Respawn Entertainment promised that Titanfall's next update will be the game's "biggest" to date, and judging by today's grand unveiling of a new four-player co-op mode, it looks like the developer isn't exaggerating.
Frontier Defense, as the mode is officiall called, offers players a new way to play together outside of the game's competitive landscape. In it, a group of four players are tasked with defending a "vital object" from "increasingly intense" waves of AI-controlled enemies, similar to that of Horde mode in Gears of War 2.
In addition to fighting familiar foes, players will face new, challenging units, including: hordes of Grunts and Spectres, stealthy Sniper Spectres and Cloak Drones, explosive Suicide Spectres and Nuclear Titans, ranged Mortar Titans, and even melee-resistant Arc Titans!
In between rounds, you'll be able to fortify your defenses by earning and deploying stationary turrets around the battlefield. There are also new Loadout Crates near the objective which will allow you to switch loadouts at will, while refilling ammo and ordnance.
Dying in the middle of Frontier Defense won't mean defeat, even if the entire team wipes. Should you die alone, you simply fly back into the battle via an airship that you can fire from on approach. If you're entire team wipes, you can still continue, though it will hurt the star rating that's assigned at the end of the match based on your performance.
Although Frontier Defense is clearly the big feature of Update 8, there are tons of other additions and improvements coming to the game, including Ranked Play, Sudden Death in Capture the Flag, new Titan Insignias, 17 new Achievements, and two more Featured Game Modes — Deadly Ground and Marked for Death Pro.
The full patch notes for Update 8 are detailed below:
Ranked Play
"Test yourself! Ranked play will enable you to work your way through an increasingly challenging set of Tiers by out-performing other Pilots in battle. This is not an exclusive mode or playlist and it works in all standard competitive matches.
In order to obtain the metrics we need to finalize the details, this feature will be launching in beta form.
The beta will last at least through October. After the beta, it will be open to all players level 32 or higher. A new season of Ranked Play will begin on the 1st of each month.
Looking for a beta invite? All Gen 10 players will receive beta access, in appreciation of their skill and determination. Gen 10 players may also invite other players to join in the fun. Gen 10 players are given 5 invites to Ranked Play, and 3 more invites per day. We may also expand beta access during this period."
Sudden Death in CTF
"In Capture the Flag if the timer runs out and the scores are tied, the match will go into Sudden Death. Respawning is disabled, the first team to capture the enemy’s flag will win."
Map Stars
"For an additional challenge while playing the game, we’ve added 3 stars to obtain in each primary game mode of each map. The stars you earn persist forever and you only have to earn each star once. To earn the star just play a match and reach the indicated score requirement. There are a potential of 504 stars to earn, and new Titan Insignias to unlock for earning a total of 30 stars combined for a game mode. You can view the progress of all Map Stars, and their requirements, in the “Levels” menu under “Personal Stats”."
Full Screen Minimap
"To improve coordination among teammates, we’ve added the ability to bring up a full map by pressing Right D-Pad or “M” on the keyboard."
New Titan Insignias
7 new Titan Insignias have been added. 2 for Frontier Defense, 5 for Map Stars completion.
Private Match Burn Card Sets
Instead of using your regular Burn Cards in Private Match, you now specify a set of Burn Cards for the lobby. Each player has access to a copy of this set and may make whatever selections they see fit.
- Fair and Balanced—Set designed for competitive play.
- All Cards—One of every Burn Card.
- No Rares—Every Burn Card, excluding rare cards.
- Ghost Match—Collection of cloak-related cards.
- High Velocity—Collection of stim-related cards.
- Machine War—Spectres…fighting Spectres…with armies of Spectres.
- Fightin’ Titans—Collection of amped Titan weapons, anti-Titan weapons, etc.
- Amped Up—All amped weapons, all the time.
- CTF Competitive—Set designed for competitive Capture the Flag.
- LTS Competitive—Set designed for competitive Last Titan Standing.
- None—No Burn Cards.
Black Market Additions
New Titan OS Voices
This update introduces new Titan OS Voices to buy in the Black Market. Sid is aggressive and dominating, while Vanessa is warm and inviting. In addition, you can purchase Black Market versions of the Betty Titan OS in multiple languages.
Black Market—Forged Certifications
Completing challenges can be hard, but on the Black Market, cheaters always win. This update lets you buy “Forged Certifications” which allow you to skip all five tiers of a challenge. You won’t receive any of the rewards for those challenges. Be careful, though—there is a new Xbox Live Achievement, “Too Legit To Quit” (0 points), to reach Gen 10 the old fashioned way—without skipping any regen challenges! Players who are already Gen 10 will also receive the challenge retroactively. Skipping a challenge that is not a regen requirement will not affect the achievement.
More Featured Game Modes coming!
Deadly Ground
The floor is covered in deadly electrified fog! Play a variety of maps in Hardpoint, Capture the Flag and Marked For Death while staying off the ground. Deadly Ground is scheduled to launch as the new featured game mode on November 5th.
Marked for Death Pro
Do you like Marked for Death but pine for classic round-based intensity? Look no further than Marked for Death Pro, poised to launch on November 26th.
New Features (Xbox One)
17 new Achievements
Gotta pop ’em all! Are you a bad enough dude or dudette to get all 2000 cheevo points?
New Features (PC)
New graphics quality settings: TXAA and HBAO
Got the GPU horsepower to take your game to the next level? Switch on HBAO for increased realism and shadows, and if you’re rocking a supported NVIDIA GPU you can also enable TXAA (2X or 4X) for increased fidelity.
Improvements and Optimizations
Load times are now significantly faster.
Specifically the time it takes to get from the main menu to a private lobby has been greatly reduced as well as the time to get from the game back into the lobby at the end of a match.
The load screen now displays the correct map name and game mode as early as possible. We managed to remove the delay before the next level showed up, and fixed bugs where the previous map and gamemode showed up in the load screen instead of the correct values.
Decal rendering optimizations were applied.
UI Improvements
The daily challenge menu now has a countdown telling you when new daily challenges will be available.
When abandoning a daily challenge, the selection will no longer return to the top of the list.
General
Changed the music that plays on the last round of LTS.
Gameplay Changes
Black Market Prices
Some item prices have been adjusted to align better with the rate at which people earn Credits.
Marked For Death
During the countdown, the player who will be marked is highlighted to his friendly teammates by an in-world icon and a minimap icon.
When you become the marked player, you now gain full minimap vision. (Previously, it gave you minimap vision of all players, but not AI). We’ve added a visual callout for this in the form of a bonus Burn Card indicator.
Rematch Burn Card
This is now disabled for use in Last Titan Standing.
Decreased the amount of time between using the card and respawning.
Weapon Burn Card Cancelled
The “Burn Card Cancelled” message has been modified to indicate if the killed player was actively wielding an amped weapon at the time of their death.
Burn Card Overflow Protection
You will no longer earn Burn Cards from kills if your total deck size has fewer than 16 free slots. You will still earn Burn Cards for all other activities such as completing challenges or successfully evacuating. This is to protect against excessive Burn Card overflow.
Voice Over
- Toned down frequency of VO that tells you if the score lead has increased or decreased.
Minimap Alert
Shots fired without silencers will now make you appear on the minimap of all enemy players. Previously this was only up to a distance of 4000 units.
Bug Fixes (All Platforms)
- Fixed artifacts due to interactions between Titan shields and particles.
- Made challenge descriptions easier to read in the challenges menu.
- Fixed some missing or incorrect data in the last game summary menu after playing in a private match
Gameplay:
- Fix unsilenced Smart Pistols never showing up on the minimap.
- Fixed a bug where the Extra Dash Burn Card could remove the Big Punch mod from Titans.
- Fixed a bug where Gen10 players using Roll the Dice with a full Burn Card deck could overflow their available space.
- Fixed minor variance in Titan shield regeneration time.
- Fixed a bug where you could change your Titan’s loadout in the middle of its life, if your Pilot had just respawned.
- Fixed a few cases where Titans could fly further than expected.
- Fix view pop when rodeo-ing a Titan that then gets embarked.
- Fixed a rare case where a neck snap might not neck snap.
- Fixed getting under the map in Nexus due to nuclear eject.
- Fixed rodeo animations getting cancelled suddenly due to a player embarking into his Titan.
- Fixed Titan warnings for incoming hostile Titanfall and getting rodeoed not playing sometimes.
- Fixed timer-to-next-Titan sometimes not displaying after respawning.
- Fixed cases of missing attacker kill credit. When a Pilot suicides, if enemy player damaged them recently, that player now gets kill credit.
UI:
- Fixed refractive effects in VDU.
- Fixed menu navigation issues when level 50 in the challenges menu
- The next map images in lobbies will properly clear when going in between menus.
- Fixed a bug where your loadouts would look unchanged after editing a custom loadout.
Performance:
- Frame hitch when Pilot connects or disconnects.
Bug Fixes (Xbox One)
- Fixed hitch when connecting to server.
- Fixed hitch when other players connect or disconnect.
