Royalty
The Aussie
Just a heads up that this post will be x-posted to a variety of subreddits and other forums. I'll explain why later.
If you are in a rush, don't like long posts or hate sentimentalism, please don't bother reading. I won't be upset.
---
Some of you may know me, others may not.
I'm probably younger than most of you - I'm finishing up high school this year.
As such, I never really got to play any of the original Tribes games.
My first exposure to any game with skiing was Fallen Empire : Legions. I started playing this is 2008, and boy did I have a blast. I was only 11 years old at the time, and as a result I don't remember too much of my FE:L experiences, but I do remember my naive llama grabs and insatiable desire to prove myself.
Instant Action (IA), the creators of FE:L began updating their website for some time (a year or so from memory?) and the game was made unavailable. It later turned out that they would close down, and FE:L was dead until it's revival (in Nov 2010) by BugsPray and the other devs.
The revival, now coined Legions: Overdrive was infectious. Everyone in the small remaining community was bursting with energy, and it was the passion of individuals such as Jordahan, Fixious and SeymourGore which confirmed the reasons I loved Legions.
Despite this enthusiasm, the game was "doomed" from the beginning. The licensing agreement with IA prevented any monetisation, meaning the devs were working voluntarily, and that advertising was limited. Furthermore, the shutdown of IA before Legions: Overdrive was announced meant that the vast majority of the original playerbase was unaware of its existence.
By this time, Australian servers (yeah I'm Australian) didn't exist in Legions (understandably, because of monetisation restrictions) and I played with a solid 200-300 ping for a year. When player hosted servers were released, there simply wasn't the playerbase. I think at this point in time there were probably only 3-5 Aussies/Kiwis actually consistently playing Legions.
Regardless, I stuck by it, as did others.
At this same time (Dec 2011), beta keys became available for *Tribes: Ass-End*. Understandably, we lost a lot of players to T:A. I too, played extensively, lured by the sizeable playerbase that had miraculously appeared out of nowhere, and the promise of sweet 40 ping, allowing me to chase to my full potential.
Again, the experience was bittersweet for me. My laptop was pretty shitty, and I would run T:A on minimum graphics with 20-30 FPS.
It was also clear that T:A had many problems. As I had never previously played a Tribes game, my understanding of its characterstics came from Legions. I thought that in comparison, T:A was slow and sluggish. Jets were weak and height/speed were minimal. Other issues were the lack of directional control when skiing or jet packing, the fact that spinfusors had no (little) inheritance, and that the game was riddled with hitscan weapons.
I think, that ultimately, T:A was a good thing for the Tribes community. Hear me out.
T:A was a lot of fun at times. I pretty much spent all my time as Pathfinder, chasing around. The classic "Tribes-esque" features that one dreamed about kept me around, and the introduction of the Blinkfusor made it really enjoyable chasing. I ended up logging around 800 games, then left, frustrated with the game's overall flaws.
T:A also fuelled the playerbase, as I mentioned earlier. In mid 2013 a good 10-20 members of the Tribes Australia New Zealand (TANZ) community ended up playing Legions with me, consistently every weekend for a month on my server. This was heaps of fun, and we spammed CTF, but also Team Rabbit - enjoying some of Legion's most redeeming qualities - it's skiing and jetpacking. This was again short-lived, as when I went overseas for two months, unable to play, the Australian Legions scene never continued. I stopped playing both Legions and T:A after this.
Finally, T:A, to some limited degree reunited the Tribes community. It was damn nowhere near perfect, but at least we had a somewhat unified community. It brought everyone together, at least in the beginning, when hopes were high.
This is important, as it kept us together afters years of no new Tribes games.
---
I'm aware Legions still has PuBs going occasionally, although there are no Aussie players left.
I have no clue how many individuals here still play T:A or any of the other Tribes games.
Ultimately, there's no denying that everybody is "in hibernation", waiting for "the game" that will satisfy everyone's wants and desires for a Tribes game.
---
These past few days, I looked back at my post history on [the Legions forums](forums.legionsoverdrive.com). I'm one of the top 20 posters there, with over 1000 posts since Nov 2010.
It's funny, looking back and seeing how much I've changed over the past 5 years, as an individual. I can see all my post history, and see what an arrogant, naive kid I was (my username was Royalty... where the hell did I pull that from?). Don't get me wrong, I'm not yet some wise old man like SeymourGore, but I have grown up.
I look back at my posts, and I appreciate all the older guys for putting up with me. You'll never fully understand, that you - one day, were very similar to me as a teenager - arrogant, rude and childish - you didn't get to see this change documented on the internet, but believe me, this was once you.
The fact that the community stuck by me and supported me is astounding. We bonded together as a whole, and pushed through hard times. Even now, this subreddit continues to push through hard times, but always united, together because of a passion for Tribes-like games, and a bond that we have with our fellow players, some of whom you guys probably played with back in T1.
It truly is an amazing community, so thank you for that.
---
I do hope that with the acceleration in the development of 'Midair', the teaser released yesterday, pre-alpha gameplay coming soon at PAX, that its eventual release will be a great success, and reunite this community that has worked so hard to keep the dream alive, despite many hardships over the years.
I want to thank the Midair dev team for their hard work and persistence. Best of luck for the future. I'll always be here to support you, and to hopefully playtest the alpha/beta, as will the rest of the community.
As I mentioned at the beginning of my post, this will be x-posted to other subbreddits and forums, since our wider community is so disjointed. T:A had its flaws, and was unable to satisfy the entire community, so it remained partitioned.
I'm hoping that one game will eventually unite us. I really want that game to be Midair, because I have faith in the dev team, and because I (and countless others) have stood by them all these years.
I hope to see us all as one community in the near future.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post, if you got this far.
If you are in a rush, don't like long posts or hate sentimentalism, please don't bother reading. I won't be upset.
---
Some of you may know me, others may not.
I'm probably younger than most of you - I'm finishing up high school this year.
As such, I never really got to play any of the original Tribes games.
My first exposure to any game with skiing was Fallen Empire : Legions. I started playing this is 2008, and boy did I have a blast. I was only 11 years old at the time, and as a result I don't remember too much of my FE:L experiences, but I do remember my naive llama grabs and insatiable desire to prove myself.
Instant Action (IA), the creators of FE:L began updating their website for some time (a year or so from memory?) and the game was made unavailable. It later turned out that they would close down, and FE:L was dead until it's revival (in Nov 2010) by BugsPray and the other devs.
The revival, now coined Legions: Overdrive was infectious. Everyone in the small remaining community was bursting with energy, and it was the passion of individuals such as Jordahan, Fixious and SeymourGore which confirmed the reasons I loved Legions.
Despite this enthusiasm, the game was "doomed" from the beginning. The licensing agreement with IA prevented any monetisation, meaning the devs were working voluntarily, and that advertising was limited. Furthermore, the shutdown of IA before Legions: Overdrive was announced meant that the vast majority of the original playerbase was unaware of its existence.
By this time, Australian servers (yeah I'm Australian) didn't exist in Legions (understandably, because of monetisation restrictions) and I played with a solid 200-300 ping for a year. When player hosted servers were released, there simply wasn't the playerbase. I think at this point in time there were probably only 3-5 Aussies/Kiwis actually consistently playing Legions.
Regardless, I stuck by it, as did others.
At this same time (Dec 2011), beta keys became available for *Tribes: Ass-End*. Understandably, we lost a lot of players to T:A. I too, played extensively, lured by the sizeable playerbase that had miraculously appeared out of nowhere, and the promise of sweet 40 ping, allowing me to chase to my full potential.
Again, the experience was bittersweet for me. My laptop was pretty shitty, and I would run T:A on minimum graphics with 20-30 FPS.
It was also clear that T:A had many problems. As I had never previously played a Tribes game, my understanding of its characterstics came from Legions. I thought that in comparison, T:A was slow and sluggish. Jets were weak and height/speed were minimal. Other issues were the lack of directional control when skiing or jet packing, the fact that spinfusors had no (little) inheritance, and that the game was riddled with hitscan weapons.
I think, that ultimately, T:A was a good thing for the Tribes community. Hear me out.
T:A was a lot of fun at times. I pretty much spent all my time as Pathfinder, chasing around. The classic "Tribes-esque" features that one dreamed about kept me around, and the introduction of the Blinkfusor made it really enjoyable chasing. I ended up logging around 800 games, then left, frustrated with the game's overall flaws.
T:A also fuelled the playerbase, as I mentioned earlier. In mid 2013 a good 10-20 members of the Tribes Australia New Zealand (TANZ) community ended up playing Legions with me, consistently every weekend for a month on my server. This was heaps of fun, and we spammed CTF, but also Team Rabbit - enjoying some of Legion's most redeeming qualities - it's skiing and jetpacking. This was again short-lived, as when I went overseas for two months, unable to play, the Australian Legions scene never continued. I stopped playing both Legions and T:A after this.
Finally, T:A, to some limited degree reunited the Tribes community. It was damn nowhere near perfect, but at least we had a somewhat unified community. It brought everyone together, at least in the beginning, when hopes were high.
This is important, as it kept us together afters years of no new Tribes games.
---
I'm aware Legions still has PuBs going occasionally, although there are no Aussie players left.
I have no clue how many individuals here still play T:A or any of the other Tribes games.
Ultimately, there's no denying that everybody is "in hibernation", waiting for "the game" that will satisfy everyone's wants and desires for a Tribes game.
---
These past few days, I looked back at my post history on [the Legions forums](forums.legionsoverdrive.com). I'm one of the top 20 posters there, with over 1000 posts since Nov 2010.
It's funny, looking back and seeing how much I've changed over the past 5 years, as an individual. I can see all my post history, and see what an arrogant, naive kid I was (my username was Royalty... where the hell did I pull that from?). Don't get me wrong, I'm not yet some wise old man like SeymourGore, but I have grown up.
I look back at my posts, and I appreciate all the older guys for putting up with me. You'll never fully understand, that you - one day, were very similar to me as a teenager - arrogant, rude and childish - you didn't get to see this change documented on the internet, but believe me, this was once you.
The fact that the community stuck by me and supported me is astounding. We bonded together as a whole, and pushed through hard times. Even now, this subreddit continues to push through hard times, but always united, together because of a passion for Tribes-like games, and a bond that we have with our fellow players, some of whom you guys probably played with back in T1.
It truly is an amazing community, so thank you for that.
---
I do hope that with the acceleration in the development of 'Midair', the teaser released yesterday, pre-alpha gameplay coming soon at PAX, that its eventual release will be a great success, and reunite this community that has worked so hard to keep the dream alive, despite many hardships over the years.
I want to thank the Midair dev team for their hard work and persistence. Best of luck for the future. I'll always be here to support you, and to hopefully playtest the alpha/beta, as will the rest of the community.
As I mentioned at the beginning of my post, this will be x-posted to other subbreddits and forums, since our wider community is so disjointed. T:A had its flaws, and was unable to satisfy the entire community, so it remained partitioned.
I'm hoping that one game will eventually unite us. I really want that game to be Midair, because I have faith in the dev team, and because I (and countless others) have stood by them all these years.
I hope to see us all as one community in the near future.
Thank you for taking the time to read this post, if you got this far.
