I've long been a fan of CoD multiplayer. Ever since CoD4, i've been hooked. It's always been that type of game (like a Madden i guess) that i can pop in and have fun with friends playing through a mechanically familiar game with subtle nuance changes from year to year. That said, there's things in this year's entry that i feel are the wrong direction to take the franchise or are just break the game.
- Stop recycling old bad ideas and stop stripping away good ones - it's a common complaint that CoD games are ridiculously familiar from year to year but this year's entry marks another instance of them taking something that people hated before and bringing it back or making it even worse. Things in Ghosts like overpowered weapons and map styles that break the pacing of the game (both of which i'll discuss in more detail further down.) Players didn't enjoy the first time and they don't need another go a few years later. Now i understand this is a console transition year so they were probably just stoked to get a game shipped but things that are genuinely enjoyable or useful to players like emblem editors or theater modes need to be locked from this point forward. Black Ops 1, Modern Warfare 3, and Black Ops 2 all had Theater modes. These weren't just showrooms for people to gather clips for their crappy YouTube montages, these were tools to help you learn about the game. Learn what other players do, how they beat you. Not having it is like being dropped off in the wilderness and not being given a map. The emblem editor is just self explanatory. People enjoy it, stop taking it out of your project scope every other year Infinity Ward.
- Overpowered weapons and crutches are abused by skilled players - Can we at least assume, that the majority of people who are ever going to care about Call of Duty are doing so now or have already been burnt out? The developers of these games year after year implement features in the game to aid newer players or assist them to be competitive and it ultimately hurts the game. Things like the overpowered weapons i mentioned above are placed into the game as crutches or "win sticks" for low level players. They're usually unlocked fairly early ensuring that everyone has access to them very soon, but the problem is while these items make a weak player competitive, they make a skilled player unstoppable. There's no question about it. If you roll up on someone carrying one of these OP "god guns" with a properly balanced weapon, you're gonna get smoked the majority of the time. These crutches don't just exist in class loadouts but in the very mechanics of the game in the form of an always on Aim Assist. Most people who have played enough CoD multiplayer on console has probably noticed a magnetic seeming pull when you aim at an enemy player. Now it doesn't suck your crosshair to center mass but it doesn't attach it to a moving player and "guide" you closer to them. This is another instance of something that aids a beginner and empowers a skilled on. Through mechanics like this, quickscoping is easier and hip fire spraying is more deadly.
- Stop enabling campers - They exist in every shooter, no matter what. they lurk in corners, waiting for people to cross their paths for easy kills. Thermal Scopes, deployable mines, guard dogs, large maps, and super powered sniper rifles all featured in this year's game are the perfect recipe for making every game, a camper's paradise. I can remember well playing MW2 and how much the majority of players loathed playing on Wasteland. It was a large map, with long sightlines, tall grass. Not much cover in the open. It was a camper's paradise. Similarities of this map to another called Stonehaven and to some extent Stormfront shows they clearly did not learn from past experience and have redrafted similar playing maps. Nobody likes people who play like this, people will just get frustrated and stop playing. Stop enabling them with your design choices.
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