I don’t game much but always did like Titanfall. You get in big robots and punch other robots. What could be more relaxing.
In the first edition of the game they introduced a Smart Pistol. The thing was pretty revolutionary, insofar as you had to have absolutely no skill to use it. Just choose it as your weapon and any target on the screen would “lock on”. You didn’t have to aim or point or click or tap any buttons just right. Just merely have an enemy player in your view and it’d lock right on. Pull the trigger and they’re gone.
The game devs went one step further and made the Smart Pistol lock on to an enemy’s head. Meaning it auto-aimed for a headshot. The thing carried 9 bullets or thereabouts, I think. The longer you focused the gun in the general direction of an enemy, the more it would lock on.
This went over with gamers about as well as you’d imagine. They hated it. “There’s no skill,” “You don’t have to do anything,” “It’s unethical.”
Sound familiar?
On the other hand, incoming players new to the game or people not obsessed with playing hours every day argued it was an equalizer. It helped level the field, gave people a chance, and helped them learn to move around and play the game.
Sound familiar?
Ultimately, Respawn’s developers rolled back the Smart Pistol for Titanfall 2. It makes no appearance in the competitive games and only makes a brief cameo in the single-player portion of the game, where you only play against the computer.
In the tick-tock of life, it was a mere blip. The Smart Pistol came, made a splash, people got upset, others thought it was super fun because they “don’t have to do anything,” and eventually cooler heads realized it wasn’t that great after all. That it was better to reward skill and, yeah, new players were likely going to get cooked for a while against better players. But that’s how you get better.
I wonder if that will sound familiar someday.
