Titanfall PC removes CTF and Pilot Hunter from public playlists
Now accessible only in Private Matches or Variety mode.
Titanfall developer Respawn Entertainment has removed Capture the Flag and Pilot Hunter modes from its general search parameters. Now, the only way to access these game modes is through Variety - which picks a mode at random - or setting up a Private Match, which requires 12 friends to organise a session. (Thanks, RockPaperShotgun).
Respawn has addressed this removal by stating that these modes simply weren't popular enough, so people were having to wait too long to get a game going. "We have an amazing and large PC audience with the vast majority of users predominantly playing Attrition and Hardpoints game modes. CTF and Pilot Hunter have not been widely used modes on the PC version. Players trying to access these modes had overlong wait times to find other users and it was making for a poor experience," the developer stated.
"We want to make sure that not only is there compelling content in the playlists we offer, but that the experience of joining a match works well. We're tracking what playlists players are choosing, and we're going to continue to look at unpopular playlists and add new ones on both platforms."
The developer noted that it will rotate available game modes into the playlist, add new game types, and all modes will be available as Private Matches. "We will still rotate Pilot Hunter and CTF in for future playlists as well as adding new riffs on game types that Respawn is currently working on," the developer explained. "Our goal is to have a wide variety of playlists that are popular and changing. That said, we will not remove modes from Private Matches, so there will always be the option to select them for competitive and personal play."
Currently CTF and Pilot Hunter have been replaced with Expedition Variety and Expedition Attrition, which are simply already existing game modes set in the new Expedition DLC maps. At least these maps are pretty good, according to Eurogamer contributor Joe Denton.
Of course, it seems like it would make more sense to give people the option to wait several minutes for a match than not play it at all, but what do you think?