MACE (MlDAlR now with less feature creep)

[unfairlight]

T : A gave me variety right out of the bat, despite me being a filthy F2P player.

And to enhance your variety you had to grind for 10x the time it takes in Midair.

Counterpoint: forcing newbs in naked spawns requires them to be skilled at the game and locks them out of the most "noob-friendly" roles.

There really is no such thing in this game. A shitty player won't dominate the server because he chose heavy, decent lights will just fly circles around them and kill them with grenades.

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?

When did the definition of pay to win change from having stuff in the game that you can't unlock for free that gives you a gameplay advantage, to having to unlock those things for a minor amount of grind that's tiny compared to almost all other F2P shooters out there?
If those new players stuck around for a week and put above 10 hours into the game, they already have enough things unlocked to play on a even state with others.

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.

So pay for the game. You expect everything for free from a small indie studio that made this game on a shoestring budget and volunteer work? Shit, everything already IS free if you spend some minor amount of time with it.

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.

You are wrong. Midair already is and will stay the most alive FPS-Z due to accessibility and active developers.

 

[RoSoDude]

The progression model is beyond reasonable. I already have a third of the stuff after like, 10 hours or less. Frankly I'm wondering how this is supposed to make money at all. Plus, the way they've done XP rewards in game is pretty nice (get XP proportional to how much damage you did, with a small bonus for assists/last hits, XP for flag grabs/retrievals/captures, XP for destroying base assets, etc.).

I played Tribes: Ascend with a 90-day booster (x2.5 multiplier in total) that I got in a $5 sale and it took like 200 hours to grind all the equipment out. It was insane. It's true they don't start you off with all the basics in Midair, but in T:A the basics were all mediocre compared to their "sidegrades". You'd have to grind for hours and hours to unlock the class in the first place, unlock the better weapon variants, and then level up all of your gear (yeah, this was a thing). Once you have a basic pack and a Grenade Launcher/Plasma Gun in Midair, you're on par with other light players in CTF. Within a few hours you'll have Medium/Heavy armors and new weapons/packs/grenades to play around with. I was considering buying the starter pack to support the devs, but I'm even waffling on that since the progression in this game is so damn fast.

Speaking of which, I just got the Mortar and hoooooly shiiiiiiit it's orgasmic. I was rather good with the mortar in both T2 and especially T:A, and just like the rest of the weapons this feels like a great middle ground. Enormous blast radius and damage with an extremely satisfying arc and just the right amount of bounce. Is it intended that I can't equip the kinetic or aegis packs on Heavy, though? That was a bit of a surprise (EDIT: weird, some of my purchases reverted and now I don't have them. Might be related).

Anyway, I'm having an awesome time with the game so far. It feels just like the Tribes I remember, borrowing from all the flavors of that which have existed. One thing I really have to praise it on over T:A is how much less sluggish it feels. T:A had really slow velocity acquisition to balance out the fact that you could (high ammo count permitting) limitlessly disk jump around the map due to automatic health regen, and the devs also had a nasty habit of putting one giant hill between the enemy bases. This meant that even with disk/nade jumps it would take upwards of 20 seconds to get to the other side as an offense player, so barely anyone ever played offense. I eventually learned how to 7v1 in that game using some OP kiting strategies with the health regen, shield pack, and absurd chain weapons, but it was a sorry state of affairs to see obscene D stacks all the time (it was common to see upwards of 15 players on defense in public games especially on the huge maps like Temple Ruins and Raindance). Midair is a hell of a lot better in this regard, with movement much more similar to T2 that gets you in the action much more quickly.

 

[unfairlight]

and then level up all of your gear (yeah, this was a thing).

Oh my fucking god. I for got about that. Holy shit. Last I played was OOTB and that got me my rose tinted goggles installed of what it was before that.

(EDIT: weird, some of my purchases reverted and now I don't have them. Might be related).

Server issue. They're working on it.

 

[RoSoDude]

and then level up all of your gear (yeah, this was a thing).

Oh my fucking god. I for got about that. Holy shit. Last I played was OOTB and that got me my rose tinted goggles installed of what it was before that.

Yeah it was totally cancer. I didn't mind the class archetype limitations so much, it was decline but still fun, but the actual unlock model was a garbage fire.

(EDIT: weird, some of my purchases reverted and now I don't have them. Might be related).

Server issue. They're working on it.

Yeah, been talking to a dev from the Discord about it. Confirmed it's also the reason I couldn't equip the kinetic or aegis packs either. Hopefully is resolved soon.

 

[unfairlight]

I have a feeling that the Biomech skin will quickly become a fan favorite in this game...

 

[RoSoDude]

So, I played like 8 hours of this today. It is truly fantastic. After an hour or two of TDM while in voice chat with some friends I noticed that I was playing the game almost completely subconsciously. It was like a total flow state. I was barely even consciously aware that I was playing, but I was still topping the score chart (and leading my team to victory!). It helps that I've played at least 750 hours of Tribes: Ascend alone, and a hundred or two in Tribes 2 as well, so the adjustment period was very short. It feels like returning home after a long, long vacation.

Sniper seems pretty OP at the moment. Just have to click dots. Concussion grenades are a bit easier to use than I expected (they're very similar to T2's), but still not as easy as Tribes: Ascend (common theme). Now that I've gotten the hang of its physics, the Grenade Launcher is an amazing tool. I'm also very happy to find out that the proximity mines cannot be exploded by your own ring launcher, meaning the combat doesn't come down almost entirely to mine-disk spam which I was never great at. The fighter is also massive incline, with the ability to freely rotate along the Z-axis to help you track enemies with its pinpoint projectiles. It's pretty annoying to fight them on the ground without a missile launcher, though.

Fun moment: one CTF match I was in got flooded with vehicles, to the point that I was watching an anti-grav tank climb up the sheer face of a tower and somehow launch itself up fifty feet, spinning upside down and targeting a fighter. For a brief moment it looked like a tank was engaging in a dogfight. It was one of the most glorious things I've seen in a multiplayer match in recent memory.

 

[unfairlight]

I noticed that I was playing the game almost completely subconsciously. It was like a total flow state. I was barely even consciously aware that I was playing, but I was still topping the score chart (and leading my team to victory!).

Not a lot of games do that for me, the only other one I can really think of is TF2. I can just play it whenever I feel like and have fun without even thinking about it, Midair might be the second.

 

[McPlusle]

Is the progression system better than it sounds or should I just download one of the old games? I haven't played any of them since Starsiege Tribes went free.

 

[unfairlight]

The old games are fucking dead and inaccessible. The progression system is fine and everything will probably unlocked in less than 50 hours.

 

[Dayyālu]

Hey, it has been some months, maybe the devs learned their lesson aaand....

Christ and Hunter

What the hell

I predicted that this needed changes or it would crash and burn like a Zeppelin, but this is surprising.

Chad J. Thundercock
RoSoDude

what the fuck happened?

 

[unfairlight]

A small game without any marketing that released with some technical issues, people thought was P2W even though it was more than fair and wasn't as easy to get into as Tribes Ascend. That's just about it. Tribes Ascend kids thought that this game had "bad controls" because your amount of free air and ski movement was very low.
Please tell me what "lesson" there was to learn.

 

[Dayyālu]

Please tell me what "lesson" there was to learn.

Tons.

We have to consider how a game made by a company that hated the genre (Ascend) managed to perform better than a work of love. Basics.

MidAir graphic style was horrendous. No appeal, no finesse, muddy looking textures and shit-tier designs. I'd like to remind that Tribes always had at least an appealing graphic design, heritage from the Dynamix days. Even Ascend kept that up. It's a minor detail, but you have to consider that people may like a game that does not look like a turd.

The entire model of P2W was crappy. Unlocking was insane. Unlock all basic armours? Unlock all basic packs? Unlock all vehicles? It's no wonder people tried this for a hour, got smashed by P2W Tribes vets and got "lol why I should be here to be a free target"

Considering how high the skill ceiling for Tribes is, dumping the new players directly into vet servers was an amusing design choice, at best. How fun must be to be dropped into a game where you don't know jack shit with the crappiest equipment possible and you need to suffer for hours to get something working if you know what to do. You can't get into the easier roles (base raping, base defense, HoF) that will let you learn the ropes of combat before going on the hardest roles. It's all Light Armour CTF guys, you'll have SO. MUCH. FUN. getting raped.

Map design was abysmal.

The dev team saw Ascend and thought "WE CAN DO BETTER" and built better gameplay than Ascend: they fucked up everything else. No new players, no new blood, game dead in a week. Literally. You don't just need to develop a new game, you need to reach and ease in new blood. Ascend managed to, MidAir failed spectacularly.

A lesson for the future, maybe.

 

[unfairlight]

MidAir graphic style was horrendous. No appeal, no finesse, muddy looking textures and shit-tier designs. I'd like to remind that Tribes always had at least an appealing graphic design, heritage from the Dynamix days. Even Ascend kept that up. It's a minor detail, but you have to consider that people may like a game that does not look like a turd.

Good graphics are expensive graphics. This isn't something that you can just "change" at the drop of a hat when your game has a budget of under $500,000, only one dedicated artist and a majority of the team is volunteers.

The entire model of P2W was crappy. Unlocking was insane. Unlock all basic armours? Unlock all basic packs? Unlock all vehicles? It's no wonder people tried this for a hour, got smashed by P2W Tribes vets and got "lol why I should be here to be a free target"

P2W lol
It should take you less than 50 hours to unlock everything. Tribes Ascend had more than 300 hours of grind for everything and the balance was retarded as hell up until Out of the Blue. Light armor is what you should be learning to play on anyway, and there are LCTF servers where everyone is a light. After you unlock the grenade launcher and the kinetic pack, you will have everything you need to be a competitive light player. That should take about an hour and a half.

Considering how high the skill ceiling for Tribes is, dumping the new players directly into vet servers was an amusing design choice, at best. How fun must be to be dropped into a game where you don't know jack shit with the crappiest equipment possible and you need to suffer for hours to get something working if you know what to do. You can't get into the easier roles (base raping, base defense, HoF) that will let you learn the ropes of combat before going on the hardest roles. It's all Light Armour CTF guys, you'll have SO. MUCH. FUN. getting raped.

When the game launched it peaked at around 700 players. The number of those that already play Midair and are "vets" are probably 50 to 100. Almost everyone was newblood.
Base raping and base defense aren't easy roles, what the fuck are you talking about? EFFECTIVE base defense and rape is hard as hell. Light/medium skirmishing is a role best suited to a new player.

Map design was abysmal.

Not at all.

 

[Darth Roxor]

reminds me i forgot to check this fucking game when it went f2p

maybe there are many other such cases

 

[Goromorg]

Godspeed, Komrade! VGCY!