Respawn Entertainment’s upcoming shooter Titanfall will only have 12 gamers at most in its multiplayer matches. Computer-controlled bots will fill out the rest of the world.
Titanfall will feature 6-on-6 team-based matches, according to Respawn boss Vince Zampella. The developer noted that 12 humans battling it out provides the right balance for competitive play. In addition to player characters, Respawn will fill out matches with bots controlled by artificial intelligence.
@MrClutch514 @Respawn 6v6 is max player count. Turned out to be the best balance with ai for us.
— Vince Zampella (@VinceZampella) January 8, 2014
Titanfall is the first game from Respawn Entertainment. It has Xbox One, Xbox 360, and PC gamers controlling a foot solider in the future that can also call in and pilot a giant robot suit. It’s due out March 11 in North America.
While 12 players is tiny compared to the 64-player count that Electronic Art’s Battlefield 4 supports, it is not automatically a negative strike against the shooter. The Call of Duty franchise supports up to 18 players in one of its modes, but most Call of Duty game types focus on the six-person teams. That’s not hurting the Activision franchise.
“We had [the player count] higher at points in testing, but this felt best,” Zampella wrote on Twitter. “A 6-on-6 game can be a crazy experience — very fun. It is what we find most fun. There are other games with higher player counts if that’s your metric.”