The killstreak thread yesterday made me reexamine Titanfall's current system. After playing in the beta, the flow of an attrition match seemed to go something like this:
1. Game Start.
2. During the initial clash, one team comes out on top and quickly gets their Titans first.
3. Other team has to focus on Pilot vs. Titan combat, which greatly reduces build time for Titans for the Pilots.
4. First team starts to lose their Titans as the other team can now call in their Titans and beat the first team in Titan vs. Titan combat with a numbers and health advantage.
5. Repeatedly return to step 3, unless one of the teams is getting completely stomped.
6. Evac.
Basically, the fact that you reduce build time not from kills but from damage, whether it be on Pilots, Grunts, or Titans, keeps it from feeling like another killstreak system. It makes it much more integral to the flow of the match. I'd hate to see if competitive play took off in Titanfall without keeping that flow to some degree.
Burn Cards feel more like killstreak rewards that you're forced to use during the next match, but that's primarily because you get them as a reward for completing certain challenges.
Considering Attrition is more of an introductory mode, I more see other more objective based modes being the "official" competitive mode. Hard Point and Last Titan Standing for example.
I hope they don't change the flow of the game too much either.