Respawn Entertainment’s Vince Zampella has confirmed through Twitter that Titanfall is set to host six players per team for a total of 12 players in a match. His post states:
6v6 is max player count. Turned out to be the best balance with ai for us.
Gamers have responded with mass outrage. Many interpret more players per lobby as a benefit of moving forward to the next generation. Battlefield 4 on PS4 and Xbox One, for example, surely displayed a scope never before seen on consoles, at least not at its technical level. The thought of an E3 award winning title arriving in 2014 with half as many players per lobby as Call of Duty was pulling back in 2007 has been shocking for some.
In response to many negative comments on popular gaming forum NeoGAF, producer Drew “DKo5” McCoy replied with his own—lengthy—thoughts, which were:
Lots of armchair game designing going on in here. I’d suggest playing before judging a something as insignificant as a number in a vacuum.
Vince is right – we tried a huge amount of playercounts (all the way down to 1v1 and up quite high) and designed the maps, gameplay mechanics, and entire experience around which played best. If anyone wants to chase the numbers game, perhaps we’re not the experience they’re after? I dunno.
And FYI, for amount of stuff happening at once in a map you’ll be hard pressed to find a game that keeps the action higher. I literally have to stop playing every few rounds because my heart just can’t take it some times. Remember, you can get out of your Titan and let it roam on AI mode – meaning there can be 12 Pilots wallrunning around, 12 Titans stomping below, and dozens of AI doing their thing.
Oh, and I keep seeing people thinking we’ve got “bots” when we talk about AI. Thats not how they are. The AI in Titanfall are not replacements for human players. Our playercount is not 6v6 because of AI – AI play their own role in the game and are a different class of character in the game.
Can’t wait! Only a couple months until speculative threads like this are gone and people are actually talking about their experiences with the game. Its truly fun stuff, and I hope everyone at least gives it a try.
As upset as some gamers are, numbers have a lot less weight than the opinion of a highly qualified development team of over 100 people. Respawn is built of some of the most hardened shooter veterans in the industry. If 12 v 12 was a better model for the game, then it’d be that way.
Every gameplay demo shown to this point features 6 v 6 battles, and there’s plenty of mayhem. The titans and highly mobile infantry would have made for an overpowering experience unless the maps were expanded greatly to compensate.
When it comes down to it, Titanfall is only two short months away from releasing. Nobody can really solidly define how successful or disappointing the player count is until they get their hands on the game.
Titanfall will release on March 11th for the Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC.
