FPS General

Earlier this month, Hi-Rez Studios announced a brand new one-purchase option for Tribes: Ascend. Previously, all of the content in Tribes: Ascend was available for individual purchases, allowing user to pick and choose what they wanted to equip their character with.

As the game progressed, Hi-Rez got continual feedback from the community that players wanted a single-purchase option for the game. One transaction to kit them out with everything that the game has to offer. Couple that with the game receiving numerous editorial awards and Game of the Year honors, and Hi-Rez felt that they were at the perfect place to kill two birds with one spinfusor disc; enter the Tribes: Ascend Game of the Year Edition.

This edition comes with - oh, never mind, we'll let Hi-Rez COO Todd Harris tell you about it. After all, he was kind enough to sit down and field some Q&A questions for us this week. Check it out below!

So, Hi-Rez just announced the Game of the Year Edition for Tribes: Ascend - can you run through what exactly is included in that?

The Game of the Year edition is really two things: Number one it is our eleventh content update to Tribes: Ascend. As an update it includes 6 new maps that are free to the entire player community. Number two, this edition gives players a single purchase option for Tribes, which is pretty unusual for a free-to-play game. So, you can pay a single price and get permanent access to all the gameplay affecting items - all the classes, over 100 weapons, and all the perks for a single payment.

Ultimately, all of that content purchased individually must be much more costly to the player. Do you have a number on how much money they are actually saving with the Game of the Year Edition?

The amount saved varies quite a bit. Some players would buy an XP boost and play during double XP weekends and unlock items more quickly. And a few weeks back we cut the XP cost of all the weapons in half to speed up the unlock process for free players.

That said, we intentionally priced the single-purchase option to be a great deal compared to purchasing items individually via micro-transactions. Players can continue to enjoy the game for free and unlock purely based on time. But if you are just starting to play Tribes: Ascend today, and you want all the classes and weapons right away, you would save more than 75% by purchasing the single price Game of The Year edition.

Keep reading for the full Tribes: Ascend interview with Hi-Rez Studios COO Todd Harris!

Hi-Rez Studios has announced that they will be releasing a Game of the Year Edition for Tribes: Ascend that will include all of the unlockable content in the game for one single purchase. Previously, Tribes: Ascend has been strictly free to play with optional micro-transactions to unlock new weapons and equipment on a per-class basis. With the Game of the Year Edition, all of that content is available for a single purchase.

This new Game of the Year edition celebrates the editorial honors that Tribes: Ascend has been given and includes:

• All 9 classes
• Over 100 weapons
• 21 class perks
• Every DLC weapon and item

In addition to the Game of the Year Edition, Hi-Rez is releasing a brand new content update that introduces the Shocklance weapon, two new skins and six brand new maps. Read the full patch notes on that right here.

As for players who have already purchased the content in Tribes: Ascend, nothing is changing for them. They will be able to continue enjoying the game and the content they have purchased with no additional fees or changes at all. The upcoming patch will be available for all Tribes: Ascend players.

The Tribes: Ascend Game of the Year Edition will be available on Friday, February 15th for $29.99 at www.tribesascend.com and on Steam. Check out a video of the brand new content in action after the break!

Labor Day weekend is rapidly approaching and while many of you may have bright ideas about sunny barbecues and succulent t-bones with your loved ones all around, you may want to consider sitting inside by yourself playing Tribes: Ascend instead.

Hi-Rez Studios has announced that players in Tribes: Ascend will receive Double XP starting on Friday, August 31st and running through Tuesday, September 4th.

Details of the event include:

• All players are eligible for the Double XP event
• The promotion applies only to base XP. It does not apply to other XP sources such as Accolades or First Win of The Day.
• The promotion applies to public servers and custom servers that exist as of Friday, August 31 at 10:00 a.m. EDT (16:00 CEST)  . The promotion does not apply to any Custom Server created or made active after the start of the event.
• Players with VIP status and/or an active XP boosts will receive those bonuses in addition to the double XP

If you haven't gotten yourself set up in the world's fastest first-person shooter, you'll definitely want to stop by http://www.tribesuniverse.com/ to download Tribes: Ascend, which is completely free to play.

Hi-Rez Studios is expected to release Content Update #8: Blits in Tribes: Ascend later today, bringing a ton of new content to the game including the brand new Capture the Flag Blitz game mode.

In CTF Blitz, the enemy flag base changes location every time your team scores a point. This causes your team to be on their toes throughout the entire match, eliminating the repeat use of capture routes and tactics. CTF Blitz will be available on Arx Novena, Katabatic and Drydock but should be hitting other maps in future updates.

Also included in the update is some new equipment for the Technician, including:

• New Primary: TC24
• New Belt Item: Repair Kit
• New Pack: EXR Turret
• Specialist Skin

Check out the full patch notes at http://www.egmnow.com/ and take a look at Update #8: Blitz in action in the video above.

Hi-Rez Studios has released a brand new content update for their fast-paced, free to play first-person shooter Tribes: Ascend.

The update, dubbed Twinfusor, is available now and servers came back online just a short while ago. This is a pretty big update for Tribes: Ascend and introduces new weapons, skins, features, maps and more! Some highlights include:

• Three new weapons have been added: The Pathfinder’s Light Twinfusor, the Soldier’s Twinfusor and Juggernaut’s Heavy Twinfusor.
• Stonehenge has been added to the standard CTF map rotation.
• Two new CTF Maps, Permafrost and Dangerous Crossing, have been added to custom servers.
• Players are more likely to be grouped in matches with other players of their same level/rank.
• Players may now create a party of their friends before joining the Quick Match queues.
• Three new skins have been added:
  • Pathfinder Freerunner
  • Brute Crusher
  • Sentinel Spectre
• Additional loadout slots have been added.

We had some pretty great matchups last weekend in the opening two days of our Tribes: Ascend Invitational, but the fun isn't done yet.

In the video above, you can take a look at some of the highlights from the first two days of the Invitational. This weekend we will be dishing out the $2500 tournament purse to the top three teams. The matches are definitely going to be heated, even by the usual frenetic Tribes standard.

Keep reading for the full schedule...

Day one of the FPS General Tribes: Ascend Invitational tournament is officially on the books, and we had some pretty amazing matchups today. The bracket is embedded below so be sure to take a look (click to enlarge) to see who faced off and how they fared.

Tomorrow's matchups look just as good as todays, the schedule reads:

Sun Jul 1, 2012
Losers Bracket Round 1 & 2 (All times Eastern Time)
12pm - 1:15pm Match Epidemic vs. Puppy Kisses (A)
12:15pm - 1:30pm Heartbreakerz vs. Revenant (C)
1:30pm - 2:45pm Exica vs. MIA (B)
2:45pm - 4pmBoss vs Winner of (A)
4pm - 5pm Egocentric vs. Winner of (B)

The stream will kick off at 12:00PM Eastern Time (9:00AM PT) so be sure to visit http://www.twitch.tv/fpsgeneral and follow our channel to be notified when we start streaming. Check out the bracket below and we'll see you tomorrow!

Tribes: Ascend has been out for a while now, but available only through a client download from the official Tribes website. Starting today, however, the team has partnered up with Valve to release Tribes: Ascend on Steam.

Hi-Rez Studios is not just releasing the base game of Tribes: Ascend however, but rather an updated version which will include two brand new maps. Miasma is a Team Deathmatch map, which you can see below. Stonehenge, on the other hand, is a Capture the Flag map. Also included in the Steam release is first-person spectator mode, which will be great as Tribes: Ascend continues to move heavily into the competitive gaming scene.

Check out Tribes: Ascend on Steam, to get yourself set up with the game. Be sure to check out details on our major Tribes: Ascend tournament, as well, by dropping by our Tribes hub.

Update: The FPS General Tribes: Ascend Invitational is officially underway! Our first matchups are going on right now over at Twitch.tv/FPSGeneral. Tune in and root on your team! Please note that due to harsh storms and massive power outages on the east coast of the United States, the stream may be a bit choppy.

The FPS General Tribes: Ascend Invitational Tournament is just days away from getting started, so it's time to post the bracket. Our 16 professional Tribes: Ascend teams have been matched up based on their Power Rankings, and will be facing off in a Double Elimination Capture the Flag Tournament.

The Power Rankings will be fully revealed later today, giving some insight on how the tournament was seeded and why.

The initial matchups are (click to enlarge):

The scheduled for the tournament is as follows:

Sat Jun 30, 2012
Winners Bracket Round 1 & 2
12pm - 1:15pm Match A, D, G, H
12:15pm - 1:30pm Match B, C, E
1:30pm - 2:45pm Match F, I, L
2:45pm - 4pm Match J
4pm - 5:15pm Match K

Sun Jul 1, 2012
Losers Bracket Round 1 & 2
12pm - 1:15pm Match FE, BA
12:15pm - 1:30pm Match HG
1:30pm - 2:45pm Match DC
2:45pm - 4pm Match Loser of K
4pm - 5pm Match Loser of I, Loser of J, Loser of L

Sat Jul 7, 2012
Winners Bracket Round 3, Losers Bracket Round 3, 4
12pm - 1pm Match Loser of KL
12:15pm - 1:30pm Match M
1pm - 2pm Match Loser of IJ
1:30pm - 2:45pm Match N
2:45pm - 4pm Match Loser of M
4pm - 5pm Match Loser of N

Sun Jul 8, 2012
Semifinals, Losers Bracket Round 5, 6, Grand Finals
12pm - 1pm Match O
1pm - 2pm Match Loser of NM
2pm - 3pm Match Loser of O
3pm - 4pm Match P

Be sure to follow FPS General on Facebook and Twitter to stay up to date on the tournament!

We're only a few days away from Day One of the FPS General Tribes: Ascend Invitational Tournament, where 16 professional Tribes: Ascend teams will be facing off in Capture the Flag action.

The Tribes: Ascend Invitational has an overall prize purse of $2500, where the champion will receive $1750, 2nd place will receive $500 and the 3rd place team will earn $250. To seed the tournament, we've used a Power Ranking system which is determined based on each teams previous tournament performance, overall ability and other variables to give them a rating.

This Power Ranking system ensures that we have the absolute best and most competitive tournament possible, by matching up teams that will provide the best challenge for each other. We've been looking at the bracket all morning and these matchups are going to be incredibly exciting to watch.

We'll be posting the official Tournament Bracket later today, but here is some insight on how our panel ranked each team...

With our very first tournament - the FPS General Tribes: Ascend Invitational - just around the corner, we're working around the clock to hammer out the details and keep our readers abreast of developments. Today, we are announcing both the official rules that the Invitational will follow as well as the teams that will be competing for the glory and the cash.

First up, here are the official FPS General Tribes: Ascend Invitational rules:

Format:
7v7 Double Elimination Tournament

Seeding:
Initial tournament seeding will be based upon a power ranking provided by FPS General and to be announced on Tuesday, June 26th.

Friendly Fire:
Friendly Fire: Enabled
Friendly Fire Multiplier: 1.0 (100%)

Click below to keep reading...

Earlier this month, we announced a really exciting Tribes: Ascend tournament, and today we're ready to bring you some more details on the upcoming FPS General Tribes: Ascend Invitational Tournament!

First off, this is going to be a Tribes: Ascend tournament for the ages, with incredible prizes and some of the world's greatest professional gaming teams facing off in Tribes: Ascend action. The worlds fastest first-person shooter is going to get even more exciting when $2500 is at stake in our tournament. Here is how the action will be going down...

The tournament is Double Elimination and will take 16 of the world's best Tribes: Ascend teams and pit them in Best of 3 Capture the Flag matches. We are going to be seeding the matches based on team's individual Power Rankings; full details will be released next week on how the tournament is going to be seeded. Matches will be held on US East and London servers. Cross regional matches will be held on a server rotation of US East > London > US East.

On each match day (dates listed further in this post), play will begin at 12:00PM Eastern Time and wrap up at around 5:00PM Eastern Time (convert to your local time here). Matches will be played on the following Tribes: Ascend maps: Tartarus, Katabatic, Arx Novena, Dry Dock and Crossfire.

FPSGeneral.com is proud to announce our partnership with Hi-Rez Studios to bring the FPS General Tribes: Ascend Invitational Tournament!

This is going to be a Tribes: Ascend tournament for the ages, with incredible prizes and some of the world's greatest professional gaming teams facing off in Tribes: Ascend action. The worlds fastest first-person shooter gets even more exciting when $2500 is at stake and that is exactly what the prize purse is for the Invitational.

16 teams will face off, battling it out in Capture the Flag game modes on all of the available Tribes: Ascend CTF maps. Teams will be 7 vs 7, but rosters max out at 10 players, leaving you room for 3 substitute players if you so choose to use them.

These 16 teams will compete in Best out of 3 Capture the Flag matches until only one team reigns victorious.

Struggling to make ends meet when it comes to capturing flags for your team in Tribes: Ascend? It's not always easy, but our resident Tribes guru SmallKiwi is going to be offering a workshop this evening helping players step up their flag capture productivity.

SmallKiwi is a veteran capper and his lobby has already filled up with eager pupils, but that doesn't mean you can't be part of the workshop! Tonight at 10:00 PM ET (7:00 PM PT), we will be broadcasting the workshop live over on Tribes Nation, our Twitch.tv channel dedicated to bringing you the absolute best in Tribes: Ascend live streaming!

Check out Tribes Nation over at http://www.twitch.tv/TribesNation for the workshop and be sure to follow us for more live Tribes: Ascend action!

If you've spent any amount of time playing Hi-Rez Studios' popular first-person shooter Tribes: Ascend, you'll know that capturing flags is no mean feat. The level of speed and maneuverability required to successfully capture flags for your team can be daunting and even experienced player can shy away from it.

Truth be told, there's an art to capturing flags and it's something that our very own Tribes: Ascend live streamer SmallKiwi has mastered. This evening, SmallKiwi is going to be hosting a Tribes: Ascend workshop where he is taking a group of players under his wing, teaching them some of the best routes and tactics when taking on the role of 'capper' - otherwise known as a player who makes it their duty to capture flags for their team.

Now, the workshop group has already filled up, but if you're looking to improve your capping skills, we're going to live streaming the whole event tonight over on our Twitch.tv channel. The event will take place tonight - May 24th, 2012 - at 10:00PM ET (7:00PM PT).

Be sure to bookmark our Twitch.tv channel over at http://www.twitch.tv/fpsgeneral for SmallKiwi's workshop this evening and more FPS streams to come in the future!

Hi-Rez Studios has announced that they will be releasing the Staying Alive content update for Tribes: Ascend in the near future, bringing some exciting in-game features as well as a few new weapons for the Brute class.

First off, the Brute class weapons. For those of you who haven't checked it out yet, the Brute is a class worthy of your time, a fact that FPS General's own Crazy Penguin will attest to. The new weapons are the Gladiator, the Plasma Cannon and the Survival Pack. The Gladiator is another sticky-explosive weapon, but with a slight twist; Gladiator rounds explode on impact with enemies, removing their ability to charge you after they've been stuck, in an attempt to take you down with them.

The Plasma Cannon is a heavier version of the Raider's Plasma Gun and features a slower rate of fire, with more damage. The Survival Pack can be equipped to give your Brute slightly more health and energy, while increasing energy regeneration and running speed on the ground.

Hi-Rez Studios, the team behind the increasingly popular shooter Tribes: Ascend, has announced that the game has now surpassed over 1 million downloads!

This number is all the more impressive, when you take into account that Tribes was only released one month ago and that just a few weeks ago, the game was sitting at 800,000 registered accounts. With Tribes: Ascend having reach around 1.2 million accounts, we're talking about 400,000 new accounts in just three weeks. We punch those numbers into a calculator and it makes a happy face.

This Summer marks the return of the Tribes franchise to the competitive e-sports scene! Hi-Rez has announced that they will kick off the Summer of Tribes tournament series this month with a host of Tribes: Ascend tournaments.

Tournaments are going to be happening regularly between May and August of this year, including a very special tournament hosted by the team here at FPS General. We'll have more info on our tournament in the very near future, but in the meantime, Hi-Rez Studios COO Todd Harris had this to say, regarding the tournaments...

Tribes: Ascend servers were taken offline earlier today while Hi-Rez Studios deployed a brand new update to the game.

Today's patch brings two brand new maps and some important changes to game functionality. First up, as you can see in the video above, the patch introduces Tartarus - a Capture the Flag map - and Hinterlands for Arena. The update also includes a new feature that will give players customized savings on content that they don't already own.

For example, when I signed in to Tribes: Ascend this afternoon, I was greeted with a Deal of the Day. If I decide to pick up the Doombringer player class, which I do not currently own, I can get it at 132G versus the original price of 240G. These deals will rotate every day and vary user-to-user.

Tribes: Ascend has been tearing up the free to play scene on PC for the last few months, leaving console gamers curious if they would get a taste of the fast-paced action on their preferred platforms. Unfortunately, the short answer is no; Tribes: Ascend won't be coming to console in the foreseeable future.

In an interview with Gamasutra, Hi-Rez COO Todd Harris explained that while the game was initially going to be multi-platform, once Hi-Rez opted for a free to play business model, that changed things dramatically. Free to play on console is nothing like free to play on PC. On PC, the microtransaction-fueled game economy can be implemented without much to-do but doing the same on home consoles is not quite so simple.

With a team of just 15 designers and developers dedicated to Tribes: Ascend, doing an Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 version of Tribes: Ascend just wasn't in the cards at this time.