Tribes: Ascend is getting support again, thanks to SMITE’s success

Do you remember Tribes: Ascend, the cool sci-fi FPS from Hi-Rez Studios? It was quite well received when it launched in 2012 but ultimately it was just left out there since it wasn't making money for the studio to sustain development. The rest is history: Hi-Rez then focused on developing the MOBA game SMITE, which turned out to be a massive hit and with it came piles of money.

Now, CEO Erez Goren tweeted that the developer is going back to the game, creating “a new map and some other small changes as well as continuing support”, while not expecting to make money out of the game.

With the success of Smite and Paladins, we have more resources than ever in the Studio. We can now afford to go back and improve older game.

— HiRezErez (@BlueOrc) August 28, 2015

Tribes will be getting a new map and some other small changes as well as continuing support. PTS in about two weeks if all goes well.

— HiRezErez (@BlueOrc) August 28, 2015

Just how Paladins is a success already we don't know, as this competitive shooter is anything but released.

Further details are on this Reddit thread:

We have a very small but passionate team working on some changes to Tribes that we hope the community will respond to positively. This team is led by HirezSean, who was highly involved at all levels on the initial Ascend project, and one of the lifelong Tribes fans that initially lobbied for us to acquire the Tribes franchise in 2010.

Our plan is to release a very early version of some of our changes to a public test server as soon as we can (hopefully within a couple weeks). We expect this version to be very raw from many perspectives, especially from a balance angle — but we know the Tribes community is passionate and will help us test out the changes and provide the feedback we need to get the changes into a shippable state.

This is a passion project for us. If we are able to make any money from it, that is great — but it is not our expectation going in. There is a group of us that still love playing the game regularly — and we want to leave the game in a better state than it is now, and provide something that all of us can keep playing for years to come.

One of the biggest changes we are contemplating and want to test on PTS is the consolidation to only 3 main classes — Light, Medium and Heavy — harkening back to Tribes 2. This may wind up being a bigger rathole than our small team can absorb — but our early testing is promising, and we at least want to give you all the ability to test this on PTS and decide as a community whether its something you want us to keep in the game.

We also have a list of bugs and other cleanups we are working on, and are looking closely at some changes to the unlock and progression system that we think will make the game more attractive to players new and old.

And, yes, we have a new map that we will ship as well.

Obviously, we can't promise how long we will maintain the game — and given our history, I want to be very careful about oversetting expectations. If people don't like and respond to the changes as we make them, obviously, we will have to stop maintaining the game at some point. But I am hopeful we can get the game to a better spot that our hardcore Tribes community will really love and appreciate for a long time.

We will share some more information soon, and Sean will start to get engaged more in the community top make sure your input is being heard.