So my friends and i have been playing Blops 2 for 9 hours straight and already we started talking about balance. Obviously, its still very early, but we still think some of the points are valid. This is my take on it. 1. Your health is waaay too low. Either they should down the damage on all the guns across the board, or they should increase your health. As it is now, you die near instantly. Wether its your health, the firerate of the guns or just the damage output, i dunno, but it really needs to be tweaked. Add a juggernaught perk or something 2. Quickscoping is too strong. One sniper rifle in paticulor have almost zero recoil, good firerate and 1 hit kill anywhere on the body. They need to remove that shit asap. 3. The ghost(assassin) perk is first unlocked at level 55(last level). Whats up with that? You cant move anywhere without getting shot in the back now. 4. Scorestreak needs to be reworked, its confusing just exactly how many points you have and how many you need to get the next streak. 5, spawn points are still bad, but i suppose thats not going to get changed. Do you guys agree? Or do you have anything to add?

1) Health too low or guns too powerful compared to what?  Black Ops 1?  MW3?   
 
2) I loathe quick scoping, but you should take a look at game replays to decide how truly overpowered the tactic is.  Most quickscopers suck, and die more than they kill.  Doesn't feel like that when die to it, though. 
 
3) Ghost has been nerfed a ton, but how is any of that unbalanced?  Also, some of my best games in Black Ops were using an unsilenced weapon without ghost.  The changes could hardly be argued as a balance issue.
 
4) Scorestreak may not be as simple, but it's been reworked to support playing the objective.  That's completely worth a little more complication to me.
 
5) Again, spawn points are bad compared to what?  I've seen people say Black Ops had horrible spawns, while also claiming that MW3 had the best spawn system in the series.  If you are one of those people, I'm just going to ignore you right now.

Spawns seems to be generally fine so far, certainly lenghts better than MW3.. One thing that does annoy me are the SMG's, they seem to outclass everything right now.

@rebgav said:

@JacDG said:

Spawns seems to be generally fine so far, certainly lenghts better than MW3.. One thing that does annoy me are the SMG's, they seem to outclass everything right now.

SMGs are going to seem overpowered until people know the maps better and aren't running around like headless chickens. The effective range of the SMGs seems really, really short this time around, it's very difficult to close the gap on someone who has LoS with a medium-range weapon.

Perhaps, I just feel I should win more one on one fights than I am currently doing, maybe it's the shotguns that suck or maybe the people who got the game early like myself are just some of the more hardcore players, I'll wait and see.

Honestly, i cant see myself playing this much more if something doesnt get fixed. Your health is low, i get that, you die quickly, but the smgs are so overpowered you get instant killed in pretty much any encounter now.

The spawn points are miles better than mw3, but still bad. I have had several occasions where i was standing way back and someone spawned directly behind me, knife distance. Thats just fucking stupid.

While quickscopers might not get good scores(which i seen several do tho) its disrupting to your exeperince and ruins your streak. I feel that its too easy to utilize this time around.

Seriously fix the fucking smgs.

Seems alright to me. But then again I haven't played since COD4.

Everything you said I have seen complained about all the other COD games. Nothin new and most of it will stay around. Sadly it will be impossible to have the game "balanced " in everyone's eyes.

Balance tweaks will come, but nothing nearly as drastic as what you seem to think is necessary.

The health and damage are in line with what I expect in these games. There are occasionally some bad spawns, but on smaller maps, it's just something that's going to occasionally happen. Ghost is far from essential, you just need to adjust your strategies to account for not having it.

Quickscoping can be pretty annoying when you run into someone that's very good at it, but I haven't seen that often enough to consider it gamebreaking.

You guys honestly dont think the smgs (pdw mostly) are OP as hell? Really?

@Jethuty said:

You guys honestly dont think the smgs (pdw mostly) are OP as hell? Really?

no I don't

but an LMG with Full Metal Jacket rounds, hybrid optic scope, and rapid fire do kill people rather quickly......

@Jethuty said:

You guys honestly dont think the smgs (pdw mostly) are OP as hell? Really?

If we want to talk about unbalanced, let's talk about the operative class. A hella good assault rifle with a decent side arm, scavenger, ghost, smoke grenades and frags? Meanwhile, literally all of this is hidden behind some of the highest level walls in the game?

Now that seems unbalanced. And I like how I play CoD, which is traditionally quietly, or at the very least, out of sight from UAV. Hiding Ghost as the highest level perk is the most infuriating thing for me.

Funny thing is, my nephew hollered at me to check something out last night. He got the final kill in a match with an smg, and we watched the slowmo kill cam replay. After the first couple of stray bullets, I counted 1,2,3....up to 9 bullets fired directly into the guy's head before he even started going down...from a seriously short range.

I don't know these games very well, and I don't play multiplayer at all, but that seemed a little ludicrously *under powered* to me, and painfully funny to watch it drag out for bloody ever in slow mo.

Funny thing is, my nephew hollered at me to check something out last night. He got the final kill in a match with an smg, and we watched the slowmo kill cam replay. After the first couple of stray bullets, I counted 1,2,3....up to 9 bullets fired directly into the guy's head before he even started going down...from a seriously short range.

I don't know these games very well, and I don't play multiplayer at all, but that seemed a little ludicrously *under powered* to me, and painfully funny to watch it drag out for bloody ever in slow mo.

I don't know shit about the balance of this game, but I do know that I used to have KDR's of around .9 -> 1 on MW1,2 and Blops... I'm hovering around 1.5 in Blops 2. I didn't get any better, so I don't know what's going on, but I think it's something to consider.

@rebgav said:

@Jethuty: Scorestreak seems fine, there's a meter in the UI which tells you how close you are to the next streak.

The meter isn't good enough. It's the same size whether you're going for a UAV or for a Swarm, and it's very difficult to tell if you need "just one more kill" to the next level. I'd appreciate a number showing the score required till the next level.

@Jethuty: My impressions after about 4-5 hours, and i've played a LOT of call of duty over the years.

1. Health feels fine. A little more forgiving than MW3 i think. I've gotten hurt a few times by someone hitting me with one or two shots and been forced to fall back to cover or get to safety

2. I agree quickscoping is lame but i haven't seen a lot of people doing it and most people who attempt it do just spam it so just keep moving intentionally from cover to cover and don't be caught in the open.

3. I don't think any one perk is OP at this point but i think the issue more is that people have spent so much time playing this that the sound of a gunshot will just bring people swarming you like a horde of zombies.

4. Scorestreak made sense to me once i was able to choose my scorestreaks and paid attention to how i was being rewarded during play. Some of the games i've gotten the most scorestreaks have been objective games which work great for me since i'm very much of the attitude K/D be damned during objective.

5. Spawn system i think i just accept as being bad in all CoD games. During objective they seem ok but everyone once in a while i get spawned in some location that i'm like "why'd i spawn here?" but there's never an instance where i get spawned in an area that seems unfair to another player, at least in objective types.

I feel like weapons have had the best changes, with respect to they function as expected. SMG and shotguns are for short range, LMGs are for suppression but you pay a big movement penalty. Snipers are for long range and ARs are kinda the everygun. Plus, pistols are good!

@rebgav: Well, to be fair, I would play much more carefully if I was close to a decent streak. Putting a number there wouldn't be a big deal.

SMGs are almost always the best weapon for the best players who play the most and know what routes to take to flank et cetera; camping is all well and good but you don't get as much map coverage and you'll almost never "roll" the map if you don't move aggressively. Now at least on PC back in the dedicated server days there were 1-2 extremely good players out of about 10,000; assuming the playerbase is substantially worse on consoles its probably something like 1 out of 25k-50k; so chances of actually running into an extremely good player are fairly abysmal.

@rebgav said:

@CatsAkimbo said:

@rebgav said:

@Jethuty: Scorestreak seems fine, there's a meter in the UI which tells you how close you are to the next streak.

The meter isn't good enough. It's the same size whether you're going for a UAV or for a Swarm, and it's very difficult to tell if you need "just one more kill" to the next level. I'd appreciate a number showing the score required till the next level.

Right, that would help you make the all-important decision on whether you're going to get killed or not before your next streak.

If i'm one kill away from a high level score streak, I absolutely want to know so I can play a little safer and not rush. If i'm a kill and a "half" away, I want to know so if I encounter two enemies, I might try to tag them both to get an extra assist instead of focusing on one. It's general transparency to be aware of what's going on rather than just guessing.

@CatsAkimbo said:

@rebgav said:

@CatsAkimbo said:

@rebgav said:

@Jethuty: Scorestreak seems fine, there's a meter in the UI which tells you how close you are to the next streak.

The meter isn't good enough. It's the same size whether you're going for a UAV or for a Swarm, and it's very difficult to tell if you need "just one more kill" to the next level. I'd appreciate a number showing the score required till the next level.

Right, that would help you make the all-important decision on whether you're going to get killed or not before your next streak.

If i'm one kill away from a high level score streak, I absolutely want to know so I can play a little safer and not rush. If i'm a kill and a "half" away, I want to know so if I encounter two enemies, I might try to tag them both to get an extra assist instead of focusing on one. It's general transparency to be aware of what's going on rather than just guessing.

What? Aren't you always going to try and kill everyone you see? Do you play like a retard until you luckily get a few kills in a row which nets you closer to a streak, and THEN you start taking things seriously? Cool, I play that way too.

It's that cycle... you die, respawn so fast, that you have no real time to get mad, you start raging and it just goes all the sideways. But once you get into the zone... it is glorious. This is coming from MW3, I had some matches where I was just... stupid good and I am HORRIBLE at COD, but it eventually clicks. From watching vids and TNT, Health seems kinda low, but COD has been one of those games, once your enemy gets the bead on you, that's pretty much your ass.

Though I did notice that it seems like Assualt Rifles don't do that much damage, like half a clip to drop a guy? I know a SMG can work fast, because it is an SMG, and at distance, you might as well be shooting spitballs, but up close, SMGs are king. And a lot of the maps take place in tight corridors.

I wish I could figure out what the hell my problem is. I absolutely am AWFUL at this game in multiplayer! I played quite a bit of the original Black Ops and had around 1.5 or so KDR, which for me is pretty good. However, in with the sequel I'll go 11-10, and then the next game 5-15. I'm all over the place at this point.

@MightyDuck said:

I wish I could figure out what the hell my problem is. I absolutely am AWFUL at this game in multiplayer! I played quite a bit of the original Black Ops and had around 1.5 or so KDR, which for me is pretty good. However, in with the sequel I'll go 11-10, and then the next game 5-15. I'm all over the place at this point.

From what I've played of Black Ops 2's multiplayer, it's the exact opposite. I sucked in BlOps 1 but I've been doing pretty well in BlOps 2.

Yeah, the only thing is that AR's seem a little under powered, but I've gotten to level 51 rocking the MTAR almost all the way, and I'm digging it. The game feels really tight to me in terms of balance, spawns get a little bad on Nuketown and stuff like that, but that shit is just going to happen on small maps. Nothing can be done about it, as far as I can tell.