Tribes:Acend

[Gracinfields]

Happen to be looking though some articles over on IGN, and brought back fond Memories of my game time in Tribes 2. It seems the maker of Global Agenda, Hi-Rez Studios, will be remastering the Tribes game in the Unreal 3 Engine; just by looking at the game play in the trailer of the video it seems they replicated the old game play style but they added a new twist. Unlike the old game where you purchased your copy and went off to play and then every now and then go searching for a patch from Sierra Studios, Hi-Rez will be making the game Free to play, aka Free to download. How are they doing this you might ask; well their going to be releasing load out packs as micro transation. When I read this I was a little disapointed, I can see so many way this could cause the game to fail flat on its face after a couple of their microtransaction packs can upset the balance of game play.

 

As from the sound of it the game might very well be brought into a centralized HUB style of game play similar to their current MMO (if you could call it that) Global Agenda. The concern I have with this style of mechanic will leave gaps where people will have high pings in an enviroment where they want to have quite low pings. This is where games like Tribes 2 and the Battlefield Series which allowed for Dedicated server which would be spread quite wide allowing for people to find servers with people on it with the lowest ping possible. However, if centralized like it seems like they may do this would leave people sticking to several servers which might leave them with a higher ping then they want in the game enviroment. Case in point Planetside back in 2003 launched with four servers in the US, Emerald- East coast, Konried- Central, Markov - Mountain (I think, could be switched with Johnri), and Johnri -Western (I think could be switch with Markov), which did spread wide but these did leave those futher away with some ping issues. Later in 2004-2005 they took down Konried and Johnri and merged those with their closest servers, then again in 2005 or so they closed down the Chiniess Server which came up some time in 2004 and merged that with the US server Markov, then another merger bring Markov into Emerald some time around 2006-2007, and a final Merger taking the EU server Warner down and Merging that into Emerald to make Gemini in 2009-2010. Thus creating some nasty ping issue for some players and even making playablity even worse for some of the EU players which already where having some ping issue back on Werner.

 

Hopefully they do something different but I don't think they will pull this off, or pull it off well enough at least to get enought people into one of the great Franchies that even inspired the Batllefield Franchice. I really would like to see this game succeed but Hi-Rez doesn't have a very good track record in my opinion, and my experiance from alpha and beta testing of their Day View game, Global Agenda, just doesn't leave much in the way of hope.

 

For those wonder here is the trailer for Tribes: Acend.

 

Edited June 30, 2011 by Gracinfields

[Gishank]

Saw this when browsing the interwebs the other day. It looks promising, although I have never played the original Tribes games it seems like it could provide some decent competition to other MMO's if pulled off correctly.