I want to mention that I mostly played TF2 right when it came out for about 2 weeks, and I played on the PC. I also played it a bit after they added one of the old maps back in. That means I don't know many of the tricks that might come up after a month of MP.
But here is what I liked about the first Titanfall:
- It's those moments when a person drops behind you, and in reaction you jump from the door to a wall, wallrun and wall jump into a balcony and shoot from the third floor as they fly past the door. A completely normal restaurant that turned into an aerial battleground (probably not correct to use "ground" in this case, heh).
- It's in that moment when you need to cross a huge wall and you hop from wall to wall building up speed and height and clear a 40 foot wall like a superman.
- Someone's chasing you as you are wallrunning on the side of a building and you quickly jump into the alley and get the drop on the person as they turn around the corner. All happening 5 stories in the air.
- The opposing person is trying to control the room that people are hacking, where they feel that they found a safespot and camp the room, but you fly down from the roof and assault from above. The vertical threat was sorely missing from the new maps.
- It's those moments where you find cool routes, sneaky ones, outrageous ones, short ones that get you across a wall, or long ones that let you cross the entire map.
This is mostly missing from the new MP maps. They are smaller, and there are less routes to take. What routes there are seem obvious and easily seen, not quite as interesting in the first one. I don't feel the joy of parkouring, discovering the routes, connecting routes like I felt with the first game. I am not aware of the gravistar+statchel trick, but the only thing that the developers of the game intended to add was the slide to "boost" on the ground (taken from Vanquish), but it barely added anything in terms of how the game played. They actually originally
slowed the player down to make the slide useful (it was a significant change in speed)... but now that they sped the player up to their TF1 speed after EVERYONE complained, all the slide does is help you maintain momentum between wallruns with less skill. On PC at least.
Also, ziplines were completely removed in favor of the new grapple mechanic when I was playing. Could be better, but it was
not the same because it was significantly slower. It also felt mostly useless in the PC.
To summarize, I felt the original design for the TF2 MP was a more grounded game where you had to use more grounded infantry tactics than the first one. But there isn't enough tactical elements (IE the respawns, complexity of the environment, not enough players, not enough units) to make this satisfying. And the parkouring was severely hampered because the maps simply weren't big enough to let you get up to speed nor interesting enough for you to make cool routes. It was a weird middle ground that I definitely was not a fan of.
The smallness of the map also hurt how "swingy" the titans were. In the original, you had a regenerating shield and your actual core damage. If you were behind, you could still drop your titan and play cautiously to turn the tide. If the opponent has a ton of titans out, the "behind team" also had a lot of hiding spots to blindside the titans. Again, due to the large map. But in the new one, if the opposing team have enough titans, you feel like there is nothing you can do. And at the same time, if you drop your titan too early, because you don't have a regenerating shield, your titan can get dropped hilariously fast just by people kamekazeing against you.
I also think the new concept half baked overall. Think about the "doomed" mechanic. In the original, it meant a nuclear explosion within 10 seconds. In the new one, you can basically live forever so long as you don't take any new damage. And you heal by putting a new battery. It's weird, and doesn't really fit imo. It also doesn't keep track of which titan you pull the battery out of, if you are carrying a battery, whatever titan you rodeo will not have one. If you don't, you will always remove a battery. Even if the guy in front of you pulled out the battery 1 second before from the same location. Just wonky.
Overall, I didn't enjoy the MP much. I played a bit more when they put Angel City back, but it was a short visit. The new Titan health mechanic hurt it and the player count was just abysmal. Even when compared to the first game.
To be fair, I never played either game with a full clan/teammates. Usually 1/2 other people.