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[Catastrophic lolcats]

A joke I often use is "My old shooters are becoming RPGs and my old RPGs are becoming shooters".

I seriously feel like I'm the only one who dislikes RPG elements in MULTIPLAYER shooters. It feels, to me, that it only furthers the gap between veteran and new-comer which is ideally something a multiplayer game should be avoiding at all cost. Hence why I used to loovvvee Team Fortress 2 ... before it became ... what ever it is now.
I know why it's there. People want to work towards something, have easily mapped out goals for them to reach. However I grew up at a time with none of this, the only way to advance in a shooter was to simply get better and have fun doing it.

Same could be said about single player RPGs. I watched the Mass Effect series go from a light-RPG to a fully fledged cover-based shooter with an, albeit nice, storyline. I watched the more "action focused" RPGs like your Elderscrolls, Borderlands, Fallout 3s, Diablo 3s, Alpha Protocols, New Final Fantasies; become the new go-to RPG rather than the more tactical focused cRPG, the stat crunching aRPG, or the ... charactor focused (?) jRPGs of yore.

That doesn't mean that this mixing up of genres is a 100% bad thing. RPG elements work in some shooters (personally offline works better here) and action elements work in some RPGs. I just find it a little ironic how the games have switched their core-gameplay at the same time.
Anyway, I think I went on a bit of a rant here, had to get it out my system.

As for getting off topic, it's going to happen. There isn't much to discuss currently since the game is very bare-bones and the potential is obvious.

[Levi]

I agree with most of that.  And I love RPG elements in singleplayer shooters, just not the multiplayer ones.

[Sordid]

I love RPG elements in any genre. I can't think of any genre that's not made better by RPG elements. As for their place in multiplayer shooters, the matchmaking system should take them into account and only put together people who have similar unlocks unless it's been programmed by a lobotomized baboon. (I have no idea if the T:A matchmaking does it, but if it doesn't, it damn well should.)

[Aklyon]

To add to the Tribes: Ascend stuff, theres also the fact that besides things like the plasma gun until they fixed it quickly, if you can't hit the broadside of a 100km/h barn, you aren't any more help than that metaphorical barn is. The barn could at least run the other team over.

[Catastrophic lolcats]

Well I'm of the opinion that match making isn't valid for all forms of online shooters. Your "Old Skool" arena shooters which focus around having dedicated servers with good pings and player counts would only be negatively affected by any kind of match making system.

RPG elements that are earnt in a single match and reset each match doesn't bother me all that much, it shows progression and rewards players. The metagame of having someone join and trump you with a weapon that you can't have because you just haven't played enough time baffles me.

Another part where I would say RPG elements work are the "high player tacital shooters", like your Battlefields and ARMAs. The RPG elements serves to educate the new players in how the game works and forces them to stick to the group to acutally help the team in any real way. 
Although I just don't get why you'll want to limit the gameplay like that. Weapons and "gear loadouts" should be changed to meet the circumstances to help your team. Having pre-determined limits just by gameplay/"achievements" seems to negate some of that awesome teamwork and tactial thinking that multiplayer games should be all about.

Maybe I'm just from the wrong generation, or rather I was born too early in mine. There seems to be two very different schools of design now.

[timferius]

Ok, this looks awesome, so I'm posting to watch. Also, someone needs to make a video of them jumping from the upper atmoshpoer, to the bottom of a hole they dug. I'm not at my computer, so I can't download this yet, so I need you to do this for me.

[Sordid]

RPG elements that are earnt in a single match and reset each match doesn't bother me all that much, it shows progression and rewards players.

That exists in TA, kind of. You earn credits which you can use to upgrade base assets (turrets, radar, generator) or to buy vehicles.

The metagame of having someone join and trump you with a weapon that you can't have because you just haven't played enough time baffles me.

Doesn't happen, weapons are sidegrades rather than upgrades. (with the possible exception of the Jackal, but that's a matter of opinion; I can't even hit anything with the damn thing)

Also, I'm thinking we might need a dedicated TA thread.

[Aklyon]

Don't we already have A T:A thread?

[Sordid]

Oh, we do. Nevermind, then. Carry on.

[alway]

Just wondering, since no one seems to have mentioned it... Does it run cripplingly slowly on anyone else's computer, or is that just mine? I'm getting only a few FPS even at 800x600 res with minimum graphics settings.

[Sordid]

Nah, runs fine on mine on max settings. It only starts slowing down once I have a bunch of turrets down and about two dozen enemies or so.

[Nomus]

Runs slow even on the lowest settings on my computer, which is somewhat low-end, but it can still run most games prettier than this.

[PTTG??]

Everyone needs to go back and play Minecraft from 2009.

[alway]

It's built in Unity, which is a completed engine. I wasn't asking to complain, I was asking to make sure it was an issue with my PC.

It should at least run moderately well (as people are reported having no issues with it), even in pre-alpha versions simply because of the fact that Unity works pretty well. I suspect I'm running an outdated version of it or something like that.

[warhammer651]

Not just you. Tried to run it on my computer and it's completely unplayable