MACE (MlDAlR now with less feature creep)

[unfairlight]

Another day, another patch.
https://www.playmidair.com/news/dev-log-20-build-0-31-0-highlights-patch-notes-and-more/
New weapon, new shotgun-esque alt fire on Blaster which I love despite me being shit with it, they added skins for weapons and armor to gear up for full release and some art overhauls. I love how these devs just release 2 gig updates after every month and bam, it's like all the improvements needed in all the right places. I love it.

 

[unfairlight]

A bit late to this but the free to play launch date has been announced: May 3rd.
https://www.playmidair.com/news/midair-free-to-play-release-date-may-3rd/

 

[deama]

So is this game any good? Any early reviews? How is it compared to tribes 1/2/ascend?

 

[unfairlight]

It's good. Closer to Tribes 2 with important QOL changes than Ascend.

 

[Dayyālu]

Holy fuck it's out.

TIME TO DOWNLOAD AND GO FAST

 

[RoSoDude]

Holy fuck it's out.

TIME TO DOWNLOAD AND GO FAST

Where is it my man? I just get this:

Just a time zone thing, perhaps?

 

[Dayyālu]

You are right.

I am at home after teh shift and it's still not released.

The pain, it's real.

 

[unfairlight]

Midair F2P is OUT!
https://store.steampowered.com/app/439370/Midair/
By the way Infinitron since you love micromanaging threads can you edit the title to be now released or something?

 

[RoSoDude]

Initial thoughts:

• Movement feels quite natural, though I was having a bit of a hard time coming from Tribes: Ascend. See, I'm used to not having much air/ground control in Tribes 2 with jump ski, but having a lot of it in Tribes: Ascend with smooth ski. In Midair, there's smooth ski and very little air/ground control. I personally really like that, as movement requires more commitment with the jetpack, but it was a minor hangup at first. I'd say after about 10 minutes I was good to go and moving around in combat like I once did without constantly running out of jets.
• The spinfusor (or whatever it's called here) is just as I remembered. I'm already hitting midairs with it, and the speed, 50% velocity inheritance, and damage feel right.
• The chaingun feels just right. I was hitting people from mid range immediately with little adjustment. 100% inheritance (i'm pretty sure) is the best, the windup time is perfect, and the accuracy is just where it should be.
• The grenade launcher is not what I'm used to at all (I must confess I'm most used to T:A's with a strange arc and 15% velocity inheritance). Doesn't feel like it does much damage either, but I probably just suck with it. Did get a nice midair with it already though.
  
• Blaster's pretty neat, definitely more useful than T2's owing to how fast you can spam it.
• Enemies drop health + ammo refills when they die, which is a nice compromise from T:A's crappy health regen and T2's single-use user-activated health packs. They also drop weird little buff items like kinetic boosters, haven't quite figured that system out yet.
• Progression model... well the game's gotta make money, I'll probably buy the pack that lets you bypass all that since I'm not looking to grind for essential gear. Didn't use Medium/Heavy armor, any packs, or any other weapons yet as a result.

I thought I'd swap back to my old ESDF control scheme that I used in T2 and T:A, but I discovered that my relatively cheap gaming keyboard does not have anti-ghosting on the keys that I require of it, so I have to let go of any movement buttons if I want to reload. Sigh. May have to upgrade again. This is why you go for the pricy N-key rollover stuff, folks (for whatever reason my old crappy laptop didn't have this particular issue as badly).

 

[unfairlight]

Glad you're liking it, I saw you get fragged in a webm on 8chan. Couldn't play yesterday since it was late but I hope the game will do good and I can get some matches today.

 

[deama]

Initial thoughts:

• Movement feels quite natural, though I was having a bit of a hard time coming from Tribes: Ascend. See, I'm used to not having much air/ground control in Tribes 2 with jump ski, but having a lot of it in Tribes: Ascend with smooth ski. In Midair, there's smooth ski and very little air/ground control. I personally really like that, as movement requires more commitment with the jetpack, but it was a minor hangup at first. I'd say after about 10 minutes I was good to go and moving around in combat like I once did without constantly running out of jets.
• The spinfusor (or whatever it's called here) is just as I remembered. I'm already hitting midairs with it, and the speed, 50% velocity inheritance, and damage feel right.
• The chaingun feels just right. I was hitting people from mid range immediately with little adjustment. 100% inheritance (i'm pretty sure) is the best, the windup time is perfect, and the accuracy is just where it should be.
• The grenade launcher is not what I'm used to at all (I must confess I'm most used to T:A's with a strange arc and 15% velocity inheritance). Doesn't feel like it does much damage either, but I probably just suck with it. Did get a nice midair with it already though.
  
• Blaster's pretty neat, definitely more useful than T2's owing to how fast you can spam it.
• Enemies drop health + ammo refills when they die, which is a nice compromise from T:A's crappy health regen and T2's single-use user-activated health packs. They also drop weird little buff items like kinetic boosters, haven't quite figured that system out yet.
• Progression model... well the game's gotta make money, I'll probably buy the pack that lets you bypass all that since I'm not looking to grind for essential gear. Didn't use Medium/Heavy armor, any packs, or any other weapons yet as a result.

I thought I'd swap back to my old ESDF control scheme that I used in T2 and T:A, but I discovered that my relatively cheap gaming keyboard does not have anti-ghosting on the keys that I require of it, so I have to let go of any movement buttons if I want to reload. Sigh. May have to upgrade again. This is why you go for the pricy N-key rollover stuff, folks (for whatever reason my old crappy laptop didn't have this particular issue as badly).

The Eagletec Kg010 Gaming keyboard is fairly cheap for a mechanical keyboard with N-key rollover; though the downside is it's kinda loud, maybe the Kg011 model is better?

 

[Dayyālu]

Ok, tried several matches:

- The design is solid. It feels better than even T:A, particularly movement and weaponry.
- Graphic design is utterly cancerous, muddy, and it makes difficult to quickly recognize friends from foes.
- The F2P model is even more cancerous, starting with no equipment. While T:A at least gave you all the armour types and some basics as a starting point, MidAir gives you naked spawn and you have to unlock everything else.

Medium Armour? Unlock.
Heavy Armour? Unlock.
Mines? Unlock.

It's impossible to be a HoF, to snipe or even to hunt properly with the basics they give you. I'll be honest, after being forced to eat several matches where the opposition had everything and you have jack shit (even vehicles are an unlock) my perception of the game was soured and I unistalled. Remember than F2P should hook the player in, not make them feeling they wasted their time and that even T: A had a better economic model.

 

[SkiNNyBane]

The number1 problem in this game is player models. They are so fucking ugly holy shit.

 

[unfairlight]

The Eagletec Kg010 Gaming keyboard is fairly cheap for a mechanical keyboard with N-key rollover; though the downside is it's kinda loud, maybe the Kg011 model is better?

That's a generic Chinese rebranded mechanical gaming keyboard. They're fine, they have N-key roll over, really super fucking loud switches (most commonly Outemu Blue) and you can find them for ~30$ on Aliexpress. I have a E-Element/MechanicalEagle/Eagle/Eagletec/there's about a billion names for these Z-88, it's held up fine for 6 months and I have no complaints other than the loudness and the fact that it gets occasional chatter on the T key, but that might be due to dust which is easy enough to clean out. Personally I'd suggest getting a keyboard with Gateron switches instead. James Donkey is a good brand that makes keyboards with them, you can find them on Aliexpress for around ~40€ free shipping. They lie about package value too so you don't have pay any customs fees if European and they don't have to pay extra taxes, you might not get away with it but I did, just don't order with Deutsche Post since people are generally unluckier with them. Gaterons are by far in large the best Chinese cherry clone switches you can get, some even think the plastic of the things is smoother than real Cherry switches which has gotten them a good rep in the mech keyboard autist circle.

 

[unfairlight]

- The F2P model is even more cancerous, starting with no equipment. While T:A at least gave you all the armour types and some basics as a starting point, MidAir gives you naked spawn and you have to unlock everything else.

True but the grind is far less steep than in T:A, in T:A you had to literally grind for days to get a single new class or weapon (pre OOTB).

 

[Dayyālu]

True but the grind is far less steep than in T:A, in T:A you had to literally grind for days to get a single new class or weapon (pre OOTB).

In T : A all the classes where free for baseline, and had somewhat basic but efficient output. If you didn't want optimization you could truck on with the basic perks and get a fun experience in the meantime: sure, the grind was there but you had fun in the meantime.

Here I can't even buy a jet - bike without grinding. Should I not have fun for the chance to (maybe) have fun when I will unlock the basics? I am forced into a naked spawn with no vehicles. The umpteenth time a Heavy Armour dude with tons of weapons charged in and mauled my entire team I seriously missed when in T:A you could get a Brute and go to town.

I'll be blunt: game is fugly but could be fun, and F2P is supposed to get me to like the game and chip in. This model of F2P will scare people away in a few days at best, leaving the cancer of Tribes there, people with a skill ceiling so high that if you have a life you simply can't compete. I need to have fun to pay money.

 

[Pika-Cthulhu]

Might be fun to grab some bros, jump into voice and dive into a server to practice for a bit, that way you can work on paths and targeting and talk shit all the while. Perhaps a drinking game

 

[unfairlight]

In T : A all the classes where free for baseline, and had somewhat basic but efficient output. If you didn't want optimization you could truck on with the basic perks and get a fun experience in the meantime: sure, the grind was there but you had fun in the meantime.

What? No it wasn't. I said PRE-OOTB, what the game was for 90% of it's lifespan.
Besides that, the grind to unlock stuff isn't anywhere near as bad as most other games. You should be able to unlock the shit you want in less than 15 hours playtime.

 

[Dayyālu]

What? No it wasn't. I said PRE-OOTB, what the game was for 90% of it's lifespan.
Besides that, the grind to unlock stuff isn't anywhere near as bad as most other games. You should be able to unlock the shit you want in less than 15 hours playtime.

But I won't have fun for 15 hours.

And I play to have fun, not to grind to have fun in the future.

(Also, I don't exactly remember the details of the different variants of T:Ascend economic model: I was a beta player and so I unlocked everything I wanted quite soon. I do remember that maybe some classes were unlock-blocked, but they were cheap as fuck and you got Heavy\Medium\Light armour and vehicles directly at the start. Here I have naked spawn. Seriously naked spawn?)

 

[unfairlight]

The T:A economic model pre-OOTB was that there was 3 classes you started with in 3 different armor categories, all with pretty similar weaponry but they were light/regular/heavy models for the different classe. I think there was 10 classes in total, and before out of the blue it would take you probably 10 hours to grind for a single weapon or class.
If naked spawn is a issue just play LCTF lol. It's the most gamemode and chain/nade/ring is the best combo to use anyway. 15 hours is stretching it way too far to begin with. It would maybe take you 10 max to get enough variety, I'm not F2P but I played for 4 hours and have 15 points, with that I could get medium armor, plasma gun, grenade launcher, a extra medium weapon slot and some kinetic packs and I would be fine just playing that if I didn't have money since that's my favorite loadout anyway. If you can't stand investing 4 hours or some money into this game I'm afraid it might not just be one for you. I just played 2 hours of LCTF and TDM using only chain/nade/ring and I did just fine and had fun. It's not like you need unlocks to do well.

 

[unfairlight]

Okay, so I sat down and played the full game for 3 hours straight now and I gotta say that this game is pretty great. Finally getting full pubs to play this game again really brings me back to Tribes Ascend days. I hope the playerbase will stick around because god damn have I waited for this for so long.
And ggs Nark

 

[Dayyālu]

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Not having the chance to play as I see fit is annoying as fuck, and not even having vehicles is mightily unbalancing (can't even be a good flag retriever).

MidAir had its chance with me, and it blew it fairly quickly. If they don't change the economic model, I predict dire times (because the Tribes fanbase is autistic and such a restictive F2P model is unsustainable to bring new blood in, contra T:A that did a good job).

If you can't stand investing 4 hours or some money into this game I'm afraid it might not just be one for you.

I didn't spend a dime on T:A, I unlocked all the classes and had fun while doing it. MidAir may be the superior game (well, it's ugly and muddy to look at, but who cares) but I'm not going to waste 30 bucks to support cancerous models. And being killed by a guy that has everything unlocked while you have naked spawn (and no counters because unlocks) is shit.

Plus, if they don't change, dead in a week.

EDIT: Also, no skill or level balance. Hell, even T:A had its shitty "protected servers" until Lv.8. Here you are thrown to the autistic wolves. Again, prediction is dead in a week despite good gameplay.

 

[Gerrard]

So what you're saying is that the people who kept bitching about everything in T:A can't actually make a better game? Shocking.

 

[unfairlight]

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. Not having the chance to play as I see fit is annoying as fuck, and not even having vehicles is mightily unbalancing (can't even be a good flag retriever).

You didn't have the chance to play how you wanted in Tribes Ascend either unless you had over 500 hours of free time. In Midair you could probably unlock everything in less than 80. Vehicles are honestly complete shit at most things in Midair (aside from tank and bomber destroying base assets, maybe) and are horrible for retrieving flags. How long did you even play the game for?

I didn't spend a dime on T:A, I unlocked all the classes and had fun while doing it. MidAir may be the superior game (well, it's ugly and muddy to look at, but who cares) but I'm not going to waste 30 bucks to support cancerous models. And being killed by a guy that has everything unlocked while you have naked spawn (and no counters because unlocks) is shit.

The grind quickly skyrocketed post launch. It would take you tens of hours to unlock a single item, the grind in Midair isn't anywhere near as bad.
As I said, if you don't like fighting heavies and mediums while you only have light, play LCTF. Lights only CTF without base assets (generators, turrets, sensors). You're on even standing with everyone else from the start and you have nothing to complain about. Play for 5 hours and you will have enough points to unlock enough things to keep you on even standing in CTF.

EDIT: Also, no skill or level balance. Hell, even T:A had its shitty "protected servers" until Lv.8. Here you are thrown to the autistic wolves. Again, prediction is dead in a week despite good gameplay.

The current playerbase is more than 90% new players with little to no experience with Tribes. It seems to me you are just shit at the game.

 

[Dayyālu]

The current playerbase is more than 90% new players with little to no experience with Tribes. It seems to me you are just shit at the game.

C'mon, do you have to resort to ad hominem attacks? "WWWAH WAAAH WAAH U ARE BAD AT TEH GAEM GET GUD NO GRIND"


T : A gave me variety right out of the bat, despite me being a filthy F2P player. MidAir doesn't. I am not willing to grind 5 hours to play basic roles that should be in the game, and this makes me unwilling to buy the game or to trust the devs with my money.

Counterpoint: forcing newbs in naked spawns requires them to be skilled at the game and locks them out of the most "noob-friendly" roles. That 90% new players is gonna disappear in a month week if they don't change their economical model: do you think nowadays someone is going to stay in MidAir and get fucked in the skull by Pay2Win vets or jump to another F2P game, only a fun one?

There's a good game under MidAir: I'll get back to it when they'll give us all armours, basic equipment and vehicles as starting gear. The game will probably be dead as fuck by then, though.

I'll simply check back in a while and see if the game built a sustainable base: in the case, I'll admit being wrong.