Tribes: Ascend 1.2 Patch Coming Later Today
Lots of balance changes
Tribes: Ascend [official site] is receiving another update this evening. Patch 1.2 will bring sweeping balance changes to the gotta-go-fast jetpack FPS, increasing heavy armour there, reducing blast radii here, making it so pressing 'Q' selects your previously held weapon, that sort of thing. There's a full list of changes in this Google Doc and a chart of new weapon values in this here spreadsheet.
In a Reddit post, Tribes lead developer Sean McBride said that they, "will be upgrading Tribes starting Thursday, January 28th 2016, at 10:00am EST (5:00pm CEST)" and that servers will be down for "around 3 hours." That's 3pm GMT, Britfans.
Ascend lay dormant for a couple of years until patch 1.1 was released in early December. That update brought larger changes than this one, including a revamp of the class system which traded nine distinct classes for three armour types with customisable loadouts. I haven't played it since the patch, but that sounds more like how Tribes 2 worked, to me.
Although I haven't played it in a while, I did once take part in a commentated show match while at cheery RPS fanzine, PC Gamer. Isn't it cute how hard the commentators try to say nice things about our amateurish shitshow?
I know people are cross that Tribes: Ascend hasn't had a better post-release life, but to put my head in the internet's mouth for a second: if a game isn't popular enough to pay the wages of a development team, then the development team has to do something else. The Tribes games have always had small, loving fanbases rather than breakthrough success - and that's sad, because I count myself among its appreciators - but I don't think Hi-Rez can be blamed for the series not being more profitable.