How Can MW3's MP be balanced?

[CorinthianRed]

MW2 had danger close, it was lame. I and countless other people would agree. Most players got sick of people abusing a weapon(grenade launcher)that was already effective before adding a perk that doubles it's explosive range and spamming the map with high explosives to get kills and would have almost no way to counter it. I know all of you can think of a time this has been a real genital slap to the face.

Black ops has Flak Jacket, I dislike it too because the explosives in Black Ops already suck enough by themselves to a point where it isn?t even remotely hard to avoid. In my experience, the only way to die by explosives in Black Ops is if you TRY to. But then to add insult to injury, treyarch added a perk which makes the user invulnerable to explosives unless he/she gets distracted and cooks a grenade too long
Once in a game of Demolition on Crisis, I was near bombsite B and getting chased back by the one guy I couldn't kill before my last mag went dry and my secondary was the strella, so I ran out the cave, turned the corner by the fence and cleverly set down two packs of C4 next to the only door leading to me. The guy walks RIGHT on my C4 and I detonated it less than half an arm?s length away from him and he didn?t die. All I got was hit-markers that felt like a big middle finger that treyarch felt I deserved and then ?Mr. Go-Flak-Yourself?promptly filled me with more holes than the plot of modern warfare 2.

All I'm saying is that there needs to be some middle ground here. Thats not too obscene an idea, is it?

 

[Sizzle Montyjing]

Encouraging different play styles.
So snipers work.
Stealth is effective.
And running into the open like a maniac isn't your best chance of survival.

Plus i'd quite like better maps, like more complex ones.
Black ops seriously let me down on that, with the invisible death walls being about 2cm under your feet.

Oh, and removing all of those utterly bastard perks.

 

[Irony's Acolyte]

What I think you're forgetting is that by taking those perks, they were not taking other perks. Now for something like Danger Close, I can see that as one of the perks that becomes "mandatory" because it's so powerful. Flak Jacket on the other hand just protects you from explosives. Not bullets. And by selecting that invulnerability to explosives, the player is missing out on other perks that could be useful.

 

[Wicky_42]

What you need is more, bigger killstreak bonuses. Start at a B52 carpet bomb for 3 kills then work up. Air-dropped tanks would be useful - though because vehicles would be unbalanced, you can only use them as cover and to try and drop them on someone when you call them in. Perhaps a 6 kill streak could get you the vitaray chamber from Captain America, to make showing the noobs you're thrashing who's boss that little bit easier. That nuke was so imba, replace it with a fuel air bomb for balance, and to level the playing field give both teams (or each person, in deathmatch) their own Spectre Gunship to automatically cover their backs. Oh, and to introduce more gameplay elements you could have active camoflage as an unlock, and if you get it to pro you can teleport too; show the host what server lag looks like!

Seems in line with the series' progress so far >_>

Encouraging different play styles.
So snipers work.
Stealth is effective.
And running into the open like a maniac isn't your best chance of survival.

Plus i'd quite like better maps, like more complex ones.
Black ops seriously let me down on that, with the invisible death walls being about 2cm under your feet.

Oh, and removing all of those utterly bastard perks.

Stop getting BF:BC2 in their MW3! If you want that sort of gameplay, your in the wrong series

 

[baddude1337]

They need to make every weapon equally as useful. In Blops and MW2 there was always basically 2 weapons that if you didn't use, you would get dominated.

And please, NO QUICK-SCOPING.

 

[Davey Woo]

Just to point out, danger close was in Call of Duty 4, but nobody used it, because it was called Sonic Boom and you didn't have to unlock it.

I'm happy as long as there is no nuke, no pointless weapons that are more effective than they should be, (200 year-old dual wielded shotguns for example) no stupid gametypes and a half decent continuation of the storyline from MW2.
EDIT: Yes i know the storyline has nothing to do with a balanced multiplayer but never mind.

 

[Davey Woo]

um, overkill made you have 2 primary weapons...

Sonic Boom, that was it.

 

[Kahunaburger]

In Blops and MW2 there was always basically 2 weapons that if you didn't use, you would get dominated.

Not my experience, actually. Some weapons were clearly better than the others, but having the jump on someone >>> having the better gun. For instance, sniper rifles beat noob tubes when you've got the noob tuber in your scope and he/she has no idea where you are. In my experience, people would whine about basically anything being OP given two conditions:

A. The weapon/perk/equipment is killing them,
B. They don't use said weapon/perk/equipment.

...which gives the impression that the game has balance issues. IMO, it's not deep enough for balance to even be a thing.

 

[Richardplex]

They need to make every weapon equally as useful. In Blops and MW2 there was always basically 2 weapons that if you didn't use, you would get dominated.

And please, NO QUICK-SCOPING.

Black ops, yes, modern warfare 2, no. Definitely not. only the F2000, Deagle, L86, and maybe the Intervention weren't viable. Everything else was balanced really (bar explosives) just that some weapons, ala ACR and UMP, are overused, but not OP. I've annihilated everyone in S&D with just an M9 for example,

Also, aye, No quick-scoping, make the noob tube a 2 hit kill (it can still take out people holding a point, and 1 shot people you have injured but gone into cover), make shotgun primaries, keep stopping power out of the game so Tier 2 actually exists, and everythings gravy. Really, Bops did it right, bar the maps (apparently), RCXDs, gun balance and challenges.

 

[Jzcaesar]

I thought it would have been great to keep all the perks from MW2 except replace commando with flack jacket from black ops, replace one man army with...anything, even hardened (except switch the pro effect with the regular effect), fix the ninja/sitrep relationship, and make the killstreaks non-stackable (i.e., they no longer build into each other).

 

[Katana314]

[sarcasm]
They just need to provide more hard-counters, like Bad Company 2 did by having flares completely negate the tracer dart. For instance.

Have a certain type of body armor that makes you take double damage from low-caliber guns (pistols, SMGs), but completely invulnerable to assault rifle damage. Rock paper scissors formula!

Have a certain helmet that makes you immune to headshots, with the tradeoff that explosives reach twice as far for you.

[/sarcasm]

What these games need to realize with rock-paper-scissors is that in a twitch-based FPS, you can't just apply it uniformly to damage. If a gun is effective because it shrapnelizes an entire room, don't just say "Oh, well this perk makes you immune to that." Give someone a speed boost so they can leave the room faster. It's supposed to be strategic counters, not math-counters (which are for RPGs)
For instance: If the Heavy from TF2 is coming at you from afar, you wouldn't want to be a scout. You'd need to get in close, and the heavy beats you at that. You WOULD want to be a sniper, because you can stay out of range of him, and take him down easily. But even then, these aren't uniform, game-determined rules because a really good scout could ALWAYS take down the heavy because he's just good at it.

I could see the same for MW2. Perks are specialties that allow you to form a strategy. You should do horribly the first time you use it until you realize what it's good for. They shouldn't do the work/thinking for you (Martyrdom, Flak Jacket, etc)

 

[PlasmaFrog]

Modern Warfare was a disaster because of the maps, for me at least, not even mentioning spawn points. It's just an overall crap fest.

 

[Chappy]

I don't think it can be balanced because as I see it if you do what the fans want you can never balance your game.

It would take a book from me to explain all my opinions on CoD balance and the stereotypes surrounding different tactics and why these stereotypes aren't actaully balance breaking like people say.

So lets just go with a common one, people always say get rid of Quickscopers, by doing that you are making the game unbalanced to people who like the quick scope to start with so they will claim it's not balanced, also people will not use the Sniper rifle and that will lead to people believing the Snipers are under powered.

People who want to use the Snipers will have to stay still or at least move very little to avoid getting into close quarters because they can't shoot up close effectively this will make people claim that the game is full of campers as the Snipers will camp so they have a fair chance in the game and then one hit kill shots with a sniper who has to camp because they can't quickscope will more than likely make people claim that 'Camping' is over powered in the mutliplayer.

Can you see where this is going? Remove something and many other things can become unbalanced especially if it's the fans your doing it for and not the game.

TL;DR - If you try to balance something for one type of player(Especially if the fans ask for it to be nerfed, buffed or taken away) your more than likely going to un-balance the game for a different player.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I just want them to fix sniping. I enjoyed the fact that a bullet to the head put someone down in Modern Warfare 2, and if you had Stopping Power and hit them square in the chest, they were done. Then, in Black Ops they took away Stopping Power. Okay, I can deal with that--wait! Why did my bullet go in the complete opposite direction as the crosshair? I can understand taking away quick scoping, but no other weapon has to wait two to four seconds for the sight to line up. That made head shots impossible because by the time I had the shot lined up, the player had moved.

I actually think Modern Warfare 2 was fairly balanced. I never played against a class that I couldn't counter. It just meant that, after I died, I switched to a different layout and destroyed the person. Getting One Man Army made it even easier.

 

[Awexsome]

They're getting better at balancing the perks out. A perk that does straight up damage increase they're starting to learn is a bad idea as that can kill balance in a CoD game faster than anything.

Personally, I love flak jacket. So long as Claymores or some variant thereof is in the game I don't want to have to run around with hacker. Don't get me wrong, hacker is one of, if not, my favorite perk, but without flak jacket that would be the only way to not run into a claymore around a corner when trying to uproot a camper.

 

[The_Yeti]

two bullets, in the game developers head.