Frontier Defense Mode
At the highest difficulties, it is absolutely impossible to stomp the enemies. Earlier difficulties, including Hard Mode, can give a false sense of security. Furthermore, it can even convince experienced players that they have nothing to gain from this mode. But that is not the case.
Once you reach Master, you must begin to play as though you’re in a serious PVP match. Else you’re going to get utterly decimated.
More than Meets the Eye
For the Beginners
Are you new to Titanfall 2? Feel like players are wedging a huge stick up your butt and wiping the floor with you? Then you most definitely want to be focusing on this mode. Here is a short list as to why:
- Tons of Experience Points. Each difficulty mode you progress into, you begin to earn more and more experience points. Experience points allow you to level up, leveling up means more credits, credits means more permanent unlocks. Overall, it’s very good for progression and profile development.
- Learn the game’s mechanics. Not sure how to rodeo a Titan? How much health does it take out, how many batteries can you steal, what does this button do? This mode will allow you to experience everything the game offers, and push you harder and harder to improve yourself each time you play.
- Master the Titans. As the name of the game is Titanfall 2, the Titans themselves play a huge role in the game. While everyone may not enjoy them, they are a key part in the franchise. They are perfectly balanced and counter each other, this mode will help you to better understand those counters.
- Learn to cooperate to succeed. Once you reach a certain difficulty, playing lone wolf and jumping in solo-queue is no longer a viable option. You will eventually be forced to find people to play with, learn to cooperate with them, and learn how to progress as a group rather than individually.
For the Unimpressed
Tried the mode and found it way too easy? Feel like it’s not worth your time? Well, I recommend sticking with it for a few reasons.
- Master Mode and Beyond. While it is a little bit of a grind to even unlock Master Mode in the first place, once you reach it you will be given a unique challenge. Imagine fighting off an army of players, all trying to defeat you and your three team mates. Because that is exactly how it feels, and it really gets extremely intense. Hard Mode is a cake walk in comparison to what Master can do to you.
- A good way to level up Titans. You may have a few Titans not yet at Gen10 or above, this is a good mode to quickly get them up. They’ll level insanely fast here. It only took me two days to get a Northstar from Gen4 to Gen12.
- Lots of Advocate Gifts! Each time you gain an Aegis Rank, also triggers gifts from your faction. It’s a good way to unlock a whole bunch of cosmetics without even trying.
Easy to Hard (Basic Training)
Easy
Get your feet wet. Try out the game for the very first time. You’ll have plenty of time to get a handle for the controls. Once you’re comfortable, advance to Regular Mode.
Regular
The stock standard difficulty. You are required to play at this difficulty until you reach Aegis Rank 5 in a Titan. However, you will only be able to use Titans above Aegis Rank 5 in Hard Mode. So you will spend a while in this mode getting all of your Titans to Aegis Rank 5 or Higher. This will give you time to familiarize yourself with the game’s basic mechanics, which include:
- 0Mortar Titans.
- Tick Spawning Reapers.
- Why Pilot Sentry Turrets Suck.
- Where and How to place Arc Mines.
- Why you shouldn’t buy Amped Batteries.
- And much much more…
Once you feel you’ve mastered this mode, and have your favorite Titans above Aegis Rank 5, advance to Hard Mode.
Hard Mode
This is basically Regular Mode, but on steroids. The bog-standard basic AI will not respond overly aggressively to your actions, they’ll still stand still like sitting ducks for your Nuke Ejects — and they’ll do very little to avoid your attacks overall. Things just have more Shields, More HP, and come in greater numbers than previous Modes.
You will not be able to advance Master Mode until you have Titans at or above Aegis Rank 11. From my experience, you’ll want them much, much higher than even 11 to perform well.
- Note: You will start to notice that enemy Titans have a higher tendency to kill you as a pilot on sight if you expose yourself without protection or cloak. This is only a mere taste of what is to come.
Bonus EXP Points
You will gain Bonus Experience for the following conditions:
- Harvester never takes damage throughout the entire game.
- Succeed without using a Single Retry.
- Succeed in a Difficulty other than Easy or Regular.
- Each player chooses a unique Titan.
Master+ (The Real Deal)
Unlocking Master Mode
Once you’ve reached Aegis Rank 11 in one or more Titans (strongly recommend more than one), you will now be able to queue for Master Mode.You may find queue for this mode long, so here are some pointers on how to curve that:
- Seek people to play with.
- Use the Titanfall 2 official Discord (just type Titanfall when added a new Discord server).
- Create or Join Frontier Defense related Networks.
Why Master Mode?
There is a dramatic difference between Hard Mode and Master Mode AI. They are two entirely different beasts. Here are just a few reasons why:
- Titans actively avoid Nuclear Ejections, which forces the player to become more clever with their timing and positioning.
- Titans instantly snipe and kill you the moment you expose yourself as a pilot. Ions, Northstars, and Tones are especially good at this.
- Scorches actively avoid Warpfalling Titans, sidestepping them and them melting them with Flameshield before you can even get into it.
- Ronins play like real players who play highly defensively, enough said.
- If your Titan is Doomed, they will try to kill you as quickly as possible.
- Stalkers one shot kill you on sight.
- Most infantry now have Shields like A-Walls.
Unlocking Insane Mode
Had enough of Master? Well advance to Insane Mode then. You’ll need Aegis Rank 14 to do this, but note that Insane Maps rotate very differently. They will rotate once a month, identified in the bottom right of the Find a Game Menu.
How to Queue
The Data Center Dance
Joining a Queue in Titanfall 2 is not quite as straightforward as it seems. The game has been out for years, and over that time the Player Base has developed some interesting habits to ensure they can play with people. To understand what this means, it is important to know a few facts:
- Players Online is an aggregate total of All Data Centers.
- Data Centers have Different Prime Time Hours.
- Players switch Data Centers frequently and often to find better Queue Times.
Why Should I Switch Data Centers?
- While you may be willing to play, it may be that people in your Data Center may not be very interested in the Mode you wish to play. Often you’ll find that certain players will be drawn to certain Data Centers at Certain Times of the day for their Favorite Modes. This combats spreading the numbers too thinly across several Data Centers, which keeps the queue times more reasonable.
How does it work?
- Each Country has their own of Data Centers. All Data Centers in that Country are tied together. When you join a new Data Center in a different country, you are now in an entirely different queue.
How do I switch Data Centers?
- On the Main Menu, select Data Center at the bottom left. Choose a country different than your own that has reasonable ping. Anything below 150 is reasonable.
When do I do it?
- Whenever the queue time for your favorite mode exceeds 3 minutes of wait time. What you want is 1 minute or less. If queues are slow in your country, jump to a new Data Center and try there instead. You may find games much faster in modes you THOUGHT no one played.
But meh PING!
- Especially things Titan related, 150 ping or less doesn’t have a huge impact on performance. Anything which exceeds that may get a little odd.
