Where did T2 go wrong?
I have been looking for a backup game to this for a little while now and after playing some free stuff and some source offerings I got to wondering where did t2 go wrong? There are some really dismal games out there with comparatively huge communities, while this one languishes in anonymity. We can say its old now, people moved on, but the player base has been really low for a long time. Cs1.6 is old too as is quakeIII and neither of them can hold a candle to this, yet they have communities that dwarf ours. T2 is free can be run on just about any hardware you have, I just can not understand its lack of popularity.
Comments
Full Disclosure: I've only been aware of/playing T1/T2 for about two years, only knew about TN in January.
I wouldn't call it 'going wrong', but it did sort of fall off the public radar. It might be the difficulty curve of learning everything there is in Tribes scared people away and killed publicity. Maybe those of us that can handle the action really are as rare as the community size suggests.
I never heard of Tribes until I stumbled upon a Wikipedia article listing out freeware games and seeing Starsiege Tribes on the list, and that was just a couple years ago. I knew T2 had been released free too but the keys to play online were all gone. Sierra did sort of summarily drop everything when T:V came around, which might have put a nail in things to thin the playerbase. I was around when the T1 master server disappeared, and it took a little while for people to migrate to the new one, and it never quite seemed that we got everyone back. Maybe it's the same way here; everyone hasn't come back yet.
I've never done CS or Q3, so can't really comment on their popularity. If there were content updates from the devs going on in those two, it might have reinforced the players they had, and so it all kept going; whereas for T1 and T2, content updates come from we the players, might be something to that.
TN's still in a beta phase. I'll share in the optimism that once T-mail and clans get back up and running we might see a nice big growth of players.
Due to top games such as World of Warcraft, or even COD5, Gear 2, this game is basicly shadowed by them, this game is old like you said and because of that newer gamers never heard of this game, let a lone Tribes 1, its all a matter of trying to recruit people into it.
I agree entirely with that post. i showed the guys in my class it, the younger guys (17-18) said, "dude that sucks." to which i replied, "What?! Why?" he says, "Those graphics suck..." then i told him to not even talk anymore. Which he didn't. Sadly none of the guys who would give it a shot have gotten around to getting it yet.
It's very unfortunate, they all think console gaming is the way to go...
You should go to them and say congratulations, you have unlocked achievment Graphic Whore.
I said this before and yes I'm going to say it again maybe a different way. Cheaters have killed this game. And until you can find people that like to be cheated or fix the problem, I believe TRIBES is dead.
It's just a shame. Look at some of the more popular shooters out there in comparison to TRIBES. Who wants to walk and maybe run when you can fly.
And as for the cheaters and those that lie about there being none (which aint really helping the problem). F#cking suck azz! TRIBES killers!
{dggs}Demoncard
No way is T2 hard, its just people using cheats/scripts/nooboffs on public servers.
I dont care about the graphics, maybe Pacman has terrible graphics, but people still play it.
Same thing with Tribes 2, terrible graphics, awesome gameplay.
This is all that needs to be said. And maybe that T2 players are the biggest jerks/nerds on the internet. I've never met a man of flesh and blood who could stand any of you pricks for more than 30 seconds.
! :P
Exactly.
True, i've never met anyone who quit Tribes2 because of the cheaters.
I believe, T2's "downfall" is due to the amount of people who know of it.
This stem's from T2's initial lack of advertisement in the early days, the people who play TribesNext are veterans or recruits from vet's, a very small minority are legitimately new folks who are open to trying new games.
Anyone who plays the game is immediately addicted to it, or that has been in my experience. Still trying to convince my graphicwhore friends to play T2. :P
it was buggy initially and honestly it still is, I cant alt tab or get an im or change the focus in anyway from it, or i get a UE imediately everytime without fail and its always been like that. It also ran like crap on all but the most state of the art hardware back when it was new, that probably didnt help. Problems like that coupled with the fact that there was no classic or base++, and the t1'ers stayed away kinda like we all did when vengeance came out.
I'm gonna have to agree with this.
Tribes 2 went huge because of the way they advertised it...I remember seeing Tribes 2 on TV, and the way they talked about it on a huge player scale....and they made it sound way fun.
Now as we settled into Tribes 2 with a peak of what like 200,000 give or take population?? The learning curve was like HOLY CRAP. Tribes was simply way ahead of its time, right about now is when they should have started with this type of game if you ask me.
Optimism and denial are two very different things, Shizuka. :P
Denial is a river in Egypt. Everyone's got a boat.
Competition like some of you know it was will never be back. Some still have that bug when you start thinkin about it and get a little choked up. I've had some great times over the 28 years on this earth, but nothing compares to the times I had in tribes 1 and 2. If I could give up everything I had now to be back home with all my old teammates on.... where to I send my wife and the keys to my jeep...
That is fucking sad. Yeah, it's a great game, but seriously...
Also, the learning curve is what most of us look for in games. Quake never would have become one of my favorite games if it weren't for the difficulty of playing among its online community. Tribes is the same. You really can't consider this game a failure - no matter the sales or player base- - when it gave so many of us twitchy hardcore assholes something else to get god damn good at.
Top of my head reponse says "leets", clans, and competition did in t2. That and running out of keys. That and the depth of play for a scifi fps. There's a steep curve to the game, and many if not most folks will try to avoid that in the 3d world. Why bother with something where the leets kill them as soon as they spawn and they have to learn invos and loadouts and farming and so on, yet they may die just as quickly in cs but there's little learning curve to cs, and of course no turrets. But the clans left t2 for 1942, wow, or any other excuse game. Now they're all about doody4 and the like. But I have seen many come back with tribesnext, and this is not a bad thing.
The younger crowd likes eye candy and bragging rights of being part of something new and cutting edge that they can call their own. As things are now, they don't want to band together with a bunch of old timers like us playing a dated game.
Think of where our mind set was back when T1 and t2 were new and cutting edge. Would anyone here have wanted to be part of a fresh forming PacMan group...lol.
Get my point?
Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease for the love of all that is holy NO ACHIEVEMENTS!
That and I'm not too sure I want to attract the younger generation (though I am technically a part of it), for the most part they are morons. We have plenty of morons already. And I'm one of them.
When Sierra canned Dynamix.
There is already a mod for that.
It's called "PJ's SuperStats." It keeps track of all kinds of things, from kills to how many times you defended your flag.
Anyway, back on topic.
Tribes 2's downfall? "Fast-food" gamers.
No, I am not talking about people that run to White Castle for their Sliders before their precious 25-man Naxx raid starts, but people like them. People nowadays want a game that has no learning-curve, spells everything out for them, and can be played solo, with grouping if they want to. That is where games like WoW, CoH/CoV, and a lot of other games come into play. They give people that option to play solo, but group when needed, as well as spelling the game out for them (seriously, what learning-curve is there in being a Mage in WoW or a Corruptor in CoV? Absolutely nothing).
People that play games nowadays want a game that you can just jump into and start playing, without delay and without having to learn anything complex. Of all the MMOs that I have played, the only, and I mean ONLY ones, that have some degree of complexity or a decent learning curve, are Tribes 2 and Star Wars Galaxies (Pre-Combat Update. This New Game Enhancement bullshit is just another WoW-clone).
With Tribes 2, you have to learn the arcs of your Grenade and Mortar launchers, inventory setups, loadouts, proper flag defense, and a shitload of other things. That's a good learning curve. You get a MUCH better gaming experience when you have to learn the game in order to play it. There were so many times when I swore that I would never play Tribes 2 again when I started to play, but always came back, because I thought, "Well, maybe if I try this loadout and place the turrets here instead of there..." You have to keep learning and learning, but the outcome is the best gaming experience you will ever have in the First-Person Shooter.
And, SWG is no different. Sure, it is an MMORPG, but it has a complexity that few other MMORPGs can match or exceed. Back during it's prime, you had 31 different professions to choose from, mixing and matching to fit your playstyle. There was no "level" system (well, there was, it was just so blurred and irrelevant that there was never mention of it), no "I want you to kill X living bushes" questline, no "fast-food" gamer bullshit. It was complex, the learning-curve was steep, and the community was phenomenal.
However, as I stated before, the "fast-food" gamers started to pop up, and games that had even an ounce of complexity in them became obsolete, or adapted to the needs and wants of the new gamer generation.
So, I do have to agree with what a few people here have said. It was most likely the complexity and learning-curve that was the downfall of Tribes 2.
In these days, the "fast-food" gamer is what companies make their money from.