Tribes: Ascend gets Stonehenge update, balance tweaks

Tribes Ascend is one of the best shooters around right now: high-speed and highly competitive. Devs Hi-Rez seem committed to pushing it as an eSport – over the weeked they released two new maps (including the classic Stonehenge), tweaks to the spectator mode, and multiple balance tweaks.

So here’s the question: are you still playing Tribes? What do you think of it, some months on?

Here are the full patch notes.
Major Highlights

• Added support for “lock to player view” while spectating players. This allows you to see what the spectated player target sees. Press ‘L’ by default to lock the view to the player’s viewpoint. Mousewheel in for a first-person perspective.
• A new TDM map has been added to the list of maps in the Quick Play rotation. (Miasma)
• A new CTF map has been added to the list of maps available to play on Custom Servers. Stonehenge is a remap of a classic Tribes map. The map is currently in a “beta” state and will be added to the Quick Play rotation after it goes through testing on Custom Servers.Weapon/Balance Items
• The Pathfinder’s Light Assault Rifle will now fire bursts from just holding down the fire button, rather than having to repress the fire button for each burst.
• Increased Rage Perk activation radius by 50%.
• Decreased effect radius of Raider’s Whiteout grenade by roughly 8%.
• Decreased damage on Shrike Rockets by 22%.
• Increased Shrike Rocket damage to armored targets (ex. base turrets, beowulfs) by 30%.
• Decreased damage on Technician’s Rockwind SMG by roughly 8%
• Slightly increased the distance from the reticule required for the Spotted command to work.
• Increased the distance Raider’s EMP grenades can be thrown to match most other grenades.
• Decreased explosion radius on Pathfinder’s Compact Nitrons by 13%.
• The Phase Rifle’s downscope reticule has been tweaked and crosshairs added.
• Raindance: A new route has been added into the generator room.Additional Items
• With the help of community feedback, we have reworked some of the mechanics of the emergent gameplay of “rock-bouncing.” The mechanic is more lenient than the last major patch:
◦ Bouncing off a rock at an extreme angle is possible again, but the player will lose some of their speed.
◦ The “grace angle” for a bounce that loses no speed has been widened
◦ We will continue to adjust this feature as needed.
• FIxed an issue where some Accolades were not being awarded with some of the new variant weapons.
• Fixed an issue where the Determination Perk was not applying its health boost correctly.
• Fixed a situation where XP was not being given if the player had left the match early.
• Fixed an issue where a player could zoom and fire with weapons that don’t allow zooming while firing by holding down zoom through a reload sequence.
• Fixed bug where the Raider’s NJ5 Reload and Retrieve sounds were not playing.
• Fixed bug where the Infiltrator’s Remote Arx Buster Reload and Retrieve sounds were not playing.
• Tartarus High intensity music added.
• Fixed an issue where the Rage Perk would sometimes not apply when it should have.
• Fixed an issue where Technician’s Long Range Repair tool was repairing vehicles too quickly.
• Fixed an issue where rapid projectile fire wasn’t replicating to a spectator viewing the player who was firing.
• Fixed an issue on Deal of the Day that was incorrectly showing an XP tag.
• Fixed an issue with the Twitch streams that was causing not all of the active players to be shown. INFO