Tribes Ascend wasn't that bad during its early beta stages, though. I think that was late 2011 / early 2012.
It went downhill with the consecutive patches following the game's release in April 2012.
If you're falling above 72km/hr and jetpack, they do nothing and you actually fall faster. Under 72 it decelerates as you'd expect. This is purely because they tried to impose variable physics based on your velocity, which in turn was a bandaid to address other issues.
They really shot themselves in the foot and only as of about 6 months ago - if that - has a small subgroup of the old devs been allowed to start unravelling the mess and make it more like Tribes 1. Before that, they basically ceased work on the game and abandoned it in favour of throwing all their devs at their next cash grab endeavour, Smite.
Criticize them for not allocating enough staff to maintain Tribes Ascend, sure, but it's unfair to call SMITE a cash-grab.