Finally, Titanfall private lobbies have arrived

One of the biggest let downs in Titanfall was the inability to play private matches. It was a very peculiar omission from the title and one that definitely hurt their review scores across the board.

Well thankfully Respawn have listened to the community and last night a titan of a patch hit the title across all platforms and brought with it the long awaited private lobbies and many more things. One thing to keep in mind with private lobbies is that you will not be able to earn XP in them, which is a fair trade off I feel.

According to Gamespot who appears to have been given a Press Release that we haven’t, the patch includes the following

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 from75 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 from25 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)

• Fixed a rare full-screen blue/red flash.
• Audio should no longer overlap after going to the Xbox dashboard and back into Titanfall.
• Fixed a crash when saying “Xbox go back” on certain menus.

When I first saw this news hit last night I accidently misread it as “Titanfall now allows private servers” which made me happy. But unfortunately if you aren’t in range of an Azure datacentre then you are still going to struggle with lag.

The game handles it well but you aren’t going to be winning many close quarters battles.

Last Updated: April 11, 2014