Call of Duty campaigns are very popular. The data says so.

[Ambient_Malice]

According to Trueachievements data, over half of tracked players finished the campaigns in BOII, Ghosts, and Advanced Warfare.

Advanced Warfare (Xbox One) (102,971 tracked)
92% complete first mission
64% complete campaign.

http://www.trueachievements.com/Call-of-Duty-Advanced-Warfare/achievements.htm

Ghosts (Xbox One) (72,671 tracked)
92% complete first mission.
60% complete campaign

http://www.trueachievements.com/Call-of-Duty-Ghosts/achievements.htm

Black Ops II (Xbox 360) (173,509 tracked)
83% completed first mission
56% complete campaign

http://www.trueachievements.com/Call-of-Duty-Black-Ops-II/achievements.htm

According to Steam data:

33.8% completed Black Ops II
40.4% completed Ghosts.
40% completed Advanced Warfare.

And like Xbox One data, on PC around 80-90% of players finish at least one campaign level.

To compare, on PC, 42.3% of players finished Wolfenstein: The New Order.

Put simply, the first argument you hear, that "most players never even touch the campaigns" is total nonsense, and the second argument, that "only a tiny percentage of players ever finish the campaigns" is also nonsense. 40-60% of players finishing campaigns which cost tens of millions of dollars to make is really, really good. That's back-slapping, "Yay team!" success right there. The notion that these campaigns are something players don't want is directly contradicted by the data.

A large chunk of the people on forums talking about the Call of Duty series seem to be completely out of touch with reality. "I'm gonna buy Infinite Warfare for the CoD 4 remaster because who cares about modern Call of Duty anyway?" Those kind of attitudes represent a tiny fraction of the player base. A tiny, extremely loud and vocal minority.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

They are popular sure. but they all are pretty bad. just walking in straight line, follow script, shoot, NPC open door. etc.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

They are popular sure. but they all are pretty bad. just walking in straight line, follow script, shoot, NPC open door. etc.

But that's what fans want. That is the genre these games occupy and are calculatedly designed to occupy.

They want a "cinematic" scripted FPS experience with flawless production values. You may as well say Dark Souls is really bad because there aren't enough cutscenes, not enough witty banter, and not enough scripted moments where you crawl along the ground, fighting to stay alive for BROTHERHOOD and COURAGE and SACRIFICE as emotional music swells.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

They want a "cinematic" scripted FPS experience with flawless production values..

but sadly this formula ruining FPS genre and COD4 set the example for that. luckily we have Great Single player FPS coming out like Doom, Blackroom, Shadow warrior 2, Space hulk and FPS/RPG hybrids like System shock 3 and Deus Ex MD.

COD 1, UO and 2 were only good COD games. after that series pretty much suck but its become more popular. most of COD fans never played original games and start with 4.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

I've finished every COD campaign (Starting from Modern Warfare) but I can't say they're all that great.

COD4 - Great
COD MW2 - Great
COD MW3 - Enjoyable
Ghost - Meh
Advanced Warfare - Meh

World at War - Meh
Black Ops - Pretty good
Black Ops 2 - awful
Black Ops 3 - Meh

So in my opinion, the Modern Warfare games are the only ones that are truly good in my book.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

I've finished every COD campaign (Starting from Modern Warfare) but I can't say they're all that great.

COD4 - Great
COD MW2 - Great
COD MW3 - Enjoyable
Ghost - Meh
Advanced Warfare - Meh

World at War - Meh
Black Ops - Pretty good
Black Ops 2 - awful
Black Ops 3 - Meh

So in my opinion, the Modern Warfare games are the only ones that are truly good in my book.

my friend, what about COD1 and 2?

I think W@W is best post MW COD ever. its closest thing to be decent.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I buy Call of Duty for the campaign only. I don't care for the multiplayer at all. The only time I enjoyed it was in Modern Warfare 2, because the maps were big enough to play as a real sniper and the setup was great. Honestly, I'd be happy if they decided to just release the campaign by itself.

Sadly, I haven't really enjoyed a COD campaign since Modern Warfare 3 or Black Ops II (I forget which one came out last). Black Ops III started out great, but then it went kind of nuts, and once I read what had REALLY happened, I lost all desire to play the game again. Advance Warfare was just...mediocre. It didn't feel like a COD game, and I think this is because it was developed by a new studio. Perhaps they'll do better next year when they get the ball again, but I don't know.
And Ghosts was just awful. Hated the characters, hated the story, hated the pacing, hated the cheap villain ending. It was just...blah. The only things I liked were Keegan, because he rarely talked, the dog because it's a dog, and...er, I guess the start of the level where you're on the aircraft carrier was okay, as was defending the beachfront, but those were very short instances of fun in an otherwise slog of a game.

The new one, Infinity Warfare, I think might be my last chance for the franchise. If it doesn't pan out, I think it's safe to say that the series has lost the magic for me.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

my friend, what about COD1 and 2?

I think W@W is best post MW COD ever. its closest thing to be decent.

Eh, I've played through COD2 but I didn't really enjoy the campaign, could've been because I was too young but it was just your standard WW2 shooter with no interesting characters or original plot in my eyes.

 

[B-Cell_v1legacy]

my friend, what about COD1 and 2?

I think W@W is best post MW COD ever. its closest thing to be decent.

Eh, I've played through COD2 but I didn't really enjoy the campaign, could've been because I was too young but it was just your standard WW2 shooter with no interesting characters or original plot in my eyes.

very first COD game is still best. it didnot even had regen health, sprint system and feel like old school. but it has iron sight since it was first game which invent iron sights.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

very first COD game is still best. it didnot even had regen health, sprint system and feel like old school. but it has iron sight since it was first game which invent iron sights.

Technically, Delta Force: Black Hawk Down did them earlier, but not all guns had iron sights. Just assault rifles and submachine guns, IIRC.

 

[Bilious Green_v1legacy]

I played all older CoD games (up to MW3) for the campaigns and never touched the multiplayer. All Ghillied Up is one of the best missions I've played in a game.

Pity the wheels fell off the franchise after the Infinity Ward debacle. The more multiplayer centric they have gotten, the less interest I have had in them.

 

[TrulyBritish]

See, now what I would be interested to know is how many of the players touched/have spend large amounts of time on the multiplayer? Whenever these discussions come up there's an awful lot of people (like myself) who've never touched the multiplayer aspect of the game. Be interesting to see what the comparison would be.

 

[laggyteabag]

very first COD game is still best. it didnot even had regen health, sprint system and feel like old school. but it has iron sight since it was first game which invent iron sights.

The fist Call of Duty may have popularised iron sights, but they did not "invent" them. I'm sure you know that iron sights are a real thing that are used on real guns, right? Call of Duty, trying to be an authentic World War 2 game just implemented these features to try and immerse the player as much as they could.

Also, feel free to comment on the use of iron sights, sprinting, and health regen in more modern games, but remember: Just because a feature can be implemented poorly, in your opinion, doesn't mean that the feature itself is bad. [small]
and just because a shooter has any combination of sprint, iron sights, or health regeneration, doesn't mean a game is CoD *cough*Wolfenstein: TNO*cough*[/small]

OT: For me, I always played the Call of Duty campaigns, and honestly, they weren't all that bad. I loved the CoD 4, and MW2 campaigns, and there were some great missions and moments in all of them. Sure, they were pretty standard "WOW LOOK AT THIS BIG EXPLOSION EXCITEMENT SHOOT BAD GUYS GO GO GO", but they did that very, very well.

As for whether or not I valued them, or they were popular; it is a different question. Just because 98% of people played the first mission, and 60% finished the story, doesn't mean that the campaign was good. Personally, I like to play the campaigns before I play the multiplayer, and this is true for pretty much every game that I own, particularly at the time when these games had just came out.

That being said, if they brought out a CoD game without any single player content, I wouldn't really miss it; same goes for a lot of other AAA multiplayer focused games, really. This is pretty much why, when Battlefront and Titanfall were revealed not to have any singleplayer content, and everyone was going crazy over it, I wasn't really all that bothered, because I knew that they weren't going to be great, anyway.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I have never played CoD online, only ever the multiplayer.

I played MW2's singleplayer so many times, my sisters still remember the story and characters.

But I think the "no one plays the singleplayer" is something that is thrown against other franchises, namely Battlefield.

For Battlefield 3, 4, and Hardline, less than 4 percent of players finished the campaign.
DISREGARD

 

[Ambient_Malice]

That being said, if they bought out a CoD game without any single player content, I wouldn't really miss it; same goes for a lot of other AAA multiplayer focused games, really. This is pretty much why, when Battlefront and Titanfall were revealed not to have any singleplayer content, and everyone was going crazy over it, I wasn't really all that bothered, because I knew that they weren't going to be great, anyway.

What makes a game "multiplayer focused"? CoD and Battlefield campaigns get a lion's share of the budget, a lion's share of the "talent", and a lion's share of the development resources. That's how you get Battlefield games where the campaign team outnumbers the MP team 2:1. Titanfall was never meant to be an MP-only game. It had a campaign in active development. It became MP-only because the developers ran out of money and the publisher wouldn't give them more more. So they shipped half a game. Less than half a game, probably. Hence Titanfall 2 is getting a campaign penned by Jesse Stern. (Modern Warfare & Battlefield 4 writer.)

 

[Ambient_Malice]

For Battlefield 3, 4, and Hardline, less than 4 percent of players finished the campaign.

Where does that data come from? Because on Xbox 360/Xbox One, it's a very different picture. Tracked completion rates are as follows:

Hardline = 44%
Battlefield 3 = 53%
Battlefield 4 = 48%

edit:

And Bad Company 2 = 44%

http://www.trueachievements.com/Battlefield-3/achievements.htm
http://www.trueachievements.com/Battlefield-4/achievements.htm
http://www.trueachievements.com/Battlefield-Hardline/achievements.htm

Now in fairness, BF4, and I think BF3 ties MP bonus content to completing the campaigns, something that pisses off the MP purists. But the point is that people do play these campaigns all the way through. Even BF4, which while I love it to bits, had a nasty campaign save erase bug on consoles, making completing it on consoles all the more impressive.

 

[M0rp43vs]

If I were to pull a guess out of my butt, I would think that's because the campaigns for these games tend to be on the shorter side, more linear and more of a tutorial for the multiplayer strung along by a plot. Unlike Wolfenstein, there's not as many secrets, alternate paths or sometimes even different ways to handle a given scenario. Not a bad thing, linearity is getting rather underrated these days. So they can easily be done and out of the way.

Anecdotal but I managed to finish the campaigns for both Black Ops and Ghost in individual lazy afternoons. Trying to look up Howlongtobeat to confirm this hypothesis but site doesn't work for me right now.

Besides, I thought the complaints were that they seem to be running out of ideas for campaigns and are more focused on leading the player by the nose through explosive set-pieces than creating fun shooting scenarios.

 

[MrCalavera_v1legacy]

I'd actually be mildly interested if Acti would release, let's say a package of CoD SP campaigns for a decent price(which obviously won't happen).
I have no interest in multiplayer.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

For Battlefield 3, 4, and Hardline, less than 4 percent of players finished the campaign.

Where does that data come from? Because on Xbox 360/Xbox One, it's a very different picture. Tracked completion rates are as follows:

Hardline = 44%
Battlefield 3 = 53%
Battlefield 4 = 48%

edit:

And Bad Company 2 = 44%

http://www.trueachievements.com/Battlefield-3/achievements.htm
http://www.trueachievements.com/Battlefield-4/achievements.htm
http://www.trueachievements.com/Battlefield-Hardline/achievements.htm

Now in fairness, BF4, and I think BF3 ties MP bonus content to completing the campaigns, something that pisses off the MP purists. But the point is that people do play these campaigns all the way through. Even BF4, which while I love it to bits, had a nasty campaign save erase bug on consoles, making completing it on consoles all the more impressive.

Ah shit, massive fuck up on my part. I read that wrong. You're right, those are the completion rates.

 

[laggyteabag]

That being said, if they bought out a CoD game without any single player content, I wouldn't really miss it; same goes for a lot of other AAA multiplayer focused games, really. This is pretty much why, when Battlefront and Titanfall were revealed not to have any singleplayer content, and everyone was going crazy over it, I wasn't really all that bothered, because I knew that they weren't going to be great, anyway.

What makes a game "multiplayer focused"? CoD and Battlefield campaigns get a lion's share of the budget, a lion's share of the "talent", and a lion's share of the development resources. That's how you get Battlefield games where the campaign team outnumbers the MP team 2:1. Titanfall was never meant to be an MP-only game. It had a campaign in active development. It became MP-only because the developers ran out of money and the publisher wouldn't give them more more. So they shipped half a game. Less than half a game, probably. Hence Titanfall 2 is getting a campaign penned by Jesse Stern. (Modern Warfare & Battlefield 4 writer.)

I suppose it is more from a customer standpoint, than a development standpoint. I'm not going to deny that EA and Activision throw a whole lot of money and talent at these campaigns, but in reality, the these games aren't really known for their campaign.

Think of Battlefield for a moment: people know the franchise because of their large scale, joint forces warfare in multiplayer, where you can be fighting infantry with your rifle for one moment, then jump in a tank, before being blown up by a player controlled jet, in a fully destructible city, that is absolutely massive, and can hold around 64 players at one time. That game, however, is not known for its "gripping" squad focused campaign, where China and Russia are holding America accountable for the assassination of one of China's most popular political candidates, and you and your squad are tasked to make that not happen. I mean, I even just had to google the plot for BF4, because even though I have spend over 300 hours in that game, I have forgotten what the game was even about.

Just look at Call of Duty Advanced Warfare: that game came out over a year ago now, and the only real lasting impression that the campaign made was "it was about private military companies", and "it had Kevin Spacey in it". Imagine if the game hadn't had a campaign, and all that time, money, and effort went into making a more varied and interesting multiplayer sandbox. We obviously wouldn't have lost much of value, and the thing that most people actually play Call of Duty for, would have been a much more entertaining experience.

It just seems that these developers are just spending so much money on these campaigns, and they aren't really getting much out of them. Honestly, I'd just rather have a bigger and better online experience, rather than a tacked on, expensive, 5 hour campaign that I will only play once, and wont remember in about a day or two.