Tribes: Vengeance closed beta

(Well I guess that's my cue. I've been in beta due to my work with WOFN - so here goes )

Well it's interesting. No question it's Tribes. The new skins have alot more details and each faction is unique and easily recognizable. The spinfusor, chaingun and mortor are back but with other interesting weapons such as the buckler, burner, and grappler - it's a different experiece.

The buckler is a shield that repels both players and projectiles - it can also be thrown doing great damage and returns to you bomerang style - it's flight path is stearable with the mouse - when used as a shield and impacting a player, can really send them flying.

The burner, while can be used for direct impact, is better used by aiming in front of players - it produces a cloud of hot burning plasma that does damge when players pass thru it and continues to burn for a while after to do (sorta like plasma nades in PS for those familier) - if fired into the air, the projectile goes for a certain distance and then detonates leaving a ball of plasma in the air - good defensive weapon when used to fill a cappers inbound or outbound route with balls of burning plasma.

The grappler is one of the more interesting items and one that will take a vast amount of practice to master. The hook will clamp onto almost anything, ground, structures, vehicles, even people. You can even grapple loose flags out of the field (but not from the stand although in the early build from E3 ou could) - Pressing the fire button sends out the hook and if in range will clamp on the surface of what it was pointed at. Pressing and holding the fire button will cause the cable to reel in pulling even a heavy to the hook. Pressing the fire button again causes the hook to release. Now here's the catch. You can switch weapons with the grappler hooked. A popular technique has been to grapple onto the ceiling somewhere, reel up and hang there swinging around, switch weapons and camp a location. You are vulnerable if discovered as you must switch back to the gappler and press the fire button to release it. Done right, the grappler is amazing effective in keeping you moving - dragging heavy up hills, turning 180's around corners, or even combining the grappler with skiiing if you can get the right distance on the cable to make you swing right at the surface of the ground. It's not an easy weapon to use but despite my initial skeptisim when it was announced, it is lot of fun - more fun than I expected.

In other weapon changes, the rocket launcher has been replaced by the rocket pod which launches six little mini rockets once after the other in aproximately 1 sec or less. The flight path of these little rocklets are stearable with the mouse like the buckler is. This also takes some skill to master but can be pretty effective. The blaster is now more like a shotgun firing a spread of enegy pellets. Most of you will be happy to hear the chaingun now will overheat and raise the COF after a while. The spinfusor projectile appears to be slowerer than T2 and faster than T1 - doesn't seem to be as easy to MA people but it can be done. The mortor hasn't changed too much - difficult to tell if the range and blast radias are on par with T2 but it's close.

Packs are another big change. There are only 4 packs. Speed, Shield, Energy, and Repair. Shield is pretty much the same. Energy is not passive as before and must be activated for a faster rechage and it doesn't last long before it shuts down and must regenerate. Nothing like the old energy pack at all. Speed is interesting - when activated, all functions are accellerated, walking, shooting etc... It's been toned down in recent builds but it can be a big advantage in pounding the firepower. Repairing is also quite different - not repair gun - it's the pack and when actived ALL items (players and objects) within range are repaired simultainiously. A green beam goes out to each object/player in need of repair untill the pack runs out of juice and must shut down to regenerate. There is also a repair pack on the wall that anyone can grab to restore a destroyed base.

Deployables are another intereting aspect. There are 4 deployables. Mines, mini-turrets, remote inventry, and repair turret. Each deployable has it own deployment station with a single deployable in a slot. Interesting enough, friendly or enemy players can pull out a deployable from ANY station. Once a deployable is remove from it's station, it will not reappear until it's destroyed, so there is a fixed number in each map. Also ANY player can grab and deploy a deployable and it doesn't take up the pack space. Players have no personal mines - no mine-disking in T:V. Instead it's a deployable now. Players do have granades but that's it. The mini-turrets have little legs that fold out and can be deployed on any surface flat enough. The remote inventory is pretty much like the existing one in T2 - in that you can't change armors with it. Finally the repair turret is an interesting concept. Looking like a small flat box it auto repairs any object/player within it's range. Great for defensive positions and base protection. There are no automated base turrents. The are one or two at the base but they must be physically manned and players can be killed in them as well as the turrent itself can be destroyed.

There are a number of new vehicles as well. A 3 person bomber, one person pod, mini tanks, and the rover (a fast mpb) looking like the marauder from PS. The bomber and pods can rain the spam down from above and while they can be destroyed fairly easily with concentrated fire, they can be devestating. I haven't played much with the tank as it's control was awkward in the last build. Also haven't driven the rover yet so I can't tell you how that handles.

Finally the flight and skiiing (not more accurately called sliding) is well different. In the last build, everyone agreed that the jetpack seemed to have a little too much lift and the gravity gave a little of the floaty feeling. It's been improved and it close to the T2 feel but it's still different than you're used to. The skiing is strange as lateral movement is very possible and the sliding effect happens even on perfectly flat ground. One can slide along on virtually any surface and in any direction much as one adjusts their flight path in the air. One doesn't seem to carry the speed through skiing down a slope as you would expect. Skiing well - takes some getting used to - it's a very different experience, but within an hour of practice or so, you can do pretty well. With many of the indoor areas with curved surfaces, you find yourself skiing a lot more than you did in past tribes games. One thing that I personally am struggling with is ground damage. It's incredibly easy to pancake yourself. You have to be very carefull controlling your velocity coming down or you'll take major damage when you hit. Much if not most of the time, my duels with players end up with me killing myself due to ground impact as you get caught up in the fight and forget to keep and eye on downward velocity. Getting used to the new physics, it's a lot harder to shoot. I find myself shooting behing people a lot as it's difficult to judge where someone is going to be by time your disc gets to them.

Players are rewarded with both Offense and Defensive points for kills, repairs, etc. Also an interesting addition is the awarding of style points if you do something cool like a mid-air - not only are you notified that you achieved a MA on someone/something but this often gets you style points for outstanding hits. Bragging rights for the hot-dog players.

Overall I'm pretty impressed with the game. I'd give it 8 out of 10 stars right now. I do find that I'm no where's near as excited about this release as I was when T2 was about to come out after playing T1. I'm not sure if this was just the whole let down thing with T2 being buggy and not being quite what all the T1 players expected or why I am not jumping up and down with glee. The game is cool, fun, and well thought out but it just doesn't get the juices flowing like it was when T2 was about to be released. We've also yet to see how this game will play competitely - the last build had problems with tournement mode so the pickup that was planned to try this out never happened. Right now, Tribalwars East and West just got their hands on the latest release of the beta and the last "rumor" I heard was that open beta might start as soon as August with a release date planned in Oct. We should have a lot more feedback on the competition aspect of the game soon. Beta testers have received the game well and most feedback has been positive. One other aspect of this game is the release of the single player missions - a campaign that not only help train and prepare new players for the experience but also adds storyline and imersion to the game for veteran players. We've yet to see any of the single player missions but expect they will be coming soon. It is Tribes - but probably not quite the Tribes you are used to.

 

(oops just found out the NDA isn't lifted until tomorrow the 26th - so please keep comments about this within the clan so they don't hang me - thanks)

 

Nice write up Mars!

What about the sniper rifle? How does it compare to the laser rifle of T1/T2?

 

Ah thanks Donkey - yes, I knew I was forgetting a weapon. Sniper is a little more like a bolt driver - there isn't a long red beam pointing right back the source to give you away but for the most part seems much like it's T2 counterpart. Seems to be hard to hit people from those who have tried it more than I have, but probably it's just getting used to the perception of where people are and timing.

 

Thanks Marsman! My lips are sealed!
I was one of the lucky that started T2 after they had fixed all of the issues...so I am pretty stoked about this release! Can't wait to hear more.

 

Edit: It's rumored FilePlanet will be hosting the file. /Edit: So far, no tester has any server code in their hands either. I would "hope" the public gets to give that a run as this is also a big part of the compatibility process.

Currently the beta consists of a physical CD (useless by itself) - a Personal Key - and a download with the build of the game containing the installer.
The current download is 1.3 Gig and this is ONLY the multiplayer client and fewer maps than we had in a previous build. This is the TribalWars Build given to attendees.

 

I'll be watching fileplanet for this to become available

 

File Planet will get the exclusive rights to the beta for DL. Paying FP customers will get into beta one week sooner then the non-paying customers DLing it for free.

Info Via Thrax on TW.

 

Are they getting rid of the ass wipes from the community in this version?

 

so....any eta on when this goes up?

 

Look around mid-August

 

No, but I got some hardware that would clean that cess-pool out real nice:

 

na that doens't work mani......

then your just left with flaming asshats

 

So we gonna have someone DL the Fileplanet version and then make it available for all of us?

I hate having to Pay to Beta-Test someone's game.... Doesn't seem right.