Version2

From Tribes2Wiki

Version2 is a mod made by Qing in response to ZOD and z0dd's development of Classic. The intent of V2 was to give players an outlet who felt that Classic was too difficult, and the mod aimed to give these players a super-simplified version of the game that still retained the speed of Base++. While many players thought Version2 was great, most of the competitive community (except for the bottom of the barrel) agreed that it was a failure of a mod that should not be bothered with. Most professional players look down on Version2 because of how easy it makes the game. It's quick naturedness made it easy to spawn, do what you had to, die, and repeat. While the mod is balanced for the most part, it still has a few parts which are deemed "too powerful" by the community which plays it (especially towards the Chaingun).

[edit] Overview

Here is a rant written by one player that actually quite accurately describes the mod, despite being somewhat biased:

"We'll start by discussing the Version2 mod itself. While every competitive mod in the game strived to increase skill and intensity, V2 went the opposite direction. The mod maker decided to reduce skill for a reason that only he knows. A while after he made the mod, a modder and V2 player named Spinebuster decided to make some changes to the mod. The original V2 was a modification of Base, and thus missed out on a LOT of bug that were fixed by the creators of Classic, z0dd and ZOD. Spinebuster realized this, and took Classic, then applied all of the V2 changes and physics to it. This marginally improved the mod, and I believe this is the version that was used in competition on the OSL V2 ladders. But, how exactly did V2 remove the skill?

"First of all, skiing was made pointless. In every other mod in the game, your speed came almost solely from turning vertical momentum into horizontal momentum. You fly up, ski down a hill, and as a result, you go a lot faster. In Classic, if you are holding the spacebar, you are completely frictionless. As a result, incredible speed can be obtained by someone who intelligently uses the terrain to his advantage and skillfully uses hills to direct him where he wants to go. In V2, none of that is necessary, because the jetpack itself gives you an uncapped ability to increase your speed. If you simply fly straight forward, you will reach a high speed without having to know how to ski at all. Skiing is still useful for changing direction, and knowing the terrain is still useful for not accidentally getting dead-stopped by a mountain in front of you, but beyond that, you don't have to have shit for skills.

"Second of all, most weapon firing rates were increased, projectile speeds were increased, and splash damage radius and total damage were reduced. Faster weapon firing rate encourages spamming as opposed to carefully aiming. The beauty of Tribes dueling - in Base at least - was that it was a battle of wits. The spinfusor fired very slowly, so you had to make each shot count. If your opponent missed a shot on you, you could capitalize on the time he would have to wait before being able to fire again. Having good aim is important, being able to dodge is important, but the most important thing is being able to outwit your opponent. Knowing when to shoot, what weapon to use, what direction to dodge, and how to position yourself to have a strategic advantage are the absolute most important aspects to dueling in Tribes. In V2 however, super-fast weapon firing rates take most of the strategy right out of it. On top of that, the faster projectile speeds made aiming a lot easier. The most cited aspect of Tribes combat is the fact that every weapon is a projectile weapon, which means you have to predict where your target is going, and aim ahead of him so that you will hit him when he gets there. However, the faster the projectile travels, the easier this becomes. In V2, it's pretty easy. Furthermore, reduced damage makes the game more fun for bad players. It makes duels last longer, and causes you to be punished less for making a poor dodge and getting hit.

"Now, not all weapons suffered from these changes. The chaingun spread was greatly reduced in V2. I don't know the exact numbers, but just as an example: say your target is 50 meters away standing still and you are aiming right at him. In Base, each chaingun bullet has maybe a 50% chance of hitting him. In V2, it's more like 90% chance. Sure, this reduces luck, but it also makes the chaingun even more powerful. In V2, an intelligent player wouldn't use anything other than a chaingun to kill opponents, because it's just so incredibly powerful. Sure, it's really powerful in every mod, but V2 definitely takes the cake.

"Another weapon is the grenade launcher, however, the V2 grenade launcher has the same changes at the Classic one, so I can't say it's terrible. In Base, grenades travel incredibly slowly, just like everything else. In V2 and Classic, they go very fast, as their purpose is to blow up enemy cappers who are also moving very fast. The grenade launcher also shoots faster than every other useful weapon in the game other than the chaingun, does the most damage in the largest radius of any weapon a light armor can carry. V2 newbies love to fly straight up into the air and shoot grenades down at other people, because it's incredibly easy and powerful - until of course the other guy kills them in 2 second with a chaingun for floating like an idiot. Most V2 players will call you a newb if you chaingun them like that - even though the grenade spam tactic is even less skillful - but that's beside the point. Like I said though, the grenade launcher change is one of the few logical changes to the V2 physics.

"Another illogical one is the laser rifle. The Tribes and Tribes 2 laser rifle has infinite ammo, damage that is based on your energy, and a bright red laser trail that tells everyone where you are. V2 removed the laser trial. Standing off by yourself and sniping at people is something that is fun for players of any game. If your enemy can easily find you, however, it becomes less fun and more challenging. V2 players couldn't stand for that, so the red laser trail was removed. I should mention also that the laser rifle has never done enough damage to ever kill a player from full health, but V2 tried to change that. It is a common request of terrible snipers for the rifle to have instant kill headshots, as they know they aren't good enough to hit their target a second time once he starts moving. However, it quickly became clear that instant kill headshots made the game more frustrating for newbies, because they would always die too fast, so it was reverted back to its original strength.

"One change that most people don't care about is the blaster. It's not a very useful weapon, but I feel it needs to be mentioned, because this change completely sums up the entire V2 mentality. The blaster is the default weapon in Tribes. It's the weapon that you are holding when you first spawn - like the pistol in Unreal Tournament. Like the UT pistol, its usefulness is limited, but it can be really entertaining if you are good with it. In Base and Classic, the blaster can bounce off of walls, damage people through their shield if they have one, has the same projectile speed as the disc, and shoots between 2-3 times per second. It doesn't do much damage, and is often looked upon as the most useless weapon in the game. Sometimes players will use it in combat as a way to humiliate their opponent or pretend to be "not trying", and sometimes skilled players (such as myself) will use it in combat just because they are good enough to use it effectively. V2 on the other hand, changes all of that. The V2 blaster fires as fast as the chaingun, and the projectiles go faster than any other projectiles in the game except the chaingun and do almost no damage. Players now use it to randomly spam all over the place around corners, rather than trying to aim it intelligently. And that, is the entire mentality of the V2 player.

"Finally, one more weapon was affected by a retarded change: the mortar. The mortar is the most powerful weapon in the game, but it shoots very slowly and can only be used by someone wearing heavy armor. In V2, the splash damage was increased by a ridiculous margin. If you are in light armor anywhere NEAR a mortar explosion, you die immediately. Now, you may think that this change would have been reversed for the same reason as instant kill headshots, but that's not true. It's fairly easy to avoid someone trying to shoot mortars at you, because they are moving slowing, they are shooting slowly, the mortar is moving slowly, and it takes a couple seconds to explode. That's why in every other mod, the mortar was never intended to be used to kill people in a duel situation; it is used to blow up base equipment or clear defenders away from the enemy flag. In V2 though, someone thought newbies would like to be able to randomly shoot mortars at other players and kill them easily, so the damage was hiked. That does it for the weapons.

"Now let's discuss some vehicles and base assets. I should mention that not all of these changes are caused by V2; some of them are changes made by someone at Rebels a long time ago specifically for the Rebels server. I'm not exactly sure which ones, so I won't specify. I'm just putting that out there in case a V2 "expert" reads this and gets upset. First, base generators and vehicle pads are incredibly strong and take much longer to kill than in any other mod. Furthermore, the repair pack almost instantly repairs every piece of base equipment The reason is simple: players don't like having to do extra work to suit up, buy a vehicle, and run off to do their retarded task. Base defense and base offense are sometimes complicated tasks that often elude most newbies. They will do them, but they won't do them properly, and as long as the other team isn't doing their job properly either, they can get away with it. The real problem with the repair pack, in my opinion, is when you come across someone repairing a destroyed piece of equipment. In any other mod, you can destroy it again right in front of them and kill them. In V2, chances are the object will be fully repaired before you even get a chance to shoot. This is a problem, because every piece of equipment in Tribes has shields. The shields stop functioning once the object has been damaged a certain amount. If an object has shields operational, they will absorb a lot of damage and make many objects almost impossible to destroy by yourself without a mortar or missile launcher. In short, super fast repairing is newb-friendly.

"As for the vehicles, it gets worse. All of the vehicles can sustain way more damage than they are supposed to, and they all go much faster. In V2, it is no longer possible for a player to destroy a shrike that is one to him. It should be, because the shrike blasters are not meant to kill players running around, and the shrike is not meant to sustain a lot of fire. The way you kill someone with a shrike is by running them down. In Base and Classic, all you have to do it chaingun a shrike and it basically can't kill you without ramming into you. In V2, the chaingun, and every other weapon for that matter, does virtually no damage to the shrike. What is supposed to be a hard battle for the shrike in real Tribes 2, becomes an unwinnable battle for the person on the ground in V2. Furthermore, V2 has made ramming (running into people with the shrike) completely useless. If you get hit by a vehicle flying 300 mph, is it even remotely logical that you survive? Guess what, in V2, you do. Impact damage is reduced to the point that running into someone is actually counter-productive, because you might just aid them with their speed. Now, this is one of the changes that I think is exclusive to Rebels. The guys who run Rebels are terrible newbs with zero understanding of the game, so they thought it would be smart to completely warp the purpose of the shrike and make it ridiculously powerful. After all, newbs like vehicles, so let's make the vehicles stronger! What a joke. To top it off, when you jump out of a vehicle in V2, you retain 100% of the speed of that vehicle. In other mods, you jump out and the vehicle flies on ahead of you because you've slowed down. Not in V2. This allows for you to fly toward the flag at a high speed, jump out of the shrike, and grab the flag faster than otherwise possible (known as shrike capping). Doing this makes capping infinitely easier and pretty much skilless. Personally, I use the shrikes to sensor jammer cap, which means turrets don't shoot at me and players on the enemy team don't see a red arrow above my head. Wearing a sensor jammer instead of an energy pack will greatly impede your ability to jet, but if you are already going ridiculously fast from a shrike cap, who needs jets? This is yet another thing that detracts from the skill of the mod.

"On the plus side, one change made in V2 that I really like is the ability to damage people inside vehicles. In every other mod, the vehicle's shields protect the rider. In V2, if you get a direct hit on the rider, he will take the damage. This allows you to do fun things like snipe people out of their vehicles, though they will immediately accuse you of using auto-aim if you do. I will mention right now that all auto-aim accusations are completely bogus, because the auto-aim cheat for Tribes 2 is absolutely terrible and misses more than it hits. Any player in the game who calls himself a sniper is going to be more accurate than the auto-aim cheat.

"That about covers it for my discussion of V2, but before I move on to specific discussion of Rebels, I want to cover one more relevant event. Ever since V2 competition on the OSL ladder first started up, V2 players constantly tried to claim that they were just as good as Classic players. They even went so far as to say that they would destroy us if we came to their ladder. Well, one day, some Classic players decided to take them up on their challenge. The team that met the challenge went by the name GG NO RE, and it consisted of players like Darkstrand, Nevares, Projectile, Gojita, and others of equal competitive prowess. They completely and utterly dominated every V2 team they played against. The best V2 team at the time, called Bombshell, couldn't even touch them. The V2 community was upset by this, and so they tried to organize a comeback. For weeks, many old V2 players were contacted and asked to come back to competition with one goal: beat the Classic players on their V2 ladder. An all-star team was assembled of some of the best players that ever played V2, and they practiced for weeks in preparation for the match. Finally, they decided to execute their plan. Before challenging GG NO RE, they decided to challenge Bombshell first. The date was set. However, when the time came for the match to be played, the leader of Bombshell noticed that his team didn't show up, and he wasn't going to have enough players to play the match. Rather than reschedule, the Bombshell leader decided to contact a few Classic players and get them to play on his team during the match as substitutes. So, a rag-tag group of Classic players and one V2 player showed up to the match, completely unprepared, to face the team of V2 all-stars. The match was an utter blowout. "Team Classic" absolutely annihilated "Team V2". It was no contest. Imagine a NFL team playing against a pee-wee football team, and you will have a basic idea of what the Classic team did to the V2 team in this match. After the match, the V2 all-stars quit the ladder entirely out of shame. Furthermore, out of frustration, the administrator of the OSL modified the score of GG NO RE by swapping their wins and losses and moving them to the bottom of the ladder because they were so angry at getting owned by a team that didn't even take their mod seriously. The Classic dudes didn't much care though, they had gotten their point across. From that day forth, only the most clueless V2 player dares to compare himself to a Classic player, and he is usually quickly corrected." - Kryand^[1]

[edit] References

1. ↑ Kryand's Tribes 2 History. http://www.themellin.com/t2history.php