The only ranged weapon I can tolerate using is the G2, really. But sometimes I'll loadout with the devotion if I really hate the map and don't want to bother.
Like Crash site pilot versus pilot, if I load out with the alternator then I have to work my way up the hill to kill the opposing pilots. Sometimes this means taking a hard flank and going all of the way around, and while often this is fruitful, if I fail and die then it's a huge amount of time wasted.
At the same time someone can just sit where we spawned and rack up a tonne of kills. In some instances if my team mates are decent, my opponents will be dead by the time I make the flank.
In other instances, I will end up killing someone along the way (in the crash site area or such) and because of this he gets to spawn back with his team mates at the top of the hill with full awareness that I'm coming and the way that I'm coming from. In many cases this player will camp out an obscure location, normally I can kill them because they're usually naive enough to believe they can run at the direction they believe me to be at and land the kill, yet why would that succeed when they failed before?
Regardless there's a huge amount of risk associated with that playstye on particular maps and it's the map design on these particular locations that really makes the Hemlock, Devotion and G2 feel oppressive. Why should I spend a minute flanking around the opposing tea when I can just set up shop with a devotion and mow down the enemy team in seconds? Not only that but if I die with this playstyle I get to spawn right back where I want to be, at the bottom of the hill in a good position to begin the same playstyle, whereas with a mobility orientated playstyle I receive more punishment when I die (far more time is wasted) and in general it's just a lot more work to pull off successfully.
The problem is that these weapons have both a very low skill ceiling and skill floor, and this is made much worse in some of the maps. Even as someone that mains SMGs almost exclusively (even above using my Titan), I find myself feeling the desire to switch just because the design of the game is overly punishing towards my playstyle when compared to using these ranged weapons.
right, like you said large differences in button accessibility.... that's what I'm talking about . Good players will be good players regardless of what they use but comparing today's situation with how halo used to be isn't really a straight comparison. Most players back then used default set ups, and halo isn't titanfall .
This is a game where yOu need to at least have slide and jump always at your finger tips. I've seen some players in titanfall 1 still wreck but they strictly played defense. Still, even that player once jumping to the elite became godlike. Ive seen average players turn into good players and good players turn into great players after upgrading to the controller
The more people adopt the elite the better the average player base will be as a whole.
I agree with you but the Evolved layout does that, it puts both slide and jump at your fingertips. You click the right stick in to slide, jump with L1, it's pretty simple to use.
The rest, the inacessibility of your tactical, melee etc. there are work arounds for. In general I would say not having a controller with bumpers is inconveinient and awkward more than it is competitively invalid. It's not nice having to claw to press tactical or melee, but it's not something that influences the moment to moment gameplay in the same way the accessibility of jump and slide do.
You would think that Pilots would learn. 
