I was watching the January 2017 version of a tier list video, when I was reminded of one of the few issues that I have with Titanfall 2.

Weapons and Titans in Titanfall 2 are actually quite balanced. There are a few weapons that put you at a disadvantage, but most weapon classes have several good options depending on your play-style. Titans are also in a fairly good place, with all Titans being competitive when played correctly. Titans have a nice "rock, paper, scissors" aspect to their match-ups, where some are better against others, which reminds me of a good tournament fighter.

It's all very good game design that allows for many different options, but then you come to titan kits, pilots kits, and boosts.

There are some titan kit options that are just way too overpowered--not it a "this needs to be nerfed" way, but in a "why would I ever not use this" way--and there other kits that are just about worthless. Let's take a look at scorch. Extra flame damage? Of course. Extra flame shield damage? Absolutely. Less damage from your own fire? Why would I want to walk through my own fire, unless I want to flame shield someone. And at that point I can't use extra flame shield, anyway. Longer lasting firewall? If I want to block a path, I'll just use the gas canisters and a standard firewall. Leave a trail from my core ability? Have you tested the extra damage this does? It's worthless, and that's even assuming the player just stands there.

This is just one example, but some titan kits are just far better choices than others.

Then we have pilots kits. Kit 1? Quite balanced. Kit 2? Why would you ever pick something besides low-profile? Maybe if you're playing LTS, you can use phase embark. Hover will just get you killed, but it can be fun the screw around with in a lobby of bad players. The wall hang kit is highly situational, mostly pointless, and will actually prevent you from being able to aim as you run along a wall. Low-profile makes it MUCH easier to rodeo a titan, pull a battery, not be seen while cloaked, not be easily noticed from a distance when jumping, and not heard jumping or running.

Boosts are a mix of some great abilities with no downsides, some situational options, some that should only be used in certain game modes, and some that are completely worthless and should never be picked.

Battery is arguably the best boost for any mode with titans. Stand inside your titan's bubble shield before you activate it, and it's basically always working for you. You can be killed after activating amped weapons or a smart pistol, and someone can destroy your sentry moments after you activate it, but battery will never let you down.

Speaking of which, amped weapons and pilot sentry are also good, the latter especially in pilots vs pilots. Map hack is another strong boost. Ticks can be good in objective games. It's a lot of fun to toss several of them into a bank room while playing bounty hunt. And smart pistol can be effective, but you'll be giving up some really useful abilities to use it. And again, you could be shot moments after activating it.

Then you have some extremely pointless boosts that are pretty much always a bad idea. The phase rewind takes far too long to activate, making it pointless to use. Titan sentries are very ineffective, due to how little damage they do, and how quickly they can be destroyed. The difference in effectiveness between pilot sentries and titan sentries is ridiculous. That giant blue shield isn't giant enough to give up an actually decent boost, and the importance of movement in Titanfall 2 makes standing in one place a bad idea in general anyhow. Radar jammer doesn't last all that long, and isn't very useful. And three holo pilots is only slightly more useful that one holo pilot, but is ultimately far less useful due to the boosts you're giving up and how infrequently you can use the ability.

I think the solution to this situation would be to allow players to select more than one ability from the boosts, titan kits, and pilot kits. Even better would be to re-work them and place them in a tier listing. You can have one of the most effective boosts, and one of these far less effective boosts. That would take a lot of work, though, and some players would undoubtedly be unhappy with the changes.

Even if the boosts and kits are never balanced, Titanfall 2 is still the most fun I've had with a multiplayer shooter in years, though. Nothing really needs to change, but at the same time, I wish I could take more advantage of the the variety in the game without putting myself at a noticeable disadvantage. Anyone else feel the same way?

I'm with you on this. I've basically stuck with sub machine guns and assault rifles along with stim and grappling hook. Then I've basically stuck with the Ronin and Tone titans. I'm still playing TItanfall 2 for the long run though. The gameplay is so good.

I find the progression complaint that was often used to be weird because the gameplay was so good in the 1st game, I didn't give a shit about unlocking stuff. I just wanted to get to the next match. I'm basically on that same train with this game, which means I will play this game for the next 2 years.

For me, in the first game it was less about the progression in the way of gear and more about the lack of variety. Titanfall 2 really improves on this. Even cosmetic unlocks help provide a sense of progression. Unfortunately, you're still restricted to a particular look for your pilot depending on the ability you use. That's probably the only other issue I have with the game.

@spaceinsomniac: That's fair. I guess I don't really care about the cosmetic stuff because we're in 1st person anyways. Which is part of the reason why Overwatch doesn't do anything for me. Everyone talks about the characters, but since we're playing 1st person the skin doesn't matter to me.

Yah it's a fun game but I dunno what they were thinking with some of the loadouts. Plenty of guns that are either useless or ok to mess around with in lobbies where inexperienced players. The final boost you unlock that randomly picks a boost for you must be the most worthless thing ever. So on and so forth, you covered most of the bases. I don't think there is any remedy for this situation at this point either, unless they introduce a whole wealth of better skills and boosts in future updates or, which I think is a worse idea, do some major rebalancing and nerfing.

I actually like the random boosts thing at lvl 50. It's an okay way to force myself to use something other than map hack. I actually wish there was a random loadout option, because I find myself using the same gun and gear all the time.

I think you've described what made MW1 & 2 so fun (made by some of the same people no less). Imbalance is balance when it comes to this stuff. If you give people enough good options in all categories of weapons people end up at a point where some weapons are left unused and some weapons are used a ton (I'm looking at you, Cold War).

As for Titans, I can't agree more, it really reminds me of a fighting game with the amount of match ups, etc. The hard part is beating the crap out of Scorch when you're playing Ronin.

The problems with Titanfall 2 in the long term are the things that just don't work by design. Tone will never be balanced since that titan is just too alround where the others aren't. The only way to make it balanced is to replace or remove Tone. Same goes for A wall which makes the Titanfall 1 map design a lot harder to implement and the game more campy overal. And the maps themself are too restrictive for the movement (because of certain mechanics in the game I guess). Boosts are available to everyone all the time so an improvement over burn cards, but make the game more unpredictable and can make others things broken (amped Alternator pls).

The game is balanced okay I think, but some of their design choices prevent it from being a true improvement over Titanfall 1.

The one major problem is just how broken the movement sometimes feels. The animations that the game forces you to go through when climbing up a ledge takes way too long, and the only reason they exist in the first place is because this game has one of the most anemic double jumps I've ever seen. There are so many ledges that are just out of reach it's ridiculous. So many times I just want to go up a few more feet to get to another area, but I have to screw around trying to wall run, which doesn't work half the time, and then I end up getting stuck on something jutting out form the wall or getting to a wall you just can't run on. There are some maps (Crash Site iirc) that has little things all over the place, like rocks and bumps and pieces of broken titans, that hinder your movement. Sometimes I'll get stuck on something that looks like it is literally 5 inches off the ground. Other times, I don't get stuck but instead I go through the animation of climbing onto something. This doesn't take that long since it is like getting on a low ledge, but it screws up your aim terribly, sometimes causing your gun to jump around, and sometimes causing it to go off screen completely. I've lost so many one on one encounters because of this.

The worst part is that it seems to happen at random. Sometimes my character just won't stick to a wall and wall run. The next time, on the same wall, it's like there's no problem. Sometimes I'll just be running through an area with no issues, and sometimes I'll get stuck on something that seems meaningless that I never would have noticed it had I not gotten stuck on it.

This is where the game falters for me the most. When I reach that zen moment and I'm zipping around the map getting kills, it is wonderfully satisfying, but being hindered by random movement issues that crop up at the worst possible times has killed many a play session. The shooting is great, and while there are some weapons and kits and boosts that are definitely better than others, there's still enough of a variety where people can choose different loadouts and still have fun.

It is true that Crash Site has some movement issues with its geometry , but I believe that's by design. It's an outlier. If you have issues with the movement beyond that, I have to say that's on you. I can't remember playing shooter with more fluid movement. There is nothing even somewhat random or unreliable about the wall running or any other aspect of the movement in this game.

The hurdle animation is there to separate the experienced players from the inexperienced. When you play the game correctly, you should almost never see it. There's also different levels of animation for each step of your height, which is great, and I don't think I've ever seen it in a game before. If you jump to a ledge that is above your head, expect a long and helpless climbing animation. If you barely miss a jump and reach a point where the platform is just above your feet, expect a very quick hurdle animation.

A good example is Exoplanet. There are several ways of jumping from the orange building to the red building.

You can jump and then double jump. You'll barely make the jump, and be forced into the long climbing animation. If another player is on the roof, you'll probably die.

You can double jump to the side of the building and then double jump again onto the top. This takes longer, but it's safer. You still might die, because someone on the red building has more time to see you coming.

Best of all, you can slide off the orange building and double jump to reach the red building. This gets you the most distance with a jump. When you do this correctly, you'll either land feet first safely on red building, or you'll miss the jump by such a narrow margin that you'll have a very short "almost made it" hurdle animation. The timing of a flawless jump isn't easy, but that's what makes it rewarding. It also makes it my fault when I miss it.

Finally, Titanfall 2 was made for players to turn and jump at the same time. If you're on a console and not using the evolved control scheme, you'll never be as fluid with your movement as players who can jump, turn, and slide without ever moving their thumbs from the control sticks.

{edit] One other thing that might be tripping you up is that you can't run along a wall, jump off, and then jump back to the same wall without touching the ground first. The game won't let you, because it's been designed that way. If it wasn't, doing what can be seen in the video above would take far less skill. If the developers wanted that, they wouldn't limit wall running on each wall to a few seconds.

@spaceinsomniac: I could go on and on about why I disagree, so I'll just touch on a couple topics. The game needs a better double jump. As much emphasis as the game puts on movement, it's ridiculous just how much height it doesn't get you. The height should be nearly double what it is. This would make vertical movement far better, considering the wall run (supposedly) takes care of lateral movement. Sometimes I just want to go straight up a few extra feet, but it's just out of reach. It's stupid to be hamstrung like this.

Also, I've seen that video before, and Gamesager is good. However, he is also an outlier. The vast majority of people are never going to practice enough to be that good. Also, I shouldn't have to use stupid tricks that are clearly not by design in order to move faster or simply do things like jump off a wall and get back on it. Stuff like that shouldn't take hundreds or potentially even thousands of hours of practice. I don't have a problem with practicing to get better but that amount of time may as well be a career. Seriously how many people do you see doing this? (not specifically this, just wallrunning this much) Not many. In fact, I hardly ever see people wall running except for, you guessed it, to get to a higher location. On the other hand, I constantly see people getting stuck on shit, having to climb up on things they shouldn't have to, running on a wall and jumping to another just to bounce off and fall all the way to the ground, and the list goes on. Just because some people have found exploits doesn't mean that the movement doesn't have problems, SEVERE problems, that I see every time I play.

There is literally a tool-tip in the game which explains that jumping at start of your slide allows you to keep your momentum. It's fully intended game design.

Also, are you playing on either evolved or bumper jumper? Because if you are, it's very easy to move from a wall run to hopping onto a building. Here's what I was talking about with the Exoplanet example.

Then again, if you don't like the game, you don't like the game. Advanced Warfare sounds like it has the movement system you're looking for. If you haven't played it, maybe check it out. Personally, I can't stand that game, but to each their own.

@spaceinsomniac: First, it's not that I don't like the game. I've logged more time in multiplayer in this game than every other game than I've ever played in my entire life combined. Granted, I don't play MP that much at all, but I've played over 200 games of TF2 so I don't hate it and I'm not bad at it.

That having been said, I'm not talking about sliding and jumping like that. Either to get more distance when running and jumping or to gain momentum when wall running. I know that and do that, well, whenever it works properly. It still sometimes bounces me straight off a wall or sometimes cancels my momentum entirely even when on perfectly flat ground with no visible obstructions. I'm not talking about this though. I'm talking about primarily things like the bunny hop trick that gives you endless momentum throughout the map. It doesn't seem likely that they were expecting people to just try spamming jump and crouch to get endless momentum. And again, I may have seen it once in my entire time playing the game. It's not that stuff like that is used against me. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that the movement system doesn't work all the time, and when someone says I need to use tricks like that for it to be better, I just can't help but get aggravated when it's apparent that nobody does it aside from a small group.