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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.

Wasteland was a sniper's paradise.

I don't agree with #3 at all. There will always be doors to watch and corners to hide in and many players will always play that way no matter what you try. IMO the solution is to encourage camping by giving them good spots to camp from and that enables everybody else to know where they are, where they'll go and what spot to expect fire from. It worked beautifully in MW2.

Call Of Duty is still awesome BUT.

I just started playing Black Ops 2 a couple of days ago and I do agree with several points, first the magnetic pull of your gun on someone seems huge in this game, but the most annoying thing has to be the amount of things that you can drop on the floor and either completely kill someone or slow them down.

Also the unmanned aerial drones in BLOPS 2 are ridiculous. They just don't make the game fun.

However I now look at Call Of Duty like a Fifa or Madden, it's a sports game that makes minor tweaks each year. One thing I do really enjoy about Black Ops 2 is the 10 point system for loading out your guy, it really makes switching up perks and things fun.

Get rid of the overpowered IED, that thing is fucking undetectable. The claymore from past games was perfectly balanced, along with manually controlled C4s.

The lock-on system has been there since COD 4. I find it more annoying when there's 2 dudes next to each other. I'll try shooting one, while the other dude runs off and my aim follows him.

Camping is absolutely fine, what IS the problem? Getting killed by a camper - shame on him. Getting killed repeatedly by a camper - stop being shit and adapt.

@baillie: I agree about campers, they're not difficult to deal with

Dragons would be cool. Full on Reign of Fire style.

COD MP is like a bad ex-girlfriend you hook up with. you haven't see her for awhile and when u do you think yea lets try this again, she still looks pretty good, you know which buttons to push to makes her do the things you want. and its fun at first, you shoot off a bunch a rounds in long sessions but after not to long u start to remember all the frustration and irritating things about her but you say to yourself, hey i am having fun getting some action every night but eventually you realize why you stopped seeing her in first place, nothing has changed about her, she really doesn't look any better, and most of her friends horrible people. And speaking as someone that tries to make it work every year, we never learn are lessons and no matter what she will never change.

Remove the unlock grinding and go back to WW II

There's a lot of weird stuff they left out of Ghosts that were present in previous games, the main one that sticks out to me is that you can't join a friend's pregame lobby without an invite.

They fixed that in, like what, MW2?

There are others but I don't recall them off the top of my head.

Also, what are the "god guns" to you? I find a lot of the guns in Ghosts pretty strong and while there are some weaker ones I don't find myself cursing one weapon over all the others (although the SA-805 was rubbing me the wrong way right when the game launched).

I don't think you could ever make it fun again, at least not to the old players; it's the same with every competitive multiplayer game I've ever played in my life; once the community gets the game figured out, the only people that ever have fun past that point are the ones that spend too much time with it. You can't ever go back to those days where everyone was just screwing around and didn't know what they were doing, you just have to move on to the next big thing.

I really think they should do a WW II one again now. It'd be at least a change of pace in that way and it'd be really cool to see on next gen hardware.

They also need a new engine.

Yes, you can join a friend's lobby without being invited, I've done it a couple times[PS4]. Obviously you can't if the room's full though.

@sander: I'm on 360 and when I go to my friends list I can't join a pre-game lobby without and invite to it, joining a game already in progress works fine though.

I could be missing an obvious lobby privacy setting, but I can't find it.

Yep I agree with your points and would like to add on.

Singleplayer:

Go back to a historic period, doesn't matter which one. What made Call of Duty 1 & 2 great was the fact that you were actually in a war that mattered and the name felt appropriate. What made Modern Warfare 1 & 2 fantastic was the fact that there were so many "over the top" moments that no games since have been able to top (nor will be able to for the foreseeable future). They have the technology now to make the crazy historical war moments that were actually over the top in real life happen in a video game. Just imagine what they could do with stuff like parachuting behind enemy lines or storming a beach or sneaking in the jungle with the technology they have at their disposal.

Multiplayer

First and foremost, have both studios communicate and stay on the same design path if Activision is so insistent on this being an annual franchise. Nothing is more annoying than having 4 different unlock and progression systems in 4 years. Same goes for the actual game mechnics (dive to prone, leaning, etc.). Secondly, start trimming the fat; there are way too many weapons in these games that are too similar. Remember CoD4? There were 3-5 guns that were actually useful and each had their strengths and weaknesses, the rest of the guns were used by people who hated themselves.

You had:

• Ak47: Ultra powerful but high recoil
• M16: One round burst laser, but needed precision aiming.
• M40A3: One shot kill to upper body, slow reload and bolt action
• MP5: Fast rate of fire but lower damage, deadly up close.

And that's all you needed. Why have so many weapons that are only differ in appearance? With new consoles out, now is the best time to start rebuilding from the ground up. Take everything they've learned since 2007, keep the essentials and throw out the useless parts. People might bitch about loosing their precious camera jammer or whatever useless shit but you'll finally have a game that looks and runs next-gen, even if it is much lighter on content. Also, add some color to the maps please, it's impossible to tell enemy players from the background most of the time. This colorless world works in Gears multiplayer because the players are blue and red and stand out from the environment, in CoD everybody's uniform is grey or brown...

Co-op

This is the one aspect to these games that I don't feel like I could provide any help. I simply never enjoyed the zombies in CoD and only bothered with the spec-ops in MW2 & MW3. The missions in MW2 were great but the devs quickly ran out of ideas, because the missions in MW3 were fun but they were mostly the same. People really like the zombies mode in these games, so let Treyarch continue developing it. What the other studio can do in the off-years is simply add a co-op based time attack mode for the campaign missions or something, the hell do I know?

@jjbsterling: MSBS, USR, M14

I don't have a problem with campers in COD, the last few iterations have completely removed the ability to camp in my opinion. Since MW2, the maps in the CODs have become progressively worse. They are too small so the most effective guns end up being SMGs on most maps. The weapons themselves were probably balanced in each game but the size of the map meant that SMGs ruled the day. I also don't see the point of putting LMGs in the game. I don't know anyone who uses them.

it's over i don't think cod will be fun again...i've always been cod fan and every year like any fan we expect something new, different and exciting but what we get ? the same recycled crap every year since cod4

look at bf4 they upgrade their engine every game with even more awesome-er one ! while cod still using the same engine for more than 8 years

@baillie: If you are having trouble with IEDs, might I suggest putting the SitRep perk on one of your soldier loadouts and then shoot the IEDs with your gun to destroy them before they cause you problems?

@oldmanlight: If you are having trouble with campers, might I suggest putting a tracker sight on a gun for one of your soldier loadouts and being done with campers once and for all? There is a counter-balance to your problem. Also, you talked about god guns, but everything I've seen written up to this point has players saying that Ghosts has some of the most balanced guns in the franchise. Beyond that, you mentioned the "always on Aim Assist," but I'm assuming you didn't do much research to learn that they have no option for Aim Assist on Ghosts at all. There is no "auto aim" in the game at all. It is now based on actually drawing a bead on someone and shooting them. It requires skill this time around, and it's one of the biggest complaints that I've heard out of kids around my workplace (I work at a LAN gaming center) - they can't quick scope now, they can't hit someone...because they lack the skill necessary to actually aim at someone.

Seriously, every single complaint I see from people seems like incessant whining about "this is overpowered" and "that is overpowered," yet Ghosts feels like one of the first times that there is a counter to EVERY SINGLE THING in the multiplayer. If you aren't using the counter, then it's YOUR fault. It's either that or a lot of incorrect information being floated around.

Personally, I think Ghosts' only crippling point is that half of the maps in multiplayer are too large either vertically, in negative space on a given map, or internally through buildings and such. I've been in rounds on some maps (particularly Stormfront, Chasm, and Overlord) where either I or someone on a mic was running around for a minute or longer and couldn't find someone because the size of the maps is vastly too large for a solid 6-on-6 TDM (which, as the most played base mode in the game, is my basis for this judgment). However, there are some maps on there with FANTASTIC design: Prison Break, Freight, Strikezone, Sovereign, and Siege immediately come to mind. The rest are maps that I could go one way or the other.

Regardless, as someone who thought MW3 was a travesty for the franchise and BO2 did more things wrong than right, I feel like Ghosts is a real return-to-form for the franchise in general.

Therefore, I cannot honestly agree with much of the negativity people have thrown at this game in the least bit.

Also, the OP mentions that maps like Stormfront and Stonehaven "enable" campers. I don't understand how that works, as those two particular maps offer the LARGEST amount of negative space of any maps in Ghosts. Should I assume that by "campers" you mean "snipers?" If so, then what would you like a sniper to do? Run and gun with his big ass rifle? It's made for long distance shooting, and given that those maps play particularly well for long-range shooting, it would make sense that snipers can excel on them. However, you can still play tactically with an assault rifle or even an SMG (which I do on both maps) and achieve good results.

Maybe you are referring to the idea of "working an area." This is also not camping. This is picking a sector of the map and focusing on remaining in that particular sector for a period of time, and this is a perfectly legitimate strategy.

Camping is when you sit in a corner or behind a particular object and do not move from that spot, waiting for an unsuspecting person to come along that won't know you are there or won't see you immediately and then kill you because of this. While I can say that many of the maps have the ability to enable campers because of the sheer breadth of nooks and crannies, the tracker sight was created SPECIFICALLY to stop this from happening. If you don't want to spend the squad points to unlock it for at least one gun and put that gun in a kit, then again, the problem rests solely on your shoulders.

I have a theory about "fun" in Call of Duty, which applies to most competitive games: A set amount of "fun" exists, and those who are winning take the majority of it, and those who are losing are left with little to no fun. That guy quick-scoping and going 35 and 3? He's having a fucking blast and loves this game. Everyone else in that match? not so much. The best you can hope for is a relatively even playfield so that it's less likely you'll have no fun, but then it's only kinda fun. Things like care packages try to give everyone a chance at that big fun, but it's always at the expense of someone else's fun.

I don't mean to say it's the losing player's fault he's having no fun, it's just that it's more complicated than simply making things more fun. There's only so much to go around. (all this strictly applies to competitive games, co-op and such is a different story)

@jakob187: i agree there's a big difference between locking down a choke point and just straight up camping. camping is people who do not move, they do not look in another direction, they sit and wait for someone to spawn or run into the FOV and then they shoot them. and yes, these 2 maps offer the longest sightlines and are where i see the behavior most commonly of any of the maps so by that definition, they are enabling it.

Also, this game is far from perfectly balanced this video sums up probably the main offender of unbalance and the auto aim i speak of isn't an option, it's an aim assist that exists in the console versions, it's been there since MW2, check out this. (sorry for the youtube spam)

@oldmanlight: But again, they are not enabling camping because they have offered a very hard counter to it with the tracker sight. As far as I know, there is no perk that can stop someone from seeing you with the tracker sight.

Nonetheless, I have yet to see "camping" on either Stonehaven or Stormfront. I've seen people "work the area" and people sniping, but I have yet to walk into a house only to be shot in the back by a guy sitting in a corner. If anything, for Stonehaven having so much negative space and such easy sniping lines, I see very FEW people sniping and most people just going full run 'n' gun. Hell, I played a match a few nights back where almost everyone was using SMGs on that map!

So in my own personal experience, I simply cannot agree with your grievances. Mind you, I get to play Ghosts maybe twice a week for a total of about 10-20 matches at most, so the data that I can even offer to this debate is minimal at best. However, again, I work at a LAN gaming center, and camping is not the complaint I keep hearing about. Most of the customers have complaints about:

• Guard dogs being glitched to where they can kill through walls (which Activision has already said there will be a hotfix for)
• Half of the maps being too big
• Shotguns being so underpowered that they aren't worth having spent time to program into the game (and I agree, they are all terrible)

Beyond that, everyone gripes about how long it takes to level up, but since you can buy LITERALLY EVERYTHING besides paint for your guns with squad points, leveling up is about nothing more than prestiging and that's it.

I'll do it in one step OP

1. Make Battlefield 2142 with agile gundams.

. . . ! ! !

@oldmanlight: I'm sorry for my incorrect use of the term "auto aim." I meant "aim assist" the entire time, which is what provided the ability for people to easily use tactics like quick scoping. I was always aware of the "magnetic" property, but I didn't know that it's what the community considered "auto aim." Personally, I don't use "aim assists" or "auto aims" if I can prevent it, being an old school Q3/UT2K4 player. However, I understand why they have the "auto aim" in the console versions, as you are using analog sticks on a controller...whereas PC players are using a digital input through KB/M. They have the capability of higher dexterity with their method of controlling, thus meaning "auto aim" is not necessary. With a controller, well...have you played a game with the "auto aim" unavailable? It gets hairy and wonky REALLY fast.

Granted, in the long run, "aim assist" in the traditional sense of "snap to ADS and automatically lock on to the nearest target" as it was in previous COD games is not existent. The slow down experienced when you come across a character is a way to help the player slow down their overall movement and aim to focus on the target necessary. I've personally never taken issue with the "auto aim" in console games. Everyone has that available as default, so all in all, it means that it's on a level playing field in that aspect.

As for the MSBS, I can see what the guy is getting at in the video, and his hard data makes sense. However, I can also point out that my CBJ with integrated armor piercing and Muzzle/Rapid attachments can be just as OP as that gun. The only difference is that I will not have the same range, but I can move much faster, ADS faster, have a higher headshot damage multiplier, an 1100+RPM, and even get a 5% reduction in my recoil by adding the Rapid Fire into the package. Is that OP? I know that no one is whining about it on the forums...or at least I haven't seen any threads about it. Everyone complains about the Vector though, solely because Muzzle/Foregrip turns it into nearly the effective longshot range of an assault rifle.

That's the point of attachments, though - they are meant to be mixed and matched as a way for people to customize the way that they play. I personally use an AK12 with a silencer. Why? I like using silencers, I like using an AK12, and I do well with the kit.

But nonetheless, your video does make a point for itself, and there's not really anything I can argue there, so I concede on that front.