14 DAY TRIAL // Respawn Entertainment wants to make sure that its recently launched Titanfall remains as fair as possible for gamers in the long term, but the company says that even if cheaters manage to remain undetected, their impact will be mostly psychological.
Jon Shiring, the leading network engineer at the company, and Abbie Heppe, a community manager, have talked to Gamasustra about the new FairFight anti-cheating system and about the way it will make the entire experience better for the fans.
They state that, “The effect is almost entirely psychological. It is, of course, really frustrating to lose to someone because they are cheating and you aren't, and everyone gets mad when it happens. In terms of actual lasting impact, it obviously can hurt your K/D ratio, but over many matches, a few games won't have any real effect.”
Respawn says that the skill system in Titanfall is adaptive and the team never plans to add a display showing each gamer’s level, which means that a loss to a cheater only temporarily affects a gamer and could end up never having an impact on the way he is matched for battle.
The two company representatives add, “For a full-priced game like Titanfall, if you have to keep starting new accounts and buying a new copy of the game to play with cheats because you've been removed from the regular player pool or banned altogether, it could get quite annoying and expensive to play.”
The studio is also willing to see how far cheaters can go on their own servers and how their methods develop in order to make the game even easier.
When the anti-cheat systems were introduced, Respawn Entertainment explained that it looked forward to see how the Wimbledon of aim-bots evolved.
Fairness is particularly important for a multiplayer-focused game like Titanfall because gamers could desert it fairly quickly if the development team is unable to deal with those who are willing to cheat to improve their performance.
The development team has already promised that it plans to deliver constant updates for the shooter, designed to improve the experience and add new features, like the already announced private matches.
At the same time, Respawn Entertainment and Electronic Arts are offering a Season Pass that will allow gamers to access three upcoming downloadable content packages that will include new maps.
Titanfall can be played on the Xbox One next-gen console and the PC and will soon also be offered on the Xbox 360.