Rock, Paper, Spinfusor -- Tribes: Ascend

[DeVadder]

Raining dead on the flag stand is what the mortar was made for and is not cheesy the slightest bit.
Let me explain the classic roles of Tribes. An organised team of tribes should have:

Heavy on Flag - A Heavy who stands on the flag and constantly looks around for incoming grabbers to shoot at them and bodyblock them. Normally should stay near the flagstand even if the flag is gone to guard it when it is returned.
Defence/Chasers - Sometimes different groups, often the same. Lights and mediums and sometimes heavys who defend the flag stand, hunt down enemy offense and chase enemy grabbers who hopefully have been slowed/damaged by the HoF. Chasers need to disc/thumper jump well to build up speed fast enough (the idea is, they regenerate while the grabber wont, so they can do that several times, Ascend maps are quite small for this though)
Offense (often HO for Heavy Offense) - Mostly Heavys typically whose sole job is to clear the flagstand for friendly grabbers to grab. Juggernauts and Raiders excell at this. Works WAY better with better communication as that allows to time the grab and clear. In public servers the way to do this would be something like saying VAF (Get the enemy flag) twice or something, but dont rely on your grabbers to understand at all.
Grabber - Lights mostly, sometimes mediums, who try to grab the flag. In a perfect world, they would get in position and say VTF (Target the enemy flag i am in position) like 20-30 seconds before they reach the flag to allow their friendly HO to do their job or even wait for their go. Often grabbers also say VFF (I have the flag) once they have begun their run to indicate to their team that nobody should llama grab (grab very slowly) the flag. Of course in public games that often doesnt work and expect to come in at 200km/h towards a cleared flag stand just to have one of your infiltrators or whatever walking over the flag.

Those are the fundamental parts every team should really have. Many people would add generator defenders and attackers, but that really is not as important as it maybe should be. One imho extremely important aspect of this for the techs out there: If you and both your turrets constantly are tied to defend the generator, it is not really worth it. Maybe if it is just you and some other tech repairs base turrets and sensor and helps defend flag stand, but i have seen way too many rounds where a single attacking juggernaut or infiltrator constantly ties 2 or 3 techs into the gener room and the gener does not help the greater good if all it powers is the gener defense.

This should only be a rough overview for people new to tribes. It is not complete or anything. Snipers, Infils and sometimes even heavy grabbers (grab of oportunity) have a place in the team. This should just hopefully give you a little hint what your team might lack (hint: it is not a 5th tech)

One last thing, because it drives vets crazy: Do not Llama grab. As in: Never walk while picking up the flag. You will get hunted down most likely and your actual grabbers wont have a chance to grab while the flag is in your hands. Only try a grab of opportunity if really no enemy is around and you are confident that you can build up enough speed fast enough to not be killed by respawners and nobody faster than you is visible.
OR when the enemy carrier is about to capture. That is called an E-Grab (Emergency) and there even is an accolade for it. That hopefully gives your friends enough time to retrieve your flag.

edit: I forgot another tip.
If your flag has been touched but the grabber died quickly and the flag now lies somewhere less open than on the flag stand (and in most maps that means anywhere near the base) do not instantly return the flag. Say VFS (Flag is secure) and stand next to it, looking around for enemys. If someone comes at you or someone like your HoF or flag carrier says VFR (Retrieve our flag) make a step ahead and retrieve it. In many situations that is WAY safer than retrieving immediatly, especially if the HoF died or left the flag stand himself.

[Miker]

New patch today! Fixes a bunch of things, but not quite as many things as I would have liked. According to the patch notes, Bella and Temple Ruins were removed from rotation, but this was true as of the last hotfix patch last week. I was hoping that this patch would come with the fixed maps.

[Kemuel]

Sweet roundup, man. Like many this is my first Tribes game, so its cool looking at the roles broken down properly and not just in terms of simple attack and defence. Doesn't feel like I've seen much Heavy Offense in most games, compared to the others at least, which might be why I have such an issue with defence stacking.. Sometimes you do just need a big guy or two to blow through all the walls and mines and turrets.

[Miker]

So they've gone and added player profiles and stat-tracking, complete with badges (achievements). I've only seen screenshots so far, and it's all very nifty, but I personally think there's a big issue here: they're tracking kills, deaths, and kill/death ratio. I think tracking overall kills is fine to see just how long someone has been playing a game, but in my experience, letting people see their KDR isn't a good idea. People will look to it as the end-all be-all stat of how good someone is, and that's never good in a team-based game like Tribes.

[frenz0rz]

So they've gone and added player profiles and stat-tracking, complete with badges (achievements). I've only seen screenshots so far, and it's all very nifty, but I personally think there's a big issue here: they're tracking kills, deaths, and kill/death ratio. I think tracking overall kills is fine to see just how long someone has been playing a game, but in my experience, letting people see their KDR isn't a good idea. People will look to it as the end-all be-all stat of how good someone is, and that's never good in a team-based game like Tribes.

I agree completely. It reminds me of when I used to play Heroes of Newerth, where there are many heroes with different roles such as tank or support, and yet the only main stats that get tracked publicly are kills and deaths. This meant that if you particularly enjoyed playing a support hero, you'd appear shit on your profile for not having a good k/d, and would subsequently be kicked from the lobby.

In fact, one of the things I initially liked about Tribes: Ascend was that your deaths arent mentioned on the leaderboard, just your kills, assists and score. This seemed to me like a fresh new way of promoting team-based gameplay that wasnt prejudiced against those who spend half the game repairing deployables or making flag runs.

[Miker]

I agree completely. It reminds me of when I used to play Heroes of Newerth, where there are many heroes with different roles such as tank or support, and yet the only main stats that get tracked publicly are kills and deaths. This meant that if you particularly enjoyed playing a support hero, you'd appear shit on your profile for not having a good k/d, and would subsequently be kicked from the lobby.In fact, one of the things I initially liked about Tribes: Ascend was that your deaths arent mentioned on the leaderboard, just your kills, assists and score. This seemed to me like a fresh new way of promoting team-based gameplay that wasnt prejudiced against those who spend half the game repairing deployables or making flag runs.

Yup. Also, the patch has appeared to break more things than it fixes. The TCN's light turrets now shoot much, much faster than they're supposed to, you can now join a team with more players at the beginning of the match (leading to imbalanced teams), and for some reason, earning the kill credit when somebody else kills themselves give you -1 kill instead of +1. And this might just be me, but I can't see any of the badges on the profile, and some of the stats aren't tracked or are being incorrectly tracked.

[frenz0rz]

Yup. Also, the patch has appeared to break more things than it fixes. The TCN's light turrets now shoot much, much faster than they're supposed to, you can now join a team with more players at the beginning of the match (leading to imbalanced teams), and for some reason, earning the kill credit when somebody else kills themselves give you -1 kill instead of +1. And this might just be me, but I can't see any of the badges on the profile, and some of the stats aren't tracked or are being incorrectly tracked.

I noticed the -1 thing, although at the time I assumed it was because I'd killed myself (damned bottomless pits...). I cant see any badges either. I hadnt noticed the turrets, but if thats true then I think we're about to see a lot more games with filled with TCNs.

At least they fixed the bug where light turrets were doing insane amounts of damage to Shrikes. I noticed that last week when doing a flyby of the enemy baseship on Crossfire - got snagged by a light turret on the way past and was near instantly obliterated.

[Miker]

Hi-Rez really does seem to let some glaring issues pass patch testing (which they say they do). I wish that they were as diligent as, say, Valve or Riot in patching, but I guess I'll have to get used to weekly patching cycles instead of the patch-o-rama of TF2 or LoL.

EDIT: Here's something I posted on r/tribes. My thoughts on the friends system and its perils:

Let's talk about the friend system -- where it stands currently, what needs work, and how to solve the problems that inevitably arise.Right now, I think the friends system blows. It's incredibly barebones, and you can't even message friends. You also don't get any notification of your friends joining your game until you notice it on the scoreboard or you see a green dot. That said, I think that the messaging system and notifications are things that will be fixed in due time.What I really want to talk about is how friends can play together. Right now, they can join their friends' game, and that's fine, but what if friends want to play on the same team? Barring the broken autobalance on this current patch, there's no guarantee that friends can play on the same team. While that sucks, it is understandable given that teamstacking is obviously frowned upon. I know that for some people, it's fine if they're in the same server as their friends, but for others (likely new players), they might be intimidated or frustrated.This might just be me, I think that the difficulty of playing alongside your friend might be daunting to the casual player. A lot of the reason people try League of Legends, another game with a really high learning curve, is because they can queue with friends and banter in the lobby while searching for a match. In Tribes, you click on a friend's game and you're "queued with SomeDude28" but all it does is dump you in the same server as him and leave you alone. I guess it's easy enough to do with a 1 or 2 friends -- just wait until a new game starts, then try and join the same team, but with more people, that's not very feasible.I honestly don't know how Tribes: Ascend will be able to solve the problem of letting friends play on the same team and preventing teamstacking. Do you guys have any thoughts?

[frenz0rz]

To be honest, the one thing I want from the friends system right now is to be able to see what map and game type my friend is playing. I dont like joining on someone to find they're playing team deathmatch or arena when all I want is a good CTF game.

[DeVadder]

So they've gone and added player profiles and stat-tracking, complete with badges (achievements). I've only seen screenshots so far, and it's all very nifty, but I personally think there's a big issue here: they're tracking kills, deaths, and kill/death ratio. I think tracking overall kills is fine to see just how long someone has been playing a game, but in my experience, letting people see their KDR isn't a good idea. People will look to it as the end-all be-all stat of how good someone is, and that's never good in a team-based game like Tribes.

I dont think those stats will be public. And way worse than K/D is the Win/Loss rate. Even if it never gets public, if i will look at that after a few hundred of pub games and it shows something below 0.5 i would hate that.
I believe some people will use snippets of their stats in their forum signature or stuff like that, but i am pretty sure most people are well aware how little kills and deaths mean in CTF Tribes. At least i hope so. I am much more interested in the flag defense/hr but even that is highly dependant of enemys attack frequency I would love a stat for Flag defender versus enemy captures.

[Kemuel]

Loving the stat screen. Having everything divided in to categories is pretty cool, can only look at the ones I really care about. Definitely looking forward to filling it up now that everything's actually being recorded. Might be a while before I get lucky enough to pull off some of my streaks again, though. ^^;

Yup. Also, the patch has appeared to break more things than it fixes. The TCN's light turrets now shoot much, much faster than they're supposed to

Knew I wasn't going crazy. I hate it when turrets get stacked at the best of times, but it seemed the other night like I was having waaaay more trouble than usual.

[Miker]

Hotfix out today that fixes those three glitches I mentioned above. I think stats tracking is still pretty broken -- it treats each flag return as a cap for some reason, and it doesn't properly track a bunch of other stats.

[frenz0rz]

By the way, has anyone else been experiencing crashes? The client seems mostly stable, but I've been crashing quite regularly when attempting to throw grenades. No other instances at all, just grenades. Its extremely frustrating considering that I do a lot of TCN and SLD indoor fighting.

[Miker]

By the way, has anyone else been experiencing crashes? The client seems mostly stable, but I've been crashing quite regularly when attempting to throw grenades. No other instances at all, just grenades. Its extremely frustrating considering that I do a lot of TCN and SLD indoor fighting.

Tribes makes my GPU go up to crazy temps, moreso than any other game, and it hard locks my computer from time to time. That said, I can't say throwing nades has caused any of my crashes.

[frenz0rz]

So does anyone else have an opinion on the latest patch?

Frankly, my biggest problem with the game right now is the fact that nobody on my team ever seems to give a shit about the generator, which makes playing a class with deployables (TCN, DMB, SEN) much less fun. Particularly when I'm the one trying to retake the gen room all on my own and am getting repeatedly blown to bits by an army of heavies and/or INFs. I dont really know how they'd 'fix' that though, aside from giving better XP rewards or something for defending the gen.

[Miker]

So does anyone else have an opinion on the latest patch?Frankly, my biggest problem with the game right now is the fact that nobody on my team ever seems to give a shit about the generator, which makes playing a class with deployables (TCN, DMB, SEN) much less fun. Particularly when I'm the one trying to retake the gen room all on my own and am getting repeatedly blown to bits by an army of heavies and/or INFs. I dont really know how they'd 'fix' that though, aside from giving better XP rewards or something for defending the gen.

I feel like the generator needs to do something more right now. A lot of the time, it goes down on my team, and people don't bother repairing it because we're doing fine without it. Alternately, people can be repairing it all the time but our turrets are shot at by heavies from miles away. It's helpful, but not *necessary* in the way that it should be.

[evilbobthebob]

I'd rather see focus move away from the generator in pub games. It seems that every server I'm on has a few TCNs circlejerking down in the gen room, providing nothing to the team. Either that or they are covering the flag stand with turrets. Flag > generator. If the generator comes to have more significance then I'll be happy for a few players to focus on keeping it up/taking it down.

[DeVadder]

I agree, to me it appears a lot of people overrate the gen. If two or three enemys spend their time at our generator, i am more than okay with it not beeing online and our team having 3 people more in the CTF part of the game.
I dont really have an opinion wether or not the generator should have higher impact though. I am just saying as it is now, if more of them spend their time at our gen than of us, i dont mind it beeing offline.

What annoys me much more is how few people understand the importance of standing on or right next to the flag while your HoF is away (if your team does not have a HoF, than wtf are you doing? ^^).
To me it allways feels, that whenever i step of the flag for just a few seconds, the flag is gone. Probably that is indeed because the gen is offline so often and thus tecs turrets don't help defending, but i am not sure.

[Miker]

I think that the generator is so important in pub games because in pub games, the generator *is* important. Not everybody is a good capper, and so if they're not good enough at high-speed flag grabs, they get nailed by the turrets. It's probably the case that a lot of people think that they need to take down the generator before capping is a possibility. As a result, you have a bunch of people going for the generator and a corresponding bunch of people defending the generator.

[Lilliput King]

Gen powers all the deployables and such though as well, right? So the damage-wall that's so good for stopping high speed caps and so on. Turrets are also useful for defending the base area from heavy offense (like, people just sitting round and shooting the flag platform to keep it clear) rather than just sniping potential flag carriers. Still, it's true that if you lose too many team members to gen defense you might as well not be bothering. I dunno really. It's a good mechanic.