Last weekend, ESL and Hi-Rez Studios presented the first ever SMITE tournament and Tribes:Ascend tournaments at the Paris Games Week in France. The tournaments featured some of the best teams from Europe and a total prize pool of 10,000 Euros. ESL France sat down with Hi-Rez's own Bart Koenigsberg to ask him some questions on Tribes:Ascend. Bart Koenigsberg (Hi-Rez) talks about Tribes:Ascend ESL : Since the Serverbrowser patch has been released shortly before pgw and being received well – and since you often seem to directly put the community’s technical wishes into production of patches and contents, how important is community feedback to hirez?



Bart : Community feedback is vital to the continued development of games, especially free to play ones! We take community feedback around balance and features very seriously and try to incoporate as much community based needs and wants into each patch as possible.





ESL : Could you model your beard for the Tribes fans?



Bart : Of course. Someday soon I hope to have in game beards available for purchase in all of our titles.





ESL : Would you like to say anything to the people who read this/ see this?



Bart : I hope to see you all in game soon. Mostly so I can win and gloat.





ESL : Could you give a sneak preview for any tournament plans or new content or community events?



Bart : We have quite a bit of upcoming events in Autumn/Fall into Winter for both Tribes and SMITE. ESL, of course, has autumn cups AND national ESL events for America and Europe. The Tribes community is running a series of community events in November through www.twitter.com/natribes. And as usual we are evaluating opportunities for more events for SMITE and Tribes worldwide.





ESL : The Tribes community has been waiting for the new tribes for 14 years. As the Tribes community is consisting of very unique players and skill sets – and we have many maps and content that has been remade from Tribes 1. Will there be some more remakes for the “old” Tribes fans?



Bart : Striking the balance between new and old is something we spend no small ammount of time thinking about. Legacy content in some cases is very well recieved, in others, it highlights the differences between the old games and Ascend, which is sometimes less desireable to the "old" players. New players enjoy content whether legacy or not. In my opinion, some of our best maps are "inspired" by legacy maps but not direct ports. For example, Katabatic.





ESL : What is Hirez’s long-term goal for Tribes:Ascend? What have you put in place for that goal already and could the community get involved with that?



Bart : The future of Tribes: Ascend lies with the community. The community organizaitons like Playapug.com, NAtribes, Gameshrine.org, TWL and many others provide an invaluable service to us as developers. We can focus on promoting community events while simultaneously organizaing eSports and international competition. The game is still quite young. The long-term goals for Tribes is to empower our community and continue to improve the game and build a competition environment.







Community feedback is vital to the continued development of games, especially free to play ones! We take community feedback around balance and features very seriously and try to incoporate as much community based needs and wants into each patch as possible.Of course. Someday soon I hope to have in game beards available for purchase in all of our titles.I hope to see you all in game soon. Mostly so I can win and gloat.We have quite a bit of upcoming events in Autumn/Fall into Winter for both Tribes and SMITE. ESL, of course, has autumn cups AND national ESL events for America and Europe. The Tribes community is running a series of community events in November through www.twitter.com/natribes. And as usual we are evaluating opportunities for more events for SMITE and Tribes worldwide.Striking the balance between new and old is something we spend no small ammount of time thinking about. Legacy content in some cases is very well recieved, in others, it highlights the differences between the old games and Ascend, which is sometimes less desireable to the "old" players. New players enjoy content whether legacy or not. In my opinion, some of our best maps are "inspired" by legacy maps but not direct ports. For example, Katabatic.The future of Tribes: Ascend lies with the community. The community organizaitons like Playapug.com, NAtribes, Gameshrine.org, TWL and many others provide an invaluable service to us as developers. We can focus on promoting community events while simultaneously organizaing eSports and international competition. The game is still quite young. The long-term goals for Tribes is to empower our community and continue to improve the game and build a competition environment. otacon , Monday, 05/11/12 16:54