Respawn dropped a trailer for the upcoming free DLC update yesterday showcasing the grand reveal of 2 new "Prime" Titans (fancy skins), the return of a map called Colony from the original Titanfall, and a new weapon, the R-101 (mostly just a reskin of the R-201). As such it was time for everyone to weigh in with their insightful comments on why the game is still continuously bleeding players even with such an "excellent" post-launch content model and it's "amazing" gameplay. I've seen a couple of people hitting on the real reason but they're drowned in the stormy seas of "lul @ EA" and "something something release date". As someone with just over 100 hundred hours clocked into this thing I think I've arrived at the big reason the game is failing to draw in new players: It's fundamentally not fun for weak players.
In terms of skill floors and ceilings, Titanfall 2 has one of the widest gaps between shit players repping team potato and 1000 DPI former Quake pros with wrists more bulging and beefed out than most dudes' biceps. That isn't an issue in and of itself, and neither is the snowball-y the-rich-get-richer killstreak system that rewards those better players with their Titans far earlier than their opponents - the real problem, and one that other, more team-based FPS games like Killing Floor and Overwatch mostly solved, is giving the average player who doesn't know how to bunny hop across the maps at 55 MPH a way to contribute to the match. While there is a killstreak reward (referred to as "boosts" here) that gives you an extra battery to give to a teammate's Titan for a bonus shield, it's not particularly deep or something you can base a strategy around.
Next to that we have the Titans themselves, which are divided into 6 distinct "classes" this time around. They're all unique in appearance and abilities and provide another thick layer of strategy on top of the manic ground game of the PvP combat, and that uniqueness gives the game an almost MOBA-esque feel (especially in modes with AI grunts like Attrition) as well as giving players a "character" to identify with and "main", similar to Overwatch. However with only 6 different choices any hope of a competitive playlist seems DoA, without even mentioning the balance of those individual Titans Titanfall 2 straddles a middle ground between full-on hero focus a la Overwatch/Dota with a small degree of customization as a holdover from it's days of aping the Modern Warfare games that it was built from. While customizing your particular Titan in the original Titanfall seems to have been a well-received feature, I'm much more interested in seeing how far Respawn can push the hero archetypes with this franchise. Possibilities for more traditional team-based shooter classes like healers and supports seem wide with the broad sci-fi universe that the games are based in, and a the Titan that wasn't just a DPS front-line combat machine seems interesting at the very least.
Titanfall 2 will continue to bleed players until all that remains is a crusty enclave of big fish in the very small pond of Titanfall games, and I don't want that to happen. If Respawn embraces the strength of their Titan designs and allows for some more varied gameplay with alternate avenues to victory for all of us who aren't 15 year olds wired up on Adderall that would do a lot to bridge the gap.
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