Titanfall

The piece that you guys are missing is that the devs have gone out of their way to reference deathmatch shooters like UT, Quake, and Doom as an inspiration for Titanfall. They say they are trying to get away from the hitscan, spray-heavy, short kill time style of modern shooters, and go back towards oldschool mechanics.

From: http://www.theguardian.com/technology/ga.../titanfall-vs-destiny-future-of-shooters

According to producer Drew McCoy, Respawn started with an interesting question: what would be the FPS version of mixed martial arts? So they started looking at classic titles and sub-genres, pulling in ideas from Doom, Counter Strike, Battlefield and more. "We went through a long prototyping process," says McCoy. "Our guys were trying all sorts of crazy stuff. It was all really rough, but it gave us an inkling of what could be good. And early on, one of the key things was movement, which has evolved into wall-running and double jumping - that sense of verticality. The other thing was survivability in a multiplayer game.

"The current trend is high lethality, one shot and you're down. It's popular, but if you go back 10 years, you had health and armour in Quake and Unreal, you could shoot guys 50 times - we wanted to try play with that, to lengthen the player's life without upsetting that quick kill balance. That's where the titans came in. They act as a kind of second life for you - you can take damage then eject out. Also you have AIs running around which are often easy to beat, so you get that quick kill loop."

There's also an ambition to add longevity to player vs player encounters, to get out of the twitch core rut that some well-known military shooters have ploughed. "The movement and face-off gameplay was influenced by Doom, especially the rocket launcher and plasma gun," says McCoy, "Those were projectiles that you could see coming, that you could dodge - there was this really cool back and forth dynamic. So Titans bring in a lot of that - they shoot a LOT of projectiles. And with the dash move, you can get in and out of cover real quick. This way, you're really fighting someone. It's not 'I shot first so you're dead', it's knowing the environment, knowing how to flank - we looked at a lot of old games for that."

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Of course, saying and doing are two different things. In the gameplay footage released, I haven't seen much that resembles the elements toted in the quote above. Sure, there is wall running, wall dodging, dashing, etc, but I haven't seen the kind of rocket/plasma shootouts common in Unreal and Quake. Hopefully this is just cause it's early and very little footage has been released.

Mainly I'm hoping that even if this game doesn't measure up to Unreal standards, it at least sets a trend against COD clones, and towards more skill-based, creative gameplay involving advanced maneuvering and projectile weaponry. It could really serve to pull FPS out of the dark age they've been in since ~2005.

So basically their Titan mech things are their idea of adding shield drops. They're probably shooting themselves in the foot if they make all the weapons "weak" or everyone has a lot of health. Hell, you died easily since Call of Duty 1. Now the most popular gamemode is hardcore, which makes it even easier for you to die.

The fanbase doesn't want a cowadooty where you need to empty magazines on enemies. That just ends up with players screaming "HOW DID DAT FAGGIT NOT DIE?!?! THIS GAME IS BULLSHIT!"

You could kill someone in one shot with the rocket launcher in Doom. Just saying.

If anything Quake/Unreal/(and more modern)TF2/Fast-paced game weapons are especially lethal and unforgiving. The only reason people survive is because they dodge that shit; extended firefights are about placement and not about how many shots can you pump into a body.

You simply cannot have that sort of game-play with slow movements speed and a sprint function lowers your weapon like 'modern' shooters. Maybe you could pass it off if the weapon didn't lower (Like Doom 3's sprint).

They can say all they want but just look at it! Every gun looks like a assault rifle or shotgun variant. In nearly every kill the player aims down iron sights. If they want faced past mech-shooting, they should have looked at games like Hawken. It has fast movement and extended fights.

Also, I loled in the second video when he said "not Bots, AI...just like in single player". Great. So the developer thinks that scripted sequence preplanned single player allies from COD are "AI" and better than "bots" that have been thinking for themselves since Unreal Tournament.

Well, it depends on the singleplayer. Halo as an example had an AI that was fairly free flowing. It's entirely reasonable Titanfall does too - if it didn't, it would be somewhat useless.

http://www.titanfall.com/
Release dates: March 11 for US, March 13 for Europe. All 2014.
For X360, X1 and PC.

"A $249 Collector's edition comes with a 18-inch titan statue with motorized cockpit. The packaging is a diorama with LED lighting. Also included are a 190-page artbook and a poster. "

Hmm.
Nope.

ambershee said:

You could kill someone in one shot with the rocket launcher in Doom. Just saying.

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N1ghtmare said:

If anything Quake/Unreal/(and more modern)TF2/Fast-paced game weapons are especially lethal and unforgiving. The only reason people survive is because they dodge that shit; extended firefights are about placement and not about how many shots can you pump into a body.

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IIRC you can survive a rocket in Doom if you have megahealth or heavy armor, just like in Quake and UT.

It's also worth pointing out that the idea of oldschool shooters being bullet-spongy is because bullets themselves are specifically nerfed compared to projectile weapons. IRC the Doom chaingun and pistol only do 10 dmg per hit. There isn't even a railgun in Doom. Then we see in the Quake and UT series, bullet damage for MG/Chaingun/Minigun/Ass Rifle goes down to 5 or 7 hp. Same goes for shotgun pellets - the most you see is like 10 dmg.

The whole point of this is it forces you to use projectile weaponry, with leading and prediction to get your speedy kills, instead of just holding the sights on the enemy and spraying for 2-3 hits like in COD. This leads to more skill-based gameplay, especially when coupled with resource control-based armor and health.

N1ghtmare said:

You simply cannot have that sort of game-play with slow movements speed and a sprint function lowers your weapon like 'modern' shooters. Maybe you could pass it off if the weapon didn't lower (Like Doom 3's sprint).

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I disagree. Years back I made a mod for Halo 2 attempting to inject more Quake/UT-like gameplay into the conventional console shooter framework. With the right weapon balance, it really works. Sure it's slower than UT, but that just compensates for the imprecision of the controller and it's still an improvement over ordinary mindless console play. Granted, Halo didn't have a sprint in Halo 2, but it's pretty irrelevant since you can dodge well enough with the normal move functions. Some demo vids here and here.

If you can make that kind of approach work with Halo's extremely slow movement speeds, then you should be able to make it work in a scifi game with jetpacks, wallrunning, and mechs, if your execution is right.

N1ghtmare said:

They can say all they want but just look at it! Every gun looks like a assault rifle or shotgun variant. In nearly every kill the player aims down iron sights. If they want faced past mech-shooting, they should have looked at games like Hawken. It has fast movement and extended fights.

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I agree that the weapons depicted in demos so far don't show off their new philosophy very well, but there are a lot more weapons planned for the game. Hopefully, some of the other weapons will be more projectile oriented and interesting, as promised.

All in all I'm less excited about Titanfall's individual execution and more excited that games are looking at this game design philosophy at all.

I honestly think it looks pretty damned great, and I'm looking forward to playing it. Nearly everyone who has gotten their hands on it, including RPS (who are pretty damned cynical about such things) fell in love with it, so I have my hopes up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caiIamHIzBY

It's Call of Duty with jump boots and mechs. The mechs do down pretty easy too.

In any case, the quote at the top of this page is clearly absolute bunk - a lie. There's almost no Quake / Arena FPS legacy in this game and the gameplay very clearly demonstrates that.

UBerserker said:

http://www.titanfall.com/
Release dates: March 11 for US, March 13 for Europe. All 2014.
For X360, X1 and PC.

"A $249 Collector's edition comes with a 18-inch titan statue with motorized cockpit. The packaging is a diorama with LED lighting. Also included are a 190-page artbook and a poster. "

Hmm.
Nope.

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£250 ($405) in the UK. Well that's a nice big 'Fuck You' from EA.

ambershee said:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=caiIamHIzBY

It's Call of Duty with jump boots and mechs. The mechs do down pretty easy too.

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That's the exact same few minutes of early footage that's been going around for 6 months. Every "titanfall gameplay" video you find on youtube shows clips from that same old demo reel. It appears heavily scripted, and only shows a couple weapons and a couple classes. Obviously, the reason this limited demo reel looks like COD is because the footage has specifically vetted to appeal to COD players.

Therefore, you can't really judge the game until actual unscripted, unedited, raw gameplay footage from non-devs starts being released. There are ton of weapons and classes that haven't been shown yet. For all we know, that footage is basically one big "bullshot", so it may not be indicative of the actual gameplay balance featured in the game.

If they are showing footage to cater to the COD players, then more than likely the game will do the same.

I just want Section 8 back

Beta ends today. No comments yet?

Looks like a Call of Duty clone rather then some Quake/UT inspired game.

I played just a few games. (Been kinda busy) So I can't say anything with great confidence.

Basically, this is where COD should have gone after Modern Warfare 1 or maybe 2. The gunplay is fairly solid. Obviously there's a lot more vertical aiming now with people jumping all over buildings and Titans. When the match begins, everyone is on foot and I actually enjoyed this part. It goes back to a more simple time of COD. Once everyone starts earning their Titan drops however, things get quite hectic.

The Titans themselves I'm not particularly fond of. It's difficult to not get rodeo'd by players that know what they're doing and of course there's not really much stealth you can do. So really you're limited to trying to tank as many players as you can in the quickest amount of time. Most of the time I just end up leaving my Titan to autopilot near me while I continue to mow people on foot down or harass other Titans simultaneously with my secondary anti-titan weapon.

TLDR; It's a simplified and better version of COD with mechs. Didn't get hooked though.

(GR)Killer said:

Looks like a Call of Duty clone rather then some Quake/UT inspired game.

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If you want a Quake/UT inspired game you'll have more luck with Strike Vector.