By most accounts, Tribes: Ascend‘s existence is quantifiably a Good Thing. It is, after all, a PC-exclusive (!) high-quality free-to-play first-person shooter (!!) that’s in no way spit-shining Call of Duty’s combat boots or leaping just high enough when it barks an order (!!!). Almost paradoxically, it’s managed to be both slavishly devoted to the series’ jetpack-jousting legacy while also paving the way for a new breed of F2P FPS. So much gloriously gleaming new, however, makes any lingering flecks of dust and mold stand out all the more. So sure, Tribes may be better than ever, but try telling that to a spinfusor-less Soldier whose already glacial XP gain has basically flatlined because the teams he joins keep refusing to work together. That in mind, I spoke with Hi-Rez about how – if at all – it plans to fix its capture-the-flag flagship’s most fundamental flaws.

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