Report: EA secures rights to Titanfall 2

[McKay]

From your wall of text of nothing that backs up your argument, it seems like you haven't actually played the game.

 

I give up, I've used specific examples with you but all you do is dismiss it with nothing, strawman and cherry pick to suit your argument. After seeing how you "argue" in other threads in the forums I can see Im against a brick wall. I even said there are a few exceptions to the rule, but on the whole the weapons unlocked later are better than the starter, it isn't battlefield 4. I own Battlefield 4 on PC, Xbox One and PS4. There isn't a god-like starter weapon like there was in BF3. That single comparison with a single mid-tier rifle doesn't dispute that. 

[HawkMan]

I didn't cherry pick, I picked the base rifle and the first random rifle that I knew was a common use rifle I could find. 

 

Fact is guns in BF4 don't equal better guns as you level up. Just different. heck your own magnum example. yeah it's a powerful gun, but extremely limited ammo and extreme kick on firing. your own examples of "superior" weapons aren't even correct. 

 

In fact people pick weapons in BF4 not because of stats but because of personal favorites. the ones who do try to pick the "best" weapon according to the stats comparer usually find that the gun doesn't fit their play style and it doesn't magically make them better but in fact gives them lesser K/D score. never mind the fact that K/D score is meaningless in BF4 anyway.

 

either way, Pay to win doesn't refer to buying guns you can unlock in the game anyway. it refers to stuff like in World of Tanks and warplanes where you can buy special ammo that does significantly more damage. Even the horribly overpriced economy in Mechwarrior online where there are mechs you canonly buy with money isn't considered pay to win. well not after the new money only mechs are properly balanced anyway. 

btw try to compare the AK12 to every weapon in that list from low to high tier and you'll find that they all have either a balanced list of -/+ or the AK12 have more +'s

[McKay]

I didn't cherry pick, I picked the base rifle and the first random rifle that I knew was a common use rifle I could find. 

 

Fact is guns in BF4 don't equal better guns as you level up. Just different. heck your own magnum example. yeah it's a powerful gun, but extremely limited ammo and extreme kick on firing. your own examples of "superior" weapons aren't even correct. 

 

In fact people pick weapons in BF4 not because of stats but because of personal favorites. the ones who do try to pick the "best" weapon according to the stats comparer usually find that the gun doesn't fit their play style and it doesn't magically make them better but in fact gives them lesser K/D score. never mind the fact that K/D score is meaningless in BF4 anyway.

 

either way, Pay to win doesn't refer to buying guns you can unlock in the game anyway. it refers to stuff like in World of Tanks and warplanes where you can buy special ammo that does significantly more damage. Even the horribly overpriced economy in Mechwarrior online where there are mechs you canonly buy with money isn't considered pay to win. well not after the new money only mechs are properly balanced anyway. 

btw try to compare the AK12 to every weapon in that list from low to high tier and you'll find that they all have either a balanced list of -/+ or the AK12 have more +'s

 

The starting shotgun, PDW, LMG are atrocious. Even if you disagree with Battlefield being pay to win, so many other EA games suffer from it, Dead Space, Mass Effect being AAA titles. Plenty of other EA titles do it. Mass Effect 3 Multiplayer lets you buy your way to awesome weapons and armour and powerups. So does Dead Space 3. Other EA titles suffer from "pay to unlock the other half of the disc" like Dragonage, where you get told about epic quests, you seek out the npc who starts it, only to be told you have to pay $7 for that quest. Mass Effect 3 storymode came with a main character locked from the start that you had to pay for. And then for shortcuts both ME2 and 3 got hit by the "here are god-like weapons that will slice through enemies like butter". I can picture Titanfall 2 implementing the battlepack system from Mass Effect 3, where you can throw money at battlepacks for awesome new gear. 

 

So even if you disagree with BF4, if you remove it from the examples, EA still have a terrible track record of offering pay to win dlc for multiplayer games. 

[DrunknMunky Veteran]

Except the stats balances out.

A gun with a high rate of fire will have lower damage per bullet or be less accurate.

The guns aren't realistic. They are created and artificially balanced so that all in all, they're all equal.

That is in the hands of someone good with them all. But some people do better with rapid fire low damage guns, while some people prefer G3 like slow semi auto guns with high damage per hit.

But all in all the attachments will give a higher bonus to your stats than any gun change. A good scope a good forward handle or something spending on your style. These are what actually makes the weapons better. Not the balanced base stats.

Hence why a lot of people play with epithet the base weapon or one of the first weapons they unlock, they do just as well with them and it's the weapon they prefer and they kill as many if not more people with them as the people with the top level unlock gun.

Heck look at the LMGs the base LMG is actually one of the best in the game and one most people prefer to use.

 

 

Except many guns are noticeably better than the starter in every regard. The point remains, EA still let you BUY the higher ranked weapons and gadgets instead of earning them.EA has a terrible history of releasing half a game, and then charging for you the rest that's still on the Disc. And then offering players shortcuts to the high ranked weapons and equipment in multiplayer games. That's why I said Titanfall 2 will probably suffer the same fate, if it doesn't then Titanfall 3 most likely will if they make a new one (which they will if Titanfall 2 sells well). You can't seriously try and pretend that EA does none of this. You can't try and justify that other people grinding to unlock a few attachments means the people who bought all the equipment and high ranking weapons aren't at a disadvantage? Think about it, when the game is new, you're running around on Battlefield with no equipment, no C4, no medkits, no ammo packs, no defib. No mines. You're unlocking attachments for your base gun. Meanwhile someone spends an extra $10 and is running around with you, with all that equipment just handed to him, and he's now unlocking attachments for a gun he shouldn't have access to until he reaches a much higher rank, often something he wouldn't touch until hours and hours and hours of effort. He has that advantage over players who didn't pay to have them unlocked prematurely.

 

They did something similar in BF4 except they gave it away to Premium members as part of "player appreciation month". They let you unlock ALL the grenades, handguns, shotguns, DMR's, I've seen people who grinded for hours a day for weeks trying to unlock the .44 Magnum, and suddenly players got handed it. My friend raged after grinding for days and days trying to unlock the more powerful shotguns, Shotguns that can erase people from time and space from 100M away, compared with the starter shotguns that have the range of a handshake and take 3 days to fire a second shot. Compare the later PDW's in Battlefield to the starter, it's a whole other plane of existence. They can clear rooms of entire squads with a single clip while the starter PDW struggled to drop 2 people at point blank on a single clip. All the addons in the game won't close the gap between the vast gulfs between those weapons. Pretty much the only starter weapon in the whole of BF4 that is favoured is starter carbine rifle, even then there is one near the bottom of the list that edges out the stats slightly in every field. The other weapon categories the difference is night and day. Nobody uses the starter LMG in BF4, the 2nd/3rd unlocked LMG are favourites generally. With the story-unlocked one also being a favourite. 

 

The problem with using BF in a Pay to Win discussion is that while it's loosely related, it's not the worst culprit. It's certainly falls under the "pay to wait" category for letting you unlock everything at once, but stats are more messy to discuss. Either way, some guns in the games are clearly more powerful than the rest. Attachments certainly negate some of those stats, but it doesn't detract from the point they can be powerful without them and be unlocked with spending money. There are also far too many variables to say why those with lower tier weapons can play better than those with higher tier. I'm one of them, I think I'm still using the starter weapons and I'm usually near the top of the scoreboard than those who play the game daily/have all the unlocks. Is that cause my gun is level with theirs or because I'm a better player? Are they having an off night? Who knows, too much trouble to bother worrying about :p

 

Btw, player appreciate month was to make it up to all players for the terrible launch. You got more as a premium member, but those without premium still got extra XP/unlocks.

[McKay]

The problem with using BF in a Pay to Win discussion is that while it's loosely related, it's not the worst culprit. It's certainly falls under the "pay to wait" category for letting you unlock everything at once, but stats are more messy to discuss. Either way, some guns in the games are clearly more powerful than the rest. Attachments certainly negate some of those stats, but it doesn't detract from the point they can be powerful without them and be unlocked with spending money. There are also far too many variables to say why those with lower tier weapons can play better than those with higher tier. I'm one of them, I think I'm still using the starter weapons and I'm usually near the top of the scoreboard than those who play the game daily/have all the unlocks. Is that cause my gun is level with theirs or because I'm a better player? Are they having an off night? Who knows, too much trouble to bother worrying about :p

 

Btw, player appreciate month was to make it up to all players for the terrible launch. You got more as a premium member, but those without premium still got extra XP/unlocks.

 

I know there are worse EA culprits, the discussion just sort of drifted in that direction. Im too in love with my P90 in Bf4 to use anything else, in built up maps Im usually top. No aiming required. Only when bumping into people with the SPAS-12 am I usually bested, but that thing erases people from time and space instead of just killing them. I just don't have high hopes for the state of Titanfall 2 given EA's less than impressive track record.

 

Need to clear a room and wipe an enemy squad? P90

Need a rodent problem taking care of? P90

Need a jar lid removed? P90

[GotBored]

Just to clarify for people who think that if Titanfall 2 uses Azure when it comes to the PS4 or Nintendo they will be paying a premium.

Firstly it's against consumer/competitive pricing laws to target and overcharge a specific company. Secondly Sony/Nintendo have nothing to do with the game development and publishing all they do is license it so it's able to be sold for their platform (PS4, Wii U). So it's Respawn/EA who will be paying for the servers. MS says no then they risk losing very large profits to a direct competitor like RackSpace, Google (Compute Engine) Cloud, AWS Amazon, etc.

Azure is neither unique nor the biggest, it's a public scalable system of servers which has been nicknamed a 'Stack'. Anyone can use it and lots already do. Hosting a game on Azure server is no different to hosting on a Rackspace, AWS Amazon or Google Cloud server. Its not even very different to hosting on a standard server, all these servers do is open up more server space when there is a requirement so if a game gets very busy they start up more servers to host more games and when the game gets less busy they scale back and host the game on less. It's a benefit for its corporate customers because they only pay for hosting space they use while the old way they had to pay for the peak usage at all times and it wasn't scalable so if they were successful beyond expectations and servers were overloaded it would take hours to setup more so everyone could play without issues.

[neoadorable]

There are no microtransactions in Titanfall, what are we talking about? It's one of the most balanced MP experiences ever. Except for the odd graphics that sometimes look great and sometimes look like screen-torn vomit, it's 100% a multiplayer feast. Love it, though have no intention of becoming a G10...can't believe the product's been out for just over a week and there's already people that prestiged 7 times :wacko:

 

As Andrew said, history has shown us MS do not care about exclusives as much as Sony or Nintendo. Gaming/Xbox is just part of the whole Windows system to them, exclusives may actually get in the way of that. They will gladly license Azure to anyone who has the money, no problem. Keep in mind the competition between Sony and MS is in name only...they cooperate much more than they compete. Probably Sony got fed up with having to say "Sony recommends Windows 8" though, so they got rid of VAIO :D

 

Kvally, not sure what "life of the product" means here...you'd need a lawyer for that. Pretty sure Mass Effect and Bioshock had the same clauses, then turned up on PS anyway. I think Titanfall will do the same, but i don't see it as a loss - what loss? We're not talking life and death here. As i said, MS could have 20 exclusive IPs if they really wanted to. They could launch a mission to Mars if they wanted to, but that would be a bit...nuts.

[Showan]

Just to clarify for people who think that if Titanfall 2 uses Azure when it comes to the PS4 or Nintendo they will be paying a premium.

Firstly it's against consumer/competitive pricing laws to target and overcharge a specific company. Secondly Sony/Nintendo have nothing to do with the game development and publishing all they do is license it so it's able to be sold for their platform (PS4, Wii U). So it's Respawn/EA who will be paying for the servers. MS says no then they risk losing very large profits to a direct competitor like RackSpace, Google (Compute Engine) Cloud, AWS Amazon, etc.

Azure is neither unique nor the biggest, it's a public scalable system of servers which has been nicknamed a 'Stack'. Anyone can use it and lots already do. Hosting a game on Azure server is no different to hosting on a Rackspace, AWS Amazon or Google Cloud server. Its not even very different to hosting on a standard server, all these servers do is open up more server space when there is a requirement so if a game gets very busy they start up more servers to host more games and when the game gets less busy they scale back and host the game on less. It's a benefit for its corporate customers because they only pay for hosting space they use while the old way they had to pay for the peak usage at all times and it wasn't scalable so if they were successful beyond expectations and servers were overloaded it would take hours to setup more so everyone could play without issues.

Microsoft gave Respawn servers almost for free. Sure TitanFall 2 will end up on competing platforms, but Microsoft can still say, TF2 on the One can run on Azure for free (but not the PS4 or Wii-U version.) EA has a history of horrid servers, and Rack Space, Google, Amazon, etc prices gonna look very steep compared to borderline free. Azure isn't the biggest but it's darn close (only Amazon having more). You should read TF developer Shirings article on the matter. He's praising Azure, and according to him a lot of other developers seem to be wanting in on Azure as well. And there will always be a difference, and that difference can be thousands of dollars or borderline free.

No matter how much people try and downplay Azure, Respwan is more than in love with the service and the results produced.

Edit: http://www.engadget.com/2014/03/10/titanfall-cloud-explained/

[HawkMan]

Just to clarify for people who think that if Titanfall 2 uses Azure when it comes to the PS4 or Nintendo they will be paying a premium.

Firstly it's against consumer/competitive pricing laws to target and overcharge a specific company. Secondly Sony/Nintendo have nothing to do with the game development and publishing all they do is license it so it's able to be sold for their platform (PS4, Wii U). So it's Respawn/EA who will be paying for the servers. MS says no then they risk losing very large profits to a direct competitor like RackSpace, Google (Compute Engine) Cloud, AWS Amazon, etc.

Azure is neither unique nor the biggest, it's a public scalable system of servers which has been nicknamed a 'Stack'. Anyone can use it and lots already do. Hosting a game on Azure server is no different to hosting on a Rackspace, AWS Amazon or Google Cloud server. Its not even very different to hosting on a standard server, all these servers do is open up more server space when there is a requirement so if a game gets very busy they start up more servers to host more games and when the game gets less busy they scale back and host the game on less. It's a benefit for its corporate customers because they only pay for hosting space they use while the old way they had to pay for the peak usage at all times and it wasn't scalable so if they were successful beyond expectations and servers were overloaded it would take hours to setup more so everyone could play without issues.

Sony may not have anything to do with it. BUT here's the kicker, in order to use a cloud platform like azure for games, you need a server back end system for it, with APIs and all that. A game developer isn't going to spend two years and a large dev team to make a cloud game platform, heck they don't even have the programmers for that sort of work. So if any playstation games are going to use azure. Then Sony first needs to make the platform to run on azure and make it free to use for it's games/developers while they rent the servers.

As for azure not being unique... No, not entirely, but it kind of is. It's not the only cloud computing platform, no, but it's still somewhat unique among them. As for size, at the moment all indications are that they are the biggest.

[vcfan]

Just to clarify for people who think that if Titanfall 2 uses Azure when it comes to the PS4 or Nintendo they will be paying a premium.

Firstly it's against consumer/competitive pricing laws to target and overcharge a specific company. Secondly Sony/Nintendo have nothing to do with the game development and publishing all they do is license it so it's able to be sold for their platform (PS4, Wii U). So it's Respawn/EA who will be paying for the servers. MS says no then they risk losing very large profits to a direct competitor like RackSpace, Google (Compute Engine) Cloud, AWS Amazon, etc.

think about it. azure supports Linux, which steve ballmer publicly called a cancer. im pretty sure Microsoft would even be delighted if sony hosted PSN on azure.

Azure is neither unique nor the biggest, it's a public scalable system of servers which has been nicknamed a 'Stack'. Anyone can use it and lots already do. Hosting a game on Azure server is no different to hosting on a Rackspace, AWS Amazon or Google Cloud server. Its not even very different to hosting on a standard server,

what good is hardware if you don't have the software? its the same thing. what good are servers, if you don't have the software? Microsoft has the tools and API for game developers to easily plug into their games. that's what makes it unique. for smaller developers, like respawn for example, this is a pretty big deal. they don't have the time, nor the resources to do this from scratch. what good is Rackspace in this case?

[GotBored]

Developers don't need to spend any time or resources creating a cloud platform they just rent the ones that are already around like Google Cloud, Rackspace Cloud, Amazon AWS or Azure. If they really wanted to RackSpace also sells software so customers can host their own cloud servers rather than use one of the previously mentioned services.

 

Developers just create a server client like normal servers and it runs on the stack, when it gets busy more servers open up with a server client running.

 

Also all of the cloud services I mentioned have tools and API's for developers, I also believe all of them still have a free trial run offer so you can test them yourself.

[trooper11]

Developers don't need to spend any time or resources creating a cloud platform they just rent the ones that are already around like Google Cloud, Rackspace Cloud, Amazon AWS or Azure. If they really wanted to RackSpace also sells software so customers can host their own cloud servers rather than use one of the previously mentioned services.

 

Developers just create a server client like normal servers and it runs on the stack, when it gets busy more servers open up with a server client running.

 

Also all of the cloud services I mentioned have tools and API's for developers, I also believe all of them still have a free trial run offer so you can test them yourself.

 

 

 

But all of that costs money.

 

If MS is really offering this stuff for free or close to it, then that means that outside of the X1/PC, developers will need to pay like they would pay for any other service.

[HawkMan]

Developers don't need to spend any time or resources creating a cloud platform they just rent the ones that are already around like Google Cloud, Rackspace Cloud, Amazon AWS or Azure. If they really wanted to RackSpace also sells software so customers can host their own cloud servers rather than use one of the previously mentioned services.

 

Developers just create a server client like normal servers and it runs on the stack, when it gets busy more servers open up with a server client running.

 

Also all of the cloud services I mentioned have tools and API's for developers, I also believe all of them still have a free trial run offer so you can test them yourself.

I don't think you understand how it works.

Yes they can rent azure or whatever, but they still need to write the server back end for the game and management for the cloud system.

If they're doing it for just one game, it's relatively simple, ish. But no game developer can afford to rent a cloud for its game alone. That's why MS is providing all the power and sharing it between all the devs while MS bank rolls most of the server costs.

A regular dev have to pay full market price for all the resources the rent. It's not marketable. So the only way it's feasible for the PS version to have cloud support, is for Sony to rent a whole lot of cloud server capacity like MS, and then write a back end for it allowing all devs to access the PS computing cloud through their API. Writing this back end and API takes a lot of time. At least 2 years and then you don't even have a fully tested guaranteed stable solution.

[Jarrichvdv]

Yeah, Sony wins again.

 

What is that supposed to mean?