Tribes: Ascend - Now in open beta

[dd14]

Got the open beta client today and I'm loving the game so far, I wasn't really expecting it to be as fun as it is. Right now I'm pretty much sticking to the scout class (don't know the name, it's the default light class) and doing non-stop flag runs. Usually works out pretty well. I really don't see much point to the other classes beyond defense however, they don't have the speed to capture or persue enemy flag carriers, and I think speed is the most important asset in Tribes.

Can't wait to play it a bit more tomorrow!

[Paladin]

Heh. You say that until you're flying away with the flag and a Sentinel drops you from across the map with his sniper rifle. Or an infiltrator hiding along your flag run path ganks you. Or my favorite, a technician has hidden two turrets behind cover along your flag run route so that you don't see them until they're shooting you in the back.

Granted, some of the stuff that brings deeper strategy into the game still needs to be developed a bit, but no one who ever played T1/T2 would make the mistake of thinking that only flag runners matter.

[Paladin]

So... They buffed turrets and suddenly everyone wants to try out Technician. I wouldn't mind except that they all suck and they put turrets all over in retarded places that block me from putting them in the places we actually need them.

Oh, and none of them have motion sensors, so their turrets might as well not even be there.

Seriously, don't bother playing tech unless you have enough xp/gold to buy the motion sensor. You're useless without it.

Playing Tech without a Thumper is perfectly doable, though not exactly optimal. Playing tech without motion sensors is equivalent to walking through Afghanistan with a bullseye on each side of your shirt, carrying a big sign with cartoons making fun of Islam on it...

[Rivy]

A tech with the SMG is great for outdoors defense. That gun is excellent at killing cappers, especially if you drained their energy with a motion sensor.
And yes, I agree that without motion sensors techs are crippled.

[Shuma]

To be fair, if you can aim the SMG it's probably better than the Thumper. And the turrets also got a slight nerf, their range is smaller now.

[Elerium]

Also is it just me, or is the Heavy Spinfusor underpowered? I know as a Brute I'm supposed to hide in bunkers and gank anyone who gets close, but in regards to the closed beta it seems they've been left behind (I was managing to kill things in closed beta Team Deathmatch and now I wouldn't bother using that class- instead using a Soldier with Thumper DX). Does buffing the Heavy Spinfusor to do 20% armoured damage give it a new lease of life?

[Sinogrim]

So, why exactly did they nerf the cloak on the INF? The entire class revolves around it. the CD on it can be quite devestating when you're playing the dangerous game of hide&seek with an enemy in the gen rooms. Unnecessary nerf if you ask me, but thankfully not gamebreaking.

Also, what exactly did they buff on the Juggernaut? I can't seem to make any sense of it.

[Paladin]

To be fair, if you can aim the SMG it's probably better than the Thumper.

Given the design of the game, it's pretty much impossible for rapid fire weapons to ever be "better" than burst damage weapons. Especially given that most of the burst damage guns can 1/2/3 shot enemies (1 shot lights, 2 shot mediums, 3 shot heavies). Sustained DPS just doesn't matter when you die the first time they hit you. And if you don't die, you're flying through the air and having your aim thrown off...

[Shuma]

@Elerium:

Yes, it's pretty underpowered, iirc it only deals about 70 damage more than the Soldier's(or pathfinder's? Maybe i'm thinking the bolt launcher's and no the spinfusor here) and it takes 2 decades to reload a single disc.

@Sinogrim:

It was so that they can't cloak and decloak in rapid succession to destroy Tech turrets without being fired on, which i think is pretty stuppid. And nothing was buffed on the juggernaut, only change was that his mortars now have 50% inheritance, ie they inherit 50% of your speed when you fire them, or something like that.

@Paladin:

I disagree, rapid fire weapons are better for chasing and killing enemies in midair. Obviously explosive weapons are better in doors, but the same doesn't go for outdoors, and tech's will often hang by the flag and only do periodic patrols to the generator room.

And turns out the Tech turret's changes were accidental(somehow), they're back to normal now.

[Sinogrim]

I know why they nerfed the cloak, it's just that there were much better solutions to that problem, like turrets being capable of firing on recently cloaked INF's instead of making this weird change that effects INF against every class in the game.

edit: there's also a bugg in the current version where INF has 3 stickies max instead of 4, making it more difficult to take down the enemy gen .

[Paladin]

Gah... the number of people on the T:A forums who bitch about this and that being too powerful because they've never played a Tribes game before and they are confused and angered by the fact that it's not like other games they're used to just makes me want to not live on this planet anymore.

[Kryopsis]

Heh. The official forums is a never-ending whine-fest by people posing as old-school gamers. I read a couple of threads today while looking for patch notes and it was both amusing and infuriating.

[Paladin]

My favorite was the guy who was bitching about soldiers having the thumper DX from the start, basically whining that everyone has a rocket launcher. I was like, "So, basically, you don't like that it's a Tribes game?"

[DoomKnights]

I might jump back on, I was playing when it was still in the close beta and bought the Elite pack, I locked nearly everything. I better not have lost anything there....grr.. *will be back to complain later tonight heh*

[Shuma]

Well if you played infiltrator now is a good time to come back, HiRez just released a "pack" for him, 2 skins, 2 new weapons, one grenade.

[Sinogrim]

All I can say is that the jackal has a pretty major design flaw. No cooldown on the detonation, meaning everybody who's carrying it is just rambo'ing it up. Shooting nades into the air and immediately detonating it, giving the opponent very little chance to get out alive. The concept of the gun (ambushing people) sounds good, but I've yet seen people actually using it as it was intended...

[WingedKagouti]

The concept of the gun (ambushing people) sounds good, but I've yet seen people actually using it as it was intended...

Probably because you can't do much but sit and wait if you try to do that.

I'm currently mixing it up with Inf, Tech, Raider and Doomie. I tried using the Inf mines in the beginning, but they were just way too visible to matter, so I'm glad they got changed.

[Shuma]

Was watching a stream earlier, apparently the big problem for the Jackal is that because of the AoE you can throw incoming flag grabbers out of their route as they come for the flag. Add to that that the guy can cloak and he can pretty much steal the Doombringer's job.

[WingedKagouti]

Tbh, I feel like the Doomie is better at Generator Defense than Flag Defense. Most experienced players ensure that they've bombed the flag area before going for the grab, so Force Fields and Mines tend to be irrelevant there. The generator on the other hand usually has 2 choke points that can be blocked off with Force Fields (preventing long range Generator Bombing), and the Chain Gun is deadly when people can't easily move at 200+ or dodge as much.

[Shuma]

If people are bombing your flag stand so much that you can't have a flag defense, then why in the world would you have a doombringer of all classes on generator defense? Does not compute.

Edit:

Not to say it's not fun though.

[DoomKnights]

Just loaded *took two hours of updates holy hell batman!* Good, lots of improvments, but I feel somewhat mmm how to say it. Screwed? I had everyone unlocked, nearly all the tech plus infl stuff unlocked and everyone else was half unlocked. They "refunded" me my exp, but it did not even come close to what I had before. I got the infiltrator unlocked as well as the tech, with the full unlocked(as before) and yet ran out of exp and could not unlock any of the other guys like I had before... I feel kind of bent over and abused there. Also I need to double check as I bought the "perm elite" but not seeing the bonus anymore...

[Rivy]

Was watching a stream earlier, apparently the big problem for the Jackal is that because of the AoE you can throw incoming flag grabbers out of their route as they come for the flag. Add to that that the guy can cloak and he can pretty much steal the Doombringer's job.

Funny, I was thinking that it would make the INF awesome for flag defense !

[Paladin]

If people are bombing your flag stand so much that you can't have a flag defense, then why in the world would you have a doombringer of all classes on generator defense? Does not compute.

The problem is that unless you're playing against absolute sucktard noobs, the other team will always be bombing the platform to the point of making deployables unusable. Any flag capper worth anything will have sprayed the stand with 4 or 5 spinfusor discs before he lands, and that's not even taking Juggernaut bombardment teams into account.

[Shuma]

@Doomknights:

That's because they added a lot of new stuff, when the big patch that changed everything hit i had just unlocked about 4 classes(uh, Pathfinder, Jugernaut, Brute and Tech, 4 classes) and no perks, after the patch and refund i could unlock all classes and a couple of perks along with some weapons. If you spent all your xp on one class, especially the infiltrator(who just got a ton of new stuff) then it's no surprise that you ran out of XP. That and the prices of some new weapons are seriously inflated, obviously the idea is that people would rather spend money to unlock them than spend the time to get the XP. Unlocking the classes themselves is relatively cheap iirc, it's just the weapons that are ridiculously expensive.

@Paladin:

Well yeah, but if you can't put defenses on the flag then why defend the generator at all? To power up defenses around the generator itself? There's only a couple of maps where the generator is important even if you can't put defenses around the flag, like sunstar.

[Paladin]

Mostly for the Sensor. The Sensor is amazingly important.

[Zephyr]

The generator is very important: if it goes down, so does your base defences, radar, turrets and sensors. That's partly why infiltrators are so annoying

[WingedKagouti]

The Radar, Vehicle Bay and Inventory Stations are the primary reasons to keep the generator alive. The generator also powers Drop Jammers for your Sentries, something the smart ones usually prefer to hide at.

The vehicles can add some firepower and harassment ability in the hands of a competent pilot, Inventory Stations are useful for quickly restocking ammo or changing gear/class if you don't want to suicide (and get hit with the spawn delay).

[Nalkor]

My first medal on an objective map as a Juggernaut was Tank Down. That was fun. I've gotten a fair number of Artillery Shots and Revenges as well. Still getting used to skiing and the two weapons of the Juggernaut, but there is something satisfying about lobbing a shot over a giant hill and seeing Artillery Shot, Revenge, and Double Kill appear all at once.

[Shuma]

I know what the generator does guys. I don't play sentinel so i don't know if the jammer is generator powered or not, but, i'm pretty sure it isn't, you can call down an inventory station that doesn't require the generator for what, 2500 credits, maybe less? The only reason you'd need an inventory station is if you're on base defense(in which case you are going to be defending the generator) or you're a DMB, in which case you're going to be swimming in credits and can just call down one 2 steps away from the flag stand, which is what pretty much every single DMB does, and for the vehicle bay, unless there's a bunch of infiltrators having a party on your gen you can just go repair it yourself and then go back to the vehicle station before anyone brings the gen down again.

The sensor is useful i'll give you that, but still i stand by my point, if you don't have deployables around the flag the generator is pretty much useless on over half the maps. Then again, i suppose the discussion is pointless, in pub games people will defend the generator or attack it simply because it's fun, and on competitive play i've very rarely have seen people pay attention to the generator.

[DoomKnights]

If they made a very good reason to keep the gen going that would work as well. First time I saw a timer on the Gen my hopes and thoughts had been that if that timer goes out before the Gen comes back up? That team loses. That would MEAN someone had to put some effort on the Gen. Of course I was wrong ^^.

[Paladin]

Personally I think the generator should put shields on base assets like it did in Tribes and Tribes 2.

As long as those shields were up, there were only a few weapons in the game that could be used to destroy a turret or the radar sensor. Pretty much just the mortar, or an elf gun with help from someone else...

[DoomKnights]

Yea I miss those days. Gen up? You are not doing much to the stuff! Now it takes a lot of time and effort to keep anything running as those things get pegged so far in game it's not funny=\ Repair our dish, walk away 1 min later it's dead again. Bah! Hah just saw my Pie chart for usage. Tech 94% used. heh

[Kryopsis]

Yeah, Shuma is right. The generator is not as useful as you guys think. You can still win a game with the generator down and having half the team defending your generator room puts you at a major disadvantage. Similarly, I often see teams continue defending a useless generator when all the turrets and the sensor are down. Judging by the streams of competitive games that I've seen, people do not defend the generator at higher level of play.

I play Raider and Juggernaut in CTF and Soldier in TDM. I find the Raider to be an incredibly versatile class. The Jammer Pack is nothing short of amazing and with the current popularity of Infiltrators, nothing makes me happier than making a quick patrol around the base and uncovering a handful of cloaked enemies. I switched back to the Arx Buster when I realized how much easier it is to destroy objectives on the move. With an EMP grenade or two, I can burst down a generator or a turret before anyone realizes what's going on.

I play the Soldier in the most annoying way possible, with the Assault Rifle, Thumper DX, Utility Pack as well as the Quick Draw and Safety Third perks. While the Spinfusor/Eagle Pistol is the stronger combination overall, rapidly throwing 4 grenades into an angry mob and gunning them down when the explosions send them flying is a hilarious tactic.

[Maktaka]

Judging by the streams of competitive games that I've seen, people do not defend the generator at higher level of play.

Well, in a standard 6v6 competitive match, you generally don't have the spare people to gen bash or gen defend. It's much easier to pull of in a 16v16 pub game where one player's presence, or lack thereof, to slip in and pop the generator or alternatively spend your time defending it as a Technician and running around keeping equipment topped off. It's not strictly required to win, no, but it helps quite a bit (depending on map).

[Nalkor]

@Maktaka - That is very true. I did a pub CTF earlier as a Juggernaut and the map was the ice one with two large pyramids between each base and are great for skiing down and into the underground ramp leading to the generator. After I blew up the enemy's generator for the third time, I found out precisely how much of an annoyance I became: One of the opposing team drove a tank down to kill me dead and then remained there. I found that last bit out as I opted for generator-kill-number-four while evading a second tank chasing me down the ramp towards the generator and what looked like a Doombringer in the middle. Two tanks and a doombringer thought my generator-killing warranted constant guarding, never would've happened in a competitive match.

So in competitive matches, gen-killing is pretty pointless, but in pubs, you might get morons who park a tank or two (if the map permits) near the generator to protect it, which means that's however many nasty vehicles not guarding the flag and such.

[Shuma]

Oh man, reminds me of when people would throw tanks down the shaft in Bella Omega to "defend" the generator.

[Nalkor]

Hey, like I said, piss some pubbers off enough and they'll screw up their priorities bigtime just to try and make you leave them alone. Thing is, I immediately realized how much they wanted me away from the generator at that point, if they match didn't end when it did, I would have gone right back to what I was doing (we had another Juggernaut at one of the balconies in the pyramid taking shots at the other team) just to keep those two tanks down away from defending the flag.

That only worked because the map favored skiing right into the opposing team's ramp-to-generator with only a few turns and using a mortar launcher to destroy a turret next to the ramp before doing so.

[Paladin]

Yeah, Shuma is right. The generator is not as useful as you guys think. You can still win a game with the generator down and having half the team defending your generator room puts you at a major disadvantage. Similarly, I often see teams continue defending a useless generator when all the turrets and the sensor are down. Judging by the streams of competitive games that I've seen, people do not defend the generator at higher level of play.

I never said the generator was useful enough... It needs to do more, and IMO they need to go back to the T1/T2 model of spawning you in default noob gear until you visit an inventory station, as well as having the generator provide shielding impenetrable to most of the weapons in the game for all your base assets (And possibly some of your deployables even, considering how weaksauce they've made the deployable turrets). But, that said, the Sensor is still massively important and having it up is a huge advantage to a skilled flag defense team that knows how to make use of the HUD.

Might help to go to the T1/T2 model of having a primary and a secondary generator as well... Though most of the existing maps are probably too small to bother with that. Bigger maps are also needed.

[DoomKnights]

I'm with Paladin. I am a tech, most of the time I protect either the gen or the flag. IF the gen is down my turrets are worthless. So I end up going from Flag D to Gen D if we have no one helping. THAT means one less person covering the flag. Again 94% of the time I have been playing Tech so yea... heh.

[WingedKagouti]

Might help to go to the T1/T2 model of having a primary and a secondary generator as well... Though most of the existing maps are probably too small to bother with that. Bigger maps are also needed.

Some of the people on the T:A forum had a look at the files and found a Backup Generator pack for the Tech (they also found the new Inf stuff before it was announced), so that is probably comming soonish.

[Nalkor]

There's a difference between having a tech keeping the base defense/generator running and some idiot taking a potential match-shifting asset down to the generator and parking it there.

[Paladin]

Meh... In my experience of pub matches no one ever buys vehicles anyway, so it's not really affecting things much if someone does that.

[Nalkor]

See, that's just it, when someone does buy the Beowulf, it's all the more shocking to see them employ it effectively... and all the more entertaining to see them employ it in a terrible manner.

[Paladin]

Well pub games are all about the lulz anyway, and there are very few things funnier than stomping generator assaults with a beowulf.

[dd14]

So I'm getting pretty sick of the Chain-gun in this game. Here I am using single-shot projectiles like the Spinfusor where I have to account for speed, direction, and my targets intended path - basically working my ass off for a kill - while the players using the Chain-gun just have to herp-derp their 600 round death weapon in the general direction of an opponent and watch them drop like a sack of shit. Awesome.

[Nalkor]

As a Juggernaut, I need to also account for speed, direction, intended path, projectile drop and the PRAY TO THE POWERS THAT BE WHEN LAUNCHING MORTARS OVER INTO THE UNKNOWN. My feelings on chain gunners is very similar to the shotgun users, but yes, chain gun needs tweaking.

[Kryopsis]

See, that's just it, when someone does buy the Beowulf, it's all the more shocking to see them employ it effectively... and all the more entertaining to see them employ it in a terrible manner.

You mean parking it next to your generator and waiting for somebody dumb enough to keep trying to assault it?


To be honest, I do not have a problem with the Chain Gun, or the Saber Launcher, or the Tumper or any of the weapons people usually complain about. The Spinfusor is more versatile than the Chain Gun by a long shot. You can easily snipe base turrets from miles away. You can even counter-snipe stupid sentinels. The Soldier, a versatile, high-mobility class, is far deadlier with the Spinfusor than the Doombringer with the Chain Gun. Not to mention that the Chain Gun is all the Doombringer has. The secondary weapon is always the Saber Launcher. Compare that to the Juggernaut who has the LMG as a secondary weapon.


I am just curious, what rank is everyone here?

[Nalkor]

Hey, it was a pub match, you think I would honestly even attempt that stunt at all in a competitive match?

[Paladin]

Chaingun is inaccurate as shit. If someone is actually hitting you with it, they're good. The projectiles aren't even hitscan, they're pretty bloody slow. The assault rifle that soldiers get is a better weapon as far as accuracy, honestly.

[Nalkor]

To be quite honest, I've only died a few times at all to the chaingun. It was more of the spinfusor from the Pathfinders and Thumper Dx (not nearly as often) and the Assault Rifle from the soldier.