Playing online games with friends is half the fun, but what do you do when a few of them are willing to buy the latest $15 DLC, and the others consider it a waste of money? Whatever you decide, someone is going to leave unhappy...
Thankfully, this is not going to happen with Titanfall 2 as the developers have recently gone on record by stating that they will not sell any maps, game modes, or other such "essential" content. There are numerous sources for these claims, but the short GamesRadar interview with co-founder Vince Zampella is the one that gives a somewhat clear picture of why exactly Respawn is doing this for, and what their future plans with Titanfall 2 are. Here's all of the relevant information, stitched together from a couple of quotes:
"We’re giving away all the maps and modes, we don’t want to split the community.
We still want to provide post launch content because people want it, but it’s not free to do. If we’re going to support the game that cost money we haven’t got everything solved yet so that’s why it’s really hard to talk about it.
We need to trust the player and they need to trust us .Trust that if we do the right thing - not sell maps and modes - we’ll get more people investing with us, investing in the game as a whole. They’re going to trust us not screw them over and they can be happy with their $60 versions"
As far as I'm concerned, this is by far the best way of handling things. Selling extra skins, experience boosts, or other such trivial nonsense is a great way to generate some extra profit without actually impacting a player's enjoyment. I would even go as far as to say that a large percentage of the playerbase would greatly enjoy these things being in the game, because nothing says "I am awesome" than having an exclusive (and no doubt expensive) cosmetic that completely destroys any camouflaging properties the original outfit may have held.
They've already done this with Titanfall 1 to some great success, so hopefully it ends up working out for them with Titanfall 2 as well, because this really is the "right thing to do". Whatever the case may be, we'll have to wait a couple of months to find out as Titanfall 2 is scheduled to arrive on October 28.
