Same here. Tribes 1 was one the best games I've played, to date. It was extremely fast paced, had an amazing team dynamic, and the character movement (skiing and flying) was beautiful. I haven't found anything comparable since.
Tribes 2 was pretty crap when it came out but the Classic mod gave it much the same feel as Tribes 1. I lost several years to the competitive scene. There were organized competitions as recent as a year or 2 back, and there is still a public server with enough of a population to play at most times.
Projectile physics were one of my favorite points (besides the open environment). You had to be aware of your own motion vector if you wanted to accurately place a shot with most weapons. Sadly, later installments (T:V, I'm looking at you) never quite had that same feeling. That was probably part of what made it relatively unfriendly to newbies from other shooters, but I felt it made the game a bit more intense and required a bit more focus rather than strictly mindless button-mashing.
Didn't they have a weird compromise in terms of projectile physics and the player's motion? I remember reading about it and thinking that doing so would make it harder to use than doing it physically accurately but I forget the details.
I can see it happening, I've even given it some thought. I have a feeling as more and more resources start appearing that are UE4 specific, we'll start seeing some really cool revivals like that. Right now, a huge portion of the community is still in Unity, we're only just now starting to see documentation and videos really coming out strong (probably fueled by UE4 dropping the subscription fee).
The skiing physics are hard to get right. No Tribes sequel has replicated it out of the box - it took several iterations of mods to get it right in Tribes 2, and Vengeance/Ascend were pretty garbage imo
T:A is the game which is being left to rot. Devlopment has been abandoned, the community ignored, and the game heavily incomplete. Management, when it existed, was incompetent.
Amen to that. And hopefully in a traditional standalone, non-free-to-play/non-MMO format. Just take my money and give me the ability to set up my own servers and mod the game.