Titanfall

[Maledict]

Nope, already confirmed they don't actually exist in the game. unfortunately.

Probably makes for some nice skyboxes at least, but presume they are being saved for Titanfall 2, a.k.a. the one where it's on the playstation as well as xbox.

[Venkman]

Wow, so much excitement for the game go live in a few hours. 

[Fordel]

You expected F13 to like a console shooter? I'm surprised we didn't get a rant on mouse vs controller, or maybe we did and I just missed it. 

[Rendakor]

The big kb+m vs controller guy doesn't post here anymore, I don't think. Can't remember his name, it was some three-letter acronym.

[Fabricated]

The beta was okay when I played it but it was a bit too CoD for me. I'm interested but I got a lot of games to play so some interest isn't enough. I'm trying to work up the care to get back into BF4 provided they fucking fixed it so I've been burned once already by an EA online-only shooter.

[Abelian75]

Man, the "campaign" mode is really atrociously bad.  I don't understand why they bothered to include this.  It feels so painfully forced.

[Venkman]

Oiy I know right? Someone really musta thought there'd be a whole generation of new gamers buying their first Console or something to have spent that amount of time on what could have been handled on a loading screen and a short obstacle course for wall running.

You expected F13 to like a console shooter? I'm surprised we didn't get a rant on mouse vs controller, or maybe we did and I just missed it.  

Don't get started. Stupid console controllers making FPS games 2D. But I'm not the three-letter guy. And don't care what all you console people think

The beta was okay when I played it but it was a bit too CoD for me. I'm interested but I got a lot of games to play so some interest isn't enough. I'm trying to work up the care to get back into BF4 provided they fucking fixed it so I've been burned once already by an EA online-only shooter.

Yea, Hawken became my standin shooter since BF4 had enough issues to give me buyer's pause, and I can go the rest of my life without another Madden COD.

[Ingmar]

The big kb+m vs controller guy doesn't post here anymore, I don't think. Can't remember his name, it was some three-letter acronym.

Tgr. I assume he's living in a doom bunker now with no internet connection to keep the DRM out.

[Venkman]

I am the biggest sucker in the world for giant robots and I still think they are just fantastic looking and feeling in this game. However, the action is not to my liking. I couldn't easily explan why, maybe the small map, maybe the bots (I really don't like them), but it gave me a Battlefield 2142 feeling. Do you remember that? It was supposed to be amazing, in some way it was, and still not many gave a fuck about it. Hell, I bought it on day 1 and I think I played it for about five hours.

I thought your original post here had something about "moba" in it, which after the last couple of days feels like as good a description as any for why there's bots in there.

They're good fodder for players who won't progress fast if they can only advance on successful hits or kills of other players. I don't know if 6x6 was a design decision or a compromise due to a tech. But the bots fill the gap ok if for no other reason than it forces players to move around the map.

They also add a dimension of play I haven't seen in an FPS. Not a whole game mode per se, but enough to make this feel different from the CoD matches I remember (though it's been a couple of years).

[jakonovski]

It happened, I found this for cheap and caved in. It's a pretty cool game and the environments are godlike in their scifiness. Played through the first campaign or should I say radio play, lost every match. Then started on the other one and lost again, for a total of ten in a row. Great matchmaking there Respawn. Kinda funny how it doesn't make any difference to the campaign, just makes the characters sound rather over optimistic.

[Venkman]

Yea I got to the fourth point in the campaign on IMF side and found not enough shit to give. Not sure why they call the other mode "Classic". But that's all I really do. I've found over time the matchmaking balances out. But if you do see a game lobby with a bunch of upper levels on one side and lower levels on the other, best just leave that lobby and try again. Not worth the aggravation, whether you'd be on the winning or losing team.

[Nightblade]

Yea I got to the fourth point in the campaign on IMF side and found not enough shit to give. Not sure why they call the other mode "Classic". But that's all I really do. I've found over time the matchmaking balances out. But if you do see a game lobby with a bunch of upper levels on one side and lower levels on the other, best just leave that lobby and try again. Not worth the aggravation, whether you'd be on the winning or losing team.

Welp, you'd better endure that laughably bad campaign if you want to unlock the other two Titan chassis!

[Venkman]

Damn, really? I didn't know that, insofar as I hadn't bothered to look at the requirements.

[jakonovski]

The campaign is really badly thought out. They make it the first thing you should do, but that's when matchmaking is still clueless and you'll get matches that make no sense at all. But it's not that long, took me about 4 hours to finish both.

[Abelian75]

The campaign is really badly thought out. They make it the first thing you should do, but that's when matchmaking is still clueless and you'll get matches that make no sense at all. But it's not that long, took me about 4 hours to finish both.

Yeah, it's a pretty terrible misstep, imho.  I am sort of obsessed with the game (and I basically never play multiplayer shooters anymore), and I think it's fun as hell, but I genuinely think the game would be better and have made a better impression on people if it simply did not include the campaign at all.  It wouldn't be AS bad if it wasn't pushed as the First Thing To Do, but it is pushed as that, and it makes the game look cheap and stupid.

[climbjtree]

I played through it to unlock one Titan, the idea of doing it again is unbearable. Not gonna happen.

[jakonovski]

Despite having had a healthy distrust of this game before release, I keep coming back to Titanfall. I guess because it's a multiplayer shooter that doesn't aggravate me. Movement is so fast that there's a way out of most sticky situations and the shooting is easy enough that you don't have to be a caffeine addled teenager to hit something. There's also a whole lot special abilities to leverage, that actually significantly contribute to your score. So no snipers and tactics trump twitch. I like!

[Venkman]

This. Some mock it for being a bit too noob-friendly. But you know? After a few decades of sucking at FPS games and yet wanting to keep trying, it's nice to not be completely frustratingly outclassed at every turn. It's a great looking title (on PC, no idea how it looks on console), some of the sci-fi stuff is fun (i.e. when the flying creatures grab the NPCs or drop ships), there's enough options that you need to keep moving, can see why you died, and there hasn't seemed to be any sure fire template that has worked on every map.

I just wish I could name my templates. Not that it matters, I regen'd and am level 2 again. But still, minor annoyance.

Other annoyance is match making. They recently changed it. It does feel slightly different but I don't know if it's an improvement or because all the overly frustrated people already left.

[jakonovski]

I always go to the variety playlist, and I haven't really noticed any difference in matchmaking, new or old. One constant niggle persists, namely the lack of autobalance.

[MisterNoisy]

Been playing a fair bit of this the last few weeks, and can't fault it, really.  A fair bit of fun, even on console, and the 'beta' matchmaking is just about right - sort of a shame that they didn't launch with it.  The burn card mechanic is just about perfect - my brother and I fucking destroyed a team by dropping 'Reserve Ogre' cards simultaneously, but it's not like we could do that bullshit twice in a row, and the shooting is as well-tuned as anything I've played.

[Venkman]

Not that anyone but Noisy, Jak and I care, but they released a patch. Mostly bug fixes, some nerfs, but also the introduction of a new Private Match game mode.

Copy/pasted here because their site is eye-bleeding (yet another poor use of responsive web design):

[veredus]

Party Colors - Your party members and their titans now show up on the mini-map with green colors, instead of the normal blue colors that other friendlies use. Their names are also drawn in green on your HUD, the obituary text, and in the pre-game lobby. This helps you figure out where your friends are and what they're up to, especially in the heat of combat.

About time. Was one of my biggest complaints.

[MisterNoisy]

I was playing this with my brother last night and he mentioned that he went back to the PC version for a bit while he was off that day and how different the same game is on the two platforms - on PC, everyone's bunny hopping with shotguns, while on the console, it's all about the assault rifle/SMG and ambushing people.

Also, count me in as a huge fan of the different colors for your party.  The other changes are neither here nor there for me, but that one is huge.

[Venkman]

Ya know, that actually makes me wonder if this would play well if PC and console users were allowed into the same session. I imagine there's already PC players playing on the same map whether using KB/M or (for whatever silly reason they wouldn't use the far superior KB/M method* ) controller. Some maps can benefit some types of players more, but none so much so that a controller-user would be at a perpetual disadvantage.

*
 

[MisterNoisy]

Ya know, that actually makes me wonder if this would play well if PC and console users were allowed into the same session. I imagine there's already PC players playing on the same map whether using KB/M or (for whatever silly reason they wouldn't use the far superior KB/M method* ) controller. Some maps can benefit some types of players more, but none so much so that a controller-user would be at a perpetual disadvantage.

*
 

Yeah - he's playing the PC version with a 360 controller and says he's doing alright - he just plays it a bit differently due to the different tactics in play - the only map he doesn't like (regardless of platform) is Rise - I admit it's not one of my favorites either, though.

[jakonovski]

Rise is so restricted it hurts. I always want to climb to the rooftops but it's already out of bounds.

[jakonovski]

So they're cutting game modes from the PC version because of lack of players. It really makes me sad that nobody expect Valve is willing to make a shooter with legs anymore. Everything is just a short term throwaway thing, regardless of how much development it took.

http://www.titanfall.com/news/addressing-updates-to-pc-playlists

[Azazel]

Meh, just makes it easier to pass on this thing when I get my new gaming rig later in the year.

[rk47]

Was 40% off on Origins for the weekend.
Tried it for 2 matches.
50 GB install size.
I asked for a refund afterwards.
It's just bullshit unoptimized port.

[jakonovski]

The funny part about this 40% sale is that you could actually get it for roughly the same price at launch. It's the 60 buckaroo Origin msrp that does it.

[Maven]

It really makes me sad that nobody expect Valve is willing to make a shooter with legs anymore. Everything is just a short term throwaway thing, regardless of how much development it took.

*Nothing* has legs in gaming. The games industry thrives on the next thing, innovation, constantly tweaking and improving for the next product release. Its natural that stuff fades into the background as time goes on unless some prominent entity funded by sponsors takes it over or it receives an injection in the form of an expansion / content pack, and even then that only adds a couple years at most before a new product *needs* to enter the picture.

Games like Team Fortress 2 and Counter-Strike are flukes in a hit-based industry just like you don't watch the same film or read the same book all the time.

[Falconeer]

Multiplayer games especially can have lots of legs these days, because they truly are like sports and you don't get bored to play football if that's your thing regardless of the rules, the shape of the ball or the colour of the field staying the same. The thing is, that's only valid for those multiplayer games which happen to gain eSport status. And while lots of products get made with that hope in mind (Titanfall for example was made with this idea), once they see it's not picking up as well as they hoped they just divert resources to a new product, in order to rake up more box money.
In fact, if your game reaches true eSport status, you absolutely CANNOT release a new version every year as that shakes things too much and people could just feel tempted to learn a new one altogether.

I am under the impression that they didn't develop Titanfall as a throwaway thing, but since it clearly didn't have the success they hoped and it didn't become the "next big multiplayer thing" they changed the direction.

[Kail]

Do we know how well it's doing on the consoles?  Because IIRC Bungie's dropping half a billion (with a "B") on Destiny with the idea that it'll be kicking around for a decade or so to earn it back.  If "game by the former devs of CoD" isn't making bank, I don't see why it would be looking much better for "game by the former devs of Halo".  But if Titanfall is doing great on the consoles and only the PC is having problems, Bungie's decision to go console only makes a bit more sense.

[Malakili]

Multiplayer games especially can have lots of legs these days, because they truly are like sports and you don't get bored to play football if that's your thing regardless of the rules, the shape of the ball or the colour of the field staying the same. The thing is, that's only valid for those multiplayer games which happen to gain eSport status. And while lots of products get made with that hope in mind (Titanfall for example was made with this idea), once they see it's not picking up as well as they hoped they just divert resources to a new product, in order to rake up more box money.
In fact, if your game reaches true eSport status, you absolutely CANNOT release a new version every year as that shakes things too much and people could just feel tempted to learn a new one altogether.

I am under the impression that they didn't develop Titanfall as a throwaway thing, but since it clearly didn't have the success they hoped and it didn't become the "next big multiplayer thing" they changed the direction.

This feels basically true, but I'm not sure exactly how we got to this point.  I played Team Fortress Classic and Counter Strike (the original) for years, and although clan matches were a thing they didn't drive the success of these games (in fact they were mods).  Quake 3 and Unreal Tournament had their different camps, but both were ultimately successful.  Quake Live still exists for that matter.  

UT did have that point where they decided to go sports release style and release a new one every year or so but people balked because they didn't want to pay another 60 bucks for the same game again.

eSports as a widespread thing is basically still brand new outside of Korea.  Obviously it has been going on a long time if you count only a niche audience. But I'd say the release of Starcraft 2 in 2010 at just around the same time these streaming services (Twitch, mainly) became a big deal, is when it really took off.  

So, in under four years have we really seen streaming become so central to the ongoing success of a title that if their game isn't being streamed very much companies are just cutting their losses and trying again?

[jakonovski]

Titanfall's ultimate failure is that there is no server browser and their matchmaking doesn't match people, it just throws them in. There isn't even autobalance. It's from the stone age.

But even so, the game's been out for two months. That's got to be a record on how fast you start cutting modes. I think even Brink survived longer.