Movement : Skiing

Forward
This is the first part of many I plan to write about the movement system in Tribes. Before getting into the nitty gritty details of movement and skill, I wanted to first give a brief overview of the systems of movement.

Introduction
Skiing played a huge role in what Tribes successful- and as said before, most agree it is at the core of Tribes. Skiing made it possible to achieve very fast speeds in the game- and unlike other shooters that were fast-paced due to the ability to change direction on the ground on a dime, Tribes was fast paced due to gravity, long falls, and raw speed. Redirection was more gradual, and the twitch play was entirely different than what you see in traditional arena shooters- because it was more about leading, and less about quick reflexes.

The Birth of Skiing
How was skiing “discovered” or “invented” ? Many claim it was the players who found it during the beta of the original game. Many claim it was the developers. So really, who was it? I thought it may be helpful to ask Scott Youngblood, the lead designer and mastermind behind Tribes 1 and Tribes 2, to entertain the question.

His response:

Yes, I remember specifically the day the skiing was discovered. Symlink (Dave Moore) was working on the physics of Jet packing one day… and he came into my office and said that he found a bug with our jet packing… but he wanted to show it to me before he fixed it. I went to his office, sat down at his chair and he told me what to do….

“Alright… he said… Jet up over that hill until you’re above a slope going down….”

“Then let yourself start to fall… and right as your about to hit the ground, start tapping space.”

He didn’t tell me what was going to happen… he just told me what to do.

So I Did it…. And before I could get to the top of the next hill I uttered these words:

“Don’t fix this…. We will USE this.”

Skiing was borne...

...We purposely didn’t TELL people about it because we wanted you to discover it. Players have much more fun with things that they can discover than things they are told about.

The Phyiscal System / The Act of Skiing
Player movement in Tribes, if looked at in terms of a physical system, is a rube goldberg machine on crack, pumping out more energy than what it is taking in. At the top of a hill, the player holds down the ski button and directs himself down it- his potential energy becomes kinetic energy as he starts gaining speed. No energy is lost due to friction- so as long as the player is heading downhill, he will accelerate- on a flat surface, he maintains momentum.

On an upwards slope, the player engages his jetpacks- he uses up the jetpack fuel (energy) in order to ascend over the battlefield, losing a bit of lateral speed, but gaining much in vertical speed. There is a brief moment of hangtime, where huge lateral distances can be crossed as the player levels out. The heights the player reaches garners him a lot of potential energy. The player then begins to fall at very fast speeds.

While falling, the player makes fine-tuned course adjustments with by tapping his jets in order to fall into a downhill slope at roughly the same enterance angle as the slope angle, ensuring no health is lost in the energy transaction. The player then holds the ski button before landing, and swoops down into the next valley. The jetpack is constantly regenerating energy when not in use, so while falling and skiing, all of the energy you use on your last ascent is all replenished. And the process repeats itself- it is with the repitition that great speeds can be achieved.

Types of Skiing
One of the many controversial topics Tribes players have discussed over the years is the best form of skiing- it's one of the many reasons the Tribes community has been fractured. Simply put, there are two forms of skiing- “jump skiing” and “smooth skiing”.

Jump Skiing
“Jump Skiing” happens with a jump at every contact with the ground- this makes net prediction and aim prediction a bit harder since the players are not moving smoothly, but changing direction often (after every “bounce”)- player movement has to be extrapolated with the bounces in mind for any prediction to take place. Jump skiing looks silly admittedly- it looks like a bug from an old game. Some people like that though, it feels “glitchy” and part of a finicky player-made experience- much like wall jumping in Gunz or bunny hopping in Quake, it pays an homage to “emergent gameplay”.

A large part of what made jump skiing feel correct was an “elastic” player collision system. In most modern games, a player’s velocity and direction are only adjusted when they are jumping or landing and come in contact with a surface- otherwise, they “stick” to the ground and move along the ground normal (thus making the collision a bit “velcroish”). In Tribes, your collision normal with the ground, and position and velocity changes were made every tick, no matter what. Regardless of whether you were in mid-air, just jumping, just landing, or walking. This made all the player movement feel very elastic in nature. As far as I know, most modern games that use “smooth skiing” rely on a velcroish collision system- I reckon that it makes for less collision computations, and saves on system resources and bandwidth a little bit.

Anyway, jumping gave you an initial upwards acceleration before even tapping the jets, which easily complimented the jetting. As well, jumping allowed use of your side jets much faster- if you jetted before jumping, there would be a lag in the power of the side-jets. For these reasons, it made sense that the jumping key was also the skiing key- it was more intuitive. With jump skiing, the differences between carving from game to game are more subtle and easily adjusted for, since carving is not system-moderated like it is with smooth skiing.

Smooth terrain was not always needed with jump skiing- sometimes a bit of jagged terrain was actually preferred with this system, allowing for quick redirections given you attacked the terrain patches at the right angles. Small imperfections in an otherwise downwards slope could easily be hopped over using jumping skiing- which made some of the more jagged maps a bit more tolerable.

The one major flaw jump skiing had was deadstops. There would sometimes be spots in the terrain or on buildings that, if hit just right, would make the player come to a complete “dead stop” or bounce in an unintended way. I believe this had something to do with the player landing on the edge of a triangle, where the physics engine couldn’t sort between the different verts in the collision octet tree or what have you (I’m not completely sure on the fancy math terms). Some techniques to prevent deadstops from occurring exist- one is to make the player hitbox “pill-shaped”- another is to ensure there is as little flat terrain as possible. Another is to make sure no two floor surfaces rub up against one another too much (very important when working with the .map format when making maps for Tribes and Tribes 2).


Games That Use Jump Skiing:
Tribes 1 was where skiing was first invented/discovered. In Tribes 1, terrain was more blocky, and you needed to know your route to every minute detail, or you could easily lose all your velocity or be sent off a different direction. But side jets were stronger in Tribes 1 than in Tribes 2. In T1 you did most your redirecting while in the air. Snipes and other shots were a bit easier to dodge by strafing at the apex.

You can find a very substantial explanation and dissection of the Tribes 1 physics on [5150] Andrew's blog, found here: http://floodyberry.wordpress.com/2008/02/20/tribes-1-physics-part-one-overview/

Tribes 2 included skiing not as a bug, but as a feature- so it felt more fluid and intuitive. In Tribes 2, terrain was made much smoother. In Tribes 2 Classic (T2C), speeds gained using skiing felt a bit greater than in T1, and the increased tessellation of the terrain object made slopes more gradual. However, in Tribes 2 there was less sideways jetting; you did most of your redirecting on the ground by carving in bowls, not in the air. Snipers more easily countered by hugging terrain, compared to strafing at the apex. In a general statement, most veterans have said Tribes 1 skiing was more finicky and temperamental, whereas Tribes 2 skiing was more soupy and loose.

Legends was another game that used jump skiing. They claimed they had the physics of Tribes 1, which was debatable. It felt more like T1 physics adjusted to feel more like T2- which wasn't bad at all, really. It was easy for both T1 and T2 players alike to get used to Legends.

Smooth Skiing
Smooth skiing where player actually glides along surface without hopping- it feels more natural, looks more realistic, and is more aesthetically pleasing or “correct” to some people. Dead stops aren’t as big of a problem with smooth skiing than it was for jump skiing. However, carving systems are harder to implement with smooth skiing- and differences in carving are more readily noticeable..

Smooth skiing also suffers from a wonky ski/jump, jump/jet system. Jump jetting still needed, and you had to ski, jump, and jet all at some point. This system where two actions happen with the same key, either both on press, or one one press, one on unpress, very wonky, not intuitive.

Smooth skiing also relies on smooth terrain, which in poly land isn’t always the case, especially on maps that had terrain just slapped onto it. With smooth skiing, you feel every imperfection in the terrain. Unless a system is cleverly designed where your player can “roll over” the small imperfections, the tiny pits and bumps will be the bane to smooth skiing. And ultra smooth terrain makes for a very uninteresting map, catering to uninteresting game play.

Games That Use Smooth Skiing:
Tribes Vengeance was one of the first games to have smooth skiing. In T:V you had no carving at all, skiing just simply removed friction from your feet, and was not reliant on your facing direction or directional keys at all. Your redirection was soully at discretion of the terrain, and you had to use jets to hover up and land into hills at a “sweet spot” or tap jets for quick redirecting (carving with jets, as it were). The lack of carve control was offset a bit by having air control while in mid-air without needing to use jets. The old Tribes vets were thrown for a loop. Those who played T:V as their first Tribes game picked it up quite fast. I wouldn't go so far as to call it intuitive- it was more watered down than intuitive, and appeared like an attempt to make intuitive controls met only halfway- the lack of carving really hurt the game.

Tribes Ascend, the next game in the series, used smooth skiing with some form of carve control, which proved quite better at slower speeds, but felt very ineffective at higher speeds. At higher speeds, it was possible to get skiing to “kick in” and work more effectively by tapping the jets a few times- this felt wonky, and unnatural. As well, you lost momentum at an alarming rate while heading uphill- making it so players avoided skiing uphill altogether (in other games, you wanted to ski up at least part of the next uphill before jetting up over it).

There have been plenty of other games over the ears that have used smooth skiing, including Ascension, Legions:Overdrive, and more recently Project Freefall, and Legacy. Legacy in my opinion has the best feeling carving to date. SmoothP claims he has taken a look at Andrew's T1 physics write-up and refactored all of the variables into a smooth skiing system.

Which is Better?
So is it smooth skiing or jump skiing? Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Jump skiing feels more buggy in nature, but also caters to that oldschool arena player nostalgia- and we all want to see some of the fast-paced intense action of the old games come back. Smooth skiing feels more refined, mature, and eye-catching, but it lacks some of the extra mobility features jump-skiing had, had quirky control schemes, and carving is harder to make feel right without spending a good deal of time on it.

My opinion? Jump-skiing is better. Its what I'm most used to, and it pays an homage to the old games, for which we owe a lot to. However, much effort needs to be spent on battling the dreaded deadstops if you plan on using this method.

Smooth skiing isn't bad- and it is easier to appeal to a newer audience using it. If this is used, consider inventing a new control scheme that makes jumping, skiing, and jetting intuitive. Perhaps use a different bind for jumping than what you use for skiing, so you can still jump while skiing to get past those pesky little bumps, and you can still jump before jetting for that extra boost in mobility. Using 3 keys for movement might be a bad... it's one you'd have to feel out.

The Mission of "FPSZ"

Forward
This is yet another document I found in my archives collecting dust which seems relevant this week, after recently been addressed by another Tribes indie dev who is thinking up something big for us Tribes gamers. It goes into detail of why we picked the name "FPSZ" to categorize our old disbanded game, Ascension. Kinda funny how this term stuck- used when referencing Legions, and used in referencing Ascend. It makes me proud every time I hear the term used, that it came from us at RenWerX. So without further adieu...

Mission Goal
FPSZ wasn't a term we tried to used to "market" Ascension as Amadeus would say- though it did help in that regard when you consider we were trying to rebrand ourselves afer leaving Tribes Vengeance:Renegades behind. We made the switch to creating a full-fledged game. When I coined the term FPSZ it meant to be something tangible for all people who love Tribes as its core could rally behind. The Tribes gameplay was the result of exploiting a bug in the early stages of a game, a mistake many Tribes players would call the most beloved game bug to ever exist in gaming history. The game community that grew up around the game were just as quirky in their nature as the game itself, just like the clumsy beginning of a bug known to us as skiing.

The game suffered from many unfortunate circumstances- it came out near the dawn of internet gaming, a huge digital frontier free from a lot of restrictions there are in games these days. There wasn't as many people playing games then as there are now. During this time games were more easily shared by friends illegally too, so Tribes developed an underground following. And as the community grew the player community became more splintered because different players preferred different "flavors" of Tribes. Most players of Tribes seem to have a very passionate bias for how they played Tribes. It also didn't help that the game was hard to really explain to other people without showing them- the notion of skiing and jetting, and all of the other quirky things about the game. Because of all of these factors, the outward appearance of Tribes was murky at best.

Getting to the point- during of our rebranding meetings. I considered the nature of the community, considered everything I mentioned above, in my stream of thought. And it occured to me- the gameplay ought to be symbolized or represented by something. Something tribals could rally behind. Something short and to the point- and, eureka, FPSZ. The term meant "FPS plus emphasis in the Z axis" (which was the up axis in the cartisean coordinate system, in the engine we were using, and in most engines now a days). FPSZ wasn't meant to be "edgey" or "elite"- as it may have seemed- though many players of other shooters did claim to "graduate" to Tribes, so the "Z" could stand for that, sure. But for us, FPSZ meant a certain, specific thing. Shooters of the FPSZ genre were to have skiing and jetting as main mobility in the game. That's something most if not ALL Tribes players (who are normally unagreeable) can agree is at the core of Tribes. FPSZ was meant to be the umbrella term for all of these styles of play, and obviously be a sub-genre of FPS games.

I slowly became addicted to Tribes when I first started playing it. So it really struck a nerve when people argued "Tribes is dead"- because its game play is so unique, I thought how could people even say that? These days all the games out there seem the same, and Tribes is something different, but totally under-appreciated by the masses. I wanted to make a Tribes game- I made it one of my life's goals, and it's kept me going for quite some time. From a game development perspective, it seemed like a gold-mine: something investors would still be able to get behind if it was explained in the right way and finally showcased to the masses in an appealing light with a name they'd remember. Something tangible.

So that's why FPSZ exists- it was my answer to the problem. FPSZ meant giving the Tribes community something to stand behind. If the community embraced it. If they did, we wouldn't have to call our game a 'Tribes successor' or 'Tribes Remake' and no longer would the game style be shrouded in obscurity. And starting from there, we'd build up.

In ways you can say my "FPSZ" answer is similiar to the answer given to...

"Hey! This bug is really neat to use, but I don't know how to explain it to my friend, what I should call it?"

"...skiing"

I don't know if this will be taken seriously or not- but I want to appeal to everyone who loved the idea of skiing and jetting- and who will be sad if it ever really dies- I want to appeal to you to band together under "FPSZ"- and if a game ever tries to capture the nature of Tribes, call it a "FPSZ". It's a practical way to promote and increase awareness of the gameplay.

That was the mission goal of FPSZ.

How "Ball Sense" Applies to Tribes

I recall roughly a year ago when many Tribes players were still amped and hopeful for the release of Tribes:Ascend, when a post was made on the "Tribes:Ascend" thread of the Tribalwar forums by SmoothP. It was essentially an essay about "Ball Sense" and it's relation to the "essence of Tribes". It has stayed fresh in my memory even a year later. I think it's important to post here, because of its clarity and its truth- "Ball Sense" is present in Tribes to an extent not found in other shooter games, and it's because of this fact that the game is loved to this day.

Football, Baseball, Soccer, Hockey, Basketball, Lacrosse, Rugby, Handball, Hurling... What do all these things have in common? They are team sports played with balls. As soon as children learn to walk, they start playing with balls. Throwing them, kicking them, catching them, hitting them. Ball games are part of the human experience, our brains are wired for them. As hunters we used projectiles to take down prey, and even in ancient cultures we find evidence of using balls in recreational sport.

In Sweden, they have a term that translates into English as "Ball Sense". We all as humans have some innate amount of ball sense, and begin improving it from birth. When throwing away a piece of trash, people often throw or shoot it into the trash can. Our ball sense is what lets us make that shot without computing how far away the trash can is, how fast and in what direction our chair is rolling, or how high we need to arc the shot in order to get it over the corner of the desk. An average person may not be able to throw a football 50 yards and hit a wide reciever running at full steam, or make a jump shot while falling down after getting bumped in midair, but we can *understand* and *appreciate* these acts because of our ball sense.

The essence and beauty of Tribes is that it speaks to these innate human qualities. It engages our ball sense, and stimulates us at a primal level. Watching even pro level CoD is fairly boring... "Oh, he ran around another corner and held down his trigger and shot that guy with a machine gun. *Yawn*" But watching quality Tribes play? It's a highly engaging experience. Seeing the shots, the timing, the skill... it's in our nature to appreciate what's on display! And playing Tribes at a competent level? It's Zen-like. You can "feel" the motion of your player and your opponent. "See" the future before it happens, in an ancient and primal part of your mind. "Know" when at what angle to fire that disc to hit just the right spot at just the right time. Without doing any computations... our minds were *built* with the ability to make those computations without thinking! Playing Tribes brings out those parts of our mind that let us take down wolves with a sling shot, buffalo with a bow and arrow, deer with a javelin. We were made for this!

There is something deeply engaging about making that disc shot, or dropping that perfect mortar round, or lobbing that perfect grenade. Much more engaging than twitch aiming a machine gun or locking on a missle. When a gamer first sees CoD, or CS, they may think, "Hmm, that looks pretty fun, and shooting things is cool." When a gamer first sees Tribes they think, "Wow! That is the coolest freaking FPS I've ever seen." They find it entralling. Because of our innate ball sense, they can immediately appreciate a great shot, even while its in flight. I know, I've introduced at least a dozen people to Tribes.
And that is why *every* loadout needs a primary weapon that is based on ball sense. Because ball sense is the essence of sport... of Football, of Baseball, of Soccer, of Hockey, of Basketball... of Tribes.

- SmoothP 

When I read this for the first time, I smiled and nodded, pretty much the whole way through. And when I take a step back and think to myself "Hey, this is about Tribes", I realize that the name of the game is a piece of deserving poetry.

It was because of a completely unintentionally borked physics system of the original game that players will able to ski and jet to achieve crazy speed- and it was over months of online play that a playstyle involving shooting slow moving explosives at fast aerial targets was developed and refined. Mid-air discs and long-arc explosives are celebrated even to this day, in the current title, Tribes:Ascend.

And now, Tribes players are very much like the tribal warriors written in the lore of human history, relying on primal instinct and hand-eye coordination. We don't throw spears at prey and predator to ensure we survive another day, but our "Ball Sense" is "alive" in some sense of the word when we score that mid-air disc to ensure our survival in the game. (You could also argue that we are just as brutal and territorial as tribal warriors are- just look at the amount of bashing and trolling that occurs on our community forums.) There is no other name more appropriate for this game than Tribes.

 I will admit, mid-air frag videos were one of the very first things that caught my attention about Tribes (though I stayed for many more reasons). We should never overlook how important Ball Sense is to the essence of Tribes. Because I can say surely, when you get to that point where you are confident that every shot you take will hit the enemy- when you can nail every MA you try for- it surely is an incredible experience. It makes you feel like a beast is inside of you.

Weapon Loadouts & Decision Making

Weapon Loadouts & Decision Making

One of the things I knew I wanted to address when brainstorming topics for Tribes Papers was the freedom of choice inherit in Tribes and Tribes 2, and how it played a big role in drawing people in and forming the tribal psyche. Specifically I want to talk about weapon choice, and how it affected the gameplay. I'm going to address what choice really means in the context of game design theory, and why it's definition should matter to the people who play Tribes. Finally, I will explain why I believe the system that the first two Tribes games uses works the best for an online shooter game, and I will offer comparisons to weapon systems that other games use.

Decisions, Problems, and Choices

Game design is about “designing decisions”. There is a lot of writing in the realm of game design dealing with decision making in roleplaying or otherwise story-driven games. But given how long online gaming has been around, it is a bit shocking how little work there is out there dealing with making decisions in online games. And decisions (according to James Portnow and Daniel Floyd of the Escapist) come in two forms- problems, and choices. And as Portnow explains, it is very important to make the distinction between the two. Most people use the terms interchangeably all the time. 
 

Problems

In real life, problems are the obstacles that lay between you and your goal. By the same token, in games, problems direct players towards their goal, whatever that may be. Choices let the player choose their goal. Every time a player is presented with a clearly defined goal, and the gameplay decisions are made in order to achieve that goal, those decisions are problems. On the other hand, choices are when a player has to choose between two things of equal or incomparable value. With problems, there is always a correct answer, and you must problem-solve to arrive at that answer. Choices do not have correct answers, and therefore are based on preference from the player.

 

Choices

Apple or Orange? Roses or Lilies? Chocolate or Vanilla? Does it even matter? These are examples of choices in a game. In traditional RPG games choices often present themselves as ethical choices, or as a choice between two weapons of separate but equal value (and this is the part I will get to later). Games generally have fewer choices than problems, but it's important to make the distinction. Often times people like to reduce choices to problems with a clear right-answer- and you can say this is an adaptive and common-sense approach to choices. We run into many choices without a clear answer every day in our real lives- what car to buy, what career path to take, where to live- things that you simply can't know a right answer to.

The problem that comes with building choices into games is that it normally takes a whole lot of effort to do so. No developer is going to spend hours creating the content for what happens if you say “No” if the game is based around you saying “Yes”. Also, often times rewards are built into a certain choice that make it far more favorable over another choice- and then the choice becomes a problem. Why not help this old man if he is going to give you a lot of money or items, and there is no gain for saying no? This happens in games all the time. 
 

Why the Distinction?

As I mentioned before, choices happen in real life all the time and we often have to live with the choices we make- this is a huge part of “the human experience” . Choices allow us to express ourselves to the outside world and are an example of free will. For games to appeal at an emotional level, they need to offer choice at least to some degree.

Another reason why choice is important to shooter games in particular is because of the motor skill involved in playing them over other games. Weapons in shooter games can only be as effective as the player using the weapon is at using them, and this is a fact a lot of people forget. These people often “prescribe” the best loadout or best way to do things as if it were a problem to be solved, when it is instead a choice based on preference. 
 

When Choices Became Problems

I've seen various things said by Tribes veterans, who have been here since the beginning, that I believe can be attributed to this common mistake people tend to make. Some veterans have said things along the lines of “I don't just want Tribes 1 to be brought back again, I want 1999 to be brought back again.” In other words, they want the feeling of experimentation they had at the dawn of internet gaming (when everything was new) to be brought back again. When skiing was just discovered, and people were learning different ways to play the game based on fast-paced movement. Back then, what to do wasn't so clear.

Vets have also said “All the strats in the game are war-proven now, there is nothing new to see.” As Tribes players began making names for themselves, different strategies and tactics became emphasized over others, changing decisions that were once choices into problems. There is now a “correct” or most efficient way to play. You didn't rely on mid-air discs to take someone out while dueling, you aimed for ground-shots and used the chaingun while in the air. You didn't rely on teamwork and flag passes to get the flag home, you relied on a fast capper who was clutch and could bring the flag home every time. You didn't use a bomber to take out enemy defense, you used spamming heavy offense. These are all examples of the mentality many vets harbor.

This is why any "fresh" game is initially appealing to a player- they offer various choices to experiment with. You could argue the reason why Tribes Ascend or Tribes Vengeance tried to break the mold so much was in order to get people out of the mindset of “This is the correct way to play.”

And personally, I feel as if this mentality becomes a weakness to some Tribes players to this day. Some people are so set in a way of doing things that they aren't willing to adjust to uncertain conditions, and try to change what isn't working. The best teams in the recent Tribes 2 Draft Tournaments have been the teams that have improvised more- not allowing cap routes to be camped, not allowing their team to be predictable to the enemy team.

The one popular remaining Tribes 2 server “Goon Haven” has many good examples of people making choices, and not relying on the “problem-solving” of other competitive players. Some use medium armors and det packs religiously. Some have become expert bomber pilots, arguably better than some HO playing competitively. I personally think at least once defensive player on a team should carry an ELF as it's more effective in taking out multiple enemies at once than using 3 mines on a heavy at one time, when you can only carry 5. One particularly vocal person in the Tribes community likes using mortar turrets and energy packs when he goes heavy.

You can argue about the effectiveness of all of things I have just mentioned- but the fact of the matter is, they are all choices made by people based on their preference and skill. And choices are aplenty in Tribes, and that's what gives the game so much replayability. If vets think the game has gotten boring, it's because they aren't expanding their horizons, much to their dismay. Even people in Vengeance began to fall victim to this way of thinking. Don't believe me? Try asking a group of Tribes players if the rocketpod weapon from Vengeance was underpowered or overpowered. It all has to do with preference and what the player is good at.

Weapon Choices in Tribes

Tribes has often been said to have been one of the prototypes for what online shooter games are today- and many developers behind games such as Battlefield and Planetside had been quoted as saying that they drew inspiration from Tribes. One of the many things that has been taken from Tribes was a sort of rudimentary class system. But Tribes did not have what we consider today to be a traditional class system, wherein games will have many classes with only a handful of weapons to choose from. Tribes made use of 3 simple armor classes- light, medium, and heavy. The light armor could hold 3 weapons in any order. The medium armor could hold 4 weapons in any order. And the heavy could hold 5 weapons in any order. This was known as the 3-4-5 system.

There were only minimal weapon restrictions for each class, but it set them apart a great deal. The sniper rifle could only be used by the light armor. The missile launcher could only be used by the medium and heavy armors. And the mortar cannon could only be used by the heavy armor. Besides that, the rest of the weapons in the game could be used by any of those armors. And every weapon had a special use or niche it filled (well, almost every- the plasma gun is arguable here as being very similar to the disc launcher).

I've tried to determine why a system like this was chosen- why Dynamix decided on such an open style for their game, considering there were other games being developed around the same time that used a more traditional class system. I believe it has partly to do with the original Earthsiege and Starsiege games that Tribes was a spinoff of.

Earthsiege (1994) was a mech simulation games based in the Earthsiege universe. In Earthsiege, like many mech games at the time, there was a variety of mechs you could choose from, each having different 'mounting' points to mount guns onto- many mechs used the same guns. This was very similar in other simulation games as well (for example, in the X-Wing (1994) series of games all the starfighters had the same weapons, but various weapon arrangements and different secondary weapons to set them apart). 
 
In the Earthsiege singleplayer campaign, you had to arm your mech and all of your bot teammate mechs in the most efficient manner for your playstyle considering your limited resources. Each mech only had so many mounting points, and there was only so much of every particular weapon you could use. You could decide to give every mech the same loadout, or build up each mech to play a specialized role. But the choice was there to do what you wanted- and it wasn't always clear what the best loadout was for your mechs.

Starsiege:Tribes definitely took the gameplay mechanic from this game- originally in Tribes there was only so much of every armor and weapon you could buy from an inventory station based on how many credits your team had. And of course, just like in Earthsiege, most of the weapons could be used by all the player types. It got to a point while playing Tribes online that most servers had the credit system turned off, and you could buy whatever you wanted without thinking about resources- Tribes 2 eventually did away with credits altogether.

I personally find the most enjoyment the Tribes loadout system than any other system I've seen in other games. The game gave you free reign over any of the weapons at any time you wished (granted you could get to a powered inventory station)- but while you had this ability to use all the weapons, you were constrained by having only so many weapon slots to fill and weapon restrictions based on your armor type. This is the perfect balance of freedom and constraint in my mind, and other games that fall to either side of this balance tend to be not as enjoyable to me.

Comparing Other Weapon Systems

I've tried to figure out why the Tribes system draws on me and so many others so much, and after searching my thoughts a while I believe it really does come back to the feeling of significant choice as opposed to problem-solving. There are games that offer you classes to play as, where you are restricted on how many weapons you can use based on your class, and have far fewer weapons to use when compared to the Tribes 3-4-5 system. On the other hand, many arena games offer the player all the weapons at once (usually requiring the player to find them all, but sometimes they spawn with all the weapons). Both of these systems have their flaws when it comes to limiting significant choice. I'm going to provide an impromptu graph to help visualize how the freedom of choice affects the number of significant choices you make, and I will discuss the examples below it (please keep in mind I am not claiming this to be fact, merely my way of thinking).

Strict Class-based Games

With traditional class-based games, there simply aren't enough choices in weaponry, and players are pigeon-holed into a specific role. As well, the limitation on choice is magnified by the fact that often there is a selection of weapons that often serves the role best.

There is no better example to paint this picture than Tribes Ascend, since we are talking about Tribes. No longer do we have 3 weapon slots for the light, 4 for the medium, 5 for the heavy- every “class” now only has 2 weapon slots, with very limited options of what weapons we can use for each slot based on what the role of the class is. Choice does seem to exist in the game, but often times there are loadouts that are obviously more effective than others. For example, there are 4 different combinations you can make with the Soldier class based on its weapons:

• Assault Rifle\Thumper
  
• Assault Rifle\Pistol
  
• Spinfusor \Pistol
  
• Spinfusor \Thumper

If you are to analyze each possible loadout, Assault Rifle\Thumper takes the win as the most effective loadout. Assault Rifle\Pistol gives you two bullet-based leading weapons, with nothing to use to perform a disc jump. The Spinfusor\Pistol loadout is a faithful match to AR\Thumper, but the pistol is semi-automatic requiring you to click every time, while the AR you can just spray and pray with. And Spinfusor\Thumper gives you two explosive weapons best suited towards ground-shots, with no easy capability for air-shots. AR\Thumper wins out here.

You can argue that this is a choice and not a problem, and I might give you that. It all comes down to preference, and what you are best with. But even then, with 2 weapons to pick in only 2 weapon slots, that's 4 separate weapon loadouts to choose from. For a medium in Tribes 2 that has access to 8 weapons to fill 4 weapon slots with, there are 24 different weapon loadouts to choose from- and that's if you neglect the order in which the weapons are chosen. And to most people the order they put their weapons in is sacred- that's one reason concussion grenades are feared in Tribes 2. When you factor in order, you are given 70 different weapon loadouts for the medium armor.

Even if you added up all the weapon loadout choices for the soldier, raider, and technician, this only barely scratches the surface of the number of choices offered to the medium armor in Tribes 2. When you consider the variety of grenades and packs you can use in your loadouts in Tribes 2, the differences in “choice” between Tribes 2 and Tribes Ascends becomes even greater.

While some loadouts for classes can come down to preference, some classes simply don't offer you what your preference is at all. What if you find yourself having a certain finesse and likingness towards arc weapons, but only so many classes have arc weapons? You are confined to using whatever else that class uses in order to be effective, or consider picking up new skills. And true, Tribes Ascend could eventually be built up to a point where every class has one of each 'type' of weapon, but is that really a good idea? There are already so many spinfusors in the game, so many “chainguns”, so many arc weapons- and at the end of the day, it would become a nightmare to balance if every class had everything- you would be better off getting rid of class restrictions altogether.


I'm just using Ascend as an example here, most class-based games have a similar problem when it comes to the limitation of choice.

Not Strictly Class-Based, but Still Limiting Choice

There are games that (while not catering to choice as much as Tribes did) do offer more selections than a class-based game. These are games that offer you fewer weapon slots than in Tribes, but give you more flexibility to choose what weapons you are going to use. Gears of War, Halo, Planetside, and Timesplitters are a few examples of this caliber of choice. In Gears of War and Planetside, you are limited to what weapons can fill certain slots (and in Planetside, each class only has a specific number of slots to use, while in Gears of War you can always carry one sidearm, 2 rifles, and an explosives). In Halo and Timesplitters you can only carry 2 guns, but the fact that you can carry any 2 guns leaves the loadout completely in the player's hands to decide. Halo 2 even gets bonus points for allowing akimbo, thus increasing the number of possibilities a great deal.

Tribes Vengeance falls just short of Tribes 1 and Tribes 2, based purely on its 3-3-3 loadout system. It's similar to that of its two predecessors, only with less slots for the medium and heavy classes. There is certainly more choice in T2 than in Tribes Vengeance, but this difference is much less noticeable than when comparing T2 to Tribes Ascend.

Arena-Based Shooters

On the complete other end of the spectrum, we have games that provide the player with every weapon at the same time (granted the player finds them all, or joins one of those special servers). Examples of this type of game include Half Life, Quake, Doom, and Unreal Tournament, among many many others. In most of these games each weapon has widely different purposes. You might be thinking to yourself, how is this a bad thing? You have all the weapons at one time- that is a huge amount of choices for the player! 

Right- but how is this helping the player feel like the choices they are making are significant? Choices feel like an after-thought when they feel insignificant- and there is nothing as significant as being limited to what weapons you can carry on your belt. There is a feeling of permanence to having only so many weapons that you choose on your body- it expresses how exactly you want to play. 

In a single player campaign in a traditional shooter game, often the weapon selection you have at your disposal is only an expression of how far you are into the game. Online, it may only be an expression to what weapons you ran into. If you have a certain weapon you favor over others, you might decide to camp a certain area of the map to achieve that weapon, or you may have memorized the spawn rate of the weapon- but only still, that is just one weapon, and when you are in a server packed with players, there is an increased risk you might not ever get that weapon. Players who play competitively in an arena-game do not find a level of meaningful choice found in Tribes- they pick the tool best for the job when they have it, and don't think twice about it. 
 

In Conclusion

The number of options available to you in Tribes was a big factor in why the game was appealing to me and so many others- and this fact was left by the wayside in recent years with T:V and T:A. You could literally “build your own class” and play how you wanted. This offered a freedom of choice not present in class-based shooters. And not just a freedom of choice- a freedom of meaningful choice. A meaningful choice that allowed you to express exactly how you wanted to play and what skills you were good at, and this allowed you to become the best fighter you could be out in the field. Not only this, but the choices you made (in light of arguments over how effective they were) helped shape your experience into something that was a human experience- possibly a bit rough around the edges, but an experience of “creative” decision making. Not an experience of “creativity through constraint”.