The Pumpkin King
Veteran XX
Note to Admins: Could I get the quote/post made by user "blackpeople" removed so that people can see my posts correctly? Thx.
Write-up On Midair
By The Pumpkin King
The Name:
What was Starsiege: Tribes:
What is Midair... really:
What Midair is not:
Paper Scissors Stone:
The low skill ceiling:
Spawn with Armor and Weapons*
Gimped Shield Pack
Smooth Terrain (No Jagged Terrain)
Unimportant Generators
Fast and Easy Discs
No Hand Grenades While Shooting
More Air Control
Built In Happy Flag
Very Low Offensive Base Control
Weaker Turrets
Heavy On Flag
Lack of skidding
Pretty much every major decision they made with this game was designed to lower the skill ceiling, and reduce the skill gap between new players and old ones. It's a very smart marketing decision. The other route they could have gone, segregating servers by experience level, wouldn't have been nearly as successful as convincing newer players that this is a game to be enjoyed. Weakening high level players, and limiting their capabilities allows newer players to come in and feel like they can hang, thus bolstering their desire to play the game and become more involved.
I'm all for noobie friendly games. I'm all for attracting newer players. In fact, it's a part I thought Tribes was very weak at, so it's great that they were thinking about this. But in my opinion, they went about it in the completely wrong way. They essentially ruined the game for high level players. They catered almost completely to new players, and ignored the long time veterans completely.
The decision they made to drastically lower the skill ceiling makes me think of someone changing the game of soccer to "Hey, no running. Everyone has to walk now to make it fair." And dictating rules that make it so "everyone can succeed." "Let's just remove pitching in baseball, and have everyone bat from a tee instead to make it fair." "Let's change all the pieces on a chess board to pawns, to make it fair for players that aren't Grandmasters." All decisions like that do is make the game no fun for anyone, and ultimately cause everyone to stop playing. For a time, there will be people who get super excited, because they can now move as fast as some of the best soccer players in the world, but their fun will not last and they will stop playing soon after they realize the game has lost the spirit of whatever made it great.
Because of decisions that follow this line of "make it fair" thinking, player retention will be very low. The moment people start realizing that the game has no depth and never did, they will just go play whatever other hugely popular game is dominating the market, because if you are going to play a game without depth, you may as well play a super popular one that has a large following. The sole and unique reason to play Tribes was for that enhanced depth of gameplay, and thus there will be no hook or addiction that keeps people playing in the long-term.
Spawning with gear -
Smooth Terrain (No Jagged Terrain) -
Unimportant Generators -
The disc -
No Simultaneous Hand Grenades -
More Air Control -
In Midair, you have more control over your avatar and the way you fall. I'm not really even sure how I feel about this. I just felt like T1 was totally fine and not in need of massive "corrections" for it to be playable and fun. Just more reinventing the wheel.
Built in HaPpY Flag -
Base Control -
Weaker Turrets -
Heavy on Flag -
Lack of skidding -
Voice commands:
The User Interface:
I think they did a great job with the UI. It has a huge icon telling you when you are holding the flag. It's quite idiot proof. There is another icon showing that you have been detected by pulse sensors. Everything seems really straight-forward, easy to understand, and just really solid overall. Very good UI in this game.
Homing Missiles:
Packs:
The skiing:
Depth Perception:
Lack of Freedom -
Weapon Design:
The Buildings and Base Architecture -
So, the base architecture is really great in this game. They have a lot of unique structures and shapes that are really fun to navigate. Whoever designed them did a great job. I've never played in bases like these, and they are new, unique, and refreshing. They don't get put to full use, since the bases are unimportant in the game overall, but they did a great job on them for sure. I'm not talking about map design, but the raw buildings that are placed into the maps. They encourage very fun gameplay. There are atmospheric tubes, corridors, generator rooms, and all sorts of cool stuff that just looks really great.
Vehicles:
Write-up On Midair
By The Pumpkin King
The Name:
Spoiler
Perhaps the single best decision Archetype made was to name their game Midair. The name is strong, clever, and great all across the board. The term "Midair" or "MA" for short was first coined in 1999, when people landed disc shots on each other in midair. Back then, it was rare to see such impressive shots getting landed often, and they were quite a big deal when they happened, especially in competitive matches. Players, after landing midairs, would taunt, brag, cheer in excitement, or if they were great at the game and made such shots regularly, act like nothing happened. Nowadays midairs are incredibly common, but the positive stigma behind the word remains.
For anyone that played Tribes, seeing the word "Midair" would invoke feelings of joy, success, winning, excitement, awe (in some cases), and heavy nostalgia. There are few words that I can think of that scream "Tribes" more than Midair. Using a word like "midair" is enough to tug on the emotional strings of someone that played Tribes. It is a name that people that played Tribes could easily unite behind.
Simultaneously, for anyone that has never played Tribes before, they would see that word and think of flying, floating, excitement, skydiving, extreme sports, adrenaline, or other such things. Not only does the name strike at old Tribes veterans, but new players as well might see the name and think "Oh wow, I've never played an FPS that happens in midair before" or "Wow, you can fly in this game" and become curious. Thus the name Midair is a multi-pronged attack that would invoke positive feelings in both the old and the new.
I compliment Archetype on their selection of this fantastic name.
For anyone that played Tribes, seeing the word "Midair" would invoke feelings of joy, success, winning, excitement, awe (in some cases), and heavy nostalgia. There are few words that I can think of that scream "Tribes" more than Midair. Using a word like "midair" is enough to tug on the emotional strings of someone that played Tribes. It is a name that people that played Tribes could easily unite behind.
Simultaneously, for anyone that has never played Tribes before, they would see that word and think of flying, floating, excitement, skydiving, extreme sports, adrenaline, or other such things. Not only does the name strike at old Tribes veterans, but new players as well might see the name and think "Oh wow, I've never played an FPS that happens in midair before" or "Wow, you can fly in this game" and become curious. Thus the name Midair is a multi-pronged attack that would invoke positive feelings in both the old and the new.
I compliment Archetype on their selection of this fantastic name.
What was Starsiege: Tribes:
Spoiler
Tribes 1 was a game where skill, good decisions, fast thinking, and wise team strategy was heavily rewarded with success. It was a very high skill and severely punishing game, and that was what made it great. It was not a game about dumbing things down, making things "easier" (especially for newer players), or "evening the playing field", so that everyone could have their moment. Making even minor mistakes were often severely punishing. Missing your shot by a hair, or missing your ski route by just a little bit, often resulted with the enemy team putting points on the board.
Tribes 1 was very much so similar to a sport, where there is a massive skill gap between a "random average joe" player and a player that is considered "elite." One powerful player could influence the game to a very high degree. The game allowed for that, due to its mechanics and the way it was designed. It is a core feature of its greatness. The depth, intensity, and unforgiving nature of the game is what made us all love it so much. I think that people like sports for similar reasons.
When you look at many of the worlds most enjoyed games, they all bare the same mark. Chess, Go, Professional Sports, Olympic Events, and a long list of other enjoyed games all show this massive performance discrepancy between high and low level players. The ability to learn, grow, adapt and evolve one's ability is there because these activities allow for it. In comparison, Tic-Tac-Toe is a highly limited game that most people don't play very much, because its gameplay is shallow and devoid of depth. The heavy constrictions and limitations on what you can do in Tic-Tac-Toe leave it feeling boring, uninteresting, and not worthy of exploration or extended gameplay.
Tribes was a game where the skill ceiling was so high, it gave the player so much room to breath. You could explore new ideas, new gameplay, and people could keep learning, improving, and growing stronger. This is a highly important aspect for any good game. As the months went by in Tribes, people just kept learning and learning and getting better and better. This process would go on for years. In this area, Starsiege: Tribes hit it out of the park.
Tribes 1 was very much so similar to a sport, where there is a massive skill gap between a "random average joe" player and a player that is considered "elite." One powerful player could influence the game to a very high degree. The game allowed for that, due to its mechanics and the way it was designed. It is a core feature of its greatness. The depth, intensity, and unforgiving nature of the game is what made us all love it so much. I think that people like sports for similar reasons.
When you look at many of the worlds most enjoyed games, they all bare the same mark. Chess, Go, Professional Sports, Olympic Events, and a long list of other enjoyed games all show this massive performance discrepancy between high and low level players. The ability to learn, grow, adapt and evolve one's ability is there because these activities allow for it. In comparison, Tic-Tac-Toe is a highly limited game that most people don't play very much, because its gameplay is shallow and devoid of depth. The heavy constrictions and limitations on what you can do in Tic-Tac-Toe leave it feeling boring, uninteresting, and not worthy of exploration or extended gameplay.
Tribes was a game where the skill ceiling was so high, it gave the player so much room to breath. You could explore new ideas, new gameplay, and people could keep learning, improving, and growing stronger. This is a highly important aspect for any good game. As the months went by in Tribes, people just kept learning and learning and getting better and better. This process would go on for years. In this area, Starsiege: Tribes hit it out of the park.
What is Midair... really:
Spoiler
Midair is Diet Caffeine Free Tribes Light. It is the World of Warcraft to your Everquest. It is the Tic-Tac-Toe to your Chess. It is a hollow shell of the original game designed to draw in new and casual players that don't know what Tribes is or how to play it. The potent depth and skill ceiling that Tribes was notorious for is more or less removed, and what is left is simply the outer husk caked over in glitter in hopes of drawing in either veterans that might not know any better (they don't exist), or more importantly, new players.
You wouldn't think that Tic-Tac-Toe boards could make a lot of money, but they really can. Tic-Tac-Toe is a game that you can teach people quickly, show them that it is fun, sell them your board, get your money, and get out of there before the customer realizes that it is useless junk, and only enjoyable for a very limited time. In contrast, it might be far more difficult to sell a Go board. Many people might glance at you attempting to explain the rules of Go and say "This looks too difficult," or "I don't understand" or "Wow, I got beaten so badly" and walk away before a purchase can be made, though the Go board has far more value overall. A Go board has massive replayability that can be enjoyed for a lifetime.
I believe that Archetype saw that there was more money to be made selling Tic-Tac-Toe boards then Go boards. They designed their game with the intent of it being financially productive, and that meant ignoring all of the Go players, the long-time veterans of Tribes, and making a game for new players.
Making a game for new players means adding a leveling up system, a weapon/item unlock system, vehicles, tutorials, super cool packs, and so on and so forth. It also means removing the heavy-depth elements in order to lower the skill ceiling that allows higher level players to do great and amazing things, so that newer players feel unintimidated upon checking it out. It means simplifying everything as much as you can, so that people can understand the concept of the game quickly. It is designed to be as unabrasive to newer players as possible. It rejects, strangles, and chokes the life out of any high level gamer looking to invest time into a game with heavy depth.
You wouldn't think that Tic-Tac-Toe boards could make a lot of money, but they really can. Tic-Tac-Toe is a game that you can teach people quickly, show them that it is fun, sell them your board, get your money, and get out of there before the customer realizes that it is useless junk, and only enjoyable for a very limited time. In contrast, it might be far more difficult to sell a Go board. Many people might glance at you attempting to explain the rules of Go and say "This looks too difficult," or "I don't understand" or "Wow, I got beaten so badly" and walk away before a purchase can be made, though the Go board has far more value overall. A Go board has massive replayability that can be enjoyed for a lifetime.
I believe that Archetype saw that there was more money to be made selling Tic-Tac-Toe boards then Go boards. They designed their game with the intent of it being financially productive, and that meant ignoring all of the Go players, the long-time veterans of Tribes, and making a game for new players.
Making a game for new players means adding a leveling up system, a weapon/item unlock system, vehicles, tutorials, super cool packs, and so on and so forth. It also means removing the heavy-depth elements in order to lower the skill ceiling that allows higher level players to do great and amazing things, so that newer players feel unintimidated upon checking it out. It means simplifying everything as much as you can, so that people can understand the concept of the game quickly. It is designed to be as unabrasive to newer players as possible. It rejects, strangles, and chokes the life out of any high level gamer looking to invest time into a game with heavy depth.
What Midair is not:
Spoiler
Midair is not a hardcore FPS designed to stimulate competitive gamers or old Tribes vets, whether you played 1999 base-mod, LT, or any other competitive game, this game will leave you feeling hungry and unsatisfied for sure. It has loot crates and a progression system designed to give newer players the feeling of progress and rope them into continuous play. It has vehicles designed with the intent of titillating simple minds. It is the type of game that you would join in every so often so you can bounce around, pew pew pew, whatever, and then logoff after just messing around and having a few laughs. Anyone that had high hopes or was looking to park down on this game is going to be greatly disappointed.
Taking the opposite approach of Starsiege: Tribes, Midair reduces all of that nasty impact of your mistakes. It stays back its hand and instead of spanking your bottom red, puts you in timeout. Did you just die? No problem, you can just respawn in 5 seconds with a full suit of armor and goodies. Did the enemy just take down your generators? No problem, just respawn closeby as a fully shielded heavy and take your base back in no time, or better yet, just spawn with a remote inventory station, deploy it, and nobody will even need to retake the base. Did the enemy just kill you and take your flag? No problem, just respawn in 4 seconds with a sniper loadout and take him right out of the sky. Oh, did they get away with the flag? No worries, the flag carrier can't hide from you as you can see a big giant flag icon guiding you to his/her location. No thinking required, just ski towards that flag carrier and pew pew pew. Easy easy easy... Tribes Casual.
Taking the opposite approach of Starsiege: Tribes, Midair reduces all of that nasty impact of your mistakes. It stays back its hand and instead of spanking your bottom red, puts you in timeout. Did you just die? No problem, you can just respawn in 5 seconds with a full suit of armor and goodies. Did the enemy just take down your generators? No problem, just respawn closeby as a fully shielded heavy and take your base back in no time, or better yet, just spawn with a remote inventory station, deploy it, and nobody will even need to retake the base. Did the enemy just kill you and take your flag? No problem, just respawn in 4 seconds with a sniper loadout and take him right out of the sky. Oh, did they get away with the flag? No worries, the flag carrier can't hide from you as you can see a big giant flag icon guiding you to his/her location. No thinking required, just ski towards that flag carrier and pew pew pew. Easy easy easy... Tribes Casual.
Paper Scissors Stone:
Spoiler
The shield pack in Tribes 1 was a beautiful thing. It took so much skill to use and master. People that got truly good at it could block midair discs with it midair, among other things. They could use it to punish the enemy team for making bad decisions. A good player could use the shield pack to keep the enemy base down, and providing a huge advantage for their team. This was something that brought a great amount of depth to the game. For many, using the shield pack as your primary tool to destroy the enemy base and kill a boatload of enemy players was one of the most fun aspects of the game.
Archetype decided that it didn't like the way that the shieldpack was designed in the original game. They changed it to make it so that blasters can penetrate through shields. Now, this isn't a big issue in the game really because no one uses the blaster, and because of the way that Midair is structured overall with being able to spawn with armor and weapons, but you can see where the direction of Archetype's thinking is going. This is a sort of paper, scissors, stone type of gameplay.
The "Paper scissors stone" approach to games, which is never fun, basically becomes "Oh, you chose shieldpack? Well I choose blaster, which counters your shieldpack." It makes me think of Hearthstone where an aggressive deck can counter a slow one by killing it before it even gets started. The emphasis of the fight is on the weapon choice rather than the actual combat. It nullifies the reward and satisfaction of having mastered certain skills, and helps to "even the playing field", which ruins the fun of games. You can see this paper scissors stone type gameplay with the flares and how they counter missiles, and how missiles counter vehicles, and so on and so forth. It's just this clear cut, "I choose dis to win against dis" that just seems to dumb things down so hard.
Why not have disc do double damage against anyone wearing an energy pack? Or how about the grenades do more damage to anyone using medium armor? Or how about if your name is Jim, you suffer additional chaingun damage? It's just silly. There is absolutely no reason that there should be one single lone weapon that nullifies the advantage of one particular pack. This is a bad decision and this school of thought leads to other bad decisions that cause un-fun gameplay, like the homing missle vs flare counterplay.
You will also notice where that nerf lands. The tool that allows strong players to do powerfully influential things, in this case the shield pack, a tool that takes great skill to use, is being put under attack with this decision. The exact same thing happens time and time again in the same exact places. Many of the tools and aspects that allowed high skilled players to excel in Starsiege: Tribes are all under attack in Midair. The disc-jump is another great example of this.
Archetype does not want veterans walking over the newer players too badly, because that is not good for business, so they strike at the tools, methods, and aspects where that occurs most so that newer players have a less abrasive experience and develop a desire to invest money into Midair. Unfortunately, that is taking all of the tools and aspects that created the most fun for the old players of Tribes. Since they can all remember their contrasting experience with the old Tribes game, try as they might, they will never reach a comparable level of satisfaction playing Midair.
Archetype decided that it didn't like the way that the shieldpack was designed in the original game. They changed it to make it so that blasters can penetrate through shields. Now, this isn't a big issue in the game really because no one uses the blaster, and because of the way that Midair is structured overall with being able to spawn with armor and weapons, but you can see where the direction of Archetype's thinking is going. This is a sort of paper, scissors, stone type of gameplay.
The "Paper scissors stone" approach to games, which is never fun, basically becomes "Oh, you chose shieldpack? Well I choose blaster, which counters your shieldpack." It makes me think of Hearthstone where an aggressive deck can counter a slow one by killing it before it even gets started. The emphasis of the fight is on the weapon choice rather than the actual combat. It nullifies the reward and satisfaction of having mastered certain skills, and helps to "even the playing field", which ruins the fun of games. You can see this paper scissors stone type gameplay with the flares and how they counter missiles, and how missiles counter vehicles, and so on and so forth. It's just this clear cut, "I choose dis to win against dis" that just seems to dumb things down so hard.
Why not have disc do double damage against anyone wearing an energy pack? Or how about the grenades do more damage to anyone using medium armor? Or how about if your name is Jim, you suffer additional chaingun damage? It's just silly. There is absolutely no reason that there should be one single lone weapon that nullifies the advantage of one particular pack. This is a bad decision and this school of thought leads to other bad decisions that cause un-fun gameplay, like the homing missle vs flare counterplay.
You will also notice where that nerf lands. The tool that allows strong players to do powerfully influential things, in this case the shield pack, a tool that takes great skill to use, is being put under attack with this decision. The exact same thing happens time and time again in the same exact places. Many of the tools and aspects that allowed high skilled players to excel in Starsiege: Tribes are all under attack in Midair. The disc-jump is another great example of this.
Archetype does not want veterans walking over the newer players too badly, because that is not good for business, so they strike at the tools, methods, and aspects where that occurs most so that newer players have a less abrasive experience and develop a desire to invest money into Midair. Unfortunately, that is taking all of the tools and aspects that created the most fun for the old players of Tribes. Since they can all remember their contrasting experience with the old Tribes game, try as they might, they will never reach a comparable level of satisfaction playing Midair.
The low skill ceiling:
Spawn with Armor and Weapons*
Gimped Shield Pack
Smooth Terrain (No Jagged Terrain)
Unimportant Generators
Fast and Easy Discs
No Hand Grenades While Shooting
More Air Control
Built In Happy Flag
Very Low Offensive Base Control
Weaker Turrets
Heavy On Flag
Lack of skidding
Pretty much every major decision they made with this game was designed to lower the skill ceiling, and reduce the skill gap between new players and old ones. It's a very smart marketing decision. The other route they could have gone, segregating servers by experience level, wouldn't have been nearly as successful as convincing newer players that this is a game to be enjoyed. Weakening high level players, and limiting their capabilities allows newer players to come in and feel like they can hang, thus bolstering their desire to play the game and become more involved.
I'm all for noobie friendly games. I'm all for attracting newer players. In fact, it's a part I thought Tribes was very weak at, so it's great that they were thinking about this. But in my opinion, they went about it in the completely wrong way. They essentially ruined the game for high level players. They catered almost completely to new players, and ignored the long time veterans completely.
The decision they made to drastically lower the skill ceiling makes me think of someone changing the game of soccer to "Hey, no running. Everyone has to walk now to make it fair." And dictating rules that make it so "everyone can succeed." "Let's just remove pitching in baseball, and have everyone bat from a tee instead to make it fair." "Let's change all the pieces on a chess board to pawns, to make it fair for players that aren't Grandmasters." All decisions like that do is make the game no fun for anyone, and ultimately cause everyone to stop playing. For a time, there will be people who get super excited, because they can now move as fast as some of the best soccer players in the world, but their fun will not last and they will stop playing soon after they realize the game has lost the spirit of whatever made it great.
Because of decisions that follow this line of "make it fair" thinking, player retention will be very low. The moment people start realizing that the game has no depth and never did, they will just go play whatever other hugely popular game is dominating the market, because if you are going to play a game without depth, you may as well play a super popular one that has a large following. The sole and unique reason to play Tribes was for that enhanced depth of gameplay, and thus there will be no hook or addiction that keeps people playing in the long-term.
Spawning with gear -
Spoiler
This hits the top of my list by far. It basically breaks the entire game. It poops on every aspect of what Tribes was and what it was based on. Tribes was a game where you really felt attached to the world around you. It accomplished this by uniting you and your teammates around a common environment and objective. You and all the people on your team were connected to the same fate, and if no one decided to defend your base, your whole team was going to suffer.
In Tribes base, this feeling of attachment to your gaming environment was achieved by tying your base defense to your ability to enjoy cool weapons, armor types, and gear. If you didn't defend, you would have no decent weapons, no packs, no armor, and no turrets for the rest of the game, which was a massive disadvantage. This built a sort of social aspect, a sense of a destructible and real environment, and a comradery and a desire to work together towards a common goal with your team. You could actually see the real consequences of your failures in the form of shattered base turrets, broken sensors, and your base crawling with "bad guys" from the enemy team. It invoked the feeling of "Oh no you didn't", when you saw that the enemy had taken over your territory. That was "your" base and you were determined to reclaim it.
In Midair, that feeling of attachment to your base is not there, because you don't need your base to acquire weapons and gear. Being able to spawn with gear also breaks various other aspects of the game, because the rest of the game has not been redesigned to compensate for this new feature. If you change this major core aspect of Tribes, without changing the rest, it is a game-balance disaster. What it causes is glaringly overpowered and underpowered aspects that suck the fun out of the game.
It would be alright to allow players to spawn with certain weapons if you were going to create a totally different game. The Tribes 1 LT mod in many ways achieved the goal, in that it went full out in the opposite direction. It abandoned the generator objective 100%, and dictated the flag as the atmospheric and sole objective around which players united towards a common goal. That is a proven model and a proven method of gameplay that players enjoyed for so many years. There is nothing wrong with allowing players to spawn with weapons, as long as you're going to redesign the rest of the game to match along with that.
In contrast Midair hasn't really been able to decide which route it wants to go, and comes across as an entirely awkward mutated child of Tribes. They should have just left out the generators entirely, or gone with the 50/50 split like Tribes 1 base. The strange 80/20 split that they went for just isn't fun. The base destruction aspect of the game feels really unrewarding and a pointless nuisance. Teams are better off not even attacking the enemy generator and focusing exclusively on the flags. A strong flag capper or defender will influence the game far more than anyone defending or attacking the generator.
In Tribes base, this feeling of attachment to your gaming environment was achieved by tying your base defense to your ability to enjoy cool weapons, armor types, and gear. If you didn't defend, you would have no decent weapons, no packs, no armor, and no turrets for the rest of the game, which was a massive disadvantage. This built a sort of social aspect, a sense of a destructible and real environment, and a comradery and a desire to work together towards a common goal with your team. You could actually see the real consequences of your failures in the form of shattered base turrets, broken sensors, and your base crawling with "bad guys" from the enemy team. It invoked the feeling of "Oh no you didn't", when you saw that the enemy had taken over your territory. That was "your" base and you were determined to reclaim it.
In Midair, that feeling of attachment to your base is not there, because you don't need your base to acquire weapons and gear. Being able to spawn with gear also breaks various other aspects of the game, because the rest of the game has not been redesigned to compensate for this new feature. If you change this major core aspect of Tribes, without changing the rest, it is a game-balance disaster. What it causes is glaringly overpowered and underpowered aspects that suck the fun out of the game.
It would be alright to allow players to spawn with certain weapons if you were going to create a totally different game. The Tribes 1 LT mod in many ways achieved the goal, in that it went full out in the opposite direction. It abandoned the generator objective 100%, and dictated the flag as the atmospheric and sole objective around which players united towards a common goal. That is a proven model and a proven method of gameplay that players enjoyed for so many years. There is nothing wrong with allowing players to spawn with weapons, as long as you're going to redesign the rest of the game to match along with that.
In contrast Midair hasn't really been able to decide which route it wants to go, and comes across as an entirely awkward mutated child of Tribes. They should have just left out the generators entirely, or gone with the 50/50 split like Tribes 1 base. The strange 80/20 split that they went for just isn't fun. The base destruction aspect of the game feels really unrewarding and a pointless nuisance. Teams are better off not even attacking the enemy generator and focusing exclusively on the flags. A strong flag capper or defender will influence the game far more than anyone defending or attacking the generator.
Smooth Terrain (No Jagged Terrain) -
Spoiler
One of the best parts of T1, was again, its unforgiving nature. Getting punished by rocks, crags, and dips that steered you wrong was part of the great fun of the game. Why? Because when you finally hit a route perfectly, you felt it so much more. It was highly rewarding. When you "succeeded" you noticed it dramatically. It gave a sense of euphoria upon success.
It also gave you lots of fun little nooks and crannies to hide behind and jook your enemies with. On top of that, it was a more imperfect world or environment that felt more realistic in my opinion. The jagged terrain was a pretty essential part of Tribes that made it great. You had to really think about your position, how to approach things, and you had to contemplate your course of action more. Midair, in contrast, you can really just "wing it" permanently and you'll be fine. You can just ski and very rarely ever will you mess it up. Failure rarely ever occurs at all if ever. The discrepency is more just between "success" and "higher success". In Tribes 1, if you hit a bump wrong, you went into a dead stop and you were mince-meat for any defender nearby, or you would botch your route and have to start a new one.
Some might argue that having to learn routes was a negative aspect of the game, but I disagree. It was part of the journey of discovery. When you saw a player with a unique route, it was really cool to watch. You'd be asking that player "Hey, could you show me that?" Often high level players wouldn't use their best routes in public games, as to not give away their secrets. Sometimes, certain routes would become named synonymously with the unique individual that was first publicly seen using it. In Midair, that's pretty much all gone. Anyone that learns how to ski decently can find acceptable routes and ski around these maps with little trouble.
It also gave you lots of fun little nooks and crannies to hide behind and jook your enemies with. On top of that, it was a more imperfect world or environment that felt more realistic in my opinion. The jagged terrain was a pretty essential part of Tribes that made it great. You had to really think about your position, how to approach things, and you had to contemplate your course of action more. Midair, in contrast, you can really just "wing it" permanently and you'll be fine. You can just ski and very rarely ever will you mess it up. Failure rarely ever occurs at all if ever. The discrepency is more just between "success" and "higher success". In Tribes 1, if you hit a bump wrong, you went into a dead stop and you were mince-meat for any defender nearby, or you would botch your route and have to start a new one.
Some might argue that having to learn routes was a negative aspect of the game, but I disagree. It was part of the journey of discovery. When you saw a player with a unique route, it was really cool to watch. You'd be asking that player "Hey, could you show me that?" Often high level players wouldn't use their best routes in public games, as to not give away their secrets. Sometimes, certain routes would become named synonymously with the unique individual that was first publicly seen using it. In Midair, that's pretty much all gone. Anyone that learns how to ski decently can find acceptable routes and ski around these maps with little trouble.
Unimportant Generators -
Spoiler
One big reason that this game isn't anything like Tribes 1, is because of the generators. You don't even really need to keep them up at all. In Midair, everyone can just spawn with any weapons they want, so who cares if the generators go down? Nobody does. If the gens go down it takes like 5-10 seconds longer to respawn, which is a light slap on the wrist. This pretty much destroys the whole core dynamic that Tribes was, which was a dichotomy between two major objectives, flag and generators. Meanwhile, this also kills it for LT players too, because they would rather just focus on skiing, discing, passing, capping, chasing, and teamplay, and all your vehicles, turrets, packs, and generators are only a giant distraction away from that.
In Tribes 1, people took base defense so seriously, because losing the base could mean losing the entire game. Everyone always yelled for the turret farmer to have first dibs on suiting up. It made the game feel so real. It felt like you were surrounded by an environment that could be effected, and actually mattered. The intensity of the requisite of your team holding together, and defending well, really got the blood pumping. In Midair, there is no such adrenaline rush. There is no feeling of intensity at all. The world around you doesn't matter. Midair seems to be very confused about what it wants to be. Queue Zoolander saying "Who am I?"
In Tribes 1, people took base defense so seriously, because losing the base could mean losing the entire game. Everyone always yelled for the turret farmer to have first dibs on suiting up. It made the game feel so real. It felt like you were surrounded by an environment that could be effected, and actually mattered. The intensity of the requisite of your team holding together, and defending well, really got the blood pumping. In Midair, there is no such adrenaline rush. There is no feeling of intensity at all. The world around you doesn't matter. Midair seems to be very confused about what it wants to be. Queue Zoolander saying "Who am I?"
The disc -
Spoiler
Man, that disc in Starsiege: Tribes was so addictive, when you landed a shot, it rocked them with loud basey "THUMP" and sent their corpse flying in whatever direction. Now you hear a pitiful waterballon-esque splash that is devoid of impact. It feels like I'm pelting people with glowing marshmallows.
The disc is faster now. It's much easier to hit people if you have strong aim, especially from longer distances. That being said the splash damage is reduced. To me, it really goes against what the disc was. The disc was mostly a weapon that you used to punish people that touched the ground. If you knew they were running out of jets you would bust that thing out and get ready to wreck them. You also used it to control their position. You could toss a hand grenade and then disc them on the other side to push them towards it, that was one of the funnest things for me to do in the game. Now the disc is more similar to the blaster. You can land midair shots super easily, and if you land a disc on the ground next to where they are, the splash barely tickles them. It also doesn't have its "push", so you can't use it to control the enemy's position as much. The disc is just less fun all across the board for me.
With the enhanced speed on the disc, newer players are going to have an easier time landing shots with it.
The disc is faster now. It's much easier to hit people if you have strong aim, especially from longer distances. That being said the splash damage is reduced. To me, it really goes against what the disc was. The disc was mostly a weapon that you used to punish people that touched the ground. If you knew they were running out of jets you would bust that thing out and get ready to wreck them. You also used it to control their position. You could toss a hand grenade and then disc them on the other side to push them towards it, that was one of the funnest things for me to do in the game. Now the disc is more similar to the blaster. You can land midair shots super easily, and if you land a disc on the ground next to where they are, the splash barely tickles them. It also doesn't have its "push", so you can't use it to control the enemy's position as much. The disc is just less fun all across the board for me.
With the enhanced speed on the disc, newer players are going to have an easier time landing shots with it.
No Simultaneous Hand Grenades -
Spoiler
In Tribes, you could throw hand grenades while shooting at people. It was awesome. Midair removes this, lessening your deadly potential to do awesome things. Just one more thing they did to limit the cool stuff that you could do in Tribes.
Why are hand grenades even there? Just make it a weapon in the 4th weapon slot. That's really all it is.
In the original game, you could control the distance at which you threw the grenade. This is another thing that Midair removed to lessen the depth of the game.
That being said, the hand grenades are pretty fun and feel good. I like them. I just wish I could throw them while shooting regular weapons.
Why are hand grenades even there? Just make it a weapon in the 4th weapon slot. That's really all it is.
In the original game, you could control the distance at which you threw the grenade. This is another thing that Midair removed to lessen the depth of the game.
That being said, the hand grenades are pretty fun and feel good. I like them. I just wish I could throw them while shooting regular weapons.
More Air Control -
In Midair, you have more control over your avatar and the way you fall. I'm not really even sure how I feel about this. I just felt like T1 was totally fine and not in need of massive "corrections" for it to be playable and fun. Just more reinventing the wheel.
Built in HaPpY Flag -
Spoiler
This is one of those things that might seem like it is super smart, but totally isn't. Giving people cheats so that they can't cheat? Ok, let's give everyone auto-aim too, and speed hack. Let's just code all these cheats into the game so that nobody can ever break the game, because it's already broken. Let's allow steroids into professional sports and the Olympics too while we are at it.
In Tribes, the hunt for the flag carrier was exhilarating. Part of being a good chaser was knowing where the enemy flag carrier would go before he went there. Cappers had a lot of freedom and they could double back, or move in unexpected directions, and players were forced to try and intuit this. Now, with the permanent HaPpY flag up, it leaves them pretty naked and predictable. It's very easy to tell which way they are going and where they will go next. So much of the excitement and thrill of the chase is just gone, completely ripped out of the game.
There is a reason it was a "cheat" in Tribes 1, and that is because it doesn't belong in the game.
I realize there are many people that will challenge me on this saying, "It's no longer a cheat if it's implemented as a feature" such as Overwatch's Soldier 76 and his auto-aim ultimate.
Just ask yourself, what is more fun and challenging?
If you played Hide-And-Seek and you had a device showing everyone's location, would you really enjoy that? How boring can you get? "I found you... Again! Wow! So fun!"
You don't even have to think, just line up cursor with icon and press forward. It couldn't be any more dumbed down. It raises the skill floor so much.
In the original game, a very sneaky player could pay massive dividends for his team by hiding in a clever spot. It lead to some really epic moments. Then there were other players who would ski around the map in a match, maintaining a speed fast enough that made them difficult to kill. Others would duel outside, or "turtle" in their base with heavy armor and shield pack. There were so many options. That magic of variety is gone now. You wouldn't dream of skiing near the enemy base with a big fat flag icon strapped to your chest, and you can't hide either, so now you are pretty much forced to stay at your base. It's very constricting.
I believe they thought this would help keep the flow of the game moving by reducing the amount of flag stand-offs. I always thought that flag stand-offs were a unique and fun aspect of the original game. They never bothered me, though I do think they can be excessive and do need to be addressed. Seeing a match where after the first capture, a team tries to turtle for 18 minutes to win the match seems like something that should be discouraged through gameplay if possible, but I disagree with the means by which they attempted this because I do not think it is fun always knowing where the flags are.
In Tribes, the hunt for the flag carrier was exhilarating. Part of being a good chaser was knowing where the enemy flag carrier would go before he went there. Cappers had a lot of freedom and they could double back, or move in unexpected directions, and players were forced to try and intuit this. Now, with the permanent HaPpY flag up, it leaves them pretty naked and predictable. It's very easy to tell which way they are going and where they will go next. So much of the excitement and thrill of the chase is just gone, completely ripped out of the game.
There is a reason it was a "cheat" in Tribes 1, and that is because it doesn't belong in the game.
I realize there are many people that will challenge me on this saying, "It's no longer a cheat if it's implemented as a feature" such as Overwatch's Soldier 76 and his auto-aim ultimate.
Just ask yourself, what is more fun and challenging?
If you played Hide-And-Seek and you had a device showing everyone's location, would you really enjoy that? How boring can you get? "I found you... Again! Wow! So fun!"
You don't even have to think, just line up cursor with icon and press forward. It couldn't be any more dumbed down. It raises the skill floor so much.
In the original game, a very sneaky player could pay massive dividends for his team by hiding in a clever spot. It lead to some really epic moments. Then there were other players who would ski around the map in a match, maintaining a speed fast enough that made them difficult to kill. Others would duel outside, or "turtle" in their base with heavy armor and shield pack. There were so many options. That magic of variety is gone now. You wouldn't dream of skiing near the enemy base with a big fat flag icon strapped to your chest, and you can't hide either, so now you are pretty much forced to stay at your base. It's very constricting.
I believe they thought this would help keep the flow of the game moving by reducing the amount of flag stand-offs. I always thought that flag stand-offs were a unique and fun aspect of the original game. They never bothered me, though I do think they can be excessive and do need to be addressed. Seeing a match where after the first capture, a team tries to turtle for 18 minutes to win the match seems like something that should be discouraged through gameplay if possible, but I disagree with the means by which they attempted this because I do not think it is fun always knowing where the flags are.
Base Control -
Spoiler
Back in the day, with high level ability, you could take over the enemy base and hold it for lengthy periods of time. Some of the bases had no respawn points inside, and only one entrance in and out, like on the famous map Raindance. A strong attacker had a long list of tools at his or her disposal that could be used to punish the enemy team for not defending well. This could cripple the enemy team severely, weakening them greatly over all, and allow for a swift defeat by means of chaining flag captures. The dichotomy of the dual objective based game was one of the most interesting and cool parts of Tribes. In midair, this aspect is almost completely gone.
The reason I say "almost" is that destroying the generators does provide a light slap on the wrist to the enemy team. It's just that the punishment is so super light, that it robs all satisfaction and reward of anyone that would have the inclination to destroy the enemy base. Furthermore, the game is designed so that bases cannot be held for lengthy periods of time, which pushes it even further in the direction of being pointless and unrewarding. The bases are mostly just there for show. Any remotely intelligent individual playing and analyzing this game will quickly realize this.
The bases are mostly just glitter, fluff, and all for show. They really don't do anything but provide structures to fight around. Actually, in my opinion, they contribute negatively, because I'd just rather have them all gone. If the game is just going to be about the flags, then make it about the flags. Just remove inventory stations all together and go LT mod. LT mod is very easily graspable and understandable, and it makes sense. The Midair base mod makes no sense at all, and is very poorly designed. As a game, it comes across as confused.
The reason I say "almost" is that destroying the generators does provide a light slap on the wrist to the enemy team. It's just that the punishment is so super light, that it robs all satisfaction and reward of anyone that would have the inclination to destroy the enemy base. Furthermore, the game is designed so that bases cannot be held for lengthy periods of time, which pushes it even further in the direction of being pointless and unrewarding. The bases are mostly just there for show. Any remotely intelligent individual playing and analyzing this game will quickly realize this.
The bases are mostly just glitter, fluff, and all for show. They really don't do anything but provide structures to fight around. Actually, in my opinion, they contribute negatively, because I'd just rather have them all gone. If the game is just going to be about the flags, then make it about the flags. Just remove inventory stations all together and go LT mod. LT mod is very easily graspable and understandable, and it makes sense. The Midair base mod makes no sense at all, and is very poorly designed. As a game, it comes across as confused.
Weaker Turrets -
Spoiler
In the original game, the base turrets influenced the field so heavily. A great example of this is Dangerous Crossings. If you didn't remove the two indoor turrets (sentinels), the enemy team could easily claim victory over you. Those things shredded light armored players that aren't moving at top speed. They do so much work for you. In Raindance, the rocket turret could wreck capper after capper after capper if it stayed up. This forces strategy and planning and adds depth of gameplay, as the enemy team has to decide how they will overcome this objective in order to weaken the enemy defense and grab the enemy flag more easily. If a defender decided to dedicate themselves to repairing that rocket turret, it was often highly effective, as the rocket turret will shoot any oncoming attacker that is jetting a lot. The rocket turret does a lot of work for you, just like the sentinels. In midair, the base turret does almost no work for you. It's boring and should just be removed.
Heavy on Flag -
Spoiler
Because of the decision to allow spawning in full gear, Heavy On Flag can just come running right back to the flag almost immediately after death, with full health and ammo. A good HOF can be a real giant pain in the butt to kill. After you do all that work, its probably just going to be right back on the flag in 5-12 seconds. Not much of a window for capping. On maps without generators, the HoF is going to be off the flag for only around 6 seconds upon death. That feels really icky. This is a great way of illustrating how when you change one major aspect of the game, other aspects of the game break. You basically have an irremovable heavy on flag. This is in heavy contrast to the original game, where killing the enemy HoF could mean that there was no more HoF for the rest of the entire game if you kept the enemy base down.
Lack of skidding -
Spoiler
I don't think there is a term for letting up on the space bar in Tribes, so I'm calling it "skidding" for the time being.
In the original game, you could sometimes adjust your position to great positive effect by letting up on the space bar. It would increase the friction on the ground and it was a really cool aspect of the game, because you could adjust your route, speed, and position through use of this. Now, when you let up on the space bar, you just stop. This also falls under the category of reinventing the wheel. I believe these changes were made to simplify things for newer players. Being able to stop on a dime is another way the game weakens the punishment for your mistakes and makes things easier for new players while simultaneously punishing high level players, limiting their ability to ski as well as they could in the original game.
There are many times when I'm playing the game, and I realize I'm going to miss my route, because I can't "skid". I'm forced to hold down spacebar and see my fate unfold before me, slamming into things I never intended to, or veering off in a direction I didn't want to, all because the game removes the allowance of re-adjusting. So many changes like this seem to be directed at lowering the skill ceiling and limiting stronger players.
In the original game, you could sometimes adjust your position to great positive effect by letting up on the space bar. It would increase the friction on the ground and it was a really cool aspect of the game, because you could adjust your route, speed, and position through use of this. Now, when you let up on the space bar, you just stop. This also falls under the category of reinventing the wheel. I believe these changes were made to simplify things for newer players. Being able to stop on a dime is another way the game weakens the punishment for your mistakes and makes things easier for new players while simultaneously punishing high level players, limiting their ability to ski as well as they could in the original game.
There are many times when I'm playing the game, and I realize I'm going to miss my route, because I can't "skid". I'm forced to hold down spacebar and see my fate unfold before me, slamming into things I never intended to, or veering off in a direction I didn't want to, all because the game removes the allowance of re-adjusting. So many changes like this seem to be directed at lowering the skill ceiling and limiting stronger players.
Voice commands:
Spoiler
Some of the voices featured in the game are straight-up annoying. There is some high-pitched squealing female robot voice that keeps yapping into my ear. It sounds like some sped-up tape-recorder chipmunk voice. I wish there was an option to mute that voice entirely. The voice commands were a cool aspect of Tribes, and they seem to be lacking in Midair. There were a lot of voices in the original game, they sounded good, and there was good variance between them.
The voice commands are something that could have been prioritized over, say, vehicles. It's not very hard to record voices and add them into the game. This area is very lacking.
They did add some really good taunts for some old-school taunting and rubbing salt in the wounds, which is great. I wish they had kept the voice commands to only three button pushes, rather than 4 button pushes.
The voice commands are something that could have been prioritized over, say, vehicles. It's not very hard to record voices and add them into the game. This area is very lacking.
They did add some really good taunts for some old-school taunting and rubbing salt in the wounds, which is great. I wish they had kept the voice commands to only three button pushes, rather than 4 button pushes.
The User Interface:
I think they did a great job with the UI. It has a huge icon telling you when you are holding the flag. It's quite idiot proof. There is another icon showing that you have been detected by pulse sensors. Everything seems really straight-forward, easy to understand, and just really solid overall. Very good UI in this game.
Homing Missiles:
Spoiler
Homing missiles are stupid. They do not belong in Tribes unless fired from automated turrets. The simple main reason is because they require no skill for a player to use. The secondary reason is that they force paper-scissors-stone type gameplay.
Homing missiles are the overly-controlling uncool parent that tells you that you can't go to that party. If homing missiles are in the game, and any defender is using them, you basically have to use flares when going offense, or you have to be very careful with your jets, neither of which are a fun result. This removes the joy of having those lovely tools known as hand-grenades to blow people up with.
“WEEP WEEP WEEP, were you trying to ski? Lol” Game says “WEEP WEEP WEEP”.
This is just brainless push-button gameplay. They, with zero effort, fire homing missile, you press flare, missile, flare, missile, flare. “Wow, that was an incredible play just now. Someone fired a homing missile and the opponent blocked it with a flare. Brilliant! I am epic Tribes player, I know how to push a key when I hear weep weep.” *heavy sarcasm*
Then they are used to vehicles too. Those super cool vehicles that the developers spent so much time making, they are a giant pain in the not-fun buttocks to use. You get in a shrike, WEEP WEEP WEEP, you flare, moments later, WEEP WEEP WEEP. Wow, really? How exciting?
WEEEEP WEEEEEP WEEEEP! WEEEEEP WEEEEEP WEEEEEP!
Just like every time you wake up to your alarm clock and you want to destroy it, Midair reminds you that jetting and skiing gets you punished with auto-homing missiles. Your ears are constantly assaulted with obnoxious alarm noises. Everyone loves alarms right?
"But you can use flares!" "But you can dodge!" "But you can shoot the missiles!"
Flares = cheesy gimmick for the sole purpose of countering one single weapon exclusively. That is pointless clutter that is not fun. I have to give up my hand grenade slot just so I can counter annoying homing missiles? "Golly gee, WEEEP WEEEP WEEEP, I press G, and no more WEEP WEEP, what awesome fun gameplay. Oop, the weep weeps are coming back again, better press F again." I should just build a script to automatically press F whenever I hear a weep weep, then I have one less annoying piece of clutter distracting me from the real game that the developers should have been focusing on making.
Dodge/Shoot = Yeah, you can dodge them. It doesn't mean it is fun. I dodged missiles and shot them out more then they hit me for sure, but it was very unfun. The fact that I know that the enemy player shooting at me did zero work and exercised zero skill to launch that at me just sucks all the fun right out of it. What am I supposed to say after he kills me with that "Nice auto-locking missile shot! That was the best homing missile shot I've ever seen! Huge respect! *high five*"
Every time I kill an opponent on their side of the map from my missile that I fired from my flag, I just shake my head. If they had only brought flares, they wouldn't have died.
Auto-aiming weapons were brought in with the attempt to draw in newer players that can't aim. Just another way they have raised the skill floor.
That being said, I thought the Rocket Turret in Tribes 1 was fantastic and extremely fun to watch. We used to get huge laughs out of that thing. I think it is great as a base's defensive asset. Too bad they aren't using them in Midair. Instead you get some crappy pulse turret that can't hit anything, and everyone usually just avoids as a minor nuisance, or spends just a few seconds lobbing a couple mortars at it and it's gone easy peasy.
I find homing missiles to be laughable, because they stray so far away from the spirit of what Tribes was.
Homing missiles are the overly-controlling uncool parent that tells you that you can't go to that party. If homing missiles are in the game, and any defender is using them, you basically have to use flares when going offense, or you have to be very careful with your jets, neither of which are a fun result. This removes the joy of having those lovely tools known as hand-grenades to blow people up with.
“WEEP WEEP WEEP, were you trying to ski? Lol” Game says “WEEP WEEP WEEP”.
This is just brainless push-button gameplay. They, with zero effort, fire homing missile, you press flare, missile, flare, missile, flare. “Wow, that was an incredible play just now. Someone fired a homing missile and the opponent blocked it with a flare. Brilliant! I am epic Tribes player, I know how to push a key when I hear weep weep.” *heavy sarcasm*
Then they are used to vehicles too. Those super cool vehicles that the developers spent so much time making, they are a giant pain in the not-fun buttocks to use. You get in a shrike, WEEP WEEP WEEP, you flare, moments later, WEEP WEEP WEEP. Wow, really? How exciting?
WEEEEP WEEEEEP WEEEEP! WEEEEEP WEEEEEP WEEEEEP!
Just like every time you wake up to your alarm clock and you want to destroy it, Midair reminds you that jetting and skiing gets you punished with auto-homing missiles. Your ears are constantly assaulted with obnoxious alarm noises. Everyone loves alarms right?
"But you can use flares!" "But you can dodge!" "But you can shoot the missiles!"
Flares = cheesy gimmick for the sole purpose of countering one single weapon exclusively. That is pointless clutter that is not fun. I have to give up my hand grenade slot just so I can counter annoying homing missiles? "Golly gee, WEEEP WEEEP WEEEP, I press G, and no more WEEP WEEP, what awesome fun gameplay. Oop, the weep weeps are coming back again, better press F again." I should just build a script to automatically press F whenever I hear a weep weep, then I have one less annoying piece of clutter distracting me from the real game that the developers should have been focusing on making.
Dodge/Shoot = Yeah, you can dodge them. It doesn't mean it is fun. I dodged missiles and shot them out more then they hit me for sure, but it was very unfun. The fact that I know that the enemy player shooting at me did zero work and exercised zero skill to launch that at me just sucks all the fun right out of it. What am I supposed to say after he kills me with that "Nice auto-locking missile shot! That was the best homing missile shot I've ever seen! Huge respect! *high five*"
Every time I kill an opponent on their side of the map from my missile that I fired from my flag, I just shake my head. If they had only brought flares, they wouldn't have died.
Auto-aiming weapons were brought in with the attempt to draw in newer players that can't aim. Just another way they have raised the skill floor.
That being said, I thought the Rocket Turret in Tribes 1 was fantastic and extremely fun to watch. We used to get huge laughs out of that thing. I think it is great as a base's defensive asset. Too bad they aren't using them in Midair. Instead you get some crappy pulse turret that can't hit anything, and everyone usually just avoids as a minor nuisance, or spends just a few seconds lobbing a couple mortars at it and it's gone easy peasy.
I find homing missiles to be laughable, because they stray so far away from the spirit of what Tribes was.
Packs:
Spoiler
I love the arsenal pack. The infinite ammo regen and reload boost are kind of cool. But mostly it's really just the ammo pack from T1, which I already loved. The only thing about it that they need to fix is when you choose the boosted reload speed and have to spam the C key constantly as you are playing, that is bad cus it's just repetitious and lame. It should just automatically reload after you've burned 3 mortars, cus that's all you're using it for anyway is mortars.
I like how the energy pack has unique options that can help, but are not overpowered. I think they did a good job on the kinetic pack. The blink and underpowered boost options are neat and a fun option for newer players. They do not seem to break anything.
The jammer pack, I didn't even look at that, cus who cares? Lol why would you make such a thing?
The cloak pack? lol. It's just so silly. It's kind of fun for what it is and I enjoy messing around with it, but it's mostly just for jokes. The shift into invisibility seems really crisp and smooth. Grabbing the enemy flag renders it entirely useless though.
All in all I think they did a good job on the packs. I like how there are additional features to modify them, and none of them seem overpowered. That's great.
So yeah, all in all an good job on the packs. One of the things that was well done in this game.
I like how the energy pack has unique options that can help, but are not overpowered. I think they did a good job on the kinetic pack. The blink and underpowered boost options are neat and a fun option for newer players. They do not seem to break anything.
The jammer pack, I didn't even look at that, cus who cares? Lol why would you make such a thing?
The cloak pack? lol. It's just so silly. It's kind of fun for what it is and I enjoy messing around with it, but it's mostly just for jokes. The shift into invisibility seems really crisp and smooth. Grabbing the enemy flag renders it entirely useless though.
All in all I think they did a good job on the packs. I like how there are additional features to modify them, and none of them seem overpowered. That's great.
So yeah, all in all an good job on the packs. One of the things that was well done in this game.
The skiing:
Spoiler
I remember having Tribes dreams in high school where I'd be flying around some rolling mountains. What a blast! Tribes skiing just felt so perfect. You got moving so fast and it was so smooth. When you hit a dip just right at an important moment, it was like one of the most satisfying game experiences ever, if not THE most. Ya know, I managed to play that game for many years, and here is something I never once heard anyone say:
"Ya know what, this "skiing" stuff is really bad and feels terrible. It could definitely be improved upon."
We were all addicts. The skiing was so darn good. No other game had anything that could give us that feeling.
But the skiing needs to be improved upon, of course. The skiing needs to be "better." (sarcasm)
I'm of the "If it ain't broken, don't fix it" school of thought, where you don't have to change things that are really great. But this falls in line with the folly of every developer that tries to make a successful Tribes game, they think they know better. They attempt to re-invent the wheel every single time, like clock work.
Tribes 2 - Nearly all but removed skiing with a horrible top speed cap.
Tribes Vengeance - Added grappling hook and other stuff that made skiing and movement entirely zany.
Tribes Ascend - Massively altered the core skiing and added concussion grenade speed boosting.
One of my #1 questions to the developers would be, "Why on earth did you change the skiing?"
The skiing in Midair is "meh". I would say it is better than ascend, and worse than vengeance. It pales in comparison to the skiing in the original game, which was basically perfect.
"Ya know what, this "skiing" stuff is really bad and feels terrible. It could definitely be improved upon."
We were all addicts. The skiing was so darn good. No other game had anything that could give us that feeling.
But the skiing needs to be improved upon, of course. The skiing needs to be "better." (sarcasm)
I'm of the "If it ain't broken, don't fix it" school of thought, where you don't have to change things that are really great. But this falls in line with the folly of every developer that tries to make a successful Tribes game, they think they know better. They attempt to re-invent the wheel every single time, like clock work.
Tribes 2 - Nearly all but removed skiing with a horrible top speed cap.
Tribes Vengeance - Added grappling hook and other stuff that made skiing and movement entirely zany.
Tribes Ascend - Massively altered the core skiing and added concussion grenade speed boosting.
One of my #1 questions to the developers would be, "Why on earth did you change the skiing?"
The skiing in Midair is "meh". I would say it is better than ascend, and worse than vengeance. It pales in comparison to the skiing in the original game, which was basically perfect.
Depth Perception:
Spoiler
One of the main things about Tribes that made it so great is that you could see a player's spatial position. You could say "Hey that guy is THERE, so if I shoot over THERE, I can hit him when he lands." Most of the skill with weapons in Tribes was about predicting the future position of the enemy player, because most the weapons move slowly in comparison with other games. This is one of the key defining traits that differentiated Tribes from Call of Duty, Counter-Strike, etc. The weapon projectiles were mostly slow moving.
In Midair, there seems to be an issue with depth perception that makes it really difficult to judge where people are going to land. I'm not sure if it is the the terrain, where everything is so smooth and has a lot of uniform color, the lack of well-rendered shadows, or the graphics engine, or what, but when people bounce around, you often can't tell if they are moving towards you or away, up or down. It is one of the worst things about the game and it makes the game a lot less fun. I'd rather miss because I missed, not because the graphics were wonky.
In Midair, there seems to be an issue with depth perception that makes it really difficult to judge where people are going to land. I'm not sure if it is the the terrain, where everything is so smooth and has a lot of uniform color, the lack of well-rendered shadows, or the graphics engine, or what, but when people bounce around, you often can't tell if they are moving towards you or away, up or down. It is one of the worst things about the game and it makes the game a lot less fun. I'd rather miss because I missed, not because the graphics were wonky.
Lack of Freedom -
Spoiler
Hard borders, the bane of any Tribes game. You're skiing around, having fun, feeling so free and then, WHAT?!?! A giant neon orange wall lets you know that you are trapped in a cube, robbing you of your feeling of freedom.
Tribes 1 tricked us all into thinking we could fly forever. You almost never went to the edge of the map. It was an amazing feeling that I consider essential to its awesomeness.
"But it's the gaming engine's fault, not the developers!"
Well, who chose the engine?
Whoever chose the engine chose an engine that couldn't represent Tribes well enough. So that was a bad choice.
Tribes 1 tricked us all into thinking we could fly forever. You almost never went to the edge of the map. It was an amazing feeling that I consider essential to its awesomeness.
"But it's the gaming engine's fault, not the developers!"
Well, who chose the engine?
Whoever chose the engine chose an engine that couldn't represent Tribes well enough. So that was a bad choice.
Weapon Design:
Spoiler
The weapons are definitely not one of the games glaring weaknesses. A lot of them are pretty good.
The disc projectile moves very fast, but has a very narrow splash. And it makes a light watery sound when it lands. It sounds and feels mildly unsatisfying.
In the original T1 game, discs landed with a loud basey thud, and blasted their corpses in a certain direction due to the impact. It was another one of the addicting hooks that kept us coming back. The midair disc just fails to capture that same magic.
That being said, the disc is "meh" or "ok". It's not bad, but not great.
The blaster was designed well in that it doesn't take energy. However, it's not a very strong weapon overall at all and very few people will use it, so it's kind of just more useless clutter. It's not good up close compared to disc or plasma or whatever, and it's not good far away compared to railgun and chaingun, so it's just kind of bad all around, unless the enemy has a shred of health left, and then it's maybe ok. The blaster in T1 was much stronger, and if you had removed it's energy drain, people would have used it all the time. One of its most notable uses was that you could do lots of damage to immobile targets from far away. In Midair, it doesn't have enough range to do that.
All in all the blaster is pretty fun to use and I like it. I wish they wouldn't have gimped its range though. I wish you could blaster snipe with it. That just makes it even less useful.
The mortar in Midair feels nowhere near as good as the original Tribes. It feels sluggish and everytime I fire it it invokes the feeling of lugging a bag of cement over a brick-wall or something. The way it bounces and sticks feels off. Though when you hit people with it, it does make me lol with joy. The damage on it is totally good. It's sad that holding the weapon I give up 20% of my screen visibility or whatever looking at this horrible cheesy picture of my arm carrying the weapon. Wish I could remove that.
Grenade Launcher - Seems pretty great. I like this weapon.
Chaingun - Seems pretty great overall, though I haven't investigated it cus I never use chaingun. I never really used it in the first game either, wasn't my thing.
Railgun - It seems good.
Plasma - The awkwardness of the bright flickering graphics on the
projectile makes it a little distracting. I do kind of like this weapon though. It fires a bit differently than in the first game. There is less of a delay on it.
The Warden - Awesome weapon. I love it. I say that reluctantly because I think it might have serious issues, in that you can seriously wreck people with it and I think it might be overpowered and cause unfun gameplay for many. I would need to investigate it more and see exactly how much energy it drains. I'm not sure why you would make it auto-aiming. I believe that all weapons in Tribes should require aiming to use.
Hand Grenades - Very good. Too bad I can't use them while firing another weapon. Sure would be fun.
The disc projectile moves very fast, but has a very narrow splash. And it makes a light watery sound when it lands. It sounds and feels mildly unsatisfying.
In the original T1 game, discs landed with a loud basey thud, and blasted their corpses in a certain direction due to the impact. It was another one of the addicting hooks that kept us coming back. The midair disc just fails to capture that same magic.
That being said, the disc is "meh" or "ok". It's not bad, but not great.
The blaster was designed well in that it doesn't take energy. However, it's not a very strong weapon overall at all and very few people will use it, so it's kind of just more useless clutter. It's not good up close compared to disc or plasma or whatever, and it's not good far away compared to railgun and chaingun, so it's just kind of bad all around, unless the enemy has a shred of health left, and then it's maybe ok. The blaster in T1 was much stronger, and if you had removed it's energy drain, people would have used it all the time. One of its most notable uses was that you could do lots of damage to immobile targets from far away. In Midair, it doesn't have enough range to do that.
All in all the blaster is pretty fun to use and I like it. I wish they wouldn't have gimped its range though. I wish you could blaster snipe with it. That just makes it even less useful.
The mortar in Midair feels nowhere near as good as the original Tribes. It feels sluggish and everytime I fire it it invokes the feeling of lugging a bag of cement over a brick-wall or something. The way it bounces and sticks feels off. Though when you hit people with it, it does make me lol with joy. The damage on it is totally good. It's sad that holding the weapon I give up 20% of my screen visibility or whatever looking at this horrible cheesy picture of my arm carrying the weapon. Wish I could remove that.
Grenade Launcher - Seems pretty great. I like this weapon.
Chaingun - Seems pretty great overall, though I haven't investigated it cus I never use chaingun. I never really used it in the first game either, wasn't my thing.
Railgun - It seems good.
Plasma - The awkwardness of the bright flickering graphics on the
projectile makes it a little distracting. I do kind of like this weapon though. It fires a bit differently than in the first game. There is less of a delay on it.
The Warden - Awesome weapon. I love it. I say that reluctantly because I think it might have serious issues, in that you can seriously wreck people with it and I think it might be overpowered and cause unfun gameplay for many. I would need to investigate it more and see exactly how much energy it drains. I'm not sure why you would make it auto-aiming. I believe that all weapons in Tribes should require aiming to use.
Hand Grenades - Very good. Too bad I can't use them while firing another weapon. Sure would be fun.
The Buildings and Base Architecture -
So, the base architecture is really great in this game. They have a lot of unique structures and shapes that are really fun to navigate. Whoever designed them did a great job. I've never played in bases like these, and they are new, unique, and refreshing. They don't get put to full use, since the bases are unimportant in the game overall, but they did a great job on them for sure. I'm not talking about map design, but the raw buildings that are placed into the maps. They encourage very fun gameplay. There are atmospheric tubes, corridors, generator rooms, and all sorts of cool stuff that just looks really great.
Vehicles:
Spoiler
Are you thinking about putting vehicles in your Tribes game? A question I might as would be, Why? Why are you doing that?
No seriously, why are you doing that? Please stop. Stop it. Stop now.
I do believe there could be a place in Tribes for well made vehicles, but to make that happen, you'd have to make unique, functional, super cool vehicles that would make people lol with fun, and assist players in some interesting and uniquely powerful way that regular skiing, movement, and armor couldn't offer. I actually thought the gravity bike in Tribes 2 was somewhat cool.
I also really liked the scout in T1. I just think that as a developer, your time must be valuable, so spending it on making vehicles before you have a rock solid winner of a game is hugely wasteful. It's a giant waste of time.
Making vehicles that require more than one person to control is a horrible idea. It just feels so forced. Furthermore, the battlefield only has like what, 8-10 people per team? 12 at best? Giving up two or even three of those people to occupy a vehicle? Yeah, it's going to be the same as deleting a player or two off your team in terms of usefulness. It's almost always going to be a bad decision.
The vehicles in this game are pointless.
Though the shrike seems kind of fun for pew pew pew I donno. You could remove all the vehicles from the game and it wouldn't matter or effect anything.
Why is making vehicles a very bad thing to do to your fans?
Well, you could have taken all the time you spent on making those vehicles, and donated it to better raw functionality, or better depth perception, or better/smoother game design overall, or more awesome maps, or whatever. That time was basically put to absolute waste. Nobody cares about vehicles. They'd rather be able to see where they guy they are trying to shoot at is going to land.
The only reason I can see that anyone would want to bring in vehicles is because they think it will attract newer players. It seems to be a marketing decision based on dollars.
I feel they really blew it on the vehicles. They fly strangely, they feel clunky and awkward, and meh. I think some people are maybe enjoying the shrike, but to spend time on that over really crucial stuff is bad.
No seriously, why are you doing that? Please stop. Stop it. Stop now.
I do believe there could be a place in Tribes for well made vehicles, but to make that happen, you'd have to make unique, functional, super cool vehicles that would make people lol with fun, and assist players in some interesting and uniquely powerful way that regular skiing, movement, and armor couldn't offer. I actually thought the gravity bike in Tribes 2 was somewhat cool.
I also really liked the scout in T1. I just think that as a developer, your time must be valuable, so spending it on making vehicles before you have a rock solid winner of a game is hugely wasteful. It's a giant waste of time.
Making vehicles that require more than one person to control is a horrible idea. It just feels so forced. Furthermore, the battlefield only has like what, 8-10 people per team? 12 at best? Giving up two or even three of those people to occupy a vehicle? Yeah, it's going to be the same as deleting a player or two off your team in terms of usefulness. It's almost always going to be a bad decision.
The vehicles in this game are pointless.
Though the shrike seems kind of fun for pew pew pew I donno. You could remove all the vehicles from the game and it wouldn't matter or effect anything.
Why is making vehicles a very bad thing to do to your fans?
Well, you could have taken all the time you spent on making those vehicles, and donated it to better raw functionality, or better depth perception, or better/smoother game design overall, or more awesome maps, or whatever. That time was basically put to absolute waste. Nobody cares about vehicles. They'd rather be able to see where they guy they are trying to shoot at is going to land.
The only reason I can see that anyone would want to bring in vehicles is because they think it will attract newer players. It seems to be a marketing decision based on dollars.
I feel they really blew it on the vehicles. They fly strangely, they feel clunky and awkward, and meh. I think some people are maybe enjoying the shrike, but to spend time on that over really crucial stuff is bad.
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