I've been playing BF2142 for about a month now, and here's what needs to be said:
Titan mode blows. This is what happens when you try to improve on perfection. The Conquest mode is simple in concept, yet complicated in game. It's a perfect framework around which to base the mayhem of an FPS. Titan mode is complicated in concept, and then even more complicated in game, plus laggy.
Take a moment to think about how stupid Titan mode is from a game design perspective.
In Conquest mode there are a number of control points on a map which you can capture. You do this by standing near them. Holding more is better. That's it. And that's the game mode which propelled the Battlefield games to success.
So what do we do?
We introduce Titan mode, in which there are missile silos, which are like control points, but even the “standing near them to capture them” part is more complicated, in that you first take a second to “uplink” then you start capturing it. And they're not just control points, they also launch missiles at the Titans which float in the sky. And the missiles knock down the Titan's shields. And then when the shields are down, you can get an APC, and launch a rocket pod up to the Titan. And then you go inside and you have to destroy terminals. And there are four terminals. And the whole time, the Titan is lagging around in a jerky fashion. And it's all indoor close range fighting, which is where the Battlefield games are at their worst. And then when those are destroyed, you can destroy the core of the Titan. And if you do that, the Titan explodes and you win.
That's about two steps in Conquest, vs. two dozen in Titan mode. It's just ridiculous.
A few other points...
APM mines are ridiculous. Nay, fucking ridiculous.
They need a serious, serious nerf. They're basically like claymores that you just drop and forget. They sense enemy soldiers and paste them in one blast. The one shot kill doesn't bug me too much, the problem is that they're very hard to see, and have an effective radius of about 20 yards. I don't know how many times I've spotted one, and thought “surely I can get by safely if I just walk way far around it on the*BANG*” It's way, way, WAY too much. They could cut the effective radius by a quarter, and the things would still be deadly. As it stands, you can just huck them around the battlefield and be sure they'll get somebody. To make matters worse, they're indestructible, so even if you're savvy enough to spot one blocking a doorway, you can't do anything to it. Grenades don't hurt it, rockets, bullets, nothing. Only the unlockable Zeller sniper rifle can take them out, and that has the charming side effect of periodically killing you anyway, because, while the sensor works to about 20 yards, the lethal range is about 25 yards.
Better still is the fact that mines remain for a time after the guy that planted them dies, so you'll frequently get kills while dead. Also, the mine model tends to remain in game, even if the mine itself isn't there, sorta like a ghost of a mine. This creates situations where you're not only trying to avoid mines, but you're trying to metagame think whether it's an actual mine or a fake ghost mine.
Long story short, nerf mines. And if that's not an option, at least fix the bugs.
The walkers are fun, they definitely improve the game, but they've got issues.
First off, they're a bit buggy... If you're a suitably retarded pilot, you can make one fall over, generally by trying to walk over something you can't or under something you can't. But if you're a competent pilot in the middle of a massive gun battle, in tight quarters, with artillery going off, it's very easy to get them to start to fall over. Sometimes this causes them to enter a strange buggy state where they hitch and jerk, and the main gun becomes totally incapable of hitting anything. Sometimes this lack of accuracy persists even after the walker has stopped hitching. Other times the walker moves totally smooth, with no sway to its gait at all.
The other issue is their weaponry. Their main guns are fine, they're very strong against infantry, but not totally overwhelming. Catch a guy in the open and shoot straight and you'll kill him. They overheat very fast, too, which forces the pilot to be prudent, and not just hose away indiscriminantly. The secondary anti-tank missiles, though, are stupid. They are touted as being heat seeking, and they do home in on enemy vehicles at times, but other times they wander off aimlessly, or seem to pass right through the enemy vehicle with no effect. Long story short, there's very little skill at play with these missiles. Basic competency lets you get the most of them, but then it's mostly random luck if they hit or not. I'd like to see a change here, something that's challenging to use, but rewards accuracy.
Speaking of the missiles and their odd “pass through shit” behavior, there's actually a lot of hit detection issues when it comes to the heavier stuff. I'm pretty certain this is not something I experienced in BF2, so I'm not sure what's going on... However, a lot of times you'll see rifle rockets pass through vehicles, walker missiles will do it too... Other times you'll fire a tank cannon at a walker, or another tank, see it explode on the target, and yet do no damage. With the walkers its' particularly obvious, since the blast is generally well off the ground, and there's no question it's hitting the walker, and not the road next to the walker. It's obvious when the vehicle is using its active defenses, so this isn't the issue.
Also a problem is the reaction vehicles have to hits. In BF2, there was never a question if the tank was getting hit. You heard it, and the vehicle shook. You could even tell what was hitting you based on the sound, be it an enemy tank cannon, a lighter chain gun, etc. In BF2142, the game sometimes “glitches” in some way, almost as if it's undergoing a mini-lag on impact. It's particularly noticeable with the ground based Rorsch anti-vehicle guns, and it can be a problem, because you'll be sitting there blasting away, when suddenly your “imminent death sirens” are going off and the walker is toppling over. It takes three or more shots for a Rorsch to kill a walker, so it's not happening quickly, it's simply not playing any sound, or shaking the camera to tell you that it's going on. In fact, I've found that if things get eerily quiet all of a sudden, it may actually be that the vehicle is getting pasted. I'm not sure if this is my system, or the game itself, but considering how well everything runs, and how beefy my machine is, I think it's the game.