Titanfall 2 game director explains why the multiplayer is slower

Over the weekend, Titanfall 2 held its first technical test on what developers called a pre-alpha version of the game. If there was one thing that the technical test revealed, it was that the pace of the multiplayer had been changed – a decision that irked some players.

Steve Fukuda, the Titanfall 2 game director, spoke out on why Respawn chose to make the game's multiplayer slower. According to Fukuda, Respawn listened to fans asking for more content and translated that message to the game being too chaotic.

The answer to the chaos was to slow the game down and essentially create lanes for players to use. Basically, the gameplay was dumbed down to make it more accessible.

Fukuda made this clear in an interview with ShackNews:

"After the original game, we sat down and looked at it objectively. We got a lot of feedback from the outside, from fans, from research saying, "Hey, there's not enough. There's not enough content. We want more content." Internally, we played the game and came out of the play session thinking, "That was super exhausting. That was super chaotic." Why is that? We struggled with trying to answer what it was.

"What it came down to was, it was difficult for players to have a predictably unpredictable kind of experience. It was difficult for players to say, "If I die here in this game mode, how do I get better?" Do I zig? Do I zag? What should I have done differently? It was hard for Titanfall players to answer that through their experience. So we went back to the drawing board so we could fix this.

"We started by addressing the fact that you move so fast. You can't shoot out of the air so easily. So we slowed things down just a touch. Then also thinking more in terms of having players more proactive decisions, so instead of reacting to everything, they're thinking more like, "This match and this mode, this map, etc." They go, what things in the loadout menu will best help me fulfill that purpose. There's a much greater sense of purpose for players, so now they are thinking in terms of planning ahead, in terms of "I want to do this. This is my goal, this is my identity of how I am as a player." There's a huge difference, because all the different modes now kind of necessitate the player proactively thinking about what they want to do."

One of the things we noted in the technical test was the new map layouts. Now, the maps are mostly big open spaces with sparsely placed buildings. Unfortunately, neither of the areas are properly set up for the fast paced traversal from the first Titanfall.