Titanfall matches will be capped at 12 players: six against six. Call of Duty co-creator and Respawn Entertainment (the studio behind Titanfall) co-founder Vince Zampella confirmed the match size on Twitter when asked by fan.
"Turned out to be the best balance with ai for us," he said.
Although the player cap is low when compared to Battlefield 4's 64-player support, Titanfall will make up for the difference in a variety of ways. First of all, every player-controlled character can have a Titan in follow or guard mode if they wish and there will be plenty of AI-controlled grunts to help populate the battlefield. Rest assured, Titanfall should feel plenty hectic despite featuring only 12 maximum player-controlled characters.
Following fan backlash to the news, a Respawn Entertainment employee took to NeoGAF to help justify the decision. He started off by suggesting people play the game "before judging a something as insignificant as a numbe rin 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," he said.
"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."
The employee went on to explain "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."
Titanfall is set to hit Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC on March 11, 2014 in North America and March 13, 2014 in Europe and Australia. Admittedly, I haven't had much hands-on time with Titanfall, but the time I have had with it resulted in some pretty chaotic, intense matches. I think everyone needs to just sit back and relax.
