Titanfall Capture the Flag Returning on PC
Respawn Entertainment got some pushback from the Titanfall fanbase thanks to the latest update for PC , which removed Capture the Flag and Pilot Hunter playlists. So today in a lengthy blog post it explained the reason Capture the Flag was removed and how it will bring it back.
“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,” Respawn wrote.
Respawn admits that the matchmaking service in Titanfall, which it calls Stryder has flaws, and says it will work to improve it. To that end, it announced new changes today.
“Well, first, we’re bringing the CTF playlist back on PC. Furthermore, we’re introducing a test of even wider region searches. If you’re searching for 5 minutes without starting a game, Stryder will eventually widen your search to include neighboring continents. This means you might end up in a game with a much higher ping than you’re used to, but as players pointed out; playing is preferred to not playing at all! The 5 minutes is a rough estimation as Stryder may very well use a much shorter time if it can determine from its real-time view of the globe that waiting 1 or 5 minutes will have no tangible difference. Like with many attributes of matchmaking, we’re tweaking and tracking or slicing data differently almost daily. Our engineers spend A LOT of time staring at graphs and analytics,” the post said.
Respawn said it is also working on other “behind-the-scenes features” to “increase visibility and control over matchmaking.”
These added features include a “connecting” status on lobbies to avoid misconceptions that they won’t fill up that cause players to leave the game, “last resort” measures to balance lobbies if they are especially lop-sided, and taking into account elements like mic/chat use to try to get like-minded players together.
You can read the entire blog post here.