Tribes:Ascend Forums

FAQ • Login • Register

The game is in a deplorable state
Author	Message
lastfatality09 Joined: Fri Nov 11, 2011 2:21 pm Posts: 110	The game is in a deplorable state I've played tribes ascend through the closed and open beta, when the game officially came out I stopped for awhile. And now I come back the game quality as decreased significantly. I was hoping to see game breaking problems fixed like: -Stacked teams -New players not knowing what to do -Weapon and other items extremely expensive both gold and in exp -Encouraging Hit-Scan weapons (I'll give details about the problem) Stacked Teams Since the start of the beta players would join the team with highest ranks, this problem persists. Almost every single match the score is either 5-0, or 0-5. We could say that it's the team's fault for not being organized enough to defend or attack. But this is not the case, for, in most matches it's rank 15-30 players against newbies rank 7-10, these newbies just got out of the low level matches and are faced with a better organised team and get completely obliterated. It's been 7 months, people constantly complain and hi-rez hasn't done anything? It's not normal. New players not knowing what to do Again and again, new players rank 7 get to taste "official" pub matches, and what happens? They stand there defending the generator as a pathfinder using their shotgun, or trying to capture the flag as a juggernaut. Why? Because Hi-Rez hasn't done the correct job of explaining the functionality of the classes and their roles. When they finally get enough EXP most of the newbies immediately buy the sentinel, thinking it's like most of the snipers in other games. When they get to the games they are camped on a hill without even planting their items. After trying to kill a doombringer for 5 minutes and wasting most of their ammo they give up, and say: -This class sucks, I want a refund It's not only because they suck with it, but they don't know what they should do with the sentinel, and it's Hi-Rez's job to show them. If they don't do this they will just lose players, of course you can say it's just a guy that sucks at the game. Yes but at the end of the day how many of these players do the same? Weapon and other items extremely expensive both gold and in exp I understand Tribes: Ascend is a free to play game, but the prices are completely exaggerated. Let's start with the EXP prices: Normally a main weapon costs 100'000 EXP, each match a normal NON-VIP player should get around 1'000 exp. Most matches go from 15 minutes to 30 minutes (if i'm not mistaken), if you do the math you'll see that you need an awful lot of time playing almost non stop just to get there. This isn't normal, the prices are absurdly high, on top of everything you also have to upgrade weapons, armor, items, special class abilities. Something has to be done about this in order to keep people incentivated to keep winning exp and to make them buy gold. Now for the Gold Prices: Normally a weapon costs about 780 gold, this is around 10 euros (or around 7 dollars), people need to pay around 10 dollars just to buy an in-game weapon, this isn't normal AT ALL and once more on top of everything you still need to upgrade the weapon 3 times with EXP. The gold prices are also absurdly high. Hi-Rez, there are many well argumented threads in the forum talking about this problem, showing the math, and giving you possible fixes in order to maintain the free to play business. What's going on now is that there are people that don't mind buying with gold but with time the sales will decrease and you will start losing money because you focused too much on high prices and new items to make more and more money. Good thread about the problem on the Tribes Reddit Forum:http://www.reddit.com/r/Tribes/comments/t01yn/if_tribes_hirez_wants_money_they_need_to_price/ Encouraging automatic weapons Since the start of the beta people have been complaining about Hit-Scan weapons (like shotgun and snipers) and about Almost Hit-Scan weapons (like machine guns, pistols, smgs etc...). In this thread I'll refer to them all as automatic to make it a bit easier. I've always understood that automatic weapons were here to stay and was never against it until NOW: Matches have become joke, bullets flying everywhere, many people barely use spinfusors, the most known weapon in the Tribes series. I will explain why I'm against the automatic weapons now: -In the beta there weren't that many people using them, and they used them carefully not just spraying everywhere on the map. Soldier's default weapon was the spinfusor, you could buy the jumper for the rifle or later you could just buy the rifle for the soldier. I was okay with this decision, but for some inexplicable reason Hi-Rez decided to change it so you would have to buy the spinfusor in order to use it. What? Why would they do that? The spinfusor is iconic, it's the basic weapon of the game has to be bought and your only option for the soldier is the rifle. Because of this AWFUL decision games have become this... thing... a mix between Call of Duty and Tribes 1 or 2. The juggernaut LMG is in my opinion really unbalanced, the shooting speed and the damage it does really destroys everything in it's path. And in my opinion it needs to be changed more like the doombringer's machine gun. In order to balance the game try imagining a match with only people with this weapon and you would see that even as a juggernaut you wouldn't be in the field very long. But my huge problem with the Machine guns and LMG's is that there is no downside if you fail the target. You have huge clip sizes even if you need to recharge it will only take a couple of seconds. Unlike the spinfusor where if you miss the target you need to recharge and that can be crucial in a fight and it teaches you to be careful and to think before hitting the target. The Doombringer has 280 AMMO on the machine gun (with no upgrades), it takes to kill: -A Light class 8 bullets -A Medium class 12 bullets -A Heavy class 24 Bullets The Juggernaut has 70 Ammo in each clip on the LMG (with no upgrades), it takes to kill: -A Light class 10 bullets -A Medium class 15 bullets -A Heavy class 30 Bullets With the damage and speed of both weapons you can destroy everything in you path with a bit of good aim, while if you have good aim with the spinfusor and fail you still get penalized because of the reload time. That's why I think something needs to be done about them. Don't get me wrong Tribes: Ascend is a great game but with the problems it has since the beta it just shows a lack of responsibility from Hi-Rez and even a lack of respect towards the players. There are things that should've been fixed by now and they still persist through the patches. Hi-Rez you're focusing too much on adding more content to get more money but this will be your downfall, if one day people start getting sick of the same problems they will start boycotting the game and when you try to fix it, it will probably be too late like in so many games... I hope the community and Hi-Rez reads this, tell me if you agree or not, and I might change my opinions (especially about automatic) but please give some arguments to back up your opinion. Thanks _________________ Last edited by lastfatality09 on Tue May 01, 2012 1:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Tue May 01, 2012 9:40 am

LHeureux Joined: Tue Dec 06, 2011 8:35 pm Posts: 349	Re: The game is in a deplorable state I agree with all points. _________________ I give up too.
Tue May 01, 2012 11:23 am

OuchMyBoobies Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 7:32 pm Posts: 999 Location: Eastern US	Re: The game is in a deplorable state team stacking - deal with it or join a different server. you can't fix it. experience cost - considering how long you play the game for, it's not really that bad. you can make 100k in less than four days. if anything, it's a good way to encourage players to pay even just $10 for vip. surely a game you play for so long is worth $10? bullet weapons...i really don't see any issue on hitscan (pistols, sniper rifles and shoutguns). they are limited / specialized in their roles. smg's are usually a trade-off between it and something else (usually a spinfusor). sometimes the spinfusor is the tool to have, sometimes the smg is the tool to have. sometimes it just comes down to player preference; i like having the options at least.
Tue May 01, 2012 11:43 am

lastfatality09 Joined: Fri Nov 11, 2011 2:21 pm Posts: 110	Re: The game is in a deplorable state OuchMyBoobies wrote: team stacking - deal with it or join a different server. you can't fix it. Yes you can, at the start of the match no letting anyone see the team composition (ranks, classes etc) _________________
Tue May 01, 2012 11:45 am

BurntToShreds Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2012 4:12 am Posts: 100	Re: The game is in a deplorable state +1. The game has glaring flaws among the things it does right. XP needs to be rewarded for performance in a specific gametype (Flag caps, returns, defenses) rather than for time spent in a match. Being rewarded properly will encourage players to repeat thoe actions which would create players that focus on the objectives rather than playing TDM in the gen room.
Tue May 01, 2012 11:51 am

Elesion Joined: Tue May 01, 2012 11:31 am Posts: 6	Re: The game is in a deplorable state Dont agree with the sentiment on automatic weapons. Many a times I would be playing heavy and i simply cannot keep up with lighter classes in a duel. They would just zip arround with spin fusers overhead and splash damage me to death while my energy goes to 0 from a single jump. You cannot rely on bolt rifle or your spin fusers to kill ligh or medium opponenets when they have so much more mobility in the air over you. the automatic weapon is your only saving grave in trying to take them down in flight. The other option is the missile launcher - which is pathetic and we wont discuss why nots not even feasible.
Tue May 01, 2012 11:58 am

raqyee Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2012 5:52 am Posts: 1914	Re: The game is in a deplorable state +1 I was one of those guys who bought sentinel when I just started playing, and I was very disappointed until I learnt how to play it properly. BurntToShreds wrote: XP needs to be rewarded for performance in a specific gametype (Flag caps, returns, defenses) rather than for time spent in a match That's the bonus part of XP you're getting ,it depends on your performance and on the outcome of the match. So that's fine. No need to give even less XP to people who are not really good at the game. _________________ Feel free to add me on steam \| Member of conclave.cc
Tue May 01, 2012 12:02 pm

lastfatality09 Joined: Fri Nov 11, 2011 2:21 pm Posts: 110	Re: The game is in a deplorable state Elesion wrote: Dont agree with the sentiment on automatic weapons. Many a times I would be playing heavy and i simply cannot keep up with lighter classes in a duel. They would just zip arround with spin fusers overhead and splash damage me to death while my energy goes to 0 from a single jump. You cannot rely on bolt rifle or your spin fusers to kill ligh or medium opponenets when they have so much more mobility in the air over you. the automatic weapon is your only saving grave in trying to take them down in flight. The other option is the missile launcher - which is pathetic and we wont discuss why nots not even feasible. I'm not saying they should be removed, just tweaked, with 8 bullets you can take down a light, you have 280 and no "punishement" if you miss _________________
Tue May 01, 2012 12:08 pm

BiscuitHammer Joined: Sun May 02, 2010 1:24 pm Posts: 355	Re: The game is in a deplorable state lastfatality09 wrote: OuchMyBoobies wrote: team stacking - deal with it or join a different server. you can't fix it. Yes you can, at the start of the match no letting anyone see the team composition (ranks, classes etc) Or just make it so that when you join a match you get the choice between "play" and "spectate." If you choose play you get assigned to a team without being able to choose. And you can't go back and change teams after that or go into spectator mode to try and cheat the system.
Tue May 01, 2012 12:08 pm

OuchMyBoobies Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 7:32 pm Posts: 999 Location: Eastern US	Re: The game is in a deplorable state lastfatality09 wrote: Yes you can, at the start of the match no letting anyone see the team composition (ranks, classes etc) you need to be able to see classes. what if you like playing hof, you go "ok, which team needs a hof" etc. BiscuitHammer wrote: Or just make it so that when you join a match you get the choice between "play" and "spectate." If you choose play you get assigned to a team without being able to choose. And you can't go back and change teams after that or go into spectator mode to try and cheat the system. no thanks. what if you want to join with your friends? what if one side is two players down and you (gasp!) want to switch over to even the teams up?
Tue May 01, 2012 12:31 pm

Display posts from previous: Sort by

The game is in a deplorable state

Author

Message

lastfatality09

Joined: Fri Nov 11, 2011 2:21 pm
Posts: 110

The game is in a deplorable state

I've played tribes ascend through the closed and open beta, when the game officially came out I stopped for awhile. And now I come back the game quality as decreased significantly.

I was hoping to see game breaking problems fixed like:
-Stacked teams
-New players not knowing what to do
-Weapon and other items extremely expensive both gold and in exp
-Encouraging Hit-Scan weapons (I'll give details about the problem)

Stacked Teams
Since the start of the beta players would join the team with highest ranks, this problem persists.
Almost every single match the score is either 5-0, or 0-5. We could say that it's the team's fault for not being organized enough to defend or attack.
But this is not the case, for, in most matches it's rank 15-30 players against newbies rank 7-10, these newbies just got out of the low level matches and are faced with a better organised team and get completely obliterated.
It's been 7 months, people constantly complain and hi-rez hasn't done anything? It's not normal.

New players not knowing what to do
Again and again, new players rank 7 get to taste "official" pub matches, and what happens?
They stand there defending the generator as a pathfinder using their shotgun, or trying to capture the flag as a juggernaut.
Why? Because Hi-Rez hasn't done the correct job of explaining the functionality of the classes and their roles.
When they finally get enough EXP most of the newbies immediately buy the sentinel, thinking it's like most of the snipers in other games. When they get to the games they are camped on a hill without even planting their items.
After trying to kill a doombringer for 5 minutes and wasting most of their ammo they give up, and say:
-This class sucks, I want a refund
It's not only because they suck with it, but they don't know what they should do with the sentinel, and it's Hi-Rez's job to show them.
If they don't do this they will just lose players, of course you can say it's just a guy that sucks at the game. Yes but at the end of the day how many of these players do the same?

Weapon and other items extremely expensive both gold and in exp
I understand Tribes: Ascend is a free to play game, but the prices are completely exaggerated.

Let's start with the EXP prices:
Normally a main weapon costs 100'000 EXP, each match a normal NON-VIP player should get around 1'000 exp.
Most matches go from 15 minutes to 30 minutes (if i'm not mistaken), if you do the math you'll see that you need an awful lot of time playing almost non stop just to get there.
This isn't normal, the prices are absurdly high, on top of everything you also have to upgrade weapons, armor, items, special class abilities. Something has to be done about this in order to keep people incentivated to keep winning exp and to make them buy gold.

Now for the Gold Prices:
Normally a weapon costs about 780 gold, this is around 10 euros (or around 7 dollars), people need to pay around 10 dollars just to buy an in-game weapon, this isn't normal AT ALL and once more on top of everything you still need to upgrade the weapon 3 times with EXP.
The gold prices are also absurdly high.
Hi-Rez, there are many well argumented threads in the forum talking about this problem, showing the math, and giving you possible fixes in order to maintain the free to play business.
What's going on now is that there are people that don't mind buying with gold but with time the sales will decrease and you will start losing money because you focused too much on high prices and new items to make more and more money.
Good thread about the problem on the Tribes Reddit Forum:http://www.reddit.com/r/Tribes/comments/t01yn/if_tribes_hirez_wants_money_they_need_to_price/

Encouraging automatic weapons
Since the start of the beta people have been complaining about Hit-Scan weapons (like shotgun and snipers) and about Almost Hit-Scan weapons (like machine guns, pistols, smgs etc...).
In this thread I'll refer to them all as automatic to make it a bit easier.
I've always understood that automatic weapons were here to stay and was never against it until NOW: Matches have become joke, bullets flying everywhere, many people barely use spinfusors, the most known weapon in the Tribes series.
I will explain why I'm against the automatic weapons now:

-In the beta there weren't that many people using them, and they used them carefully not just spraying everywhere on the map.
Soldier's default weapon was the spinfusor, you could buy the jumper for the rifle or later you could just buy the rifle for the soldier.
I was okay with this decision, but for some inexplicable reason Hi-Rez decided to change it so you would have to buy the spinfusor in order to use it. What? Why would they do that? The spinfusor is iconic, it's the basic weapon of the game has to be bought and your only option for the soldier is the rifle.
Because of this AWFUL decision games have become this... thing... a mix between Call of Duty and Tribes 1 or 2.

The juggernaut LMG is in my opinion really unbalanced, the shooting speed and the damage it does really destroys everything in it's path. And in my opinion it needs to be changed more like the doombringer's machine gun.
In order to balance the game try imagining a match with only people with this weapon and you would see that even as a juggernaut you wouldn't be in the field very long.

But my huge problem with the Machine guns and LMG's is that there is no downside if you fail the target.
You have huge clip sizes even if you need to recharge it will only take a couple of seconds.
Unlike the spinfusor where if you miss the target you need to recharge and that can be crucial in a fight and it teaches you to be careful and to think before hitting the target.

The Doombringer has 280 AMMO on the machine gun (with no upgrades), it takes to kill:
-A Light class 8 bullets
-A Medium class 12 bullets
-A Heavy class 24 Bullets

The Juggernaut has 70 Ammo in each clip on the LMG (with no upgrades), it takes to kill:
-A Light class 10 bullets
-A Medium class 15 bullets
-A Heavy class 30 Bullets

With the damage and speed of both weapons you can destroy everything in you path with a bit of good aim, while if you have good aim with the spinfusor and fail you still get penalized because of the reload time.
That's why I think something needs to be done about them.

Don't get me wrong Tribes: Ascend is a great game but with the problems it has since the beta it just shows a lack of responsibility from Hi-Rez and even a lack of respect towards the players.
There are things that should've been fixed by now and they still persist through the patches.
Hi-Rez you're focusing too much on adding more content to get more money but this will be your downfall, if one day people start getting sick of the same problems they will start boycotting the game and when you try to fix it, it will probably be too late like in so many games...

I hope the community and Hi-Rez reads this, tell me if you agree or not, and I might change my opinions (especially about automatic) but please give some arguments to back up your opinion.
Thanks

_________________

Last edited by lastfatality09 on Tue May 01, 2012 1:28 pm, edited 2 times in total.

Tue May 01, 2012 9:40 am

LHeureux

Joined: Tue Dec 06, 2011 8:35 pm
Posts: 349

Re: The game is in a deplorable state

I agree with all points.

_________________
I give up too.

Tue May 01, 2012 11:23 am

OuchMyBoobies

Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 7:32 pm
Posts: 999
Location: Eastern US

Re: The game is in a deplorable state

team stacking - deal with it or join a different server. you can't fix it.

experience cost - considering how long you play the game for, it's not really that bad. you can make 100k in less than four days. if anything, it's a good way to encourage players to pay even just $10 for vip. surely a game you play for so long is worth $10?

bullet weapons...i really don't see any issue on hitscan (pistols, sniper rifles and shoutguns). they are limited / specialized in their roles. smg's are usually a trade-off between it and something else (usually a spinfusor). sometimes the spinfusor is the tool to have, sometimes the smg is the tool to have. sometimes it just comes down to player preference; i like having the options at least.

Tue May 01, 2012 11:43 am

lastfatality09

Joined: Fri Nov 11, 2011 2:21 pm
Posts: 110

Re: The game is in a deplorable state

OuchMyBoobies wrote:

team stacking - deal with it or join a different server. you can't fix it.

Yes you can, at the start of the match no letting anyone see the team composition (ranks, classes etc)

_________________

Tue May 01, 2012 11:45 am

BurntToShreds

Joined: Wed Jan 04, 2012 4:12 am
Posts: 100

Re: The game is in a deplorable state

+1.

The game has glaring flaws among the things it does right. XP needs to be rewarded for performance in a specific gametype (Flag caps, returns, defenses) rather than for time spent in a match. Being rewarded properly will encourage players to repeat thoe actions which would create players that focus on the objectives rather than playing TDM in the gen room.

Tue May 01, 2012 11:51 am

Elesion

Joined: Tue May 01, 2012 11:31 am
Posts: 6

Re: The game is in a deplorable state

Dont agree with the sentiment on automatic weapons.

Many a times I would be playing heavy and i simply cannot keep up with lighter classes in a duel. They would just zip arround with spin fusers overhead and splash damage me to death while my energy goes to 0 from a single jump.

You cannot rely on bolt rifle or your spin fusers to kill ligh or medium opponenets when they have so much more mobility in the air over you. the automatic weapon is your only saving grave in trying to take them down in flight. The other option is the missile launcher - which is pathetic and we wont discuss why nots not even feasible.

Tue May 01, 2012 11:58 am

raqyee

Joined: Fri Mar 30, 2012 5:52 am
Posts: 1914

Re: The game is in a deplorable state

+1
I was one of those guys who bought sentinel when I just started playing, and I was very disappointed until I learnt how to play it properly.

BurntToShreds wrote:

XP needs to be rewarded for performance in a specific gametype (Flag caps, returns, defenses) rather than for time spent in a match

That's the bonus part of XP you're getting ,it depends on your performance and on the outcome of the match. So that's fine. No need to give even less XP to people who are not really good at the game.

_________________

Feel free to add me on steam | Member of conclave.cc

Tue May 01, 2012 12:02 pm

lastfatality09

Joined: Fri Nov 11, 2011 2:21 pm
Posts: 110

Re: The game is in a deplorable state

Elesion wrote:

I'm not saying they should be removed, just tweaked, with 8 bullets you can take down a light, you have 280 and no "punishement" if you miss

_________________

Tue May 01, 2012 12:08 pm

BiscuitHammer

Joined: Sun May 02, 2010 1:24 pm
Posts: 355

Re: The game is in a deplorable state

lastfatality09 wrote:

OuchMyBoobies wrote:

team stacking - deal with it or join a different server. you can't fix it.

Yes you can, at the start of the match no letting anyone see the team composition (ranks, classes etc)

Or just make it so that when you join a match you get the choice between "play" and "spectate." If you choose play you get assigned to a team without being able to choose. And you can't go back and change teams after that or go into spectator mode to try and cheat the system.

Tue May 01, 2012 12:08 pm

OuchMyBoobies

Joined: Fri Mar 09, 2012 7:32 pm
Posts: 999
Location: Eastern US

Re: The game is in a deplorable state

lastfatality09 wrote:

Yes you can, at the start of the match no letting anyone see the team composition (ranks, classes etc)

you need to be able to see classes. what if you like playing hof, you go "ok, which team needs a hof" etc.

BiscuitHammer wrote:

no thanks. what if you want to join with your friends? what if one side is two players down and you (gasp!) want to switch over to even the teams up?

Tue May 01, 2012 12:31 pm

Forum rules

The game is in a deplorable state