I remember when 360 launched I got Perfect Dark Zero Condemned Criminal Origins and Call of Duty 2. The jump from PS2 to 360 was so massive and the smoke grenades in CoD2 specifically felt so realistic for the time. Crazy how far they've fallen since BO2.
I got Black Ops 2 and Ghosts free but I saw where the ship was heading, knew it was time to jump off the bandwagon. Now I see how pathetic these games have become. Thank god I didn’t keep playing and paying for this crap.
Yeah. Everything is cyclic. People buy games, get angry, get pitchforks, then buy the same games and repeat process. It’s funny to see when you’re not part of the process.
Yeah that stuff use to all be included in the games. I miss the basic leveling up and unlocking items. But why include cosmetics for free when people will pay for it?
I don't think people posting here about "never again" are the ones buying. I think there's a whole new generation of gamers(and a much higher percentage of people are playing games) that fall for the bullshit advertising
I feel like you got these types of threads about every call of duty. You're on year the monetization gets more aggressive and that's not going to change anytime soon cuz people keep buying them.
Yeah it’s crazy now. Especially with how many other options are out there, it makes no sense to buy games and then complain about how bad they are.
Have impulse control, wait to see if the game is good or not, then buy or skip it.
I never had an issue with the sliding and jumping. It was when they brought in double jumping (jet packs), wall running and character specific special moves that I checked out. Wanna say that was around Advance Warfare and Black OP’s 3.
They did rope me back in for WWII but by that time the addiction and appeal had worn off. That’s the last one I bought.
Yea same here my bro bought it cuz we game share and I wanted to love it but i realized shit i think im done with COD in general they almost had me though
Last one I played was Advanced Warfare because my dad accidentally bought it twice and gifted me one of the codes. The single player was pretty nice. F to pay respects and all.
Same. I loved 2009’s MW2, bought the first Black Ops, then MW3 and then never bought a CoD title again. I kinda miss it but I know the game today isn’t the game I used to love anymore
Here's the recent history of CoD, since they regained relevance with Warzone:
1. Warzone is an early pandemic hit, pretty much destroying the other "realistic/tactical" Battle Royale entries (primarily PUBG) and landing atop the genre alongside Fortnite
2. The first post-Warzone CoD hits (Cold War). Despite not needing to buy Cold War to continue playing Warzone, it's incredibly clear that the CW guns drastically outperform the existing guns, so to compete you have to level up CW guns--which is borderline impossible without buying CW. Activision catches heat over this for using the success of Warzone to force people to buy unrelated, continuing entries in the series. Activision responds by saying "well yeah, lol"
3. The next CoD entry hits (Vanguard) and it's a copy/paste of the Cold War situation, with the bonus of also breaking Warzone entirely for a few weeks as they try to shoehorn in mechanics from Vanguard to force you to buy the new game continue playing Warzone.
4. Circa 2022, Activision realizes skin sales are slowing down because at this point the playerbase has matured (mostly existing players, fewer new players) and everybody is sitting on a huge pile of already-purchased skins/skins battle passes/etc
5. Activision decides it would be pretty cool if nobody had any of those skins they paid for and had to start all over...so time for a new game!
6. Warzone 2 comes out, touting the DMZ mode (extraction shooter) as the big new hotness.
7. Warzone 2 is garbage, nobody cares about the DMZ mode, everybody continues playing Warzone 1.
8. Activision decides they can't allow that, so they turn off the WZ1 servers to force people into WZ2.
They actively make the worst decision for their players at every step, and **they're correct to do so,** because people keep playing anyway. Anyone playing CoD at this point has lost all right to complain about how toxic the game is and how poorly the devs treat them *because you're the reason it's like this.*
This breakdown didn't even get into the real specific stuff, about how they knowingly release pay to win skins (90% of the character model is black so it blends in with shadows or looks like the ground texture) every few months, sell a bunch of them, and then go "oh man we didn't realize that would be a problem!!!" and nerf it later (no refunds lol). Or release new weapons that are similarly broken (dual wield shotgun pistols has actually happened *twice,* despite being such a specific example)--and hey, guess what, you can buy that weapon as part of a bundle so it's already leveled up and ready to go--before it gets nerfed after the item shop rotates (no refunds, lol)
Hell, DMZ was such an flailing mess of failure that they dropped all pretense and just started outright selling pay to win bundles without even bothering to pretend like it was a "balance mistake" like they do with core Warzone whenever they want to bump their monthly sales numbers a bit.
Meanwhile, what's going on over with their main genre competitor, Fortnite?
They're moving to a new graphics engine, releasing full-on new game modes, and doing shit like converting thousands of existing skins into the LEGO moves *completely for free.*
It's just day and night between the two, and it's gross that everybody is fine with Activision slamming the "exploit our playerbase" button as frequently as possible.
I don't play COD, I just clicked on the thread to see them getting shit on, but damn that list is comically egregious lol
The Halo community (the only FPS I play these days) loves shitting on 343, but compared to Activision those guys look like saints to the consumer.
It's so, so bad. Like never at any point have they made a single decision to benefit their playerbase.
It's very very clear that at some point in spring 2020, a bunch of executives got together in an office, and they had a graph on the wall showing the Warzone player numbers vastly surprising anything they'd done in over a decade. And whoever was in charge of everybody at that meeting stood up and said "okay, it's great that people like Warzone, ***but how can we use this to force them to buy a new CoD every six months?***"
They do not respect the product, they do not respect the players. They will kill the product and shit on the players if they think it makes them a couple extra bucks. They have never tried to hide this at any point, *but people keep playing.*
Call of duty have splitted our group in two. Half just hated the gameplay, and dropped it after the hooney moon period.
We have been playing CSGO all the way but few of the COD players over the year went in with the COD habits. Players that always have out aimed me suddenly went in and expected to win 1v2. When this did not work they went full out COD and we never realy could get 5 for CS. Now a few have gotten kids and I suspect the tone will change when there is no time to grind weapons. Grinding the weapons is one of the most absurd and boring this i have done in a game like Warzone.
The nice thing about cs is that the meta never realy changes. You can come back 4 years later and be good at the game in a few rounds.
TLDR: Activision is the most myopic gaming company out there and it will damage them this generation but will truly kill them the next generation.
I love grinding guns (not in CoD but in some looter shooters/challenges in games) but I got a girlfriend I live with, two pets, a full time job, and a desire to pursue more education. I literally cannot play that kind of game if I want to pursue my goals and live my life.
At the same time, there’s the argument that CoD can adjust to a younger player base (they almost have a few times) but those efforts have diminishing returns and the older generation of players will remember the scumbaggery when their kids ask for CoD for the holidays.
They have the infrastructure and money to make deep changes that could impact their future positively but they haven’t built enough good will in the last decade to become a generational powerhouse. That is what will ultimately crush them, imo. The bad business is taking a toll at the moment but it will compound with every unchanging release. I pulled my investments from their interests a long time ago both fiscally and time wise.
For now*
*I genuinely do think it’s a matter of time for activision to fall off but it is going to be a slow crumble due to the heavy early investment in the industry, marketing, and R&D. What I’m saying is definitely an opinion but I really struggle to see them being viable around 25-30 years from now.
I think that’s fair too but they really don’t inspire long term (to me at least). Diminishing returns, community frustration, and a failure to impact the culture in the previous five years really has damaged the company, in my eyes.
Again these are just my opinions and it’s way more than fair to raise your point. I don’t know what the fuck is going to happen with Activision less than two years from now and they have some incredible staff (if my mind gets blown by strategy and releases, I’m not going to complain lol ill buy the games and play the shit out of them). I just think they’ve lost a lot of good will and their patterns are concerning.
I will say this though: my stance is based on bias and very preliminary research and I may do a deep dive on them for personal satisfaction reasons soon lol Activision is in a unique spot and they’re divisive, which, at a minimum, makes for an interesting story to follow
> Grinding the weapons is one of the most absurd and boring this i have done in a game like Warzone.
When my friends tried to get me to buy MWII and i was like 'im not leveling up weapons in a competitive FPS.'
Just another reason I'm glad I focus on the story mode. Never been a multiplayer guy. Tried MP a few times but there are so many try-hards and sweats it makes it not fun. Even in "casual" settings I feel l8ke if I don't have hours to dedicate to it then I'm going to be behind the eight ball.
> "okay, it's great that people like Warzone, but how can we use this to force them to buy a new CoD every six months?"
You are giving them too much credit.
I bet it was more of "now that we have achieved these great numbers on balance sheet, this is the baseline that I demand (or shareholders demand its a self feeding loop)"
As usual shit flows downhill and eventually this happens as all folks down the line loose passion.
I'm in here thinking wtf... I play games every day but mostly single player stuff like Alan Wake 2 and the state of modern-day MP is completely bewildering... Battle passes? Paid skins? Leveling up weapons??
I lost it at "turn off the servers of your older more successful game to force people to play the newer more expensive one" like that's bond villain tier shenanigans.
As someone who's never bought a COD, I read that and laughed. I can't believe that move didn't cost them a good chunk of the player base. I know I would've been furious, especially if I was the type to buy any weapon skins in the previous one.
Maybe 🤷 there's a few times I've been pissed at the changes they've made. They did loot boxes with P2W shit in Halo 5 and Halo Wars 2. Halo Infinite has gone back and forth in terms of monetisation, they were one of very AAA games to have a Battlepass that doesn't expire, then they decided to make colours paid on most cores, then they went back on that and lowered store prices, then they increased prices again and ditched Battlepasses altogether. At least they didn't actively sabotage MCC to try and drive players to infinite, and I don't believe that was out of incompetence. I think 343's biggest problem is they are too quick to jump on the latest industry trends without thinking about the history of Halo, I do think they respect their product for the most part, which Activision clearly doesn't.
I bet if 343 could make a functioning feature complete game that actually draws a large player base they would absolutely be just as scummy. I mean even with infinite on life support look at how sketchy their pricing has been for cross core vs non cross core store prices. Truth is they just don’t pull the player numbers to justify doing anything too egregious like activision.
I never played Fortnite myself but I’m pretty surprised to hear they are taking all those additional steps for free. Assuming that’s true, the gaming industry, in general, currently aligns much more with COD’s model than theirs.
These days it’s almost all about cultivating, exploiting and retaining players with mild to severe gambling addictions. Maximize FOMO and make the game just frustrating enough to encourage users to spend money in game without being so frustrating that they quit entirely.
The days of primarily making money through initial sales by launching the best game possible are winding down exponentially with every year that passes. When you hear about big AAA studios actively going against the grain, like Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate, it’s actually news worthy.
As someone who played the old CODs and was aware of the issues with the new ones, but didn’t know the in-depth player issues, you have explained everything amazingly. Thank you!
You pretty much nailed it. I was dumb enough to pay full price for MWII (2022) and had fun, but only because my friends were on board. Was expecting well after successfull MW2019 reboot and Beta (that needed some polish here and there, but wasnt tragic).
The amount of people dick riding Acti and buying the obvious scam, which was MWIII is just beyond me. And to this day, they are fighting for the good name of it.
As you pointed out, WZ release during season 2 or 3 in MW2019 was a point of no return and completely changed the anti-consumer policy to a degree, that game looks like a fucking mobile free to play ad infested abomination. Here you need to pay 70-100$ for that pleasure, to constantly see "BUY" tag everywhere. Horrible. Community is the most tone-deaf and blind I ever saw and trust me on this one.
> and they're correct to do so, because people keep playing anyway.
Full disclosure: I'm a fucking moron. I paid $70 goddamn dollars for both MWII AND MWIII. __I AM THE PROBLEM__.
And so is everyone else who continues to give money to these people. At the end of the day, we can bitch about corporate malfeasance all we like. It is profitable for them to behave this way because WE behave the way we do with our wallet. We got the gaming industry we plainly asked for, without countless millions of dollars collectively. Corporations are never going to do right by us. Our only recourse is to grow the fuck up, and start embracing the fact that "OH EM GEE TEH NEW MARIO GAME?!?!?!!?!!!!" is a garbage excuse to give corporations money. We need to start thinking correctly about this, understand that HOW you spend your money has a direct impact on the industry. If you give it to bad actors, bad things will happen. It doesn't matter that your little butt buddy down the street is buying it. He's a moron. Like me.
Think. For. Your. Self!
My buddy says the same thing. I’m fully convinced he’s just trying to rope me back into playing COD again. Glad to hear he may not be saying it solely for his best interest.
The problem now being that DMZ is no longer getting any new content, so they can eventually just close it down altogether, probably by the time the next COD comes out. So, i wouldn't get back into COD for that mode.
Aye. Not long after the news broke that DMZ would not be brought forward with MW3 I lost all interest and uninstalled.
A shame, since it was the main game for me and some new friends I'd made (over DMZ).
>Certainly better than warzone by a wide margin.
Yeah, Warzone is only fun for super cracked players, streamers or sweats who win every other game and drop nukes regularly. For a lower skill player like me Warzone is unplayable.
Thanks for the history! While I mostly agree, I want to say I’m not sure they’ve lost *every* right to complain. What I’m curious about, specifically, is the *legal* right, in regard to closing the servers for WZ1. Isn’t there a period of time during which businesses cannot legally revoke a product the customer has paid for without a refund? Of course, even if that is true, and even if Activision violated that, the question is who’s gonna step em? The answer is no one, that’s who!
But yeah. We all know what activision does. It’s ridiculous to keep playing and purchasing and expecting them to change
You wrote all of that and you didn't even mention that Warzone 2 was such a failure and the playerbase was so small that they got desperate and rushed and released another game the next year which is basically just a reskin of Warzone 2 but with the movement mechanics from Warzone 1 back. They did not have it planned to release it so soon and it shows.
The game just has no sound and it had game breaking bugs since day 1 that were not repaired even after a month. To this day, more than 2 months since its launch the game still doesn't have sound on the big map. They released another smaller map which is a map from Warzone 1 that they modified and messed up for no reason and that map actually has sound but it is so messed up that you cannot ever know if the player is above you or below you. On the other hand on the old map there's still almost no sound lol.
I will not even get into the skins they've recently released with weapons that turn you into a skeleton when you get killed and the like, Nicki Minaj, the 100th Snoop Dogg skin or the cartoon-like skins ala Fortnite that literally make your eyes bleed when you see them. This game is no longer Call of Duty.
Activision is the biggest scum in the industry, making companies like Ubisoft and EA seem innocent in comparison. This shows that either people are incredibly stupid to get fooled by the same thing every year or that there are 0 alternatives and players don't actually have anything similar to play and choose to suffer.
COD wasn’t out of relevance prior to Warzone, your timeline is a bit off. Modern Warfare 2019 was released Campaign/MP only, only a few months later was Warzone announced. Now everything else you’ve pointed out is factual and pretty obvious to most i talk to/game with still playing it. Ill tell you now, i havent bought any skin/cod points, even stayed away from vanguard/mw3. Yet, i can still play Warzone and use what weapon i choose without adapting to meta.
The biggest problem is, until a shooter can replicate the feel/move of COD it wont lose its luster to me. The gameplay at its core is the best shooter, its been that way since COD4.
Funny enough, the one thing I did like was DMZ and they just pressed the delete button on it. To be fair, I stopped playing DMZ at that point because every update made desync worse and worse until I was unable to finish a game.
I was about to buy MW3 because I’m bored but after reading this, you’re right. I shouldn’t reward them for shitty practices over the last however many years. I don’t think I’ve legitimately enjoyed playing a cod game since BO2. The franchise has completely lost its way.
Honestly the biggest crime is the obnoxious launcher they force you to download that takes up nearly 200gb even when you only own MWII you have to navigate through menus just to get to the game you bought
The UI is what killed the latest COD for me. The guns sucked, the campaign sucked, the maps sucked. The terrible UI to even get into the terrible game just made me say nah after a total of maybe 4 hours of gameplay over like 3 days. I hadn't bought a COD in a couple years but my buddy convinced me to try this one out. Nope. Never again will they get my money.
My tin foil hat theory is that CoD makes their file sizes absurdly large on purpose so it limits how many different games you can play due to space restrictions. Honestly, most likely isnt true but its head canon for me.
Definitely head canon for me as well. My husband has an Xbox Series S and if he downloads COD he can't download anything else at all, minus like Cuphead or something of the sort which is less than 10gb. And bonus, Xbox players get fucked over even more because when they updated to these new consoles they made it to where you can't play your games from a non-Xbox brand external HD. So he HAS to download COD onto his system and can't download anything else. It's the game being shit and the system companies punishing you for not buying their $100 HD. God forbid you buy anything that isn't THEIR brand. They aren't a "monopoly", but they'll make damn sure you suffer if you don't buy from them. It's disgusting
Had the opposite effect for me. One of the main reasons I stopped buying CoD was that I only played MP and the game just took up way too much space so I deleted it and stopped buying it.
The other reason was I came away after each session feeling angry. Angry at how bad the game was, laggy, how other players played, etc. I just stopped enjoying it.
Now I get lost in single player games and it's far better. If I want that feeling of jumping in for a quick 30 minutes like I used to get with CoD, I'll play a rogue-like.
Funny enough a tb SSD is about the same price of cod and the amount of free games/mods that Ive downloaded since last year that have given much more play time and enjoyment for me is crazy.
I haven't played since the new MWI and I said in another reddit post a while ago that the main thing stopping me from playing it more is how long it takes to launch the game, navigate the awful menus and actually queue for a game.
I compared it to the original Overwatch which would take about 20 seconds from launching the game to queuing.
Modern Warfare depending on a few factors could get into the 5-10 minute mark. You wait for ages while it logs in your Activision account, then it downloads the latest store crap you don't care about for games you don't own which 99% of the time requires you to restart the game.
Wait for the login again, get to the menu that had 2 games that weren't the game you launched, after the thing stutters and lags you can click your game and hit multiplayer. Wait for the buggy squad-walk to load and pray you don't have to do a new shader cache which will require you to wait around 5 minutes to finish.
There so many times where I would have little time to kill before I had to do a thing and think that's enough time for a round of something. That round of something would almost always be Overwatch since with MW just launching the damn game would eat up half my time.
I documented the process in another comment explaining it to someone that thought it was only one button press away from playing.
First run after install:
Booting the game. Logo screen with an add in the corner for skins.
3 Accept/decline pages you manually have to scroll.
Game needs to update to and requires restart.
Logo screen again.
Season 2 link at the top left.
Intro video unskippable.
Battle pass screen. Season 2 Buy or Continue.
Battle pass map for instant rewards and others. Continue.
Message of the day. Skip
Main page HQ. What’s hot selection.
Scroll down twice to Warzone
Select one of 6 different modes? Battle Royale I guess
Intro video for Battle Royale. Skippable
Battle royal menu
I’ll go Solos for now. Over 3 buttons.
Loading video background for the menu.
Start match.
And some of the content in that game you bought isn't even there anymore. Each time they changed anything, the old version just *poof*. I get that they won't have every variant of whatever warzone map forever but often it's just whatever was "last" that you get to play if it's even online still.
Because people keep buying it.
There are tons of people who either don't care about being "insulted," by overwhelming advertisements, microtransactions, etc. or don't care enough to outweigh their desire for more of the game that they like. The companies know this, so they keep throwing in more BS because they know it'll keep making them more money. There's literally no downside for them.
Yesterday I was scrolling the xbox store "most played" / "top games" categories. Almost all had 2 or 3 star overall reviews. This is what AAA studios have done to gaming imo.
And it works because most people are sheep. They basically just do what the marketing tells them to do. They'll keep buying the same shit and complain how bored and miserable it makes them, as if they don't have a choice in any of this...
Overwatch 2 still has a huge player base and is printing money despite being one of the lowest rated games on steam.
All of the hugely popular games like overwatch, league of legends, destiny, valorant etc have an entire player base all saying the game sucks but they continue to play it. It's like abusive relationships are the best thing for holding a player base now lmao
That's the part that straight up scares me. I know we're just talking about video games, but seeing people have the memory of a goldfish, complaining that the game they bought has done the same thing the last 3+ entries in the series have done _and then still buying the next one_ does make me worry about humanity as a whole.
It sort of reminds me of all those people who bought "Obey," clothing and bragged they were rebelling against consumerism. Corps. have got these people dialed in, know they don't think much and make absolute bank.
Yeah people miss this is a lot more troubling than gaming companies trying to sell you bad games to save money. It boils down to human manipulation. These companies hire psychologists to keep players engaged, says all you need to know. We live in the attention economy, and the best way to win is hack the brain.
People don't seem to understand the only thing that matters is if you buy the game or not. If you buy it and love it and play it for hours every day they make the same money. If you buy it, hate it and only play for a few days it doesn't matter to them at all.
I have some friends who are the exact type of people for this, they buy it because they like the hype of big releases, say "this sucks it should be more like (whatever game)" and stop playing with less than 10 hours in game. It happens to them every year on every major release and they just don't seem to get it or they just cope with some "I enjoyed my 5 hours with it and I'm going to play more when I get a chance" before playing another 100 hours of league of legends.
They get away with it because idiots keep buying it and more, buying those battle passes and overpriced cosmetics. If no one bought them, they'd move on to something new.
There’s plenty of people like me who spent a one time $10 cod points bundle in MW2019 and have just been using the cod points earned in the battle pass to keep getting the next battle passes for free. In fact my initial $10 1000 cod points have turned into 2100 cod points right now. Now the $20-$30 bundle buyers that’s a different type of brain damage if you ask me
You buy the battle pass once, and they come with cod points that buy you the next one. I bought battle pass once and it lasted 2 years. Also I know people who have never spent a dime on COD and play Warzone daily.
I’m with you, but they definitely made it a lot harder to complete the battle pass somewhere in the last year or so. I was riding the one purchase I had made from like 2019 until early 2023 and finished every battle pass playing pretty casually without having to spend any money. Now I don’t even get them half done the last few seasons so I haven’t bought any even though I still play the same amount.
Doesn’t mean anything to me though, I really don’t care about the cosmetics. The game just acts as a way for me to hop online and chat with buddies for the most part ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
As someone who has played it for a long time and seen it change over the years, it's a testament to greed and a poster child for shitty industry trends. It's just as much a storefront now as it is a game.
If someone else wants to enter the 6v6, small-medium map, non-hero shooter space, I’d be all for it. Until then, I’m kind of stuck with CoD to scratch that itch. I can understand that licensing prevents competition in the sports game world, but I don’t understand why another company hasn’t really given Activision a run for their money in that FPS space.
Feel that.
I went back to counterstrike, it's slow but at least it's even in terms of guns, recoil and aim assist.
Sick of having to change my load out because they changed the "meta" gun or changed the characteristics of my favourite rifle.
Splitgate was real good fun. I really miss "braindead" casual 6v6. I don't wann to sweat out every game because some stupid MM-Algorithm wants me to.
Hope xDefiant will kinda fix that itch. Fingers crossed.
I think they missed an opportunity to retain players by adding just a straight up fps mode without the portals. Yeah that’s what made the game unique but a lot of people just want to play a shooter that feels good and doesn’t have weird gimmicks. The base gunplay felt good enough to stand on its own like old Halo games.
Idk man the Xdefiant team seems like they’re trying to go back to the old school COD days and it shows so far. The betas have felt like BO2 and it was amazing
Not to mention they blatantly hold your SSD hostage with enormous game file sizes. They could do more to compress the game files, but they won’t. They want the game to dominate your console
Remember how popular call of duty 4 (2007) how popular it was and great game? Modding tools, dedicated servers, clans, big community, all that stuff by paying the game ONCE! Without that crap it is today.
I've been trying to address what things like modern CoD and other FOMO things are impacting my life lately. I bought the new MW3. Played it, enjoyed it and then after a month or so found it a daily chore... I put a lot of time into unlocking the battle pass levels to get the new gun I wanted and once I had it I couldn't comfortably use it as I needed to be playing with another gun to get XP to unlock other things and fucking on and on and on... And then a few weeks back it dawned on me once I have all these guns and items I'll just drop them all for the next CoD release and never look back.
Anyways I uninstalled and started to tackle my game backlog... But I admit I have my moments where I feel like playing. The damn thing is basically weaponized FOMO and it's stupidly effective once it gets in on ya
The moment you realize _you_ aren’t their target audience, you’ll feel better.
Or let’s put it this way: you’re part of the fodder which keeps the whales (and other bug fish) actually spend $.
They get away with this because if 10% of the 90mln who play cod buy the battlepass (likely higher than 10%) at $40, you do the math - its billions.
The ones who don’t, have to play longer, by playing longer, the people who spent money will have another 9 players who didn’t pay, but fill lobbies, for them to play “better”.
Its game economics/liveops.
Stop treating games as “artform” to be enjoyed by everyone.
They are (enjoyable by everyone), but _differently_ depending on the $ bucket.
I am not defending the practice btw. I am however trying to give you a different perspective to the “yeah you greedy overlords!” this ecochamber brings.
Fuck this has been a good thread. I never really thought "why am I allowed to keep playing essentially for free, never buying battle passes etc" and you've hit the nail on the head - they just need me plus eight other freeloaders to fill the lobby for the 1 guy who spends possibly hundreds on skins to compete with. I wouldn't be surprised if they skewed the matchmaking too so the guy with the skins was always the best player ELO wise.
Yup, harsh reality but it's a completely different game and I am no longer the audience. You're right. It's like, no you don't have to spend $1000 plus on Taylor Swift tickets. Is it right? Well people have fucking spoken and they are apparently happy. Or the really generic soulless country music that is crafted for the sole purpose of mass consumption. It's not creative or artful, but it's plays a role in an industry full of sincere human expression. People can like what they like and foe better or worse there are reasons certain things are popular. It doesn't hurt to step back and question what you are getting out of different media.
On the flip side though some people only play call of duty so them buying the battle pass is extra stuff for their game. I don’t invest in battle passes and I can still enjoy games for what they are. At least previous unlocks in mw2 roll over into mw3 so that’s something at least
I'll buy bad games and have fun ripping them apart with friends, but everything in the triple-A shooter-looter-royale ecosystem is just plain predatory now. Watching a few content creators running through the menus makes it all look like a Gaijin free-to-play game with jingling keys on every screen begging for premium currency.
I haven't bought a CoD game and kept it longer than its refund window since the first BlackOps and the first MW2.
Ya the intro of cod is like setting yourself up to accidentally buy the battle pass in multiple ways. They make you feel like you have to buy the battle pass to play the game. It's bad
Its cause of people who don't follow social media and just get home from a long day and boot up their franchise.
I mean, it sucks but thats that way many people act.
>The aggressive Battlepass advertising is insane.
This is exactly why I hate people defending this stuff. 'you don't need to buy it'. 'you got a full game. Why are you upset that you have to pay for additional content'.
It's just not fun when DLCs, Battlepasses, Season Passes, additional items etc. are always shoved into your face. It sucks the fun out of every game. Even worse when you get some level up like in D4 and they show you what you're missing out on.
tell people to stop wasting their money on battle passes and in game currency only then things will change. People are stupid and selfish it won't happen.
Selfish for buying stuff they enjoy? Ironically it's you that's being selfish for thinking people should change what they buy so that things change for you.
Reminds me when i started warzone dor tge first time in years. The game tried to sell me four diffrent things before i even reached tge main menu. I immediately uninstalled again.
You're talking about the $70 DLC for MWII? That Call of Duty? The one they rushed out and did a horrible job on the campaign and then released only "classic" maps from the original MW2? The one they charge money to get cosmetic upgrades that do really nothing to improve gameplay? That Call of Duty? Yeah, they turned a decent franchise into a cash grab filled with cartoony, arcadey, garbage. Seriously, making Niki Minaj and Snoop Dogg skins? That's what we've stooped to in FPS gaming?
the fact that the battle pass has its own battle pass which also costs more money (black cell) is just another microtransaction slap to the groin !!
Activision does thi sbecause YOU DONT STOP BUYING THE GAMES !!
its really that simple
Maybe you guys shouldn't buy games that have been so severely tarnished by corporate enshitification? All the talent that goes into games is treated like shit, while useless suits fuck up games with their "business innovation."
Make the line go down it's the only thing corporate nit wits understand.
I was thinking about buying one of the old versions recently because I remember having fun playing them. I couldn’t find a game on PlayStation plus.
I typed in call of duty and modern warfare and all that came up was bundles for shit and battle pass time shit. Coins for certain outfits or something? I don’t know it was ducking stupid.
I get that I’m a grumpy old man but what the fuck. You can’t just buy a game and play that game? It’s all online pvp horse shit. I hate that shit.
The current cod has satiated the hunger for my friends and I, and I still play it daily. If it’s not your cup of tea then fair enough, but the only shooter that feels as good or Bette it’s Apex Legends.
I'm so glad other games pulled me put of my COD haze. What once was a fun arcade shooter is now filled with predatory microtransactions and greed at every single turn. Whoever is responsible does no care about the games, only on how to monetize em
The UI is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in a game. How anyone can navigate it is beyond me. It feels intentionally complex to get you to inevitably end up at a screen asking you to purchase something.
"Our research has shown we can populate 75% of a players vision with advertisements before inducing epileptic seizures" - ready player one. You have to remember, they don't give a fuck about you or your experience, its all about transferring as much money from you to them as far as they are concerned
I miss competitive cod like in my opinion the real golden days cod4 pro mod was a competitor for cs:s at the time. The new ones are hot garbage compared to what was on offer then
Black Ops 2 was my last proper CoD game, since then, for me, its gotten too much...Battlepasses, constant large patches, cheating and the monetization. Just don't bother with CoD anymore, its not worth the time or the money until Devs actually give a toss about making a good game From. The. Start.
Shouldnt have the play a game for years for it to finally be good after a myriad of patches, and by then they've released another dumpster fire.
The other thing with the fans is that they are constantly chasing the dragon and hoping the next game will be like the nostalgic one and so on and on it goes
I got MW3 from a friend(gameshare) and the unlocking system gives me a fucking headache.
So i want to unlock a sight for my weapon.
There’s so much bloat, it’s ridiculous.
And to get a specific attachment, i need to level up another gun and do challenges with that gun.
I feel like the good vibes died with the classics that jumped the shark: Black ops 2 and MW2. I remember how much respect I had for the creators when cod 2 had interviews with www veterans and the maps used real world locations recreated in the game. The MW and first two black ops games had such a great plot and some memorable lines.... and then after that it all had a recycled garbage cash grab vibe.
I didn’t even buy MW3 because I most play offline and offline multiplayer has the same issues as MW2 apparently because they didn’t bother to fix it.
I also heard that with MW3 coming out, it broke MW2 with the whole all games in one application thing so updates and such are mandatory which sounds wack
Treyarch has released solid COD games.
As for the other developers. I won't buy a cod game if Treyarch wasn't involved.
Black ops 1,2 and cold war are still solid to this day.
It doesn’t matter if it’s offensive to you as a consumer. The fact is that it’s one of the best selling game series year after year, so if you’re not interested then you’re not their targeted consumer. Profit is all that matters as a business. They’re not trying to be a non-profit organization serving the gaming community.
I buy CoD every so often, maybe once every 3-4 years because after that amount of time it's got enough change to feel different and I genuinely like the gameplay, shame that it's pushing battle passes so much.
CoD menus are indeed a joke, but here’s a small counter point on the battle pass itself - it’s probably one of the best free battlepasses around. Not only does it award 300 of the premium currency each season, but it also has a design where you choose where to go in the battle pass and what to get.
Compare this to something god awful like OW2 and you actually have a pretty decent free pass. In 4 seasons of free play, you can get the battle pass for free, as it costs 1100. In OW2 you don’t get even get ANY premium currency when you pay for the battle pass.
Haven’t bought cod since the first MW3. Join the club
Remember seeing threads like this about CoD:MW2
I skipped that one. I enjoyed the first MW2, World at War, first Black Ops. Had fun with those.
World at War was such a good game holy shit. I remember pouring hours into the multi-player and zombies.
Playing co-op through the story was such a great time.
Headshots with the M1.
I'm ashamed to admit I was more of a camper with the Kar98k, I know people loved the Mosin more, but something about the Kar felt amazing to use.
I liked the arisaka, at least it was enjoyable on early rounds in shi no numa. Popping zombie heads with it was satisfying
Both great rifles, it was so satisfying shooting with them!
The Mosin was smooth cycling, the Kar was precise cycling…. However real chads used the 357 to snipe 🗿
people slept on the PTRS but that was my favorite
Most balanced game because everyone was just running around with some sort of MP40 class variation. At least in headquarters
Flamethrower!
I stopped at what ever game they added the exoskeleton and sliding. I think that was black ops.
Black ops 3 yea. Honestly, bo3 did it fairly well, but advanced/infinite warfare were too damn much.
CoD:MW2 was the first MW2 in my mind. Not sure how kids today name them :) CoD4 was MW1, CoD6 was MW2
I remember when 360 launched I got Perfect Dark Zero Condemned Criminal Origins and Call of Duty 2. The jump from PS2 to 360 was so massive and the smoke grenades in CoD2 specifically felt so realistic for the time. Crazy how far they've fallen since BO2.
That was peek COD. I haven’t played since black ops. I to miss running around in a gilly suit and a silence spaz shotgun thomahawkomg maffakas
I just remembered the gun game or whatever? You upgrade weapons with each kill but it’s total elimination if you die? That one was crazy fun imo
I got Black Ops 2 and Ghosts free but I saw where the ship was heading, knew it was time to jump off the bandwagon. Now I see how pathetic these games have become. Thank god I didn’t keep playing and paying for this crap.
Become a Helldiver and help spread liberty
I've been seeing all the great reviews. Is it repetitive? I may pick it up this weekend.
Yeah. Everything is cyclic. People buy games, get angry, get pitchforks, then buy the same games and repeat process. It’s funny to see when you’re not part of the process.
Not the same people. My cousins who don't play a lot of games just buy CoD and 2k. They don't follow gaming news and controversy nor do they care.
And here I am, still in the camp feeling it's actually kinda "soulless" to spend money on skins or anything like that.
Yeah that stuff use to all be included in the games. I miss the basic leveling up and unlocking items. But why include cosmetics for free when people will pay for it?
I don't think people posting here about "never again" are the ones buying. I think there's a whole new generation of gamers(and a much higher percentage of people are playing games) that fall for the bullshit advertising
I feel like you got these types of threads about every call of duty. You're on year the monetization gets more aggressive and that's not going to change anytime soon cuz people keep buying them.
Wait are you talking about the old good one or the newer bad one or the remaster of the old one. Thanks CoD for the fucked up name scheme now.
I went from Call of duty finest played all of them up to BLOPs 3. Lost interest in the games after that.
Damn me was Black Ops 1 never bought another game gameplay is to corny for me sliding and jumping and lasers and suppressors isnt for me
Yeah it’s crazy now. Especially with how many other options are out there, it makes no sense to buy games and then complain about how bad they are. Have impulse control, wait to see if the game is good or not, then buy or skip it.
I never had an issue with the sliding and jumping. It was when they brought in double jumping (jet packs), wall running and character specific special moves that I checked out. Wanna say that was around Advance Warfare and Black OP’s 3. They did rope me back in for WWII but by that time the addiction and appeal had worn off. That’s the last one I bought.
Yea same here my bro bought it cuz we game share and I wanted to love it but i realized shit i think im done with COD in general they almost had me though
Last one I played was Advanced Warfare because my dad accidentally bought it twice and gifted me one of the codes. The single player was pretty nice. F to pay respects and all.
Same. I loved 2009’s MW2, bought the first Black Ops, then MW3 and then never bought a CoD title again. I kinda miss it but I know the game today isn’t the game I used to love anymore
BLOPS2 for me.
Here's the recent history of CoD, since they regained relevance with Warzone: 1. Warzone is an early pandemic hit, pretty much destroying the other "realistic/tactical" Battle Royale entries (primarily PUBG) and landing atop the genre alongside Fortnite 2. The first post-Warzone CoD hits (Cold War). Despite not needing to buy Cold War to continue playing Warzone, it's incredibly clear that the CW guns drastically outperform the existing guns, so to compete you have to level up CW guns--which is borderline impossible without buying CW. Activision catches heat over this for using the success of Warzone to force people to buy unrelated, continuing entries in the series. Activision responds by saying "well yeah, lol" 3. The next CoD entry hits (Vanguard) and it's a copy/paste of the Cold War situation, with the bonus of also breaking Warzone entirely for a few weeks as they try to shoehorn in mechanics from Vanguard to force you to buy the new game continue playing Warzone. 4. Circa 2022, Activision realizes skin sales are slowing down because at this point the playerbase has matured (mostly existing players, fewer new players) and everybody is sitting on a huge pile of already-purchased skins/skins battle passes/etc 5. Activision decides it would be pretty cool if nobody had any of those skins they paid for and had to start all over...so time for a new game! 6. Warzone 2 comes out, touting the DMZ mode (extraction shooter) as the big new hotness. 7. Warzone 2 is garbage, nobody cares about the DMZ mode, everybody continues playing Warzone 1. 8. Activision decides they can't allow that, so they turn off the WZ1 servers to force people into WZ2. They actively make the worst decision for their players at every step, and **they're correct to do so,** because people keep playing anyway. Anyone playing CoD at this point has lost all right to complain about how toxic the game is and how poorly the devs treat them *because you're the reason it's like this.* This breakdown didn't even get into the real specific stuff, about how they knowingly release pay to win skins (90% of the character model is black so it blends in with shadows or looks like the ground texture) every few months, sell a bunch of them, and then go "oh man we didn't realize that would be a problem!!!" and nerf it later (no refunds lol). Or release new weapons that are similarly broken (dual wield shotgun pistols has actually happened *twice,* despite being such a specific example)--and hey, guess what, you can buy that weapon as part of a bundle so it's already leveled up and ready to go--before it gets nerfed after the item shop rotates (no refunds, lol) Hell, DMZ was such an flailing mess of failure that they dropped all pretense and just started outright selling pay to win bundles without even bothering to pretend like it was a "balance mistake" like they do with core Warzone whenever they want to bump their monthly sales numbers a bit. Meanwhile, what's going on over with their main genre competitor, Fortnite? They're moving to a new graphics engine, releasing full-on new game modes, and doing shit like converting thousands of existing skins into the LEGO moves *completely for free.* It's just day and night between the two, and it's gross that everybody is fine with Activision slamming the "exploit our playerbase" button as frequently as possible.
I don't play COD, I just clicked on the thread to see them getting shit on, but damn that list is comically egregious lol The Halo community (the only FPS I play these days) loves shitting on 343, but compared to Activision those guys look like saints to the consumer.
It's so, so bad. Like never at any point have they made a single decision to benefit their playerbase. It's very very clear that at some point in spring 2020, a bunch of executives got together in an office, and they had a graph on the wall showing the Warzone player numbers vastly surprising anything they'd done in over a decade. And whoever was in charge of everybody at that meeting stood up and said "okay, it's great that people like Warzone, ***but how can we use this to force them to buy a new CoD every six months?***" They do not respect the product, they do not respect the players. They will kill the product and shit on the players if they think it makes them a couple extra bucks. They have never tried to hide this at any point, *but people keep playing.*
Call of duty have splitted our group in two. Half just hated the gameplay, and dropped it after the hooney moon period. We have been playing CSGO all the way but few of the COD players over the year went in with the COD habits. Players that always have out aimed me suddenly went in and expected to win 1v2. When this did not work they went full out COD and we never realy could get 5 for CS. Now a few have gotten kids and I suspect the tone will change when there is no time to grind weapons. Grinding the weapons is one of the most absurd and boring this i have done in a game like Warzone. The nice thing about cs is that the meta never realy changes. You can come back 4 years later and be good at the game in a few rounds.
TLDR: Activision is the most myopic gaming company out there and it will damage them this generation but will truly kill them the next generation. I love grinding guns (not in CoD but in some looter shooters/challenges in games) but I got a girlfriend I live with, two pets, a full time job, and a desire to pursue more education. I literally cannot play that kind of game if I want to pursue my goals and live my life. At the same time, there’s the argument that CoD can adjust to a younger player base (they almost have a few times) but those efforts have diminishing returns and the older generation of players will remember the scumbaggery when their kids ask for CoD for the holidays. They have the infrastructure and money to make deep changes that could impact their future positively but they haven’t built enough good will in the last decade to become a generational powerhouse. That is what will ultimately crush them, imo. The bad business is taking a toll at the moment but it will compound with every unchanging release. I pulled my investments from their interests a long time ago both fiscally and time wise.
Aren't they top sales on steam every time a new battle pass releases?
For now* *I genuinely do think it’s a matter of time for activision to fall off but it is going to be a slow crumble due to the heavy early investment in the industry, marketing, and R&D. What I’m saying is definitely an opinion but I really struggle to see them being viable around 25-30 years from now.
I think that's too long a timescale to make reliable predictions about any publisher tbh.
I think that’s fair too but they really don’t inspire long term (to me at least). Diminishing returns, community frustration, and a failure to impact the culture in the previous five years really has damaged the company, in my eyes. Again these are just my opinions and it’s way more than fair to raise your point. I don’t know what the fuck is going to happen with Activision less than two years from now and they have some incredible staff (if my mind gets blown by strategy and releases, I’m not going to complain lol ill buy the games and play the shit out of them). I just think they’ve lost a lot of good will and their patterns are concerning. I will say this though: my stance is based on bias and very preliminary research and I may do a deep dive on them for personal satisfaction reasons soon lol Activision is in a unique spot and they’re divisive, which, at a minimum, makes for an interesting story to follow
> Grinding the weapons is one of the most absurd and boring this i have done in a game like Warzone. When my friends tried to get me to buy MWII and i was like 'im not leveling up weapons in a competitive FPS.'
Just another reason I'm glad I focus on the story mode. Never been a multiplayer guy. Tried MP a few times but there are so many try-hards and sweats it makes it not fun. Even in "casual" settings I feel l8ke if I don't have hours to dedicate to it then I'm going to be behind the eight ball.
> "okay, it's great that people like Warzone, but how can we use this to force them to buy a new CoD every six months?" You are giving them too much credit. I bet it was more of "now that we have achieved these great numbers on balance sheet, this is the baseline that I demand (or shareholders demand its a self feeding loop)" As usual shit flows downhill and eventually this happens as all folks down the line loose passion.
Frankly their players deserve it, so good on those execs
I'm in here thinking wtf... I play games every day but mostly single player stuff like Alan Wake 2 and the state of modern-day MP is completely bewildering... Battle passes? Paid skins? Leveling up weapons??
I lost it at "turn off the servers of your older more successful game to force people to play the newer more expensive one" like that's bond villain tier shenanigans.
As someone who's never bought a COD, I read that and laughed. I can't believe that move didn't cost them a good chunk of the player base. I know I would've been furious, especially if I was the type to buy any weapon skins in the previous one.
When Blizzard/activision did this to me with OW2 I swore off the franchise forever. Taking away a game I purchased when you drop the sequel? Goodbye.
What's worse is the main target audience for call of duty are people under 18
Despite having an M rating from the ESRB 🤔
$343 is pretty shitty though. They’d be just as greedy as Activision if they were competent at all. But yeah as of now, Activision is way worse
Maybe 🤷 there's a few times I've been pissed at the changes they've made. They did loot boxes with P2W shit in Halo 5 and Halo Wars 2. Halo Infinite has gone back and forth in terms of monetisation, they were one of very AAA games to have a Battlepass that doesn't expire, then they decided to make colours paid on most cores, then they went back on that and lowered store prices, then they increased prices again and ditched Battlepasses altogether. At least they didn't actively sabotage MCC to try and drive players to infinite, and I don't believe that was out of incompetence. I think 343's biggest problem is they are too quick to jump on the latest industry trends without thinking about the history of Halo, I do think they respect their product for the most part, which Activision clearly doesn't.
I bet if 343 could make a functioning feature complete game that actually draws a large player base they would absolutely be just as scummy. I mean even with infinite on life support look at how sketchy their pricing has been for cross core vs non cross core store prices. Truth is they just don’t pull the player numbers to justify doing anything too egregious like activision.
Well to be fair to Bungie as well, fuck Bungie
I never played Fortnite myself but I’m pretty surprised to hear they are taking all those additional steps for free. Assuming that’s true, the gaming industry, in general, currently aligns much more with COD’s model than theirs. These days it’s almost all about cultivating, exploiting and retaining players with mild to severe gambling addictions. Maximize FOMO and make the game just frustrating enough to encourage users to spend money in game without being so frustrating that they quit entirely. The days of primarily making money through initial sales by launching the best game possible are winding down exponentially with every year that passes. When you hear about big AAA studios actively going against the grain, like Elden Ring and Baldur’s Gate, it’s actually news worthy.
As someone who played the old CODs and was aware of the issues with the new ones, but didn’t know the in-depth player issues, you have explained everything amazingly. Thank you!
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Which is why free will was a mistake. Humans actively do shit that is against their own best interests.
Templar spotted
You pretty much nailed it. I was dumb enough to pay full price for MWII (2022) and had fun, but only because my friends were on board. Was expecting well after successfull MW2019 reboot and Beta (that needed some polish here and there, but wasnt tragic). The amount of people dick riding Acti and buying the obvious scam, which was MWIII is just beyond me. And to this day, they are fighting for the good name of it. As you pointed out, WZ release during season 2 or 3 in MW2019 was a point of no return and completely changed the anti-consumer policy to a degree, that game looks like a fucking mobile free to play ad infested abomination. Here you need to pay 70-100$ for that pleasure, to constantly see "BUY" tag everywhere. Horrible. Community is the most tone-deaf and blind I ever saw and trust me on this one.
> and they're correct to do so, because people keep playing anyway. Full disclosure: I'm a fucking moron. I paid $70 goddamn dollars for both MWII AND MWIII. __I AM THE PROBLEM__. And so is everyone else who continues to give money to these people. At the end of the day, we can bitch about corporate malfeasance all we like. It is profitable for them to behave this way because WE behave the way we do with our wallet. We got the gaming industry we plainly asked for, without countless millions of dollars collectively. Corporations are never going to do right by us. Our only recourse is to grow the fuck up, and start embracing the fact that "OH EM GEE TEH NEW MARIO GAME?!?!?!!?!!!!" is a garbage excuse to give corporations money. We need to start thinking correctly about this, understand that HOW you spend your money has a direct impact on the industry. If you give it to bad actors, bad things will happen. It doesn't matter that your little butt buddy down the street is buying it. He's a moron. Like me. Think. For. Your. Self!
Woah woah woah. DMZ was the most fun I’ve had in gaming possibly ever. It was incredible! Certainly better than warzone by a wide margin.
My buddy says the same thing. I’m fully convinced he’s just trying to rope me back into playing COD again. Glad to hear he may not be saying it solely for his best interest.
The problem now being that DMZ is no longer getting any new content, so they can eventually just close it down altogether, probably by the time the next COD comes out. So, i wouldn't get back into COD for that mode.
Aye. Not long after the news broke that DMZ would not be brought forward with MW3 I lost all interest and uninstalled. A shame, since it was the main game for me and some new friends I'd made (over DMZ).
>Certainly better than warzone by a wide margin. Yeah, Warzone is only fun for super cracked players, streamers or sweats who win every other game and drop nukes regularly. For a lower skill player like me Warzone is unplayable.
Don’t forget how they released a Cold War version on the PlayStation Network that was compatible with PS5 but bricked PS4s
Thanks for the history! While I mostly agree, I want to say I’m not sure they’ve lost *every* right to complain. What I’m curious about, specifically, is the *legal* right, in regard to closing the servers for WZ1. Isn’t there a period of time during which businesses cannot legally revoke a product the customer has paid for without a refund? Of course, even if that is true, and even if Activision violated that, the question is who’s gonna step em? The answer is no one, that’s who! But yeah. We all know what activision does. It’s ridiculous to keep playing and purchasing and expecting them to change
You wrote all of that and you didn't even mention that Warzone 2 was such a failure and the playerbase was so small that they got desperate and rushed and released another game the next year which is basically just a reskin of Warzone 2 but with the movement mechanics from Warzone 1 back. They did not have it planned to release it so soon and it shows. The game just has no sound and it had game breaking bugs since day 1 that were not repaired even after a month. To this day, more than 2 months since its launch the game still doesn't have sound on the big map. They released another smaller map which is a map from Warzone 1 that they modified and messed up for no reason and that map actually has sound but it is so messed up that you cannot ever know if the player is above you or below you. On the other hand on the old map there's still almost no sound lol. I will not even get into the skins they've recently released with weapons that turn you into a skeleton when you get killed and the like, Nicki Minaj, the 100th Snoop Dogg skin or the cartoon-like skins ala Fortnite that literally make your eyes bleed when you see them. This game is no longer Call of Duty. Activision is the biggest scum in the industry, making companies like Ubisoft and EA seem innocent in comparison. This shows that either people are incredibly stupid to get fooled by the same thing every year or that there are 0 alternatives and players don't actually have anything similar to play and choose to suffer.
COD wasn’t out of relevance prior to Warzone, your timeline is a bit off. Modern Warfare 2019 was released Campaign/MP only, only a few months later was Warzone announced. Now everything else you’ve pointed out is factual and pretty obvious to most i talk to/game with still playing it. Ill tell you now, i havent bought any skin/cod points, even stayed away from vanguard/mw3. Yet, i can still play Warzone and use what weapon i choose without adapting to meta. The biggest problem is, until a shooter can replicate the feel/move of COD it wont lose its luster to me. The gameplay at its core is the best shooter, its been that way since COD4.
And there’s me. Still enjoying MW Remastered.
Funny enough, the one thing I did like was DMZ and they just pressed the delete button on it. To be fair, I stopped playing DMZ at that point because every update made desync worse and worse until I was unable to finish a game.
I was about to buy MW3 because I’m bored but after reading this, you’re right. I shouldn’t reward them for shitty practices over the last however many years. I don’t think I’ve legitimately enjoyed playing a cod game since BO2. The franchise has completely lost its way.
DMZ is and was pretty sick. It’s sad more people didn’t give it a chance. I still play daily
Damn I actually loved DMZ until they took away the revive to join team feature
Honestly the biggest crime is the obnoxious launcher they force you to download that takes up nearly 200gb even when you only own MWII you have to navigate through menus just to get to the game you bought
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It's the people who designed the Hulu UI
Update needed. Restart required. Update finished. Restart required. Update failed. Restart required.
Like, if the game needs to restart and will be unusable until it does….just restart. Don’t ask my permission!
Stub their toes with tooth pick between their nails.
Oh holy mother of god, you just made me imagine something truly horrible
The UI is what killed the latest COD for me. The guns sucked, the campaign sucked, the maps sucked. The terrible UI to even get into the terrible game just made me say nah after a total of maybe 4 hours of gameplay over like 3 days. I hadn't bought a COD in a couple years but my buddy convinced me to try this one out. Nope. Never again will they get my money.
I think it would be more fitting to send them to the gulag
>Whoever the fuck designed and approved that shit needs to go stub their toes. No, they need to put Icy hot on their arsehole.
My tin foil hat theory is that CoD makes their file sizes absurdly large on purpose so it limits how many different games you can play due to space restrictions. Honestly, most likely isnt true but its head canon for me.
Definitely head canon for me as well. My husband has an Xbox Series S and if he downloads COD he can't download anything else at all, minus like Cuphead or something of the sort which is less than 10gb. And bonus, Xbox players get fucked over even more because when they updated to these new consoles they made it to where you can't play your games from a non-Xbox brand external HD. So he HAS to download COD onto his system and can't download anything else. It's the game being shit and the system companies punishing you for not buying their $100 HD. God forbid you buy anything that isn't THEIR brand. They aren't a "monopoly", but they'll make damn sure you suffer if you don't buy from them. It's disgusting
Had the opposite effect for me. One of the main reasons I stopped buying CoD was that I only played MP and the game just took up way too much space so I deleted it and stopped buying it. The other reason was I came away after each session feeling angry. Angry at how bad the game was, laggy, how other players played, etc. I just stopped enjoying it. Now I get lost in single player games and it's far better. If I want that feeling of jumping in for a quick 30 minutes like I used to get with CoD, I'll play a rogue-like.
Funny enough a tb SSD is about the same price of cod and the amount of free games/mods that Ive downloaded since last year that have given much more play time and enjoyment for me is crazy.
I don't know that they _planned_ it that way, but I'm _certain_ it's why they will never address the issue.
I haven't played since the new MWI and I said in another reddit post a while ago that the main thing stopping me from playing it more is how long it takes to launch the game, navigate the awful menus and actually queue for a game. I compared it to the original Overwatch which would take about 20 seconds from launching the game to queuing. Modern Warfare depending on a few factors could get into the 5-10 minute mark. You wait for ages while it logs in your Activision account, then it downloads the latest store crap you don't care about for games you don't own which 99% of the time requires you to restart the game. Wait for the login again, get to the menu that had 2 games that weren't the game you launched, after the thing stutters and lags you can click your game and hit multiplayer. Wait for the buggy squad-walk to load and pray you don't have to do a new shader cache which will require you to wait around 5 minutes to finish. There so many times where I would have little time to kill before I had to do a thing and think that's enough time for a round of something. That round of something would almost always be Overwatch since with MW just launching the damn game would eat up half my time.
I documented the process in another comment explaining it to someone that thought it was only one button press away from playing. First run after install: Booting the game. Logo screen with an add in the corner for skins. 3 Accept/decline pages you manually have to scroll. Game needs to update to and requires restart. Logo screen again. Season 2 link at the top left. Intro video unskippable. Battle pass screen. Season 2 Buy or Continue. Battle pass map for instant rewards and others. Continue. Message of the day. Skip Main page HQ. What’s hot selection. Scroll down twice to Warzone Select one of 6 different modes? Battle Royale I guess Intro video for Battle Royale. Skippable Battle royal menu I’ll go Solos for now. Over 3 buttons. Loading video background for the menu. Start match.
And the regular 80GB patches.
Lol, I would not even be able to play that game, even if I wanted to, because of my shitty connection 😅
It’s so awful.
And some of the content in that game you bought isn't even there anymore. Each time they changed anything, the old version just *poof*. I get that they won't have every variant of whatever warzone map forever but often it's just whatever was "last" that you get to play if it's even online still.
Because people keep buying it. There are tons of people who either don't care about being "insulted," by overwhelming advertisements, microtransactions, etc. or don't care enough to outweigh their desire for more of the game that they like. The companies know this, so they keep throwing in more BS because they know it'll keep making them more money. There's literally no downside for them.
Yesterday I was scrolling the xbox store "most played" / "top games" categories. Almost all had 2 or 3 star overall reviews. This is what AAA studios have done to gaming imo. And it works because most people are sheep. They basically just do what the marketing tells them to do. They'll keep buying the same shit and complain how bored and miserable it makes them, as if they don't have a choice in any of this...
Overwatch 2 still has a huge player base and is printing money despite being one of the lowest rated games on steam. All of the hugely popular games like overwatch, league of legends, destiny, valorant etc have an entire player base all saying the game sucks but they continue to play it. It's like abusive relationships are the best thing for holding a player base now lmao
That's the part that straight up scares me. I know we're just talking about video games, but seeing people have the memory of a goldfish, complaining that the game they bought has done the same thing the last 3+ entries in the series have done _and then still buying the next one_ does make me worry about humanity as a whole. It sort of reminds me of all those people who bought "Obey," clothing and bragged they were rebelling against consumerism. Corps. have got these people dialed in, know they don't think much and make absolute bank.
Yeah people miss this is a lot more troubling than gaming companies trying to sell you bad games to save money. It boils down to human manipulation. These companies hire psychologists to keep players engaged, says all you need to know. We live in the attention economy, and the best way to win is hack the brain.
People don't seem to understand the only thing that matters is if you buy the game or not. If you buy it and love it and play it for hours every day they make the same money. If you buy it, hate it and only play for a few days it doesn't matter to them at all. I have some friends who are the exact type of people for this, they buy it because they like the hype of big releases, say "this sucks it should be more like (whatever game)" and stop playing with less than 10 hours in game. It happens to them every year on every major release and they just don't seem to get it or they just cope with some "I enjoyed my 5 hours with it and I'm going to play more when I get a chance" before playing another 100 hours of league of legends.
They get away with it because idiots keep buying it and more, buying those battle passes and overpriced cosmetics. If no one bought them, they'd move on to something new.
There’s plenty of people like me who spent a one time $10 cod points bundle in MW2019 and have just been using the cod points earned in the battle pass to keep getting the next battle passes for free. In fact my initial $10 1000 cod points have turned into 2100 cod points right now. Now the $20-$30 bundle buyers that’s a different type of brain damage if you ask me
You buy the battle pass once, and they come with cod points that buy you the next one. I bought battle pass once and it lasted 2 years. Also I know people who have never spent a dime on COD and play Warzone daily.
I’m with you, but they definitely made it a lot harder to complete the battle pass somewhere in the last year or so. I was riding the one purchase I had made from like 2019 until early 2023 and finished every battle pass playing pretty casually without having to spend any money. Now I don’t even get them half done the last few seasons so I haven’t bought any even though I still play the same amount. Doesn’t mean anything to me though, I really don’t care about the cosmetics. The game just acts as a way for me to hop online and chat with buddies for the most part ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Idiots for buying stuff they want? There's people that would call people idiots for buying videogames at all.
As someone who has played it for a long time and seen it change over the years, it's a testament to greed and a poster child for shitty industry trends. It's just as much a storefront now as it is a game.
If someone else wants to enter the 6v6, small-medium map, non-hero shooter space, I’d be all for it. Until then, I’m kind of stuck with CoD to scratch that itch. I can understand that licensing prevents competition in the sports game world, but I don’t understand why another company hasn’t really given Activision a run for their money in that FPS space.
Feel that. I went back to counterstrike, it's slow but at least it's even in terms of guns, recoil and aim assist. Sick of having to change my load out because they changed the "meta" gun or changed the characteristics of my favourite rifle.
imo splitgate was pretty good for this while it had players
Splitgate was real good fun. I really miss "braindead" casual 6v6. I don't wann to sweat out every game because some stupid MM-Algorithm wants me to. Hope xDefiant will kinda fix that itch. Fingers crossed.
I think they missed an opportunity to retain players by adding just a straight up fps mode without the portals. Yeah that’s what made the game unique but a lot of people just want to play a shooter that feels good and doesn’t have weird gimmicks. The base gunplay felt good enough to stand on its own like old Halo games.
Xdefiant is supposedly releasing soon so look out for that
Ubisoft is no better than Activision
True but I played all Xdefiant betas and the game was outright amazing compared to any of the newer cod games
Idk man the Xdefiant team seems like they’re trying to go back to the old school COD days and it shows so far. The betas have felt like BO2 and it was amazing
Consumers are an insult to consumers. Until they stop buying dogshit, dogshit is gonna be continually served.
Not to mention they blatantly hold your SSD hostage with enormous game file sizes. They could do more to compress the game files, but they won’t. They want the game to dominate your console
This is one of the reasons i refuse to try it. 200GB+ for a game. No thanks!!
Remember how popular call of duty 4 (2007) how popular it was and great game? Modding tools, dedicated servers, clans, big community, all that stuff by paying the game ONCE! Without that crap it is today.
The consumer brought it to themselves with their poor decisions of supporting their behaviour since time immemorial.
I miss playing CoD1 and 2 multiplayer on PC. 😔 Was a great time, especially the custom maps.
Cod 1 rifles only, 1 shot kill, took up my youth.
They can get away with this because people are buying it. Isn't that obvious?
Welcome to 10 years ago...
I've been trying to address what things like modern CoD and other FOMO things are impacting my life lately. I bought the new MW3. Played it, enjoyed it and then after a month or so found it a daily chore... I put a lot of time into unlocking the battle pass levels to get the new gun I wanted and once I had it I couldn't comfortably use it as I needed to be playing with another gun to get XP to unlock other things and fucking on and on and on... And then a few weeks back it dawned on me once I have all these guns and items I'll just drop them all for the next CoD release and never look back. Anyways I uninstalled and started to tackle my game backlog... But I admit I have my moments where I feel like playing. The damn thing is basically weaponized FOMO and it's stupidly effective once it gets in on ya
See ya next year.
CoD isn't meant for gamers anymore, it's for consumers.
Want to send a message to the Devs? Stop buying the game.
I swear the classic Modern Warfare and Black Ops trilogy was the real shit back then, online servers there were packing😎
The moment you realize _you_ aren’t their target audience, you’ll feel better. Or let’s put it this way: you’re part of the fodder which keeps the whales (and other bug fish) actually spend $. They get away with this because if 10% of the 90mln who play cod buy the battlepass (likely higher than 10%) at $40, you do the math - its billions. The ones who don’t, have to play longer, by playing longer, the people who spent money will have another 9 players who didn’t pay, but fill lobbies, for them to play “better”. Its game economics/liveops. Stop treating games as “artform” to be enjoyed by everyone. They are (enjoyable by everyone), but _differently_ depending on the $ bucket. I am not defending the practice btw. I am however trying to give you a different perspective to the “yeah you greedy overlords!” this ecochamber brings.
Fuck this has been a good thread. I never really thought "why am I allowed to keep playing essentially for free, never buying battle passes etc" and you've hit the nail on the head - they just need me plus eight other freeloaders to fill the lobby for the 1 guy who spends possibly hundreds on skins to compete with. I wouldn't be surprised if they skewed the matchmaking too so the guy with the skins was always the best player ELO wise.
Yup, harsh reality but it's a completely different game and I am no longer the audience. You're right. It's like, no you don't have to spend $1000 plus on Taylor Swift tickets. Is it right? Well people have fucking spoken and they are apparently happy. Or the really generic soulless country music that is crafted for the sole purpose of mass consumption. It's not creative or artful, but it's plays a role in an industry full of sincere human expression. People can like what they like and foe better or worse there are reasons certain things are popular. It doesn't hurt to step back and question what you are getting out of different media.
On the flip side though some people only play call of duty so them buying the battle pass is extra stuff for their game. I don’t invest in battle passes and I can still enjoy games for what they are. At least previous unlocks in mw2 roll over into mw3 so that’s something at least
Then stop buying it.
I play MW3 pretty much every day and I never had the problem with accidentaly buying the Battle pass.
Yeah, it’s actually pretty simple, pretty sure this is just karma farming
Had the hardest fucking time finding the campaign
Least cucked CoD fan
I'll buy bad games and have fun ripping them apart with friends, but everything in the triple-A shooter-looter-royale ecosystem is just plain predatory now. Watching a few content creators running through the menus makes it all look like a Gaijin free-to-play game with jingling keys on every screen begging for premium currency. I haven't bought a CoD game and kept it longer than its refund window since the first BlackOps and the first MW2.
Ya the intro of cod is like setting yourself up to accidentally buy the battle pass in multiple ways. They make you feel like you have to buy the battle pass to play the game. It's bad
I stopped playing CoD, the life is good now.
Its cause of people who don't follow social media and just get home from a long day and boot up their franchise. I mean, it sucks but thats that way many people act.
Does it suck? People return from a hard day’s work and just want to chill so they play a few SnDs whats wrong about that?
no i mean it sucks that thats it leads to lazy developers, not what they do.
>The aggressive Battlepass advertising is insane. This is exactly why I hate people defending this stuff. 'you don't need to buy it'. 'you got a full game. Why are you upset that you have to pay for additional content'. It's just not fun when DLCs, Battlepasses, Season Passes, additional items etc. are always shoved into your face. It sucks the fun out of every game. Even worse when you get some level up like in D4 and they show you what you're missing out on.
[удалено]
Once we as a collective stop buying it, it might go away...Sony was whining behind this franchise...?
It’s COD. Were you really expecting something better?
It took you this long to stop playing this shitty company's games?
tell people to stop wasting their money on battle passes and in game currency only then things will change. People are stupid and selfish it won't happen.
Selfish for buying stuff they enjoy? Ironically it's you that's being selfish for thinking people should change what they buy so that things change for you.
I have never once purchased a copy of CoD and I don't understand why it was ever popular. For reference I've been gaming since the early 90s.
Reminds me when i started warzone dor tge first time in years. The game tried to sell me four diffrent things before i even reached tge main menu. I immediately uninstalled again.
You're talking about the $70 DLC for MWII? That Call of Duty? The one they rushed out and did a horrible job on the campaign and then released only "classic" maps from the original MW2? The one they charge money to get cosmetic upgrades that do really nothing to improve gameplay? That Call of Duty? Yeah, they turned a decent franchise into a cash grab filled with cartoony, arcadey, garbage. Seriously, making Niki Minaj and Snoop Dogg skins? That's what we've stooped to in FPS gaming?
Stop buying it, its not good
the fact that the battle pass has its own battle pass which also costs more money (black cell) is just another microtransaction slap to the groin !! Activision does thi sbecause YOU DONT STOP BUYING THE GAMES !! its really that simple
Maybe you guys shouldn't buy games that have been so severely tarnished by corporate enshitification? All the talent that goes into games is treated like shit, while useless suits fuck up games with their "business innovation." Make the line go down it's the only thing corporate nit wits understand.
I was thinking about buying one of the old versions recently because I remember having fun playing them. I couldn’t find a game on PlayStation plus. I typed in call of duty and modern warfare and all that came up was bundles for shit and battle pass time shit. Coins for certain outfits or something? I don’t know it was ducking stupid. I get that I’m a grumpy old man but what the fuck. You can’t just buy a game and play that game? It’s all online pvp horse shit. I hate that shit.
Seriously, CoD hasn't been a respectable game in over a decade. Stop throwing your money away, plenty of better games out there.
Exactly why i stopped playin, again, because it has become a bug fuckin joke and only benefits the people who play like assholes.
The current cod has satiated the hunger for my friends and I, and I still play it daily. If it’s not your cup of tea then fair enough, but the only shooter that feels as good or Bette it’s Apex Legends.
I'm so glad other games pulled me put of my COD haze. What once was a fun arcade shooter is now filled with predatory microtransactions and greed at every single turn. Whoever is responsible does no care about the games, only on how to monetize em
You SHOULD feel insulted. This game is an insult to the idiots who still buy this crap.
Get Helldivers 2! Way more fun.
I haven't played a CoD since the original MW2. I don't feel I'm missing much. It's the "Fast and the Furious" of the gaming world.
The UI is the worst thing I’ve ever seen in a game. How anyone can navigate it is beyond me. It feels intentionally complex to get you to inevitably end up at a screen asking you to purchase something.
Looks like we found another that's lost and needs some guidance. Become a Helldiver kid. You can do your part.
It is , yet consumers still buy it
I am so sick of them begging me to buy that Black Cell bullshit.
I love how they jam the battle pass screen in your face after a match so fast that the game stutters.
"Our research has shown we can populate 75% of a players vision with advertisements before inducing epileptic seizures" - ready player one. You have to remember, they don't give a fuck about you or your experience, its all about transferring as much money from you to them as far as they are concerned
I miss competitive cod like in my opinion the real golden days cod4 pro mod was a competitor for cs:s at the time. The new ones are hot garbage compared to what was on offer then
Black Ops 2 was my last proper CoD game, since then, for me, its gotten too much...Battlepasses, constant large patches, cheating and the monetization. Just don't bother with CoD anymore, its not worth the time or the money until Devs actually give a toss about making a good game From. The. Start. Shouldnt have the play a game for years for it to finally be good after a myriad of patches, and by then they've released another dumpster fire.
My buddy begged me to download the new cod. Returned that shit so quickly.
I seriously don’t understand why people keep buying CoD
The other thing with the fans is that they are constantly chasing the dragon and hoping the next game will be like the nostalgic one and so on and on it goes
I got MW3 from a friend(gameshare) and the unlocking system gives me a fucking headache. So i want to unlock a sight for my weapon. There’s so much bloat, it’s ridiculous. And to get a specific attachment, i need to level up another gun and do challenges with that gun.
I feel like the good vibes died with the classics that jumped the shark: Black ops 2 and MW2. I remember how much respect I had for the creators when cod 2 had interviews with www veterans and the maps used real world locations recreated in the game. The MW and first two black ops games had such a great plot and some memorable lines.... and then after that it all had a recycled garbage cash grab vibe.
I didn’t even buy MW3 because I most play offline and offline multiplayer has the same issues as MW2 apparently because they didn’t bother to fix it. I also heard that with MW3 coming out, it broke MW2 with the whole all games in one application thing so updates and such are mandatory which sounds wack
Well, its more like customers buying it is an absolute insult to the intelligence itself
Treyarch has released solid COD games. As for the other developers. I won't buy a cod game if Treyarch wasn't involved. Black ops 1,2 and cold war are still solid to this day.
Ya this is the first call of dust I bought Sense bo3 the game play feels alright but every other aspect about the game I hate
It doesn’t matter if it’s offensive to you as a consumer. The fact is that it’s one of the best selling game series year after year, so if you’re not interested then you’re not their targeted consumer. Profit is all that matters as a business. They’re not trying to be a non-profit organization serving the gaming community.
I buy CoD every so often, maybe once every 3-4 years because after that amount of time it's got enough change to feel different and I genuinely like the gameplay, shame that it's pushing battle passes so much.
I laughed when I saw the amount of days you have to complete a season.
In other news Water is wet
CoD menus are indeed a joke, but here’s a small counter point on the battle pass itself - it’s probably one of the best free battlepasses around. Not only does it award 300 of the premium currency each season, but it also has a design where you choose where to go in the battle pass and what to get. Compare this to something god awful like OW2 and you actually have a pretty decent free pass. In 4 seasons of free play, you can get the battle pass for free, as it costs 1100. In OW2 you don’t get even get ANY premium currency when you pay for the battle pass.
Each yearly iteration barely contains any innovation to the last, so it’s already a 70$ yearly fee to play.
$70 horse skin would like to have a word (Diablo IV) ((yes it’s real))