Katabatic – zfz 5, Tao 0

Drydock – zfz 3, Tao 2

Crossfire – zfz 5, Tao 1

This week, the professional e-Sports North American Star League (NASL) celebrates the Open Beta of Tribes: Ascend by airing the first exhibition matches for NASL Season 3.

The first night of Tribes: Ascend streaming will be Wednesday 2/29 at 8pm PST / 11pm EST on www.nasl.tv.

Night two will begin after Starcraft II, Thursday 3/1 at 8pm PST / 11pm EST.

This week’s matches feature top European and North American teams, shoutcasted from the NASL studio.

zfz’s scrim against Tao will be one of the featured games. Be sure to tune in and grab your weekly pass for an HD stream!

The match was with Area 51 in a tightly contested Bo5. Both teams were out of their element slightly playing 7s, as well as an agreed upon gentleman’s rule of no vehicles. We wanted to put on as much of a show as possible for HiRez and friends during their open beta celebration party.

Though A51 started strong taking the first two maps, zfz was able to come back and win the match 3-2. Thanks to A51 for another great game!

Crossfire - zfz 3, A51 5

Katabatic - zfz 3, A51 5

ArxNovena – zfz 5, A51 2

Drydock – zfz 5, A51 2

Bella Omega – zfz 5, A51 3

Intro and first map – Crossfire

Second and third maps – Bella Omega, Drydock

Fourth and fifth maps – Katabatic, ArxNovena

We played in a scrim with Tao with a win for zfz 3-1. The scrim was plagued with connection and latency issues on Tao’s side for the final two maps, as well as some confusion on the scrim format for the first map. ArxNovena remained relatively stable as the second map played on East Coast servers. Here’s hoping for a better scrim next time.

Crossfire – zfz 0, Tao 5

ArxNovena – zfz 5, Tao 0

Katabatic – zfz 5, Tao 0

Drydock – zfz 5, Tao 0

This system will be a work in progress, with more features to be added later. Please leave any comments for changes or additions you’d like to see in the stream.

Again, HiRez demonstrates their ability to closely listen to their players and address all of the major issues in a timely fashion as well as their ability to add new content at a very rapid pace.

Press release here.

Tribes Beta Version 0.1.789.1 Patch Notes

SERVER DOWNTIME: The Tribes Servers are expected to be down for a number of hours on WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 2012 while the patch is deployed. Watch the Server Status on the game loader for the latest availability information.

Major Highlights

• The game no longer requires a key in order to play. Anyone can join the beta program by simply creating an account onhttp://www.tribesascend.com and then downloading the game. Players are reminded that their progression in the game will be kept once the beta ends and the game officially launches — so time spent playing now will be rewarded at launch.
• A new gametype, Arena, has been added with two initial maps, Air Arena and Lava Arena. The Arena gametype features five-on-five matches fought on small hazardous maps. The team that wins two rounds wins the match. During the course of a round, each team has 25 respawns. After a team’s respawns are depleted, players on that team each get one more life before the round ends. The team with the last man standing wins the round.
• A new Capture the Flag map has been added to the quick match rotation (Temple Ruins).
• A new Team Deathmatch map has been added to the quick match rotation (Inferno).
• Two new unlockable items have been added on the Soldier class: Proximity Grenade and Utility Pack.
• Servers are now available in Asia and Brazil. You may choose your server region in the Play Now menu, or in the Settings menu.
• You may now change your Gamer Name for gold, using the Store menu.
• The end-of-match screens have been given a significant user interface overhaul.
• The Doombringer and Brute have new suits. There have also been some adjustments to the suits for some other classes, based on user feedback.
• Updated art for the Accolades and Ranks.
• Variety of other fixes, clean-ups and feature additions.

Weapon/Balance Items

• Fixed an issue with the Sentinel’s Phase Rifle not properly applying damage.
• Motion sensors that are automatically destroyed for placing too many no longer trigger the notification.
• Reduced initial clip size on Sentinel’s Falcon Auto Pistol from 24 to 22. Reduced and adjusted starting ammo pool to match.
• Infiltrators using the Stealth pack now fade in and become “visible” at speeds over 173kph.
• Increased the activation delay on newly placed Light Turrets (Technician) from 1 to 2 seconds.
• The following weapons projectiles now spawn center cross-hairs, rather than offset to the right: Soldier’s Assault Rifle, Doombringer’s Chaingun, Soldier’s Eagle, Sentinel’s Falcon, Pathfinder’s Light Assault Rifle, Raider’s NJ4, Brute’s Nova Colt, Infiltrator’s Rhino, Infiltrator’s SN7, Technician’s Sparrow, Technician’s TCN4, Juggernaut’s X1LMG.
• Damage falloff range on Pathfinder’s Light Assault Rifle increased (improved) by roughly 16%.
• Two new unlockable items have been added for Soldier: Proximity Grenade and Utility Pack.

Additional Items

• You may now add a player as a friend directly from the scoreboard. You may also mute players (turn off chat and VGS).
• Eliminated several issues that were causing “hitches” in matches. (Some other issues may still exist — optimization still in progress).
• Several bug fixes and cleanups to the main menu UI.
• The Target Practice map has been improved. There are now Light, Medium and Heavy bots in the maps, in addition to both enemy and friendly vehicles, along with other improvements.
• The Rabbit gamemode has been removed from the Quick Match rotation. It will be available through Custom Servers at a later date.
• Added the ability to view both Blood Eagle and Diamond Sword skins from within the Class menu.
• The ability to add Tribes Gold to your account is now available from all menu screens.
• Under Gameplay Settings, you may now set “Default Objectives On/Off”. This controls whether you see the objective markers by default in a match. (To toggle them inside of a match, press the “O” key).
• VGS and Announcer volumes are now independent settings
• Revisited Blood Eagle variant class visuals based on user feedback.
• Various minor cleanups have been made to the Ski Tutorial.
• Made several changes to the Shrike: increased yaw-turn sensitivity, decreased damage received when hitting static objects, and changed the collision model so that wing tips are less likely to cause terrain impacts.
• Changed Beowulf handling, it will no longer allow immediate forward/backward velocity changes.
• Enemy vehicle icons will now show through walls if they are detected by a Radar Sensor.
• The Flag Reach perk will no longer allow players to pick-up the flag through walls.
• Accolade medals have been given another polish pass. New accolade medals have been added as well.
• To be consistent with other maps, vehicle stations in Crossfire were moved next to the vehicle pad.
• A message now displays when a teammate executes a Call-in.
• Call-ins are now free in roaming and training.
• When a player is invulnerable and they fire a weapon, invulnerability immediately expires.
• Fixed and improved how the client handles an unexpected disconnect from the server.
• Fixed an issue in the main menu where a character skin from the Classes screen could pop into other main menu scenes.
• Fixed an issue where Gameplay Settings for sensitivity were only allowing integers, they now allow floating points.
• Fixed an issue where if a player died while falling in a deep pit, footstep sounds could begin playing.
• Fixed the chat filter, and added an option to disable it in the Settings menu.
• Fixed an issue where if a player died while falling in a deep pit, the previous damager could get a blue plate or air mail accolade.
• Fixed an issue where AoE wasn’t properly being applied to players and surrounding objects when a generator or inventory station was in the way. This includes Technician’s turrets being placed in inventory stations not taking AoE damage.
• Fixed an issue where Bass Boost in the Audio Settings was not properly being saved. The frequency ranges that are boosted (or suppressed) have also been tweaked to prevent audio popping.
• Fixed an issue where zooming while attempting to deploy an object could cause a second object to appear at the top of the screen.
• Fixed an issue where a player could fire a projectile (or call-in) and suicide, which would result in teammates taking damage.
• Fixed an issue where players were able to place deployables in volumes that were not permitted, this is most noticeable with the Doombringer’s Force Field being placed near the flag stand at certain rotations.
• Fixed an issue where dying players were not dropping ammo nuggets and ammo nuggets could get lost inside generators or base deployables.
• Fixed an issue where users binding ‘Enter’ to chat would have the chat window immediately close.
• Fixed an issue where a player dying before the MIRV launcher’s secondary split would not be properly credited for the kills.
• Fixed an issue where the Doombringer’s Chaingun spin-up sound would be stuck playing if you died while spinning up.
• Fixed an issue on Drydock where no-deploy zones around the flags were to large relative to other maps.
• Fixed LOD popping on all new class variant visuals.
• Fixed some other situations where UI sounds played multiple times for the same event
• Fixed an issue where users with certain graphics settings were able to see fully stealthed Infiltrators.
• Fixed an issue with Doombringer’s forcefields not being able to be destroyed at certain angles.
• Fixed incorrect description on Soldier’s Energy pack.
• Fixed an exploit where users with specific graphics settings were able to see a fully stealthed Infiltrator.
• Fixed an issue where Radar Sensors weren’t properly detected being hit.
• Fixed an issue where Base Turrets and Light Turrets were unable to target enemy players through friendly base force fields on Bella Omega.
• The enemy generator icon will always display if you are showing all objective markers.
• Fixed an issue where players were losing their invulnerability when spawning a vehicle. They will now remain fully invulnerable until they are teleported into the vehicle.
• Fixed an issue where the zoom binoculars were being stuck on when zooming while throwing grenades.
• Fixed an issue causing some maps to crash in roaming mode.
• Fixed issues with the Friends List that occur when you scroll down the list.

Known Issues

• Heavy characters may sometime appear as stretched out medium characters.

The game will be streamed live through Onemoregame.tv, with HiRezBart and SirScoots casting, and featured on the front page of Twitch.tv!

The last time the US faced off against European competition in a Tribes game was during the Tribes 1 World Cup, with US-W defeating Sweden in the finals. As zfz is a mostly West Coast team, will they be able to continue the legacy? Be sure to watch to find out!

We played Boss in a rematch. It was to be a Bo5 match, but due to time constraints for Boss was limited to Bo3. zfz took the win with a score of 2-1.

ArxNovena – Boss 5, zfz 3

Drydock - zfz 5, Boss 3

Crossfire – zfz 5, Boss 1