I'm not one of those guys who thinks Call of Duty has been destroyed by Activision because frankly, I always thought of Call of Duty games as "above average" games, never amazing ones. It's fun, but has a lot of bullshit stacked on top of it that I know how to fix and what Treyarch/Sledgehammer/Infinity Ward need to do. Black Ops really only fixed three problem from MW2, and that was the noob tube, FFA boosters, and the Nuke. Not good enough. BTW if you say I suck at COD I have a K/D ratio hovering around 1.65 right now which as been on the rise recently.
There are 8 main problems with COD: Maps, Spawns, Killstreaks, Knives, Claymores, Clans, Health, Lag
Solution 1. Maps
Allow the ability to select a preferred map and a preferred to avoid map (or disliked) when entering matchmaking. A find a couple of maps pretty shitty, but some just plain piss me off and I now leave immediately after it getting picked and it's wasting my time and my favorite map isn't picked often. Also set it for each individual gametype. Some maps like Summit are good for FFA, but a pain in the ass to play on in Domination imo. Also, make it so this ability is disabled when searching in a party of more than 2. This will prevent people in Clans or in large parties from abusing the feature by selecting 6 different maps as disliked and 1 as preferred.
Solution 2. Spawns
COD devs don't need to upgrade their spawn system necessarily (but it'd be nice if they did), but they need to modify them. They need to allow a feature of preferred spawns. There are three options: 1. In the Action 2. Close to Action 3. Away from Action.
- With 1. You will spawn right in the middle of the action so you can start getting kills and caps right away but there is a medium high risk of getting spawn killed. With 2. You are close to the action and but still have to run to it. There is a moderate risk of getting spawn killed though. With 3. You are away from the action and have to spend a while getting to it but there is a low chance of getting spawn killed. Also you can get to a place where you can call in your damn care packages without getting killed 2 or 3 times getting to the spot or risk getting it stolen or get stuck on a rooftop or something.
Solution 3. Claymores/Claymore equivalents
Make claymores a perk, not a damn equipment option. It's a pain in the ass when a claymore is just regular equipment and used by everyone and used along side Ghost or something. I'm constantly getting blown up by random as hell claymores and it's really frustrating.
Solution 4. Knives/Melee
Either remove it entirely or weaken it where instead of it being an instant kill it only takes away 80% of your max health. Knives only serve to piss people off because they are cheap as hell. Or instead of a knive it's a melee with your current weapon where the damage, speed, and recovery speed is depended on the type and weight of the weapon but not an instant kill. Like if you have an AK-74u if someone gets to close you could quickly melee the guy with your gun and do like 50% max health damage and then blind fire and kill them in a bullet or two. Knives are really unbalanced and give people with a faster connection a huge advantage in close combat.
Solution 5. Clans
I hate clans, I'll be playing TDM or Domination and I'll end up going against a clan and just leave and take a loss because I know I'll get destroyed. They should make it so that if you are in a party with people of the same clan tag or have had the same clan tag (so clans won't cheat by temporarily changing their clan tags) as you that you will more likely be matched up with other clan people or the highest prestiged people available.
Solution 6. Lag
Call of Duty sells like 10 fucking million copies per system, there is no reason that Activision should NOT have dedicated servers. It's not lag where the game starts getting all choppy (but that happens sometimes) but lag where you know you made it around that damn corner but the damn server didn't register it as soon as you did it and you get killed by the other guy because he has a faster connection than you. Or when you shoot at a guy first but then when you look at his killcam he was already aiming at you before you even saw him come out the door. Also there is yes, host advantage like in Gears. Just pay attention and you'll easily notice it. Even Microsoft as greedy as they are have used dedicated servers on past console games and are putting dedicated servers on Gears 3, the third installment to the franchise; Black Ops is what? COD's 7th? WTF? F1stdaCuffs, J34 or whatever his name is and all those other Machinima COD players are yes really good, but they also have a huge advantage over ALMOST EVERYONE because they have like a 10mb upload speed when the average person has like a 1.5-2 mb upload speed. They wouldn't be getting their huge ass 40 Killstreaks so often if COD was on dedicated servers.
Solution 7. Killstreaks
The core reason for camping, they run the match, and are an overall pain in the ass. I'm sick and tired of dealing with dogs and chopper gunners every match and pissed off how half the people in Domination go for kills instead of caps. An EASY solution for this is to make rewards SCORE and TIME based over KILL based. Basically you can get a reward for getting 500 points in 15 seconds or another for getting 2000 in 15 seconds or another for 1500 in 20 seconds or something. Match leaderboards are already ranked based on scores over kills so why not rewards too? Give people less points for kills in objective modes and more points for completing objectives in objective modes and it will deter camping and give people an incentive to play the damn game how it should be played and make it better for everyone. It's stupid how a team player who tries to cap and defend as many points as he can can get a Napalm Strike at best while a lone wolf who does nothing for his team is raining down hell with his chopper gunner or calling in dogs.
Call of Duty could be a much better game and here's what Activision needs to do for COD to actually deserve all that hype and sales without losing the Call of Duty feel to it.