Call of Duty: Modern Warfare III came out at the tail end of the year, and while it has certainly revitalized the online community to some degree, it has also highlighted a host of issues that have been growing amongst the development teams within Activision. With Microsoft’s recent buyout of the studio set to shake things up, here are some of the things that many players are praying for the next games to get right.
A compelling single-player story
Yes, Call of Duty’s lasting popularity might be in its online multiplayer, and it’s not unfair to say that most people buy it for the PvP experience. However, a lot more people buy it expecting a complete game and, as our review stated, the single-player mode of MW 3 in particular didn’t feel like it was offering that. In fact, it doesn’t feel like we’ve really had a superb single-player campaign from COD with really memorable moments since Black Ops.
A great zombie mode
Zombies might have just started as a little extra, a half-joking mode that capitalized on the undead craze that was very much in full swing in 2008 when it was first added to Call of Duty: World at War, but it quickly became one of the favorite game modes across the entire franchise. The Black Ops games have typically had pretty good zombies modes, but we haven’t had one of those since 2015, and it simply feels like the more recent offerings have just been kind of tossed in to appease the fans without creating the robust experience that we really want from them.
No more gameplay gating
If Call of Duty wants to bring players into its online PvP modes gradually and have a tutorial that teaches the ropes while limiting the move set, that’s just fine. But to make you grind for 55 levels before you unlock every gameplay element of the PvP, especially when you can buy XP packs in-game, is pay-to-win, there’s no other way to put it. Right now, it’s a better deal to get COD MW3 accounts that have everything unlocked already. If COD was a series of free games looking to monetize online to make some money, that might be one thing, but these are premium games with premium price tags and we should demand better.
Less focus on Warzone
Warzone was a huge game changer for Activision, and the success of COD’s battle royale mode, which is not an easy genre to succeed in, given the sheer amount of dead and canceled examples, re-oriented the series. However, a lot of players would argue that this wasn’t for the best, as nowadays it very much seems like the mainline COD titles feel like nothing more but development grounds for the assets that later get added to Warzone, and that the online experiences of other CODs don’t get the long-lasting support that we used to see from them.
Needless to say, these are just opinions, and some that a few people are going to disagree with, but they do speak to an itch amongst the players that hasn’t felt well-scratched for a while now. Here’s hoping the next game gets on it.
