Yep! They want the best of both worlds and sadly it's made them BILLIONS of dollars so it's not going to change anytime soon. The only answer is to stop playing these AAA overpriced fast food video games.
This is the reason why I don't think I'll be buying another cod. I couldn't help but thinking "did i really pay a full $70 for this? This feels like a free-to-play game" while navigating through countless in-game ads for wacky/flashy cosmetic skins
This! Especially when each new game resets content, changes formulas, doesn't guarantee quality of content and reintroduces a bunch of bugs we just spent the last year asking them to fix. I probably won't be coming back until the entry fee is removed.
The insistence on reinventing the wheel every year around the Warzone base is unsustainable. Even the amount of manpower they have between all studios isn't enough to manage 1 full premium game launch + 12 months of premium post-launch content + 3 more games in simultaneous development + annual Warzone overhaul. And that's *before* you consider a situation like Black Ops Cold War where studios are switched and/or a massive development roadblock emerges IRL. Something's gotta give.
I wanna add as a warzone player that, it's pretty evident that constantly changing around how warzone works every year is not only unsustainable, but it's evident that it's not exactly popular. new map yes, but people are tired of the game changing every 12 months and then being horrid for the first 3 months.
@NormalSuitNick Totally agree with you! They really need to split off Warzone as it's own game under the CoD umbrella and not worry about Warzone keeping the same tempo as the annual release. For several years they just break Warzone trying to "intregrate" it with the regular release and then it sucks until spring LOL.
Honestly that's a big reason why I don't play Warzone, because why would I when all the improvements get reset each year? I tried it when it first came out and wasn't into it I'd have rather played Blackout, Fortnite, or PUBG But if it wasn't reset and they kept adding improvements, new Maps and other content maybe I'd have wanted to return and give it another chance but it just seems like a mess
@@junyaiwaseyesss, i main warzone and last years mw3 version could have made a good base to just add guns and maps on to. it was the best we had since mw19 imo. but ofc they uppdate it with bo6 and destroy even basic stuff like audio and make the movement feel worse and then slowly work their way back like always.
Idk if that’s true. Infinity Ward managed all of that well during MW 2019. In MWII they started the seasons with a bit less content but then Seasons 3,4 and 5 had a good amount.
Free to play games are like cancer in video gaming. Notice the Degradation in quality since the advent of these mobile/free to play games that everyone loves? The Devs don't even care about their games anymore, since the customers seem to have been dumbed down and they will accept a low quality experience
Double edged sword. What if the game is not liked by the community but they're forced to stick with it for two years. Imagine two years of MW2 (we kinda got it but MW3 ended up its own title with massive changes so...)
@@bs_blackscout The community is never happy. They don't like anything whether it lasts 1 or 10 years. IMO they should have made no sequels after MW2019 and continued on that instead, having the other studios contribute to the live service.
Let’s not forget that with MW3, if you did every weekly challenges for 8 weeks, you got a brand new camo. Even in the events they would give us animated camos.
They need to bring back community managers. Since they axed this position I've noticed a big disconnect between what players need/want and what shareholders want
I mean, would it really work? We've got multiple content creators who even provide direct feedback to employees inside the company and nothing changes. We give them feedback, people like Ace, TacticalBrit, Espresso deliver quality feedback, some just leave the game and don't come back as protest, yet it seems like nothing makes them do anything to improve the game :l. It's like the game is fully dead, while still being beaten and Activision just watches it.
call of duty should not be a live service title. warzone should; however warzone should be fairly independent of COD. I've held this sentiment for awhile but until people stop purchasing these games in droves they will continue to take the easy money
Too bad cuz Warzone depends ENTIRELY on Multiplayer for content and its large map design is basically a combination of maps from multiplayer. That's why it wont be independent at all
@@goldenwolf_gamingYT thats why i said fairly independent , because it still uses guns from MP. but realistically warzone doesnt have to depend on MP. it could easily have its own ecosystem with stuff borrowed from MP but have its own gun set etc. but they make more money connecting 'X' COD and Warzone.
@@goldenwolf_gamingYT for example we already have cod mobile. which doesnt follow whats happening in MP and does its own thing and has its own bundles its without a doubt possible
@junyaiwase wrong again. Cod mobile also has its guns and bundles ported directly from multiplayer. Its mp maps too. Everything is coming from the main title of cod multiplayer
Amen, some of the kits were not very good, some were an absolute blast, looking at you blunderbuss kit, but it was something new that nobody else had done in awhile. Closest thing I could think of was BO4 parts.
Cannot agree more. Those weekly challenges were a ton of fun and a much better carrot on a stick to chase than traditional number-goes-up Prestige. It's the difference between meaningful new content and varied gameplay week to week vs. doing the exact same level grind numerous times for some (IMO lame) cosmetics and bragging rights. And the camo system in BO6 has the exact same problem by standardizing the camos themselves as well as the headshot requirement.
They should just have both in the game, it seems like everything good that gets added to COD they just either forget about or take it away then add it later in the year & say 'We've listened to community feedback'
"Live service" and "1 year" in the same sentence is the last thing I could understand. It's like saying you're perfectly healthy but you only got 1 year to live.
MW3 was an oddball in all COD games. I dun know how Sledgehammer actually made so much content and kept up with community feedback altogether. Other Activision studios need to take guidelines from Sledgehammer about this
@@mysticalmayhem8546 Kinda true, MWII's foundation was super strong, it only failed because of weird decisions on the gameplay (seriously what were IW smoking when they gave SMGs attachments that gave ADS Penalties so big that even Snipers were faster?), MWIII grabbed that foundation and actually built something fun on top, the weird thing here is BO6, it *Also* uses MWII's foundation, but Treyarch just pulled an IW and also made weird decisions.
With Marvel Rivals they not only let you convert units (free currency) which can be earned from completing challenges and game events into lattice (premium currency) which can then be used to purchase skins and the battlepass, they also let keep your battle passes that you purchase to grind at your own pace instead of it expiring by the end of season.
mw3 itself was garbage and only became good-enough at the very end of its life cycle. cod has gone completely downhill and players are leaving it in masses.
I’ve been saying the same thing since the beta like bruh what is this mw3 hell even mw2 with DMZ was wayyy better than this slop some features are A+ I get it but the fact that so many got removed gutted and left behind for them just ain’t it dog the warzone integration is just dog water the zombies are alright but I just find it stale might be me but that’s just not good for them end off the player count is dropping cheating is rampant they barley talk honest and open to the community they always beat around the bush with things studios competing against each other on there own franchise it’s just messy Microsoft buying them during all this madness it’s just a recipe for disaster I’m glad people are enjoying certain parts of the game more power to you but the majority just ain’t felling it
@@phazedsquidz5648How is MW2 better than this game? I’m not trying to be rude or anything like that, I’m genuinely curious. This is the first I’ve personally heard this, so I wanna know why you think that
Honestly, Call of Duty is trying so hard to do a live service model while still having a full-release game. It's not possible to do both. Live service models (LSM) will do gameplay updates at each seasonal release, with a mid-season mix-up. This standard was started by Fortnite as a way to ease players back in. Also 10 weeks or longer is better, as it allows for casual players to put down the game and go play something else. Seriously, I don't want to put all my time into Call of Duty, there are other games I want to put time into. Additionally, LSM should include additions and reductions to the equipment in the game. Why? Because while having every gun available is fun for a while, it becomes tedious for the developers to have to balance all of them. If Call of Duty was smart, they'd start making overlap on guns between seasons and instead of just constantly adding, also did some subtraction of other weapons to keep things fresh. However, that all conflicts with having a full-release game title. Full releases are expected to be supported for a year, with a majority of the updates coming in the first few months. These things tweet gameplay and balance out situations, but overall don't tend to add too much content outside of maps. But this also means cosmetics are kind of limited, because honestly I don't think we should have to pay for cosmetics knowing they'll be useless in 1 game. This is the problem, they're trying to get both birds with one stone, and its not working.
The maps suck, the connection/ping sucks, the spawns are just insane, very little content added and the Recon perk all destroy this game. I’ve been feeling increasingly frustrated when playing this game every single time I turn it on and decided there was no point in continuing. I am deleting this game and good riddance.
I agree, mostly. Most of the maps aren’t great, the connection definitely needs work, spawns are definitely ridiculous at times, but the Recon perk definitely doesn’t do harm to this game. After the nerf, Recon seems fine, it only is a real problem to campers who sit in the same spot all match. Otherwise, not a big deal at all.
Why does CoD have to release in October/November? They should just do a summer release. It lets them support the game in its most critical months, and by the time the winter holidays roll around, they can tune back a bit and then prepare for a big post-holidays update to bring people back to the game. They can then ride that wave into summer where the new game releases. Releasing a brand new game a month or two before your entire workforce goes on a big break just seems so fundamentally stupid to me.
9:20 makes sense from the rumors that the studios hate working together and that they basically start from scratch every year on a new game. That's why these minor things don't carry over from one COD to the next.
For me the biggest issue comes down to the launch date of the game. Releasing the game so close to the dev studios Christmas break is just a terrible idea, every year the honeymoon phase ends because the bugs/issues are left unresolved for what feel like a month because of this. I really don’t get why they can’t just drop in October and give the studios time to iron out the launch bugs. I feel like this just makes way more sense and they’d also be able to push micro transactions to a larger player base for Halloween compared to whoever is still playing 9 months after the release.
What I hate about live service games is that they'll eventually turn into playable advertisements. WWE, Squid Game, The Boys, Mountain Dew skins, etc. It destroys any sense of authenticity and aesthetics the game originally had.
Multiplayer in the old games just looks better because the characters look like they belong there, not to mention being able to tell which team someone is on by looking at them. I'd literally pay a bit extra to disable skins.
I've heard a strong case for doing a 2 year release schedule. Giving the studio more time to flesh out features, pre-prepare new content, better game test new maps, while allowing the current CoD the ability to really try new features, incorporate their live service model, and add long term grinds that can be satisfying while also focusing on the short/mid term grinds.
I will die on this hill: MWIII was the best COD since BO4 and without the strict EOMM and server issues that every COD since MW19 had, it would've been a top 5 COD of all time! Great gunplay and movement, amazing content unlock system, fantastic post launch content (almost every map was a banger, SHG really hired some top tier map designers!) and even if they were far superior to MWIII guns, all the MWII guns to use and unlock camos on as a bonus to all of that! That game brought so many good changes and was overall so good in many regards, yet somehow people just saw it as a DLC for MWII even tho from a gameplay and content perspective, it was the polar opposite of MWII!
It’s astounding how many millions of dollars COD/Activision are giving up by not addressing players concerns in a timely manner. I’m not buying the Black Cell upgrade to Season 2. Like you said, this is a Live Service model, and we aren’t getting what we are paying for.
The art style of the game is already chalked, and it's only season 1. Usually, season 5 or 6 is when they cash out and do big on collabs. Doing a squid game collab that takes over the entire page and force equips the tracksuit man skin for 2 weeks gets ridiculous as someone who doesn't care for the event nor the show. Season 2 needs to ground the game somewhat or people will continuously see this game as a cash grab that barely cements itself as a game taking place in the 90s. Events also need to fit the era. A Die Hard or another Rambo event would fit the 90s perfectly as opposed to what we've been getting.
What do you mean by "force equips the tracksuit man skin"? I've never equipped it as - like you - I have no interest in the show/event. Just wondering what I'm missing...
@@grfxninja I think they mean it's very easy to accidentally equip the tracksuit operator because they put the page right before create a class, messing with muscle memory.
As someone who plays most likely the ultimate and one of the first live service game with World of Warcraft, having things to bring you back each week is soooo important like the Great Vault in WoW, by doing things throughout the week you unlock slots in the vault which on Wednesday "Reset" when the game resets and all the raids and dungeons unlock for another week, its great to have something to open and bring you back each week to see what you get. I think this is something which Call of Duty NEEDS! something to bring people back week after week like the After Market Parts in MW3
People romanticize the past season pass model, but a BIG downside most seem to have forgotten about is that it used to split up the playerbase and especially later during a game's lifecycle made it increasingly harder to find matches. Nowadays you are essentially forced to uninstall all your DLC if you still wanna find a match in those older CoDs. I still prefer it over the live service model we have today, for sure, but it by no means was perfect.
Yeah BO2 model seem to allow for a more cohesive experience but it split the player base. Companies like Rockstar saw right through it when they released GTA Online in 2013 and made sure to not repeat the mistake of splitting the player base. Battle Pass sucks but makes it so everyone can play together.
I think instead of adding too many pointless attachments/bloat, they should add different looks or styles for the ones we already have, and only add a few more attachments if they really add a valued purpose. MW22 and 23 were pointlessly bloated. The biggest thing is finding balance, so one setup isn’t the best on almost every gun. It’s actually not too bad as it is, right now, but could still be improved.
@ It’s true that blueprints add looks to attachments. I meant more like looks/styles for grips, barrels, under barrels, stocks, etc.. that work with all the guns, that you don’t have to pay for, and that work well with camos. Basically, like the stuff we have from mw22/23, but have the excess applied to existing attachments, unless like I said before, it truly adds value and a meaningful purpose. And, I know we get free blueprints as well, but I hope I made my point a bit clearer.. Everyone likes the customization of our guns, we just don’t need the stats bloat and pointless attachments… the looks in themselves were fine. It’s become pointless having them in the game when everyone runs the exact same thing, because certain attachments were clearly better though. Make sense?
As far as consistency I wonder if earlier releases would help. Like just a month or two would allow the devs to get season one rolled out and then mid season patch fixing issues with the season right before the holidays opposed to the update itself right before the holidays
The connection issues and lack of fresh feeling maps has completely derailed my desire to play b06. When most people vote for the same handful of maps that we've been playing since the open beta, it feels very samey. Doesn't help that almost all the maps heavily favor close quarters. Coming off of mwiii which had a metric ton of pretty good maps with some good variety, it's a tough comparison. I didn't play every week in mwiii, but I appreciated having some optional objectives for extra XP on top of the aftermarket parts. I especially enjoyed that if I did miss a week, it would still be available the next week for the rest of the season.
I actually think the way it was in the past was way better. Payed DLC which was crafted with care and no other forms of monetization. Real gritty warfare without silly cosmetics. No battle royale nonsense, free speech in game chat, no crossplay and no manipulating matchmaking algorithms. I miss the good old days of CoD…
@@mopey39”Speech moderation is a good thing” That is definitely one of the sentences that I’ll instantly never take anything you have to say seriously again.
Whilst the paid dlc stuff certainly did have a high level of quality to them, they also created a big problem which was that it split up the community making matchmaking difficult for those who purchased the dlc as you would have to be paired with other people who purchased the dlc. Not to mention call of duty is a yearly title therefore the dlc packs quickly lost their value by the time the next entry released.
the reason the first season is so long imo is so that people who get the game at Christmas can have a reasonable amount of time to get caught up with bp, rank ups, etc.
@@sirgrizzlypfote6369 If they do this then the employees go on vacation at launch, meaning that the game is a complete disaster as it often struggles at launch. With the maximum amount of players and no one there to update it would kill the player base as most people would leave before it is even fixed.
Live service for bo6, while it could be better, isn't my main issue with the game so I still won't be coming back. However, to the people enjoying the game, I warned you all that this could be a repeat of mwii/mwiii where bo6 is the less supported less content full half of 1 game that was split in 2... I see that we may be experiencing the rude awakening now that mwiii's content drops weren't sustainable in a normal cod model.
The weekly challenges for camos and aftermarket parts in MW3 was nice last year! The post launch content kept the game pretty fun and had some decent enough events.
I agree with keeping universally loved features; the weekly release of MW3 was great and so on. I'll diverge from you about the lenght of the season. I think its just right. I personally just finished the battlepass and that is with all the double xp we've had, yet some of ya'll finished weeks ago. I hop on for an hour or so every night. I play zombies and mp; And I do pretty good in both especially when it comes to my daily challenges. Even at this rate, i'm typically barely finishing the battlepass as it is about to end.
Fair gameplay is what we need. Once that is a thing the game can success and sell. Before that is a focuspoint the game will rot and loose players. Any form of content wont bring players back.. the numbers will degrade. People that quit did not quit due to lack or content. Whats the point in content if the game feels unplayable for most.
Since this game I have the game through game pass I was actually considering buying a cool skin cause I didn’t pay for the game, but they don’t even have good skins in the store.
The whole section at 5:00 is a double edged sword, the community complained about camo challenges requiring you to play a certain way or play different game modes, now you're asking them to add challenges that make people go outside their comfort zone..
Events are limited time additions to the game and not a part of the core grind for the game. As I said though, there should be limits to this and it should, at most, only require you to play a small handful of matches in the event based modes in order to complete the challenges and I would be against the system if it required hours of grinding these modes.
@@TheXclusiveAce No I get your thought process entirely and I don't disagree with you, I just dont think the general public agrees. Marvel Rivals is having an example of that right now where there are event challenges. One is 50 kills in their LTD mode and people are even complaining about that. People are complaining about a challenge that can be done in AI bot games and take 1 game to complete (activate spider tracer with spiderman 10 times)
To add to what you said about having a player change up their play style would also help with weapon camos, just having headshot kills being what you need to unlock camos is just boring and feels unrewarding. Having challenges to unlock camos feels rewarding
I welcome the idea of game mode specific challenges, but with how they do MM, smaller playerbase regions have an extreme drop-off after the 1st weekend or so. The search parameters dont open up or lobbies dont fill, then you have the issue of enemy dependent challenges. I'm having PTSD just typing this out
I hear you on the wait, like other than the guns and handful of maps the game has been stale like same maps, guns, and issues with nothing to bring someone back. If you already done the mastery challenges or whatever you shoot for what is there to get you to come back?. Also add a battle pass and premium, the squid games battle pass shop bundles like how much more money do yall need? Sad that some of these issues won’t get fixed at all but they sure have time to pump out the next set of bundles like such a slap in the face to the community.
They need more developers and better code-management between studios. Since it already existed in MW3, it should be trivial to implement challenge-tracking into the game if code was managed properly.
Many an agreement from me as always! I was playing BO6 zombies grinding Nebula almost daily in my limited play time. Then these events, which are all play time based and nothing really new or exciting kept popping up followed by the aggressive store sales push just got my goat. Ive hardly played in 2025 now despite being so close to Nebula! The MW3 challenge system done in either BR, MP or MWZ was really well executed with the bonus camo at the end of the season too and totally achievable within just a couple of games as many challenges stacked or overlapped. The challenge tracker vanishing from MW3 to BO6 baffled me. Simple QoL feature thats now coming 4 months after launch? I guess the numbers of the non vocal majority still work in Activision's success and sales numbers rather than the vocal minority who are all seemingly playing Marvel
it would just be nice for the game to come out finished and have new content added to it as oppose to waiting 6 months for the game to be in a state it should have been on launch
Developers taking christmas and new years off is part of the problem. There is a reason why retail workers work more over december-january than average. There is a reason that most restaurants have their 'weekend' mon/Tuesday. The staff/company need to match the player levels NOT the standard business calendar.
I have this feeling too, like some of the issues may be convenient at times. But the downfall of BO6 makes doubt it a bit, too much of a risk to play the cards that way.
Yeah I pretty much agree with everything you said. I'm not sure if 4 maps is doable and if it wouldn't put much pressure on the devs but it would be cool. I think (and this will sound weird) that the issue is that BO6 launched as too complete of a package, it gave players too much at once. I'm not a big fan of drip feeding, like Rockstar Games does. But holding off some content helps and allows the devs to polish core content more for day 0 and the extra content more for whenever it gets released. This could be a strat.
How to fix cod in 3 easy steps: 1. Change from annual release to every 2 years. 2. Specify each studios role - let IW and Raven handle WZ, let Treyarch develop the campaign, MP and zombies and let SHG be the post-launch studio that handles cosmetics and events and seasons. 3. Either reduce the price of all the MTX, or cut the base game cost significantly.
a good game doesn't need a gimmicky non-sense like battle pass or live service event to play it. Gameplay should be enough, not some FOMO non-sense like aftermarket parts.
I thought about it too but at this day and age both old and new players have gotten used to this that I think it would be insane not to continue. But it is pretty damning. In BO2 days the game we got was enough for many and it lasted three years if not more with a stupidly active player base.
I like the annual releases but I actually think MWIII worked very well because it launched with maps and guns from the previous game. We had tons of content at launch and by the end of it we have over 40 maps and lime 150 weapons. Has really helped the replay ability of that game since I’m done with BO6 and playing MWIII instead.
All cod studios' priorities are very clear. The game is an afterthought and the main focus is monetization - same budget, but recourses are focused on making skins and emotes rather than gameplay. The only possible way to make cod better is to slash the cosmetics teams and devote more resources to the dev teams that actually support the game.
I think it was marksman who spoke about it. Apparently every COD is built from the ground up. And apparently the studios within activision don’t actually communicate with each other that much. So the way I interpret it, is like Hell’s Kitchen. Everyone has the same starting ingredients, but they have to cook their own meals, and no help from other contestants. It makes sense in a way, all three are trying to be the better game maker, but I think it’s counter intuitive for them to not share the things that fans like. Since they are all under the same umbrella, when one wins they all win.
Personally, I'm in a weird spot. I feel like making one "COD" and just building onto it for years *COULD* be a massively amazing move... but at the same time, I don't trust that they'd implement it well. The dream team would obviously be Sledge for MP, Treyarch for Zombies, IW for Co-op/Survival/DMZ, and Raven(I think) has WZ. This is a list I've kinda narrowed down to subjects: Having 30 maps in a game is already a bit annoying, when you only like 3 of them. Imagining 100+ maps unfiltered would be awful, I'd suggest they do kinda like what one of the recent CODs did and have "seasons" of maps separated so it's less RNG, or even just have filters for maps like they do modes. People who don't care can leave them all available and others can have like 20 maps to switch between. 100's of guns is cool, but how many of them are just "AK and M4" clones? Don't get me wrong, I would love to not have to earn M4 attachments again, every year, for 6 years (excluding Vanguard), but we've already seen how hard it is for them to balance 100+ guns with MW3. How do they keep up with the Camo grinders? do they just reset the Camo grind every year, or add a new mastery camo every 6 months or so? Coming from someone who has played almost every single campaign all the way back to Finest Hour, I'd probably be fine just scrapping the campaign altogether since no one really buys the game for the Campaigns... The Pros: They have one anti cheat/engine and they just work from there, The Micro-transactions we pay for stay in the game for years instead of months. When they get a new engine, we get a new game. The Cons: The game would probably take up entire hard drives. Things will probably grow stale after a year anyway. They'd probably charge money to upgrade the game every season to make up for the game not getting bought every year. Layoffs would be massive.
I appreciate all the recommendations, and your hard work, but I un-installed this game. I am tired of the constant issues and packet loss for a player with a 2 gigabit lan connection. I am going to try other options.
Couldn't disagree more on event challenges and weeklies. As someone with somewhat limited time to play, it meant i very rarely got to, "just play." Instead I was always left chasing the carrot, playing in some arbitrary way that wasn't much fun. Absolutely burned me out and eventually i just gave up entirely.
I don't agree with the first point Ace made. The problem with the game is the fact that they're always updating the game with new skins, new modes, new maps, new themes, new events. I agree there should be updates for improving the game and fixing bugs but i dont think there should be a constant flow of updates that completely change the game. Many of us remember the golden years of COD. All we got was like 2-4 DLCS a cycle with a handful of maps and that was it. No one complained, life was good.
I just turned off cross play on my Xbox and the difference is insane. Went from 1.5 kd per match to above 2.5 kd. Also, I realized that if I launch the game from the gamepass app on pc, it will still recognize as if I had cross play turned off, therefore, will only match me with Xbox players who have cross play turned off as well. To summarize: even though you turn off cross play on your Xbox, you can still be matched with PC players who launch it from game pass. No surprise I was playing against people who were not that good, yet had nuke calling cards.
MW3 was so engaging and rewarding. Like you said, every week we had something to grind for. A new red dot sight that helped with recoil stability, or an after market part, or a new muzzle, or new camos, etc. SBMM was cranked up in MW3 tho, but at least all the new content kept me coming back. BO6 is such a downgrade. I only play it every other day.
You can solve the season release issues and a plethora of other major issues by not having 3 different companies creating a COD game separately every year. Imagine all 3 development teams working on the same platform. Each new yearly game could still fall under 1 of the 3 development teams, but the other two could specifically look after the S1 and S2 for instance. This open ups so much man power and time for the current years developer to work on in game issues. I know this will never happen bc it's all about the benji's, but one can dream. I really don't see how COD ever reaches it's potential when you have a different developer each year. It makes absolutely no sense.
Good video Ace, I never usually LIKE videos but I LIKED this one. You hit the hammer on the nail with this video. One of the reasons I like the battlefield franchise is because they release ONE game every 3 to 4 years and during that time the game usually gets better and IMPROVES features. This gives casual players PLENTY of time to get used to the mechanics, work on challenges, and learn the game. It also helps with Store purchases that feel USEFUL for YEARS. MWIII was GREAT, I loved the added features, I Loved the kill-streaks, equipment, maps, etc. When COD releases every year, it changes things that took time to get used to and some changes I don't like. I'm still playing MWIII because I think it's the better game. COD should focus on ONE game every 3 to 4 years with scheduled seasons and events. COD feels RUSHED. by the time I get into the new game another is coming out. It's so hard to keep up with COD it's better to simply watch channels like yours in order to stay relevant with the community, and it should not be that way, Casuals can't keep up with an annual release anymore, we need TIME to learn and play.
You give these devs wayyyy too much credit dude. Older cods were made with 1/4th the amount of devs and the games were complete aside from balancing and bugs. These devs teams today have 200% more manpower and the moderns cods are 200% more broken. They don’t deserve a break until the game is in a finished state. If you have time to create neon pink tracer bundles, you have time to fix your F’ing game. Quit defending this scummy company.
1:24 That's the problem. A live service game shouldn't be having a 12 month life cycle. Fortnite is 8 years old, Siege and Rocket League are almost 9 years old, Warframe and GTA Online are about to turn 12 years old. In those games, you can still use everything you've bought and unlocked.
Stop making excuses for “game developers”, they’re still the ones making the game. They get paid for the job they do, if they don’t get it right, or push greed first, they should get sh!t on. “My boss made me do it” wouldn’t fly in court and it sure as f$ck doesn’t work on cod.
The thing i find frustrating is that they have the capability to keep all bundles you bought previously. the game we are playing is COD HQ bo or mw its just a big expansion pack. We saw that you could use previously gained camos and operators. They are unnecessarily tendered worthless. If cod went the route of CS where they just treat it as one game that would be fine!
I’ve been playing cod for 17 years so I def understand everyone’s frustration. I recently stopped playing cod even tho it was my favorite game of all time. I don’t want to see it die like this. I think if Al the companies would work together to deliver one big cohesive franchise i think the game would be in a way better state. That mean more devs teaming up to work on each yearly project instead of each team point fingers when a project goes wrong. This all hands on deck approach would give the devs the breaks they need throughout the year without having yo go through so much over time. More so I do agree with exclusive ace on more maps throughout the season. I think this would be a better approach to refresh the game monthly and I think there should be a focus on more maps for warzone. This includes more big maps yearly and more smaller maps yearly. Rebirth island shouldn’t be the only small map that’s available year in and year out. Area 99 is a decent map so far but it’s only small map to come out of the franchise for warzone in 7 years since black out was first introduced. I think this is something they could capitalized with squid games in releasing a copy of the famous island on the series into a small warzone map. With every game room, hallway and even outside of the island available on one small map as a resurgence mode. It would’ve brought so many players to the game to just try out the map. We all know they need better servers and better game stability, which can come through the efforts of team work through all studios.
I'm honestly fine with how the events are going. The AMPs constantly coming out was getting really old. Plus a lot of those parts would get nerfed until they was useless or be stupid OP. They was never properly balanced most times or even useful in the game. Challenge tracking should be standard in CoD from now on. That was one of the best updates they ever did. They definitely have room for improvement. So far I'm pretty much fed up with how team balancing is. Before I could solo play and not have many issues, now it feels like they are forcing you to team up to have more even lobbies. Just not that fun anymore.
The easiest way to fix CoD: Have all the studios work together. They all have their great attributes on the individual games and of course some of the worst things as well, but if they worked together I really believe we could get a generational game. Yes I know that they don’t like working together but this is a business, I don’t like working with a lot of people in my work but I still do what I got to do🤷🏽♂️
Putting guns from the last game in the new one just to have them easily be the worst options is the dumbest thing they do. remove the sprint to fire delay, don't have the guns in the game in the first place, or actually put some thought behind weapon balancing to have weapons that have different benefits instead of they are all mid except the one that's clearly the best by a long shot.
Year after year. Them-We made this game so good Players-ooo slide slide fun fun Them-thanks for record sales Players-wait this is the same boo boo Them-eh, we made another one with ✨jetpacks✨ Players- oooo jetpack fun, very high much speed. Wait it’s still broken Them-you said $20 gun skin, you got it 😊
While I agree with almost everything you've said in the video, I have one point that I don't *completely* agree with: I feel like 8 weeks is a bit fast for a season with the current Battle Pass XP rates, especially when people might want to play other games during that time. I think 12 weeks for a season would be fair, instead of the current 16-20 weeks that makes the game start to get stale without AMPs every week.
They always seem to balance Battle Pass XP rates to ensure the majority of casual players can reasonably finish it before it ends, regardless of the season duration. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they even adjust the rates slightly mid season to ensure they're hitting this mark.
I agree with everything besides for aftermarket parts. I prefer a simplistic approach to the gunsmith rather than having 1 million options and especially in mw3 where there were so many attachments, AM parts made it extremely frustrating to make loadouts. I felt like I had to watch yt videos or tiktoks to keep up with the meta. I like the idea of having something to unlock each week via challenges, but I dont want it to be something that’ll make the gunsmith more complicated than it needs to be.
The biggest sin so far is definitely the map selection and how long Season 1 is. I still can't believe they made it that long, I finished the pass almost 5 weeks ago and I play casually only a couple times a week!
I really enjoy black ops 6, and have been enjoying COD for many years. I think we sometimes forget we chose to buy these games and that we wouldn’t buy it if we didn’t think they are fun. All these people complaining about COD should maybe just not buy the game..? There are tons of other good games if you aren’t having fun with it anymore.
Activision live service model: fix things that aren't broken that ends up breaking other things, just to show face for this live service model to manipulate the player base to buy more items in the shop, KEEP PLAYING EVEN IF THE GAME WILL NEVER BE COMPLETE
Most places of work get maybe xmas eve, xmas, and new years off. The rest u need to use ur personal pto if u want time off. "Taking a long holiday" is not an excuse. The business still needs to operate
treating a $70+ dollar game like it's a free to play title is definitely a bad business model, can't imagine why its hemorrhaging players
Yep! They want the best of both worlds and sadly it's made them BILLIONS of dollars so it's not going to change anytime soon. The only answer is to stop playing these AAA overpriced fast food video games.
@@Doombot2point0 I feel so free after hitting uninstall.
This is the reason why I don't think I'll be buying another cod. I couldn't help but thinking "did i really pay a full $70 for this? This feels like a free-to-play game" while navigating through countless in-game ads for wacky/flashy cosmetic skins
@@__-ni1kzI weighed my computer before and after uninstalling Call Of Duty. It weighed 20 lbs less.
This! Especially when each new game resets content, changes formulas, doesn't guarantee quality of content and reintroduces a bunch of bugs we just spent the last year asking them to fix. I probably won't be coming back until the entry fee is removed.
The insistence on reinventing the wheel every year around the Warzone base is unsustainable. Even the amount of manpower they have between all studios isn't enough to manage 1 full premium game launch + 12 months of premium post-launch content + 3 more games in simultaneous development + annual Warzone overhaul. And that's *before* you consider a situation like Black Ops Cold War where studios are switched and/or a massive development roadblock emerges IRL. Something's gotta give.
I wanna add as a warzone player that, it's pretty evident that constantly changing around how warzone works every year is not only unsustainable, but it's evident that it's not exactly popular. new map yes, but people are tired of the game changing every 12 months and then being horrid for the first 3 months.
@NormalSuitNick Totally agree with you! They really need to split off Warzone as it's own game under the CoD umbrella and not worry about Warzone keeping the same tempo as the annual release. For several years they just break Warzone trying to "intregrate" it with the regular release and then it sucks until spring LOL.
Honestly that's a big reason why I don't play Warzone, because why would I when all the improvements get reset each year? I tried it when it first came out and wasn't into it I'd have rather played Blackout, Fortnite, or PUBG
But if it wasn't reset and they kept adding improvements, new Maps and other content maybe I'd have wanted to return and give it another chance but it just seems like a mess
@@junyaiwaseyesss, i main warzone and last years mw3 version could have made a good base to just add guns and maps on to. it was the best we had since mw19 imo. but ofc they uppdate it with bo6 and destroy even basic stuff like audio and make the movement feel worse and then slowly work their way back like always.
Idk if that’s true. Infinity Ward managed all of that well during MW 2019. In MWII they started the seasons with a bit less content but then Seasons 3,4 and 5 had a good amount.
It should just be free to play if they want to monetize it as such.
This company's greed and scheming is so annoying.
I agree but the problem of decreasing the barrier to entry is that MP would have even more cheaters. Unless they go strict on hardware identification.
What free services are you giving out?
ur mom should be free service
just start playing something else and u'll forget this garbage disappointment
Free to play games are like cancer in video gaming. Notice the Degradation in quality since the advent of these mobile/free to play games that everyone loves? The Devs don't even care about their games anymore, since the customers seem to have been dumbed down and they will accept a low quality experience
I really wish they'd let the games last longer than 1 year. I'd love a 2 year life cycle
Double edged sword. What if the game is not liked by the community but they're forced to stick with it for two years. Imagine two years of MW2 (we kinda got it but MW3 ended up its own title with massive changes so...)
@@bs_blackscout Then they need to make a better game.
@@bs_blackscout The community is never happy. They don't like anything whether it lasts 1 or 10 years. IMO they should have made no sequels after MW2019 and continued on that instead, having the other studios contribute to the live service.
MWII/III was perfect for that
2 year life would cause cod to be dead after a year. They would have to do it like MW2 / MW3, and I’m all for that
Let’s not forget that with MW3, if you did every weekly challenges for 8 weeks, you got a brand new camo. Even in the events they would give us animated camos.
They need to bring back community managers. Since they axed this position I've noticed a big disconnect between what players need/want and what shareholders want
I mean, would it really work? We've got multiple content creators who even provide direct feedback to employees inside the company and nothing changes. We give them feedback, people like Ace, TacticalBrit, Espresso deliver quality feedback, some just leave the game and don't come back as protest, yet it seems like nothing makes them do anything to improve the game :l. It's like the game is fully dead, while still being beaten and Activision just watches it.
Depends on the person. The community manager for MW2019 was laughably bad. Thankfully, the game still stayed true to form for most of its life cycle.
@@dillonc7955oh what was her name again? I remember she ended up not even replying to tweets anymore 🤣
Ashton Williams left Activision and Joined Microsoft and look who owns CoD😂@@Kuukuukaachoo
They kept getting death treats when someone's favorite weapon got nerfed. Cod players are insufferable 😅
call of duty should not be a live service title. warzone should; however warzone should be fairly independent of COD. I've held this sentiment for awhile but until people stop purchasing these games in droves they will continue to take the easy money
Too bad cuz Warzone depends ENTIRELY on Multiplayer for content and its large map design is basically a combination of maps from multiplayer. That's why it wont be independent at all
@@goldenwolf_gamingYT thats why i said fairly independent , because it still uses guns from MP. but realistically warzone doesnt have to depend on MP. it could easily have its own ecosystem with stuff borrowed from MP but have its own gun set etc. but they make more money connecting 'X' COD and Warzone.
@@goldenwolf_gamingYT for example we already have cod mobile. which doesnt follow whats happening in MP and does its own thing and has its own bundles its without a doubt possible
@junyaiwase wrong again. Cod mobile also has its guns and bundles ported directly from multiplayer. Its mp maps too. Everything is coming from the main title of cod multiplayer
@@junyaiwase also you saying borrow from multplayer osnt helping your case either since its still depending on multiplayer for its own content
MWIII weekly challange system, despite me never really using the AMP or the camos from them, was more engaging to me than prestige mode
This
Amen, some of the kits were not very good, some were an absolute blast, looking at you blunderbuss kit, but it was something new that nobody else had done in awhile. Closest thing I could think of was BO4 parts.
Those weekly challenges kept me playing the game throughout the year.
Cannot agree more. Those weekly challenges were a ton of fun and a much better carrot on a stick to chase than traditional number-goes-up Prestige. It's the difference between meaningful new content and varied gameplay week to week vs. doing the exact same level grind numerous times for some (IMO lame) cosmetics and bragging rights. And the camo system in BO6 has the exact same problem by standardizing the camos themselves as well as the headshot requirement.
They should just have both in the game, it seems like everything good that gets added to COD they just either forget about or take it away then add it later in the year & say 'We've listened to community feedback'
"Live service" and "1 year" in the same sentence is the last thing I could understand. It's like saying you're perfectly healthy but you only got 1 year to live.
They sell half assed game and then use previous features as "new" content, also the bugs are the same
MW3 was an oddball in all COD games. I dun know how Sledgehammer actually made so much content and kept up with community feedback altogether. Other Activision studios need to take guidelines from Sledgehammer about this
Well, it's because it was a dlc.
😂
They made so much content for it because the other devs did all the hard work for the game before S1
@@mysticalmayhem8546 Kinda true, MWII's foundation was super strong, it only failed because of weird decisions on the gameplay (seriously what were IW smoking when they gave SMGs attachments that gave ADS Penalties so big that even Snipers were faster?), MWIII grabbed that foundation and actually built something fun on top, the weird thing here is BO6, it *Also* uses MWII's foundation, but Treyarch just pulled an IW and also made weird decisions.
@@abstractbeholdings1030 Yes, you heard a buzzword.
@@Thecorrector3000 and it was accurate
With Marvel Rivals they not only let you convert units (free currency) which can be earned from completing challenges and game events into lattice (premium currency) which can then be used to purchase skins and the battlepass, they also let keep your battle passes that you purchase to grind at your own pace instead of it expiring by the end of season.
Big W might give the game a go
A game needs profit to make content. This will be a temp thing
I just wish I enjoyed the gameplay loop because they are making great decisions for that game.
@@scmsean useless cod fanboy
@ mommy wouldn’t buy you the game so now you cry
I don’t understand how we went from mw3 to this
It's simply Greed, wickedness
mw3 itself was garbage and only became good-enough at the very end of its life cycle. cod has gone completely downhill and players are leaving it in masses.
I’ve been saying the same thing since the beta like bruh what is this mw3 hell even mw2 with DMZ was wayyy better than this slop some features are A+ I get it but the fact that so many got removed gutted and left behind for them just ain’t it dog the warzone integration is just dog water the zombies are alright but I just find it stale might be me but that’s just not good for them end off the player count is dropping cheating is rampant they barley talk honest and open to the community they always beat around the bush with things studios competing against each other on there own franchise it’s just messy Microsoft buying them during all this madness it’s just a recipe for disaster I’m glad people are enjoying certain parts of the game more power to you but the majority just ain’t felling it
@@phazedsquidz5648How is MW2 better than this game? I’m not trying to be rude or anything like that, I’m genuinely curious. This is the first I’ve personally heard this, so I wanna know why you think that
@@Dark.Syndicate
I liked Mw3 overall way before the end of it's cycle so I'm going to have to disagree.
They want to charge 70 dollars we need the 70 dollar experience.
Sir, this is Activision.
All experiences are the same.
Honestly, Call of Duty is trying so hard to do a live service model while still having a full-release game. It's not possible to do both.
Live service models (LSM) will do gameplay updates at each seasonal release, with a mid-season mix-up. This standard was started by Fortnite as a way to ease players back in. Also 10 weeks or longer is better, as it allows for casual players to put down the game and go play something else. Seriously, I don't want to put all my time into Call of Duty, there are other games I want to put time into. Additionally, LSM should include additions and reductions to the equipment in the game. Why? Because while having every gun available is fun for a while, it becomes tedious for the developers to have to balance all of them. If Call of Duty was smart, they'd start making overlap on guns between seasons and instead of just constantly adding, also did some subtraction of other weapons to keep things fresh.
However, that all conflicts with having a full-release game title. Full releases are expected to be supported for a year, with a majority of the updates coming in the first few months. These things tweet gameplay and balance out situations, but overall don't tend to add too much content outside of maps. But this also means cosmetics are kind of limited, because honestly I don't think we should have to pay for cosmetics knowing they'll be useless in 1 game.
This is the problem, they're trying to get both birds with one stone, and its not working.
The maps suck, the connection/ping sucks, the spawns are just insane, very little content added and the Recon perk all destroy this game. I’ve been feeling increasingly frustrated when playing this game every single time I turn it on and decided there was no point in continuing. I am deleting this game and good riddance.
I'm having fun with this game on a casual, non intimate level. Treat it like a friend you see occasionally, not a lover you depend on
I agree, mostly. Most of the maps aren’t great, the connection definitely needs work, spawns are definitely ridiculous at times, but the Recon perk definitely doesn’t do harm to this game. After the nerf, Recon seems fine, it only is a real problem to campers who sit in the same spot all match.
Otherwise, not a big deal at all.
I will miss you my friend
thanks for the free money!
see you in the next day liar!
Maps are the biggest problem. I've never really liked Nuketown, but I find myself playing Nuletown 24/7 in this game because it's better than the rest
Why does CoD have to release in October/November? They should just do a summer release. It lets them support the game in its most critical months, and by the time the winter holidays roll around, they can tune back a bit and then prepare for a big post-holidays update to bring people back to the game. They can then ride that wave into summer where the new game releases. Releasing a brand new game a month or two before your entire workforce goes on a big break just seems so fundamentally stupid to me.
Because they need the Christmas kiddies who literally tear the house down if mommy doesn’t buy the new cod
Man that nuke streak at 12:05 ending that way would’ve had me flipping my desk lol
Cod being 70$ every year is a big turnoff for new players when there are free live service games in the same ecosystem.
i'm sure many people straight up dropped both cod and battlefield in favour of delta force
@@shadowgoblin123marvel rivals you mean
@@EngageTV nah, delta force.
but seriously, both games are good. i play df and am planning to play rivals sometime in the future
@@EngageTV Marvel Rivals may appeal to you fortnite kiddos but it's not what most CoD refugees are looking for.
@ excuse me?
9:20 makes sense from the rumors that the studios hate working together and that they basically start from scratch every year on a new game. That's why these minor things don't carry over from one COD to the next.
0:52 me when I haven't unlocked stim shots yet after prestiging.
Heavily disagree with Ace on annual releases. It’d be so much better if there was a single COD game that got continuously updated.
For me the biggest issue comes down to the launch date of the game. Releasing the game so close to the dev studios Christmas break is just a terrible idea, every year the honeymoon phase ends because the bugs/issues are left unresolved for what feel like a month because of this. I really don’t get why they can’t just drop in October and give the studios time to iron out the launch bugs. I feel like this just makes way more sense and they’d also be able to push micro transactions to a larger player base for Halloween compared to whoever is still playing 9 months after the release.
What I hate about live service games is that they'll eventually turn into playable advertisements. WWE, Squid Game, The Boys, Mountain Dew skins, etc. It destroys any sense of authenticity and aesthetics the game originally had.
Multiplayer in the old games just looks better because the characters look like they belong there, not to mention being able to tell which team someone is on by looking at them. I'd literally pay a bit extra to disable skins.
I've heard a strong case for doing a 2 year release schedule. Giving the studio more time to flesh out features, pre-prepare new content, better game test new maps, while allowing the current CoD the ability to really try new features, incorporate their live service model, and add long term grinds that can be satisfying while also focusing on the short/mid term grinds.
I will die on this hill: MWIII was the best COD since BO4 and without the strict EOMM and server issues that every COD since MW19 had, it would've been a top 5 COD of all time! Great gunplay and movement, amazing content unlock system, fantastic post launch content (almost every map was a banger, SHG really hired some top tier map designers!) and even if they were far superior to MWIII guns, all the MWII guns to use and unlock camos on as a bonus to all of that! That game brought so many good changes and was overall so good in many regards, yet somehow people just saw it as a DLC for MWII even tho from a gameplay and content perspective, it was the polar opposite of MWII!
Don't forget the aftermarket kits, they too were cool
If I wasn't so into Marvel Rivals I would go back to MWIII
It’s astounding how many millions of dollars COD/Activision are giving up by not addressing players concerns in a timely manner. I’m not buying the Black Cell upgrade to Season 2. Like you said, this is a Live Service model, and we aren’t getting what we are paying for.
I wish I could get lobbies as chill as you had in this video, that round on skyline at the beginning actually looked date I say it, fun!?
The art style of the game is already chalked, and it's only season 1. Usually, season 5 or 6 is when they cash out and do big on collabs. Doing a squid game collab that takes over the entire page and force equips the tracksuit man skin for 2 weeks gets ridiculous as someone who doesn't care for the event nor the show.
Season 2 needs to ground the game somewhat or people will continuously see this game as a cash grab that barely cements itself as a game taking place in the 90s. Events also need to fit the era. A Die Hard or another Rambo event would fit the 90s perfectly as opposed to what we've been getting.
then people will complain because they are ''obligated'' to buy their rambo and die hard again
The art style was chalked before launch. Anyone who glanced at the pre-order bonus knew this was going to happen.
What do you mean by "force equips the tracksuit man skin"? I've never equipped it as - like you - I have no interest in the show/event. Just wondering what I'm missing...
@@grfxninja I think they mean it's very easy to accidentally equip the tracksuit operator because they put the page right before create a class, messing with muscle memory.
@grfxninja a bunch of people had the skins auto equip without them hitting anything.
As someone who plays most likely the ultimate and one of the first live service game with World of Warcraft, having things to bring you back each week is soooo important like the Great Vault in WoW, by doing things throughout the week you unlock slots in the vault which on Wednesday "Reset" when the game resets and all the raids and dungeons unlock for another week, its great to have something to open and bring you back each week to see what you get. I think this is something which Call of Duty NEEDS! something to bring people back week after week like the After Market Parts in MW3
Remember when og MW3 gave us 2 maps per month with one season pass?
Every SHG title be like that
@@sirgrizzlypfote6369 You forgetting about Vanguard and their very lackluster post-launch support for that game?
People romanticize the past season pass model, but a BIG downside most seem to have forgotten about is that it used to split up the playerbase and especially later during a game's lifecycle made it increasingly harder to find matches. Nowadays you are essentially forced to uninstall all your DLC if you still wanna find a match in those older CoDs.
I still prefer it over the live service model we have today, for sure, but it by no means was perfect.
If only they implement a way to disable dlc
Only one game in the series allowed that
You often got more original content and in a way it weakened sbmm
Yeah BO2 model seem to allow for a more cohesive experience but it split the player base. Companies like Rockstar saw right through it when they released GTA Online in 2013 and made sure to not repeat the mistake of splitting the player base. Battle Pass sucks but makes it so everyone can play together.
With the season pass we at least got good content.
@@dvdivine1962you mean when it wasn’t free?
Its really crazy how they dont have an aftermarket part style system in the game. The event challenges that require just xp are so bad
The aftermarket parts brought me back to the game AT LEAST once a month for a few days.
That kept me so interested in MW3. AMP was so satisfying to chase
I think instead of adding too many pointless attachments/bloat, they should add different looks or styles for the ones we already have, and only add a few more attachments if they really add a valued purpose. MW22 and 23 were pointlessly bloated.
The biggest thing is finding balance, so one setup isn’t the best on almost every gun. It’s actually not too bad as it is, right now, but could still be improved.
¿? That's the blueprint system
@ It’s true that blueprints add looks to attachments. I meant more like looks/styles for grips, barrels, under barrels, stocks, etc.. that work with all the guns, that you don’t have to pay for, and that work well with camos.
Basically, like the stuff we have from mw22/23, but have the excess applied to existing attachments, unless like I said before, it truly adds value and a meaningful purpose.
And, I know we get free blueprints as well, but I hope I made my point a bit clearer.. Everyone likes the customization of our guns, we just don’t need the stats bloat and pointless attachments… the looks in themselves were fine. It’s become pointless having them in the game when everyone runs the exact same thing, because certain attachments were clearly better though. Make sense?
MW3 tac stance is a good feature I’d keep to see again in future CODs.
its a attachment in bo6 which is honestly dumb but like Ace mentioned this was probably their way to add it in after developing their core game
@ , yes, I know.
I’d like to have this feature just like it was in MW3 as a standard toggle in the game option and not related to an attachment.
@@SolidSnake995 agreed
As far as consistency I wonder if earlier releases would help. Like just a month or two would allow the devs to get season one rolled out and then mid season patch fixing issues with the season right before the holidays opposed to the update itself right before the holidays
8:45 was a unemployment ciip lol
This man keeping CoD alive rn
Wrong people who keep buying bundle keep cod "alive"
Ace gives me a deeper understanding of the game and keeps me updated on relevant changes. Without this channel I would've forgotten about this game
The connection issues and lack of fresh feeling maps has completely derailed my desire to play b06. When most people vote for the same handful of maps that we've been playing since the open beta, it feels very samey. Doesn't help that almost all the maps heavily favor close quarters. Coming off of mwiii which had a metric ton of pretty good maps with some good variety, it's a tough comparison.
I didn't play every week in mwiii, but I appreciated having some optional objectives for extra XP on top of the aftermarket parts. I especially enjoyed that if I did miss a week, it would still be available the next week for the rest of the season.
I agree with your thoughts on the after-market parts, even tho some of them I never used, but it was a challenge it gave those another option.
They could move up the release window so that they start a new season before the vacation season starts
I actually think the way it was in the past was way better. Payed DLC which was crafted with care and no other forms of monetization. Real gritty warfare without silly cosmetics. No battle royale nonsense, free speech in game chat, no crossplay and no manipulating matchmaking algorithms. I miss the good old days of CoD…
Battle royale, speech moderation, and crossplay are all good things. No arguments about the other stuff though.
This is 100% the core of what made cod so good.
cosmetics are optional. if you want free speech you may also give others the freedom to use the cosmetic they want.
@@mopey39”Speech moderation is a good thing” That is definitely one of the sentences that I’ll instantly never take anything you have to say seriously again.
Whilst the paid dlc stuff certainly did have a high level of quality to them, they also created a big problem which was that it split up the community making matchmaking difficult for those who purchased the dlc as you would have to be paired with other people who purchased the dlc.
Not to mention call of duty is a yearly title therefore the dlc packs quickly lost their value by the time the next entry released.
the reason the first season is so long imo is so that people who get the game at Christmas can have a reasonable amount of time to get caught up with bp, rank ups, etc.
Maybe they should do cod launchers at december 10-20 then.
@@sirgrizzlypfote6369 If they do this then the employees go on vacation at launch, meaning that the game is a complete disaster as it often struggles at launch.
With the maximum amount of players and no one there to update it would kill the player base as most people would leave before it is even fixed.
@@cosmicskydragon333 or maybe hire people who dont celebrate christmas at least some emergency people. 2/3 of the world doesnt celebrate it
Live service for bo6, while it could be better, isn't my main issue with the game so I still won't be coming back. However, to the people enjoying the game, I warned you all that this could be a repeat of mwii/mwiii where bo6 is the less supported less content full half of 1 game that was split in 2... I see that we may be experiencing the rude awakening now that mwiii's content drops weren't sustainable in a normal cod model.
I whole heartedly agree with the events comments, I don't understand why events aren't more engaging.
The weekly challenges for camos and aftermarket parts in MW3 was nice last year! The post launch content kept the game pretty fun and had some decent enough events.
Annual releases are what’s killing this game. Even making it 2 years per game would be perfect. One year is not enough.
I agree with keeping universally loved features; the weekly release of MW3 was great and so on.
I'll diverge from you about the lenght of the season. I think its just right.
I personally just finished the battlepass and that is with all the double xp we've had, yet some of ya'll finished weeks ago. I hop on for an hour or so every night. I play zombies and mp; And I do pretty good in both especially when it comes to my daily challenges. Even at this rate, i'm typically barely finishing the battlepass as it is about to end.
Shorter seasons tend to have faster BP XP earn rates to compensate.
Great video! I absolutely agree with your view on these issues
Fair gameplay is what we need.
Once that is a thing the game can success and sell. Before that is a focuspoint the game will rot and loose players. Any form of content wont bring players back.. the numbers will degrade. People that quit did not quit due to lack or content.
Whats the point in content if the game feels unplayable for most.
Since this game I have the game through game pass I was actually considering buying a cool skin cause I didn’t pay for the game, but they don’t even have good skins in the store.
The whole section at 5:00 is a double edged sword, the community complained about camo challenges requiring you to play a certain way or play different game modes, now you're asking them to add challenges that make people go outside their comfort zone..
Events are limited time additions to the game and not a part of the core grind for the game. As I said though, there should be limits to this and it should, at most, only require you to play a small handful of matches in the event based modes in order to complete the challenges and I would be against the system if it required hours of grinding these modes.
@@TheXclusiveAce No I get your thought process entirely and I don't disagree with you, I just dont think the general public agrees. Marvel Rivals is having an example of that right now where there are event challenges. One is 50 kills in their LTD mode and people are even complaining about that. People are complaining about a challenge that can be done in AI bot games and take 1 game to complete (activate spider tracer with spiderman 10 times)
To add to what you said about having a player change up their play style would also help with weapon camos, just having headshot kills being what you need to unlock camos is just boring and feels unrewarding. Having challenges to unlock camos feels rewarding
To me, the first month was great. Once season 1 and the battlepass dropped, it rapidly turned into slop. Haven't touched it since then
The Squid game event was compleatable in a matter of 2 hours because of the double xp. I agree, I wish it had weekly goals to unlock stuff
I welcome the idea of game mode specific challenges, but with how they do MM, smaller playerbase regions have an extreme drop-off after the 1st weekend or so. The search parameters dont open up or lobbies dont fill, then you have the issue of enemy dependent challenges. I'm having PTSD just typing this out
I hear you on the wait, like other than the guns and handful of maps the game has been stale like same maps, guns, and issues with nothing to bring someone back. If you already done the mastery challenges or whatever you shoot for what is there to get you to come back?. Also add a battle pass and premium, the squid games battle pass shop bundles like how much more money do yall need? Sad that some of these issues won’t get fixed at all but they sure have time to pump out the next set of bundles like such a slap in the face to the community.
They need more developers and better code-management between studios. Since it already existed in MW3, it should be trivial to implement challenge-tracking into the game if code was managed properly.
Many an agreement from me as always! I was playing BO6 zombies grinding Nebula almost daily in my limited play time. Then these events, which are all play time based and nothing really new or exciting kept popping up followed by the aggressive store sales push just got my goat. Ive hardly played in 2025 now despite being so close to Nebula! The MW3 challenge system done in either BR, MP or MWZ was really well executed with the bonus camo at the end of the season too and totally achievable within just a couple of games as many challenges stacked or overlapped. The challenge tracker vanishing from MW3 to BO6 baffled me. Simple QoL feature thats now coming 4 months after launch? I guess the numbers of the non vocal majority still work in Activision's success and sales numbers rather than the vocal minority who are all seemingly playing Marvel
it would just be nice for the game to come out finished and have new content added to it as oppose to waiting 6 months for the game to be in a state it should have been on launch
Developers taking christmas and new years off is part of the problem.
There is a reason why retail workers work more over december-january than average. There is a reason that most restaurants have their 'weekend' mon/Tuesday.
The staff/company need to match the player levels NOT the standard business calendar.
They won’t change, they’ll continue to make the problems and the “solutions”
I have this feeling too, like some of the issues may be convenient at times. But the downfall of BO6 makes doubt it a bit, too much of a risk to play the cards that way.
Yeah I pretty much agree with everything you said. I'm not sure if 4 maps is doable and if it wouldn't put much pressure on the devs but it would be cool.
I think (and this will sound weird) that the issue is that BO6 launched as too complete of a package, it gave players too much at once.
I'm not a big fan of drip feeding, like Rockstar Games does. But holding off some content helps and allows the devs to polish core content more for day 0 and the extra content more for whenever it gets released. This could be a strat.
How to fix cod in 3 easy steps:
1. Change from annual release to every 2 years.
2. Specify each studios role - let IW and Raven handle WZ, let Treyarch develop the campaign, MP and zombies and let SHG be the post-launch studio that handles cosmetics and events and seasons.
3. Either reduce the price of all the MTX, or cut the base game cost significantly.
another feature they removed was stat loss prevention when joining a match in progress and it straight up counts as a loss
a good game doesn't need a gimmicky non-sense like battle pass or live service event to play it. Gameplay should be enough, not some FOMO non-sense like aftermarket parts.
I thought about it too but at this day and age both old and new players have gotten used to this that I think it would be insane not to continue. But it is pretty damning. In BO2 days the game we got was enough for many and it lasted three years if not more with a stupidly active player base.
@@bs_blackscout insane but not wrong
A lot of those issues like visual recoil, slow animations, no challenge trackers etc are all engine issues from MW2 and IW
I like the annual releases but I actually think MWIII worked very well because it launched with maps and guns from the previous game. We had tons of content at launch and by the end of it we have over 40 maps and lime 150 weapons. Has really helped the replay ability of that game since I’m done with BO6 and playing MWIII instead.
All cod studios' priorities are very clear. The game is an afterthought and the main focus is monetization - same budget, but recourses are focused on making skins and emotes rather than gameplay. The only possible way to make cod better is to slash the cosmetics teams and devote more resources to the dev teams that actually support the game.
Id be interested to hear your perspective on the article about COD game budgets that came out recently
I'm not sure I have anything interesting to add to the discussion, otherwise, I likely would've put something together.
I think it was marksman who spoke about it. Apparently every COD is built from the ground up. And apparently the studios within activision don’t actually communicate with each other that much. So the way I interpret it, is like Hell’s Kitchen. Everyone has the same starting ingredients, but they have to cook their own meals, and no help from other contestants. It makes sense in a way, all three are trying to be the better game maker, but I think it’s counter intuitive for them to not share the things that fans like. Since they are all under the same umbrella, when one wins they all win.
Personally, I'm in a weird spot. I feel like making one "COD" and just building onto it for years *COULD* be a massively amazing move... but at the same time, I don't trust that they'd implement it well. The dream team would obviously be Sledge for MP, Treyarch for Zombies, IW for Co-op/Survival/DMZ, and Raven(I think) has WZ. This is a list I've kinda narrowed down to subjects:
Having 30 maps in a game is already a bit annoying, when you only like 3 of them. Imagining 100+ maps unfiltered would be awful, I'd suggest they do kinda like what one of the recent CODs did and have "seasons" of maps separated so it's less RNG, or even just have filters for maps like they do modes. People who don't care can leave them all available and others can have like 20 maps to switch between.
100's of guns is cool, but how many of them are just "AK and M4" clones? Don't get me wrong, I would love to not have to earn M4 attachments again, every year, for 6 years (excluding Vanguard), but we've already seen how hard it is for them to balance 100+ guns with MW3. How do they keep up with the Camo grinders? do they just reset the Camo grind every year, or add a new mastery camo every 6 months or so?
Coming from someone who has played almost every single campaign all the way back to Finest Hour, I'd probably be fine just scrapping the campaign altogether since no one really buys the game for the Campaigns...
The Pros: They have one anti cheat/engine and they just work from there, The Micro-transactions we pay for stay in the game for years instead of months. When they get a new engine, we get a new game.
The Cons: The game would probably take up entire hard drives. Things will probably grow stale after a year anyway. They'd probably charge money to upgrade the game every season to make up for the game not getting bought every year. Layoffs would be massive.
Keep on posting these. We need more big name TH-camrs calling out this horrible “live service”.
SOME OF YALL ARE PAYING A $70 YEARLY SUBSCRIPTION!
I appreciate all the recommendations, and your hard work, but I un-installed this game. I am tired of the constant issues and packet loss for a player with a 2 gigabit lan connection. I am going to try other options.
Couldn't disagree more on event challenges and weeklies. As someone with somewhat limited time to play, it meant i very rarely got to, "just play." Instead I was always left chasing the carrot, playing in some arbitrary way that wasn't much fun. Absolutely burned me out and eventually i just gave up entirely.
As if it wasn’t bad enough that the events are boring, it’s extra cool that they went out of their way to create a mini-battle pass for SqG2
But for the price of 1100 CP like the adult-sized battle pass mind you
I don't agree with the first point Ace made. The problem with the game is the fact that they're always updating the game with new skins, new modes, new maps, new themes, new events. I agree there should be updates for improving the game and fixing bugs but i dont think there should be a constant flow of updates that completely change the game. Many of us remember the golden years of COD. All we got was like 2-4 DLCS a cycle with a handful of maps and that was it. No one complained, life was good.
I just turned off cross play on my Xbox and the difference is insane. Went from 1.5 kd per match to above 2.5 kd. Also, I realized that if I launch the game from the gamepass app on pc, it will still recognize as if I had cross play turned off, therefore, will only match me with Xbox players who have cross play turned off as well.
To summarize: even though you turn off cross play on your Xbox, you can still be matched with PC players who launch it from game pass. No surprise I was playing against people who were not that good, yet had nuke calling cards.
MW3 was so engaging and rewarding. Like you said, every week we had something to grind for. A new red dot sight that helped with recoil stability, or an after market part, or a new muzzle, or new camos, etc. SBMM was cranked up in MW3 tho, but at least all the new content kept me coming back. BO6 is such a downgrade. I only play it every other day.
You can solve the season release issues and a plethora of other major issues by not having 3 different companies creating a COD game separately every year. Imagine all 3 development teams working on the same platform. Each new yearly game could still fall under 1 of the 3 development teams, but the other two could specifically look after the S1 and S2 for instance. This open ups so much man power and time for the current years developer to work on in game issues. I know this will never happen bc it's all about the benji's, but one can dream. I really don't see how COD ever reaches it's potential when you have a different developer each year. It makes absolutely no sense.
Good video Ace, I never usually LIKE videos but I LIKED this one. You hit the hammer on the nail with this video. One of the reasons I like the battlefield franchise is because they release ONE game every 3 to 4 years and during that time the game usually gets better and IMPROVES features. This gives casual players PLENTY of time to get used to the mechanics, work on challenges, and learn the game. It also helps with Store purchases that feel USEFUL for YEARS. MWIII was GREAT, I loved the added features, I Loved the kill-streaks, equipment, maps, etc. When COD releases every year, it changes things that took time to get used to and some changes I don't like. I'm still playing MWIII because I think it's the better game. COD should focus on ONE game every 3 to 4 years with scheduled seasons and events. COD feels RUSHED. by the time I get into the new game another is coming out. It's so hard to keep up with COD it's better to simply watch channels like yours in order to stay relevant with the community, and it should not be that way, Casuals can't keep up with an annual release anymore, we need TIME to learn and play.
You give these devs wayyyy too much credit dude. Older cods were made with 1/4th the amount of devs and the games were complete aside from balancing and bugs.
These devs teams today have 200% more manpower and the moderns cods are 200% more broken. They don’t deserve a break until the game is in a finished state. If you have time to create neon pink tracer bundles, you have time to fix your F’ing game.
Quit defending this scummy company.
1:24
That's the problem. A live service game shouldn't be having a 12 month life cycle. Fortnite is 8 years old, Siege and Rocket League are almost 9 years old, Warframe and GTA Online are about to turn 12 years old. In those games, you can still use everything you've bought and unlocked.
Stop making excuses for “game developers”, they’re still the ones making the game. They get paid for the job they do, if they don’t get it right, or push greed first, they should get sh!t on. “My boss made me do it” wouldn’t fly in court and it sure as f$ck doesn’t work on cod.
The thing i find frustrating is that they have the capability to keep all bundles you bought previously. the game we are playing is COD HQ bo or mw its just a big expansion pack.
We saw that you could use previously gained camos and operators. They are unnecessarily tendered worthless. If cod went the route of CS where they just treat it as one game that would be fine!
I’ve been playing cod for 17 years so I def understand everyone’s frustration. I recently stopped playing cod even tho it was my favorite game of all time. I don’t want to see it die like this. I think if Al the companies would work together to deliver one big cohesive franchise i think the game would be in a way better state. That mean more devs teaming up to work on each yearly project instead of each team point fingers when a project goes wrong. This all hands on deck approach would give the devs the breaks they need throughout the year without having yo go through so much over time. More so I do agree with exclusive ace on more maps throughout the season. I think this would be a better approach to refresh the game monthly and I think there should be a focus on more maps for warzone. This includes more big maps yearly and more smaller maps yearly. Rebirth island shouldn’t be the only small map that’s available year in and year out. Area 99 is a decent map so far but it’s only small map to come out of the franchise for warzone in 7 years since black out was first introduced. I think this is something they could capitalized with squid games in releasing a copy of the famous island on the series into a small warzone map. With every game room, hallway and even outside of the island available on one small map as a resurgence mode. It would’ve brought so many players to the game to just try out the map. We all know they need better servers and better game stability, which can come through the efforts of team work through all studios.
The locked in flow state you hit on derelict 🔥
I'm honestly fine with how the events are going. The AMPs constantly coming out was getting really old. Plus a lot of those parts would get nerfed until they was useless or be stupid OP. They was never properly balanced most times or even useful in the game.
Challenge tracking should be standard in CoD from now on. That was one of the best updates they ever did.
They definitely have room for improvement. So far I'm pretty much fed up with how team balancing is. Before I could solo play and not have many issues, now it feels like they are forcing you to team up to have more even lobbies. Just not that fun anymore.
As always, another spot on analysis.
The easiest way to fix CoD:
Have all the studios work together. They all have their great attributes on the individual games and of course some of the worst things as well, but if they worked together I really believe we could get a generational game.
Yes I know that they don’t like working together but this is a business, I don’t like working with a lot of people in my work but I still do what I got to do🤷🏽♂️
Putting guns from the last game in the new one just to have them easily be the worst options is the dumbest thing they do. remove the sprint to fire delay, don't have the guns in the game in the first place, or actually put some thought behind weapon balancing to have weapons that have different benefits instead of they are all mid except the one that's clearly the best by a long shot.
Year after year.
Them-We made this game so good
Players-ooo slide slide fun fun
Them-thanks for record sales
Players-wait this is the same boo boo
Them-eh, we made another one with ✨jetpacks✨
Players- oooo jetpack fun, very high much speed. Wait it’s still broken
Them-you said $20 gun skin, you got it 😊
While I agree with almost everything you've said in the video, I have one point that I don't *completely* agree with: I feel like 8 weeks is a bit fast for a season with the current Battle Pass XP rates, especially when people might want to play other games during that time. I think 12 weeks for a season would be fair, instead of the current 16-20 weeks that makes the game start to get stale without AMPs every week.
They always seem to balance Battle Pass XP rates to ensure the majority of casual players can reasonably finish it before it ends, regardless of the season duration. I wouldn't be surprised at all if they even adjust the rates slightly mid season to ensure they're hitting this mark.
I agree with everything besides for aftermarket parts. I prefer a simplistic approach to the gunsmith rather than having 1 million options and especially in mw3 where there were so many attachments, AM parts made it extremely frustrating to make loadouts. I felt like I had to watch yt videos or tiktoks to keep up with the meta. I like the idea of having something to unlock each week via challenges, but I dont want it to be something that’ll make the gunsmith more complicated than it needs to be.
The biggest sin so far is definitely the map selection and how long Season 1 is. I still can't believe they made it that long, I finished the pass almost 5 weeks ago and I play casually only a couple times a week!
I really enjoy black ops 6, and have been enjoying COD for many years. I think we sometimes forget we chose to buy these games and that we wouldn’t buy it if we didn’t think they are fun. All these people complaining about COD should maybe just not buy the game..? There are tons of other good games if you aren’t having fun with it anymore.
It won’t even matter. Until matchmaking changes it just will never matter
Activision live service model: fix things that aren't broken that ends up breaking other things, just to show face for this live service model to manipulate the player base to buy more items in the shop, KEEP PLAYING EVEN IF THE GAME WILL NEVER BE COMPLETE
Most places of work get maybe xmas eve, xmas, and new years off. The rest u need to use ur personal pto if u want time off. "Taking a long holiday" is not an excuse. The business still needs to operate