WARNING: Gripe thread!
I played the crap out of the first Titanfall game. Literally; I've clocked about three hundred hours played or something. It was one of those games that I picked up, immediately fell in love with, and played as often as I could for months.
So when I say I'm not having fun playing Titanfall 2, I think that says something. It's not a bad game. But it isn't anywhere near as good as Titanfall 1, and the upsetting thing about it is the changes are so bafflingly unnecessary that it almost feels as though the game was developed by an entirely different studio, a studio that just didn't get Titanfall and the things that made it fun. It's Titanfall as done by Treyarch, essentially.
I don't want to just rant and rant, but I figure I'll just list the things that irk me the most and then maybe other Titanfall 2 players can come in and agree or disagree with me, or provide some perspective I'm missing.
It really bugs me how you could fuck up the idea of giant robots fighting, but Respawn have done it. Don't get me wrong - the new stuff they've added, the new Pilot abilities and weapons, they're pretty great. The campaign is short but quite enjoyable, with most of its flaws coming from the basic fact that Titanfall's mechanics weren't meant to be a single-player game.
I just feel that, all of the changes? They're trying to fix something that isn't broken, and the end result is a lot like a fresco of Neckbeard Jesus. [https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--XNZobdgv--/17woepenfwjnmjpg.jpg]
I played the crap out of the first Titanfall game. Literally; I've clocked about three hundred hours played or something. It was one of those games that I picked up, immediately fell in love with, and played as often as I could for months.
So when I say I'm not having fun playing Titanfall 2, I think that says something. It's not a bad game. But it isn't anywhere near as good as Titanfall 1, and the upsetting thing about it is the changes are so bafflingly unnecessary that it almost feels as though the game was developed by an entirely different studio, a studio that just didn't get Titanfall and the things that made it fun. It's Titanfall as done by Treyarch, essentially.
I don't want to just rant and rant, but I figure I'll just list the things that irk me the most and then maybe other Titanfall 2 players can come in and agree or disagree with me, or provide some perspective I'm missing.
- Titan loadouts are locked. This is the big one. In Titanfall 1, titans were equipped much the same way players were - you picked a main weapon, an ordnance weapon, a tactical ability and a small bonus like a nuclear self-destruct and faster shield regen. In Titanfall 2, all that shit is locked. You can't change a Titan's weapons or abilities; the whole loadout is set for you. Do you want the Titan that flies? You better like sniping, because he's got a sniper weapon and you can't change it.
This wouldn't bother me if it was a balance problem, and the developers felt that the only way to keep Titans balanced was to lock their loadouts very strictly. But the Titan balance is atrocious. Everyone picks Tone as soon as they've unlocked it, because Tone has a loadout that is essentially a Christmas stocking containing all of the best weapons and abilities from TF1, plus the ability to see through walls.
- Titans don't have shields anymore. In the first game, Titans had a regenerating shield over a non-regenerating hull. This served a bunch of purposes. First, it meant you couldn't be whittled down by the fast, small, sometimes-invisible Pilots. Second, it gave you a general "oh dang" ability to get out of dangerous situations - such as turning the corner into three enemy Titans, or getting hit by an ordnance weapon like cluster missiles - without suffering long-term damage.
In Titanfall 2, there's no shields. They changed this to give players a reason to use a new mechanic - Pilots can rodeo enemy Titans and steal their batteries, then give the batteries to a friendly Titan a small health boost and a shield. But because the TF2 shield doesn't regenerate, it amounts to just...a health boost, making the whole shield conceit kind of trivial. And I don't see why stripping the shields was necessary - stolen batteries could repair hull damage, power core abilities, or just provide an overshield. Instead, Titans are now disproportionately fragile - a 1v1 fight that you win will still leave you damaged enough that you'll lose the next fight. And it raises the question - why are all these professional militaries sending their Titans into the battle with their shield generators equipped and functional, but unpowered?
- Titan dashes are reduced across the board. A dash, for people who haven't played TF1, was the Titan's equivalent of a jump; a short, rocket-propelled side-step in one of the cardinal directions. It was vital to Titan combat, because it allowed the normally-lumbering giant robots to get a sudden, limited burst of mobility that had to be used tactically to avoid enemy attacks, close in quickly, or just get away as quickly as possible. Your number of dashes depending on your chassis; Ogre (heavy) Titans got one dash bar, Atlas (medium) Titans got two, and Stryder (light) Titans got three.
In TF2, all dashes have been reduced by one step. Light Titans get two, medium Titans get one, and heavy Titans get zero. This kind of cripples the heavy titans, because that dash mobility was just so damn important, and it basically makes the Dash Boost upgrade mandatory just so these guys can even compete. It's dumb, and the only reason I can think they did it is if they looked at the giant robots lumbering across the map and said "These guys are moving too fast, can we slow them down?"
- All Titan cores are basically the same. Not exactly the same, but they're all variations on the role of "deals damage," as opposed to TF1. In TF1, the three Titan chassises had three different cores that, when activated, gave a temporary buff - Atlas got a damage boost, Ogre got an overshield, and Stryder got free Dashes. It was a nice balance of offence, defence, and mobility that helped distinguish the three chassis and encourage different playstyles.
In TF2, all the core abilities are basically attacks. There's one that fires missiles, one that fires lasers, one that jets you into the air and fires missiles, one that fires flame, one that fires for you, and one that buffs your melee damage. They're all essentially the same - you pop them, and they destroy whatever Titan you're currently fighting, and that's it. It's boring. It's boring, lazy, and not even very fun.
As an alternative, they could have kept the same light/medium/heavy chassis from the first game and added a flyer Titan like Northstar and a stealth Titan like Ronin, and given them core powers that let them briefly hover and turn invisible respectively. That's how I would have done it, and honestly I don't understand why they chose to just make them all the same.
- All Titans have Electric Smoke by default. In TF1, Electric Smoke was one of the three Titan tactical abilities, with the others being Vortex Shield (a catch-and-return shield) and Particle Wall (deployable one-way cover). Electric Smoke had two roles; it broke lock-ons when deployed, and it dealt damage, allowed it to serve as a Pilot deterrent - if you rodeo'd a Titan with Electric Smoke, it just popped the smoke and if you didn't jump off it would kill you. By passing on Particle Wall or Vortex Shield - both good for Titan v Titan combat - you got a countermeasure that made it much harder for pilots to rodeo you. It wasn't perfect, but it was okay.
In TF2, all Titans can pop electric smoke by default. This one really confuses me. After stripping the Titan's shields to encourage your teammates to steal batteries for you, they go and give all Titans a foolproof method for killing Pilots who try to steal their batteries. It's like the right hand is trying to write a letter, and the left hand is punching the writer in the face. From my play experience, people simply don't bother stealing batteries, because it's too dangerous and the payoff isn't very large and doesn't benefit you personally.
- Your pistol and your anti-Titan weapon now use the same slot. This one is just daft. In TF1, every Pilot had a loadout of a main weapon like an SMG or assault rifle, a sidearm, and an anti-Titan weapon like a homing rocket or grenade launcher. It was nice, because it meant that every Pilot had a gun for Pilots, a backup gun, and a gun for Titans.
In TF2, the sidearm and anti-Titan weapons are exclusive - you have to pick one or the other. What does this mean in practice? Well, I'm never going to fucking pick the pistol, because not having an anti-Titan weapon means being unable to damage Titans. In a game named Titanfall, you encounter Titans pretty frequently. I don't understand the logic behind this change at all.
- The maps suck. The maps suck. They're cramped, confusing, bereft of the verticality that made TF1 so distinctive, and very difficult to wall-run through - there's a lack of contiguous walls for a Pilot to run along, and ziplines are completely absent. The maps are small enough that you'll respawn in front of the guy who just killed you more than once a game. The invisible boundaries are everywhere, stopping you from climbing to the top of buildings or running high up along the walls. You often run into literal Titan traffic - three or four giant robots trying to push each other aside so that they can get through a narrow crevice or alleyway, because there are no ways to bypass it and nowhere else to go.
As awesome as a giant robot traffic simulator sounds, it's not that fun in practice.
This wouldn't bother me if it was a balance problem, and the developers felt that the only way to keep Titans balanced was to lock their loadouts very strictly. But the Titan balance is atrocious. Everyone picks Tone as soon as they've unlocked it, because Tone has a loadout that is essentially a Christmas stocking containing all of the best weapons and abilities from TF1, plus the ability to see through walls.
- Titans don't have shields anymore. In the first game, Titans had a regenerating shield over a non-regenerating hull. This served a bunch of purposes. First, it meant you couldn't be whittled down by the fast, small, sometimes-invisible Pilots. Second, it gave you a general "oh dang" ability to get out of dangerous situations - such as turning the corner into three enemy Titans, or getting hit by an ordnance weapon like cluster missiles - without suffering long-term damage.
In Titanfall 2, there's no shields. They changed this to give players a reason to use a new mechanic - Pilots can rodeo enemy Titans and steal their batteries, then give the batteries to a friendly Titan a small health boost and a shield. But because the TF2 shield doesn't regenerate, it amounts to just...a health boost, making the whole shield conceit kind of trivial. And I don't see why stripping the shields was necessary - stolen batteries could repair hull damage, power core abilities, or just provide an overshield. Instead, Titans are now disproportionately fragile - a 1v1 fight that you win will still leave you damaged enough that you'll lose the next fight. And it raises the question - why are all these professional militaries sending their Titans into the battle with their shield generators equipped and functional, but unpowered?
- Titan dashes are reduced across the board. A dash, for people who haven't played TF1, was the Titan's equivalent of a jump; a short, rocket-propelled side-step in one of the cardinal directions. It was vital to Titan combat, because it allowed the normally-lumbering giant robots to get a sudden, limited burst of mobility that had to be used tactically to avoid enemy attacks, close in quickly, or just get away as quickly as possible. Your number of dashes depending on your chassis; Ogre (heavy) Titans got one dash bar, Atlas (medium) Titans got two, and Stryder (light) Titans got three.
In TF2, all dashes have been reduced by one step. Light Titans get two, medium Titans get one, and heavy Titans get zero. This kind of cripples the heavy titans, because that dash mobility was just so damn important, and it basically makes the Dash Boost upgrade mandatory just so these guys can even compete. It's dumb, and the only reason I can think they did it is if they looked at the giant robots lumbering across the map and said "These guys are moving too fast, can we slow them down?"
- All Titan cores are basically the same. Not exactly the same, but they're all variations on the role of "deals damage," as opposed to TF1. In TF1, the three Titan chassises had three different cores that, when activated, gave a temporary buff - Atlas got a damage boost, Ogre got an overshield, and Stryder got free Dashes. It was a nice balance of offence, defence, and mobility that helped distinguish the three chassis and encourage different playstyles.
In TF2, all the core abilities are basically attacks. There's one that fires missiles, one that fires lasers, one that jets you into the air and fires missiles, one that fires flame, one that fires for you, and one that buffs your melee damage. They're all essentially the same - you pop them, and they destroy whatever Titan you're currently fighting, and that's it. It's boring. It's boring, lazy, and not even very fun.
As an alternative, they could have kept the same light/medium/heavy chassis from the first game and added a flyer Titan like Northstar and a stealth Titan like Ronin, and given them core powers that let them briefly hover and turn invisible respectively. That's how I would have done it, and honestly I don't understand why they chose to just make them all the same.
- All Titans have Electric Smoke by default. In TF1, Electric Smoke was one of the three Titan tactical abilities, with the others being Vortex Shield (a catch-and-return shield) and Particle Wall (deployable one-way cover). Electric Smoke had two roles; it broke lock-ons when deployed, and it dealt damage, allowed it to serve as a Pilot deterrent - if you rodeo'd a Titan with Electric Smoke, it just popped the smoke and if you didn't jump off it would kill you. By passing on Particle Wall or Vortex Shield - both good for Titan v Titan combat - you got a countermeasure that made it much harder for pilots to rodeo you. It wasn't perfect, but it was okay.
In TF2, all Titans can pop electric smoke by default. This one really confuses me. After stripping the Titan's shields to encourage your teammates to steal batteries for you, they go and give all Titans a foolproof method for killing Pilots who try to steal their batteries. It's like the right hand is trying to write a letter, and the left hand is punching the writer in the face. From my play experience, people simply don't bother stealing batteries, because it's too dangerous and the payoff isn't very large and doesn't benefit you personally.
- Your pistol and your anti-Titan weapon now use the same slot. This one is just daft. In TF1, every Pilot had a loadout of a main weapon like an SMG or assault rifle, a sidearm, and an anti-Titan weapon like a homing rocket or grenade launcher. It was nice, because it meant that every Pilot had a gun for Pilots, a backup gun, and a gun for Titans.
In TF2, the sidearm and anti-Titan weapons are exclusive - you have to pick one or the other. What does this mean in practice? Well, I'm never going to fucking pick the pistol, because not having an anti-Titan weapon means being unable to damage Titans. In a game named Titanfall, you encounter Titans pretty frequently. I don't understand the logic behind this change at all.
- The maps suck. The maps suck. They're cramped, confusing, bereft of the verticality that made TF1 so distinctive, and very difficult to wall-run through - there's a lack of contiguous walls for a Pilot to run along, and ziplines are completely absent. The maps are small enough that you'll respawn in front of the guy who just killed you more than once a game. The invisible boundaries are everywhere, stopping you from climbing to the top of buildings or running high up along the walls. You often run into literal Titan traffic - three or four giant robots trying to push each other aside so that they can get through a narrow crevice or alleyway, because there are no ways to bypass it and nowhere else to go.
As awesome as a giant robot traffic simulator sounds, it's not that fun in practice.
It really bugs me how you could fuck up the idea of giant robots fighting, but Respawn have done it. Don't get me wrong - the new stuff they've added, the new Pilot abilities and weapons, they're pretty great. The campaign is short but quite enjoyable, with most of its flaws coming from the basic fact that Titanfall's mechanics weren't meant to be a single-player game.
I just feel that, all of the changes? They're trying to fix something that isn't broken, and the end result is a lot like a fresco of Neckbeard Jesus. [https://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--XNZobdgv--/17woepenfwjnmjpg.jpg]
