Johnnysworld

Modern is as modern does.

If you were unaware or just don’t care (look at me rhyming), August 1st marked the multiplayer reveal of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare.

Good thing I waited a couple of days to write this though because developer Infinity Ward is releasing new info left and right.

I’m going to talk about my opinion how it looks. I’m not famous so I haven’t tried it yet, so this is just based off of what I’ve seen. If you want a recap of what we were shown, check out my last post and/or you could just watch this crispy new 4K gameplay from developer Infinity Ward as a refresher.

Since the jump to next generation consoles back in 2014, I haven’t paid this much attention to a Call of Duty game as I have this year. I think it’s because it feels like it’s been forever since Infinity Ward has made a Call of Duty game, and after their last entry of Infinite Warfare, I just thought I’d pay attention for haha’s. Needless to say, they’ve finally decided to take the game back to modern warfare. This is finally a true modern warfare setting: no specialist weapons or abilities, no wall running gimmicks. Straight soldier versus soldier.

This game looks like Battlefield and Call of Duty: Ghosts had a child and it made a new Medal of Honor game set in modern day. Remember when EA tried to reboot Medal of Honor and it tanked? This is what it should’ve looked like.

Infinity Ward divided the community hardcore with the removal of the mini map: a staple in every CoD game since Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Reddit is aflame with posts of “Mini map or no mini map?” or “Who cares play the game first before you judge?”. It’s a fire storm, and I touched on why I think it’s a bad idea in my multiplayer reveal recap. Here’s what I said:

To me, I do not play Call of Duty for realism and I also don’t watch the mini map. It’s a tool to know when spawns are flipping, where Killstreaks are, and where my teammates are. I don’t know why they’d remove it since there’s no reason to remove it. It will be in competitive play though, which only makes me wonder how does that make sense?

 

Yeah idk about that one. It’s a weird change, and instead of a mini map, players will be looking at a compass/map thing that shows red dots on it. Infinity Ward wants to decrease the skill gap for newcomers, but in my opinion, it’s harder to read that compass that it is to read the mini map so it might as well increase the skill gap even more. This is something they most likely will be monitoring during next month’s beta.

There’s a brand new feature coming to the game called the Gunsmith. You basically get to customize your gun, and you can see the changes happen visually. For example, there’s no AK-47u in the game (at the moment), but you can customize the AK-47 to make it look and function like the AK-47u. Each gun has 30-60 attachments, and each will have pros and cons which will supposedly make players think about what they’re running. It’s been said that you can customize your guns during the match, which is neat.

Interestingly enough, Infinity Ward has axed the Wildcard system meaning we can’t use multiple perks like we’ve been used to for so long. Players will only be able to choose three perks, which is kind of lame in my opinion. I liked the freedom we had of not being able to use a perk tier if you didn’t like that tier. Not to mention Ghost is in a category where people will just choose it with no remorse of missing other perks. In the gameplay above, the dude was running Ghost/Cold-Blooded.

That reminds me. This game looks campy. When Ghosts introduces the cover system, the game turned campy. People would just hide in lanes, peak their gun out and shoot. A new feature is the introduction of mounting your weapon, no bipod included. You can mount any gun on a surface, and that’s going to make objective game modes even campier.

When Black Ops 2 introduced the Scorestreak system, it gave players a fair chance to earn their fair share of rewards by earning points versus earning kills. With this change, objective modes offered a more rewarding experience since you’d get more score for playing the objective. The trade off came when streaks started feeling weaker with each new Call of Duty entry, and people realized earning score versus earning kills was a fine line developers had to keep in mind. I really liked this system, in spite of their weaknesses, since it felt more rewarding in a sense. TheXclusiveAce has a pretty good video on the difference between both.

Infinity Ward has decided to go back to the Killstreak system, in which Killstreaks are achieved by reaching a certain amount of kills, and there’s no more wrapping kill streaks either (meaning when you get all your streaks in one life, you can’t earn them again in that same life). Streaks are said to be powerful with a healthy returning set of streaks such as the Juggernaut and the Pavelow. At first, I didn’t like the idea of Killstreaks versus Scorestreak, but since the reveal, IW announced a new perk called Point Man which will allow players to turn Killstreaks in Scorestreaks, which is pretty cool. The removal of wrapping streaks sucks though, but to be fair, people are saying it’s to balance the game and not make it a “pub stomping affair”.

There is a new mode called Ground War, or Conquest as many people are calling it. Players compete in teams of 20 (I think the number changes as there will be larger number of player counts) for five flags. It looked just like Conquest from Battlefield, but boring. Call of Duty has been the game I play for fast paced action, and from the 20v20 gameplay shown, it looked boring.

I think my biggest concern for this game will be the micro transactions that Activision will most likely sneak in at some point. If you pre-order one of the higher end editions, you get 3000 COD points aka the currency for supply drops. Activision beat the brakes off of Black Ops 4 with supply drops, and with the amount of customization in this game shown so far, the possibilities are endless for Modern Warfare. People are saying by Christmas the game will just be full of supply drops, supply drop weapons, camos, emblems, etc. We’ll probably get customizable executions and Operator skins. It’s scary, and it’s safe to say the community is scared too. They aren’t going to stop doing these business practices anytime soon.

Micro transactions aside, I think Infinity Ward is trying to get Call of Duty back to it’s roots with a lot of these gameplay changes. To be fair, CoD has evolved over the years becoming a bit more “complex”, and IW seems to be scrapping a lot of it in order to bring in a new set of players. It’s easier to make these types of changes to the formula this year since Battlefield fans are pissed, and there’s no other challenger to the throne. It seems like the community is excited, but that’s how they get whenever a new game comes out so I’m taking it with a grain of salt.

Now, maybe you’re wondering what’s going to happen to Blackout, Treyarch’s battle royale mode from Black Ops 4. Word on the street is that…

This guy seems to have a good track record with leaking this info, but as always, take this with a grain of salt. In my opinion, Infinity Ward should make this like Blackout: a “greatest hits” of the Modern Warfare series, and after that, the BR modes should be axed from Call of Duty for good. As we saw with Treyarch, it’s hard to balance all these different modes with updates and content while looking for ways to monetize it as much as they can (I’m a troll I know). Modern Warfare will be looking to balance content for multiplayer, Spec Ops, and if true, a BR mode.

Last thing I want to talk about is the future of Call of Duty. As I included the tweet about Activision making $800 million off of micro transactions, it looks like they’re going to continue the yearly release of Call of Duty games. With Sledgehammer and Raven Software’s 2020 game axed, Treyarch is being called up to work on next year’s iteration. The next game is said to be a remake of the Black Ops universe similar to this year’s Modern Warfare, but grittier.

Maybe this is a crappy idea, but I’m not the only one who thinks Activision should cut the yearly releases. Their business practices are heinous and hurting the staff that make these games. Treyarch was literally the savior of CoD until Activision ruined their games with pay to win guns and camos (my opinion). I think, and hear me out, Activision should give Treyarch a break and remaster an older entry from this series. Remaster Modern Warfare 2 or Black Ops 2, and have the next “new” game come out 2021. That’s just my two cents though.

I’m sorry this article got out of hand. I just kind of wanted to summarize what’s going on in the CoD universe. Let me know what ya think in the comments below or on Twitter!