Titanfall’s update today brings with it a slew of balance fixes and tweaks, but the main purpose of the update is to introduce private matches. It’s a beta feature, but available to all players.
The private match system allows players to pick who they play with instead of jumping into fights with the unwashed masses and random pilots. It’s a necessity for online tournament play, but also convenient if you just want to fight with some chums.
Here’s what the private match system brings to the game:
- Private Match supports 2 to 12 players, with 1 to 6 players on each team.
- You can start a new Private Match lobby by choosing it on the main selection screen (alongside Campaign, MP, and Training). Invite your friends in or have them join you at any time.
- Choose any of the game’s maps or modes (CTF, Pilot Hunter, etc.) to play in.
- Choose which team you’re on.
- There is no XP gain, challenge progress, or achievement unlocking while in a Private Match. For this beta, the Last Game Summary screen will display what you would have earned in normal play outside of Private Match, but be aware that this progress will not be recorded to your lifetime total.
- For this beta, there is no concept of a “lobby leader”; any player can change game options in the lobby or start/stop the match countdown.
- All Private Match games are still played on dedicated servers via Xbox Live Cloud Compute, just like normal matches.
- New options like round time, score limits, and much more will come in future updates.
On top of this, the update brings scoring changes to the Hardpoint Domination and Capture the Flag modes. In Hardpoint, the focus is now more clearly on playing aggressively, capturing points instead of defending them. In CTF, flap-cappers now get greater rewards than the players who successfully hunt them.
The Gooser Challenge has also been tweaked. Until now, it tasked players with killing 50 ejecting pilots. Respawn thinks that it went too far with the challenge, and has now knocked the requirement down to five ejecting pilots.
You can take a gander at the full patch notes over here.