K - Katabatic

I have really enjoyed playing Tribes: Ascend.  It has been a lot of fun and really made me nostalgic.  As fun as it might be, it isn't the real thing.  There are very few things that I dislike, but I dislike them enough to not want to play it regularly.

My first issue with the game is the loadout system that is being used.  Each "class" gets a certain "loadout".  What this means is: you get two weapons and an armor type.  You technically get a special grenade, but some of those are so not special that is barely worth mentioning.  In my particular case I enjoy putting up turrets and deploying base defenses.  I enjoyed it in Tribes and Tribes 2 and I enjoy it here.  However, the last of a disclauncher makes it almost impossible to do anything by be a turretwhore.  Not to mention that my secondary weapon is a repair tool.  REALLY?!  You give me a shitty SMG-styled gun that has no place in Tribes AND you make my secondary WEAPON a REPAIR TOOL?!  What the fuck?!  Why?

Some classes make out a lot better than others.  Skilled players have a lot of classes that they will find easily fit within their playstyle.  I agree that the balancing done is pretty good, but there are a couple classes that suffer greatly.  The light stealth class gets gimped as well, but to counter that they have lowered the "price" of it.  Yes, there is a purchasable currency within the game.  You can slowly earn currency to buy the classes, but this takes a lot of time.  Back to the point.  The loadouts aren't created equal.

My second issue is the free-to-play nature of the game.  Free-to-play games seem to attract a lower-rung of players.  Yes, I'm judging.  You get a lot more people who are annoying asshats, than if a game was purchasable.  The original Tribes had plenty of asshattery, but in 2012 the level is much higher.  The game being built to run on a wider variety of systems doesn't help either.  Dickhead Dan with his 2007 Dell playing Tribes and being a complete douche is not conducive to an environment that I want to participate in.  If you aren't going to give people dedicated servers, then we need better tools for the servers to get rid of these people.  Seriously.

In the last week or so I have tried on three or four occasions to play Tribes: Ascend.  I find it enjoyable, but I also seem to land in a server where someone is being a dick.  Someone is spamming the chat with the V-commands or people try as hard as they can to teamstack.  These things don't make the game fun.  When you have two people on your team sitting on a hill chit-chatting, it isn't fun.  It is frustrating, especially when you consider how team-oriented the Tribes games are supposed to be.

I had very high hopes for this game and they are slowly being squashed..