As much as I love the Titanfall franchise, and poured countless thousands of hours into it, there comes a point where I have to look the game in the face for what it really is. And in Titanfall 2's case, the game is a cautionary tale above all else.
Both for players, and developers. Even though I know no Respawn dev will ever see this, I'm going to illustrate several points as to why their actions (and ours as players) killed Titanfall 2 so quickly, and how the inevitable Titanfall 3 can be spared the same grisly fate.
The first flaw, and the one that's probably been hit the hardest, is release date. For a title with such little renown such as Titanfall, it needs to be the only thing releasing at the time. Titanfall 1 did this excellently, releasing in a sort of dry spell in games. Everyone's kind of bored with what they picked up last November, but E3 isn't for a few months at least, so the initial release of the first title in March 2014 was nothing but good for the game. It's out in the open, and doesn't have to compete against some of the more major titles like Battlefield or Call of Duty. Releasing the third title in March of 2019 or 2020 would be nothing but a boon, as the lack of competition would likely drive up sales.
The second reason that Titanfall 2 is quite the cautionary tale, is because of what it tried to be. TF2 tried to bring itself closer to CoD, and subsequently lost a lot of things that make Titanfall, well...Titanfall. Let me explain what I mean by this.
The first game had a reasonably long time to kill, with unique weapons and pilot kits that were designed to allow you to play to your strengths and pad your weaknesses (TF2 crudely attempts this, but I'll get to that in a moment). For example, a pilot who needs help clearing tight buildings might pick active radar pulse to help them out, versus a pilot who wants to engage titans directly might pick cloak. Stim is overall useful in direct pilot-to-pilot combat, so those seeking to do nothing but slay other pilots usually picked that. The same can be said for weapons, ordnance, and perks.
But how did TF2 fail at this same task? The answer is simple. The devs seemed to crank up some abilities till the knob broke off, but either nerf or ignore others. Couple this with the addition of new abilities, both meme and god-tier, it doesn't work out for a very diverse meta. It's not surprising, though. When grapple and stim exist, why would you use anything else (inb4 "memes bro") if your goal is to win?
Additionally, in straying away from its roots as a game, TF2 blatantly pillaged the setups of other popular games in a effort to try and tap into those markets. I'm talking of course about hero-style titans. In an effort to capture the essence of games like Overwatch, Rainbow Six: Siege, and League of Legends; Respawn seemed to feel the need to take the hero system and try to shoe-horn it into their own title. Not only does this throw any concept of balance out the window (since good luck working with only 7 titans and having them all reasonably competitive with one another), it also flies in the face of what little lore there is. If a titan and a pilot are supposed to be as close as Jack and BT, doesn't it make sense that a pilots titan would be set up to what plays to pilot's strengths? Having to chose between 7 pre-designed titans only pigeon holds players into certain play styles, and makes the game less fun overall.
Finally (and before you downvote me into oblivion over this please read it all the way through), the biggest contributor to my perception of TF2 as a cautionary tale isn't the art style, or the campaign, or even how much gameplay changed between the two titles. It's this: How the game was supported after launch.
What do I mean by this, exactly? Well the answer is nuanced and a bit of a read to get all the way through and explain cogently.
TF2's multiplayer, which is really the only reason anyone bought it, was poorly handled after launch. And the biggest reason, is that Respawn Entertainment is a company of Micheal Scotts. The emphasis on their post-launch game support was on making people happy, not making the best game possible. Now there's nothing wrong with Micheal, but the studio really didn't have any Dwights or Oscars there at the time to make sure that the game would be viable and therefore more likely to generate repeat customers. Making people happy in the short term is fine, but it usually has repercussions that damage the game in the future, and may deter people from buying sequels or recommending the game to their friends. I've been a fan of the first game since it came out back in 2014 and if there were more than 8 people playing now in 2018 it I'd recommend it to everyone, but I can't bring myself to recommend the second game to anyone, especially after the first few patches were rolled out.
So let's delve a little deeper into how exactly Respawn handled the game after launch, why it resulted in such a small community now, and how they can avoid hemorrhaging players with their third title.
Data. Data. Data. When most game developers do their balancing, they go by data, sometimes to a fault. But what data? A combination of pick rates, win rates, and overall stats of the weapon, ability, whatever have you. If something has a high pick rate, and a high win rate, chances are pretty good it's getting nerfed. One of the best games to look for examples of this is Rainbow Six: Siege. If an operator has an exceptionally high pick and win rate, the devs try to analyze what is causing such drastic outliers, and try to reel them in so that they're fair and balanced when compared to the other playable characters in the game. Now sometimes it takes a little longer than the playerbase would like, but overall the balancing is done well.
Titanfall 2 (and to a much lesser extent TF1) did almost the exact opposite of this. And in my opinion balance is the Achilles' Heel of Titanfall games. Don't get me wrong, the games are still wildly entertaining, and have brought me countless hours of joy with my friends and girlfriend, but at the end of the day it's a giant issue that needs to be addressed.
When making balance changes, Respawn seemed reluctant, if not outright abhorrent to the idea that there ought to be some objectivity in balancing their game, instead they listened almost exclusively to the community for ideas on balance, which sounds pure and noble as an idea, but quickly falls apart under even an iota of scrutiny. The biggest reason becomes this: the people who mange to scream the loudest aren't always right.
Additionally, we as a community let Respawn down by not policing our own. People screaming and crying that what they like isn't good enough, while everything that kills them is blatantly OP and needs to be nerfed is commonplace, but instead of using the available data in game to support or deny those claims, we all just sort of jumped on the bandwagon and pile drove weapons/titans/kits into the ground, while letting things that are bigger problems go unnoticed.
"WHAT? THE (insert gun/titan you hate) KILLED ME? ME!!! THE BEST TITANFALL PLAYER EVER! CLEARLY IT NEEDS TO BE NERFED RESPAWN LITERALLY UNPLAYABLE."
While everyone's felt this way about something or other, the problem becomes when we needlessly spam social media pages with this opinion, no matter how unfounded it is, and spread it like wildfire. It gets everyone upset over one thing, while letting a thousand other issues that are even bigger go unnoticed. On top of the fact that gameplay is clearly not matching what many of us say online.
I see nothing for hate but the spitfire online, and I hate it too. But every game I see 2 or 3 per team at least, so some of us are lying. Simple as that.
And while we were all complaining about the Hemlok, the Devotion, or any other weapon under the sun that had the audacity to be used against us, real problems weren't being attended to since we sent the devs on a goosechase to smash things we didn't like into the dirt, even if it wasn't justified. All this is amplified even more by the fact that the majority of people calling for the heads of players who use what they don't like, never touched the first game. So rather than make it known that in order to do well at Titanfall, you'd have to learn to play Titanfall, the devs would rather capitulate to CoD fans who just want the same game with a different skin.
This does something else that really puts nails in the coffin for Titanfall. Precedent. Deciding only to balance on whatever facebook post gets the most likes, reddit the most upvotes, or youtube video with the most comments, the devs back themselves into a hard corner to get out of. Because once you've established that data isn't going to be something you balance off of, it's exceedingly difficult to start balancing by data without intense community backlash. And Respawn, in an effort to see people happy, almost automatically caved on that decision.
I'm talking of course about the Grapple nerf. It was a step in the right direction. With grapple's insane pick rate and win rate, every other team of devs from every other game on the market would've nerfed it. Hard. Something that good, that blows every other ability out of the water, really shouldn't. And responsible devs who want a fair, competitive, while still entertaining environment acknowledge that. Even including Respawn! Because they did nerf it. The problem comes from what happened next. The first data-driven balance change of TF2 was met with nothing but scorn and hate, and about a million Rick and Morty copypasta-esque posts about how it takes a massive IQ to understand how to properly use grapple.
Rather than standing up to grown adults throwing a hissy-fit because their win-button got toned down a bit, Respawn immediately reverted the balance changes, sealing the fate of TF2 for good.
Issues like glowing pilots, ridiculous aim assist, broken hitreg, and countless other issues just seemed to get swept under the rug, because the community in general started frothing at the mouth over the G2, or Ion, or Ronin, or A-Wall. Can those things be annoying? Sure. Should they be taking the focus off fixing core issues with the game? Absolutely not.
But occasionally the community is right about certain things that might be impacting the game negatively, even if there is no data to support it. For example, Arc Grenades. Were they good? Yes. But were they picked so frequently that it was a major issue? No. So sometimes the players en mass do get it right on what needs to be nerfed/buffed. The goal is to strike a balance. Both data and community feedback. 70/30.
So the biggest, and by far the most important issue for the developers to focus on in the third title, is balance. Because if Respawn can nail home how to support a game after launch, they can likely expect TF3 to have a long, healthy life.
I'm not an expert. I'm not a game designer. I'm not even a content creator. I'm just a fan of the game who wants to see it succeed in the future so I can have something to share with my friends.
Submitted November 25, 2018 at 03:26AM by SignusMeadBreath https://ift.tt/2R6l5YW
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