Who opened the flood gates
Yesterday Vince Zampenlla, the co-founder of Respawn Entertainment, announced that the highly anticipated multi-player only game, Titanfall will only have a max of 6 vs 6 player matches. Although the player count may seem low for versus mode-centric games, the creators have assured us the gaming experience will only benefit from that decision.
The response to this news has been (for the most part)… less than thrilled.
The tweet that went live yesterday stating the players capped at 12 caused an array of reactions from people. Some felt this news was a letdown and announced that they were canceling their pre-orders. Others suggested that, due to balancing, the lower player number compared to other First-Person Shooters (FPS) would help create an intense and equal playing field.
This quote is from Polygon’s commenter drazzer on the article covering the Titanfall debacle. This tone is found in most comment sections throughout the Internet:
“Care to elaborate what is so good about a caped limit of 6 v 6 on a “next-gen” title? Is 6 v 6 [FPS], what is this ? the 90’s? Even B[attlefield]1942 had more players [than] this, more [than] [ten] years ago. I get that they feel that 6 v 6 it “Turned out to be the best balance with AI for us” but why not give the option for different match types of 24 v 24, or 32 v 32? 6 v 6 is very poor.”
After the internet allowed this to brew, Polygon put out the sourced story to help refresh people’s minds. Back at E3, Titanfall won awards for best in show; best in this, best in that… it stole the show. Along with all the awards, it reaped a massive outpouring of support from critics and fans who were lucky enough to get their hands on the 14-player capped version. Producer Drew McCoy told Polygon at E3:
“So I think what we showed on Microsoft’s stage was 7 on 7, but it really comes down to how many titans can be in play at once, how many AI, what the level is like, and what the mission is. It’s something that we change on a weekly basis and play test a lot. Our goal first and foremost is to make a fun game.
“…It’s not a technical question for us — we’ve tested dozens and dozens of players — it’s more of a creative and game design question.”
Flash forward back to yesterday’s announcement, and that number hasn’t changed much. It went from a player cap of 14 to 12. Luckily, to help reinforce the design choice, Joystiq found a NeoGaf thread from DKo5, a Respawn Entertainment employee addressing all the negative comments about the player cap choice. In the post he or she stated:
“[W]e tried a huge amount of player counts (all the way down to 1 v 1 and up quite high) and designed the maps, gameplay mechanics, and entire experience around which played best.”
My Take On It
All the controversy about the max player cap seems a bit nitpicky. I also don’t completely understand how this could be new or shocking if they were running 7 on 7 at E3. With most of my experiences in FPS’s, the multiplayer always seemed better when it was around 4 on 4 à la Halo (many, many hours of Halo). I found Gears of War very intense and that was 5 on 5, Left 4 Dead, Assassins Creed Multiplayer… the list goes on about how many games don’t have a large player cap. (Part of me likes to think of this as a 6 on 6 Star Wars Battlefront).
Besides, we are talking about the studio leads, the creators that made Call of Duty, one of, if not the best-selling game series of all time. I’m not too sure if the community knows best in this case. Regardless, people will vote with their dollars when the game launches on March 11, 2014 for Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC.
Published: Jan 8, 2014 06:26 pm