Sure, CoD4 is great an all, but at what cost? AT WHAT COST!?!
There seems to be a trend becoming more and more prevalent with every new video game release, I like to call it “CoD syndrome.” This syndrome is characterized by selfish play, team killing, and ignoring objectives. Thanks to some developers the people who are behaving like asshats are being rewarded for not working as a team. Squad tactics, last I checked, in the army don’t involve one man or woman going out on their own and ignoring the objectives of their mission. So why do developers promote this type of gameplay when they could be teaching kids and adults something valuable like teamwork?
Case in point: Individual weapon upgrades that are unlocked the more people you kill with said weapon. I believe Call of Duty 4 to be a great game and the campaign was one of the best I ever played; it just seems to be where individual “rank whoring” began. Since the game was a huge success a lot of games are trying to follow that model i.e. COD World at War, KillZone 2, and many more. I think the concept for these types of games is sound, reward the people who perform better in the game. It gets a little screwy when it only rewards them slightly less for bad play and it doesn’t really matter if you win or lose the match b/c you’re still getting points.
Developers have even taken it so far that it is necessary to have these “perks” or “rewards” to be competitive at the game. They start you off with a club and a butter knife and you have to reach level 4 to get the SMG. So you have to suffer 200 games of “spawn and die” to even have a chance! OK, I’m exaggerating a bit but that’s the feeling you get when you first jump into a game, especially if it's already been out for a few days. This “reward” system also promotes boosting, glitching and even the dreaded CHEATING.
Everyone has their weapon of choice. For some it’s a SMG or assault rifle, shotgun or sniper rifle. Well, if your weapon of choice is a sniper you may have to play 500 games (a la Killzone 2) before you can unlock that sniper rifle and another 200 to get the good scope. After you’ve taken all that time to unlock your favorite weapon they are only going to give you 12 bullets, so don’t miss! The devs say it’s for “game balance.” Doesn’t that sound like fun for you Mr. sniper? To me what they are saying by making their game such a time suck is, "we want our game to have the 'game balance' like we’ve seen in Call of Duty 4."
There are a few games that are out there that got it right, like Rainbow Six: Vegas. When you rank up in RB6: Vegas, you unlock only cosmetic things like different uniforms, face masks, helmets and different types of armor. Players never had the option to unlock anything that gave one player a slight edge over another. There was also a “reward” system in place that made you rank up faster through team wins. Good teams would beat superior individual players any day of the week. Plus it had some great objective game types that forced you to play as a team; no Rambo’ing it in Vegas. The second iteration of the series RB6V:2 (released after COD4) also suffered from the syndrome. Now when you rank up it is based more on individual stats and less on team play. If the new ranking system wasn’t enough of a slap in the face to fans of the original, Ubisoft took out some great objective game types, like retrieval, and tweaked others so teamwork wasn’t as important.
The “syndrome” has largely affected gameplay in the FPS genre, and it has become a recipe for the “Rambo“ style: spawn, run, die, rinse and repeat. Players who use this style rarely care about the team, only that their kill/death ratio is positive, 'cause nothing says winner like getting 29 kills with 28 deaths. It’s okay though because they are awesome and the rest of the team sucked! They’ll also be sure and tell you all about it in the lobby after the game ends. The more of these unsportsmanlike players you have in a room, the more you’ll see them jumping in front of one and other even team killing to get the good spot so they get the points for planting the bomb. Why play as a team if you can “rank up” without them?
It seems this mentality is getting so ingrained in players heads it’s leaking over into non-shooter type games. I’ve even seen it in NHL 09, a damn team sport game of all things. We’re not even talking about the glitchers and cheaters. Catch a team game online and all you’ll see is get the puck, rush down the ice, shoot the puck, rinse and repeat. After the game when that team loses you’ll hear, “You guys suck, I had 30 shots on goal you guys had none!” We could work as a team but screw that I need 40,000 goals before the next NHL comes out cause I’m l33t, yo!"
So now no matter how tactical and cool developers think their new game is, it’s going to be played like COD4 online.
There are a few easy ways developers can overcome these issues.
- Let me rank up in private matches or with bots alone or even with friends. I don’t mind ranking up as long as I can have FUN doing it. Ranks really aren’t about skill in video games, anyway. They’re more about how much time you’ve got to put into the game.
- A cover system. And don’t tease me with tactical game play in your single player demo then give me Kamikaze online craziness (Killzone 2, I’m talking to you, your new name is “almost # 5“).
- A good lobby/party system, so when I can’t get all 32 or 60 of my friends together let me take a couple with me into public matches let us be on the same team and I don’t know, talk to each other. Social interaction is the future of online gaming not “rank whoring,” or “run and gun."
Listen COD 4 is a great game. It had great sales and a lot of people love playing it. But that doesn’t mean every game ever made from now on has to be a COD 4 clone. I don’t want “Killzone of Duty,”“Call of Rainbow,” or “insert clone type game here.” The thing we need are new games that actually take advantage of being a next generation console when it comes to gameplay, not just pretty graphics. Game developers PLEASE give us some innovation. Show some creativity. We are getting nowhere with this copycat style of game making, and frankly I’m bored.
