Tribes: Ascend Gets An Update Today. No, Really.

Hi-Rez Studios wasn't kidding when it said it had a small team of "four or five people" still working on Tribes: Ascend. Today, that small team's efforts have bloomed into a full-on patch for the game, its first in literally years, appropriately named "Out of the Blue."

And the changes to the game aren't small. There are the three new capture-the-flag maps, inspired by maps in previous Tribes titles: Ice Coaster, Perdition, and Terminus. All classes have seen a slight bump to their health, with a corresponding decrease to health recharge time. Light and medium classes can now carry three weapons, and heavies four, and all have nine custom loadouts by default.

All items have been rebalanced, and vehicles received a major tune-up to make them more generally useful. As a result, all purchases have been undone and their Tribes Gold and XP refunded to player accounts.

There are a slew of other miscellaneous changes, big and small, to virtually all aspects of the game; you can read the very full patch notes here. The game will be down for about six hours, starting at 10:00 a.m. Pacific, for the patch. Tribes: Ascend fans, are you pumped?