Support NeoGAF

[Dice]

Wow, everything I hear from Titanfall is continually negative. The game looks so potentially great to me (after seeing actual gameplay, not just PR hype) but if it's multiplayer only and you fuck up the community, that's game over. So glad I didn't cave on the 40% off over the weekend.

 

[Vigilant Gambit]

I have an idea.

Have a couple of new themed playlists. One for Hardpoint + CTF, another for Attrition + PH.

Hardpoint and CTF are my favorite modes.

Wow, everything I hear from Titanfall is continually negative. The game looks so potentially great to me (after seeing actual gameplay, not just PR hype) but if it's multiplayer only and you fuck up the community, that's game over. So glad I didn't cave on the 40% off over the weekend.

I'm glad I did. Ended up getting the game and the DLC for $30 by using Hola to buy it from the Mexican Origin store with Paypal.

 

[The Cowboy]

I have an idea.

Have a couple of new themed playlists. One for Hardpoint + CTF, another for Attrition + PH.

Hardpoint and CTF are my favorite modes.

This is actually a great idea and i would actually be very OK with this - i would prefer it as it was, but this would be a decent compromise as it puts all Capture and Defend modes together.

So you'd have.
Man game: Attrition mode: LTS mode, Variety HP/CTF & Variety All game types.
DLC 1: Attrition mode: LTS mode, Variety HP/CTF & Variety All game types.
DLC 2: Attrition mode: LTS mode, Variety HP/CTF & Variety All game types.
DLC 3: Attrition mode: LTS mode, Variety HP/CTF & Variety All game types.

I would gladly stop my refund if they did this.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

Man, even the playlists for the DLC that was just released like 4 days ago are empty in the mornings. I tried three separate times to get a game in this morning and it never went through.

 

[Camp Lo]

The pc release for this seems a disaster, but I haven't played it much since launch tbh so I can't even comment :/

It is, it truly fucking is. At this point, the only game mode that can get you in a game with the least amount of wait time is Attrition. Every other mode is used solely for challenge whoring. Campaign is about dead so all the new players are hopping into Multiplayer modes with zero perks.

Long waits are the LEAST of their problems.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

The game is really fun though. :[

 

[Askherserenity]

The game is really fun though. :[

For a day or two, though.

 

[mynameismyname]

In their defense, Pilot Hunter is a stupid mode.

 

[El_Chino]

For a day or two, though.

Lol no.

 

[Askherserenity]

Lol no.

Ok, 3 days tops.

Spoiler

Obviously fucking around but it did get boring rather fast for me.

 

[Deleted member 22576]

For a day or two, though.

Naw, its been out for two months now. I think they've got a good thing going. I find that there is a lot of room for technique and finesse in the gameplay. I'm still honing my routes and traversal efficiency. Theres a lot there if you're looking for it.

 

[El_Chino]

Ok, 3 days tops.

Spoiler

Obviously fucking around but it did get boring rather fast for me.

Haha I mean I guess to each their own? But I've been playing almost 4 times a week now since release.

 

[rokkerkory]

TitanFail? really this is kinda crazy

 

[Toothless Spoon]

If their reason is due to long wait times, then they'll soon be removing the rest of the game modes - Hailing from Australia, finding a game in Attrition takes far too long on PC. It appears the console might be doing well, but I just put that down to the fact that there isn't any other games to play (that are new anyway).

I agree the game is fun, and I have fun whenever I play it - but Respawn have bought all their old problems with them from their Infinity ward days. I came back to the game only in the last few days to see how it was travelling, and to see if they had fixed the stuttering issues - only problem is it takes ages (without exaggeration) to find a match. Granted once I get in, the game seems to be running well, and looks better than I remember - but those wait times kill it for me.

 

[Wickerman22]

I want to add that I absolutely love Titanfall. I'm on Xbox One and need about 30 more MVPs before I can hit 10th Gen. Hopefully that will put into context the amount of time I've played. I'm 39 years old and I was playing Rise of the Triad and Quake via telephone modem back in day so I've had quite a bit of FPS experience over the years. For me, it's all about the gameplay. What's fun, what's not. I don't need "challenges" and camos and pointless customizations to unlock for a game to be "fun" and Titanfall is an absolute blast. I'm just responding to all the critics that say it's a failure. I mean, it's been the top selling UK game since launch and in the top 10 in the US since launch and EA and Respawn have announced a continuing partnership for "future Titanfall experiences" which we know means a sequel. Just because you got bored of it or because it's limited to certain platforms doesn't mean it's a failure.

I play Attrition and Hardpoint only, as do pretty much all my friends. Pilot Hunter was an experimental playlist from the beginning. It was basically to cater to the people that complained about shooting grunts. It's a failed playlist because you only get points for 1/3 of what you kill in the game. No points for taking down a Titan, which is hugely satisfying, and no grunt farming. CTF, especially since the Call of Duty era, has been a very niche, competitive type playlist. Even in Call of Duty, in the public playlist, CTF sees a minuscule percentage of the population.

 

[JB1981]

Wow, everything I hear from Titanfall is continually negative. The game looks so potentially great to me (after seeing actual gameplay, not just PR hype) but if it's multiplayer only and you fuck up the community, that's game over. So glad I didn't cave on the 40% off over the weekend.

The game is honestly amazing. Shame it hasn't gotten attention it deserves because console wars.

 

[SkeptiMism]

I'm really considering making a proper thread about whether or not multiplayer only games should be cheaper than games with single player (but I'm probably too lazy to do it though). There was that one thread about it a while ago but the whole basis for it was ridiculous and naive.

When an online only game bombs it can be really nasty for the consumer as you really can't know what you're paying for exactly and how long the game will be functional since unpopular modes might be patched out like this or the servers might simply be taken down after a relatively short time. I'm not saying online only games should necessarily be cheaper, but I think it should be talked through deeply.

EA should really put the game on Steam by the way. I think it could be really successful there.

 

[Nydius]

Give it time, I'd wager it will end up with being Attrition mode and Variety mode for main game too.

I think you're right, sadly. I didn't even stop to realize that about the DLC until you pointed it out. Going forward, I won't be surprised if the game becomes entirely Attrition OR Variety. Campaign is basically just Attrition/Hardpoint "variety" on fixed maps as it is already. They claim to be working on other modes but that means balancing every map for the new modes and as more DLC comes out that means more work for them to do. Call me a pessimist but I just don't see it happening.

It's only been two months? The way most people talk about this game it's as if they've wrung every last bit of joy out of it already.

For PC, they more or less have. It already had a dearth of content and a fairly small install base (after all, if the install base were worth boasting about, EA would have boasted already since they know, explicitly, how many PC copies have been activated due to the fact that every copy must be activated through Origin). Within the first month they started changing gameplay mechanics, effectively turning Hardpoint Domination into an Attrition-with-Capture Points circlejerk where defending was frowned upon. Gen challenges stop being fun after Gen 3 and start becoming a chore. Then, when they finally fix one of the major problems with CTF, they remove it a few days later instead of waiting to see if the changes boost the population.

We're currently working on those new modes and updates and can't wait to share the details with you. We will still rotate Pilot Hunter and CTF in for future playlists as well as adding new riffs on game types that Respawn is currently working on. Our goal is to have a wide variety of playlists that are popular and changing.

In their blog post they wrote the above comment. However, they're moderating the hell out of the Disqus comments log attached to it so my comments keep getting deleted. Instead, I'll just write them here since we know Respawn occasionally checks NeoGAF:

I wanted to believe in this game. I loved beta, I loved the concept of the title, and I wanted to see more competition in the shooter genre that has been dominated by Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Counterstrike for far too long. The reality is you've bungled the PC release of this game from the start, Respawn. Despite claiming that these issues were on your radar, to date there's still no performance updates and no updates for more advanced graphical options or higher resolutions. You offered no server browser, no ability for community run dedicated servers thanks to the Microsoft Azure alliance, no consideration for people when they're offline or want to play locally, and were late to the party with custom games which still aren't fully configurable.

Beyond the issues limited to the PC version, your knee-jerk reactions to patching game mechanics (namely the way points are awarded) have also driven people away from the title. The PC population fell off a cliff within a mere month and a half and, from where I sit, it looks like you've made no real attempt at retaining them. That is directly why game types like CTF and Pilot Hunter are languishing and, frankly, I'm surprised Last Titan Standing made the cut. Removing modes a mere two months into the game's lifespan is abhorrent, especially when you don't even try to replace them with something else. Although other games have removed playlists in the past, I can think of no other game that removed gametypes without adding others.

Between the gameplay changes and the removal of modes, Titanfall on PC is now a fundamentally different product than it was at launch and inferior in most respects (with exception to graphical customization) to both console counterparts. Yet as of typing this the sale ended and the asking price for Titanfall (PC) is the same price as Titanfall on consoles: $59.99. $59.99 for less player options and vague promises of addressing the content drought sometime soon.

Before the game launched you had people claiming there would be patches to address graphical issues for both the PC and XBO versions. You, through nVidia's PR blog, stated more graphical options would be coming for higher end rigs. Neither of these have come to pass. The first DLC is out and there have been zero new modes added. How are those of us who remain supposed to have any trust in you when you say you'll be adding new modes soon when that's the same line you've been using about every other issue in the game for months? It really doesn't matter what you're supposedly "working on" at this point because you've probably lost the bulk of the PC crowd due to your poor management of the game post-launch. Pre-launch and even for the first two weeks after launch, I actively proselytized the game; your decisions afterward, coupled with increased frustration over how poorly optimized the game is, have turned me into someone who won't trust the "Titanfall" brand again. I doubt I'll be loading the game up again - I have plenty of other options for mindless TDM and better options for Hardpoint Domination style gamemodes - and I won't have have any interest in "Titanfall 2", if that title ever comes to be.

At least I can say that Stephen Barton made a great soundtrack for the game. At this point that's one of a very few compliments I still have for the title. It's such a shame to see so much squandered potential.

 

[The Cowboy]

In their blog post they wrote the above comment. However, they're moderating the hell out of the Disqus comments log attached to it so my comments keep getting deleted. Instead, I'll just write them here since we know Respawn occasionally checks NeoGAF:

They've been doing that a lot, I've had lots of comments removed so far and not one was insulting in any way at all (in fact i went out of my way after the 1st removal to make posts overly polite), in all i was just pointing out that I'm not happy about playlists being removed and the HP/CTF points changes.

This to me speaks volumes about how much they care about their community and feedback from it, basically - if the feedback is negative, they don't seem to care about it and simply delete it if they can.

 

[infe|2no]

I just don't understand why they don't let us choose on which mode we want to play...
on XB1 we have only the variety pack or attrition... that sucks because i usually playing only hardpoint....

oops: was talking about Expedition

 

[Mainstreamer(1up)]

what is happening to videogames

The eventual decline and disappearance of them.

 

[Orayn]

The eventual decline and disappearance of them.

That's just a touch dramatic, don't you think? Even a collapse of some major publishers of high-budget console games would leave large sectors of the industry untouched. Video games as a medium are too diversified to collapse.

 

[The Albatross]

I thought they were adding these playlists into the random playlist mode... But they're just removing them?

Pilot hunter was junk IMO, it should have never been added, and was only added because people didn't get what grunts were and requested a mode where you'd only kill people. But, CTF was a lot of fun when played correctly. Disappointed that it's gone, I suppose.

 

[harrypmgaga]

I thought they were adding these playlists into the random playlist mode... But they're just removing them?

Pilot hunter was junk IMO, it should have never been added, and was only added because people didn't get what grunts were and requested a mode where you'd only kill people. But, CTF was a lot of fun when played correctly. Disappointed that it's gone, I suppose.

Pretty sure it's still in the variety pack.

 

[Orayn]

I thought they were adding these playlists into the random playlist mode... But they're just removing them?

Pilot hunter was junk IMO, it should have never been added, and was only added because people didn't get what grunts were and requested a mode where you'd only kill people. But, CTF was a lot of fun when played correctly. Disappointed that it's gone, I suppose.

They're both still in Variety Pack and Private Matches.

 

[Nydius]

I thought they were adding these playlists into the random playlist mode... But they're just removing them?

They've added them to variety but removed them as dedicated modes.That still effectively kills those modes, however. Although I agree that Pilot Hunter wasn't that great, CTF, at the least, should have remained its own mode since it's a freakin' staple mode of FPS games.

By putting CTF into Variety matchmaking only, people who want to play CTF are going to be pushed into trying to find private matches - which is not made easy by the way private matches have been implemented - or stop playing all together because going into Variety matchmaking means they might get match after match after match of a game mode they don't want to play at all.

 

[scitek]

Made this for my podcast last night.
https://soundcloud.com/itsdonallen/whatever-fake-ad-respawn-repo

(We have weekly "fake sponsor" breaks)

 

[Vigilant Gambit]

It is, it truly fucking is. At this point, the only game mode that can get you in a game with the least amount of wait time is Attrition. Every other mode is used solely for challenge whoring. Campaign is about dead so all the new players are hopping into Multiplayer modes with zero perks.

Long waits are the LEAST of their problems.

Campaign on PC is crap.

There are very few people in the campaign playlists, which are unique because it creates a lobby of people who all have as close to the same campaign progress as you. The problem is, it can't always find a group of 6 at the same point... so it'll search backwards. This problem is compounded when the game separates the two 6-man groups because one side beat the other too badly (which happens frequently because the Militia side is comprised solely of people who have already beaten the game once).

I had to play through the same level over and over before I could finally clear it the second time. And once I learned about how the matchmaking worked, I had to intentionally suicide in order to feed the other team points so the game would keep us together long enough to finish the game.

I hate, hate, hate this type of unlock style.

 

[Izayoi]

CTF is by far the best game type...

Unreal.

 

[Black Nectar]

That really does suck for the PC community I love me some CTF.

Although leads me to this point..

Where is your master race now?

Playing actual good games.

 

[Vormund]

Couldn't they just promote this by making you level up faster in these modes instead?

Although a lot of people have probably leveled up 10 times over already.

 

[EmpReb]

They need server browser... plan and simple. Even if its just for the round on the Azure servers it would do wonders for this game. But no NOT EVEN THAT CAN BE DONE. Derp back to BF4 for me. At least CTE is a true beta and things are finally getting fixed.