*Just to make it perfectly clear. This is not a discussion about the graphics engine, the short SP, or the fact that we get one every year. this is purely for the sake of MP. If that's all you have to add to this discussion then please keep it to yourself.

Now to the subject i wanted to discuss.

I never really got into the MP from CoD4 onward because by the time I got around playing it, which was about a year after release, people were already such experts that getting into the MP was, to me at least, a waste of time and more importantly, not fun at all which is the reason any of us play video games to begin with.

I did though played the CoD 2 MP back in the day, mostly on my then new mac mini, even though I got into it also a year after launch. However, in CoD 2's favor I never felt like the elephant in the room, so to speak. I never once got the feeling that CoD 4 gave me which was a sense of utter failure. Mostly because in CoD 2 the meta-game wasn't as important as the gameplay itself. People did not play it for the sake of improved K/D ratio, exp points, unlocking new perks, and all those things CoD 4 introduced into the series. People played it simply for the sake of playing. There were winners and losers as is with all pass time with a competitive nature but it wasn't the "meat and potatoes" of the game.

Now don't get me wrong, I like the meta-game as much as the next guy, I didn't put 180 hours into BC2 if i hadn't, but I just feel this aspect of MP shooters got lost along the way and we as players were just too quick to discard it because of our obsessive nature with the meta-game. It almost feels like baking a really good cake and then adding frosting, nuts, fruits, more frosting, chocolate shavings, edible ornaments, and finally top it off with cherries. Now I know it sounds like good cake that most people would love to sing their teeth into but to me the magic of a simple cake is just gone.

Now I would like to ask you this. If CoD forsake all, or at least most, the meta-game for the sake of pure gameplay, would you still play it? Would you still invest hours upon hours playing the game for sake of playing it?

Personally I know CoD would never go back to it's roots, but an aging gamer like me can still have hopes.

if it was good sure, why not. il play any game if its good and fun. just like CoD is now.

I prefer multiplayer without progression and had the most fun with CoD 2 when it came online. So yes I agree with everything you are saying.

Fuck the meta-game.

@Bell_End: But do you think it'll be widely accepted by current players? I know a lot of people here have played the old school MP games but a large portion of current CoD players are kids that were just too young at the time to experience pure gameplay. Do you think those players would accept it?

I know the gameplay element is there, but it's buried beneath a mountain of meta-game.

Yeah, I would. No perks, no FPS caps, no bullshit locked cvars, server mods, user made content. I'd probably play it for a bit.

I don't think it'd be incredibly popular but I'd play it. You may also think so highly about COD 2 because those maps were fantastic. Still the best in the series.

The weird thing about the "meta game" in military shooters is that it suits the setting really well.

When you join, you're a nobody. You're worthless, and from this point you earn some basic skills and get the "right" to be called a Private (or whatever your country's equivalent lowest enlisted rank is). As a career progresses, you earn more qualifications within your specialization, achieve a higher rank, and so on. For all intents and purposes, you're a better soldier. It's something you earn, it's a sense of achievement.

But what these games really lack is that a higher rank, which comes with greater access to resources, also comes with a bigger responsibility. You're expected to perform to a higher standard. This doesn't really exist in CoD. I don't know how to represent it in a game. I won't try guessing some kind of solution. All I know is that I enjoy the meta game, and while I agree that it's intimidating, it's better to have it than not. To me it fits with the military shooter genre.

EDIT: To sum up, I'd rather see the meta game evolve than get removed.

@Giantstalker said:

But what these games really lack is that a higher rank, which comes with greater access to resources, also comes with a bigger responsibility. You're expected to perform to a higher standard.

MAG actually has that very thing you were talking about. I suggest you check into it if you are interested in getting bigger responsibility with higher rank.

I still remember some of the bigger conflicts from COD2. I miss big scale battles and the WW2ness of previous COD games. I just want a different focus for COD. The series still had potential.

Take that mother fucker to the future.

Personally, I think that meta-game is really what makes Call of Duty what it is. The game would have to be significantly better, and different, to support itself without. Maybe I'm cynical because I'm not a Call of Duty fan, but I don't think Call of Duty (as it is) would work without that system. Further, I think it would have to evolve so far beyond what it is to support itself without that system, you might as well not even bother with the Call of Duty name. Like it or not, when somebody thinks Call of Duty, they're thinking about leveling up, 'prestiging', and unlocking new perks.

If the question is, could a modern game work without that system? Absolutely. I don't think the answer is to just scrap the idea and go back to where we came from, but to come up with something new and clever to make us all forget about "leveling up."

@HatKing said:

If the question is, could a modern game work without that system? Absolutely. I don't think the answer is to just scrap the idea and go back to where we came from, but to come up with something new and clever to make us all forget about "leveling up."

Interesting idea. But as you said, at this point CoD is really all about the meta-game. Do you think it might be too late, from the avrage player perceptive, to try and remake "lighting in a bottle" so to speak?

COD3 had the best multiplayer.

No I'm not joking.

COD4 is fully playable and being played even now. The good game is still around. I dunno, I feel the question is some way to generate interest in a new CoD game and frankly I can be bothered. BF3 offers a much more rewarding corridor shooter experience at this stage with better graphics, better weapons, much better handling and clearly better ballistics. The meta game comes from BF and Killstreaks became stupid once MW2 hit and they really don't reward skill (and can't reward skill) in the tiny, tiny maps which MW2 onwards offered.

I know, I sound like I hate CoD but I really don't, I just feel that CoD MW2 capitlised on the surprising success of CoD4 in all the wrong ways; it removed the arcade scoring component so people couldn't really hone their skills offline, it amped up the killstreaks to 11 which only made the game silly, it stole content from fan made sources and sold that back to people as new features and it removed dedicated servers and mod support for the PC. MW2 was where the series really declined and I don't think it can ever come back to what it once was; a surprisingly good modern combat game, because Activision still don't give a real fuck about their communities beyond being able to monitise them and any competitive game is only as good as the scene which supports it.

@mordukai said:

@Bell_End: But do you think it'll be widely accepted by current players? I know a lot of people here have played the old school MP games but a large portion of current CoD players are kids that were just too young at the time to experience pure gameplay. Do you think those players would accept it?

I know the gameplay element is there, but it's buried beneath a mountain of meta-game.

but you don't have to buy in to the meta game that much really. i play now and again with friends and we don't really care about all that stuff. but its there if people want it i guess.

i think there should be different types of shooters out their whether its COD, BF, ArmA, Halo they all offer something a bit different. sometimes i want to play CoD sometimes its ArmA

not really sure what your getting at

@SeriouslyNow said:

I feel the question is some way to generate interest in a new CoD game and frankly I can be bothered.

Obviously you don't me well enough. The last thing I am interested in is generating interest in a new CoD game. that job will be filled soon enough by other on these forums. I am truly interested is knowing where people stand on the issue I brought up. I would very much would like to ear you answering my questions.

Do you think CoD, or even BF/BC, can still exist if the developers remove as much of the meta game as possible?

@mordukai said:

@SeriouslyNow said:

I feel the question is some way to generate interest in a new CoD game and frankly I can be bothered.

Obviously you don't me well enough. The last thing I am interested in is generating interest in a new CoD game. that job will be filled soon enough by other on these forums. I am truly interested is knowing where people stand on the issue I brought up. I would very much would like to ear you answering my questions.

Do you think CoD, or even BF/BC, can still exist if the developers remove as much of the meta game as possible?

I really don't think so. We live in a world where meta gaming has become part and parcel of almost every gaming experience and CoD's gameplay without the meta element is little more than SoF2 without weapon unlocks on even smaller maps. CoD gameplay was never particularly stellar in terms of MP so boiled down to its raw elements I think most people would find it rather unsatisfying.

Sure, I had a lot of fun with Black Ops' multiplayer vs bots (with my cousin), played some online too and if I didn get sniped/no scoped across the level through 5 little nooks I had quite a bit of fun.
The problem with BF and CoD, in my opinion, is how the community plays nowadays, its not my cup of tea and it takes the fun out of it for me.
 
If the next set of war games goes back to the basics I'll be on the front lines from day one.
Until that happens however I will keep longing for a new Timesplitters.

At this point, I'm so attached to meta-games. I'd like this if I could have vanity items and stats at least, don't need unlocks.

http://www.shootmania.com/

I would go back to CoD if they changed the map design away from arcade-style FFAs to having conflict zones, but that's never gonna happen. It's probably not exactly what you'd call back to basics, more back to the roots. I don't think the meta-game is the thing that ruins most people time in CoD, it's the fact that the maps and gameplay is designed for cheap deaths (which ultimately also leads to easy kills, the big draw of the game). They mixed the 2 different styles of FPSs I enjoy (tactical shooters and arcadey gibfests), and while there's certainly a lot of people who like it to me it's just the worst combination imaginable. CoD is a game for people that revel in getting kills, not for people who get upset about being killed, with or without the metagame.

No interest in the stale arcadey gameplay of Call of Duty, with or without perks/progression.

After playing Red Orchestra 2, I'd like more WW2 shooters again. Never really got tired of that setting The problem was they where all MOH/COD style games of walking in a straight line watching scripted sequences. Then they changes the setting and managed to trick everyone very much like throwing a towel over a bulls heads.

Yes in a nutshell. The first COD I played online was Big Red One - I didn't own the newest console back then. I played that game almost as incessantly as I have the last few iterations. I freely admit - I'm hooked on the formula. It helps that I fuck shit up at these games.

I do not think a game that took a step back to more bare-bones, pure multiplayer would be a good idea from a business perspective. And since Activision is the greediest business of them all, it ain't happening.

@kmdrkul said:

I do not think a game that took a step back to more bare-bones, pure multiplayer would be a good idea from a business perspective. And since Activision is the greediest business of them all, it ain't happening.

I'll have to agree with that. However, we all were ready to write EA off before then they started changing thing around. One can hope.

I really liked Black Ops after being put off by MW2, I thought MW2 went too crazy with the whole you can get killstreaks off kills from a killstreak and the nuke. Black Ops just felt right the servers were alot better and I really dug the campaign the only thing missing was the best thing from MW2 spec ops, but the maps, killstreaks and customization was alot better than MW 1 and 2

@mordukai said:

@HatKing said:

If the question is, could a modern game work without that system? Absolutely. I don't think the answer is to just scrap the idea and go back to where we came from, but to come up with something new and clever to make us all forget about "leveling up."

Interesting idea. But as you said, at this point CoD is really all about the meta-game. Do you think it might be too late, from the avrage player perceptive, to try and remake "lighting in a bottle" so to speak?

No, I really don't. I mean, I don't expect the leveling up to disappear entirely. What I'm trying to say is that there will probably be some new brilliant idea - hopefully soon? - that becomes all the rage. Looking at games like Mass Effect 3 and Super Monday Night Combat, we're starting to see the evolution of a paid model. The leveling system is still there, but it's almost tertiary to the game itself and the loot. It's an interesting concept, and it might be next big thing.

It appears to me, though maybe I misread, that your chief concern about this "meta-game" is that it, to a degree, extinguishes the team spirit, or what was the social nature of multiplayer gaming. People might as well be playing a single player game for as much as they care about what's going on outside of the leveling up. This might be a little too reductionist, but I think the solution here might be as obvious as making better games. I think it's hard for people to care because they're playing something so similar to what they played last year, and the year before, and the year before that. The only drive comes from the leveling up. Think about it, if Modern Warfare 3 were released today as a traditional shooter, scrapping the leveling and unlocking meta-game entirely, do you think anybody would still be playing it? It's not likely.

I think what we need to see is a return to a concentration on the evolution of the game, not so much the peripheral systems. It seems like every multiplayer game released now brags about it's ranking system and loot, but never about the level design or actual gameplay. It's all the same game with, sometimes, slightly different characters and environments. Gears of War was truly unique upon release, and look at the splash it made, but now it's been the source of so many rehashes and inspirations, that even it isn't really that interesting anymore. Same applies to Call of Duty.

It seems that these game changers (no pun intended) tend to come a few times per console cycle. The games that really set the bar for what multiplayer is all about for that generation. This cycle we had Call of Duty, Gears of War, and Left 4 Dead (I'm sure somebody could add to the list); don't get me wrong, we've seen plenty of brilliant games spawned from the trendsetters, but this extended console cycle might be to blame for the stagnant creativity we're beginning to see. My guess is that once the next generation roles out, and the developers have a couple years to wrap their minds around it all, we begin to see some new, really interesting, ideas. Frankly, I can't wait to box up my 360 and PS3.

I would take a basic COD 2 multiplayer part over its modern siblings any day. I really loved COD 2's multiplayer, it was one of the best launch games for my 360. Thats not to say it was perfect though it had a lot of connectivity issues, and the True Skill system was not very great. But still i kept playing it online for a very long time.

It was nice you could just get in there, pick a weapon load out and go shoot stuff up.

COD needs to be more like CS

EDIT: Meaning more modes, I want zombie modes where i play a zombie, or gun game, or surfing, or ...

How can you get more 'back to the basics' then it already is? You go around and shoot dudes. The only real change has been the addition of the ever-present 'follow' character that is in every COD game. Are the mechanics really that different now to warrant revisiting how the old games played?

@Jothel said:

COD3 had the best multiplayer.

No I'm not joking.

yes you are c'mon.

@JasonR86 said:

How can you get more 'back to the basics' then it already is? You go around and shoot dudes. The only real change has been the addition of the ever-present 'follow' character that is in every COD game. Are the mechanics really that different now to warrant revisiting how the old games played?

I think he means getting rid of the killstreaks and perks and whatnot. Call of duty has played the same throughout the whole series. I like the games and would take them over some game that gets praise solely because it is trying to be different regardless of how shit it is.

I suppose I would, but my biggest issue with the more recent (non-IW) CoDs has been with the maps and less so with the progression systems in place.

In MW and MW2, there always seemed to be a sense that you and your team could hold a position. Find a building, or a place in the map, where you could set up firing lines, and then all the action in a match would flow in and around that position. There was a real sense of momentum in who was winning and who wasn't, and if the losing team might be able to make a comeback based on how much pressure they were putting on. I felt that was missing in Black Ops and MW3, and that the maps in those games were less about controlling area and more about being constantly on the move. But this may be more about my personal preference in playing FPS games than anything else. Still, I would go back if there were more maps like MW2's Derail and Highrise and MW's Crossfire.

As for progression, I actually largely ignored it. I never prestiged, because I never saw a real draw to it. In MW2, I didn't bother with any of the other guns once I became really comfortable with the SCAR-H.

I would rather they went back to WWII not a fan of the modern ones, but if they are going to add red dots and shit like that to the guns they can go fuck themselves.

I love progression systems in FPS games. The more the devs can do to keep me hooked (short of DLC), the better. I don't play COD, though, because I feel like they kind of hit their creative peak in 2007, with the first Modern Warfare. Everything after that has just been completely derivative.
 
Edit: So, in answer to your question, "No, probably not."

If the CoD metagame is stripped out, all you are really left with is a poorer version of Counterstrike or Day of Defeat or what have you (pick your poison I guess). The fact is that the shooting, movement, etc in the CoD series (going back to the first) has always been pretty arcadey and imprecise compared to more skill-based shooters, and it's that very fact combined with the metagame that has seen it embraced by the masses the way it has, as it can feel rewarding for players of all skill levels (especially as of MW3). (I don't want this to sound like I hate Call of Duty either - the games are fine, even if I was over it pretty quickly after playing MW and Blops; CS and all that don't do it much for me either anymore, I'm almost solely a Tf2 and BF3 man now.)

I think the ship has prolly sailed on taking out the meta game. I'd play it, but I'm getting set in my ways. Must be getting old!

@mordukai: If they returned the MP of Call of Duty back to the first Call of Duty game's MP, then yes I would actually play it.

I really miss the glory days of COD2 but what I miss more is COD3. I know most people don't like it or have never played it enough but the way the MP was put together was something I truly miss. Ranking up your class during a match because you were doing good was more rewarding than earning XP for every little thing you do.

Oh hell yeah, everyone basically on an even playing field. No stupid perks and ridiculous weapon attachments.

In a way teh most fun in a call of duty was on a stripped server that had no perks or killstreaks and all that..

but at that point i'll just wait for cs:go

You should check out Ground Branch by Blackfoot Studios OP.

Am I not correct in saying if you play the hardcore modes there aren't any killstreaks or perks anyway?

I really enjoyed the online play in black ops actually, hardly played any of MW3, the map design just seems so basic, if you don't want to run round with an Assault Rifle you're basically buggered. I'll buy the new one as I enjoyed the first Blops.

I think alot of what ruined COD for me is how people play now, it's become such a big thing but at the same time it feels more elitist now than ever before, people play dirty and cheap and hell IW does nothing but ENCOURAGE it (quickscoping) it just used to feel more..innocent? like people were playing for the fun and not to get their K/D up and hardcore clan crap.

I'll never understand how people don't like unlock progression in games. I guess I'm the only one who likes a goal other than "Kill more dudes than the other team, round 5000".

The only CoD I really liked was CoD4 and even that got frustrating at times. The only change that I really want from their multiplayer is to make it so my bullets don't so any damage to the guy I was shooting at if I die before they hit. That shit is the most aggravating part of the series for me.

All those stupid things are probably the reason why I was so drawn to CoD when I was younger...  I think thats why I cant sink a lot of hours into many shooters now

This is my obligatory mention of the fact that CS is still going strong.

Go back to your conversation.

Yes I support this. I haven't really enjoyed shooters since the whole mass unlock thing started (It was fine in certain cases like BF2, where there were few unlocks and they weren't really better than the main weapons).  It makes it feel like worse players can get artificially good because of time spent in the game unlocking stuff that gives them an advantage that is unnecessary. It's also why I don't like TF2 anymore. I loved it when it first came out but then they added a bunch of unlocks and you just get destroyed if you don't have some of them now.  I mean, I can still do a good job as engineer but some of the other classes I feel useless now.
 
Also, the whole "Yo check out my sick K/D ratio and also you suck" attitude got old a loooong time ago. You go into games and all you hear is people treating each other like garbage, and that sucks all the fun out of the game. I used to love going into games of Battlefield and Counterstrike and people would be having fun while chatting (other than those hardcore people, but they were easy to ignore because there was only one or two of them), now it's just 14 year olds telling each other various ways in which their parents are going to die.

I would still go back and play COD 2 if enough people were still playing it online.

@mordukai: Hells yes I would play it.

@HatKing said:

Like it or not, when somebody thinks Call of Duty, they're thinking about leveling up, 'prestiging', and unlocking new perks.

I haven't taken the time to read all of these posts, so please forgive any redundancy, but this is the truth and it's a damn shame. I still remember when I held the franchise in high regard. I played Call of Duty 1 multiplayer for years. Even to this day it's still good! Hard to say that I've been excited about new Call of Duty in the last 5 or 6 years, and there have been as many new games in the series in that time. Says a lot.

• Fuck leveling up and 'prestiging'
• Bring back WWII and my Kar98k
• Make a real effort to focus on better multiplayer maps and spawns
• Do all of this:
• @WilltheMagicAsian said:
  

  Yeah, I would. No perks, no FPS caps, no bullshit locked cvars, server mods, user made content. I'd probably play it for a bit.

But it'll never happen.