Teamplay

Teamplay without throat shoving

Many an opinion was that Tribes 2 emphasized teamplay, but did it to the point where in your average public game fundamental game features like capturing a flag or destroying a generator required an act of god and three Havocs fully of heavies to pull off. Moreover, when those three Havocs of heavies take off, a lone Shrike could, and usually did, take all three down in seconds. Tribes 2 emphasized teamplay, but for most players who enjoyed achieving objectives and playing the game, it was far too much. The team-play model behind Classic is to return to Tribes 1, where a team benefits from working together, but it isn’t required to do so to play the game.

When one team breaks up into multiple roles, one hops on as a heavy on the flag, another starts spewing out turrets, and a third sits back and acts as a light defense-man, then even the finest capper is going to have problems moving the flag. Which is when he’ll call in the heavy offense and the teamplay ball gets rolling. The issue is, it’s possible to move the flag or achieve objectives when the opponents aren’t working together, if they start to, then your team had better pick up the pace as well. Compared to the days of when a single capper wouldn’t be able to move the flag against a team TKing itself, and things are improved.

Whoopsie.

Waiting in line like its the DMV

Doh

New vistas

One of the most impressive changes to Classic is the fact that it ships with somewhere around 25 new maps, almost 42 megs (zipped!) of content. Some of these maps, 10 or so, are remakes of original Tribes 1 maps, another 15 are entirely unique maps made specifically for the patch with Classic in mind. Some of the most impressive mappers Tribes 2 have seen assembled to pitch in, and with maps like White Dwarf, Surreal, and Gorgon it shows. Moreover, z0dd, one of the lead coders of Classic also re-released an earlier map pack he had edited with 3 new maps by one of the most popular T2 mappers, Rilke. This brings the total CTF maps alone somewhere well above 60 if a server has these various patches and map-packs installed.

Weird artifacts in the house

Poking around in their generator room

Badaboom

The maps are broad in their scope, ranging from Ramparts featuring two monstrous bases situated like fortresses atop hills, accompanied by rivers acting as moats. Or there is White Dwarf, a visual powerhouse, featuring futuristic small bases, a unique generator set-up and an entirely exposed flag stand. Prefer the more deliberate vehicle oriented gameplay? There’s Sandstorm, with a vehicle pad situated deep underground, where purchasing a shrike has the player rising through the ground. Touting new graphics, but more importantly terrain designed for flowing gameplay, had these maps shipped with the original Tribes 2 the game would have been infinitely more playable. When coupled with the speed changes in Classic, it’s an entirely different game.