Titanfall Won't Be As Frustrating As Call of Duty Multiplayer

Cognimancer

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Titanfall Won't Be As Frustrating As Call of Duty Multiplayer



Titanfall employs some neat design tricks to keep players active instead of waiting to respawn.

Multiplayer shootouts are often great in theory, but substantially less interesting when you can't survive for ten seconds without another player effortlessly gunning you down. Luckily Respawn Entertainment (the team behind Titanfall, with several former Call of Duty developers) has been in this game for a while now, and the developers have a few ideas on how to keep things fun for everyone. A clever blend of player empowerment and AI combatants helps players stay engaged without driving anyone to ragequit.

Titanfall makes it relatively easy to stay alive. On foot you're very agile and hard to hit, while Titan mechs are durable and give you a chance to eject before dying. "It's not boom-you're-dead, boom-you're-dead," says producer Drew McCoy. Meanwhile, AI-controlled soldiers are not nearly as resilient. "AI grunts keep that quick time-to-kill feedback loop," McCoy explains. "When you can kill three guys in eight seconds, that's good - but when you're on the other side of that, it's not."

The disconnect between players and AI troops is deliberate: these aren't "bots" in the traditional sense. "They're not meant as a human replacement. They're a different class of people. Pilots are these super-awesome soldiers that have the gear to do double jumps, the weapons to take down Titans, but the AI are the low-level guys that are always on the ground ... they show new players where to go. And once they start fighting, they're usually fighting other AI because all the experienced players are fighting on walls and rooftops. New players start getting kills on AI, when usually in multiplayer games they're getting completely whacked."

The end result is a unique kind of battle, where every player can mow down squads of enemies but player-against-player encounters are intense skirmishes. It seems like a solid way to manage the learning curve of a multiplayer-only game; with no campaign to learn the ropes from, new players had better hope that Titanfall's AI goons make for good target practice.

Source: Edge [http://www.edge-online.com/features/respawn-on-titanfall-and-breaking-free-of-call-of-dutys-spawn-die-spawn-die-loop/]

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ScrabbitRabbit

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I can see some people complaining about "casualization" with this, but I think it's a good idea. It can be very frustrating, getting into a new multiplayer game and being stomped by everyone. Especially for folks like me who can only usually afford to buy a game several months after release.
 

Abomination

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Sounds like a bit like a MOBA spin on the traditional FPS formula.

I'm hoping since it has bots it can have modding... but the server strain for this could be quite intensive.
 

fix-the-spade

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ScrabbitRabbit said:
I can see some people complaining about "casualization" with this,
I think this is the oppositte actually, they're keeping the skill ceiling high(er) but adding in a meta game that caters to new players. It's a much more elegant solution than what's happened in CoD where they've added and added assistance to the point that the game almost plays itself, but also avoiding the Counter Strike/Quake problem of the skill ceiling being so high that you're either a dedicated player or a complete noob with no middle.
 

Diablo1099_v1legacy

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Abomination said:
Sounds like a bit like a MOBA spin on the traditional FPS formula.
I was just about to post that, yeah.
Seconded there, But that actually sounds like a really neat idea.
Players can still pilot gunships gotten from kill-streaks while other players don't get killed instantly.

Guess what will be the newest feature in next years COD? Aside from Cats of course :p
 

Abomination

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NameIsRobertPaulson said:
Without bullet fall and trajectories, being agile and hard-to-hit doesn't mean squat on PC, where you can point and click to kill. Hopefully the guns account for that
Hoping there's some kind of recoil or base inaccuracy for weaponry. Perhaps larger health pools for folks.

Diablo1099 said:
Players can still pilot gunships gotten from kill-streaks while other players don't get killed instantly.
Is that going to be called Urban Jungling?
 

Diablo1099_v1legacy

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Abomination said:
Is that going to be called Urban Jungling?
Nah, I don't think most COD players would be into LoL...
Then again, I'm not really an expert >_>

Still, I'd imagine they'll make up their own term.
 

Yuuki

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My only concern is that the Titans themselves aren't overpowered through the roof aganst ground soldiers. For example I'm inhenerently against the concept of killstreaks, if someone is mowing down people back-to-back the LAST thing they fucking need is something that helps them mow people down even faster...not to mention it even further reduces the (already pathetic) chances of any newbies getting those killstreaks.

If by any chance Titans are balanced around teamwork to kill and they have access to super-charged weapons that can one-shot-kill ground soldiers, then there will be a big problem because we'll just end up with a Battlefield game where coordinated teams are overpowered through the roof and uncoordinated teams get utterly destroyed.
One core idea I prefer they "borrow" from Call Of Duty is that you should be able to accomplish quite a lot on your own (aka lone wolf) and your individual performance shouldn't rely too heavily on your squad-mates not sucking.

Based on all my previous multiplayer shooter experience there are so many issues that I see Titanfall potentially running into...but I have at least some faith the devs will understand the delicate art of balance. It's not easy and perfect balance is borderline impossible to achieve (it's only something devs can AIM for :p).
 

Deathlyphil

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SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
Its cool if they don't want to go for that COD style where the guy who shoots first wins in half a second but

Cognimancer said:
McCoy explains. "When you can kill three guys in eight seconds, that's good - but when you're on the other side of that, it's not."
Maybe those 3 guys should just get gud? Not even kidding here. If you're going to balance your game around Scrubby McNoob because he can't aim for shit and he might get frustrated, I'll skip it.
Maybe they should introduce a ranking system that actually works and places like skilled players against each other? The lack of proper ranked matches in BF3 and CoD almost put me off the genre.

I'll happily wear an "I'm a newb" badge if it meant I can have a fun match rather than get killed every few seconds.
 

WindKnight

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SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
Its cool if they don't want to go for that COD style where the guy who shoots first wins in half a second but

Cognimancer said:
McCoy explains. "When you can kill three guys in eight seconds, that's good - but when you're on the other side of that, it's not."
Maybe those 3 guys should just get gud? Not even kidding here. If you're going to balance your game around Scrubby McNoob because he can't aim for shit and he might get frustrated, I'll skip it.
why should people bother getting good if their not having fun?

Win or lose, the point of a this kind of game is to have fun, and chances are players will get good if they enjoy it enough to put the time in.
 

Hero in a half shell

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The way they're stating this it sounds essentially like there will be a pile of bots on the ground running about as low challenge cannon fodder, and the free running/jetpack mechanic will encourage the better players to seek the higher ground above the bots, but those younger/less experienced players still have the opportunity to drop down to the floor and have a go at the bots if the skill level is too overwhelming for them.

I'm actually in favour of that. Larger battles, more action and more targets, and if an experienced player ever gets bored or wants to try out a more inventive style of play than the one or two weapons that everyone will inevitably use because they're the best stat-wise, then they can always drop to the ground and muck about with the bots.

Fun all round.
 

The Rogue Wolf

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SmashLovesTitanQuest said:
Its cool if they don't want to go for that COD style where the guy who shoots first wins in half a second but

Cognimancer said:
McCoy explains. "When you can kill three guys in eight seconds, that's good - but when you're on the other side of that, it's not."
Maybe those 3 guys should just get gud? Not even kidding here. If you're going to balance your game around Scrubby McNoob because he can't aim for shit and he might get frustrated, I'll skip it.
If you're going to balance your game around Hardcore McPro's desire to "pwn noobz" and not let new people even get in on the ground floor, then the game is going to die a very quick death.
 

weirdee

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so, we're going back to battlefield 1942 for innovation. awesome!

tbh, i've always preferred this style of combat, which is why dynasty warriors gets a check mark from me