melmer

TITANFLAPS 2

Recommended Posts

I'm looking forward to this one. Never got a chance to play the original but remembering hearing good things... Wait wait wait, didn't they rebalance the guns making them weaker and everyone hated it!? Well, hopefully they've learnt from their mistakes in that regard. No doubt this game will have betas out the wazoo, and so it should.

It's been a while since I've played a competitive fps, dipping my toe in destiny when it first came out. I really enjoyed the mutiplayer in modern warefare 1 & 2 haven't really bothered since then. I've been eyeing up overwatch lately, but I'm not sold on the hero/Lords Management style yet. Where as TITANFALL 2 will hopefully be good old fashioned large scale deathmatch, comforting and familiar, but not too familiar, but not too not familiar.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

This Titanfall has a free trial on Origin if I don't misremember. Tried it out for a bit and had the most fun I've had in a multiplayer FPS in forever. However, not really being that into MP in the first place I decided against taking the plunge and purchasing it. 

From what I recall, this will actually have a proper Singleplayer campaign though, which makes it much more enticing.

 

One of my favorite things with what they did in the original was actually a slight "Lords Management"-y touch, where there were what basically amounted to "Creeps" on each side. AI controlled bots who would run around, shoot poorly and try to capture positions. It lent a life to that world that isn't typically present in these kinds of games as well as providing less skilled players with ample targets to take out when other players prove too challenging. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I played a lot of Titanfall and I very much enjoyed it. The majority of public complaints were that tyere was no single-player component for a $60 game, that there wasn't enough weapon customization, and that leveling up and unlocks happened too quickly; none of these things bothered me.

Titanfall has a meat-grinder pacing where players typically find themselves in combat immediately after spawning and die often. The main ways it distinguishes itself from games like the COD: Modern Warfare series is that you eventually earn the ability to call in a large mech. The mechs can be riden though, so there is a lot of moments where giants are trying to get players off of their backs. Another feature is wall-running, jump-jets, pilot-ejection, and zip-lines that don't feel constrained at all compared to something like BlackOps III. The cyber-suited infantry on exotic planetary colonies aesthetic is also significantly different than other similar theming.

Another aspect that a lot of players never seemed to understand or simply didn't like, was that the main mode was not a traditional team-deathmatch. The main mode is called attrition ans the way it works is that thefirst team to get 300 points wins the match. Killing bots is 1-point, pilots are 5-points (irc) and titans are 4-points(irc). I love this mode. I basically have two types of builds. I either use a build that is highly mobile and can take out massive quantities of bots (smart-pistol is awesome for this). Or I harass titans and try to increase the ability of my team to dig in and control the map. Since neither of these strategies are focused on enemy players (unless they have similar strategies) AND since these strategies greatly increase the likelihood of winning in attrition, the end game lobby often has a few players who complain that I'm not playing it like traditional team-deathmatch.

I never felt tye need for team-communication in Titanfall though; there are very few explicit mechanics that encourage team-play. I think that makes the game less satisfying than some other competitive shooters, but I'm looking forward to this next Titanfall game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I also quite liked Titanfall. The Call of Duty sort of model of multiplayer FPS is super popular for a good reason - it's a really compelling feel, when it comes to the guns, and Titanfall's innovations all worked great: the movement, the Titans, the AI NPCs. The movement added a little dose of Tribes into the game, which is great because every game needs more Tribes, and more generally it really amped up the verticality and made much more of the map a live option in terms of traversal, which cuts down quite a bit on what otherwise sometimes feels like monotony in other FPS games when you're running around a map for the 890th time. The Titans escalate the game over time in a pretty interesting way, they work well whether you're in them or using them as massive robotic attack dogs, they give you a way of making progress even without directly fighting (by killing NPCs so you can get a Titan) and they have some pretty cool guns and abilities. The NPCs were the things I was most dubious about before the game came out - I didn't want a bunch of bullshit crowding my pristine killing fields - but they add some strategic depth, especially to the game modes where you can contribute towards victory by killing them, and they mostly just make the battle feel more impressive.

I don't know how excited I am about Titanfall 2 - I don't really need more Titanfalls if they're like more Call of Duties, which is to say basically the same game all over again. But if they mix things up again (which clearly they were willing to do with the first game) while also keeping the core of the game (which they managed to keep perfectly, because they're masters of the craft) I'll be happy. I wonder if they'll use Source (or, Source 2 I guess) again this time. The engine was almost unrecognizable in Titanfall which I found pretty enjoyable, because I like to feel like I can sort of tell what engine I'm in just by the way the game looks and feels, but Titanfall threw me for a bit of a loop.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I really enjoyed Titanfall, but my enjoyment of multiplayer deathmatch type games (there were other modes, but I'm lumping them all together) is very limited. I much prefer larger scale cooperative PvE type games, and SP experiences. I'm hoping they have made the game richer (it was good, if a bit shallow, pretty quickly), because if so, I'll probably pick it up. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Titanfall has a meat-grinder pacing where players typically find themselves in combat immediately after spawning and die often. 

 

maybe i'm wrong, but i feel like the meat grinder moved at a slower pace than CoD, which really appealed to me (though my strategies rarely put me in contest w/ many other players, so that might contribute to my perception of this).

 

asides from TF2, this is the only online FPS that i've ever played more than a handful of hours and that's almost entirely b/c of the movement mechanics. i also liked how going after bots meant that i could play almost solipsistically and still end up being a help in attrition.

 

how would you guys feel about the game adding some Battlefield style support abilities/classes? i think i could def see myself playing a Titan engineer/hacker in this game and still having lots of fun. i almost always enjoyed playing on foot when the Titans were out b/c it really added to the sense of scale the levels had. if the game encouraged that in some way, that'd be a treat.

 

edit: also, this thread title has me imagining Titans with mudflaps. get ready for that micro-transaction.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

how would you guys feel about the game adding some Battlefield style support abilities/classes? i think i could def see myself playing a Titan engineer/hacker in this game and still having lots of fun. i almost always enjoyed playing on foot when the Titans were out b/c it really added to the sense of scale the levels had. if the game encouraged that in some way, that'd be a treat.

You can do this to some extent in Titanfall. Some of the abilities and pieces of equipment can be combined to be a titan-killer for instance. The sledge-hammer on the large-machine-gun does a good amount of damage to titans when you are mounted on them. The arc-grenades make titans vulnerable to an attack on foot. Cloaked soldiers Are much less visible to titans than they are to soldiers. The nuclear-ejection ability on the titan, and the 40mm cannon feel built to take out titans. Of course you can tune your anti-titan build based off of what works for you.

I wouldn't want the abilities and weapons to be class-exclusive. I wonder if the sense of classes could be presented with a few preset-builds. Maybe those presets could be made to feel substantial with models and/or titles that are specific to them. I might not be understanding the advantages of class-systems in this type of game.

Edit: I think I misunderstood. I'd love some support abilities. It might be fun to hitch a ride on a titan and repair them as I hold on. And I love spotting in Battlefield games.

I would also enjoy an ability or piece of equipment that significantly boosts a pod of grunts.

It would also be cool if you could set a trip-wire for Titans that just paralyzes their system for twice as long as an arc-grenade.

How cool would it be to be able to hitch-up ziplines for use by your team?

Yeah, there's a lot of potential support abilities.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah, i dig those support ability ideas.

 

I am down for a Titanfall  2, I just hope there is more content/unlocks or what is there is better spread out. I really enjoyed what they did with the horde mode and DLC maps they added.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

CTF never forget

 

The biggest selling point of Titanfall 2 for me is a population of players high enough to let me play some other modes like capture-the-flag which is super fun when it is available.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It might be fun to hitch a ride on a titan and repair them as I hold on. And I love spotting in Battlefield games.

I would also enjoy an ability or piece of equipment that significantly boosts a pod of grunts.

It would also be cool if you could set a trip-wire for Titans that just paralyzes their system for twice as long as an arc-grenade.

How cool would it be to be able to hitch-up ziplines for use by your team?

Yeah, there's a lot of potential support abilities.

 

it'd be an interesting counter to the 'just kill bots' strategy if you were able to give them a temporary boost that made it so that they needed 2 bullets instead of just 1 to be killed. also, the ability to use ziplines would really open up the maps in some neat ways. seeing the sword in the trailer reminds me of super sentai shows and then wondering what co-op titans would look like.

 

what i would really want is some taller levels. I loved how in the Rise map you could be wall running over Titans while they made their way through the narrow passages- what an incredible feeling that was.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Titanfall 1 felt to me like a purer evolution of call of duty: instead of getting so insanely complicated in terms of gun and perks customization, there was a reasonable amount of customization spread out across your human and titan loadouts, and the combinations of the two.

 

It was really easy to play a lot of it and the movement was fun, and made the modes about capturing multiple spaces most interesting because of the motivation to move around.

 

I dislike this type of shooter on principle, as I prefer a slower, more strategic pace.  But it was cool for what it was.  And the smart pistol was a satisfying gun to use.

 

probably won't play this one, but looking forward to seeing it anyways.

 

 

EDIT: oh, by the way it was announced and leaked a while ago, it's supposed to have space magic in it, whatever that means.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Titanfall was my go to multiplayer game for about a year and a half or so (I moved on after I couldn't find anyone playing Hardpoint anymore on the PC).  I really loved the wall running and general speed of it.  I'll almost certainly pick this one up.

 

My play style basically amounted to "jump on and off of every wall everywhere all the time" and I really enjoyed that:

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It wasn't just the lack of singleplayer that frustrated me with Titanfall, it was that their concept of "campaign multiplayer" was so barebones. The campaign randomly assigned you to one faction that you were stuck with for the duration of the story, and you had to play the maps in order. Ingame, the only difference was that the story played out in little video clips in the corner of your screen. I was assigned to the evil corporation's team, and we proceeded to win every match. But the story was all about the rebels fighting back and beating the corporation, so every mission ended with "Good job! But turns out the rebels won anyway." I felt like a really competent henchman working for an inept cartoon villain.

 

But man, I can't help getting excited about the possibility of campaign multiplayer being great. There are so many things they could do to make it really cool and rewarding. If the gameplay is just regular multiplayer, why not have a branching narrative that each player sees differently? Or have the players be actual characters in the story instead of them only existing in your HUD? I hope their response to the first game's campaign is to be ten times more ambitious about it because there's something potentially great about the concept.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I enjoyed the campaign multiplayer, but I agree that it wasn't ambitious at all and that really interesting things could be done. I think one significant limitation for it is that the time between matches will have to be the same as thy are in multiplayer if you want players to play through it more than once. The solution to this seems to be having the story branch mid-match which could be triggered by dynamic events. Maybe something like Battlefield 4's levolution but with some commander squawking about how important it is?

I suppose the outcome of the match could determine the next map and mode, that would be simple to implement and feel significant.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think the solution is that you don't have to have every player in the game hearing the same story. For example, the first mission in the game has the rebels break into a corporation refuelling facility to refuel their spaceships. Rebel players are capturing points to siphon fuel, while corporation players are capturing points to activate AA guns to shoot the ships down. But no matter what team wins, the match ends with the rebels refuelling their ships and escaping. All they need to do to fix that is to tell me, as a corporation player, that we blew up their ships and we're now winning the war. It doesn't matter to any other player what dialogue I get, since they can have their own dialogue. That means that another player in that game might be at a totally different point in the story where they're trying to accomplish a totally different objective, even though we're playing the same map and mode (Or they might not even be playing story mode, they might just be in multiplayer matchmaking). With that approach there are a huge number of possibilities for how the story could be told. That's not even getting into sending the player to a different level based on what happened in the last mission i.e. If you won the match you play CTF on map A, and if you lost you play deathmatch on map B.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I don't really mind "losing" the game if I'm playing as the bad guys. I don't need to "win" every "single player" game I play. As a card carrying Idle Thumb I appreciate games like Far Cry 2 that aren't just power fantasies that suck your hero dick. I could understand feeling a disconnect between playing well in a match and then being told that you've "lost," which isn't something Far Cry 2 quite does, but I don't really mind that (I guess I'm laid back!) so I had no problem with the Titanfall campaign. Then again, I wouldn't mind if they "fixed" this in Titanfall 2.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Sure, I'm not mad because I want to win all the time in video games, but that's exactly what was happening here, just for the other team! Our team had to constantly lose in service of the people on the other team having the cool rebel fantasy, because there was only one outcome to the story in a scenario with two outcomes.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I guess I don't mind "winning" the game if I'm playing as the good guys, either. I'm happy with pretty much any outcome, really. I'm not a picky dude. Like I said, I'm pretty laid back.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I really liked Titanfall too. The core gameplay was just awesome. It didn't have legs though, the player base on PC disappeared pretty rapidly, couple that with the paid maps splintering the user base (I didn't pay for any maps), I eventually found myself waiting 10+ minutes for a match, so inevitably I just stopped playing.

 

I'd also much rather have this on consoles. So I can say with 90% certainty that I'll grab this when it drops falls.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's good, let's hope they don't make the same mistake again. I'm sure they will, it's such an obvious thing to charge for. Has any traditional console shooter released map packs for free? Or do they all wait until the community is dying in an attempt to bring people back?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's good, let's hope they don't make the same mistake again. I'm sure they will, it's such an obvious thing to charge for. Has any traditional console shooter released map packs for free? Or do they all wait until the community is dying in an attempt to bring people back?

 

isn't Battlefront giving out free maps? i googled a bit and am still baffled at who is getting what on that game.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

That's good, let's hope they don't make the same mistake again. I'm sure they will, it's such an obvious thing to charge for. Has any traditional console shooter released map packs for free? Or do they all wait until the community is dying in an attempt to bring people back?

 

According to this Polygon article (http://www.polygon.com/2016/4/18/11424314/gears-of-war-4-compete-free-to-play-esports-world) both Halo 5 and the upcoming Gears of War 4 won't be charging for maps.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now