Poll: What can COD franchise do to bounce back as beloved franchise?

[FakeSympathy]

So COD has become quite a controversial franchise among gamers. It''s either the most beloved or hated franchise. One major complaint that we all see is "Same shit ever year", and Activision is not putting enough effort into each game (although there is some time gap from devs POV). Well, if AV were to stop the yearly release, give devs more time to making games, can future COD games be MW and WOW of this gen, and have many players say "Yep, that's a good game!"?

What else needs improvements besides development time?

 

[pequod]

The yearly release kills it for me, same with AC. Drop it down to two years and use DLC and microtransacs to make your money, Activision. COD is one of those series that most people enjoy at least in small measures. Whether we admit it or not, both the campaign and multiplayer can be alot of fun.

I just want a COD4 remake mainly. This near future setting with jetpacks and exoskeletons is gay, bring back the atmospheric chernobyl setting from COD4.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

The developers have three years to make their game. Remember, they have three different studios working on three different Call of Duty games. They take turns. Now, I don't work in programming in any sort of way, but I think 3 years for a game like C.O.D is plenty of time. I could be wrong though.

Anyway, on to what I think could give the series a shot in the arm:

1) Change the setting. I am tired of "Modern" warfare. I'm also tired of the near-future setting. Give me laser guns. Instead of frantic beach landings where I watch other boats/choppers get blown apart before I even hit the ground, give me drop ships like Starship Troopers or drop pods/jetpacks like Halo (thank you, Black Ops II, for showing me a glimpse of this). Give me a war set so far in the future (or set in another reality) that the thought of using a machine gun causes the soldiers to either laugh or go, "What the hell is this thing?"
At this point, I am so tired of Modern or near-future that I will even welcome a return to good old World War II. Speaking of WWII...

2) There are other countries--and people from other countries--besides the U.S. Some of Call of Duty 2's most memorable missions have you playing as the Russian or the British. The stronger campaign (to me) in World at War had you playing as the Russians. Hell, Call of Duty 3 had missions where you played as the Polish. The freaking POLISH! A group that barely even gets talked about in WWII outside of being invaded, and that game had missions with them. I get it--this is the U.S. and we are the only ones who can save the world, but damn, we don't do it alone (I'm being sarcastic about saving the world there). If we're going to go back to WWII, how about we completely ignore the U.S. forces, or have them be in the background? There are some great battles in WWII that the U.S. didn't even touch.
And no, having the main character be part of an international force but still be an American DOESN'T COUNT! Looking at you, Advance Warfare! And good Lord, the dribble coming out of Ghosts' characters...is that really how the rest of the world thinks the U.S. thinks? How our soldiers think?

3) Finally, make it COD again. I know that sounds dumb, but the games recently have lost that magic that drew me to them. I want to be part of an ARMY again. I want to storm beaches, defend points, and be involved in a WAR! I'm sick of being part of a one-to-three man team sneaking behind enemy lines and blowing stuff up over and over. I want to feel like I'm in the middle of a battlezone, not in a firefight. I want to hear the AI yelling at each other to get down, only for the sentence to get cut off as one of them gets shot. I want to feel that sensation of hopelessness when I looked around at the wasteland I had to cross to retake the White House, but know that I'm not crossing it alone. I want that feeling of riding in a landing craft as one of the soldiers looks over the edge and yells, "It's the coral! We're stuck on the--!" but then a MG takes his head off. Ghosts' best mission was defending the aircraft carrier because I wasn't alone. The rest of the time it was me and one-to-three other guys who couldn't be killed, but I did all the work.
Black Ops II was the last game to get this right. Yes, there were stealth missions, or small man missions, but there were just as many "YOU'RE IN THE THICK OF IT NOW BOY!" missions, if not more. That changed when Ghosts came out, and no one has been able to get it back since.


So, there are my thoughts: Change the setting drastically, stop making it just about the U.S., and make it feel like I'm in a war again.

 

[MysticSlayer]

I'll try to be brief on what drove me away from CoD:

1. Too much grinding. I had to go through 50-70 levels to unlock everything I could use to build a class. I then had to grind with all of that stuff to make each piece of gear fully usable. And if I wanted customization options and more class slots, I needed to Prestige and start it all over again. It was enough for one game. But then they started requiring that every year. It was just too much to want to do. The fun was in the game itself, but it couldn't reach its full potential until I went through all that grinding. Basically, if I'm spending $60 on a game, I shouldn't have to invest dozens of hours just to make it as enjoyable as the CoD game I already own and finished the grinding in.

2. Too much emphasis on balance. Sure, CoD had issues with balancing (Commando anyone?), but CoD4 and MW2 could generally remain balanced and interesting by allowing for players to make overpowered classes but giving enough that all played against each other. Now it seems like they just care about making sure that you never let anything get too powerful, to the point where a lot of stuff just isn't fun anymore.

3. Overpriced DLC. You mean that after paying $60 for a game I have to spend another $45+ just to guarantee that I will still be able to play with my friends who having more money to spare than I? Ha! We'll find another game.

4. Horrible networking. It simply became impossible to not associate CoD with lag and attempts to balance against differences in ping. I'm not sure what they started doing post-MW2 (heck, even MW2 wasn't great), but it became harder and harder to tolerate deaths when you knew it may have very likely been due to connection issues, and that went doubly so if the killcam confirmed it.

So I guess what would get me back is finding something to replace all the level grinding (and no, paying for it is not a solution), start focusing more on making it fun rather than competitive (the competitive crowd will change the rules as they need to for tournaments), and stop making it worth so much just to keep up with it. Some of that may be fixed by stopping yearly releases, but I think CoD really just has a lot of underlying issues that go far beyond that.

 

[Ambient_Malice]

Split releases. SP game every 12 months. MP game ever three years. This stops the fundamental issue of SP fans wanting new and exciting things and MP fans wanting more of the same shit, and these desires clashing.

Now that the MP fans are contained in this scenario by only getting an MP release ever few year, we can focus on the campaigns, which are the real reason to play Call of Duty games. Black Ops, Black Ops II, and Ghosts are the best games in the series. Ghosts is the best game Infinity Ward has ever made. It has great writing, diverse gameplay, and tight pacing. If the new Infinity Ward game is Ghosts 2, and it surpasses Ghosts in every way, it will be excellent. Ghosts fits in a good place. It has modern day tech, a modern-day-ish setting, and has a universe where a lot of interesting operations can take place.

Black Ops, meanwhile, nosedived into the ground with the overall terrible Black Ops III. A game that took Black Ops II and threw out basically every innovative design feature in favor of FEAR 3 crossed with Age of Ultron. It also continued Call of Duty's bizarre trend of shamelessly stealing from Starbreeze's excellent SYNDICATE.

Advanced Warfare stole Syndicate's story, and BO3 steals its game mechanics. It's bizarre and offputting. Syndicate was a great game precisely because it wasn't like Call of Duty. It was its own thing. Call of Duty stealing from Syndicate creates a weird, hollow product. Ghosts worked so well because it was a game that looked back on Call of Duty's history, chose what worked, and created a fantastic blend of great elements with the horrible design problems of the Modern Warfare series mostly resolved.

 

[Evonisia]

At this point the next CoD could be an isometric RPG about fighting dragons and the public would still call it the same game everytime, so there's nothing they really can do to "bounce back".

But maybe this would help:

Pick one developer. Let them keep the series going on a three year development cycle. It'll make the changes the series makes more dramatic than gradual, and stops the annual releases that people hate. I have my bias towards Treyarch, but I don't mind which developer they choose given that the three latest titles were not as entertaining as the last one the developer made.

Black Ops III is a barely held together mess with one of the series' worst campaigns yet simultaneously one of the most fun multiplayer experiences. Advanced Warfare has a ridiculously fun campaign held down by the other two thirds of the game being dull. And Ghosts has no merits - a soulless dedication to having nothing good, nothing bad nor anything worth thinking about. Perhaps if we just let one developer do it, they'd actually put in the effort in to make something special.

 

[AnthrSolidSnake]

Like most people, I don't necessarily want to watch it disappear or die, but I do want it to take a break.

Activision has an important choice, and it STILL somehow has time to make it.
Call of Duty can still be a guaranteed money maker in the future, but they need to decide whether to milk out that money now by continuing their trend of releasing a game every year, OR they can wait a year or two. Let the people WANT another Call of Duty game.

And come back strong. Really strong. A game with a fully developed, fleshed out campaign, and the most refined multiplayer you can possibly create. You'll need to prove to players that it was worth the wait, or else most people will just think you'll never change and won't bother.

You actually want players to give a damn about your campaign again? Keep up the Co-op campaign mode from Black Ops 3 (and WaW). Black Ops 3's campaign was not great, but it was certainly a lot of fun with a friend, making it my favorite campaign since the first Modern Warfare.

 

[Lufia Erim]

So COD has become quite a controversial franchise among gamers. It''s either the most beloved or hated franchise. One major complaint that we all see is "Same shit ever year", and Activision is not putting enough effort into each game (although there is some time gap from devs POV). Well, if AV were to stop the yearly release, give devs more time to making games, can future COD games be MW and WOW of this gen, and have many players say "Yep, that's a good game!"?

What else needs improvements besides development time?

Firstly. There are 3 different developers making Cod games. The games come out ever year, sure, but it cycles between developers.

Secondly. As for what they need to do? ABSOLUTELY NOTHING. Listen, what they are currently doing right now, is making them tona of money. Some people legitimately hate the franchise, some pretend to hate it because that's the trend, others are neutral, more love the franchise and quite a few people pretend to love it because their friends do. Whatever camp you are in, the game sells like hotcakes.

The problem isn't that cod is stale, it's that every other game tries to copy it.

 

[DrownedAmmet]

I say they need more variance in their settings. They used to have Modern Warfare, and Black Ops, which was good because one was "current" and the other mixed Cold War era with near future.

Now Advanced Warfare and Blops III are practically the same thing, it'd be nice to see them go in different directions

 

[TheSapphireKnight]

Ending the yearly release cycle would go a long way towards getting me to play CoD again. I still enjoy CoD gameplay, but I just can't get into a multiplayer game where I know primary support will be dropped after a year.

Although I don't mind that the core gameplay has remained relatively unchanged, I also can't really justify $60+DLC every year for incremental improvements and lack of support past that single year. I want a multiplayer game I can really sink my teeth into and be part of building the community around that particular game.

That being said, I don?t really care much for the Titanfall chasing ?mobility? gimmicks, so if all I have to look forward to is more Advanced Warfare or Black Ops 3, I?m not sure that it will matter too much what they do.

 

[gigastar]

Die and live on in the memories of people who, 5 or so years from now, will remember Ghosts as a pinnacle of storytelling?

Ok seriously, what if, instead of having 3 studios rotate releases of CoD, we had 3 studios that focused on the three main aspects of CoD, the campaign, the pvp and the horde modes?

I think that way at least each studio gets better at thier assigned aspect through iteration if nothing else.

 

[SonOfVoorhees]

Well if they released a WW2 one instead of the boring modern set ones every year then i might buy one. So that would be one extra sale gained.

 

[Kotaro]

Actually put effort into the single-player campaign. That's all it'll take for me. The only CoD game that I actually like is the first Modern Warfare, and that's because it has a campaign that is actually good.

 

[Hazy992]

Take a break for a year. Absence makes the heart grow fonder

 

[baddude1337]

3) Finally, make it COD again. I know that sounds dumb, but the games recently have lost that magic that drew me to them. I want to be part of an ARMY again. I want to storm beaches, defend points, and be involved in a WAR! I'm sick of being part of a one-to-three man team sneaking behind enemy lines and blowing stuff up over and over. I want to feel like I'm in the middle of a battlezone, not in a firefight.

A million times this. COD 1 and 2 captured this feeling. Outside of the later British campaign in 1 and United Offensive, you were nothing more than a soldier in the middle of gigantic battles. The series has lost that for years and years now.

Right now Project Reality's bot mode on small maps with 100 of the buggers is more to the experience I look for in military shooters.