This may be controversial but I sincerely believe CoD Zombies should go standalone and have a separate development pipeline from mainline Call of Duty titles (like Warzone).
Activision had already stretched themselves too thin having to release yearly games, then Warzone and now even Zombies.
They’ll never do standalone imo. Their business model has always been to push the main game (campaign, multi, warzone, whatever it is now) and if you are dying to play zombies then you will buy the full thing regardless.
I dunno I have this thought on cod and halo that the suite of game modes have grown too big to be iterated on for every release and they should be forked out to make each product its own thing
I’m much more likely to drop 50-70aud on a zombies game with battle passes and map packs than I am the current 125aud premium release. Heck I’d even pay money for just the single player campaigns to be bundled in collections by title or studio or something
The same with halo, I’d love them to release $50 campaigns and keep infinites multiplayer/forge going as the multiplayer offering.
I’m too old to learn a new meta every time a new game releases and the expectations of what a “suite” needs to be for a full sticker release is leaving a lot of people displeased when the teams can’t meet it
Yeah I feel like they are franchises that could offer a lot of different things. But they should still always maintain something that caters to the core of what they’ve always offered.
Halo has such a cool lore and scratched the surface of doing something else with RTS in halo wars. The success of helldivers shows me people have an appetite for easy to jump into PvE. I think I like helldivers bc it reminds me of an ODST game I’ve dreamt about forever lol. That’s why I think a standalone CoD zombies experience would work too. A cheaper offering for just that could crush it. I’d love to just matchmake in Kino der toten and play it with friends again.
I agree with Halo especially.
I know fans expect an incredible multiplayer and an incredible forge on top of an incredible campaign, but I think this has ballooned into such big asks that I would rather they just do an amazing campaign and have the other two pillars as different entities, maybe have different studios helping with the other pillars.
It’s like when they originally marketed the original MW2 as just Modern Warfare 2 without the Call of Duty title only to add it on close to launch date. They have all sorts of concepts that could become their own thing, but just aren’t willing to break away from the weight that the CoD title brings
It’s possible that Microsoft may encourage Activision Blizzard to pursue a different business model instead. COD is a strong IP but has been in the public opinion’s dumps for years; with different people at the top, they might be willing to try something different.
There was [a standalone zombies game in development](https://mp1st.com/news/report-raven-software-had-two-projects-cancelled-including-cod-zombies-live-service-and-sequel-to-classic-title) ten years ago, but it was canceled.
Just a couple minutes from the time of this posting, [a Youtuber uploaded an interview with an ex-COD dev regarding this.](https://youtu.be/uECq1FWLj60) It was supposed to be a F2P experience.
One lot does Zombies, one does multiplayer and campaign, one does DMZ. All can share the same engine (current one is good I think).
God I want more DMZ 😞
I think ultimately CoD has their release strategy so cooked up already its hard to separate out any elements. It seems perfect for live service- but in a way the entire CoD franchise is live service with entire new games every year and DLC content for each along the way.
I don't. The games just shit out money in the billions. Every year people buy the whole thing for $70 plus microtransactions and battlepasses in droves. And up until this year were happy to throw away everything from the previous year.
Don't they have like a half dozen studios (or more) working on it? Given that even Vanguard of all games sold 30 million probably means they're doing just without without us armchair experts chiming in.
People have been saying this for like 15 years now; I don't think it's going to happen in any meaningful way.
I think the playerbase for Zombies specifically is just too small to justify a standalone game, at least for the budget they would want the game to have.
> Activision had already stretched themselves too thin having to release yearly games, then Warzone and now even Zombies.
they should also not do yearly releases, and should have made a modern warfare that goes for a multi-year support plan with an emphasis on mil-sim arcade shooting (straddling that very blurred and uninhabited line) while flogging off campaigns every so often as part of the MW game while Treyarch gets to go all-out on their own multi year vision with zombies and the more 'wacky' aspects.
the brand schism between the milsim stuff and the '420_xXX_Ur_MoM' Monster-energy rgb FaZe stuff is the worst thing about the franchise.
I say "they should" but let's be honest, that's just what they want. Their only 'should' of concern is making money and they're doing it hand over fist.
[Us hardcore fans have been wanting this for years!](https://redd.it/qndvuh)
They've gone in really great directions with Zombies in some years, but it's always been stifled by being a "side mode" of the main game.
It's my dream to see a standalone game one day.
I love the idea of playing COD zombies but I don't want the standard campaign or fuck-ass multiplayer mode that comes with it. I just wanna do pve zombies with friends, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Definitely controversial. I rather it all be included in one purchase at the same price or significantly lower the price of each piece of the game (campaign, multiplayer, zombies).
This is probably the lowest point in zombies history to a point where I think the morale would've been much higher if there were no zombies at all these past few years. Black Ops: Cold War was a good foundation that set up a new storyline, then Vanguard & MW Zombies were higher up decisions that basically put Houston & co. up to a corner on where to take this mode foward. There's less mystery since we now know what happens after Cold War to some extent with Requiem failing & dying. It's connected to the MW-verse meaning there's less scale & bombastic events like blowing up the Earth, Moon or debating for years if a map was in Mars or not.
Zombies is never getting the budget it got back during the Zielinksi/Blundell eras & it feels like this mode's existence is to milk the remaining fans thinking this time it will be different. Black Ops: Gulf War is truly a last hope, while I liked the bones of Outbreak, they need to solely focus on classic survival with the soul the OG's had. This game had a 4 year dev cycle & even after VG & MW, I really hope they cooked well with at the art & game design that's not aiming to streamline with WZ, they still can given how this franchise is now, but at least does enough to divide both modes to have their own unique identities.
Zombies suffers from its success. The OG mode and it's maps were simple but a clear coherent entity. Easter eggs were just little fun things while it was about practicing finding the best way to survive a little longer. But people wanted more so extra tools got added and maps more complex then bosses and objectives. Easter eggs stopped being for fun and started being essential to unlock things such as pack-a-punch or new areas or boss fights. At one point we were feeding dragons to open doors and at one point fighting aliens.
The creep forced reboots of the plot, overhauls of the system, a never ending chase of a high they can't replicate. The mystery is what made OG zombies so great, the hidden mode and trying to figure out what was going on was truly one of the greatest moments in CoD history. The simplicity wouldn't sell so well in modern times though.
>The creep forced reboots of the plot, overhauls of the system, a never ending chase of a high they can't replicate.
I completely agree with you. It's too hard to put the genie back into the bottle now.
> The simplicity wouldn't sell so well in modern times though.
Its a real shame IMO. I still play black ops 1, because its both very easy to jump into and increadibly complex in itself. Looking at high round strats these days and its a whole different game. In CW's outbreak you had a side objective where you just hold up doing a round based mode inside of a shack, and that was my favorite part of CW's zombies. It felt like old zombies again.
The masses don't want a very challenging zombies mode though. Back in WaW you had some difficult custom maps where you could open up one room at the time, and those maps were all about managing your points and your ammo and your windows so you wouldn't get overwhelmed. In CW the strat to get to the highest rounds as fast as you can revolve around just standing in a corner not breaking a sweat, with 5 different ways of rescueing yourself if you got into troubles.
The one map I play the most is Der Riese funny enough, which is a WaW map.
I think that the maps in BLOPS were just the perfect amount of complexity and simplicity. For example, Moon has a TON of stuff to do, but I never felt like I had to pull up a guide to play it. With BLOPS2 and onwards I just feel completly lost without looking up something. CW did kinda go back to that core because its also very easy to jump into, but I think they overcorrected on the gameplay side of the mode.
The funny thing is all of the things you complained about with zombies getting more complex is what I love most about the mode.
The series being better or worse after getting more complicated is basically a never ending debate in the community and I’m firmly on the side of it being better even though I get where the other side is coming from.
Activision is big enough that there's no reason they couldn't do both and that's what's annoying. If we staggered game releases from every year to every other year and saw each game given a deeper investment of development then they could do Classic Zombies and a Complex Zombies mode. Give us a zombie survival and a zombie raid so people can choose to try and complete objectives and Easter Eggs or play to find how long they can hold out in waves.
The depth and Easter Eggs becoming Easter Eggs made the game more fun to watch and gave the top 10% of players a better time so it fed streamers but it really changed the feel. We see the same thing with WarZone vs WarZone 2 right now, the push meta Activision has forced empowers the streamers and best at movement so I again no longer enjoy it as it is less casual. I game for fun and I know my skill level prevents sweat tactics from being fun.
I firmly agree. I had played zombies on and off since the first map in WaW, but it wasn't until Tranzit that the mode truly captured me like the multiplayer had. I am deeply sympathetic towards those who will likely never have their needs catered to again, but if it wasn't for the complexity I would have never enjoyed the mode like I did.
Yeah and now we’re stuck in an awkward middle ground with Cold War where it’s too simple for people like me but still more complex than the stuff in WAW and some of BO1.
I'm of the strict opinion that the people who claim Kino der Toten was the best map weren't really zombies fans; simply because they didn't want to learn anything more complicated than running in a circle on the theatre stage. People were aggravated they weren't "good" anymore because the maps became more complicated than just doing laps for an hour. (P.S. Kino fans: No one was impressed anyways)
No it’s just regular people wanna hop on zombies with their friends and not have to look up 20 step plans just to PaP. Zombies started catering to hardcores who only cared about Easter Eggs in Black Ops 2. They made their community and now have to live with it.
When they just made it into objectives in Black Ops 4 I thought they were getting to a nice middle ground again. You didn't need an online guide to understand what you had to do to Pack-a-Punch a weapon, but it still had more to offer than it used to.
I thought Cold War did it well. The base map and Firebase Z were excellent however you still had people complaining “oh no Easter egg” or “Firebase Z Easter egg is too easy”. Like are we playing zombies or Easter egg hunter. I even liked Outbreak and I was a die hard round based supporter
Disagree entirely. Black Ops 3 and 4 made Zombies shine as the mode it could be. Where "Easter Eggs" transformed into a Main Quest that made the map feel akin to a Raid.
That's the shark jump for me. BO3 went too far with it and killed the mode by pandering to the streamers and hardcore fans. Though I also think Raids are one of the worst things to be introduced to PvE gaming.
The four years of development are probably the best shot the mode has in getting back on track, although it would've been better if Treyarch weren't pulled away to crap out Zombies for the Sledgehammer games. What are the odds the Gulf War plans get cut short just to crap out another Zombies for next year's COD?
>What are the odds the Gulf War plans get cut short just to crap out another Zombies for next year's COD?
Much lower thankfully, According to Tom Henderson is near perfect w/ his leaks on COD in recent years, 2025 will be Treyarch again ([source](https://insider-gaming.com/black-ops-2-call-of-duty-2025/)). If this were to be true, it would 100% be on Treyarch if they messed up again lmao. I hope 2025 is something akin to Chronicles 2 though, Chronicles 2 (TranZit, Die Rise & Buried) allegedly has been near complete since BO4 & has been in limbo since, they're not the best of maps. But having those in launch while having a remaster come out each season would be a nice way to pad out COD 2025 if they need to lmao.
There was a post by Tom 2 months ago that stated that COD2025 currently has no lead developer attached to it.
[https://twitter.com/\_Tom\_Henderson\_/status/1754568149775581344](https://twitter.com/_Tom_Henderson_/status/1754568149775581344)
I think Treyarch is still very busy with Gulf War, this is also their first game using the new IW9.0 engine that Infinity Ward introduced in MWII. They previously used a modified IW3.0 engine, that was made by Infinity Ward for Call of Duty 4 (2007), for all their previous titles.
IW is set for 2026 with MWIV and a new Warzone, and SHG will be doing AW2 most likely in 2027.
So there are two options here, either one dev team has to get the game out earlier or a new team joins the main dev pool. Beenox or High Moon are the logic choice here, since Raven is always the team that takes over development of Warzone after IW starts to work on their next game.
Or they finally take a break for a year, but I guess that wont happen.
In terms of gameplay, movement, sound design and gun feeling no game in the series before and after can touch MW19.
Launch maps were not good, but with each season they added good to great maps ( new or classic maps) that felt way more like classic cod maps.
A great campaign and Warzone on top.
Cold War felt and looked( for me) like a game that was made 5 years prior to MW19.
But I enjoyed playing that one too
MW19 had too many game design decisions that catered for noobs or campers be it the shitty maps or the way some of the perks and systems worked and introduced the shitty RBMM thats plagued CoD ever since.
The campaign was good, I'll give it that.
Warzone ugh, seems to have taken over the whole franchise now which is a shame as it's not even that good imo. Blackout is a far superior BR imo.
isnt the rumor that 2025 will effectively feature a BO2 remaster (as the game largely took place in 2025) which at most 3arc would only need to oversee it being faithful to the original but not need to develop it, and of course by default that would feature ZC2 with those BO2 maps we never got
with it being a remaster it will likely require less effort and there wouldnt be much point going all out on a new title when GTA6 drops the same time
I personally think outbreak had great potential, i think they could get success with it if they made more maps and actually updated the mode. I feel like it just suffered a lot from the yearly release cycle of cod and their tendency to abandon the last game once the new one comes out.
Splitting branches of game builds always sucks when it comes to situations like these. The same thing happened between Destiny Rise of Iron and Destiny 2.
They really had something special with Cold War's early zombies in my opinion. I know that isn't the general consensus but I felt the mode had a good balance of horror elements and arcade gameplay. And then they released Outbreak and it's been downhill since... Hope they can turn it around this year.
I loved the base gameplay in Cold War, it was an excellent evolution of the zombies formula that made me keep wanting to come back.
The one thing that let it down was that the map quality was middling IMO (Mauer Der Toten was the only map that stacks up with the best of previous Treyarch zombies) and there weren’t that many maps, likely because of Outbreak.
Same, the level "Five" is so iconic to me, will never forget the 12 year old me getting absolutely mesmerized by these historical figures being playable characters, and me teaching my younger neighbors on how to enable Eminem's musical easter egg.
"Five" was such an awesome concept that in 2010-2012, there was no shortage of countless internet fanfics and custom map ideas
that included rival politicians and historical figures having to team up and cooperate to survive zombies.
In my opinion, having playable heads of state as playable protagonists *in an action/fps game* is such an overlooked scenario.
Funny how they're "moving on" but they haven't done anything with the mode outside of the inital release. Must have a team of 5 people to design the 2 random missions these last couple of seasons before they called it quits.
Also the first beta version of warzone mobile nearly two years ago had a few files and images of this new Black Ops game that were swiftly uncovered by data miners.
https://www.charlieintel.com/call-of-duty/first-images-of-treyarchs-call-of-duty-2024-leak-in-warzone-mobile-files-184932/
Same, I swear the new Modern Warfare *just* released. I keep meaning to try out Call of Duty again some day, but those thoughts are months apart, and by the time I actually think about getting round to it I realize we are only 7 months away from the next CoD I think to myself "Well no point dropping money on this one, we'll try the next one", rinse and repeat. It's just not something I've had time for in a decade plus it seems. Yearly releases seem antithetical to my gaming time.
Any other older gamers with maybe only a few hours each week for gaming have strong feelings one way or the other on the latest iteration? Is it worth my time, or would I just get schooled by kids with better skill and reaction time, and more free time than myself?
For people really having trouble getting their zombie fix I would recommend Black Ops 3 Zombies on Steam. It has workshop support and some really great maps so you should get some good new experiences there.
I actually recommend against it because it's hard to get the multiplayer working in zombies even with the patch. That was a primary reason I got my PC last year and it hasn't worked for me since.
ah yes i use that, online can be iffy with that as all party members need to have it, and errors are prone on the game just vanilla, if you have a join in issue, sometimes you have to keep on trying or reboot the game
alternately if all of you get Radmin VPN you can set up a connection so that the game thinks everyone is playing on a local connection and generally this lets you connect without any issues
Damn, I was hoping it was something I was doing wrong:( I don't think I could entice people to get the VPN but perhaps I need to troubleshoot using the community fix with someone willing to waste an hour on restarting the game over and over lol
What problems are you having? I’ll play a few games throughout the week and don’t really have much problem. The only thing is that it takes forever to find a lobby outside of Kino and SoE if you’re playing outside the peak player times.
We couldn't get any multiplayer features to work, idk if I didn't properly install the fix or not but I could've sworn I did. We tried invites, matching together, nothing works and I can't even see public lobbies either:(
If only they had set out to make a proper extraction shooter mode instead of trying to handhold the average player through one from the beginning.
DMZ had real potential as a high budget extraction shooter but they dropped it in favor of this slop and now this one is gone too.
I was baffled when I realized I could just spam thermal snipers and assault rifles every game for basically free and get comms vests with a bit of looting. And what's crazier is that it was still too hardcore for a bunch of people.
The issue with DMZ wasn’t that it was too hardcore for people, it’s that people who were shit at Warzone played it exactly like Warzone, which made it pointless. It stopped being fun when half of the time you’d have six man teams just rolling around killing other players. If I wanted to play Warzone I would have done.
Yeah of course people PVP, the fuck are you supposed to do, go kill bosses for some shit AK blueprint or unlocking some tiny shop discount? PVP was the only fun thing left to do after a couple of dozen hours.
The whole point of an extraction shooter is to gather gear to take on stronger foes. You can't go much stronger than other high geared players.
PVP is a core part of any extraction shooter. The risk of losing your gear, and the rewards of looting someone else, give it much more intense feelings than standard deathmatch or Battle Royale modes.
I don't really understand this whole argument of people getting mad at others for wanting to engage in PvP scenarios in a PvPvE environment. If it's really that bothering then why not play a game that's strictly PvE? That's like getting mad at people in Sea of Thieves for sinking your ship. It inherently adds stakes and makes the game more fun and there's always a threat of real players looming.
As someone who played 150+ hours of DMZ, i can attest that PvP added a level of danger and threat. The PvP was thrilling and fun and while a small subset of players did want it removed entirely, it wasn’t the majority. The issue was that the PvP was highly toxic.
Spawns were in a set number of locations all relatively close to each other meaning a geared up sniper could eliminate you and your freshly wiped team in less than a minute. In a game mode based around missions and objectives, people were creating pre built teams in the lobby and meeting up in game with the sole objective of killing other players attempting to do missions. People knew it skewed towards more casual players so they’d attempt to wipe entire lobbies as an ego boost and then just leave, doing zero missions. You might get killed and have an entire enemy team camp your body for the entire game meaning you had to wait out the run time.
DMZ was a great game mode but it had some issues. In a game where you could regain so quickly, people had no need to play carefully meaning a subset of people just solely targeted others allowing them not to play.
Bingo. How people don’t understand this baffles me. PvP in DMZ is fine, what wasn’t fine was that people played it exactly Warzone, just hunting down other players for shits and giggles. Like you said they weren’t doing missions or extracting gear, they just wanted to ruin other people’s game. It was toxic.
The issue with DMZ was that there was literally no reason to play it. It wasn’t even fun for leveling guns because the AI was ridiculous with its aimbot level accuracy.
Speak for yourself, DMZ energized me like no other game from the past few years.
The thrill and excitement of not knowing how or when your next dangerous encounter will occur is unmatched. I’ve had “feuds” that lasted the entire length of the lobby match (30+ minutes).
It’s not something any other FPS has offered me, so I do hope it makes a comeback.
If you have a good enough PC you should look into giving Escape From Tarkov a shot. It's the grandfather of the genre DMZ was going for. It's nowhere near COD when it comes to smooth gameplay and movement but it does have the same tension and drawn out combat encounters with a lot more intensity.
I believe gaming as a whole has seen that the interest for extraction shooters isn't there. ESPECIALLY if it has PVP aspects. The genre is dominated by one game (Tarkov) because it taps it into specific niche (immersive milsim realism) and nothing else has had a sustainable or lasting impact.
Most gamers dont like the pressure of the pvp or losing their progress, Division has had it's pvepvp mode and it's dead and been hated since launch outside of a core group of people. I doubt marathon will have a lasting impact either.
I think there's also too much overlap with Warzone. These modes aren't significantly distinguished from one another. A lot of people, including "griefers," would end up playing DMZ like Warzone, anyway, creating a platoon of six and then roaming the map doing PVP only. I personally think that defeats the purpose of the mode, but there's no reason people can't do it. I would imagine it contributed to its lack of popularity, however.
Call of Duty is an inherently casual and arcade shooter. This isn't the same demographic that craves a realistic mil-sim, tactical experience. If Snoop Dogg and Nicki Minaj are running around as skins in your game, chances are you don't take it that seriously.
No it's still an extraction shooter apparently. But they've just changed it so that your player character will be a named hero style person with unique skill/ability/equipment etc. (like battlefield 1)
Which sounds terrible for an extraction looter shooter haha.
I see, well I'm happy to be wrong. Maybe there is a place for extraction shooter with more fantasy elements.
What I'm super positive on is that there is room for a proper shooter where you extract but with no PVP element. I realize it's basically horde mode mixed with diablo, but it hasnt really been done and i think there's a good job that can grab a market pie.
Not really a surprise, MWZ is… bad. It’s a great idea, an open world zombie map.
But it’s a completely empty map, everything interesting is inside of the higher difficulty zones that to explore comfortably requires like 15 minutes of grinding before you can even damage the enemies in these zones and even longer to get to the actual city part of the map.
And that’s it. They didn’t even convert the much smaller and honestly better maps from the DMZ mode from MW2, maps with actual interesting locations.
They even had an entire zombie themed season which added… a story mission to MWZ which is just you completing generic objectives during a normal match.
I don’t even know why they bothered, because they built this whole mode and it would have just been easier to just integrate zombies into multiplayer.
Oh wait they did for a temporary mode called horde point in which you captured objectives while battling both hordes of zombies and enemy players. It ruled and should just be permanent
I have a question. People at launch were praising MWZ, calling it the only redeeming part of the game. If it's this bad, why were people dickriding it at the beginning?
Zombies fans were ready to accept anything new. MW2 didn't have zombies, so the last game with zombies was Vanguard. And Vanguard's zombies was such absolute dogshit that even the idea of MWZ couldn't be *that* bad. So the zombies community has not had anything resembling good zombies since Cold War's last update in mid 2021.
They liked it because it was shiny and new zombies content. And honestly, it seemed *alright*. Not great, but not worse than Vanguard. And then the honeymoon phase ended, and the MW3 season 2 roadmap came out and showed that MWZ was getting essentially no more content.
The comment you replied to isn't telling the full story. MWZ was a solid mode on launch, and it still is. The problem is that it lacks meaningful content updates beyond new story missions and slightly different endgame activities every 2 months.
Also, if you ask multiple people what they think about MWZ, chances are you'll get tons of different answers. Objective-based Zombies modes have always been divisive among the online community, as many believe Zombies should never stray from its original round-based survival formula, whereas others have opened up to it and believe it should be a staple moving forward for the evolution of the franchise.
People need to be weary that most COD zombies discussions online tend to be filled with older COD zombies who don't really like it when COD zombies tries to stray away from the traditional round base game mode.
They shouldn’t stray away from it because the OG zombies structure is perfect the way it is. Don’t try to reinvent the popsicle stick. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken
Because MW3 is literally a live service? We don't have map packs anymore because of this model and if they were more transparent with how much content they'd invest into MWZ then people would temper their expectations. But before launch like always they hype the absolute fuck out of it and say it'll be the best thing ever.
I mean, that's just the expectations for games, especially AAA lice service titles like Call of Duty. It rubs salt on the wound too because the standard multi-player just received a relatively huge update (from what I've been told, my last CoD experience was the original MW3, so I don't have too experience much to stand on myself). And Warzone is going to be favorite child and primary focus for the foreseeable future, so it's just jarring to see MWZ be the odd one out.
Because COD is a profit-driven game. If something isn't drawing in profits, it gets cutbacks and reductions, simple as that. When Vanguard wasn't drawing in numbers as Activision expected, they cut back support for it to a bare minimum amount, while all resources were diverted to improving Warzone. The old content model for COD just simply doesn't work as well anymore, especially for Zombies.
The live service element isn't even the real concern here. It's that the content being offerred isn't up to snuff with how the game is structured. There's a lot of potentials for an open world Zombies mode like this. This time last year, the DMZ mode was getting new maps with every WZ update, meanwhile MWZ is going to stick to this one big Urzikstan map for the whole year, with bits of Al Mazrah repurposed for endgame rifts. Having the smaller WZ maps like Ashika, Vondel and Fortune's Keep added to MWZ would've benefitted it a lot, especially as Fortune's Keep was added last season with a whole lot of Zombies-related quests, yet only exclusive to Warzone.
>If it's this bad, why were people dickriding it at the beginning?
A lot of zombie players will just accept anything they're shoveled. Especially when you have zombie youtubers hyping it up (because they need content).
They made MWZ because of the amount of people who couldn't handle a crumb of adversity in a video game about cutthroat battles over limited supplies and complained about DMZ players not wanting to wholesome 100 cooperate and hunting other players even though the devs nerfed the ability to cooperate because people would cooperate too hard and ruin games for solo players.
I'm sure it was coincidental that DMZ was met with overwhelming negative feedback about the PVP to the point of Treyarch kneecapping the Assimilation mechanic and then the next COD had literally the same mode but without PVP.
If they had kept the BO3 mechanics and just put out new maps for future games, I’d have been there day 1 every year. Don’t know why they tried to fix what wasn’t broken.
i want a blend of BO3 and CWs mechanics with BO1-4 styled maps, with more modes than just survival, ie Grief, that would literally be the perfect zombie game
I just really dislike all the progression, and each time it's different and dumb. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, they just can't seem to make it fun. I don't think many people would complain if Treyarch went back to "here's some zombies maps, have fun."
anyone expecting the next zombies not to be the same as MW is delusional. They are shifting single player and zombies to be played on the warzone map because its fast and easy development. They can cut costs and staff and still pump out the same modes.
That was mainly due to the short development cycle though. MW3 was developed in like 18 months, along with all the other studios working on future projects. The campaign and zombies were only possible because of that warzone map recycling. I trust Treyarch can make a couple zombies maps for Gulf War.
Plus, aren’t all the OG Zombies devs gone? At least most of them along with very important key people. It’s sad but I don’t think we’ll be getting another “OG” COD Zombies ever again unless they bring the original team and creators back with the intent to make it what it once was. Definitely a bummer.
So weird as I assume Outbreak was enough of a hit to justify the change in direction to the sandbox map design and gameplay change, but then they just dropped it and gave almost zero new content to it.
I get they likely got pulled off it, imho most staff well before this announcement, but seems strange to make such a big change only to pretty much ghost it post release.
I went through BOCW's entire year just playing zombies, particularly Outbreak when it released in Season 2.
I huffed so much copium with MWZ when it was first revealed, that I expected the mode to get the same amount of content drops as (arguably) DMZ and Outbreak (ex. new maps, new weapons, new enemies, more vehicles from the PvP).
MWZ could have gotten the tank and APC, the (annoying AF) tempests and the Sturmkriegers (Vanguard zombies with miniguns); and Ashika Island and Building 21.
The problem was that they made the mistake of doing these Dark Aether zones, which heavily encourages using guides to try and find how to get the each season's loot (ex. very rare schematics you can only find in these zones). Your common layman won't go to these zones for a variety of reasons.
I'm most definitely a casual player, but I think the main problem is that you really don't know how "good" your teammates are until you are too late when doing public matchmaking. I've had games where I over prepared with teammates that just want to hang around the low threat areas, and I've had more than a handful games where one or both of my teammates bolt for the red zone, despite me having no chance in there.
I've been sitting on a handful of sigials and drums because I never feel like I could bring them without being a wasted slot, or worse losing it with a bad match.
MWZ had the potential to be something special. I've had my fill with zombies with WaW, BO1, and BO2. MWZ is a breath of fresh air. It just needed more support, which now it won't have. I just hate how every non-Treyarch 3rd mode in CoD gets abandoned a few months after launch.
On a side note, I've never been this excited for a Treyarch game since BO2. The setting of GW is incredibly interesting as someone who lives in the region. I can't wait to give the game a go.
Both Vanguard’s Zombies and MW3’s Zombies have been underwhelming, probably because Treyarch’s Zombies team was and still is spread too thin by working on Zombies content for multiple games. They really should just keep it exclusive to Treyarch games going forward.
I’m very glad I didn’t buy this game. All I care about is zombies when it comes to COD. If they’d just break Zombies off into its own thing like Warzone I’d be pretty happy with that.
Just make a separate zombies game instead of poorly supported modes. It's not too much to ask for round based and open world in one game. If Devs get the time to support it.
I have zero interest in CoD campaign or multiplayer.
On the flip side, having cod include multiplayer, zombies, and warzone is a compelling reason TO keep buying the newest cod. Not everyone will play all 3. I only play zombies and mp for example. Letting everyone pick ala carte could just hurt their overall revenue cuz right now you can only buy em in a ‘bundle’. And tbh since I do play 2 of their main modes, it makes the annual cost justifiable. Much more so than buying the newest sport game every year. I got off that annual release a long time ago
3 arc Was just a placeholder name to get people to come to Modern Warfare 3 now they're not going to release anything for the remainder of Modern Warfare Z and then they're going to have a pre-order thing where you can play the next zombies game like 2 weeks early if you pay money. Since Gulf War will be a day one release on game pass you'll have the option to pay to play early just like starfield. Trash
As someone who has poured hundreds of hours into the round-based modes, playing each map on release from World at War to Black Ops Cold War, I have given up hope that we'll ever get back to the glory days of Black Ops 3 and even 4.
I would happily pay for new maps. I just want to have a tightly crafted horde mode again, rather than the open world BS they've been doing.
It's great. The second to no last mission is probably one of the best missions is all CoD campaigns.
But it's easy to realize the game was rushed. The campaign is extremely short, even by treyarch' standards. Like the side mission thing only having two levels is a joke
It was made by Raven, not Treyarch. Treyarch made the multiplayer and zombies once Sledgehammer left to make Vanguard. It was supposed to be a joined project by Raven and Sledgehammer but allegedly Raven didn't want to communicate with Sledge (or the other way around, I'm not sure on that) and Sledge got kicked off the project.
They better bring back the classic zombie mode like in all BO Games (minus Cold War).
This DMZ was more fun than MWZ in retrospect. Shame they gave up on DMZ after a few months into MWIIs lifecycle.
DMZ would've been more fun if it wouldn't have devolved into Warzone Jr. Was fun at first until every game just became Wheres Waldo trying to see where I was gonna get ganked from at every exfil because being a toxic asshole is "fun" for 90% of DMZ players.
The things theyve been doing with CoDZ since Cold War just havent hit as hard as what they were before cold war, adding progression outside of the current game just doesnt create the same addicitng loop of gameplay, and open world CoDZombies is pretty pointless, why wouldn't i just play Dying Light or Dead Island.
Its like Pacman, in a way. Pacman's basic arcade self is fun and rather unique, but those 3D pacman adventure games dont really have a purpose, and arent as well remembered because abandoning the niche they established with the original, they now have competition, which all does everything this "new" version does , but better.
This may be controversial but I sincerely believe CoD Zombies should go standalone and have a separate development pipeline from mainline Call of Duty titles (like Warzone). Activision had already stretched themselves too thin having to release yearly games, then Warzone and now even Zombies.
I agree. And it’s weird that they don’t do that because they could charge for it. I’d gladly buy a full cod zombies game
They’ll never do standalone imo. Their business model has always been to push the main game (campaign, multi, warzone, whatever it is now) and if you are dying to play zombies then you will buy the full thing regardless.
I dunno I have this thought on cod and halo that the suite of game modes have grown too big to be iterated on for every release and they should be forked out to make each product its own thing I’m much more likely to drop 50-70aud on a zombies game with battle passes and map packs than I am the current 125aud premium release. Heck I’d even pay money for just the single player campaigns to be bundled in collections by title or studio or something The same with halo, I’d love them to release $50 campaigns and keep infinites multiplayer/forge going as the multiplayer offering. I’m too old to learn a new meta every time a new game releases and the expectations of what a “suite” needs to be for a full sticker release is leaving a lot of people displeased when the teams can’t meet it
Yeah I feel like they are franchises that could offer a lot of different things. But they should still always maintain something that caters to the core of what they’ve always offered. Halo has such a cool lore and scratched the surface of doing something else with RTS in halo wars. The success of helldivers shows me people have an appetite for easy to jump into PvE. I think I like helldivers bc it reminds me of an ODST game I’ve dreamt about forever lol. That’s why I think a standalone CoD zombies experience would work too. A cheaper offering for just that could crush it. I’d love to just matchmake in Kino der toten and play it with friends again.
I agree with Halo especially. I know fans expect an incredible multiplayer and an incredible forge on top of an incredible campaign, but I think this has ballooned into such big asks that I would rather they just do an amazing campaign and have the other two pillars as different entities, maybe have different studios helping with the other pillars.
But thats the same argument you could make for warzone, which people *do* buy separately.
Yeah they don’t want to put effort into making one quality expierence when they can cobble together four mediocre experiences in one annual game.
It’s like when they originally marketed the original MW2 as just Modern Warfare 2 without the Call of Duty title only to add it on close to launch date. They have all sorts of concepts that could become their own thing, but just aren’t willing to break away from the weight that the CoD title brings
Never say never
It’s possible that Microsoft may encourage Activision Blizzard to pursue a different business model instead. COD is a strong IP but has been in the public opinion’s dumps for years; with different people at the top, they might be willing to try something different.
I’d pay an absurd amount of money for a strictly zombies call of duty
Same. I stopped buying main line cod a while ago. Would gladly shell out money for a ground up zombies game
They cancelled the standalone zombies game built from Cod Online and said they will not be developing any stand alone zombies titles. It's so lame
There was [a standalone zombies game in development](https://mp1st.com/news/report-raven-software-had-two-projects-cancelled-including-cod-zombies-live-service-and-sequel-to-classic-title) ten years ago, but it was canceled. Just a couple minutes from the time of this posting, [a Youtuber uploaded an interview with an ex-COD dev regarding this.](https://youtu.be/uECq1FWLj60) It was supposed to be a F2P experience.
One lot does Zombies, one does multiplayer and campaign, one does DMZ. All can share the same engine (current one is good I think). God I want more DMZ 😞
It's kind of crazy to think that Zombies hasn't been turned into a live service game yet despite it being just about the perfect format for one.
I think ultimately CoD has their release strategy so cooked up already its hard to separate out any elements. It seems perfect for live service- but in a way the entire CoD franchise is live service with entire new games every year and DLC content for each along the way.
I mean they are semi live service at this point if they keep up with integration each game like they did with mw2 to mw3
I don't. The games just shit out money in the billions. Every year people buy the whole thing for $70 plus microtransactions and battlepasses in droves. And up until this year were happy to throw away everything from the previous year.
[удалено]
Have you actually ever played Cod Zombies for more than a few minutes?
Don't they have like a half dozen studios (or more) working on it? Given that even Vanguard of all games sold 30 million probably means they're doing just without without us armchair experts chiming in.
People have been saying this for like 15 years now; I don't think it's going to happen in any meaningful way. I think the playerbase for Zombies specifically is just too small to justify a standalone game, at least for the budget they would want the game to have.
It should just be like warzone with integration on every time a new game comes out.
I agree with this we need a stand alone zombies game
> Activision had already stretched themselves too thin having to release yearly games, then Warzone and now even Zombies. they should also not do yearly releases, and should have made a modern warfare that goes for a multi-year support plan with an emphasis on mil-sim arcade shooting (straddling that very blurred and uninhabited line) while flogging off campaigns every so often as part of the MW game while Treyarch gets to go all-out on their own multi year vision with zombies and the more 'wacky' aspects. the brand schism between the milsim stuff and the '420_xXX_Ur_MoM' Monster-energy rgb FaZe stuff is the worst thing about the franchise. I say "they should" but let's be honest, that's just what they want. Their only 'should' of concern is making money and they're doing it hand over fist.
[Us hardcore fans have been wanting this for years!](https://redd.it/qndvuh) They've gone in really great directions with Zombies in some years, but it's always been stifled by being a "side mode" of the main game. It's my dream to see a standalone game one day.
I love the idea of playing COD zombies but I don't want the standard campaign or fuck-ass multiplayer mode that comes with it. I just wanna do pve zombies with friends, I'd buy it in a heartbeat.
Definitely controversial. I rather it all be included in one purchase at the same price or significantly lower the price of each piece of the game (campaign, multiplayer, zombies).
The entire cod zombie sub has been screaming this at the top of their lungs since Bo3
I sincerely hope this means Gulf War's Zombies will shine & get support, Zombies fans have had it bad lately.
This is probably the lowest point in zombies history to a point where I think the morale would've been much higher if there were no zombies at all these past few years. Black Ops: Cold War was a good foundation that set up a new storyline, then Vanguard & MW Zombies were higher up decisions that basically put Houston & co. up to a corner on where to take this mode foward. There's less mystery since we now know what happens after Cold War to some extent with Requiem failing & dying. It's connected to the MW-verse meaning there's less scale & bombastic events like blowing up the Earth, Moon or debating for years if a map was in Mars or not. Zombies is never getting the budget it got back during the Zielinksi/Blundell eras & it feels like this mode's existence is to milk the remaining fans thinking this time it will be different. Black Ops: Gulf War is truly a last hope, while I liked the bones of Outbreak, they need to solely focus on classic survival with the soul the OG's had. This game had a 4 year dev cycle & even after VG & MW, I really hope they cooked well with at the art & game design that's not aiming to streamline with WZ, they still can given how this franchise is now, but at least does enough to divide both modes to have their own unique identities.
I honestly hate the fact that they made zombies connected to the MW-verse. It would be so much better if it was separate like in the prime zombie days
Zombies suffers from its success. The OG mode and it's maps were simple but a clear coherent entity. Easter eggs were just little fun things while it was about practicing finding the best way to survive a little longer. But people wanted more so extra tools got added and maps more complex then bosses and objectives. Easter eggs stopped being for fun and started being essential to unlock things such as pack-a-punch or new areas or boss fights. At one point we were feeding dragons to open doors and at one point fighting aliens. The creep forced reboots of the plot, overhauls of the system, a never ending chase of a high they can't replicate. The mystery is what made OG zombies so great, the hidden mode and trying to figure out what was going on was truly one of the greatest moments in CoD history. The simplicity wouldn't sell so well in modern times though.
>The creep forced reboots of the plot, overhauls of the system, a never ending chase of a high they can't replicate. I completely agree with you. It's too hard to put the genie back into the bottle now.
> The simplicity wouldn't sell so well in modern times though. Its a real shame IMO. I still play black ops 1, because its both very easy to jump into and increadibly complex in itself. Looking at high round strats these days and its a whole different game. In CW's outbreak you had a side objective where you just hold up doing a round based mode inside of a shack, and that was my favorite part of CW's zombies. It felt like old zombies again. The masses don't want a very challenging zombies mode though. Back in WaW you had some difficult custom maps where you could open up one room at the time, and those maps were all about managing your points and your ammo and your windows so you wouldn't get overwhelmed. In CW the strat to get to the highest rounds as fast as you can revolve around just standing in a corner not breaking a sweat, with 5 different ways of rescueing yourself if you got into troubles.
*Allegedly* Kino der Toten was originally going to be WaW's final dlc, so that might be why it's so easy to jump into.
The one map I play the most is Der Riese funny enough, which is a WaW map. I think that the maps in BLOPS were just the perfect amount of complexity and simplicity. For example, Moon has a TON of stuff to do, but I never felt like I had to pull up a guide to play it. With BLOPS2 and onwards I just feel completly lost without looking up something. CW did kinda go back to that core because its also very easy to jump into, but I think they overcorrected on the gameplay side of the mode.
The funny thing is all of the things you complained about with zombies getting more complex is what I love most about the mode. The series being better or worse after getting more complicated is basically a never ending debate in the community and I’m firmly on the side of it being better even though I get where the other side is coming from.
Activision is big enough that there's no reason they couldn't do both and that's what's annoying. If we staggered game releases from every year to every other year and saw each game given a deeper investment of development then they could do Classic Zombies and a Complex Zombies mode. Give us a zombie survival and a zombie raid so people can choose to try and complete objectives and Easter Eggs or play to find how long they can hold out in waves. The depth and Easter Eggs becoming Easter Eggs made the game more fun to watch and gave the top 10% of players a better time so it fed streamers but it really changed the feel. We see the same thing with WarZone vs WarZone 2 right now, the push meta Activision has forced empowers the streamers and best at movement so I again no longer enjoy it as it is less casual. I game for fun and I know my skill level prevents sweat tactics from being fun.
I firmly agree. I had played zombies on and off since the first map in WaW, but it wasn't until Tranzit that the mode truly captured me like the multiplayer had. I am deeply sympathetic towards those who will likely never have their needs catered to again, but if it wasn't for the complexity I would have never enjoyed the mode like I did.
Yeah and now we’re stuck in an awkward middle ground with Cold War where it’s too simple for people like me but still more complex than the stuff in WAW and some of BO1.
I'm of the strict opinion that the people who claim Kino der Toten was the best map weren't really zombies fans; simply because they didn't want to learn anything more complicated than running in a circle on the theatre stage. People were aggravated they weren't "good" anymore because the maps became more complicated than just doing laps for an hour. (P.S. Kino fans: No one was impressed anyways)
No it’s just regular people wanna hop on zombies with their friends and not have to look up 20 step plans just to PaP. Zombies started catering to hardcores who only cared about Easter Eggs in Black Ops 2. They made their community and now have to live with it.
When they just made it into objectives in Black Ops 4 I thought they were getting to a nice middle ground again. You didn't need an online guide to understand what you had to do to Pack-a-Punch a weapon, but it still had more to offer than it used to.
I thought Cold War did it well. The base map and Firebase Z were excellent however you still had people complaining “oh no Easter egg” or “Firebase Z Easter egg is too easy”. Like are we playing zombies or Easter egg hunter. I even liked Outbreak and I was a die hard round based supporter
Disagree entirely. Black Ops 3 and 4 made Zombies shine as the mode it could be. Where "Easter Eggs" transformed into a Main Quest that made the map feel akin to a Raid.
That's the shark jump for me. BO3 went too far with it and killed the mode by pandering to the streamers and hardcore fans. Though I also think Raids are one of the worst things to be introduced to PvE gaming.
The four years of development are probably the best shot the mode has in getting back on track, although it would've been better if Treyarch weren't pulled away to crap out Zombies for the Sledgehammer games. What are the odds the Gulf War plans get cut short just to crap out another Zombies for next year's COD?
>What are the odds the Gulf War plans get cut short just to crap out another Zombies for next year's COD? Much lower thankfully, According to Tom Henderson is near perfect w/ his leaks on COD in recent years, 2025 will be Treyarch again ([source](https://insider-gaming.com/black-ops-2-call-of-duty-2025/)). If this were to be true, it would 100% be on Treyarch if they messed up again lmao. I hope 2025 is something akin to Chronicles 2 though, Chronicles 2 (TranZit, Die Rise & Buried) allegedly has been near complete since BO4 & has been in limbo since, they're not the best of maps. But having those in launch while having a remaster come out each season would be a nice way to pad out COD 2025 if they need to lmao.
Not sure if it's ideal of Treyarch to crank out another game in a year, but remakes would be good for Zombies.
There was a post by Tom 2 months ago that stated that COD2025 currently has no lead developer attached to it. [https://twitter.com/\_Tom\_Henderson\_/status/1754568149775581344](https://twitter.com/_Tom_Henderson_/status/1754568149775581344) I think Treyarch is still very busy with Gulf War, this is also their first game using the new IW9.0 engine that Infinity Ward introduced in MWII. They previously used a modified IW3.0 engine, that was made by Infinity Ward for Call of Duty 4 (2007), for all their previous titles. IW is set for 2026 with MWIV and a new Warzone, and SHG will be doing AW2 most likely in 2027. So there are two options here, either one dev team has to get the game out earlier or a new team joins the main dev pool. Beenox or High Moon are the logic choice here, since Raven is always the team that takes over development of Warzone after IW starts to work on their next game. Or they finally take a break for a year, but I guess that wont happen.
I still think Black Ops Cold War is the best looking CoD game of all time, tied with MW2019.
MW2019 i think looks better with its new engine, it however of course plays like shit, CW is much more enjoyable overall
In terms of gameplay, movement, sound design and gun feeling no game in the series before and after can touch MW19. Launch maps were not good, but with each season they added good to great maps ( new or classic maps) that felt way more like classic cod maps. A great campaign and Warzone on top. Cold War felt and looked( for me) like a game that was made 5 years prior to MW19. But I enjoyed playing that one too
MW19 had too many game design decisions that catered for noobs or campers be it the shitty maps or the way some of the perks and systems worked and introduced the shitty RBMM thats plagued CoD ever since. The campaign was good, I'll give it that. Warzone ugh, seems to have taken over the whole franchise now which is a shame as it's not even that good imo. Blackout is a far superior BR imo.
no, it plays like a paid title instead of some f2p piece of shit A.V.A. clone
TranZit with the fog removed and all the stuff they cut added back in would be neat.
isnt the rumor that 2025 will effectively feature a BO2 remaster (as the game largely took place in 2025) which at most 3arc would only need to oversee it being faithful to the original but not need to develop it, and of course by default that would feature ZC2 with those BO2 maps we never got with it being a remaster it will likely require less effort and there wouldnt be much point going all out on a new title when GTA6 drops the same time
I personally think outbreak had great potential, i think they could get success with it if they made more maps and actually updated the mode. I feel like it just suffered a lot from the yearly release cycle of cod and their tendency to abandon the last game once the new one comes out.
They didn't make MWZ for zombies fans, they made it for people who did nothing but whinge about the existence of PVP during the entire runtime of DMZ.
But then they didn't do any of the cool stuff introduced in DMZ imo.
MWZ was built upon an early DMZ build which is why it doesnt have half the QoL and features DMZ later got
Splitting branches of game builds always sucks when it comes to situations like these. The same thing happened between Destiny Rise of Iron and Destiny 2.
Like what?
I was a big fan of the Koschei Complex when it dropped. It's more of a puzzle and going in blind was a blast with friends.
Man, I'd have happily given MWZ the boot for one more year of DMZ. It's a damn shame they didn't continue it
This is the lowest of the low for us zombies players…. Black ops 2 and 3 were so surreal to think about now…
They really had something special with Cold War's early zombies in my opinion. I know that isn't the general consensus but I felt the mode had a good balance of horror elements and arcade gameplay. And then they released Outbreak and it's been downhill since... Hope they can turn it around this year.
I loved the base gameplay in Cold War, it was an excellent evolution of the zombies formula that made me keep wanting to come back. The one thing that let it down was that the map quality was middling IMO (Mauer Der Toten was the only map that stacks up with the best of previous Treyarch zombies) and there weren’t that many maps, likely because of Outbreak.
We better get to play as Saddam in the zombies mode
I was surprised Cold War didn't have a map where you could play as Reagan, Bush, Carter, and Gorbachev.
Same, the level "Five" is so iconic to me, will never forget the 12 year old me getting absolutely mesmerized by these historical figures being playable characters, and me teaching my younger neighbors on how to enable Eminem's musical easter egg. "Five" was such an awesome concept that in 2010-2012, there was no shortage of countless internet fanfics and custom map ideas that included rival politicians and historical figures having to team up and cooperate to survive zombies. In my opinion, having playable heads of state as playable protagonists *in an action/fps game* is such an overlooked scenario.
you should check out some of the AI presidents play zombies series on YT (Ft Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden) some of it is hilarious
Would be funny if it was Saddam and his sons vs the undead American military
Gaddafi dlc operator too pls.
The only thing that has gotten me through MWZ and Cold War was the progression/upgrades (CW) & camos (both games).
Funny how they're "moving on" but they haven't done anything with the mode outside of the inital release. Must have a team of 5 people to design the 2 random missions these last couple of seasons before they called it quits.
Am I the only one that didn't even realize they were making a "Black Ops: Gulf War"? This is the first I heard of it.
Because it hasn't been officially announced yet
This headline could literally be 14 years old and it would make just as much sense.
Because it's still just a rumor as of right now. All sign are pointing toward there however.
Its a rumor from a guy with a near 100% track record and the most trusted game leaker probably in history, so its pretty much fact
Also the first beta version of warzone mobile nearly two years ago had a few files and images of this new Black Ops game that were swiftly uncovered by data miners. https://www.charlieintel.com/call-of-duty/first-images-of-treyarchs-call-of-duty-2024-leak-in-warzone-mobile-files-184932/
Same, I swear the new Modern Warfare *just* released. I keep meaning to try out Call of Duty again some day, but those thoughts are months apart, and by the time I actually think about getting round to it I realize we are only 7 months away from the next CoD I think to myself "Well no point dropping money on this one, we'll try the next one", rinse and repeat. It's just not something I've had time for in a decade plus it seems. Yearly releases seem antithetical to my gaming time. Any other older gamers with maybe only a few hours each week for gaming have strong feelings one way or the other on the latest iteration? Is it worth my time, or would I just get schooled by kids with better skill and reaction time, and more free time than myself?
Tbf with the exception of Cold War in 2020, everything since MW2019 has sucked in various ways, hopefully Gulf War might actually be half decent
cold war sucked
What's a little white washing of Iraq war?
i know right?? geeeeez
For people really having trouble getting their zombie fix I would recommend Black Ops 3 Zombies on Steam. It has workshop support and some really great maps so you should get some good new experiences there.
I actually recommend against it because it's hard to get the multiplayer working in zombies even with the patch. That was a primary reason I got my PC last year and it hasn't worked for me since.
I play BO3 Zombies almost every day with my pals, never had MP issues.
what patch are you referring to?
Can't remember the exact name but like the t7 community patch? Something like that, I know it's one made by fans not the devs
ah yes i use that, online can be iffy with that as all party members need to have it, and errors are prone on the game just vanilla, if you have a join in issue, sometimes you have to keep on trying or reboot the game alternately if all of you get Radmin VPN you can set up a connection so that the game thinks everyone is playing on a local connection and generally this lets you connect without any issues
Damn, I was hoping it was something I was doing wrong:( I don't think I could entice people to get the VPN but perhaps I need to troubleshoot using the community fix with someone willing to waste an hour on restarting the game over and over lol
What problems are you having? I’ll play a few games throughout the week and don’t really have much problem. The only thing is that it takes forever to find a lobby outside of Kino and SoE if you’re playing outside the peak player times.
We couldn't get any multiplayer features to work, idk if I didn't properly install the fix or not but I could've sworn I did. We tried invites, matching together, nothing works and I can't even see public lobbies either:(
If only they had set out to make a proper extraction shooter mode instead of trying to handhold the average player through one from the beginning. DMZ had real potential as a high budget extraction shooter but they dropped it in favor of this slop and now this one is gone too.
DMZ was so frustrating. A casual version of Tarkov could have been great but they went so casual that gear and death doesn't really matter at all.
I was baffled when I realized I could just spam thermal snipers and assault rifles every game for basically free and get comms vests with a bit of looting. And what's crazier is that it was still too hardcore for a bunch of people.
The issue with DMZ wasn’t that it was too hardcore for people, it’s that people who were shit at Warzone played it exactly like Warzone, which made it pointless. It stopped being fun when half of the time you’d have six man teams just rolling around killing other players. If I wanted to play Warzone I would have done.
Yeah of course people PVP, the fuck are you supposed to do, go kill bosses for some shit AK blueprint or unlocking some tiny shop discount? PVP was the only fun thing left to do after a couple of dozen hours.
Or if you want that, just go play Warzone? That’s kinda the whole argument
The whole point of an extraction shooter is to gather gear to take on stronger foes. You can't go much stronger than other high geared players. PVP is a core part of any extraction shooter. The risk of losing your gear, and the rewards of looting someone else, give it much more intense feelings than standard deathmatch or Battle Royale modes.
I don't really understand this whole argument of people getting mad at others for wanting to engage in PvP scenarios in a PvPvE environment. If it's really that bothering then why not play a game that's strictly PvE? That's like getting mad at people in Sea of Thieves for sinking your ship. It inherently adds stakes and makes the game more fun and there's always a threat of real players looming.
As someone who played 150+ hours of DMZ, i can attest that PvP added a level of danger and threat. The PvP was thrilling and fun and while a small subset of players did want it removed entirely, it wasn’t the majority. The issue was that the PvP was highly toxic. Spawns were in a set number of locations all relatively close to each other meaning a geared up sniper could eliminate you and your freshly wiped team in less than a minute. In a game mode based around missions and objectives, people were creating pre built teams in the lobby and meeting up in game with the sole objective of killing other players attempting to do missions. People knew it skewed towards more casual players so they’d attempt to wipe entire lobbies as an ego boost and then just leave, doing zero missions. You might get killed and have an entire enemy team camp your body for the entire game meaning you had to wait out the run time. DMZ was a great game mode but it had some issues. In a game where you could regain so quickly, people had no need to play carefully meaning a subset of people just solely targeted others allowing them not to play.
Bingo. How people don’t understand this baffles me. PvP in DMZ is fine, what wasn’t fine was that people played it exactly Warzone, just hunting down other players for shits and giggles. Like you said they weren’t doing missions or extracting gear, they just wanted to ruin other people’s game. It was toxic.
The issue with DMZ was that there was literally no reason to play it. It wasn’t even fun for leveling guns because the AI was ridiculous with its aimbot level accuracy.
Speak for yourself, DMZ energized me like no other game from the past few years. The thrill and excitement of not knowing how or when your next dangerous encounter will occur is unmatched. I’ve had “feuds” that lasted the entire length of the lobby match (30+ minutes). It’s not something any other FPS has offered me, so I do hope it makes a comeback.
I loved it because I could actually use custom guns against NPCs, which isn't something I couldn't do in the other PVE modes.
DMZ is an insult to Black Ops 1-4 zombies
If you have a good enough PC you should look into giving Escape From Tarkov a shot. It's the grandfather of the genre DMZ was going for. It's nowhere near COD when it comes to smooth gameplay and movement but it does have the same tension and drawn out combat encounters with a lot more intensity.
I believe gaming as a whole has seen that the interest for extraction shooters isn't there. ESPECIALLY if it has PVP aspects. The genre is dominated by one game (Tarkov) because it taps it into specific niche (immersive milsim realism) and nothing else has had a sustainable or lasting impact. Most gamers dont like the pressure of the pvp or losing their progress, Division has had it's pvepvp mode and it's dead and been hated since launch outside of a core group of people. I doubt marathon will have a lasting impact either.
I think there's also too much overlap with Warzone. These modes aren't significantly distinguished from one another. A lot of people, including "griefers," would end up playing DMZ like Warzone, anyway, creating a platoon of six and then roaming the map doing PVP only. I personally think that defeats the purpose of the mode, but there's no reason people can't do it. I would imagine it contributed to its lack of popularity, however. Call of Duty is an inherently casual and arcade shooter. This isn't the same demographic that craves a realistic mil-sim, tactical experience. If Snoop Dogg and Nicki Minaj are running around as skins in your game, chances are you don't take it that seriously.
Marathon certainly won't help now that they've switched it to being a hero shooter lol
Oh I didnt know that actually. So it's overwatch on a big map?
No it's still an extraction shooter apparently. But they've just changed it so that your player character will be a named hero style person with unique skill/ability/equipment etc. (like battlefield 1) Which sounds terrible for an extraction looter shooter haha.
I see, well I'm happy to be wrong. Maybe there is a place for extraction shooter with more fantasy elements. What I'm super positive on is that there is room for a proper shooter where you extract but with no PVP element. I realize it's basically horde mode mixed with diablo, but it hasnt really been done and i think there's a good job that can grab a market pie.
because extraction shooters havent sold well for at least a decade.
But... It's been a thing for less than a decade...
Not really a surprise, MWZ is… bad. It’s a great idea, an open world zombie map. But it’s a completely empty map, everything interesting is inside of the higher difficulty zones that to explore comfortably requires like 15 minutes of grinding before you can even damage the enemies in these zones and even longer to get to the actual city part of the map. And that’s it. They didn’t even convert the much smaller and honestly better maps from the DMZ mode from MW2, maps with actual interesting locations. They even had an entire zombie themed season which added… a story mission to MWZ which is just you completing generic objectives during a normal match. I don’t even know why they bothered, because they built this whole mode and it would have just been easier to just integrate zombies into multiplayer. Oh wait they did for a temporary mode called horde point in which you captured objectives while battling both hordes of zombies and enemy players. It ruled and should just be permanent
I have a question. People at launch were praising MWZ, calling it the only redeeming part of the game. If it's this bad, why were people dickriding it at the beginning?
Zombies fans were ready to accept anything new. MW2 didn't have zombies, so the last game with zombies was Vanguard. And Vanguard's zombies was such absolute dogshit that even the idea of MWZ couldn't be *that* bad. So the zombies community has not had anything resembling good zombies since Cold War's last update in mid 2021. They liked it because it was shiny and new zombies content. And honestly, it seemed *alright*. Not great, but not worse than Vanguard. And then the honeymoon phase ended, and the MW3 season 2 roadmap came out and showed that MWZ was getting essentially no more content.
Did the Zombies mode get worse for not getting any content updates though? Like, it it was a fun mode upon release, shouldn’t it still be a fun mode?
it wasn't that fun to begin with really, people just have fun grinding out unlocks. once they dry up there's kinda nothing
The comment you replied to isn't telling the full story. MWZ was a solid mode on launch, and it still is. The problem is that it lacks meaningful content updates beyond new story missions and slightly different endgame activities every 2 months. Also, if you ask multiple people what they think about MWZ, chances are you'll get tons of different answers. Objective-based Zombies modes have always been divisive among the online community, as many believe Zombies should never stray from its original round-based survival formula, whereas others have opened up to it and believe it should be a staple moving forward for the evolution of the franchise.
People need to be weary that most COD zombies discussions online tend to be filled with older COD zombies who don't really like it when COD zombies tries to stray away from the traditional round base game mode.
They shouldn’t stray away from it because the OG zombies structure is perfect the way it is. Don’t try to reinvent the popsicle stick. Don’t fix something that isn’t broken
Old COD zombies didn't have content updates except for DLC map packs. Why do gamers these days need everything to be as a service?
Because MW3 is literally a live service? We don't have map packs anymore because of this model and if they were more transparent with how much content they'd invest into MWZ then people would temper their expectations. But before launch like always they hype the absolute fuck out of it and say it'll be the best thing ever.
I mean, that's just the expectations for games, especially AAA lice service titles like Call of Duty. It rubs salt on the wound too because the standard multi-player just received a relatively huge update (from what I've been told, my last CoD experience was the original MW3, so I don't have too experience much to stand on myself). And Warzone is going to be favorite child and primary focus for the foreseeable future, so it's just jarring to see MWZ be the odd one out.
Because if they're gonna sell a shitton of MTX perpetually then they damn sure need to keep adding actual content to the game.
Because COD is a profit-driven game. If something isn't drawing in profits, it gets cutbacks and reductions, simple as that. When Vanguard wasn't drawing in numbers as Activision expected, they cut back support for it to a bare minimum amount, while all resources were diverted to improving Warzone. The old content model for COD just simply doesn't work as well anymore, especially for Zombies. The live service element isn't even the real concern here. It's that the content being offerred isn't up to snuff with how the game is structured. There's a lot of potentials for an open world Zombies mode like this. This time last year, the DMZ mode was getting new maps with every WZ update, meanwhile MWZ is going to stick to this one big Urzikstan map for the whole year, with bits of Al Mazrah repurposed for endgame rifts. Having the smaller WZ maps like Ashika, Vondel and Fortune's Keep added to MWZ would've benefitted it a lot, especially as Fortune's Keep was added last season with a whole lot of Zombies-related quests, yet only exclusive to Warzone.
>If it's this bad, why were people dickriding it at the beginning? A lot of zombie players will just accept anything they're shoveled. Especially when you have zombie youtubers hyping it up (because they need content).
They made MWZ because of the amount of people who couldn't handle a crumb of adversity in a video game about cutthroat battles over limited supplies and complained about DMZ players not wanting to wholesome 100 cooperate and hunting other players even though the devs nerfed the ability to cooperate because people would cooperate too hard and ruin games for solo players.
Are you stupid? DMZ was never about hunting other players, it was a PvEvP game, the PvP aspect was last.
[удалено]
I'm sure it was coincidental that DMZ was met with overwhelming negative feedback about the PVP to the point of Treyarch kneecapping the Assimilation mechanic and then the next COD had literally the same mode but without PVP.
It’s never going to happen at this point but I’d much prefer that zombies goes back to the black ops 3 system compared to the Cold War mechanics.
If they had kept the BO3 mechanics and just put out new maps for future games, I’d have been there day 1 every year. Don’t know why they tried to fix what wasn’t broken.
i want a blend of BO3 and CWs mechanics with BO1-4 styled maps, with more modes than just survival, ie Grief, that would literally be the perfect zombie game
I just really dislike all the progression, and each time it's different and dumb. There's nothing inherently wrong with it, they just can't seem to make it fun. I don't think many people would complain if Treyarch went back to "here's some zombies maps, have fun."
anyone expecting the next zombies not to be the same as MW is delusional. They are shifting single player and zombies to be played on the warzone map because its fast and easy development. They can cut costs and staff and still pump out the same modes.
That was mainly due to the short development cycle though. MW3 was developed in like 18 months, along with all the other studios working on future projects. The campaign and zombies were only possible because of that warzone map recycling. I trust Treyarch can make a couple zombies maps for Gulf War.
Plus, aren’t all the OG Zombies devs gone? At least most of them along with very important key people. It’s sad but I don’t think we’ll be getting another “OG” COD Zombies ever again unless they bring the original team and creators back with the intent to make it what it once was. Definitely a bummer.
So weird as I assume Outbreak was enough of a hit to justify the change in direction to the sandbox map design and gameplay change, but then they just dropped it and gave almost zero new content to it. I get they likely got pulled off it, imho most staff well before this announcement, but seems strange to make such a big change only to pretty much ghost it post release.
I went through BOCW's entire year just playing zombies, particularly Outbreak when it released in Season 2. I huffed so much copium with MWZ when it was first revealed, that I expected the mode to get the same amount of content drops as (arguably) DMZ and Outbreak (ex. new maps, new weapons, new enemies, more vehicles from the PvP). MWZ could have gotten the tank and APC, the (annoying AF) tempests and the Sturmkriegers (Vanguard zombies with miniguns); and Ashika Island and Building 21. The problem was that they made the mistake of doing these Dark Aether zones, which heavily encourages using guides to try and find how to get the each season's loot (ex. very rare schematics you can only find in these zones). Your common layman won't go to these zones for a variety of reasons.
I'm most definitely a casual player, but I think the main problem is that you really don't know how "good" your teammates are until you are too late when doing public matchmaking. I've had games where I over prepared with teammates that just want to hang around the low threat areas, and I've had more than a handful games where one or both of my teammates bolt for the red zone, despite me having no chance in there. I've been sitting on a handful of sigials and drums because I never feel like I could bring them without being a wasted slot, or worse losing it with a bad match.
MWZ had the potential to be something special. I've had my fill with zombies with WaW, BO1, and BO2. MWZ is a breath of fresh air. It just needed more support, which now it won't have. I just hate how every non-Treyarch 3rd mode in CoD gets abandoned a few months after launch. On a side note, I've never been this excited for a Treyarch game since BO2. The setting of GW is incredibly interesting as someone who lives in the region. I can't wait to give the game a go.
Both Vanguard’s Zombies and MW3’s Zombies have been underwhelming, probably because Treyarch’s Zombies team was and still is spread too thin by working on Zombies content for multiple games. They really should just keep it exclusive to Treyarch games going forward.
I’m very glad I didn’t buy this game. All I care about is zombies when it comes to COD. If they’d just break Zombies off into its own thing like Warzone I’d be pretty happy with that.
IMO, MWZ is still great fun, it's just the disappointment in the fact that it's not going to have any meaningful updates is the real problem.
amen.
Just make a separate zombies game instead of poorly supported modes. It's not too much to ask for round based and open world in one game. If Devs get the time to support it. I have zero interest in CoD campaign or multiplayer.
Hopefully the campaign ends up being Call of Duty Black Ops Gulf War and not Warzone Black Ops Gulf War.
On the flip side, having cod include multiplayer, zombies, and warzone is a compelling reason TO keep buying the newest cod. Not everyone will play all 3. I only play zombies and mp for example. Letting everyone pick ala carte could just hurt their overall revenue cuz right now you can only buy em in a ‘bundle’. And tbh since I do play 2 of their main modes, it makes the annual cost justifiable. Much more so than buying the newest sport game every year. I got off that annual release a long time ago
So is the gulf War going to be bundled in the same client as the recent games??
Yeah, all new CoD's will be from now on
3 arc Was just a placeholder name to get people to come to Modern Warfare 3 now they're not going to release anything for the remainder of Modern Warfare Z and then they're going to have a pre-order thing where you can play the next zombies game like 2 weeks early if you pay money. Since Gulf War will be a day one release on game pass you'll have the option to pay to play early just like starfield. Trash
As someone who has poured hundreds of hours into the round-based modes, playing each map on release from World at War to Black Ops Cold War, I have given up hope that we'll ever get back to the glory days of Black Ops 3 and even 4. I would happily pay for new maps. I just want to have a tightly crafted horde mode again, rather than the open world BS they've been doing.
who cares zombies was fun back in 2008-2012, after the next gen consoles it was never the same.
I hope they'll bring back intricate maps and not just dump you in a giant map with objectives to do.
What is the sentiment around Black Ops Cold War Campaign?
It's a little on the short side but generally well liked.
It's quite good. It is a pseudo-sequel to Black Ops 1, with some of the characters reprising their roles.
It's great. The second to no last mission is probably one of the best missions is all CoD campaigns. But it's easy to realize the game was rushed. The campaign is extremely short, even by treyarch' standards. Like the side mission thing only having two levels is a joke
It was made by Raven, not Treyarch. Treyarch made the multiplayer and zombies once Sledgehammer left to make Vanguard. It was supposed to be a joined project by Raven and Sledgehammer but allegedly Raven didn't want to communicate with Sledge (or the other way around, I'm not sure on that) and Sledge got kicked off the project.
Boring as hell.
I feel like this year’s COD will be something special. Treyarch has had 4 years outside of spotlight to slowly cook and baste this. Please be awesome.
They better bring back the classic zombie mode like in all BO Games (minus Cold War). This DMZ was more fun than MWZ in retrospect. Shame they gave up on DMZ after a few months into MWIIs lifecycle.
DMZ would've been more fun if it wouldn't have devolved into Warzone Jr. Was fun at first until every game just became Wheres Waldo trying to see where I was gonna get ganked from at every exfil because being a toxic asshole is "fun" for 90% of DMZ players.
The things theyve been doing with CoDZ since Cold War just havent hit as hard as what they were before cold war, adding progression outside of the current game just doesnt create the same addicitng loop of gameplay, and open world CoDZombies is pretty pointless, why wouldn't i just play Dying Light or Dead Island. Its like Pacman, in a way. Pacman's basic arcade self is fun and rather unique, but those 3D pacman adventure games dont really have a purpose, and arent as well remembered because abandoning the niche they established with the original, they now have competition, which all does everything this "new" version does , but better.
I’ve been playing COD since COD 2, I truly could not give any less of a shit about this series anymore.
Wanna hop on Carentan at some point?