In boilerplate multiplayer shooter modes such as team deathmatch, capture the flag, and territory domination, they’re dilemmas we’ve all faced: The win or the kill? The points or the pride? The team or the individual?
There might be no in “I” in Call of Duty, but from World War II in Normandy to World War III on Manhattan’s East River the axiom has only amplified: killing – the “K/D” is king.
Treyarch hopes to reverse this individualistic mindset in Call of Duty: Black Ops II. Speaking to Eurogamer, design director David Vonderhaar outlined several of the new multiplayer changes announced for the game at last week’s Gamescom – each of them aimed at fostering a team-based culture.
Step one: a new competitive play matchmaking system called League Play that promotes and relegates players into skill-based divisions. Even playing in a strictly supportive role, it’s possible to advance alongside the heavy-hitting killers.
“When we play you really start caring [about winning and losing] again… I was the goal tender. I stayed back and protected our C Domination flag. That was the entirety of my job. I focused on doing that job and doing it well. And even though I wasn’t in every single fight all the time and running out to my death, I was setting up strategic defensive positions and thinking about it a lot. It was just an incredibly fun way to play. “
League Play’s addition is, in part, a response to the explosive growth of the series following 2007′s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare; with the flood of players present in Call of Duty’s multiplayer ranks, Vonderhaar expressed how important it is to accommodate everyone: those who “just want to go out and wreck in public matchmaking”, and those looking to form a tighter, strategy-centric connection with their teammates.
To further encourage the latter, Black Ops II is also scrapping a long-time catalyst of self-minded gameplay. The famous kill-streak system, featured in every installment since 2007′s Modern Warfare, has been replaced with Score Streaks. Resetting with each life as always, Vonderhaar describes Score Streaks as outside-the-box thinking, a more encompassing way for rewarding valuable team players.
“When something is a kill and only a kill, that’s a pretty specific thing. When something has numbers, like score, then it can be more or less. That gives us a lot of flexibility to reward the appropriate gameplay behavior for winning the game mode.”
And again, the focus is flexibility: Kill streaks are still fruitful enough to unlock rewards the old fashioned way, but anyone who wants to earn a UAV could just as well capture a flag. After all, as Vonderhaar says: “He probably deserves them more than some guy just standing off somewhere just generating kills, and that’s all he’s doing.”
Doubtless some will try to paint League Play and Score Streaks as a relaying of old architecture from countless other shooters. Black Ops II has constantly shown an ambition for overhauling the Call of Duty formula, however, (look no further than its 2025 setting, branching-narrative campaign, and redesigned “Pick 10″ loadout system), and an inherently diverse audience can only benefit from diverse gameplay.
Ranters, does Call of Duty need to refocus and emphasize, like, say, Battlefield 3, team-based multiplayer?
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 releases November 13, 2012 for the PS3, Xbox 360, and PC.
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Follow me on Twitter @Brian_Sipple.
Source: Eurogamer
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Score streaks is exactly what medal of honor did in 2011. I really like the system- made it more enjoyable to play a supportive role rather than focusing on strictly killing
Once again, I am actually looking towards this game with high hopes. I have not bothered with any of the other COD games from the past few years because theyve been the same game. This actually looks interesting haha
Ha. Those aren’t enough to make BO2′s multiplayer team-focused. Sure, score streaks are good, but that’s not enough to make the MP a team game. Besides, MW3 basically did the same with its pointstreaks. At least Treyarch is attempting it, though.
Battlefield fanboys, I tell ya…
Sure, go ahead and label me a BF fanboy just because of my profile pic. How about I label you technologically challenged since you’re using the default profile pic? You don’t know any games I play beside BF3 and CoD. You wanna know something? I own four CoD games and only two BF games, BF3 and BF1943. I have 25 other games from all genres that I play and am not, by any means, a fanboy of anything. I’m not forever loyal to any one franchise. Next time you’re going to make an assumption about someone, just don’t.
ha, that’ll be the day. I seriously doubt that many COD players will even care or take notice. Here’s hoping though
“When we play you really start caring [about winning and losing] again… I was the goal tender. I stayed back and protected our C Domination flag. That was the entirety of my job. I focused on doing that job and doing it well. And even though I wasn’t in every single fight all the time and running out to my death, I was setting up strategic defensive positions and thinking about it a lot. It was just an incredibly fun way to play. “
I always play Domination, and I alway play like this. I don’t get the most kills, and I don’t get the most point, but I guarantee I have the most fun, which is really what the game is about, right?
You’re right
But there aren’t many people that do that. I’ll defend objectives, but I won’t do it for very long. Same goes for a lot of people. And then there are those who just run around trying to get kills.
Team play isn’t in the game, it’s in the players. The best a dev can do is try to put more emphasis on it.
seconded
That’s true. IW and Treyarch just don’t put much emphasis on team play.
this will never work. people can actually play as a cohesive team now, and they don’t. unless you are running with your clan or a party; odds are when you go in a public lobby you’ll get matched up with some people who don’t have mics, with those same people having the mic volume muted so they can’t even hear their teammates let alone communicate to them where a sentry gun is or where an enemy is running to/from. that makes it impossible to play as a full, cohesive team working for a common objective. not even taking into account the assholes who play DOM or another objective game who just kill people without ever trying to capture a flag.
whenver i play dom in a public lobby i’m usually by myself trying to capture flags, and it takes so long to capture them that most of the enemy team swarms me to defend it. meanwhile i got some jerkoffs who goes 46-7 with 1800 points, 30-10 with 1500 points and 6-28 with 400 points in a dom match. a bunch of useless, mindless morons who use dom as a k/d booster laying down and camping between the two closest flags or who are so bad defending the flag that they go 6-28 (which allows k/d whores to rack up killstreaks) as we lose the match.
they have the support package now, and most people use it for things like the stealth bomber, osprey and juggernaut, the 3 things that rack up the most kills, rather than laying down body armor, calling in a UAV or counter UAV which actually supports the team more. the ratio in a public lobby of people saving up for assault type “support” streaks to people who lay down body armor is very lopsided.
it’s nice to hear the devs talking about fixing/adjusting the game in certain aspects as it means they are at least hearing some of the complaints. but it will never happen. not until they come out with an engine that can actually sense how a person is playing and boot them from the game if they’re not playing the pbjectives. or get rid of camping losers by booting them if they don’t move withing a certain amount of time.
They should make the multiplayer challenging, so that the player understands (If they do)that they need to work together.