Some Titanfall heat in the Bombcast!

What did people think of the heated discussion on Titanfall between Vinny, Jeff and Brad? I felt Vinny and Jeff were a bit defensive when Brad brought up some points about the class structure in the game.

I think Brad was being very odd about Plants vs Zombies Garden Warfare given that EVERY game is all about 1) How YOU play as a player and 2) How EVERYONE else around you plays. PvZ: GW can be just as non-tactical as anything else, and other shooters can be as tactical as your team and yourself are as players.

I understand Brad's point, that Titanfall and some first person shooters because of the design, do not encourage teamwork or other styles of play. Class based shooters or shooters that rely heavily on teamwork (Left 4 Dead) encourage players to not lone wolf and do more constructive things for the sake of the team.

As MonkeyKing said, it is all on the player though, they can choose to play it as they see fit. Titanfall can be as tactical as you want it to be.

Brad unfortunately just devolved it to left trigger, right trigger and it is that at it's core, but it can be more than that. I think Jeff, who likes FPS, took offense to that basic labeling.

I agreed with Brad's underlying point despite the fact that he is, God love him, perhaps one of the worst debaters in the history of debaters. All he was trying to say was that he's tired of shooters that have boiled the gameplay down to the bare basics of simply aiming and shooting, and that he wishes more shooters included more class and gameplay variety to make things more fresh. That's all fair.

It spiraled out of control when Jeff got (understandably, considering how overly hip some try to act with "oh it's just another call of duty") hyper defensive over it, especially considering a game Brad was casually dismissing isn't even out yet. Brad reacted like Brad and responded with all the subtlety and argumentative precision of a 2x4 and started making broad, reductive statements, and came off as a little pretentious, I assume, without meaning to. Aside from Brad's struggle to effectively construct an argument, the only thing I hope isn't true is that Brad isn't so reductive with all games like that, because if he is, I'm not sure how he finds any enjoyment in video games anymore.

It also wasn't really even that big of an argument. It lasted less than five minutes proper, and wasn't vicious at all. I think it's actually healthy to hear disagreement and arguments over games on the bombcast. It certainly gave the podcast more energy than most of them have had lately.

It felt like Brads DOTA brain was leading in his outlook on shooters as a whole. That PvZ has enough whimsy and class based "load outs" doesn't negate the fact that it'll most likely be played like all of the other games of its ilk. It isn't as team dependent as he's making it out to be when the end goals are the same.

I don't have much experience with competitive shooters (at least not since the days of Q3 and CS beta), but I sort of got the impression that Brad was founding his argument on his experience of jumping into random matchmaking, where no shit everyone's going to be lone-wolfing it and there's not going to be any strategic depth. It's like if someone tried to base their opinion of high-level Dota on trench-tier pub games.

I generally prefer class-based shooters when I have the choice too, but I'm not going to pretend that COD/Titanfall have no strategic depth or no room for varying responsibilities/roles when played with a coordinated team at a high level.

I agree with IIGrayFoxII and Marokai. Also, as Marokai states, it didn't even last 5 minutes and it didn't really get THAT bad so it was definitely blown out of proportion by some people.

I always think it's unfortunate when that happens on a podcast.

Only because I feel some people on the outside just don't get it..

What I mean is that all people have these dumb fights. Especially when you spend lots of time together. Sounds like Jeff and Brad were just not vibing that afternoon and when that happens and you start arguing games it's easy for both sides to just start making points about nothing, being critical about nothing, etc and so on. Until you get to where they got and it's all "well you said this but you I think you mean that" as if it's some kind of news story that humans are inconsistent/hypocritical/have difficulty expressing complex arguments on the spot, like the spread of classes across modern day shooters.

It's exceptionally difficult to really parse out class systems across all third person and first person shooters and analyze which are more about killing and which have more playstyles.

For example ME3 has tons and tons of classes but even on the hardest difficulty you will see all players generally do the same thing: kill the enemy. The difference is just that in that game you often have to stick together or you will get overwhelmed and die. This leads to much more natural use of party buffs, stationary guns, area of effect abilities, etc. Plus there really is the existence of both melee and long-range classes in the game, and mechanically that's a huge difference.

As well... I have often played ME3 purely as a team saviour before, and people do tend to really appreciate that. Because it's game over when all 4 people are down, being alive really matters in ME. So if you play a fast, invisible character who doesn't necessarily kill people but instead focuses on reviving, your teammates will really appreciate it. Unfortunately, score wise, the most points always go to those with the most kills/headshots/power uses.

Brad was being overly reductive. If you boil any game down to its raw mechanics, it sounds boring. Mario is nothing but running and jumping. Dota is nothing but clicking on bad guys. And let's not forget how strongly he advocated for another left-trigger-right-trigger game last year. What was it called? Siblings?

I just got done with this section of the bombcast and I agree with Brad that Jeff was kind of missing the point although that may partially be Brad's fault for not explaining himself well. Being a big fan of more team oriented games I get that Brad was trying to say that a lot of popular CoD-like shooters don't have many distinctive and tactically different roles that facilitate team based gameplay. When a game is designed to have true support classes that are mainly useful for making other players stronger I find that there is more depth and replayability to the game than when everyone's main ability is to kill other players with a secondary ability that assists teammates. Additionally I think that this happens for a reason, people like to be the one killing other people in multiplayer games more than they like to assist other people. This can be easily seen in games like Dota 2 and LoL where it is common in random pick up group games for a lot of people to want to play the carry role. I think that this is one reason that a lot of multiplayer shooters are designed around everyone having mostly equal offensive capabilities and thats what makes them so popular.

It was awkward because even they recognized they kept debating it. But Brad has a bad habit of being very hyperbolic and meaning it. His favorite phrase is to say a game looks like shit because it doesn't look as good as the PC version. Also, he was equating roles allowed for in a game (medic, assault, support, sniper) to depth and therefore Plants vs Zombies had more depth than Call of Duty. Jeff kept saying, he could see why class based shooters were more interesting to him, but to dismiss Call of Duty or Titanfall because everyone on the team has to shoot is stupid.

It felt stupid, especially coming from Brad, the man who will go on all day about his adoration for shooters like Quake and who never even talks about playing things like Team Fortress or even Battlefield. "I love Team Fortress in theory" or whatever he said was so dumb....there is no way Brad was on debate team in highschool because he's really bad, like awful at debates.

As for the actual argument? Yeah sure Titanfall probably has a lot less tactical variety than a class-based shooter but they could at least wait until the full game comes out before starting these discussions. Anything can be reduced to its most simplest form and it's good to be critical of things you don't enjoy but at least have a half-decent argument as to why.

@marokai: oh but Brad IS just that reductive about pretty much everything. He's extremely stubborn too and will make snap judgements that he tends to stick to for extended periods of time. Just in the Lords of Shadow 2 quick look Brad completely dismisses the story as bad compared to the original games, without actually remembering any major plot details of those side scrollers. I love Brad as much as everyone but when it comes to arguing anything it's almost painful to listen.

Brad is just so terrible at expressing himself and he gets aggressive when confronted with differing viewpoints.

@thehbk said:

Later in the very same podcast, he said Dawn of Sorrow was amazing, while its direct successor, Portrait of Ruin, was terrible (or something along those lines). They're extremely similar games, and the metacritic scores of the two are 89 and 85, respectively. I can understand liking DoS more, but that sort of disparity is like saying that you loved Super Mario Galaxy 1, but despised Super Mario Galaxy 2.

I still love Brad, but he does tend to be extremely hyperbolic.

I was gonna post this on the Bombcast page but I will here instead.

I normally side with Jeff, but on this one, Brad is totally right. Call me jaded, but the variety, or more specifically the lack thereof, in many modern games (not just shooters, this applies in a lot of places) is making a lot of games completely unappealing, especially for genres that have had a million and one different games that are all similar but with one tiny quirk to differentiate them from the rest. I look at games like Titanfall and have absolutely no interest in them. I played a ton of Call of Duty 4 in 2007 when it came out, and I loved it. But 7 years later, that style of game is so tired at this point, and any quirk added to it does not fix the issue that the actual gameplay is kinda boring, and that even with different weapon choices, the gameplay still is not all that varied. Does a sniper rifle offer a different experience than a shotgun? Sure, but it still just boils down to shooting dudes, with no other opportunities to contribute to winning. There's nothing else to be done. To win the game, you just shoot other players and try to get a higher score. There is nothing else you can do to contribute to winning.

And with that, what I think his argument boiled down to was that in class-based games, at least there is the opportunity to have a vastly different experience in each game. For example, in TF2, playing a game as an Engineer is a completely different experience than playing as a Heavy, which is also a completely different experience than playing as a Medic. Likewise in Battlefield and other games like that. In BF2 there would be whole games where I wouldn't fire a single shot because I was fulfilling the role of a medic, and since I did that, it allowed the team to prosper. Likewise with engineers. Those people focusing on keeping a tank alive are contributing just as much to winning the game as the person driving the tank. That type of opportunity isn't really available in games like Call of Duty or Titanfall. Shooting multiple dudes without dying might give you more options for killing more dudes, but it doesn't contribute to your team's success in the way a medic or engineer class would in a class based shooter.

That's why I've always said people who go into Battlefield games and just try and get away with lonewolf shooting people and not taking part in the team-based activities are missing the point.

I'm just happy to hear a diffrent opinion about Titanfall. It's been all roses and that made me feel funny.

Haven't listened to it so I don't know exactly what the debate was about, but I'd be way more into the likes of Battlefield multiplayer if you could strip out all of the individual bullshit (K/D ratio, XP for everything etc.) and just had team success / failure.

I can appreciate what Titanfall is doing objectively, but it pretty much looks like the culmination of everything I don't want multiplayer to be.

Yeah Brad's point was kind of ill conceived. That Plants Vs Zombies is a better game because... sometimes you're a punching plant instead of a shooting one? Also I've played Titanfall, in the more nuanced modes there's hell of strategy to how you're going to approach shit especially with the way the traversal and titans work.

@cloudymusic: Actually Portrait of Ruin is a shitty game. I've played it, I know. Too aggressively Anime and instead of having one character who was great at magic and attacking you have two who are good at one thing and useless at the other. Real lame. I will say though Order of Ecclecia, the third DS game, was fucking rad.

I actually really liked the discussion. I don't think they were "fighting" and I don't think it was a thing that either of them thought about at all after the discussion was over they were just challenging each others viewpoints rather aggressively and that is fine and makes for exciting content to hear both sides argue their points. I sort of fall of Jeff's side here but regardless at least Brad had an interesting argument to back up his side even if he is totally wrong. ;)

Nothing wrong with people on the radio getting mad at each other, it's good listening.

Titanfall has this situation where so many people are starting with an idea of proving why it can't be the biggest game. They should just let it live.

Left Trigger Right Trigger has serious depth! Just 99.9% of people don't engage in it.

God. You're so right. And these sorts of spats just suck and make you feel shitty. Because by the end the only people in the room who have any remaining dignity are the ones choosing to remain silent. The ones arguing are sniping at each other with veiled, near-personal attacks that they're sure to not truly mean.

Ugh. The worst.

It's fine for Brad to not like the "Call of Duty" shooter, as he's never talked about playing those games. He was either into Starcraft or DOTA. Never had the impression that shooters were his thing.

I don't mind people having different preferences about videogames, however. Using reductive logic to dismiss other genres seems like a moronic thing to do. As some people pointed out already, if you reduce game mechanics to simplistic statements everything sounds dumb and boring.

It is fine if you don't like competitive shooters but there could be strategy, teamwork, deep and skill involved, just watch some NML COD sarch and destroy / Hardcore, they actually quite fun to watch. As someone who grinded my way to Diamond league in SC2 a couple of years back: in all honestly 4v4 random matches have as much team work and strategy as any random COD death mach, most people don't give fucks about teamwork the match is won by however click the fastest and has the best build order.

Don't blame the game, blame the random player matchmaking.

I agree with Brad. Class-based shooters are infinitely more interesting to me than Military ones. Having a bunch of tactical options, playing as a team and the strategies you can use together, different play styles depending on class, ect. are the things that really appeal to me in a shooter. That's not to say I don't like Titanfall or similar games, they are fun and have their place but I just can't see myself investing heavily in a game like that. At some point it just boils down to the same thing - shooting at people (but with different guns).

I agree with Drew on this one.

Always the right call

Brad wasnt really being aggressive at all. Jeff was the one who got really crazy about it. Brad was done arguing about halfway through the debate.

With that said, it was a bit awkward after the argument ended, but they eventually got back on track. Shit happens.

I was totally, 100%, on Brad's side in this discussion, and I thought it was Jeff who got unreasonably annoyed and refused to see his point. Brad didn't perhaps make the perfect case for his side, but he at least remained relatively calm and made sense. Jeff was just jumping from argument to argument.

The central issue here is one of skillsets: the Call of Duty-style games (including Titanfall) very much value different things than games that have the kind of focus Brad was talking about. In order to get good at those kind of shooters, by far the most important thing is being good at handing a controller. Having fast reaction times and being really good at very quickly getting someone in your sights and shooting them. The games Brad were talking about have other priorities as well: it's not just about being dextrous at using a controller (though that certainly helps), but also being able to consider "what should my role be here, what tactics should I employ in order to help my team achieve our goals?" I don't think that there's any question that those kinds of games have a deeper, more strategic bent to them.

That's not to say that there isn't depth and skill to being good at shooting guys as quickly as possible. Of course there is, and what kind of game you like is a matter of preference. I get the sense that Jeff much prefers not having to think about stuff like that, and just focus on killing dudes in the most efficient manner. That's perfectly fine, there's nothing inherently superior in either style, but it's undeniable that it's a more shallow experience compared to games that are designed in such a way that you have to work together with your teammates in a more tactical way.

I'm totally with Brad on this one. I've played enough games that I'm basically done with the simple experience of shooting guys. I've been playing a lot of Battlefield lately, and it has put in stark perspective how much I prefer objective based modes over Team Deathmatch. I usually just quit a server when a TDM game comes into the rotation, because it's so unfulfilling. It feels like empty calories: shooting guys for no other reason than racking up a good K/D ratio.

I think Brad did a poor job at expressing his point. That is all... Jeff took it at face value and everything went from there.

But it is a point I have thought about before and agree with him. I simply don't like games where the only way to measure performance is who killed the most of other people in PvP, 1v1 encounters. I think I have grown tired of deathmatch as a mode, and would rather play a decent horde game than a good deathmatch game, even with strangers. I also don't feel attracted to games that uses loadouts as synonims of classes, and roles like support or defensive are not supported. I believe Team Fortress 2 (before the hats-mania) was probably the best implementation of the PvP paradigm, and games like Resistance 2 or Mass Effect 3 are good examples of Horde mode done right...

I don't think Jeff responded correctly, but if I had to deal with how Brad expresses his opinions every day, I'd probably lose my shit on him occasionally too.

I found that argument extremely uncomfortable to listen to. It only reinforced my sense of an animosity between Jeff and Brad I've been picking up on the podcast for the past 6 months or so. I really hope that's not the case, and given their long history it probably isn't, but it's a bummer that I've been getting that vibe.

I had a little giggle at the argument and moved on without thinking much about it. What I did find kinda weird was Jeff's reaction at people tweeting to him about BF4. Don't really understand why Jeff would get so pissed off because some people responded to a tweet from him talking about bugs with BF4 by talking about their own experience with bugs in the game....Maybe needs to watch the talk Patrick gave...

Like, dude seemed to get really annoyed about it

Reductive, eh? From the guy that said Rayman Origins might as well be Bubsy? I'm not buying it.

Also, Jeff was doing the exact same thing with the Horde stuff in PvZ.

Brads argument was bizarre to me. He stated that you never see teamwork in those games. Now while this may be mostly true, I have to say, when working as a team in those games, or going up against actual "teams," there is a HUGE change in outcome. There is strategy, many just choose not to employ it. The same way you can beat say.... Devil May Cry, and never get an A combo. Because people choose not to employ strategy or the more complicated aspects to a game does not mean they do not exist. Brad was being very reductive.

I agree with the core of Brads reasoning but he is the worst at articulating his opinions. At least in a live and heated debate anyway because otherwise i think he's the best writer on staff when it comes to reviews but when he is put on the spot and has to debate his views right there and then he just can't do it.

At the same time however Jeff has this way of understanding perfectly what the other guy is trying to say but purposefully ignoring it and responding purely on what is being said and did come off as an asshole on this one but i can't say i wouldn't get annoyed at Brad the same way in the same situation.

It wasn't fun to listen to in any case.

Yeaaah...I feel like this might've been the final straw that causes Brad to leave Giantbomb. Surprised that he has lasted this long.

Jeff and Brad should just get it over with and fight...or make out...or both.

I don't know how anyone didn't understand Brad's point of view/argument. Having a class-based shooter makes you able to do lots more things than just trying to kill the other team better. Most of my time in BF3 was me reviving, healing and capturing points. I had a friend who spent most of his time destroying tanks/helicopters, etc. Then we had spotters in the recon section. Man, when everyone plays their role right, it's awesome.

No Jeff, there's nothing much different between using an Assault Rifle and a Sniper. Man, I really thought he needed to chill out.

@glottery: Why would he leave? It's not like it's a real hostile work environment, or the asbestos levels are rising in the building. I mean really. They might argue for a while... then go play video games for a living. Tough life. You'd have to be pretty fragile and/or stupid to up end your career, friendship or working relationship because of a disagreement about a game (which is kind of what you're there to do as a critic begin with).

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I saw brad's argument as being that in CoD type games the only influence you can have on your team is the shooting and killing of dudes. Even in domination modes you will have to be shootings guys to attack or defend a point.

Other games like TF2 and PvZ:GW have ways to still contribute if your not all that good at shooting via healing, or being a distraction as a tank or by completing more involved objectives.

Co-operation and teamwork can work across either so that's neither a positive or a negative thing for either side.

I think he is influenced by DOTA 2 where you can help your team in countless ways that aren't just getting kills. Maybe I agree with him because I play Dota too, but it is just inherently more interesting, as the shooting people is still in all the games which have more variety in the ways you can contribute to the team anyway.

I think maybe Jeff saw it as an attack on something he likes and he very aggressively defends the things he likes.

I'm with Jeff here, though I agree with Brad's sentiment. Not a huge fan of COD, and TF2 is one of my favorite games, but Brad is sometimes awful at using the English language. He said the reason he would be more likely to play PvZ over Titanfall was because left trigger, right trigger is getting old. Jeff flipped out (and listening to it, I did too), because that's the reason for Brad to never play another shooter ever. It's a statement that does nothing to differentiate what makes PvZ different or more interesting than Titanfall, but is instead a familiar criticism levied at COD. Brad used forum buzzwords instead of actual criticism, Jeff flipped, and Brad struggled to find his actual point. Not a huge deal, but Brad does seem to have the most difficulty getting his meaning pretty often.

He wouldn't. After being a member of this community for a couple of years, I felt like I finally had to make my contribution into the olde "Brad's leaving" meme.

I rather enjoyed the heated conversation. It was nice hearing them talk passionately about games. I'm on Brad's side in this though. Most shooters with short time to kill just boil down to killing the other team as fast as possible.

@glottery:

Ah Ic.

I agreed with Jeff about Titanfall, I just thought he was being kind of a dick about it. Especially where later on(or earlier, I forget when it happened) when he gave Brad shit about Garden Warfare. It's cool, we get that they were and made that Mass Effect multiplayer but with PvZ styling, you sound cynical when you keep hammering home that you should play one as opposed to the other.

It's only a problem because I never heard the other guys giving Jeff shit for liking Black Ops for instance, even though it is just ANOTHER call of duty. You can still like something if it's uniquely similar to something prior.

I see what Brad is getting at with the teamwork comment because how much team work is there really in a CoD match? It is just contained chaos even in team oriented match types where there is little to no coordination between any players who are not already partied up and know each other and even then the amount of coordination is low. You can see this even in GB's QL for TitanFall where there were others in office participating but each of them where running around doing their own thing. They were on the same team (side question: Have they fixed up how teams are made yet?) but none of that was team work.

If friends at the same location who can locally can communicate with each other don't really coordinate, why would 12 random strangers split into 2 teams even try?