MMO Shooter – MMO Fallout

Tribes: Ascend, the free to play shooter, is great for the very idea that any weapon or upgrade that can be bought with cash can also be purchased by simply playing the game. Granted, by the time you play Tribes: Ascend long enough to unlock every weapon and upgrade, you might be cashing in your retirement check and playing on virtual reality machines.

As part of the June update, Hi-Rez Studios is greatly increasing the rate at which unlocks are obtained. The new system will operate in a manner familiar to sandbox MMO fans: Each piece of equipment has its own experience bar which increases as you use it. To speed up the process even more, you still obtain experience and GP that can be spent on unlocking further upgrades even faster.

Now that Tribes Ascend can (reasonably) be played for free, there is no reason not to jump in and start killing the deserving Sandrakers.

“It’s a persistent game, it has persistent player data, the character grows and gets better over time. I think most gamers expect that now anyway, but this was a design I’d done a while ago. I think it’s pretty valid.”

John Romero is one of the industry’s finest, even if he no longer works with John Carmack, and if the man wants to make his own MMO-ish shooter, then by God he will. In an interview with Eurogamer, Romero stated that while the game is still in pre-production stages, he has a solid vision of what he expects the title to become. Romero discusses his distaste for the current shooter genre, and mentions that his game will play faster than the Gears of War titles currently available, and won’t rely on the slower-paced cover based systems and characters who act as bullet sponges. Not to say Gears isn’t a great game, it just isn’t the type Romero would like to create.

If this makes you think of Quake Live, you probably aren’t too far from the target. Granted, very little about Romero’s game, so we will simply have to wait for more details.

(Source: Eurogamer)