'Titanfall' Update Brings Private Matches Beta And More Improvements

Titanfall-background — New "Titanfall" update brings a number of improvements. Courtesy/Respawn

A new update for Respawn’s first-person shooter “Titanfall” will improve the game’s private match mode. This means players will have a more efficient way to organize matches with friends in tournament or casual play. The developer is just launching the beta across all platforms and is hoping for useful player feedback.

The update will also fix a number of the game’s bugs, including faulty Pilot health pools and large amounts of bandwidth used when connecting to servers. The update began rolling out yesterday for the PC, Xbox One and Xbox 360.

Respawn also promised improvements with future updates, including more custom loadout slots and last game summaries.

More information can be found below.

Via the official “Titanfall” blog:

• Private Match supports 2 to 12 players, with 1 to 6 players on each team.
• You can start a new Private Match lobby by choosing it on the main selection screen (alongside Campaign, MP, and Training). Invite your friends in or have them join you at any time.
• Choose any of the game's maps or modes (CTF, Pilot Hunter, etc.) to play in.
• Choose which team you're on.
• There is no XP gain, challenge progress, or achievement unlocking while in a Private Match. For this beta, the Last Game Summary screen will display what you would have earned in normal play outside of Private Match, but be aware that this progress will not be recorded to your lifetime total.
• For this beta, there is no concept of a "lobby leader"; any player can change game options in the lobby or start/stop the match countdown.
• All Private Match games are still played on dedicated servers via Xbox Live Cloud Compute, just like normal matches.
• New options like round time, score limits, and much more will come in future updates.

Party Colors - Your party members and their titans now show up on the mini-map with green colors, instead of the normal blue colors that other friendlies use. Their names are also drawn in green on your HUD, the obituary text, and in the pre-game lobby. This helps you figure out where your friends are and what they're up to, especially in the heat of combat.

Auto-Titan Color in Obituary - Your auto-titan's name now shows up in the obituary with the gold color that your own name does. Previously it had the same blue color as any other friendly. This makes it easier to keep tabs on how your titan is doing.

Removed Wall-hack Exploit - PC cheaters were able to modify their local configuration files to enable a sort of wall-hack cheat using legit game code. We've closed the exploit that they were using.

Menu Changes - "Play Multiplayer" is now the default (top) option on the private lobby menu, if you've completed both the IMC and Militia campaigns. It has also been renamed from "Play Classic", since the term "classic", which we used internally, proved to be confusing to some players.

Game Version on Main Menu - The main menu now displays the game's version in the bottom-left corner. Now you don't have to wonder if you really do have the latest version of the game, and we can use that to double-check things if support is helping you troubleshoot issues.

NEW FEATURES (Xbox One)

Party App Shortcut in Menus - Added a shortcut on all menus that opens the Xbox One's "Party" app by pressing Left Trigger on the controller, similar to the existing Right Trigger shortcut that invites friends. You can then press 'B' to close it when you're done, or leave it up. (This is much easier than the manual method of going to the Home screen, opening "My games & apps", selecting Apps, scrolling a few screens over to the "Party" app, and opening it.)

GAME BALANCE CHANGES

The Gooser Challenge - Based on recent feedback from fans of the game, the Gen 5 challenge requirement 'Gooser', requiring players to kill 50 ejecting pilots, will be reduced to 5 total. We had a couple of design goals for Regeneration. One was to give players a structured way to discover and experience ways of playing the game they might not have otherwise tried on their own. The second was to recognize players' mastery of various skills, going beyond just 'time played'. We went a bit too far with this challenge, especially considering the unique conditions that have to be met just to have the opportunity to get a kill on an ejecting Pilot. We understand some players have already completed the challenge, or have already earned more than the new requirement so we will be internally noting those players so we can recognize their accomplishments in a future game update.

40mm magazine capacity for default and Extended Mag – The default magazine size was making the 40mm too powerful. It is intended to be the only weapon that can take a Titan down without reloading, if used skillfully. However, 20 rounds per magazine were proving to be too high and overly tolerant of indiscriminate fire. We’ve reduced it to 12 rounds per magazine, which still allows players to take a Titan down without reloading, but helps balance it out against other Titan weapons. The extended mag has also been dropped from 25 to 16, with the same design principles applying to this change.

Titan Quad Rocket mag size change – During development, there was a time when the Quad Rocket was too powerful. We made a lot of changes to pull it back before shipping (lessened the screen shake impact, lessened the duration of the first person impact FX, lowered the magazine size, pulled the damage back, etc.) It currently can struggle against other Titan weapons and going back to the 5/6 (default/extended mag) magazine sizes helps balance the weapon and allows players to miss a few shots and still be effective. It was 4/5, now its 5/6.

Titan Quad Rocket damage vs Titan shields – It was taking too long to drop a Titans shields with the Quad Rocket (5 shots). This meant you had to reload before you could even drop an enemy Titan’s shields. This was the only Titan weapon that had this issue. We’ve now upped the damage against Titan shields so that it can drop a shield with 4 shots. Combined with the increased mag size, this damage increase effectively gives you one more volley in the mag to deal serious direct hull damage.

Titan Quad Rocket 'Rapid Fire' Mod's mag size change – We upped the magazine size for the Quad Rocket's Rapid Fire Mod to help it compete with the changes made to the extended magazine (from 5 to 6). The Rapid Fire Mod’s magazine size is going up from 16 to 18.

Amped Kraber Titan damage change – We upped the damage that the Amped Kraber Burn Card does to Titans. It is now the only significantly effective “small arms” weapon against Titans. Note that this only applies to the Amped version of the Kraber. The damage goes up from 100 to 800. We added this to give the Kraber Burn Card a little bit more character, as well as to give you something to shoot if you have a hard time hitting those little Pilots with the Kraber. So snipe away at those Titans…before they kill you!

Hardpoint Domination scoring changes – We wanted to reward and encourage players to go out and capture enemy hardpoints. As important as defending a hardpoint is, capturing them is more important and a tougher task, generally speaking. We did not want to completely remove points for defending, but attacking players were getting too little credit for their efforts. Here is a breakdown of the changes:

• Capturing a hardpoint from 150 to 250

• Assisting in capturing a hardpoint from 75 to 100

• Neutralizing a hardpoint from 50 to 150

• Assisting in neutralizing a hardpoint from 25 to 75

• Killing a player inside an enemy hardpoint from outside (nearby) from 75 to 50

• Killing a player inside an enemy hardpoint from outside (far) from 75 to 50

• Killing a player inside an enemy hardpoint from inside the hardpoint from 75 to 50

• Killing an NPC inside an enemy hardpoint from inside the hardpoint from 25 to 10

• Killing a player outside of a friendly hardpoint whilst inside of a hardpoint from 75 to 50

• Killing a player inside of a friendly hardpoint whilst inside of a hardpoint from 75 to 50

• Killing an NPC outside of a friendly hardpoint whilst inside of a hardpoint from 25 to 10

• Killing an NPC inside of a friendly hardpoint whilst inside of a hardpoint from 25 to 10

• Defending a hardpoint now goes from 75 to 25

CTF scoring changes – We wanted to make sure the big payoff in CTF came from capturing the flag. Killing the carrier and then returning the flag was worth 400 points (combined), while capturing the flag was worth 500 points in comparison. These changes are meant to reward players who capture the flag a bit more than those who kill the carrier and return the flag. Defense is still a very important aspect of CTF so we wanted to make sure to keep defending points high enough to still encourage playing defense. Here is a breakdown of the changes:

• Capturing a flag from 500 to 400

• Returning the flag from 250 to 100

• Killing the flag carrier from 150 to 100

BUG FIXES (All Platforms)

• Fixed an issue where a Titan firing ordnance would not show on the minimap correctly.

• Fixed a rare bug with Pilot health pools that would make them virtually invincible.

• Fixed rare cases where Titans could be called in through solid geometry.

• Titan shields now protect friendly rodeo players from explosion damage (such as from an Arc Cannon).

• Fixed a case where a Pilot could embark a Titan through walls.

• Spitfire LMG and XO-16 firing sounds will no longer sometimes cut off before the gun is finished firing.

• The Archer now locks onto the top of a heavy turret rather than the base of the turret.

• The Archer’s rockets now home in on Titans correctly when those targets are kneeling.

• Fixed shadows incorrectly shimmering on a particular area of Lagoon.

• Fixed Satchel Charges and Particle Walls causing pilots to permanently rodeo other pilots.

• Fixed certain characters not rendering properly in French and other languages.

• Fixed an issue where "Initializing..." would be displayed if a server wasn't found.

• Fixed being unable to scroll to the top of the datacenter list after scrolling down.

• Greatly reduced the bandwidth used when connecting to a server. People who previously could not progress past the load-screen when connecting to servers should be able to play now.

• Grunts now show up on the minimap when they shoot.

BUG FIXES (PC)

• Fixed issues with Asian fonts.

• ‘-nojoy’ command-line parameter now disables gamepad input.

• All anti-aliasing modes should now properly be displayed in the video settings menu.

• Fixed graphics corruption and some GPU underutilization for SLI and Crossfire configurations.

• Fixed a crash in the options menu when toggling between Low and Medium shadows.

• Mouse buttons can now be used for voice chat in lobbies.

• Titanfall will no longer override your Windows microphone volume setting when it is launched.

• Fixed the Smart Pistol reticle so it scales properly based on the Field of View setting.

• Fixed crashes on machines with 32 or more cores.

BUG FIXES (Xbox One)