Weapons & Skill

Attempting to address the weapons in Tribes 2 is similar in experience to cooking a meal. Just the thought of the final product makes your mouth water. Sometimes it looks like it will be easy with all the parts laid out in front of you. You might burn yourself along the way. Cussing will certainly be involved. Your eyes might tear up. You have to wait a while. Generally, it's a bitch when doing it with other people. And it's uncertain if it will even taste good at the end. But you dream of the enjoyable end-product, and you think it's worth it. Right?

Weapons in Tribes have been debated- and still continue to be debated to this day (really, this game is how old?) I've put much thought into the reason the weapons are the way they are- and if changes were made to them, what would be the ideal way to do it. Not ideal in the sense that everyone agrees with it, but ideal in the sense that would give every weapon a purpose (or a “niche”), require skill to use, and still fit into the overarching metagame. There are certainly some weapons that are never used in competitive play. And some weapons people abuse to some extent or another, without having a particular goal in mind other than to kill people, or grief people. And to some extent, this will never go away.

I want to address each weapon in Tribes 2- what I think about each one's role in the game, if they do their job well, and how I would change them (if I'd change them at all). But before I dive in, I want to share the overarching theory I applied to each of the weapons when considering them- I do this, because the terms I use will come up many times in the writing. Specifically, I want to talk about the idea of skill.

Skill

Most people talk about weapons in terms of skill. How skilled do you need to be to use a weapon? Does this weapon take skill to use? Or is it a noob tube? Ideally, you want to be sure that a weapon's effectiveness is proportionate to the amount of skill it takes to use it- and keep that proportion constant on all of your weapons. But what the hell does skill mean anyway? People throw the word around when talking about weapons without elating to their meaning. To me, skill can be broken down into 3 components.

1. “Twitch” or Motor Control Skill – The how well you do the basic executions, including aiming, and Leading. How quickly can you press the buttons, and how precise can you make your player movements and weapons fire. Requires good hand-eye coordination in a virtual 3D space. Can use critical thinking, over time is “learned” and becomes instinct.
2. Analytical or “Tactical” Skills – Knowing the best way to going about your basic executions. Knowing when or how much you need to lead. Knowing the optimal position you need to be in to do something. Knowing your constraints and how to work within them. Knowing when you can fudge the rules. Requires critical thinking.
3. Strategic Skills – Understanding of the overarching game, and determining the best plan of action to reach a goal. Requires critical thinking.

You can think of it like this:

There is a problem. To succeed, I need to determine the best plan of action to take. I need to determine the manner in which I am going to do this plan of action. And I need to do the execute the plan as best as I can.

There is a hiearchy in play here. Strategy, Tactics, Twitch.

When you're coaching a team, you're thinking top-down, focused on strategy and developing and refining tactical and twitch skills. When you're first learning a game, you're learning bottom-up, starting with twitch, and overtime mastering strategy.

This idea of skill applies to all aspects of the game, but it's especially important to keep these distinctions in mind when concerning weapons and tools- they are the primary reason anything gets done. So without further ado, let's jump into the weapons.

Weapons

Disc Launcher
This is the bread and butter weapon of Tribes. This is the shit. Essentially a rocket launcher, it's a staple to most every loadout. There is nothing wrong with how this weapon functions- and why fix what's not broken? There is one thing that needs to be addressed, and that is the fact that T1's projectile inheritance was 50% of the player momentum, and T2C's projectile inheritance was 75%. I'd go halfway with inheritance to compromise with both camps. This of course applies to more than just the disc, but it is worth bringing up ecspecially in this case because of the impact of mid-air discs to the game. Of course, the explosion impulse needs to be mapped to a function as opposed to a linear impulse, to get the feeling of disc jumping just right.

Chaingun
Essentially fires projectiles at a fast clip, in a somewhat tight cone of fire. It's the weapon of choice for airborne targets. It's pretty unreliable at a distance, but becomes largely more effective when together with many other teammates – it's a good way Tribes promotes teamplay without forcing it. This is a controversial weapon for many people because of it's apparent lack of skill required, and the reliance of “spray and pray”. I however would disagree to some extent- there are many things you need to be able to do to be effective as a player when using the weapon.

For an example of what it takes to chaingun effectively, look at what happens when you chase someone (a prime example, because when you are chasing a flag carrier, you are trying to chain him out of the sky a majority of the time). When you are chasing, you have to lead the target to some degree to get hits- and that's not always easy with a fast moving object moving across your screen. And in order to be more precise with your leading from a distance, you need to be zoomed in at least a bit, and this means you can't always see the ground below you- and if you are in the air and chaining someone, sometimes the ground is not visible in your view at all. But chasing requires you to move fast in a hurry to intercept the capper- so hitting the right bowls and hills is essential. Because of this, chasing a capper with the chaingun requires a good sensibility of where you are in the air- you essentially need to manage your lead on the target and your own position and movement all at the same time.

Sure, anyone can stand on a hill and chainwhore enemies passing by- but he likely could be doing a million more effective things than that.

The chaingun doesn't need a change from T2C. Unlike the chaingun in T:V, it should have a spin up and spin down- this is one of the important balancing factors for the weapon. You need to commit to shooting the chaingun because of it's spin up, so you need to choose when to use it wisely.

Another thing I want to address about the chaingun is the use of scripts to change network interpolation. The fact these variables were built into Tribes 2 and were made open for editing suggests it's not really a cheat, but it wasn't easy for a common user to change these variables without using a script, so it was either you had it, or you didn't. I personally didn't notice much of a difference when I accidentally turned off my interpolate script for a month, but I can say it definitely adds something of an advantage. People like having that amount of control over their network settings, and it's no different than wanting to play on a server that gives you a better ping than another. For these reasons, I'd suggest an equivalent of the interpolate script with a GUI to be written into a game from the get-go to allow everyone access to these net tools.

Blaster
The blaster is one of those weapons that is begging to be used, but doesn't really seem useful at anything in particular. I like to equate it to the pistol in Half Life, or the Assault Rifle in UT- pretty much any wimpy weapon in a game you start out with that you quickly find a replacement for (makes sense, since it IS the player's default weapon). Many people in T1 and T2 used a script that automatically threw the blaster away after spawning- just the idea makes me roll my eyes. 

The blaster did try to fill a role to some extent- it's ability to penetrate shields made it a useful weapon for spawn LDs in widdling down the health of shield pack heavies. Many indoor HD decide to give a weapon slot to the blaster instead of the mortar, since it's obviously more useful than something that can take out your base. So it seems like it wants to be a weapon for defense. But the fact of the matter is, the projectiles travel so slow, and the projectiles do so little damage, that most any other weapon would be more effective taking up that weapon slot (even the ELF). The blaster also seems to want to fill the niche of the disc launcher, but fails on every level. There are a few things I can think of that would help the blaster fill a defensive role better.

One technique- one we've seen two Tribes projects use (Legends, and Enemy Territory:Tribal Wars) is turning the blaster into an assault rifle of sorts, firing quick rounds. Something that functions like a chaingun but with a tighter arc, and having each shot do less damage per shot. Also, the projectiles still eat up your energy and penetrate through shields. And the gun would have to be semi-auto, and the projectiles could only travel so far. This would make the blaster inherently more useful in tearing up shield HO by many LD players working together, and firing upon the heavy from a distance (which is ideally where spawning LD players want to be anyway).

There is another solution I have thought up that couples the blaster and another weapon together, but I will get to that later. Basically, the blaster needs to be useful for something. Or in better terms, more effective at what it could be useful for.

Grenade Launcher
Again, another weapon that I don't believe needs to be changed. It is yet another weapon that can mess people up and fast, but it's pretty much only useful on land targets. To successfully land a mid-air nade, you need to not only account for the grenade's delayed fuse, but the arc that the nade travels in as well, and the grenade hitbox- MAs are almost never seen. The rapid fire of the grenade launcher makes it great for spamming flag stands, and the delayed fuse makes it a decent weapon at defending indoor areas because it can bounce around corners (the grenades bounce everywhere though, so a D player needs to be cautious when using it indoors). Sure, it can deal a great amount of damage and very fast- but if you become prey to it, it means you probably should have been moving around a bit more, and not as predictably. No change on the grenade launcher.

Plasma Rifle
The plasma rifle, like the blaster, seems to want to be the disc launcher- it fires a slow moving projectile. This weapon is a bit more successful at mimicking the disc launcher than the blaster is, but it still falls short. The projectile can do a lot of damage, but you cannot disc jump with a plasma burst- in fact, you can't knock around people much at all with the plasma, but you can with a well-placed disc. So plasma rifle falls short of the niche. This is a weapon I think needs to be changed.

And I might have to put my foot in my mouth for saying it, but I personally liked the direction Tribes Vengeance took with this weapon, turning it into an area of denial weapon. Area of denial weapons had not been done in Tribes before this (you could argue that the mortar might've been one, but mortar rounds don't linger like burner rounds did)- and the concept works great for protecting areas of an indoor base, or blanketing cap routes. It was a bit silly that the burner used energy- this is one thing I disliked about the weapon. But otherwise, adding another tool like this to the defensive utility belt could be a welcome thing if done right.

For one, the plasma rounds should travel slow, and only “explode” into a lingering fire once touching something. The fire damage should not stack (in order to prevent spamming doorways by turtles- a turtle would have to choose an area to cover with the lingering plasma, instead of laying it out all in one concentrated heap. And if he covered an entire area of the base, he'd also realize he'd be cutting off that area for personal use, too). As well, I don't think the plasma shots should travel as straight as the burner shots- they'd have to arc a little bit (not as much as the grenade, but to some degree). This would add for a bit of difficulty a defensive player would have to overcome in order to not accidentally hit himself or a teammate in the face with burning plasma.

This weapon would likely require a LOT of fine tuning, but I've always liked the idea of an area of denial weapon in Tribes. It forces players to change up their routes a bit, or otherwise address the risk vs. reward of running into an area on fire.

Shocklance
Clutch. Gimmicky. Unfair. Uneffective in the overall meta. Many things can be said about this weapon, and it makes for a pretty controversial weapon. But why not have it be controversial, it's really the only melee weapon in the game! 

The assassins choice... and deadly in the hands of people who use it well (and horrible in the hands of the inexperienced). This weapon didn't do much damage on a frontal attack, and the refire time for it is ridiculous. But a hit to the back of the head meant instant death to any player- including shielded heavys, and this is what made it a weapon of choice for many LDs. You HAD to be good at it though. If you missed a backlance, that means you just wasted a lot of time that could have been used firing another weapon without as much risk. But if you nailed a backlance, you just saved yourself a bundle of time, effort, and ammo. And backlances weren't always easy against a target who knew how to move. 
 

I'd keep the shocklance's functionality relatively similar, with one added challenge- having to hold fire to charge a shot. And only a fully charged shot could deliver a backlance. This makes the weapon just that much harder to use, and not as easy to “cheat” with. You would need to be a master of timing, opportunistic, and precise.

I come to this perspective from a varied background. I practiced with the shocklance for a few months before even becoming somewhat effective with it- I've since become rusty and horrible at it, and never use it. And I have also been on the receiving end of a backlance, but I can appreciate the difficulty it takes to do because of how much practice I had with it- so I never really considered it cheap. It really is a do-or-die weapon. You miss, you give away your position and can't fire anything for a second or so. You pretty much become cannon fodder.

Laser Rifle 
The laser rifle was the sniper rifle of Tribes. It pushed all of your suit's energy into a single shot- and a full charge on a light armor certainly meant death for the unfortunate soul. The difficulty came in waiting for your energy to recharge to take another shot, or to even jetpack out of the way. And you had to be in light armor, with an energy pack, to use it. It became a very niche weapon, used primarily by LOFs, and by the dreaded Osnipers.

There is a huge cultural component to the mentality many Tribes players harbor towards players who take the laser rifle out offensively. Although its technically a legit tactic in the game, it is frowned upon by many. I've racked my head about why I dislike Osnipers. Maybe it's because it doesn't seem to fit with the overarching metagame in competitive Tribes, it doesn't seem to server a purpose other than to distract the enemy defense. Maybe it's because it makes me feel like someone is trying to play Call of Duty or Counterstrike in a Tribes game. Maybe it's because many Osnipers went for headshots on players buying vehicles from their vehicle bay. All I know is, I'm not alone when I say: Osniping is lame.

That is why I approve of the idea of the laser rifle requiring energy AND ammo to fire, like the one in Tribes Vengeance- at the very least, it made it so shots were more precious, and an Osniper would have to take a deployable inventory along with him to do damage in any stretch of time (often to the dismay of their team). Let's not forget, LOFs are discouraged from being sniper-happy all the time too- Tribes isn't about having camping snipe wars, it's about perpetual action. Snipes should be done frugally and deliberately by the LD and LOF. Because of these reasons, I'd probably limit the ammo on a sniper rifle to a single digit number. Likely no more than 8. This admittedly would be a constraint put in place to discourage what is considered “misuse” of the weapon by a culture of players- but it likely would be the only game design decision of this kind made for this game. Aside from the ammo requirements, there would be no other changes made to this weapon. Following the KISS method sometimes is the best way to think about making weapon changes.

In short, Osnipers suck, and sniping as an LD is honorable, but sniping LDs smell bad. 

ELF
The ELF is arguably the black sheep of all of the weapons in Tribes 2. Some find it irritating, some people find it does more harm to your team than good. Most people think it's wimpy. It certainly doesn't take much motor skill to use. The fact of the matter is much of the competitive community never saw a use for the ELF- but overlook the fact that when used surgically, it can help out defense a lot.

The writers of the Tribes 2 Classic mod spent a lot of time going through each item in the game and revamping the values to ensure each item was balanced while also playing a role. They got much flak over many of these changes from passionate people- as we all know how passionate Tribes players are. One of the writers claimed he got two fairly long e-mails in the same day right before the final push for Classic- one was an argument that the ELF was worthless, and one was an argument that the ELF was overpowered. The fact that this happened just accentuates the fact that you can't please everybody all the time.

When you press fire on the ELF, the weapon uses your energy reserve to emit a beam that basically latches onto the closest player in a specified cone, and drains their energy at a pretty respectable clip. In Tribes 2 base, this weapon was devastating, because energy meant much more. Without the speeds you got in Classic, you had to rely on jetting unpredictably to stay alive- so being grounded by the ELF meant a timely death.

In Classic, speed is king. Arguably more important than energy. Because of this, competitive players have argued that the speeds that you can achieve essentially nullified the weapon because of it's limited range- that you're better off firing another weapon at a person instead of draining their energy. And the weapon is known for changing its target to a closer friendly player on a whim.

My case for the weapon is that it's great when used on enemy shield pack HO when the HO is between you and your friendly LD. All armors carry only 3 mines- and to take out a HO's shields in a timely manner, you either have to use up 2 mines for mine-discs, or have two LD on a HO at one time mine-discing. And then you have to kill the HO, often with yet another mine-disc. When a team fields many HO at you, and they are perpetually coming in, you don't have time to resupply ammo to get all the mines you need to take out those HO. You need to harm the HO.

The ELF is a great solution for this (for the team who knows how to work together). You get one person behind the HO to ELF them while the others give the HO punishment in the front. The HO loses his shields fast, can't jet away, can't traverse backwards, and is now forced to fight. Many mines are saved in the utilization of this technique. Of course, you never see competitive players doing this- they rather stick to their tried-and-true methods for HO disruption.

I like the ELF. I like the idea of a weapon that drains energy- I think it has its place in a game that is all about movement, when jetting is a huge factor to movement. I will agree that the way the ELF does its thing could be changed to be more effective, and not have the risk of being as detrimental to your fellow teammates. And require more precision motor skill than simply just pressing the fire button. Some aiming should be involved here.

While the changes I've thought of thus far for weapons have been relatively simple, this one is a bit more complex. Remember when I mentioned I had an idea for the blaster? This is where this comes in- the idea of coupling both the blaster and ELF together into one energy weapon. Combining two weapons into one of course means you have one less weapon to work with in the game. But this weapon would fill a niche and be great at what it does- stopping shield HO.

My idea is that the weapon would be a charged weapon- holding fire charges a shot, pulling energy from your reserve. The longer you charge it, the larger the shot, the slower the projectile moves, but also the more damage it inflicts. The projectiles pass through shields. And a fully charged shot has the capability of completely draining its target's energy pool. You can decide to fire the weapon like a semi-auto, clicking rapidly to make many pea shots at a player- this would essentially make it function like an assault rifle. Or you could decide to charge up a huge slow-moving energy blob that fizzles out a player's energy and leaves him a sitting duck. Voila, the ultimate shield HO disrupting weapon, that still requires skill to use.

I'm going to apologize right here and now for turning the piece on the ELF into an essay...

Missile Launcher
When I was a fresh face to Tribes, I absolutely hated the missile launcher. I hated the fact that I had to always carry flares. I hated the fact that if I ever tried to use another grenade and used my jets, I was met by a high-pitched siren and shortly after by a missile to the face. I hated how it seemed like the weapon required no skill to use.

Of course, this was back in base, when I humped my jet key to no end. Since then, players have jumped to classic and can move faster, and I've learned better energy management. I just recently learned that you can only be locked onto if your energy reserve falls below your heat gauge- whether this was a feature in Classic or something they implemented in Base is beyond me, but a nice thing to know regardless. Missiles don't bother me so much- it's just something I've taken to be a part of the game: if you're going to cap, you're likely gonna carry flares. But I won't lie, I've often wondered what kind of grenade I would take with me capping if I didn't need flares. It would probably change the meta quite a bit, all the way from the game at the stand, to the base defense game. Think of all of the things that would change if you didn't have to worry about missiles.

I've been on the fence on whether or not the missile launcher needs to be changed from Tribes 2 Classic. After all, it does require your reticule to be on a target for a second or two, so in some sense it requires “skill”. It's pretty much the only other weapon you can rely on to take out base assets from a distance, besides the mortar (and mortars can bounce off assets, making them unreliable when firing at assets on a small floating platform). And it's the only weapon that can deter vehicles (though it was horrible at actually killing them when there was a skilled pilot behind the wheels).

There was one concept for a rocket launcher a respected member of the community had recently come up with, that seems relatively sane compared to some of the more exotic ideas out there. And it would be simple, too. The rocket launcher wouldn't need a lock to fire, and the rocket would travel straight- until something with a heat signature was in it's path. It would then track the object, and continue to tail it until it hit the object, or found an object with a hotter path to follow. The rocket would travel pretty fast (fast enough to reach flying vehicles), but its turn radius would be pretty narrow. This would require the user of a rocket launcher to lead its target, and make sure nothing with a stronger heat signature was in its path. 

On the upside, the rocket could now be fired dumb-fire on stationary assets. Flares could still be used to sway the missile away, but it wouldn't ensure the rocket would always hit the flare- with it's limited turn radius, the rocket could potentially drive straight into the ground in an attempt to track the flare (meaning that using a flare to stop a rocket might not always be the best solution for base defense, because it could cause the rocket to fly into something else at your base). A capper would no longer need flares to shake a rocket. But the capper and the shrikes would have to make evasive maneuvers to get off the rocket's path. The rocket launcher would still have a fairly slow refire rate, so the fact that the rocket initially travels straight would not mean it would be used in place of the disc.

Of course, this is just one idea for the rocket out of many. I recall many ideas being thrown into the mix at the Ascension forums when we were talking about changing it, and none of them really grabbed me. The question is, what would a good alternative to the rocket launcher's current functionality? If it even needs to be changed at all? Maybe it's good to have missile launchers the way they are, in order to “keep cappers honest” and refuse them extra firepower when they don't need it.

Mortar 
This was another weapon I hated the ever loving crap out of when I was new to Tribes. Fast forward to this year, when I used the mortar weapon in Tribes Ascend and complained that it was horribly underpowered, and you can see my perspective has changed a lot. The mortar is a huge part of the overarching meta in Tribes. A mortar is essentially a grenade launcher with a longer refire rate, a longer fuse, but a huge blast radius, and the ability to obliterate most everything in its range. It's the reason that the primary objective of Tribes is jested to be “Capture the Flag, and Stop the Heavys”. A heavy has a lot to be worried about- he is essentially a walking mini-boss, everyone wants a piece of him, because he is the only one who can carry around a mortar. He is slow, he is big, he is clumsy, and there are many ways that he can die. But he is relied on to take base assets out, and if he is caught in the same room as the mortar he just fired when it goes off, he adds himself to the list of it's victims. Sure, you can kill people easily with the weapon. It's not an especially “hard” weapon to kill people with- but that's not the point. The skill required to use the weapon lies it's utilization.

This is one weapon I wouldn't mess with. The only thing I would change is it's blast-radius. A mortar should not be able to take out the entire room in the Stonehenge base- it should take out most of it, but not all of it. Here is another place Tribes Vengeance did something right- the blast radius was just right in Vengeance. Not too big, but not too painfully small (like in Ascend). It was “just right”. 
 

In Conclusion 

For the most part, I love the weapons in Tribes. It's a huge factor of what Tribes what it is. But there is always work that needs to be done. But changes shouldn't happen for the sake of change (a pattern we are seeing in many games these days)- it needs to aimed at improving the functionality that is already there. Sometimes changes should be simple. Sometimes, a difficult situation arises that allows for more complex answers. But the final gameplay experience should always be on the forefront of your mind.

So I just shared my ideas, what about you? Do you have any idea of how you'd refactor and balance the weapons? What weapons really worked, and what didn't? Do you still hate the ELF? Really, you do? Why? :( 

Seriously though, any constructive comments are welcome here, let's keep the ball rolling!