Wednesday, February 07, 2018

Succeeding at Titanfall 2: Some Closing Thoughts

[NOTE: One in a series of posts on my Titanfall 2 experience. Find the intro article with links to others here.]
Titanfall 2 is a really fun game, even though the multiplayer aspect is not a type of game I do well at or even search out to play in other games. [Ed.: Dude, you have 28 days of total gameplay and you just got Gen 50. WTF? Seriously?]
A few closing thoughts for this series:
  • Find Game Modes That Work For You. Early on I said I’d rather punch myself in the balls while being drug behind a motorcycle through a field of cactus and broken glass than play pure pilot v. pilot modes. I find myself in those modes spending a lot of time dying and cussing. Attrition is different because there are pilots and minions, plus Titans come in to play. I still die and cuss, but have a much better time. The other modes I've mentioned suit my skills and mindset very well. Find modes that work for you.
  • Figure Out Your Goals. Or If You Even Care. In TF1 I was determined to max out at Generation 10 Level 50 just to prove I could do it. TF2 is completely open ended, so my goals were more around game play. Then at a certain point I decided I wanted to play well enough with each weapon to Gen them up to Gen 2 at least. Then I could stop playing ones I hated, because at least I’d proved myself with that weapon. Remember my DMR being in the same grave as Jimmy Hoffa and Chuck Schumer’s conscience? Yeah. That. You don’t have to have goals. That’s just fine too.
  • Get a Mic. Chat With Your Team. The Titanfall player community is really pretty awesome. There’s a lot of funny players online. I’ve only ever had one teammate who cussed at the rest of us. He was playing really poorly and decided it was the fault of all the rest of us he was scoring so poorly. “Worst fucking team I’ve ever played with!” Yeah, pal. That’s exactly why you ended with five kills and few points. Jerkface.
The vast majority of folks with mics tend to be good teammates. A very few even know how to communicate well to help the team, especially when you’re playing Frontier Defense.
  • Learn Effective Communication. “Cover me!” isn’t helpful. Where are you? Where are you going? What direction are you taking fire from? Learning the maps can be very helpful so you can call out useful info like “Careful! Pilot sentry in the main courtyard.” or “Pilot’s camped out in cover up on the grain towers.”
Of course, there’s my always helpful running “useful” commentary: “Well, shit. That didn’t work so well.” Or “Damnit, Funky Chicken killed my ass again because I was stupid and ran in front of him.”
Don’t be me. Be better than me…
  • Have Fun. Like any multiplayer game, it can be extremely frustrating, particularly when the game matching algorithms don’t work all that well. You get baby seals (me!) thrown in with sharks. Which is why I gave up on playing Call of Duty multiplayer after leveling up my Prestige to prove I could. Move past that frustration and focus on all the fun parts.

In Closing

I hope this series has been helpful to whomever runs across it. It’s not getting a lot of views, but that’s not really why I wrote it. I was more interested in getting back in a writing groove, and laying out my experiences was a fun way to do it.
Look me up some time if you’re interested. My GamerTag is FrazzledDad and I’m online 9pm-ish in the Pacific timezone.
In the meantime, go have some fun.

No comments:

Subscribe (RSS)

The Leadership Journey