Tribes Vengeance.

*Disclaimer* These are just my impressions from a days worth of play. Some of the stuff written may be wrong, while some is pure speculation. Being a tribes vet, I cannot help but compare t:V to the past games, however I was ready and willing to try some new stuff.

Skiing:

You will all be pleased to know that skiing is fine, allowing you to build up good speed and conserve energy etc. Not much else to say on it really.

Cratering:

Cant remember to much about this, but I think the cratering effect in t:V is different. If you mess up a ski it will sort of bounce you back off the ground (sometimes at disasterous angles), at the same time taking damage. If you fall from a height you will land HARD, but I saw AP pull a nice jet manouver to save himself from a crater. So I guess there might be a skill factor involved that allows you to avoid cratering. *NOTE* As said cant remember that much about it, could be wrong.

Armours:

Light: On Zeds suggestion I tried out light with speed pack, this is where the armour really shined imo. Hard to tell, but I think the light armour will probally be suited for MF duties.

Medium: You spawn in medium armour. This is ok though, because the medium armour handles like t2 light armour does. All I can say is that the usefulness of the medium armour has shot through the roof with t:V, it really is quite astounding. Light armour gave you abit more speed, but for most roles (ie capping, defending, duelling etc) medium armour was more suitable than light.

Heavy: Heavy armour was GREAT. In T2 I tend to stear away from Heavy armour at all costs, but it was great fun in t:V. The armour still felt heavy, but in general it was easier to manouver. You didn't need HO ski routes to get to the enemy base quickly, improvising as you went along got you there plenty fast. I also made sure to try out heavy capping with the various packs, and all I can say is that YES YOU CAN HEAVY CAP. Hurray for SuperHouseBrick!!!

Packs:

All packs had a active feature. This was represented by a hud in the lower right hand side of the screen. The hud served as a meter, starting off full, when activated it slowlly drained down until reaching zero, at that point the active feature disengaged and the meter would start crawling back up.

There are 4 weapons packs in t:V. These are:

Energy - The E pack now has a booster, which kind of works the same way as a dj does, propelling you forward in the direction you are aiming. This is sort of hard to explain, but using a boost does NOT propell you forwards at a insane speed, instead it helps you reach a speed that you would get from a bit of good skiing. One boost used up the meter, so you would have to wait for it to recharge before making another boost.

Shield - The shield works very differentlly from previous tribes games. It has a passive mode that protects you, taking (I think, dont know for sure) 25% damage off hits to you. You could also activate the pack to give a short ammount of invulnerability ( I think... was pretty damn close in heavy thats for sure *edit now been informed it was 75%*) that lasted as long as your meter. You cannot toggle this on and off, you have to wait for it to run out and charge back up. From what I hear HoF'ing with the shield was pretty useless.

Repair - Again the repair pack worked very differentlly from previous tribes games. Upon activating it, the repair pack would automatically repair anything within its range until the meter ran out. Was very cool, you could repair your whole base at once... while still shooting that pesky heavy that came in!!

Speed - The speed pack. This was easily my favourite pack of the day. I like to think of it like this: In passive mode, rather than walking (normal speed), you would be jogging. Weapon fire rate also increased. In active mode, rather than jogging, you would run (until your meter ran out). Again weapon fire rate increased. Now to those of you who havent played t:V, this may sound like quite a useless pack for a tribes game, but this is not the case.

The speed pack had a variety of uses:
1. TM'ing. Speed pack allowed quex to deploy his turrets in record time!!!
2. Capping. You may have seen the abandoned city type map in some of the screenshots/movies released. On this map, capping using the speed pack and going from base to base on ground using the buildings as cover was quite effective. Using this technique I capped 4-5 times. Basically, I found it safer to hug the ground out of sight than to fly through the air in full
view of everyone.
3. HO'ing. Using the speed pack, not only could you get to the enemy base faster (walking while your jets recharged etc), but once inside you could run around and blow **** up hella fast!
4. LD'ing. Increased fire rate at its most useful imo.

Packs summary: Gone are the days of the t1 and t2 common/default energy pack config. Every single pack stood on its own, they all had unique strengths that opened up new forms of gameplay. KP himself said that every pack allowed for speed. I didn't really take this onboard until I saw Hawk capping with a rep pack (its true!). From what I understand, using the rep pack hawk was able to disc jump more, allowing a good buildup of speed. As a added bonus he also repaired himself after grabbing.

Really awesome stuff, we are seing the dawn of new and exciting ways to play tribes.

Weapons:

Disc Launcher: The disclauncher was the same... but different. The disc travelled MUCH slower than t2 discs. I really found it quite frustrating. You needed to lead alot more, and if people were travelling away from you they could literally outrun your discs. From what I could tell, MAs were only possible if the enemy were travelling towards you, hovering, or travelling away from you very slowlly (verge of hovering). *Speculation* I think the reason they may have slowed it down so much is to limit the disc launcher to a short to medium range weapon. IMO the days of 200m+ MAs are over.

Grenade Launcher: The nade launcher was really neat. I have always hated the T2 nade launcher, its such a spammy weapon. The t:V version was alot better imo, it still retained its usefullness, but some how didnt seem as spammy. Not to sure on this, but I think the range was longer than t2 launcher, and nades didnt bounce along the ground (because they fired so far). Was alot of fun to use, was in my loadout alot.

Chaingun: Well I think they have done some good work here. When you first fire the cg, it has a really tight cone of fire. Whilest this did lead to people still "whoring" it, the tracers were really small so it balanced it out. The longer you fired the wider the cone went, until finally it overheated and you could not fire until it had cooled down again. It took quite along time to overheat, but the cone of fire became waaay to wide for the cg to be useful well before actual overheating occured. They have done a really good jugling act with the CG, by giving it a tight cone of fire to begin with, the cg still
retains its usefullness, however they have implemeneted some great ways of stopping whoring.

Sniper Rifle: Sniper Rifle felt like a railgun to me. Not too much to say, but I did note that it did not kill medium armours too well.

Burner: Easilly my favourite weapon of the day. The burner is sort of like a plasma gun crossed with a flame thrower. When you fire, it shoots out a plasma like blast for the first 30m (rough estimate) before spreading out into a sheet of fire. Players hit with the burner catch alight and slowlly take damage. It had a variety of uses:

1. Defensivelly the burner was used to blanket the flag, forcing incomming cappers to pass through the fire and burn to death. It was also a good weapon to use to clear out enemys in the base.
2 Offensivelly the burner was a GREAT raping weapon. It was very effective on inventorys etc, and at the same time you would be in effect blanketting the interior with sheets of fire, catching spawning enemys. You could retreat from a room and blanket the doorway, forcing the enemy to either wait for it to dispurse (allowing you time to get away) or running through and catching alight.

Buckler: Gav's new favourite weapon. The buckler is probally the most skill orientated weapon in the game. Passivelly it serves almost as a riot shield of types, you hold it out in front of you, it takes damage of incoming fire, and it bumps people off that run into it. It also has a active fire mode that throws it like a boomerang. It was possible to MA people with the buckler, Gav especially was pwning it up. Once throwing it, you could guide it with your aimer. One cool thing that happened with me was, I threw the buckler and missed my target, but by guiding it I MA'd the enemy in the back when the buckler was returning to me.

Rocket Pod: As with the grappler, you could guide your rockets using the aimer. People did manage to MA with this thing (cool hey ), generally if you landed 2 or more of the rockets you would make the kill (depending on armour and health). The pod is also a effective raping weapon. Firing just one salvo at a turret (big ass ones, not deployables) destroyed it. It was also possible to rape inventorys and generators. I found it quite hard to hit the flying pod vehicle with the rockets, the pod could dodge easily. The rockets were more effective on the gunship and rover buggy though.

Grappling hook: Yes, you can be spider man! The grappling hook did allow you to swing accross the map (especially the city map) to build up good speed. I found grappling players to be comparable to the effect a t2 elf gun has. It limited the grappled players ability to move, if you grappled someone travelling along or close to the ground they would not be able to jet up. In this way it was like the elf, effectivelly pulling them to the ground. It was possible to MA grappler players, I myself managed to MA grapple Vurt 3 times in a row (not that it helped much, he still killed me). Over all I didn't feel the grappling hook was worth a weapon slot, while it had its uses... to me they just didnt add up enough to warrant the loss of a weapon.

Energy blade: Gay, nuff said.

Shotgun blaster: On its own this gun wasnt very useful, however when paired with the speed pack it really shined. In any case there is a BIG improvement in terms of usefullness over the previous 2 games' blaster.

Mortar: Same old mortar we all love really. I did notice that one mortar was generally enough to kill anything (ie invs, turrets, sensor etc). As such, raping the base was incrediblly easy (do not worry though, rep pack equals it out).

I think thats all the weapons... *scratches head*

Weapons Summary: As with the packs, every weapon had its own specific advantages. Weapons had multiple uses, they did not need to be used the same way. Overall, I'd say every weapon was equally useful, bar the grappling hook.

Maps:
We played 5 maps, while I wont go into too much detail, I will say that generally the maps felt smaller than the average t2 map. Fort (2 bases, pillars around flag stands, river down the middle of map) was boring imo. The city map played completelly different from any previous tribes map, bringing in new stratergies and gameplay. This was not a bad thing, I quite enjoyed the map, however some people felt that the spawn points were too close to the enemy base.

Gametypes:

CTF: OFN

Fuel: To save time, here are some irc logs explaining fuel and telling a personal highlight of the gameplay.

<some guy> fuel?
<Santah> ok
<Santah> 2 teams
<Santah> depot each
<Santah> as well as some nuteral depots
<Santah> aim is to fill your depot
<Santah> to do this you must steal fuel from the other teams depot
<Santah> max number of canisters you can carry is 15
<Santah> every time you die, your depot loses 1 canister
<Santah> neatural depots have a **** load of fuel
<Santah> but they run out before you reach max
<Santah> so at some point you need to steal from enemy
<Santah> which requires casualtys, thus losing canisters
<Santah> we only had one game that was close
<Santah> the rest were won in 5mins
<Santah> but one game both teams were around 90% full
<Santah> and we got ours to 99%
<Santah> and then they managed to steal us down to 80ish
<Santah> we managed to kill the thiefs before they got back to base though
<Santah> and got the cells back and won
<some guy> sounds like it COULD be ok
<some guy> with good teams
<Santah> yes
<Santah> it had potential
<Santah> in the close game
<Santah> it deffinatelly required teamwork
<Santah> we needed people defending our dept
<Santah> and
<Santah> partys to raid their depot
<Santah> like me and mr lag went heavy with shield packs, and got someone to cover us in med
<Santah> so we went in and stole the fuel while the med kept them off our backs
<Santah> then we got the **** out of there
<Santah> so yeah that was close gg
<Santah> but all the others were over before you blinked o_O


Gameplay:
This is what worried me, and im pretty sure it worried others. Now that all the packs and weapons are so useful, and have multiple uses, it felt to me like the need for team co-ordination was not so great in t:V as it is in T1 and T2. For example, a lone HO could rape everything without any assistance, a capper could get away without any assistance etc. I do think that we should not judge from this single day though, because basically everyone was out to try everything as fast as they could. This meant lots of Death Matching, testing out the weapons etc, and noone really worried about defending the base, chasing flag carriers etc. Yet still, I cannot shake the feeling that the need for co-operation and teamwork, for tactics and strategy in t:V is no where near the level that was required in clan matches for t1 and t2 (and to a lesser degree pubs) to be sucessful. In my opinion, what sets the Tribes franchise apart from other FPS is the teamplay and tactics, and if I am right and t:V has lost these elements, then the game will have a harder time standing out and making a lasting impression. Overall I can say it was fun, but clan matches may not be as big a thing in t:V.

Huds:

Hud layout was generally good, however I think they really need to fix up the huds that relate to flag action. The Flag cap scores were really tiny, almost like they were irrelevant. There was also nothing to tell you (beside the announcer sound) whether the flag was at home, in the field, or being carried. As tribes is primarilly a CTF based game, I really think this needs to be addressed.

Graphics: It looked pretty. Being a hardware tech head, I made sure to observe everyone's PC performance. I generally observed that anyone with a gf4 ti4200 128mb card or better ran t:V fine. Mr-Lag was sitting next to me and he got poor Frames per second when using a gf4 ti4200 64mb (processor was a p4 2.4), when he switched the card out for a gf4 ti4200 128mb the game ran fine. My computer is a AMD 2500+ with 512mb 3200ram, and a 9800pro. I ran t:V at 1024X768 at medium detail.
Graphics looked nice and fps were fine.

Voice Binds: THEY WERE ******* ****!!! Being a spammer at heart, I was keen to checkout the t:V voice comms system, and I must say it sucked. For some unknown reason, they have abandoned the v chat menu system. You had to hold down shift to bring up the menu, and whilest still holding shift navigate threw the menus and select the desired bind. Holding down the shift key and having to navigate through the poorly layed out menus in effect tied up a whole hand. BRING BACK THE V CHAT SYSTEM!!!

Waypoints:
Not 100% on this, but im pretty sure in CTF there were no waypoints at all. This includes player wps, flag icons, portable invs, bases... you name it, it wasnt waypointed. In Fuel the depots were waypointed. They've gone back to t1 routes with the flags, no more icon to tell you where the carrier is. Instead you have to try and spot the trail the flag leaves behind, however most people generally found it impossible to spot unless at close range. If they are going to get rid of icons then they really need to do something to make the carriers more visable imo.

Sensors:
The sensor system was great. When the sensor was up you get a nice red triangle above the enemy's head to chase. When the sensor was down you didnt get one. When the sensor was attacked a announcement would sound, alerting everyone. The sensor did go down, but never for very long. Overall I thought it was a great idea and well implemented.

Turrets:
Big base turrets such as the Anti Air Turret do not have AI controlling them. Instead you have to physically man the turret. This is something completelly new to tribes... we may actually have people whos position is "gunner" or "turreter"! I had the chance to use the AA turret and the "Sentry" turret. The AA fired rapid projectiles. These projectiles travelled quite fast, and so it was really easy to MA people. I racked up alot of kills in the AA. The Sentry turret was like a double barrel chain gun turret, I didnt get anywhere near as many hits with this thing, not a single kill actually. I also hear that Zed top scored a map using a Burner turret, but I did not see this turret at all so...

Deployables:
You get deployables from different inventorys than the ones you kit up to. You can get deployable invs, mines, and turrets.

Turrets: Overall the turrets seemed all but useless. They could only be deployed on the ground. ONE disc shot was sufficient to destroy a turret. The turrets response time was aweful, Quex had 6 turrets out around the flag on Fort, and they didnt even manage to get a shot off at Gav when he went in for the flag. I only saw them fire once the whole day, and from what I could tell they had a chaingun sort of weapon. I think turrets in t:V are probally more usefull indoors blocking doorways etc.

Invs: Apparentlly you can deploy a unlimited ammount of invs (could be wrong). To bad you will never find the bloody things because they are not waypointed! Good news is KP said that they were looking to implement a beacon for the invs though. Same as previous tribes, you can kit up, but not change armours. You cannot get other deployables such as turrets from portable invs.

Mines: Mines are now deployables. They are really big and stand out, but they take 2 disc shots to kill.

Vehicles: There were 4 vehicles. These were the gunship, the pod, the rover buggy and the tank. In the build we played the tank was not ready yet, and was next to useless.

Gunship: All I can say is "Woooooooooooo........". This thing is the bomb!!! There are 3 bordable posistions, being a pilot, and 2 gunners spot. As the pilot you also have the ability to use a bomb like weapon. So single manned bombers are viable in t:V. The 2 guns (one either side of the gunship) were awesome. They blasted the **** out of anything in the air and on the ground.

The Pod: The best way to describe this vehicle is as a expansion pack for your jet pack. It is highly manouverable from side to side, but vertically it could only travel forward and up or straight down. Ramming was impossible. The pod fired little missles that were able to kill players and vehicles. It was quite weak and it did not take much to kill it.

Rover Buggy: Basically this thing is a fast, light mpb. It could not be used offensivelly, it was waaay too weak. It served as a mobile spawn point, as well as a inventory. When moving it around you have have a driver, a gunner and a person (or maybe persons) in the back inv.


Tank: Not worth mentioning really, couldnt use it.

Overall Impression:
Tribes Vengeance was great fun. The new weapons and packs came across as useful and brought new unseen gameplay to the tribes world, while still allowing for the old ways of play. As stated, I am worried the team element of the game is lacking, but it was too short a period to judge effictivelly. Newbies will have a better time of it, especially ones that cant use jet or ski, as I said... it was possible to cap the flag ground hugging using the speed pack. For the doomsday fanbois like SoulFire, do not worry, there is still plenty of things that require skill that only a vet could do, such as good skiing and grappling, and using the buckler.

Hope you all enjoyed reading, I know I sure as hell enjoyed playing If anyone that played spots a error, please do correct... it was a big game and no one can take it all in, in only one day.

Really big thanks to the Devs and to Gav for all the hardwork, everyone really appreciated it.

Last edited by Santah on Sun Jun 06, 2004 11:07 am; edited 2 times in total

Bless you

Damn you

And any word on T:V beta at bittah LAN?

Ohh also I think I remember KP (or someone else maybe) saying that you could go back to the old v menu system as an option.

where when and how did this take place? i can't imagine you guys sitting at E3 swapping hardware in and out of machines.... were you in canberra?

good work on the writeup santah...

the burner...did you mean it could be used to light up a patch of wall or floor? or was it only people that caught alight? ie, did you have to hold it "on" over the flag to set a capper on fire, or could you fire it at the flag stand, have the flag stand catch on fire, go away do something else and the capper would still catch on fire? if the last is the case, how long did the "wall of fire" last for?

Yeah it was kind of a wall of fire effect. You fire (and let go) and it travels out like a plasma blast (plasma gun in t2), until it reaches a certrain distance or hits a object. It then spread out into a cloud sort of shape. I'd say it lasted roughly 5-8 seconds.

ok, well im still not 100% clear on what its like, but it all sounds very cool and exciting. i can just sense that my girlfriend will be looking for a divorce when this hits the shelves.

Damn you

GREAT writeup!!!

10000 x better than anything i've read on the net ever.

thx

PS fuk u

In Sydney

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Last edited by RealTime on Sun Jun 06, 2004 10:33 am; edited 1 time in total

Also removed.

Last edited by Santah on Sun Jun 06, 2004 10:38 am; edited 1 time in total

eh take it all with grains of sea salt guys. Any write up is largely going to be based purely on personal opinion. I'm sure there will be plenty more writeups and possibly some of them wont miss whole discussions that were had with the devs about certain gameplay elements after we played. good write up though Santah.


oh and we did try to have a big pug. spent about 10 minutes sorting possitions and then the game countdown and 3 2 1 half the people crashed to desktop apart from that the game was pretty stable. I will do a writeup eventually.

see disclaimer