Hey there.

Black Ops 2 is in the future. That's cool. Is it because there are lasers and mini helicopters and tanks with legs? Largely, yes, but it also has a design side to its awesomeness. This has never been done in Call of Duty.

Ever.

This is the same deal as when CoD4 brought the game to the present day. We're working in a brand new timeframe and that opens up SO much design space. What you've got is a fantastic recipe: A great company, a great franchise and a whole load of open design space. If that doesn't excite you then it really should.

That's all I really want to say at the moment. No matter what you've been excited for so far - new guns and killstreaks, cool levels, freaky story, cool technlogy - just remember that most of that stuff is essentially a skin on an existing frame. What's really great about the new setting is that it opens up space at the very lowest levels of the design process and that... That is something to be hyped for.

-FK

The fact they actually dare to do something radically different (even if just visually, which I honestly doubt) just shows they've realized that the franchise isn't immortal and that they can keep doing modern warfare games forever.

The trailer was the first CoD trailer ever that legitimately caught my attention, because I did not really expect it despite the rumours and speculations.

One thing I really like about the near future setting is that they have more freedom to keep it "realistic" and still include futuristic and interesting new concepts. With entirely new weapons (especially if they are still just ideas or totally imaginary today) they can make them from the ground up with balance in mind as opposed to make it whatever gun it's named after. But that's just me being optimistic.

And of course, it's adorable to see the same special individuals already complain about how it's too different when they're the ones who have been constantly pointing out that CoD needs to change drastically. Not weird they've realized they can't please everyone with people like that, lmao.

You made a new thread for that......i'll allow it.

Looks like Homefront and Call of Duty had a love child.

13 years in the future is radically different? How? Its still an fps, your still going to shoot people with guns, the only thing that's really going to change simply because its in the future are killstreaks and equipment. Which they already do weird shit like heart beat sensors and explosive rc cars anyway so that time difference clearly hasn't been a barrier for them in the past. Treyarch typically makes good campaigns but that's really the only thing they do that's unique. Other then that this new timeline has no real impact on anything multiplayer related.

Honestly it's the same shit every year, Activision releases a trailer and everyone thinks that finally they are going to change the series up or make it better. That's never going to happen. This CoD will be exactly like the Mw3, Black Ops, Mw2 and CoD4. A new graphics skin with the same weapons, the same perks and the same killstreaks.

INFINITE wrote:

Please tell me more on how you understand the business and development portions of developing a FPS? Look at Battlefield; copy-paste formula. Add new vehicles, couple guns, big ass maps, revamp classes, add new equipment, and viola. CoD; add new guns, add a few perks, new pointstreak system, add new and old lethal equipment, add new tactical equipment, and viola They make changes but nothing major to a formula that WORKS. Assassin's Creed and God of War are other examples of formulas that work so they don't change, rather adjust and tweak.

So you can bitch about it all you want but this is how business works, my friend. My best advice is: don't buy. And further more, if you think it's shit, why bother to come into this section?

Back on topic, I like it. It seems really interesting even though I'm not a fan of the Michael Bay-esque explosions and what not. I can't wait to see things when they're, you know, not blowing up every three seconds.

INFINITE wrote:

Are you kidding? As soon as you work some way into the future - enough that noone can really know what will happen - then you can do SO much and have it be justified. I don't know what those might be, but the potential for new design elements is vast.

INFINITE wrote:

Have you even played the past Call of Duties? You seem to be ignorant to the changes that have been implemented on from game to game. Compare all the features in Mw3 to CoD4 and you'll be surprised and how much has changed. The basics are the same but of course it is because that is Call of Duty, move too far away and it's not the same game. For Call of Duty the future hasn't been explored yet and as Free-Kill has said in this thread, it opens up the franchise to many different avenues.

Free-Kill wrote:
Because justifying shit that doesn't make sense was clearly a problem they were facing in the past right? That's why they used the timeline in Black Ops last time, they justified weird shit by simply saying that the cold war produced a lot of prototype weapons and equipment. MwX is justified because they are in a near future. They've always had things in the game which aren't realistic and they always justified it with weird loop holes in the timeline. Whether its 50 years in the past or 13 years in the future it makes no difference.

Fokus wrote:
Please explain to me where I said that? I simply said whats true about these forums, every year the same people bitch about how poor the previous game was yet when the new trailer comes out those same people get super excited about how THIS time its going to be different despite how for the last 5 years the game has not made any significant changes.

Fokus wrote:
How much Battlefield have you played? If you actually played the game I think you'd find that for example Bad Company is much different then BF:3. Are they both FPS games? Well yeah I guess if that is your idea of not changing things up then you'd be pretty disappointed.

Gangsta-Nun wrote:
Have they changed something? Sure, but relatively speaking this is a series which hasn't improved since CoD4. We still have primarily the same perks except the removal of a few which took 5 years to make that happen. As far as significant gameplay changes? Host migration, customized kill streaks, deathstreaks, lag compensation. One of those is a horrible idea and 2 are band aid fix's to problems mother games avoided completely with dedicated servers. And when you really think about does having your 3 killstreaks on 4/7/11 really change your game that much from 3/5/7?

Gangsta-Nun wrote:

This. From game to game, it changes. Some changes work, some don't. But you can't ignore their existence.

Okay I'm astonished not by the trailer, but because of you guys. Especially those who bring good ideas how to improve games seem to be flashed by this trailer

The franchise made changes, but not big one's ?
You gotta be kidding me. This is your argument?
I may agree with you that the futuristic set-up is not bad and actually a pretty good choice.
Is this enough for you guys to hope that the game will be better?

Basic mechanics need to be tweaked to make the game better and yes it is possible without destroying that "CoD feel".Adding fancy new stuff achieves 0.
CoD NEVER made a good step forward since CoD 4 ( I would even say CoD 2). We have the same engine that allows players to headglitch. We have almost the same limb multipliers which are basically none existent. We have view kick. We have even more randomness that I don't want to mention, because I am slowly getting sick of it and NONE of these problems were fixed since CoD 2.

I am completely agreeing with INFINITE on this point. CoD will never change.

As long as they aren't bullshitting a bunch of made-up content because they put it at such at time in the future I'm fine. I know its stupid to associate Call of Duty with realism, but I just like to know that the stuff I'm using to kill something with actually excists

Saying CoD will never change is, I think, undeniably incorrect.

Are you going to tell me CoD 4 was the same as Black Ops? They're only joined in their general playstyles, but are massively individual given anything more than a cursory overview.

The game has evolved hugely. It may still be Call of Duty, but then again it's a series. It's meant to feel like the same family of game. The nuance, however, and the details that a person who's bothered to find this forum should appreciate, are what differentiate the games. It's the reason we have fanboys of the different installments. The reason I can jump in and play a game of Black Ops whenever I like but would get angry playing a single match of MW3.

The games are similar, yes, but no more so than any other series of games. The fact that Black Ops 2 has been set in such a new, unexplored environment leaves much more room for innovation than the previous titles have. I don't even see how that's debatable.

double post

INFINITE wrote:

You are forgetting some major changes that have added to the overall experience.

Such as theatre mode, character customization, varied killstreaks + wider range of killstreaks, pro perks, party system and invites, loads more gametypes,Elite integration, thousands more challenges, wider range of guns than previous titles, host migration and improved stat tracking all add up to make playing CoD4 quite a painful experience when you are used to these luxuries, i could go on but they are minor changes which you may take for granted. Some of the additions are stupid such as deathstreaks while others are break through for the genre.

I was going to type up a small argument about other points made but since Free-Kill kindly summed up all my points in his own post I'll just leave that here instead:

Difference between Black Ops and CoD4

Maps - something that can be erased as a difference thanks to possible add-ons and DLCs. IF 3arc does that is a different story.

Killstreaks - Yea great difference. Now I can tear shit apart with my napalm strike instead of air strikes. Implementing dogs is so innovative and really increases the skill ceiling.

Perks - Blops has even a worse perk tree. Overall no real innovations on that aspect.

Weapons - Here is the thing that seperates them. The weapons overall kill slower in Blops. Do we have any significent changes ? No, not really except for snipers.
Equipment - fancy motion sensors really improve the gameplay

I don't know. Is there anymore difference? Did we finally got rid of knifing? Are grenades finally not OHKOing?

I could do the same thing with any other CoD and have basically the same conclusion. If you prefer one CoD or another is subjective. If there is "the best CoD" then we would have the same opinion, but we don't.

g0ggy wrote:

Is that necessarily a bad thing? To what extent can you change a game and for it to still be that game? Eventually, you'd make enough changes to the game that it becomes a completely different game, where the only similarity between it and the previous game is the name. You talk about things such as the game engine and mechanics such as view kick, head glitching and limb multipliers, and how they are 'steps forward' to what I presume you mean to be a better Call of Duty. Have you considered that the feel of the game as created by the game's engine and the mechanics of Call of Duty are what make it 'Call of Duty'? Create the game on a different engine and remove/change/add a few new mechanics, but with the idea of creating Call of Duty the whole time, and you end up with something that doesn't feel like Call of Duty. For example: remember back to the good old days of Need for Speed. Underground, Underground 2 and Most Wanted were all great games (Carbon was ok, not great). Then, with the 'generation shift' they tried something new with Pro Street. They changed the basic mechanics such as brakes and handling, and added a few new ones such as vehicle damage that affects performance. The game was also created on a brand new engine. Pro Street was a dreadfully poor game, and the only similarity between it and the likes of Most Wanted was the name and that they were racing games.

Why disrupt a winning formula? Can you give me an example of a game series that drastically changed and didn't suffer for it (can Mario be considered a series?)? I can give quite a few examples of games series that have stuck with a winning formula over the years that have enjoyed quite a lot of success: Call of Duty, Resident Evil, Pokemon, Assassin's Creed, Battlefield, Ratchet and Clank, Fifa, Madden, Gran Turismo.

Instead of bashing Call of Duty for not changing or not taking a good step forward for years why don't you make some suggestions as to how it could be improved?

@ Albino

Maybe it would actually change the flow. Who knows ? I don't think that those points I listed here would change it.

Just think about it. What would happen if I remove view kick? Okay first of all we had less random 1on1 gun fights. Both people start to shoot at the same time and the one with better aim would win.
Negative aspects of this change : ... welll IDK I don't see it. It doesn't really seem like it would change the flow either. A possible situation would be that people won't flank so much anymore. They would know that theier chances at going right into a choke point and surviving it might be higher. That would even compliment the flow that we have anway.

We might never know until we try. Being scared of new and different things is typical human behaviour, but it always brought us forward.

BTW as a Resident Evil veteran I don't accept it as an example of yours

g0ggy wrote:

I agree with you on view kick, it is an entirely negative mechanic that I highly doubt anyone would miss, I simply included it as you used it as an example in the previous post. However, my point still stands that games are defined by their mechanics; both core mechanics such as movement and aiming and other mechanics such as how the player model interacts with the map and limb multipliers. Changing too many mechanics or changing mechanics too much changes the feel of the game. For example, the different feel of aiming in Call of Duty and Battlefield (which is also down to frame rate). Something as 'simple' as aiming changes the overall feel of the game (and is the main reason why I play CoD over Battlefield). Change the feel of the game too much and it becomes a different game. Not just another title in the series, but a different game altogether.

Fair enough on the Resident Evil point. To me they're all survival horror (main series at least, Operation Raccoon City is barely Resident Evil), with the main differences between the games, to me, being both graphically and the ease of control of the characters. They still have that winning formula of survival horror.

Fokus wrote:
How much Battlefield have you played? If you actually played the game I think you'd find that for example Bad Company is much different then BF:3. Are they both FPS games? Well yeah I guess if that is your idea of not changing things up then you'd be pretty disappointed.
[/quote]

So based on that logic, CoD:4 is much different than MW3, right? CoD may not have a new world-shattering engine but neither does Battlefield. Classes in Battlefield have stayed relatively the same, just as perks have in CoD, which has exceptions in both cases. In the FPS genre, it's normal for gameplay to stay practically the same once you find your formula, so I don't understand how you can say it doesn't change when every installment since CoD:4, with WaW having tanks,zombies, and killer dogs. MW2 being the overhaul of new features including weapons, equipment, killstreaks, pro perks, and Spec Ops. I could go on but I've proven my point(:

I think the thing I'm worried the most about the future setting is more cheap stuff implemented into the game. Things such as motion sensors that were implemented in Black Ops slowed down the flow, particularly in SnD. It is rather annoying for someone to stay in range of his motion sensor that is placed near the bomb and all he does is wait for a blip to come onto the screen, or in Dom a guy camping a motion sensor near a confined b flag such as on cracked or launch. In mw3 they made it even stronger with a wider radius and the whole team being able to use it, an when a whole team uses it, it becomes a camp fest. This future setting allows them to make up a technology that could be as annoying as a motion sensor/heartbeat or implement all 3. That's my only problem with the setting, besides possibility of annoying killstreaks such as rc-xd. In general I hope they go back to the winning formula of black ops, no support, no specialist, no profiecincies, and no cheap equipment or attachments as I really didn't like those additions and felt they were unnessecary. Like I've said before I'm holding judgement and hope vahn and the team makes a great one, I just hope they don't go overboard on unnessecary features.

Albino I also want to preserve the feel of CoD. I don't want to get rid of core game mechanics like ADS even though I see ADSing as a negative feature.
From all the points I mention so often to improve FPS games I'd only want a small number of those in CoD.
There is no way around the fast killing weapons. Situational awareness should be focused in CoD. Get rid of the soundwhoring perks and increase the overall volume of footsteps. Get rid of the ambient sound. Like this SnD becomes way more interesting. You to slow down when you don't want to be heared.

Don't let the character models blend in so well with the environment. Maybe even allow custimisation only with ridiculous hats and shit like you showed it.

I have ideas. I am not here to simply bash CoD. I think the game has a ton of potential. Not only from the game mechanics stand point, but also because of the huge fan base. This game is seen as a brilliant FPS game and it sucks to see that the masses are okay with what they get.

g0ggy wrote:
The masses like the elements that you don't though; they don't want slower paced gameplay, they like ADSing (going from CoD to games without this feature is hard work and seems like a step backwards to me), they like fast killing weapons.

Hats would be a major improvement though, to any game series.

Is there any way to un-thank a post? I hit the thank you button on the wrong post in this thread

And CoD has potential, there's tons of examples. Excellent one is MW2 - that game was pretty fantastic if played without the stuff people have complained about enough for the next 100 years. The first week(s) of MW2 was the most fun I've had in a CoD game since WaW.

I'm being optimistic simply because I really like Treyarch, their games and how they operate. And because we've had our WW2 games, modern warfare games and now it's the near future.

I know that CoD will always keep its core, but isn't that what people play CoD for anyway?

welshboymick wrote:
This man speaks the truth.
Preferably with circling particle effects.