Last week Respawn dropped Pilot Hunter and Capture the Flag from the playlists of Titanfall. Now, due to demand, Respawn will be bringing CTF to the PC version of Titanfall.
Getting into the details
In a blog post, Respawn detailed why they removed Pilot Hunter and Capture the Flag from playlists. According to Respawn, they removed these modes “because hardly anyone was playing them and matches were nearly impossible to find.” They stated that less than 1% of the player base were even trying to play CTF:
The reality is that less than 1% of the player base was even trying to play CTF, let alone actually able to get in to a game. With that few players attempting to connect, our matchmaking would just sit there, spinning forever, waiting to find a game to play. This is a bad experience for the user, and so we had to look at how we fix it. Our first step was removing playlists that were effectively broken. The second step is to continue refinement of our matchmaking. After that first step, though, it’s obvious that lots of people were upset – far more than the player counts on the removed modes led us to believe.
They continue:
“We’ve continually been working on improvements as testing matchmaking systems in closed player groups (like our office) is really tough. Our best feedback has come from observing the game in the wild. Even the beta we ran in February with 2 million players wasn’t enough data over a long enough period of time to give a complete image of how matchmaking would function post-launch. We’re actively working to make our matchmaking better.”
The blog post states that despite there being problems with the servers, people still wanted to play CTF in Titanfall. Thus, Respawn decided to bring back the game mode after a matchmaking update. The blog post goes into detail on how Respawn is working the servers, and why these modes did not work. You can read that here.
I am glad that Capture the Flag is coming back to Titanfall.
I really enjoyed the mode, and it is one of my favorites. It is also mentioned that Respawn is working on new modes and variations of existing modes. Hopefully these will also be as much fun as Capture the Flag. I am also glad that Respawn is listening to the fans, and giving the community what they ask for. It is good to know that they listen to the people who are playing their game.
Titanfall has been one of my favorite games of the year so far, and I hope that the new additions the game will be seeing keep as fun as it is right now.
