Let's talk about Call of Duty

[ImmortalDrifter]

So with Black Ops 2 right around the corner I figured it was time to do something I've wanted to do for a while. Let's talk about Call of Duty. No I don't mean fling shit at it and nor do I mean masturbate to Black Ops 2 gameplay videos. There are several issues that have been hanging over Call of Duty as a franchise for a while now and it's time we address them in a calm and dignified manner. These statements will largely focus on the multiplayer since it is by far the selling point, but the campaign can be something else to bring up on the side. First I'll get this out of the way though, yes, I am a fan of Call of Duty. Do I think it's perfect? No. Second if you simply don't like Call of Duty's gameplay (multiplayer in particular) THAT'S FINE! (Please don't comment to tell me that either) I'm not here to try and change your taste in games, or to insult/degrade you. This is simply my take on the various issues people have with Call of Duty that aren't related to personal perference. On that note, let's begin.

"It's only played by 10-year-olds"

Spoiler

This argument is false right out of the gate. I play CoD and I'm 18 and I'm in a clan with people ranging from 16 to 33 (many of whom are married). You heard a kid with a squeaky voice? So what? Mute him. In fact mute everyone if the prospect of human interaction is as unsettling to you as it is to me. If something is popular naturally then munchkins will want in on it, it's that way for everything and there is no way you can truly get away from them. (Except in single-player of course but as stated above if you don't like multiplayer then don't just redundantly say that)

"CoD is full of Racist/Sexist/Stupid people"

Spoiler

This may seem like a cop out argument, but welcome to the damn internet. Those kinds of people will always be where anonymity offers them safety from punishment. There are just as many douches on any multiplayer game (Dark Souls is my best example of this). Singling CoD out for it is simply petty. Should I dislike the Escapist as a whole because some people on it are pretentious asshats? (See the Witcher 2 ZP Facebook comments for my evidence of this)

"It's repetitive"

Spoiler

I'm forced to call immediate bullshit on this argument for two reasons. (When this is used as an argument against the games' quaility) Firstly because other games get a free ride. No one ever rails on TF2 because it's repetitive. If you get bored of a game then that isn't necessarily the games fault; especially when hundreds of thousands still play it. The other reason is because to many the repetition does nothing to stop their enjoyment of CoD, or anything else for that matter. Does repetition stop football from being enjoyed year after year after year? Is football bad because of that?

"It started the Modern Shooter market saturation"

Spoiler

I really can't say that this isn't true. I can however say that it isn't CoD's fault. Whenever something is popular hordes of pretenders will try to ride its coattails. It happened with Star Wars, Twilight, Law and Order, the Da Vinci Code, Black Sabbath, Monkey Island, Seinfeld, Half-life, the Simpsons and whoever the first metalcore band was. It isn't CoD you should be angry at, but rather those who insist on trying to emulate it. CoD didn't force anyone to make a knock off of it, retarded publishers did.

"It's the same game every year"

Spoiler

I'm forced to come back to the sports analogy. People will pay ludicrous sums of money to simply watch a sporting event; often with the same people playing, the same rules, and the same drunken riots for stupid reasons. While they do face some flack I haven't seen any threads demonizing sports leagues or the people who watch them. I pay 60$ a year for around 10 new maps, 30 new guns, 1 or 2 new game modes, a six hour campaign, and some streamlined features (more zombies this year is a bonus). If that isn't enough for you, fine, you?re entitled to your opinion and I respect that. But it is enough for me and many others, and it doesn't make us thick it just means that we enjoy it more. (And yes MovieBob, Nintendo pumping out Mario sequels is in fact the exact same thing as what Activision does with CoD. Deal with it.)

That's all of the arguments against CoD I hear on a regular basis. I'm just really tired of CoD being blamed for the downfall of gaming or other verbose melodrama. I'm also tired of people assuming that playing CoD makes you some sort of sub-human. I might have just wasted my time in writing all of this, but I feel better knowing that I didn't just sit there while being stereotyped. If you disagree with something I said, tell me why. Please keep it civil

 

[King Billi]

Sorry to do the one thing you specifically asked not to do but I'm sorry I just don't like multiplayer, especially the multiplayer in Call of Duty.

Do you know how I deal with that though? I just don't play it. (I know shock horror!)
It certainly hasn't stopped me from enjoying Call of Duty specifically for the single player though. (Although playing Call of Duty JUST for the singleplayer may in itself be a little unusual... I don't know?)

I don't dislike playing multiplayer for any of the reasons you listed I just don't find it fun. I get the feeling though that most of the problems people tend to complain about with Call of Duty are more about what it represents rather than the about the games themselves, more so its effects on the industry as a whole... you know what I mean?

In any case I don't agree with any of the hate. You can count me as another fan... even if it may be for slightly different reasons than yourself.

Cheers

 

[ImmortalDrifter]

Sorry to do the one thing you specifically asked not to do but I'm sorry I just don't like multiplayer, especially the multiplayer in Call of Duty.

Do you know how I deal with that though? I just don't play it. (I know shock horror!)
It certainly hasn't stopped me from enjoying Call of Duty specifically for the single player though. (Although playing Call of Duty JUST for the singleplayer may in itself be a little unusual... I don't know?)

I don't dislike playing multiplayer for any of the reasons you listed I just don't find it fun. I get the feeling though that most of the problems people tend to complain about with Call of Duty are more about what it represents rather than the about the games themselves, more so its effects on the industry as a whole... you know what I mean?

In any case I don't agree with any of the hate. You can count me as another fan... even if it may be for slightly different reasons than yourself.

Cheers

Well it's like what I said, if you don't find mp fun then I have no problem. Although youre the first person I've seen who likes CoD purely because of single player.

Cheers indeed!

 

[tippy2k2]

I agree! I've said this repeatedly and I'll say it again:

Call of Duty is not a bad game. If you don't enjoy it, that's fine, but calling it a bad game because you don't like it is silly. Most of the arguments I hear against the game is the same tired argument that you hear against sport games: "It's the same game with a different skin! Only sheep buy it!"

For lack of a better word, that is either an extreme hyperbole or incredible ignorance (for sport games or CoD). Yeah, if you look at screenshots, every CoD looks the same. However, give me any title that has ever been created and using the power of ignorance and exaggeration, I will tell you how it is just like every game that has ever been created in that genre.

As to your points:
1. I'm 26 and not racist, sexist, or stupid (or at least not sexist/racist!). The group I play with are in their late 20's, 30's, and 40's and there are multiple parents in that group.
2. Repetitive is such a stupid argument that I'm not going to bother. Show me a game and I will show you making repetitive actions in order to create a desired effect. Shit, the idea of gaming without repetition is a pipe-dream.
3. Caused the saturation? No, other companies who are just copy/pasting CoD are the ones that are saturating the market.

You are allowed to not like Call of Duty. It's people that have it in their mind that because I like Call of Duty I am either a sheep who is unable to think for themselves or a dumb jock gamer who couldn't give you the name of any other game (besides maybe Madden).

 

[BloatedGuppy]

I've never played any of the Black Duty or Modern Call games, and I feel incredibly left out of these discussions. =(

 

[SilkySkyKitten]

"It's the same game every year"

Spoiler

I'm forced to come back to the sports analogy. People will pay ludicrous sums of money to simply watch a sporting event; often with the same people playing, the same rules, and the same drunken riots for stupid reasons. While they do face some flack I haven't seen any threads demonizing sports leagues or the people who watch them. I pay 60$ a year for around 10 new maps, 30 new guns, 1 or 2 new game modes, a six hour campaign, and some streamlined features (more zombies this year is a bonus). If that isn't enough for you, fine, you?re entitled to your opinion and I respect that. But it is enough for me and many others, and it doesn't make us thick it just means that we enjoy it more. (And yes MovieBob, Nintendo pumping out Mario sequels is in fact the exact same thing as what Activision does with CoD. Deal with it.)

I find this one one of the most annoying of the arguments. The only recent CoD games I could consider remotely samey are MW2 and MW3, otherwise there's usually quite a bit of difference between them:

-MW1 was more grounded in reality than the others, and was the first game in the series to take place in a time period that wasn't WW2.
-WaW went back to World War 2 with more of a gritty approach than most games have ever attempted, plus multiplayer-wise it actually gave a reason for Prestiging (in MW1, Prestiging was pretty much just to increase the size of your E-Penis).
-MW2 took a more action movie approach to Modern Warfare and made things more chaotic and less grounded in reality, both in the multiplayer and singleplayer.
-Black Ops took place in the 1960's and was the first game to NOT have a silent and faceless protagonist, plus it introduced theater modes for the multiplayer and changed how the unlock system worked.
-MW3... well, okay, that one was incredibly similar to MW2 but was even less coherent and made even less sense, and it introduced weapon leveling-up and pointstreaks that didn't involve how many kills you got without dieing.

And now Black Ops 2 will take place in the future, have a non-linear storyline with branching paths, and is totally restructuring how loadouts work in the multiplayer. If anything, that sounds like a pretty different game compared to the previous incarnations.

 

[Tdoodle]

This one is also funny. COD catches so much flack for not "evolving", while Total War is fine...? What major innovations has CA made to it's long running series between Medieval 2 and Shogun 2? Naval battles, better multiplayer, and that's about it.

Just wanted to pick on this bit; I imagine the reason Total War doesn't get flack for not introducing "major innovations" is because each one is set in a completely different period to the last (except for Napoleon following Empire). That means new units, tactics, maps, technologies and setting on top of the graphical overhaul each version usually gets.

I can see what you're getting at because the core real-time-strategy doesn't change all that much, at it's most basic Shogun 2 is still the same clicking your unit onto their unit until one team has no units left that we had in Medieval or Rome, but even to the untrained eye each one is still obviously different to the one that came before it. The same can't necessarily be said for Call of Duty.

Black Ops 2 looks like it might be a good laugh, though.

 

[aguspal]

*snip*

God fucking GOD.

Thank you, at least someone with common sense. I cant fucking belive it.


I agree with all of this 100%. It seems like it is simply cool to hate on COD these days. Its like some kind of mini meme or something, people do it simply because a lof of people are doing it. Thats how I feel about all of this.


No it is not perfect. No game is anways.

This one is also funny. COD catches so much flack for not "evolving", while Total War is fine...? What major innovations has CA made to it's long running series between Medieval 2 and Shogun 2? Naval battles, better multiplayer, and that's about it.

Just wanted to pick on this bit; I imagine the reason Total War doesn't get flack for not introducing "major innovations" is because each one is set in a completely different period to the last (except for Napoleon following Empire). That means new units, tactics, maps, technologies and setting on top of the graphical overhaul each version usually gets.

In cod that would translate to new maps, perks, killstreaks, weapons...


Its pretty much the same deal for both games. I dont see why people are bashing on cod only.

 

[Atmos Duality]

"It started the Modern Shooter market saturation"

I really can't say that this isn't true. I can however say that it isn't CoD's fault. Whenever something is popular hordes of pretenders will try to ride its coattails. It happened with Star Wars, Twilight, Law and Order, the Da Vinci Code, Black Sabbath, Monkey Island, Seinfeld, Half-life, the Simpsons and whoever the first metalcore band was. It isn't CoD you should be angry at, but rather those who insist on trying to emulate it. CoD didn't force anyone to make a knock off of it, retarded publishers did.

That's actually the root of the problem, and it isn't anything new.
Call of Duty 4, like Halo before it, Mario before that, etc, was too successful relative to the rest of its market.

When such a game is that overwhelmingly successful, it encourages business to further overtake creative license, and this in turn pressures developers to cash-in rather than take creative risks.

This effect is further amplified by Call of Duty 4's timing; it attained success at the end of a gaming market high, and dominates in terms of raw sales during a period of consolidation (you may have noticed a whole bunch of studios closing their doors and mass-layoffs in the last few years).

What incentive is there to innovate when your game sets sales records year after year?
And why does it set sales records when the market is consolidating? Simple: Because their competition is struggling.

Robber Barons. Great Depression. Similar outcome.

Due to recession, gamers have more time, but less disposable income. They're more inclined to pick the game series with the best track record, and the online component of CoD4.x is easily the main reason people play it, so it fills the time quota.

"The rich get richer, and the poor get poorer".

This in turn, leads to intensified filtering of genre until the consolidation ends, and re-diversification begins (which I'd tentatively guess is starting within a year or two; possibly now. All of this stuff is defined in retrospect, really).
I didn't expect to see another Tribes game ever again, yet it finally happened this year.

As for the sports analogy: This is more akin to one sport becoming so dominant, that it pushes all other sports aside unless they conform. Rugby, Soccer, Baseball turning into Football even where it doesn't fit.

(Taking this concept to a broader topic in gaming, you can find evidence of "broader appeal" in several other genre games: Resident Evil 6. Dead Space 3. The new Devil May Cry perhaps.)

If that sounds silly, well, one it's an analogy, and two video games are infinitely more malleable in their logic than any real-life sport. Which in turn I imagine is why some gamers get so pissed off at seeing the same game set sales records year after year.
You have all of these resources, all of this opportunity, and they spend it doing a Telemann Performance of last year.

The sad part is that bitching about it does absolutely nothing. Until the market outright rejects CoD4.x, it will continue on exactly as it has.

 

[ohnoitsabear]

Oh boy, here we go again. I don't dislike Call of Duty for the reasons you listed, I dislike it for many other, completely legitimate reasons. But, I might as well examine your points while I'm at it.

1 & 2. People have different tolerance levels when it comes to screaming ten year olds and extreme bigotry. I don't know how much of the Call of Duty user base consists of these people (I haven't played it since MW2, and not on Xbox, which is apparently the worst for this sort of thing), but I have seen enough evidence that these people do exist. And for some people, the amount of these idiots is too much. And some of these people don't want to eliminate all social interaction in the game, so they would probably rather not play with everybody muted.

I guess my point is that just because it isn't an issue for you, doesn't mean it isn't a valid issue for anybody else. Also, just because it's everywhere on the internet doesn't mean that it's any less excusable when it happens in Call of Duty, or that Call of Duty should be able to avoid criticism for it.

3. Again, just because it's not repetitive for you doesn't mean it isn't repetitive for somebody else. You're still free to enjoy it, but the people that do think it's repetitive are free to dislike it, and express their dislike (so long as they're not being dicks about it, which is something I won't defend).

4. No, knock-offs aren't Call of Duty's fault. Really, anybody using this argument against Call of Duty instead of against the industry in general is kind of an idiot.

5. I would say that no series can make enough evolutions to justify sixty dollar sequels every damn year. Additionally, yearly sequels (especially when they're being worked on by several different studios) inevitably means that they won't be able to figure out exactly how to evolve the series in a meaningful way, instead just throwing in changes just to make it not the exact same game.

Anyway, I have to go to class soon, so I don't have time to post my problems with the Call of Duty series, so I'll just copy what I posted in this thread, which was in response to this article.

Spoiler

I disagree with the article. Yes, it does have some valid points, but I think it ignores many of the valid reasons why people dislike Call of Duty and it's influence over the video game industry.

For one, most of the points in the article really only apply to the multiplayer part of the game. Yes, they tweak the multiplayer every year, and it can potentially last you hundreds of hours, but the single player still remains the same follow somebody and watch setpieces crap with minimal replay value that you'd be hard-pressed to make last longer than 5 hours. In fact, most of the article ignores that the single player even exists, which is where most of the (valid) criticism comes from.

Even though the multiplayer does evolve some, I would argue that it doesn't change enough to justify the yearly whoring out of the franchise. I haven't played Call of Duty since Modern Warfare 2, so I may be wrong here, but it seems to me that the changes are more along the scale of an expansion pack, rather than a full game.

Speaking of expansion packs, let's not forget that the map packs cost fifteen cocking dollars. For just five maps. Nothing else. I could buy entire games that would give me much more entertainment for that price.

Then let's not ignore how Activision has been spitting on the PC community, with limited dedicated servers and a lack of mod tools, when we had good dedicated server support and fine mod tools in the past. Considering that the game engine has barely changed since Call of Duty 4, there's really no reason why we can't have these things except for Activision wanting to milk us for more money.

The reason all of this stuff is a problem is that there are companies out there that don't pull all of this shit. For example, Team Fortress 2 will let you play all of the many, many maps (many of them community made) for exactly zero dollars. That kind of business is worth supporting.

I'm not damning Activision for this (although they are not free from blame). Like the article said, why would Activision do anything differently? I'm damning the people that keep buying this shit every single freaking year, thus telling all of the other game publishers that Activision's shitty practices are okay.

 

[bl4ckh4wk64]

Actually, none of the reasons you listed are reasons I don't like CoD. In fact, I rather like the over-the-top super-hyper-over-realistic gameplay of the single player. It's when I start talking to the community that I get annoyed. Not because they're racist, or sexist, or 12 years old, but because they're absolute fuckheads. Not stupid, just assholes that won't understand that their opinion isn't always the perfect one.

That being said, there's one other thing that means I'm constantly at odds with the entire CoD series. Their claim to have realistic guns. I've written many, many posts about this, but the thing I dislike the most about CoD is the fact that the guns are really just fucked up. The damage stats are off with how they should be, the accuracy stats are purely objective, and with so many of their newer games, what the literal fuck were they thinking by adding certain guns? I mean, the AT4 now locks on to aircraft? Now that they're going into the near future, they should be using futuristic guns, not prototypes canceled in 2004 because it was a shit gun (the XM8/M8). Their lack of knowledge with these things shows that the devs were too lazy to even check wikipedia on this, it's like they were watching an episode of Future Weapons and thought "Oh, that looks cool, let's put that in!" I mean, the M27 IAR and the HAMR are both newly developed IARs, yet in game one of them is an assault rifle and the other is a light machine gun.

and WHAT THE FUCK IS THE SMR?!?!

That being said, I do like the fact that there's finally a game with the Sig 556 in it, and I'll probably buy it because zombies is always fun and I want to use a Sig to shoot some zombies.

 

[Rooster893]

I agree with EVERYTHING you said. And while certain Escapees on here do have good points (ohnoitsabear, SmashLovesTitanQuest) I will still play and love the Call of Duty games, for both the single player AND the multiplayer.

 

[Jinxzy]

I'm going to pick at a few of your thoughts of CoD, not saying they are wrong or anything but just trying to put my own thoughts on some of the reasons you stated.

2) The biggest problems with COD's multiplayer is too much fucking shit. MW3 had like 50 different killstreaks that went into 3 different streak systems. Every gun had over 10 attachments. Those guns also came with a slot for a speciality of your choosing, ranging from more damage to increased range. That's not to mention your 2 equipment slots and 3 perk slots. Oh, and don't forget deathstreaks, theres also five or so of those in MW2 and MW3.

It is too much. Both Infinity Ward and Treyarch have proven they are not competent enough to balance all this stuff, while Sledgehammer have proven they shouldn't be let near any multiplayer modes in the future. It is the wrong kind of "innovation". Killstreaks aren't even killstreaks anymore, you can go 5-45 and still get a UAV.

I really do like the options of getting to pick what ever kill streak you want. If gives you options and I love having option. They three types of picking if you want to go support, specialist, and assault. Granted support should have never had stealth boomer, it should be more for helping the team. Also if your a weak player and pick support and go 5-45 and get a UAV I think that makes them feel like they are actually helping and not just a waist on the team. There are people out there that might not be able to compete with people that are better then them. That's probably a reason why they came out with death streaks.

And when they do have a great idea, they go ahead and exclude it from the next game. Stopping Power and Cold Blooded should still exist. Killstreaks should actually be powerful. Even One Man Army was an interesting idea that should have had a place in the COD games after MW2, obviously with some changes.

But no, they excluded all of those things while keeping Second Chance and deathstreaks in the game. Hell, they even added new killstreaks. What are they doing?

Stopping Power was over powered so they took it out, also Cold Blooded/Ghost. They were getting so over powered they had to dumb them down or get rid of them. Cold Blooded is still in the game it just goes by different names and now it's multiple perks. So in MW3 it would be blind eye and assassin makes cold blooded/ghost. They are actually getting rid of second chance.

So how do you fix all of this?

a) Bring back the aforementioned Stopping Power
b) Stick to the number of perks and perk slots they have now
c) No more fucking specialist or support. You get to choose 3 killstreaks from a list of 10. No fucking stacking upon death or any of that bullshit.
d) Who designed the maps for MW2? You bring that guy back. If you can't get him because you fired him, get the guy from COD 2. If you can't get him, don't fucking make a multiplayer mode, because apparently every other developer Activision can hire doesn't have a clue what he's doing.
e) Cut the campaign and cut the price.
f) Piss off with this COD Elite bullshit and calm down on the DLC. You can't play any recent COD game without being flooded with notifications stressing you to buy the latest "3 really bad maps" DLC.
g) You get a gun and a secondary. Both of those guns get one attachment. Finite.
h) Make the PC versions decent again. If you can't, let a bunch of amateur modders handle it for you and don't fucking nuke their project. Leave AlterIW alone, let it live (or die) in peace.

a) Stopping Power is two over powered and shouldn't come back.
b) Getting rid of your kill steaks in MW3 to get extra perks was really no big deal. Now in Bops2 you have to get rid of guns, grenades, attachments just to have more perk. So if you want 6 perks your going to have to have a pistol or knife.
c) That's for only infinity ward, Treyarchs kill streaks never stack.
e) they would never cut the pice if they still have millions paying for the $59.99.
f) There is no more elite $50 anymore, it's a free service if you would like to use it.
g) if your willing to lose a perk to get more attachments fine buy me, In Bops they used warlord and missed out on better perks.


You have to remember that Infinity Ward and Treyarch are two different people with different ideas for CoD, I do prefer Treyarch cause to me they always seem to be taking good steps towards a better and more even CoD. If you play with friends and people that are going to jerks then you can always find fun in any game. I will probably never going to touch the single player but I will be play multiplayer and zombies. It's just a fun shooter to play with friends.

 

[peruvianskys]

I don't really care about the gameplay nearly as much as I care about the general aesthetic and framing, which is of course a creepy Eurocentric power fantasy. The actual mechanics don't appeal to me, but I wouldn't mind it nearly as much if the Call of Duty games didn't come with shamefully pro-war, pro-America, pro-destruction campaigns and a multiplayer that is focused on essentially nothing but just "see person, shoot person" bloodlust. It just seems to be designed solely to capitalize on the macho, jingoistic dehumanized warfare aesthetic that I find so distasteful and tacky.

 

[Lt._nefarious]

Well in a few days the Hardened edition of Blops 2 will arrive at my door so I think that pretty much sums up my opinion on CoD. But, why are people still needing to do this? Why do you have to defend a game you like just because others don't? And a game with a fan base so large you could probably occupy a decent sized country? Not saying the OP is bad or any of you are in the wrong some how but it just all feels a bit unnecessary... But, yeah, I totally agree with all your points.

 

[fix-the-spade]

d) Who designed the maps for MW2? You bring that guy back. If you can't get him because you fired him, get the guy from COD 2. If you can't get him, don't fucking make a multiplayer mode, because apparently every other developer Activision can hire doesn't have a clue what he's doing.

I would hazard a guess that any people who fulfill either of those qualifications are also the people who Activision attempted to use coercion and extortion against in an attempt to make them continue working without the pay and bonuses they had previously (and contractually) been promised.

Those people are now sat around their swimming pools, driving their nice cars and wondering what else to do with the many millions Activision paid them in that out of court settlement.

Which more or less sums up CoD really, the people who made it a success are gone forever, now you are stuck with what ever's left and the franchise will play out to nothing over the next decade...

 

[deathbydeath]

I actually wasn't planning to use those excuses. I was going to say that mechanically, it's basically a poor man's Stalker.

Relativism aside, the mechanics encourage really slow gunplay and they are a bit too forgiving. Not to mention that the level design is a bit too restrictive and not easy to maneuver in.