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General: Five Thoughts on Tribes Universe
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
The List this week features a few thoughts from MMORPG.com's Bill Murphy about the recent announcement of Tribes Universe. In case you missed it, the Tribes IP has been purchased by Hi-Rez Studios, developers of Global Agenda. See what Bill thinks about the announcement of Tribes Universe and then add a few of your own on our forums.
While I know many of the visitors to our site are the die-hard MMORPG players of the world, I expect more than a few of you remember the days of old when Starsiege: Tribes was the game to play online. Its team versus team warfare was the stuff that led to the dominance of games like Halo today, if you ask me. It’s often overlooked as one of the precursors to the modern FPS movement, but with its jetpacks, setting, and multitude of game modes, there was no other shooter more addictive in the late 90s. The series sort of lulled along for the past ten or so years, with some very good sequels that seemingly no one cared about. But now Hi-Rez Studios has gone out and purchased the IP for Tribes and is motoring along in development on Tribes Universe: a massively multiplayer competitive shooter with hundreds of players competing on one map, across three factions, and with oodles of doodads to play with. Oh yes, there are quite a few reasons to be excited about this one. Let’s list a few this week, shall we?
Read more of The List: Five Thoughts About Tribes Universe.
Comments
Wow this is great news.... or very dreadfull ones.
Hi-Rez as great ideas i wont hide that. Global agenda , even if not what i was expecting it to be. Turned Out to be a decent game for its price. Further more after they removed the payments.
The AvA on the other part didnt feel great at all. and it is what worries me for the Tribes Franchise.
Time will tell. I will follow these news Closely . Hi Rez seems to be willing to expand beyond what they made already. I give them all my Cheers ... Keeping some for Guild wars 2 also tho X)
Global Agenda 2 wouldn't be a bad thing. Add an open uninstanced world, 3 Factions, and some vehicles - etc. and you've got a great game on your hands.
I'd like to know more about classes, if there will be crafting, all that other MMOesque stuff.
It's a good read and I for one will be anxiously awaiting this game. I played T1 for years and made many friends and 4 times as many enemies.
But in the post the term "skiing" is being taken too literally. Skiing refers to bunny hopping down hills and slopes to gain alot of speed and move faster on foot. It does not however refer to players wearing skis around the battlefield and thats how I feel the author took it. Including the ability to ski is one feature that Tribes Universe MUST have in order to keep the Tribes feeling.
Skiing is a skill in Tribes.
Its a skill that allowed players to use hills, jetpacks and gravity to move very fast. If done right, you can maintain speeds 5-10x faster than regular travel. Or burst speeds absurdly high.
The point of skiing was that it was an accidental side-effect of the games engine in Tribes 1 that was so popular that it was incorporated later. It just gave the game flavor and added skill for chasing or running or harassment.
Tribes was always about fighting in any direction and using large-scale maps. And i mean large-scale that nearly all other games dont even scratch on the scale.
I am really excited to hear about this game. I've always wanted a good remake or twist to Tribes. Huge fights with even dozens of players would be awesome.
Ahh Tribes 1 in the old days.... I bought it Dec 24th, 1998 (I believe), I know it was Dec 24th, because that was the day it came out in the local EB. I had no patience to figure out a cool name, so I just used my first name as my toon's name: Eric..... real original I know. I was one of the lucky few who had high speed cable modems, so I had a nice 12ms average ping time to the Combat NJ servers. Yeah, I was a LPB.... then the OGL came around into tribes, I joined one that played mostly on the NJ's, and we had a lot of fun, for a tribe that never liked to practice. Made it to #4 I think on the OGL ladder at one point. What ruined it for me in the end was the cheats. Much like APB, rampant cheating just drives me mad.
Tribes 2 still the best FPS I have ever played, from a team perspective. i'll watch from a safe distance.
It reminds me too much of Planetside on paper(an enhanced one anyway).It'll be great to experience those massive battles again that PS used to provide.
Can't can't wait!
Thanks for the article.
Although I'm a big FPS fan, I never played Tribes. For some reason whenever someone even mentions the name I think of some cowboys and indians game and move along.
If someone can make me a modern PS, I will be quite happy. GA is a fun little shooter, but as the OP mentions, it is heavily instanced and the big (fun) battles are exclusively AvA.
Just as a point:
Bill dearest,
If you don't know about something -- like it is quite clear that you don't know about Tribes or the Tribes universe -- don't write like you do know about it. That way you avoid looking like a rank amatuer, which you and Jon somehow manage to do all the time.
Thanks.
http://www.themmoquest.com - MMO commentary from an overly angry brit. OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED!
Hahaha, he didn't know what skiing was. Way to show your hand on this one. You're supposed to play them close to your chest so we can't see that you have no idea what you're talking about.
Don't you have editors to slap you upside the head and prevent these kind of "columns"?
what is skiing? i never played tribes.....it was before my gaming time.
Basically in Tribes, they released the game with jet packs etc, but the engine was broken. So instead of hitting the floor and stopping (due to simulated friction) you could "ski" along the floor whilst using your jet pack, provided you hit it at the right angle. It was common for people to jet up hills, fly through the air and then "ski" down slopes, causing them to gain insane amounts of momentum. What were huge maps became tiny if you could do it right, because you could gain enough momentum to clear a large portion of the map in one jump.
Of course this became one of the defining elements of Tribes. In fact it made the game the critically acclaimed and cult classic title that it is today, so in Tribes 2 they added skiing as a feature. And in Tribes 3 they broke it.
I would suggest that anyone who wants to take on a Tribes like games should check out Fallen Empire Legion as it pretty much captures the fundamentals. Sadly however Garage Games - former owners of the Tribes IP - took the game down and now it looks like it isn't coming back.
http://www.themmoquest.com - MMO commentary from an overly angry brit. OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED!
From the developers:
Tribes Universe is definitely not Global Agenda 2, and we think there will be a market for both games. Each game is built to appeal to somewhat different audiences. Global Agenda, while certainly a shooter, has a lot of features meant to appeal to the traditional MMORPG player -- PvE, leveling, small battlegrounds, loot progression, crafting, etc. Tribes Universe is likely to find its core audience much more in the harder-core FPS community, and we're building the game primarily with that audience in mind.
Tribes 2 is back!!!! http://www.tribesnext.com/
And from the makers of tribes: Fallen Empire: Legions http://www.instantaction.com/
You spelled Infallible wrong. Ironic.
Thanks for the article. I was a big Tribes 1 fan back in the day. I'm looking forward to this.
Joined 2004 - I can't believe I've been a MMORPG.com member for 20 years! Get off my lawn!
I remember Tribes, one of the first large scale map games I played. I got my copy free in a game mag, I think I still have the disk. To bad the game is long gone.
Thank the game gods Tribes is coming back! I miss this game and still have Tribes:Starsiege, sking was pretty hard to learn at first but provided many amusing gameplay hours especially when you do it and drop unsuspecting on someone from above.
Intentionally ;-)
Oh and it's not ironic, even if it weren't intentional.
http://www.themmoquest.com - MMO commentary from an overly angry brit. OFFICIALLY LAUNCHED!
This is great news! Tribes and Tribes 2 were both fantastic games and I had never thought to see a decent Tribes game ever again. I wish Hirez luck in their attempt.
I still laugh when i remember the kill messages. (insert name here) got a shock out of meeting (His Pants)
on a side note, perhaps you should use google and wikipedia before writing your articles in the future, as a quick search will explain skiing to any who never played those two amazing games.
So in short.
Planet side + Global Agenda + Starsiege: Tribes setting and backpack use = Starsiege: Universe.
wooooooooooooooooooo return of CTF "skiing"
Made by Ga devs kills my hopes for the games right away.
lets hope SOE doesnt publish it then or it will be a dead goose XD
Massively talked with a GA dev and he said this will not be GA2. If you guys want to relive that old Tribes 2 then try out http://www.tribesnext.com/ . They run on private servers of Tribes 2.
bloop
I was in the starting rotation for one of the tribes that spent most of the time at the number 1 slot for OGL Arena ladder. Aside from the insanely fun and funny physics engine that Tribes and Tribes 2 sported, the Arena function was THE best part of the game. Death to snipers, eat my disc!
Doc
For the love of god base the game and the playstyle off of Tribes 1 instead of 2. Both the sequals were absolute crap and by and large missed the mark on the gameplay and on the fly action that made the original what it was.
Make it a mmo scale sure but don't stray off the tried and true that was tribes 1 for sake of 2 having slightly better graphics. Gameplay is what matters, and much like the sequals, pretty models will not save a terrible game.