Respawn wants you to know that it’s listening to your feedback, and it will continue to look for ways to improve the experience of playing Titanfall. In a recent blog post the game’s director, Steve Fukuda, discussed the developer’s approach to supporting the game, and offered a few hints at what we should expect in the near future.
These updates range from behind-the-scenes tweaks of the gameplay to new features. Fukuda also promises transparency throughout, with regular posts highlighting what is coming next and when. He then went on to explain some of the things that are currently on the way.
“We tend the garden and keep the weeds out,” Fukuda posted, meaning Respawn’s first focus is to make the game run as smoothly as possible before it considers adding new features. This includes behind-the-scene changes like weapon balancing and matchmaking. Fukuda also singled out the scoring in Hardpoint, and states that one of these tweaks on the way is to make the scoring more generous for attacking players.
Fukuda went on to discuss the next type of updates, “convenience features.” These updates won’t change the nature of the game in any significant way, but they make “life more pleasant in Titanfall.” These are generally minor changes, and include things like adding a Party Color, so the names of players in you party can easily identify them in a game or lobby. This category of updates also includes the ability to name your custom loadouts, filter your challenges so you can find those closest to completion, and adding the previous match’s final scoreboard in the Last Game Summary.
The next tier of improvements falls under “infrastructural features,” which include a recently launched beta for custom Private Matches. According to Fukuda, this category also includes what it calls “competitive-oriented” and “competitive spirit” features, which it will discuss in future updates.
The director also went in to greater detail about the more visible, new content we’ll be seeing soon. This includes new types of Burn Cards, “Nose Art” (new insignias for your Titan), and new maps coming via the Expedition DLC that was recently confirmed for May. He also mentioned that Respawn is working on new game modes and game mode variations. At PAX East the developer went in to slightly more detail and discussed the possibility of introducing “rifts or variants” of existing game modes. These would take established game modes and modify in unknown ways, then offer them for a limited time. The variant modes that are best received may then earn permanent rotation.
With the exception of the May release for Expedition, there was no specific release given for these updates. Fukuda was quick to point out that with the exception of the upcoming DLC, all of the updates he mentioned would be free of charge.
