I’ve been playing a bit of Call of Duty: Black Ops: Cold War a bit recently and, while I’m having fun, there are certainly aspects which are entirely frustrating. Most of those, however, I’m noticing are common throughout all Call of Duty games and, in some cases, all FPS games period. So, in this post, I’m going to rant a bit about some aspects of that range from small complaints to design choices that should get the developer barred from creating video games and players slapped for letting it happen.
Kill streaks
Not exclusively a COD feature, but is predominately here, kill streaks don’t make any sense. Essentially, we have a player or team that is already doing so well they are generating enough points to “earn” this kill streak, so we figure it’s best that they now have an army of assault shoppers, machine gun turrets, body armor, zone wide bombing raids and more. It makes zero sense. I’m not saying we should give those perks to the losing team or player either, but it just is nonsensical to give an already dominant force even more power. Some games, just getting a small lead essentially ends the game when your ez-mode auto-kill machines farm the other team until it’s over.
I’m not some amazing player by any stretch. However, I’ve had a few games that are 50+ kills with only a couple of deaths because score streaks helped carry the way. During the time I wrote this article, I got 13 kills from one chopper… Even being on that side of a pair of helos and a bunch of turrets isn’t fun. It’s not fun for me using it, it’s not fun being killed several times in a row by air strikes. The only people who might find using those fun are the same people who need to use cheat codes to win games.
A better solution is, well, first just remove them. If you’re getting a bunch of kills and objectives you’re doing well and will probably win anyway. The other option is to remove all of the large, zero skill, bonuses. No choppers and gunships farming the enemy. Smaller things, UAVs and counters, maybe a shorter duration turret. Killing or being killed should be by out playing… not by collecting more points.
Melee weapons
So… a long time ago there was no guns. Eventually gunpowder was created and we figured that guns were more powerful than sticks and rocks and knives. Why does meleeing with a pistol do more damage than shooting with it? Why does a knife do more damage than anything but a sniper head shot?
Now, before you argue “but then no one will use melee weapons”… yes, they won’t. Because it’s a shooter not a fighting game. If you run out of bullets, melee is a backup option. It should not out damage a gun, period. There should be no scenario where running around with a knife, running through gunfire, just to stab someone is an effective strategy.
Shotguns
Similar to melee weapons, shot guns are not the end all, be all of guns. You can, in no reality, run through assault rifle bullets, getting smashed by lead repeatedly in the chest, in order to go shoot someone with your shotgun and kill them instantly. Shot guns are niche weapons not massively overpowered compared to nearly all guns all of the time.
Sniper Flinch / Drop Shots
If you’re sniping, and you get shot in the face several times, you cannot keep looking down the scope and aim/shoot perfectly straight. You cannot. Not in one million attempts will that work out. However, in game it works out perfectly fine, somehow. If you’re sniping and someone shoots you first (means you failed at sniping, btw) it should flinch to the point that any immediate shots go wild at minimum, but the correct change would be to remove the player from the scope. There’s absolutely no excuse for allowing the game to have a sniper get shot in the face repeatedly and still get to shoot perfectly straight with no issue.
Similarly, if you’re shooting someone and you throw yourself to the ground, you will not keep shooting. If you do keep shooting, you will not keep shooting with even the slightest amount of accuracy. And BIG IF you somehow manage to completely ignore the oncoming ground and focus exclusively on your shot and keep shooting with even a slight amount of accuracy, when you hit the ground your gun will smash down and bounce up and around and you will have a near zero chance at hitting anything at all. I don’t blame the players, I’ll use it sometimes as well because it’s part of the game… but the developers would have a hard time explaining how to makes any sense.
Spawn flipping
No. If your match making is so bad that spawn camping is a regular thing, fix your match making. If your maps are so poorly designed that spawn camping is incredibly easy then fix your maps. Flipping spawn points isn’t a solution to spawn camping, at all.
BUT – if your development team isn’t up the challenge of designing decent maps or setting up reasonable match ups and you can think of literally nothing but spawn flipping, then do it right. There needs to be a cool down period on the spawn flip. There needs to be a minimum distance from an enemy player. I have personally been spawned INSIDE of an enemy player. I have been spawned in such a way that I could reach out and touch 4 enemy players at the same time. I’ve been spawn flip ping ponged as a spawn to where an enemy player is, the spawn flips immediately to where the enemy just rushed, I die before I load in, am flipped back to the previous location and bounced 6 times in a row as such. Today, while working on this article, on the Nuketown map, I had just spawned after earning my supply crate. 2 of my teammates are inside the building in front of me. I drop my crate marker. The enemy team fully spawns 5 yards from me. I kill 3 of them as they spawn on, but it just keeps spawning them on me, over and over and over again. There is zero excuse for this. There is zero defense. If you can’t code your game to not do this, then consider a profession change.
Misc
All of these are in addition to things that I assume are accidental, bugged, etc. Wall hacks and aim bots are rampant in PC shooting games. If you ever feel like sometimes your bullets do more damage and sometimes you’re shooting peas, it’s not you. Bullet damage is inconsistent from time to time in CoD. I’ve tested it. Same gun, same loadout, same predetermined enemy player, different number of bullets to kill. But… I assume these are mistakes. Hackers aren’t being allowed to stay intentionally, bullet damage has RNG components that don’t work right, something. Despite the assumptions that this sort of thing isn’t being allowed on purpose, it needs fixed. How is there no anti-cheat in this game despite literally thousands of videos of blatant and obvious cheating? How is there no anti-cheat despite people publicly admitting to using them? Why do bullets hit for different amounts of damage to the same body part? And if there is a reason for that… then we need damage numbers.
What do you think? Are you someone who needs to have the game kill for you with a chopper streak? Do you think that knives truly are more powerful than assault rifles? Think I’m too harsh on the devs? Let me know in the comments.