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Titanfall has maximum player count of 12 (alongside AI) [Respawn comments post #558]

DKo5

Respawn Entertainment
Lots of armchair game designing going on in here. I'd suggest playing before judging a something as insignificant as a number in a vacuum.

Vince is right - we tried a huge amount of playercounts (all the way down to 1v1 and up quite high) and designed the maps, gameplay mechanics, and entire experience around which played best. If anyone wants to chase the numbers game, perhaps we're not the experience they're after? I dunno.

And FYI, for amount of stuff happening at once in a map you'll be hard pressed to find a game that keeps the action higher. I literally have to stop playing every few rounds because my heart just can't take it some times. Remember, you can get out of your Titan and let it roam on AI mode - meaning there can be 12 Pilots wallrunning around, 12 Titans stomping below, and dozens of AI doing their thing.

Oh, and I keep seeing people thinking we've got "bots" when we talk about AI. Thats not how they are. The AI in Titanfall are not replacements for human players. Our playercount is not 6v6 because of AI - AI play their own role in the game and are a different class of character in the game.

Can't wait! Only a couple months until speculative threads like this are gone and people are actually talking about their experiences with the game. Its truly fun stuff, and I hope everyone at least gives it a try.
 
Is it a known gameplay point that AI cannot call down mechs? I don't see why they couldn't? Wouldn't be hard to write a script for an AI to call a mech and enter said mech.
 

Gadirok

Member
Are you really that guy who plays shitty campaigns from these multiplayer-focused AAA offerings?

Don't be that guy, buy good games if you are looking for that experience.

I think his point was that this game doesn't warrant the $60 price tag.
 
Well your not to blame, blame people like Adam Sessler, Arthur Gies for hyping this game up to MEGATON proportions.
Yeah, damn those people who played the game actually liking it.

And around and around we go.

I'm starting to think that the Titanfall that exists in many people's heads has next to nothing to do with the actual game that people have played, and that garnered so much positive buzz.

I love how people were like "Oh, it's just CoD with mechs and wall-jumping!" and now that we've got a good example that the game design is more than that people are pissing their pants in tantrums.
Seriously. I'm flabbergasted but I can't look away.
 

Sneds

Member
AI can't call in mechs or be a legitimate threat.

They obviously enjoy the gameplay that the AI brings to the table, but they don't terribly throw off the balance like adding in 2-4 extra players.

For example, maybe mechs get destroyed too quickly with increased player count. Maybe the maps aren't big enough to accommodate that many call downs, or too much of a clusterfuck for one player to make a difference.

That makes sense. I have to admit that I remain sceptical as if the AI really are just designed to be cannon fodder I just imagine shooting them becoming old really quickly. There's a reason that I don't play single player FPS campaigns on easy difficulty.
 

Fracas

#fuckonami
Well your not to blame, blame people like Adam Sessler, Arthur Gies for hyping this game up to MEGATON proportions.

When Vince Zampalla said they made the game in under 2 years(To me that spells barebones for modes and content the rest will be sold in DLC packs), I took a step back, when they announced Multiplayer only, I jumped back. Now with them charging 60 bucks and touting AI to make up the rest of the roster in the game with 6x6, I await impressions and reviews before investing any type of time into this game.

I honestly do not understand how player count can make a game good or bad.

Halo CE-Reach were some of the best MP games ever created and the max player count was 16 while 4v4 was the bread and butter. The sheer number of players is irrelevant. If your map design directs players towards encounters and the AI is good, then you will never feel like the map is empty.

It's ALL about map design and how you use that player count. Titanfall could have been 12v12 or even 100v100 but Respawn chose 6v6. It's not a hardware limitation, it's creating gameplay that suits what they want to do.
 

dimb

Bjergsen is the greatest midlane in the world
The value is in however the game is designed. Can bots call in Titans? If no, then you have your answer.
I simply find it difficult to imagine there is not a reasonable middle ground to facilitate more players and excise bots limp-wristedly emulating them completely.
Respawn's objective is to make a good, fun multiplayer shooter that provides entertainment and challenge alongside balance. Not to make a social networking tool. Perceptually small player counts have worked for multiplayer shooters since forever. If that's not for you, fine, but what you like as a number on paper isn't a prerequisite for making a good multiplayer video game.
There are good, fun, multiplayer shooters that provide entertainment and challenge alongside balance with higher player counts. When I look at Titanfall the potential for chaotic encounters based on mobility in dense environments seems exciting with larger groups of players. To me a game like Titanfall has more in common with something like Unreal Tournament on paper than it does something like Counter-Strike, where a slower pace facilitates more careful and calculated play.
 
How do you know what it is? It's not Battlefield or xyz game either. They're building things around this.

COD games have been designed for consoles since COD4, most of the maps still were fun with 16 vs 16 on PC despite 8vs8 optimization
Im pretty worried about this game.
 

mr2t

Banned
Please explain your position. I would love to hear why one game being 5v5 + AI controlled fodder is great, but another being 6v6 + AI controlled fodder is terrible.

Dota is a totally different style of game. You couldn't replace ai fodder in Dota with more players. You certainly can get rid of crappy ai bots in a shooter and add more players.
 
You guys are right. Nobody plays games like CounterStrike.
It MUST be bad with 6 vs 6.

csgoposxe.gif

Well I doubt many of those servers are capped at the competitive 5 vs 5 format.

For pubs having a lot of players is a clusterfuck but also kinda fun.

I'm really surprised at such a low number of players but can't say if it's good or bad because I've never played the game. If anything a smaller team structure as a standard will make the games feel a bit more organized.
 

Sub_Level

wants to fuck an Asian grill.
Are you really that guy who plays shitty campaigns from these multiplayer-focused AAA offerings?

Don't be that guy, buy good games if you are looking for that experience.

Oscar Mike to Burgertown was an amazingly frosty experience (and it stayed that way throughout), speak for yourself. It really felt like eminem's ideas were successfully expressed in the creative process. Dont be a Roach, be a Ramirez.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Are you really that guy who plays shitty campaigns from these multiplayer-focused AAA offerings?

Don't be that guy, buy good games if you are looking for that experience.

Please stop. Don't be that guy who buys into a demo, or hyperbole by Adam Sessler and Arthur Gies.

I play fully realized games. Games like Left 4 dead you know what your getting, and it's chalked full of content and modes, with no DLC BS.

Titanfall has an amazing premise, and a neat look that screams Sci-fi campaign with awesome multiplayer like Halo series.

This game was made very quickly and has bare bones written all over it. Hence why we havn't seen anything new but Titan classes. Nothing on story which is suppose to written into multiplayer, nothing on experience system, nothing on kinds of maps, modes ect.

So again I will await reviews and impressions before putting 300+ hours into a game. Just like I have 300 hours in L4D,counter-strike, Call of duty ect.
 

PBY

Banned
Please stop. Don't be that guy who buys into a demo, or hyperbole by Adam Sessler and Arthur Gies.

I play fully realized games. Games like Left 4 dead you know what your getting, and it's chalked full of content and modes, with no DLC BS.

Titanfall has an amazing premise, and a neat look that screams Sci-fi campaign with awesome multiplayer like Halo series.

This game was made very quickly and has bare bones written all over it. Hence why we havn't seen anything new but Titan classes. Nothing on story which is suppose to written into multiplayer, nothing on experience system, nothing on kinds of maps, modes ect.

So again I will await reviews and impressions before putting 300+ hours into a game. Just like I have 300 hours in L4D,counter-strike, Call of duty ect.

Re: the bolded- what.
 

Sneds

Member
Lots of armchair game designing going on in here. I'd suggest playing before judging a something as insignificant as a number in a vacuum.

Vince is right - we tried a huge amount of playercounts (all the way down to 1v1 and up quite high) and designed the maps, gameplay mechanics, and entire experience around which played best. If anyone wants to chase the numbers game, perhaps we're not the experience they're after? I dunno.

And FYI, for amount of stuff happening at once in a map you'll be hard pressed to find a game that keeps the action higher. I literally have to stop playing every few rounds because my heart just can't take it some times. Remember, you can get out of your Titan and let it roam on AI mode - meaning there can be 12 Pilots wallrunning around, 12 Titans stomping below, and dozens of AI doing their thing.

Oh, and I keep seeing people thinking we've got "bots" when we talk about AI. Thats not how they are. The AI in Titanfall are not replacements for human players. Our playercount is not 6v6 because of AI - AI play their own role in the game and are a different class of character in the game.

Can't wait! Only a couple months until speculative threads like this are gone and people are actually talking about their experiences with the game. Its truly fun stuff, and I hope everyone at least gives it a try.

Does the game come with a surgeon general's warning? Don't go too ott with the hype.

Obviously the proof is in the pudding and there are lots of talented experienced designers at Respawn. I just hope the AI is fun to fight against.
 

Whompa

Member
That's for logistical reasons mainly, and for spectating. It's more fun to WATCH a smaller team. Really weak way to argue your point though. There are better reasons to support small player counts. "Competitive games are small scale" is not one of them. Most every popular CS server is 16v16 or 12v12.



DOTA is a MOBA with a ton of variables.

The maps were made for 5 v 5. How about for actual design reasons? Bad enough an argument for you? When playing a 32 player game in cs, it's absolutely a cluster fuck. No team dynamics. No actual strats.

That's for competitive reasons. The "ESports" guys play 5v5 in Battlefield 4, too -- check it out for yourself -- but that doesn't mean 5v5 is the most fun or popular.

Why is Esports in quotes? You also honestly cannot argue fun. That's absolutely subjective.
 

Cat Party

Member
Oh, and I keep seeing people thinking we've got "bots" when we talk about AI. Thats not how they are. The AI in Titanfall are not replacements for human players. Our playercount is not 6v6 because of AI - AI play their own role in the game and are a different class of character in the game.
Interesting. Can't wait to try it out.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
I honestly do not understand how player count can make a game good or bad.

Halo CE-Reach were some of the best MP games ever created and the max player count was 16 while 4v4 was the bread and butter. The sheer number of players is irrelevant. If your map design directs players towards encounters and the AI is good, then you will never feel like the map is empty.

It's ALL about map design and how you use that player count. Titanfall could have been 12v12 or even 100v100 but Respawn chose 6v6. It's not a hardware limitation, it's creating gameplay that suits what they want to do.

Yes I agree, especially coming from a L4D player. But the AI population vs, player count is worrying.

The setting also has vehicle type combat in the forms of mechs, where in any other game has anything smaller than 8v8 worked?(with Vehicles)
 

Sanic

Member
Reads the thread. It's PvP with AI units.

How general of a description can you get? So again, while somewhat ignoring what I said in my previous post, your argument seems to comes down to you being dissapointed that it's different from your more standard FPS fare?
 

BeerSnob

Member
I'll echo that sure maybe 6v6 is the perfect balance for this game but why the bots? It's weird.

To make it seem bigger than it is. It's really hard to make even mech on mech violence seem larger than life when it's just you and eleven other dudes clanging away at each other. Why they went the micro route in depicting their storyline instead of the macro, like mechwarrior/hawken etc, is something you would have to ask EA. I suspect it's an attempt by EA to pimp Respawn out to the esports crowd but I don't know.
 
Well for what's it worth Vince is answering a lot of questions about it on Twitter.

https://twitter.com/VinceZampella

Not sure how much info we'll get about it but still.

I just wish Respawn wasn't so tight lipped about it. I really want to know more. Are they modes with more than 6v6? Are there modes with no AI? Other objectives modes?

Coming from the guys who created MW1 and 2 I'd be very surprised if the game is limited to only 2-3 modes with no difference in player counts or objectives or other variables.
 

jet1911

Member
Dota is a totally different style of game. You couldn't replace ai fodder in Dota with more players. You certainly can get rid of crappy ai bots in a shooter and add more players.

Every human player can call a Titan. I guess that having more than 12 titans running around was not as fun as some of you who never played the game think it was.
 

EatChildren

Currently polling second in Australia's federal election (first in the Gold Coast), this feral may one day be your Bogan King.
Is anybody bothered that AI controls non-player combatants in DOTA2, Left 4 Dead, DayZ, Grand Theft Auto 5, Dark Souls, and every single bloody hoard mode? Where is it written that every multiplayer shooter must, with absolutely no concession made to the game design, support 100% player controlled characters and zero AI? That Titanfall should have a ton of players in every map calling in their personal Titans even if it plays like diarrhoea because the map size, design, and objectives don't support the player count but fuck it lets do it anyway.

It's a magnificent sort of confusing to call out Respawn for very specific, calculated game design in their own game, one an overwhelming majority of people here haven't played, based entirely on the premise that it's not designed exactly like a bunch of other shooters on the market, shooters it's specifically designed not to be like in the first place.

Ya'll basically looking at Call of Duty and Battlefield and going "BUT WHY BOTS", instead of looking at Titanfall and thinking "Bots must serve a purpose". They're designing a 6v6 player game supplemented with limited function bot fodder, all components working together to forge the core design.
 

Chobel

Member
The maps were made for 5 v 5. How about for actual design reasons? Bad enough an argument for you? When playing a 32 player game in cs, it's absolutely a cluster fuck. No team dynamics. No actual strats.

And yet people play with more than 5 v 5, 12 v 12 and more.
 
How general of a description can you get? So again, while somewhat ignoring what I said in my previous post, your argument seems to comes down to you being dissapointed that it's different from your more standard FPS fare?

I already said what the game is doing in terms of its Player count and AI, I'm not you mother, if you can type you can read. Literally the entire thread has commented on this. They're putting in AI slots instead of other players, this is frickin stupid. How more blunt can I be?
 

Paz

Member
Dota is a totally different style of game. You couldn't replace ai fodder in Dota with more players. You certainly can get rid of crappy ai bots in a shooter and add more players.

Good thing they didn't do what you're suggesting, not so good that you can't even understand the concept of someone making a new game and a new experience :/

They made a first person shooter built around a 6v6 player set with tons of supporting AI characters that you can kill to power up quickly, see what you're not getting?

A bot is not a player replacement in Titan Fall, no more than an ent was a player replacement in Dota.
 

NeoGash

Member
Don't like 6v6? Totally cool. Some people do though, and not everyone likes games with shit loads of players. More ≠ better.
It's alright not liking it, but calling it bad design or hardware limitation etc. is quite frankly, insanely fucking idiotic. So idiotic that you should be ashamed. I don't even think I'll get the game, but Respawn made the game they wanted to make. If large player MP games are so good, then play them and let people who enjoy tighter experiences like this enjoy them.

"Rar rar, I like Morrowind, it is open world. Every game should be open world or else it sucks. Rar rar, I am so smart and am better at making games than people who are paid to make games rar rar, back to basement now bye bye!"
 

Fantasmo

Member
Is anybody bothered that AI controls non-player combatants in DOTA2, Left 4 Dead, DayZ, Grand Theft Auto 5, Dark Souls, and every single bloody hoard mode? Where is it written that every multiplayer shooter must, with absolutely no concession made to the game design, support 100% player controlled characters and zero AI? That Titanfall should have a ton of players in every map calling in their personal Titans even if it plays like diarrhoea because the map size, design, and objectives don't support the player count but fuck it lets do it anyway.

It's a magnificent sort of confusing to call out Respawn for very specific, calculated game design in their own game, one an overwhelming majority of people here haven't played, based entirely on the premise that it's not designed exactly like a bunch of other shooters on the market, shooters it's specifically designed not to be like in the first place.

Ya'll basically looking at Call of Duty and Battlefield and going "BUT WHY BOTS", instead of looking at Titanfall and thinking "Bots must serve a purpose". They're designing a 6v6 player game supplemented with limited function bot fodder, all components working together to forge the core design.

I like to play 2056 man games on De_Dust. Because there's a bunch of servers that do. Anyone who plays default size games has never played CounterStrike, unlike myself. I designed it in fact before it was even released by other people who copied my ideas.

Titanlfail is a bad, NO, HORRIBLE game because of 6v6.

Agreed. Can't even begin to fathom the reactions in this thread
 

kdash7

Member
Now all i want to know if there is splitscreen or not! That will be deciding factor for me to whether buy this game or not!

Just saw a tweet from @Titanfallgame that the latest OXM has alot of details on Titanfall...can somebody confirm if splitscreen is mentioned or not.
 

Papacheeks

Banned
Re: the bolded- what.

Respawn started pre-production on its then-untitled game back in 2011, originally for current generation consoles. As the team tried to pinpoint what their first project would be, they searched for a technological foundation to build on. They found it in an unlikely place: Valve’s Source engine. While few titles outside of Valve’s own games and independent mods have used Source this generation, a number of factors made it a good fit for Respawn.

http://www.polygon.com/e3-2013/2013/6/12/4419110/titanfall-respawn

Basically little over 2 years counting January, February, Second week of MArch in 2014.


So from conception all the way to retail shelves little over 2 year, With only 80 people. How much content on disk you think you will have access too?
 

Dart

Member
6 v 6 sounds alright to me, I'd much rather have fewer players than a chaotic war IMHO.

That is one of the reason why I loved The Last of Us multiplayer so much.
 

HariKari

Member
The maps were made for 5 v 5. How about for actual design reasons? Bad enough an argument for you? When playing a 32 player game in cs, it's absolutely a cluster fuck. No team dynamics. No actual strats.

The maps weren't made for 5v5. Did you just start with CS:GO? Because I'm getting that vibe. You really think something like de_dust was made with a total of 10 players in mind?

You can hide behind 'game design' all you want. That doesn't do anything to help people who were excited about this potentially being a large scale game. Fundamentally sound gameplay can be scaled up to various playercounts. Battlefield does this. There's no reason you couldn't have larger maps and therefore larger playercounts on PC.

If they want to have the 'design choice' of a really small game, then I'll vote with my wallet and not buy it. Just like I haven't bought a CoD game since MW2/WAW. I got tired of that style of gameplay, and this is no different. There may be AI grunts and unlockable titans, but it's still fundamentally a small scale experience. Not for me, and for people who were hoping for something large scale.

You seem desperate to claim that small scale is somehow inherently better when it's clearly not. It's just personal preference. I see no reason why we both couldn't have our cake, as they could have a 'large scale' mode that is total chaos. Curiously enough, no one seems to have a problem with the total lack of 3rd party servers and matchmaking in the year 2014.
 

Sanic

Member
I already said what the game is doing in terms of its Player count and AI, I'm not you mother, if you can type you can read. Literally the entire thread has commented on this. They're putting in AI slots instead of other players, this is frickin stupid. How more blunt can I be?

Insulting me personally now, are we?

I know what your point is. I'm commenting on it. There are (presumably) valid mechanical reasons they are doing what they're doing, but because the game isn't conforming to some other context you already have built in your head, you're rejecting the game and the developers competence.
 
Okay cool, I'm sure the game is designed for 6v6 lol..
Didn't really expect anything much larger in a competitive multiplayer shooter from the makers of COD (which is 6v6 mostly)
Some people will try to find any excuse to hate on this game...
 
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