The thread title as seen above is the actual title of a video on the official PlayStation You Tube account. It is the title that you see before you click the video, at which point you can see the full title: "Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare – 1/10 Quartermaster Update Trailer | PS4"

Hilarious.

For those who still haven't wrapped your head around it, 1/10 refers to the 10th of January, when the update was released. Sorry for the "click bait" but I wanted you to experience the video title as everyone on the PlayStation You Tube account has. It's just funnier that way. Besides, I also want to talk about the update in question. That's an interesting situation.

The recent Infinite Warfare update seems to be designed for the same purpose that Black Ops 3's updates served, to add loads of crappy random loot that nobody wants, and make it continuously improbable that players will ever unlock what they actually want. Only something different happened right before this update that has the community divided and fairly upset.

Two or three weeks ago, Infinity Ward featured a promotional loot box that was a gift for the holidays. The thing is, they didn't spend as much time in QA as they probably should have, and players were able to go into the local multiplayer menus and open the loot box as many times as they wanted. What was supposed to be a small gift of a moderate amount of in-game currency turned into a broken ATM machine that wouldn't stop giving out 100 dollar bills, so to speak.

News broke about the exploit, and players were gleefully declaring "fuck you" to Activision, and unlocking enough currency to buy every broken, try-hard weapon in the game. Then came people actually reading the TOS warnings, which lead to another set of gleeful players gleefully explaining how those dirty cheaters were going to get banned, have their rank reset, and lose all those ill-gotten weapons.

Everyone was gleeful, until they were not.

As stated in the TOS, everyone who exploited the loot crate was banned from the game for 48 hours. The bans rolled out, and everyone waited for the other shoe to fall. You Tube content creators warned their viewers they may be banned if they used the exploit. You Tubers who used the exploit warned their fans that accounts may be reset. Everything they worked for since the game was released could be gone in an instant. Players who were good little boys and girls mocked those dirty cheaters, and told them how screwed they all would be thanks to the additional punishments clearly explained in the terms of service. But that other shoe never fell. The only additional punishment glitchers received was losing all their in-game currency, which didn't matter because they still got to keep all of their weapons and rank.

One you tuber I know of went from "it's a gray area, and I can see it both ways" one day, to "If I knew I wasn't going to be reset, I would have done the glitch! This sucks, Activsion!"

With their increasingly less popular franchise already losing players every year, Call of Duty developers found themselves in an unwinnable situation. Reset the rank of thousands of players, or give them a slap on the wrist and enrage thousands of other players.

All this on top of adding loads of crap to the loot boxes, and making it even harder for players to get what they want.

If only the developers of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare were working at another company, developed a new franchise, and were releasing all of their DLC maps and weapons for free. Then people could stop playing Call of Duty games. One can dream.

So is anyone here currently playing Infinite Warfare? What were your thoughts on this whole fiasco? Should Activision have punished people who exploited the system beyond a simple two day ban, or would they have been crazy to reset the ranks of players during an already declining time in the franchises' popularity?

@spaceinsomniac: I got the game through the win 10 store and enjoyed the single player quite a bit, but could never get into a single multiplayer game - not once.

I actually went on Black Ops 3 not too long ago and was faced with an entire team using the Shadowclaw crossbow, which is a very accurate rapid fire crossbow that kills in one hit anywhere in the body. I rage quitted as there was not really much I could do to counter it. This weapon is only available by luck or gambling via supply drops. So in conclusion: Fuck Call of Duty.

@shivermetimbers: yeah, that's really stupid that they put those things behind the supply drops...

@spaceinsomniac: I know a couple of people that did this glitch and lost all of their progress. They were disappointed and moved on to play Call of Duty 4. As far as me? I'm still playing Titanfall 2. It's still awesome.

That headline is pretty amusing. CoD was dead to me the minute the original Titanfall came out. It's still awesome (and better than the second, IMO). I hate the direction they've taken CoD, but this problem is bigger than CoD. I utterly despise every "loot crate" system where you have a fucking dice roll of getting what you actually want in a sea of bullshit. Thanks DOTA, Destiny, et al. for ruining progression in favor of dangle-the-carrot garbage. Even though I really enjoy the gameplay of Battlefield 1, I'm not playing it all that much because I don't feel like I'm getting anywhere. Oh, playing for four straight hours unlocked a "battlepack" that ends up being a crappy boost consumable for a match or a skin for a weapon I don't even use? Awesome.

As for the CoD exploit, I'm 100% on the side of everyone who took advantage of it. I mean, if the developers intentionally structure systems to lower the chance of players getting quality unlocks, when they fuck up and players find a way around that bullshit, good on them. Gone are the days of straightforward progression, where every weapon was legitimately obtainable in a relatively similar (and reasonable) timeframe. Now the idea is "well, if we give them 95% crap and tease the 5% useful items, those suckers will keep playing". I refuse to play that game (figuratively and literally). Alternate currencies are also awful, while I'm at it. I mean, I don't really remember the CoDs in the MW days having some precipitous drop in playerbase once everyone unlocked everything. The games were good enough to keep playing, and people would just prestige again if they wanted to continue "progression".

This loot crate crap is an insult to gamers. It stinks of companies trying to figure out the best ways to "trick" us into playing more or spending more rather than focusing on the actual quality of the game. The F2P phone games take this shit to a whole different level, but gaming on the whole is far worse off as randomized unlocks have become more and more prevalent. It's honestly pushing me away from multiplayer on the whole. Oh, but I can buy a loot crate for another chance? Fuck off. I'm not paying you extra money because you intentionally tried to NOT give me that good item. I wish more people would do the same before this garbage makes its way into every game.

So, yeah. Call of Duty 1/10. Loot crates 0/10.

Fuck Call of Duty!

Yeah, sure, fuck Call of Duty and all, but I think you're fucking it for the wrong reasons, when it comes to the Shadow Claw.

The shadow claw is a cool weapon that was made available only in random loot boxes, in a game that cost 60 dollars, or over 100 with a season pass that still didn't included any weapons. Buy a full-priced retail game with full-priced DLC, and still potentially have to spend over 100 dollars more in supply drops before you get the weapon you want, if you wanted to have a shadow claw. Basically turning a 60 dollar retail game into a slot machine. That's the problem, here.

But the shadow claw wasn't some weapon that was really better than anything else. If you run into an entire team using it, and they destroy you only with the shadow claw, it's because they're better players than you, not because they're using a particular weapon.

Having fought against many players using the shadow claw, "There's not much I could do to counter it" doesn't seem like a fair statement.

@spaceinsomniac: Yeah, the main reason to hate it is that I can't get the weapon and try it out myself w/o spending a shit ton of money. However, it is a one shot weapon that can be akimbo'd and rapid fire shot. If you're playing on PC, it's also super accurate. All a matter of preference as to whether or not it's OP. I may made it seem that I'm more angry than I actually was. It was just a game, I just didn't want to deal with it. I was mad that they have something I couldn't get.

It also wasn't a whole team, it was more like half a team (3 players) using it in a party and I was doing a 1 k/d performance (more or less, perhaps less considering I didn't look at the score when I quit). My bad, it just seemed like a whole team b/c that's basically all I died from. So yeah, I sucked that round. My main point was it felt unconquerable b/c the weapon couldn't really be obtained by me w/o money.

I guess I'm an old man when it comes to multiplayer shooters. I just can't get into them anymore unless it's an arena shooter.

Edit: Last two sentences are not entirely true. I did play (and sucked) at Titanfall 2 the other day (meaning a week and a half ago, I'm really bad at quantifying stuff) and ended up enjoying it more than my first impressions back in October. I played it on console, btw. I can suck at a game and have fun if I feel like I can be challenged fairly and what I deal with can be obtained myself and beaten using a similar strategy. The Shadowclaw I mentioned, a one hit rapid fire weapon with what seems like good accuracy, I feel outclasses all of the shotguns at close range. It can be debated, but 3 people using something I can't have and can't SEEM to counter, even if it's debatable whether or not it's actually better, just made me mad. It's the idea of the haves and have nots which Call of Duty has settled into that makes me say: Fuck Call of Duty. It's turned into a slot machine where the consumer loses.

@humanity: Oh yikes. If I may ask, what motivated you to get it there? That multiplayer segregation is a real problem.

@thebrainninja: I was gifted some store credit on the Win10 store and to be honest all I wanted to do was play the single player campaign so it was the perfect use of it. I tried out multiplayer as a novelty and I dunno I think something must have been broken with it because it seems impossible that I couldn't find a single game, ever.

@spaceinsomniac: I think it's bullshit that they're hiding guns behind the blind boxes. If it was just cosmetic stuff, I wouldn't have a problem with it. I guess they have to make money somehow.

Exactly, and that's a real problem for Black Ops 3 and for Infinite Warfare. It doesn't matter if it IS an uncounterable weapon or not, it just maters if it FEELS like it is. If you're on the receiving end of a DLC weapon, you'll never really know how effective that weapon is without doing research that you really shouldn't have to do, just to make sure that you're not being repeatedly killed by an overpowered weapon that you can't have. That obviously sucks, and customers should consider that sort of game design unacceptable.

Even loot-crazed Destiny made specific weapons available for purchase each week through an acceptable amount of grinding for currency. With games like Destiny, Overwatch and Titanfall 2 available, no one should be playing modern COD games, unless they both accept and enjoy the idea of players using weapons that they cannot. People have choices, and nobody should put up with games or game companies that treat you poorly as a customer.

Lastly, on the off-chance you don't already realize this from your time with Titanfall 2, that game practically IS an arena shooter, if you play it that way. Use an SMG with the run and gun attachment, and you don't ever have to aim down your sights.