who would ever want assets and ai turret in any game?
I did. Setting up a base defense was one my favorite things about Tribes, along with attacking a well defended base and finding out how to get around it. Mind you this was mainly on Annihilation servers, where capping the flag wasn't really a huge focus, but instead building and attacking defenses was. It was a huge amount of fun for me and a lot of people, and I still go back every once in a while and play on those servers because I miss it. I was hoping with the inclusion of Engineer and assets, we could have something that at least partially brought back that gameplay. I tested quite a bit of the Engineer system, and am sad that it'll probably be a long time till we see if back (if ever).
Turrets and assets don't 'dumb' down gameplay. I really wish you could have been around for T1's heyday, or at least a few years ago when Annihilation was fairly populated. It introduced many new ideas to the game, and required you to think how you'd get past a different kind of defense. I don't see them dumbing down other games like Firefall either, but then again I've only stuck to the PVE aspect. Setting down a few turrets around a Thumper helps, but they certainly can't do they job just by themselves (especially when you set down larger Thumpers). In an ideal world we'd have enough players to populate several servers throughout the day, with one or two of them supporting the engineer core. That way if you weren't a fan of it, you could simply play on normal CTF servers.
As for Cores ruining Legions, I don't agree with that either. I'm fine with all of them, but would like to see some changes made. Pop has already nerfed Dodge's damage reduction, and is working on putting in some energy drain. I'm ok with Shield being used with flag, but I also wouldn't mind seeing it also drain energy upon activation (how it originally worked). I think each core should have some sort of trade-off, and the Shield has none. The chaingun thing should also be fixed if it hasn't already, and maybe an increase in cool-down. As for Regen, I agree that the amount Sents receive through its AOE is pretty tiny. That and the radius could get a buff. Warp is warp. Sadly I haven't seen any kind of coordination with someone setting up a warp scar for their capper now that they can go through them while holding the flag, but other techniques have come about. Boost seems ok, even if people rage when I use it on Nivo. And OD is...OD.