Apparently, they're giving out free beta keys. Just head over to http://www.facebook.com/tribesascend?sk=app_126443417467788 and like the page. This game is pretty damn good.

 

Its definitely got its issues on my laptop but in the end, there is still nothing more engaging then a giant team battle with spinfuzors and jetpacks.

 

I can't figure out how the hell everyone goes so much faster than me. But I can't seem to keep up. People can leave me in the damned dust in a matter of seconds.

Makes playing the game really hard.

 

Servers are down. Lame.

 

Its called 'Skiing'. Time your landing so you land on a downward slope of a hill or ramp and you get a HUGE burst of speed. You can chain them too.

 

It seems they accidentally put up a faulty patch, and now they have to roll it back and put up a new, working one. I was in the middle of training when servers simply went down and kicked me out.

 

Skii with spacebar, there's a tutorial for it.

 

2 beta keys if you're too lazy to do the facebook deal.

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After a few hours of playing... what is this I don't even... I love it. They recreated the feel of Tribes 2 perfectly. The only thing I have a problem with is it'll be free to play, so you got to either play for awhile to unlock better weapons and armor, or pay. I was pretty consistently #1 by far on both teams until a dude with mortors and heavy armor joined, and after that we pretty much didnt keep our generators online again.

Some balancing with how slow you move once you move out of energy is needed. I can ski fine and usually max out the momentum bar, but once the energy is gone you're a turtle. I loved Tribes because it was a ton of skill shots, mid aid assault gunnning, dual mid air spinfusor kills. It's almost perfect. I'm Midknight on the US servers

 

I just tried it the other day. Finally broke down and made a facebook account that I'll never actually use. :facepalm

I like it a lot so far. It does have some problems but overall I'm enjoying it.

Annoyed by the whole classes thing. I'd like to just pick my armor type and go with whatever loadout I want like it was in T2.

I agree on the running speed, it does feel quite slow. The maps also feel smaller, but maybe that's just my memory of T2 playing tricks on me. Anyway, the slow run speed does at least place a great amount of importance on managing your energy levels and skiing properly. So that's kind of good.

That there's no mods allowed is the worst for me. I love mods.

Thinking back on my time playing it, I can't recall the music in Tribes Ascend. The music in T2 was incredible. I may just have to mute the in game music and play the T2 soundtrack in the background.

Which class you you guys prefer using? I've gone with the one that has the spinfuser. I love the grenade thing of the other class but I'm no good with the machine gun and the grenade launcher sucks for chasing down flag carriers.

 

I got Soldier and Ranger. Can you start with different initial loadouts then?

I agree. It pissed me off at first, because they're essentially making you buy the weapon you want on a armor kit you might not want it on. Having to play my ass off for quite awhile to unlock heavy weapons is a bit odd, as is not being able to just unlock individual weapons.

As for the mods comment. Tf2 was mods. Tribes is mods. Period. Needs to happen eventually somehow. Shifter alone sucked up hundreds of hours worth of my time.

the medium machine gun has to have some sort of autoaim, or a gigantic hitbox range, because I've been mowing folks down with us both in the air from a pretty decent chunk of distance.

All in all, it's still lightyears ahead of what I was expecting.

 

First real complaint, is the controls over the vehicles. It's like moving through quicksand. Way too unresponsive. And the shrike falls out of the fucking air super fast if you're not moving at a decent speed, so aiming is a beast. And then the shots... you get 4 shots, and then you relooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooddddddddddddd slow as hell. Have turned up the DPI on my mouse on the fly to 4,000 and it still responds slow as hell, so it's not just mouse sensitivity.

Also, I know you can unlock them later, but the game without a engineer class just feels messed up. I racked up 20 kills in my generator room with little effort, because if I set foot outside of it, the damned thing went down as fast as they could get to it. Deployable forcefields and turrets is a must have. And defensively, the base turrets are put in some of the worst spots possible, I think I went a good 3 matches without seeing one fire.

 

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They need to add some more maps too. As much as I love their Katabic remake, playing it nonstop in rotation is annoying.

 

I can't seem to figure out how to use these deployable forcefields and such. It says C is default to use your "Pack" - whatever that is - but it doesn't work.

 

I only have the (first) four: Soldier, Ranger, Juggernuts, and Pathfinder.

 

I can't believe how many people are talking about Tribes 2 in these matches. You kind of get used to playing with the occasional adult, but mostly shit talking 13 year olds. To play with folks who recognize who epic T2 was is nice. They told me about Tribes Next, which is essentially T2 put back online. Mod support and all!

Don't think the developers are going to let mods for Ascend, it'd be almost impossible since they want you to unlock everything slowly. I miss playing Engy in Shifter or Meltdown with my turrets, telepads, deployable bases, etc. Nuke strikes ftw.