Here's some sad news for people anticipating Respawn Entertainment's giant mech shooter Titanfall- the game will only support 12 player multiplayer matches.
The news was revealed on Twitter, of all places. Vince Zampella of Respawn Entertainment responded to a responded to a question about the player count with a simple "6v6 is max player count. Turned out to be the best balance with ai for us."
This of course instantly set off an avalanche of boos from irritated gamers. Six on six matches are small for online multiplayer, after all, at least for gamers weaned on 64-player extravaganzas in titles like Battlefield 4. Considering that Titanfall is an online-only game with a multiplayer campaign (rather than a single-player one) you would hope to at least see big battles taking place.
But there's a fix for that- the world will still be populated with lots of AI soldiers to beef up your team or populate your enemy's, and you can even have an AI Titan in follow or guard mode. Zampella started trying to respond to some of the complainers on Twitter and convince people that the game works better with this seemingly low number of players. He's been very diplomatic considering the amount of bile people are throwing around, telling them that it's fine that they don't like what they're hearing and that he only wants them to try it and see if they like it. "it is what we find most fun. There are other games with higher player player counts if that's your metric," he told one irriated gamer. Have to love that honesty.
Zampella also promises that there will be unlocks for the players and the Titans to encourage replayability. Those Titans sure look fantastic- don't forget about the recent trailers that showcase those bad boys and imagine rampaging around in those things.
While the player count is undeniably smaller than most figured, don't forget that Zampella and co-founder Jason West were responsible for Infinity Ward's Call of Duty titles, so they should know online multiplayer better than most. More as we hear it- Titanfall hits Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC on March 11th.