As I mentioned sometime last week, I’ve been playing Titanfall 2 quite a bit the past month or so, really getting into the grit of the online multiplayer scene. Coming in 2 years late I’ve naturally had a rough start, but I’ve gotten into a groove with the game, refined my play style, figured out some tactics that work well on some of the more popular maps, and even begun to pick up on various play styles other people I’m teamed up with or fighting against may have, so I can actually somewhat predict their actions well, at some times anyway.
I apologize in advance for how incredibly long this entry is for what subject matter it covers, but there really is no short way to explain this without it just coming off as wrong. Funny how that is sometimes.
Of course there are those matches where I’m surprised by how the battle goes, and those are fine – more learning experiences, at the very least, and most of the time these prove to be quite exciting battles, different from the typical back and forth, but even then, most of the time I have quite a good time, with only the occasional annoyance of getting killed by either making a stupid mistake or the occasional issue with lag or some other reason beyond my control. A fair kill though, no matter how frustrating at that moment, is still a fair kill, and I don’t hold that against people I play against – that’s the nature of the game, after all.
Really, when an evenly matched set of players are going against one another the game is at its best. You just about can tell what the other player is doing, and everyone has their share of slip-ups, but generally kills feel earned, success feels rewarding and while dying is still frustrating, you at least feel like the opponent had to make an effort to take you down and they earned it. Next chance you get, you might return the favor.
Then, there are matches that are just plain odd. I’ve had quite a few of those this weekend while playing, and I thought I might as well write about them here. The weekend is oddly the best and also worst time to play such games since, sure, there are the most players playing around these times so you can easily get into matches, you also run into the problem of often being paired against players far better than you (which can be outright frustrating) or opponents who have play styles which just leave you scratching your head.
A thing to understand about Titanfall and an element which separates it from other shooters like Call of Duty is how much the height of the battlefield plays in the nature of combat. While other shooters do have multi-tiered battlefields and players will be in varying positions, Titanfall takes this to a whole new level (pun not intended) with elements like wall running and climbing, chainable double-jumps, and other elements that, while implemented into some other games in the years since the release of the first Titanfall, really seem to work best in that universe and not in others.
This verticality makes sniper style play, for example, more effective, yet also riskier since being at the highest point on the map makes it trivial for players to go up there and take you out once discovered. Hell, sniper style players tend to not just get killed once they make their first kill (thus revealing their location) but generally stop being effective by the end of the battle because people keep an eye out for them – the sniper player has to change tactics soon after their discovery or else they become nearly useless. Not uncommon with other games but given the way maps are designed, what can be a very effective play tactic is far riskier than other games, or so I’ve seen.
That’s not too atypical, but what I’ve been experiencing recently is, and is related to sniper style play. In this case, it’s camping, of all things – hanging out in one spot only coming out enough to take a shot at someone passing by.
This is not at all a normal play style in Titanfall – not for prolonged periods. At most I’ve camped maybe 30 seconds in a spot before moving because the nature of gameplay in the Titanfall series is a constant shift, probably more so than most any other game I’ve played of this type. Maps are designed to be as open as possible, and even the closed spaces in the game have multiple entrances that simply cannot be guarded all at the same time by the same person, so such camping tactics, much like sniper style play, quickly betray your location.
Stick and move is more of what I would describe the natural Titanfall gameplay as – know the general zone you and your team have dominance in but move in to find the enemy, or hold an area and let them come to you. If you don’t see anyone, get out of there because they are probably practically behind you!
Again, this all isn’t too far removed from most shooters, but Titanfall just has things that little bit different compared to the typical game where it benefits the player to keep moving, especially when the Titans come into play.
The past few days I’ve seen far more players than normal bullheadedly go all in against a Titan, only to get annihilated with ease. Normally a player will hang out on rooftops or inside of buildings and take what shots they can at a Titan hoping to damage it but otherwise avoid its pilot hitting them – these players however seemed to not give a damn about getting killed in the process of trying to damage my Titan, for example. Other players on rooftops continued to bounce around in an almost childish style, knowing good and damn well that I’m aiming my cannon at where they will be. Yeah, I might take a bit of damage here but that’s worth it to kill a player, or a group of them, and still have health left enough on the Titan to take down more opponents. It’s just not a sane battle strategy to me, and I play quite chaotically as is!
Now, if all this strange hiding mixed with not giving a damn actually won the other team the game I could see it being valid and try it myself, but in all the cases I’ve seen where this has gone on, the opposing team has lost, sometimes by large margins.
I just don’t get it. I don’t know if I’m just playing against younger people who don’t quite get the game but still play all the time, or if this is in and of itself an actual play style that works, but it just doesn’t match how the game tends to go. Last night I actually encountered a situation where I didn’t see an enemy player for at least 2 minutes, an unheard of time to be in a 6 vs 6 attrition match and not at least catch a glimpse of a player!
Incidentally, in that match as well as others I’ve also found more groups of players sticking together, which can be a good tactic if everyone works as a team, but best I can gather these were odd ad-hoc groupings that didn’t hold up well to a well placed explosive or a player getting at their group from behind and getting in a few kills before they can react. While groups are a strategy that works, they have to work in conjunction with the fast-paced free-flowing nature of gameplay in Titanfall 2 and when the above examples are what you’re up against in a match, it just doesn’t work out to be a fun time.
There’s just something about excessive camping contrasted with overt offensiveness when caution would be best – effectively an opposite take on how the game is normally played – that just kills all the fun. When people play in such a way that doesn’t quite match how the game is designed, and this seems to be their entire play style and they lose the match because of this it isn’t really a fun victory either – it’s just a game of annoyance, trying to find them so you can even attempt actual combat.
I’ve gone on far longer than I should have on this subject and it’s incredibly hard to put into words but at the same time something that anyone who plays Titanfall 2 can imagine and understand the annoyance of. Something about such sloppy play styles just kills the fun and flow of the game in a way that is almost worse than just being set up against better players – at least they fight the way you expect, right?