Tribes is a subtle pay-to-win FPS using nostalgia and a dry market to springboard its name.
At current, it would take years to earn all of the guns and enhancements using the VIP method (100,000 XP per gun, x 8 for number of classes, and that's just the guns, there's millions of XP to be earned for the unlocks, and you only get about 1000 per 20 minute match. Considering the average gamer would only get around 3-4 matches in every other day, that would mean it takes OVER 3 years of bi-daily gameplay to unlock everything)
It also doesn't help that almost half of the core concepts in Tribes (flag chasing, team gameplay, base defence) are rendered null by these new weapons that break the gameplay off from the original Tribes feeling.
Let's face it, this is Tribes Fortress Modern Warfare 2: Ascend. Many of the guns are even a direct ripoff of TF2, and the Thumper/Sentinel is an obvious Call of Duty fanboy pleaser.