day and smoke a joint unwind after work. maybe that's the real magic of the first game - that it was able to fulfill so many buckets for so many demographics of gamers.
in any case, my opinion is that just became some people fell in love with the original unicycle polo and some fell in love with unicycle polo 2.0 doesn't mean that any group is any more right than the other, regardless of which one came first or which one attracts more players. it just shouldn't come as a surprise to find out that most unicycle polo 1.0 players aren't that interested to play the version with training wheels, no matter how much the 2.0 players insist that they should.