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Comment by tjansen | Hacker News Reader

Tribes 2 with modern graphics for modern platforms, and maybe an Apex Legends-like Battle Royale mode. I don't think that there has ever been a better multiplayer FPS. When you're used to jetpacks and skiing, most other FPS feel slow. And there is nothing as elegant as killing with slow ballistic projectiles like the Spin Fusor.

Apex Legends has got some of the aspects that made T2 so great, especially if you play Valkyrie (Apex's only flying character), but the weapons are not as much fun and you're wasting too much time on looting.

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I would take that a step further, and say more like Tribes 1 with modern graphic. I feel like the modding community was out of control in a good way on Tribes 1. Flying around with unlimited jetpack and a automatic sniper rifle in Ultra Renegades trying to capture a flag that's is in a base that's booby-trapped with a bunch of turrets was way ahead of it's time.

It still blows my mind that 007 Golden Eye existed as a popular game at the same time with Starsiege: Tribes when they were worlds apart in quality and gameplay.

That takes me back. I vividly recall some ultra-heavy armor that toted around 6 chainguns, 3 on each side of the screen. It was great at blotting fast movers out of the sky.

The modding scene for Tribes 1 really was something else.

T1 remains my favourite Tribes game, especially with the mods (Shifter ftw!). T2 was ok, but too focused on glitz and I didn’t like the change to the skiing mechanic.

I'm with you. T1 discfusor sniping+skiing was deeply satisfying.

Tribes was released over a year after Goldeneye.

T1, I randomly was thinking of this just last night. I put so many hours into that game and loved the mods. Putting laser turrets behind shields/walls to protect them was so cool. I think it was the first fighting/building game I'd played (FPS at least, I loved AoE/StarCraft/etc) and I wish I could go back to those late nights playing with friends.

> It still blows my mind that 007 Golden Eye existed as a popular game at the same time with Starsiege: Tribes when they were worlds apart in quality and gameplay.

I agree with your overall sentiment, but I do think that GoldenEye was relatively more accessible in terms of MSRP and technical setup.

BattleField 1942 was released a year after Tribes 2. It got a bunch of praise for FPS & vehicles, built-in voice chat, seamless outdoor AND indoor environments. It sounded familiar.

While it wasn't perfect, I really enjoyed the brief existence of Tribes Ascend. It makes me hopeful someone else is going to pick up the genre, maybe even the license.

Hi-Rez certainly weren't a good fit for the game. I'll know better than to spend money on anything they're doing in the future.[1]

[1]: https://www.maxlaumeister.com/articles/rip-tribes-ascend/

Ascend was fantastic until it went free-to-play and Hi-Rez desperately tried to monetize it.

I would want Tribes: Ascend back again as it originally was, but with good support for mods and private servers. That would make me happy.

The out of the blue update actually fixed the game substantially, but unfortunately it seemed to have been a last ditch effort and leadership at Hi-Rez (which probably boils down to Erez) lost interest entirely when SMITE suddenly became very profitable.

I enjoyed this game quite a lot, I never figured out why it didn't take off even when it was free.

It was hugely popular before being free. The problem was that some basic options for the classes that were strictly better or required for gameplay (the worst offender here is likely the Jackal[1]) were gated behind days of grinding or microtransactions. Newly introduced options usually had some severe balancing issues. The core audience and biggest advocates for the game were people that played Tribes and Tribes 2 decades earlier - they didn't really like that they couldn't buy the game outright and have all the content in it unlocked at a reasonable pace.

[1]: https://tribes.fandom.com/wiki/Jackal

The usual performance problems with tribes games, also the usual unintended difficulty increases by trying to make it "easier".

IMO for two reasons, separated by player type. Casual players were turned off by the grind, and experienced players (read: players of former games) were turned off by the dumbed-down mechanics as compared to previous games.

By the latter I mean mostly the decision to eliminate base play, i.e. gens/turrets/invs mean basically nothing because you spawn in your load out. Also, the jetting/skiing physics are kinda wonky, in ways that I think negatively impacted gameplay.

In case the T2 fans here weren’t aware, it’s a free download now and people still play. There’s a Discord community and we do pickup games every month or so. You can get it here: https://www.playt2.com/

I wasn't aware. I...I'm not sure I should....

Oh cool! I played for a while back in the post-TribesNext days, but haven't touched it in years. Are there still pubs at all, or do you pretty much have to wait for a scheduled game?

Yes, there’s only one active (non-bot) server but we play every night! “Discord PUB” is the server and it’s usually LakRabbit from around 4–6pm Pacific, then CTF for the rest of the night once enough people join up.

> And there is nothing as elegant as killing with slow ballistic projectiles like the Spin Fusor.

I loved aiming ahead near the ground of a skiing opponent and hitting them with the splash damage.

But the most amazing moments were when you hit someone mid-air. :)

Thank you, Tribes is great... Shazbot!

> I don't think that there has ever been a better multiplayer FPS.

100%

Tribes 2 should have been "THE" early 00's FPS to play. Instead, it was Halo, a game that I insist did not introduce ANYTHING new to the FPS genre, yet people went crazy for.

Did you ever play Fallen Empire: Legions or Legions: Overdrive? It's a shame we don't have more in the FPS-Z genre. If there were one free software title in the genre, people could at least spin off a few games from it. I wonder if anyone's tried building such a thing on one of the Quake engines.

Check out Diabotical. It's a bit dead but it was a ton of fun for the first few months. I think it's dead because of epic games contract. It's more like quake than tribes but very nice fast paced arena fps.

Tribes 1 was where it was at. So much fun at LAN parties. The Tribes sequels only got worse, in my opinion. They were just clinging on to what made Tribes great, but kept losing something every iteration.

I haven't really played either, but I always think about how similar Fortnite is to T1 renegades. You can build, you can taunt, dance etc, big open world.

> you're wasting too much time on looting.

But that's the most fun part of Apex ;)

Sounds like titanfall 2, other than the battle royale part.

It’s been a while since I played Titanfall, but I remember it as mostly ground-based FPS. This video gives you an impression of Tribes 2 fights: https://youtu.be/Kj6K_d6Zsuw

There were also other roles you can’t see in the video (at least in the first minutes): there was an invisibility shield that allowed you to infiltrate enemy bases. You could set up sensors to make invisible opponents visible, deploy small turrets and radars. You could spend all game just repairing things like turrets, radars and inventory stations, and that was an important role in CTF. And there were vehicles that needed pilots, you could control turrets…

Humans taste like fish.

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