 | Going Pro – A Guide To Becoming A Top-Tier Tribes Ascend Player |
Here’s my personal thoughts on how to raise your skills and become a top level Tribes Ascend player (maybe you’ll get to win some of the big tournaments pictured on the right). Though I should probably clarify my skill level first, I’ve been playing Tribes 1 since I was 16, I played Tribes 2 competitively with our clan staying undefeated for 26 games in a row, I also got to take part in the Tribes 2 World Championships and have so far only entered 4 LAN tournaments in varying FPS games (against over 500 players each time) but won all 4, so have a good understanding of online games competitively.
So lets get started,
You might notice while playing Tribes Ascend that even when players are rank 35 and above they can still be quite easy to defeat, despite having invested well over a hundred hours of gameplay. And then there are players who are as low as 20 who are skiing incredible speeds, out-duelling everyone and being a great team player, these are the ones you want to emulate, but what are they doing that makes them noticeable better than the average player? Playtime is great for improved aiming and general map awareness but will only take you to a certain level, to burst through the skill barrier you need to work hard, become a student and practice hard.
Find Your Guru
My favorite way to increase my skill level is to find someone who is just a fantastic player (usually someone who is has specialized in 1 specific skill, such as duelling or capping) and ask for their help. Getting on Mumble or even just in-game text chatting and playing together usually means they’ll throw some tips your way and they can make massive differences to your game.
Watch Live Streams
Watching match casts really doesn’t help you to have a deep understanding of how to play Tribes Ascend, only by watching intently videos of great players in first person perspective do you realize what they are doing that’s just that bit more clever than the average player.
Find The Best Clan
I’ve found it’s more productive for your development to be the worst player in the best clan and learn from the team, rather than the best player in a pretty average one. This usually means you need to really pursue a good clan and badger them to let you join. You don’t always have to be the best player, you just need to be very teamwork focused and heavily specialize in 1 skill for example shriking, sniping, being a Heavy on the flag , capping etc etc.
Just by listening to the audio channel of a great clan you’ll realize other people can perceive the game hugely different to yourself and just by seeing the game from a different angle will help you to understand it more.
Practice Mode
Sometimes the best way to improve your skills is away from other players and alone, practising on a map. even my spending 20 minutes skiing as high and cleanly as you can on a map will help you a lot more than just capping your same old routes over and over in a normal public game.
Also watch capping videos over and over and try to recreate their routes in practice mode, and when you screw it up don’t try to salvage the run, suicide and try again, over and over.. and over until it’s correct.
Obsess
This is probably the most controversial tip, I honestly think to be truly the best at something it needs to become a real focus of your life, only by thinking and researching and practising something do you really become brutally good.
Self Analyzing and pondering a lost match will slowly make you realize what you need to do to be better and if you can record a demo of lost matches and re-watch, that’s even better. Don’t be harsh on your mistakes, but every death should be a lesson learned.
Become A Pug King
I’ve lead and lost a lot of Pick Up Games, where tactics vary wildly and voice communication is a must, but it’s through these losses I’ve become more match aware and realized what a team needs to do to win, and what I need to do myself to win too.
Overall
Pug a lot, join a clan and scrim a lot and play with and against great players…. a lot. But make sure you ask yourself, is the effort really worth it?
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