haoz
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Post by haoz on May 5, 2017 13:45:44 GMT -5
I think prestiging is the dumbest way to keep people playing a video game.
In an RPG, you level up and get +ATT and +HP, but this is a multiplayer video game, so all they can offer you is new guns. But there are only so many things to unlock, so at some max level, you have the opportunity to reset locks to do the whole thing all over again. All you get for your effort is a new player icon. Not only that, but classes reset, so you have to waste time setting things up the way you like.
The game devs even offer events like double XP weekends where you can unlock things faster, and that gets more people to play the game. "Oh boy, leveling up faster!"
The whole thing is basically a human hamster wheel.
I get why it works, but what's amazing is that people are willing to go through the effort of prestiging every year they buy the game.
In-game challenges are similar, except that you have to put a bit of specific effort toward finishing them. I do find them somewhat compelling, but I also get that same hamster wheel feeling from challenges when the requirements for a challenge are excessive.
The same stuff year after year keeps CoD the #1 game sold. I find that incredible.
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 6, 2017 19:51:40 GMT -5
There is no substitute for a gameplay loop worth playing for hundreds of hours.
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wings
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Post by wings on May 7, 2017 12:28:49 GMT -5
I only bothered with the prestige system to unlock the five extra custom classes and that is it. I think games putting more and more emphasis on gamers' playing time is annoying.
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haoz
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Post by haoz on May 9, 2017 18:00:31 GMT -5
Hence SHG came up with supply drops to help with player retention, and here we are. Supply drops are also a funny thing too, since the stuff they contain has value for approximately a year.
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markopolo
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Post by markopolo on May 10, 2017 10:28:29 GMT -5
But....
But... the emblems.....
Those beautiful beautiful emblems.....
The heresy in this thread is overwhelming
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Post by GodMars on May 10, 2017 12:03:18 GMT -5
Prestiging is something that just happens while I work on golding all of the guns.
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haoz
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Post by haoz on May 14, 2017 12:57:09 GMT -5
Golding the guns is funnish, but after getting solar, I'm stymied by the M1. So no dark sky for me. I haven't played in weeks though.
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Post by illram on May 14, 2017 18:08:55 GMT -5
The dark sky grind in IW is a little too much. It was doable in BO3.
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Post by godzilla on May 14, 2017 21:57:51 GMT -5
The dark sky grind in IW is a little too much. It was doable in BO3. While you could go to Touch Football to make parts of the DM BO3 grind easier (pistols, Drakon OHKs), Tactical TDM in IW is practically required for the snipers (160 headshots, and your headshots don't count until you rack up the first 200 kills), and the Howitzer. Probably not a good idea to have a challenge where it is strongly recommended to leave Core! And you have to be minimum 9th prestige to finish the Dark Sky grind, otherwise you have Solar which a friend described as "if Cheeto dust were a gun camo." It feels like IW copied a popular element from BO3 without understanding why it worked, which boy, that sounds like Infinite Warfare as a whole.
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haoz
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Post by haoz on May 15, 2017 17:37:25 GMT -5
No. IW is better than BO3. It just had the misfortune of coming second.
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Post by godzilla on May 16, 2017 11:24:39 GMT -5
No. IW is better than BO3. It just had the misfortune of coming second. IW made some improvements on BO3, especially with the technical side of the game and the supply drop system, but I feel the core gameplay is a significant step back from BO3 in many major ways. 1. Synaptic. Synaptic has one of the best supers, if not the best super in the game with Rewind. It charges quickly, you get a free reload and extra ammo, health regen process is started during Rewind, and it lets you recover from bad positioning very easily. Phase Shift and Camo can be used offensively, but neither gives you the free reload, and Camo takes twice as long to charge. While it's not clear that Rewind is the best of the top-tier supers, Propulsion is the best character perk in the game and it's not close. Propulsion means you have close to 100% uptime with your jetpacks, which even BO3 Afterburner didn't let you do. The maps aren't built for this movement, and worse, they discourage it with invisible walls and map geometry that limits how high you can fly. So all you can do is mash the jump button every time you see someone, and playing against other proficient Synaptic users feels like a matchup on who has the better reflexes and connection. The hitbox has been much debated, and while I tend to believe that Synaptic has a hitbox similar to the other characters, the model being visually smaller does screw with your brain. It feels harder to hit a Synaptic that's behind a headglitch, or one that's in the air because you feel like your target is smaller than it actually is. These 3 factors combined make Synaptic so much better than the other characters, and Synaptic has never been nerfed aside from the global payload charge time nerf around DLC1. Merc used to come close with its good perks but Armor isn't very useful after they nerfed it. 2. Weapon balance/gunplay. A lot of people complained about the NV4 and even the KBAR, but I've always felt the top of the meta was fine with balance. The real problem is that there's a lot of garbage, e.g. the non-Longbow snipers, the non-Reaver shotguns. Plus many weapons don't feel unique in their role or feel, like WaW and BO1. 3. Killstreaks: the mid-tier streaks in IW were all garbage, except for maybe the Vulture and even that was annoying for the user because the Vulture only got Afterlife medals. the A-P3X and Warden were cool, but the other high streaks didn't feel worth the score. This may have changed with scorestreak variants, but shouldn't the high-tier streaks been like this in the first place? 4. Connection issues. Overall CoD is the laughingstock of the FPS world with how poor its tickrates are, and IW can be a better experience than BO3 because of the improved hit detection. But man, IW had the packet loss symbol in half of the gameplay for the official DLC2 trailer. BO3 was never good by modern standards but at least it was consistent. Plus when I played with friends, there was a 40% chance of the party breaking after leaving a lobby even when DLC1 released. I had my fun with IW, but I really don't feel like returning to it. I don't feel like putting up with just Synaptic, let alone all these other factors, when there are so many other great games I haven't played.
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Post by illram on May 16, 2017 11:55:48 GMT -5
IW felt the most "unfinished" of all the CODs on release. We've got a lot of stuff in the game now that should have been there on day 1. And the balance issues in the meta game as well as little side stuff like impossible challenges for gametypes that do not exist, or overly difficult challenges getting nerfed 6 months after release, shows a lack of planning I didn't see as much of in BO3. BO3 had it's issues for sure but there were not as many head scratchingly dumb design or gameplay decisions.
Map wise and gun wise I think IW is still fun. After getting used to the confusing maps I do find some of them very enjoyable and less cookie cutter than the usual Treyarch fare.
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Post by iw5000 on May 17, 2017 13:35:24 GMT -5
IW felt the most "unfinished" of all the CODs on release. We've got a lot of stuff in the game now that should have been there on day 1. And the balance issues in the meta game as well as little side stuff like impossible challenges for gametypes that do not exist, or overly difficult challenges getting nerfed 6 months after release, shows a lack of planning I didn't see as much of in BO3. BO3 had it's issues for sure but there were not as many head scratchingly dumb design or gameplay decisions. Map wise and gun wise I think IW is still fun. After getting used to the confusing maps I do find some of them very enjoyable and less cookie cutter than the usual Treyarch fare. I think one should say, it didn't 'feel' unfinished, it WAS unfinished. It had elements removed from prior games (like theater mode). It was released with terrible party grouping functions (at least on XB1). It had a huge "Coming Soon" title placed on where the leaderboards should have been, a simple tool that has been in every CoD dating back at least eight years. To add insult to injury, it also had "coming soon" right up on the Emblem creator section too, for months and months. There were at least five or six things not in this game, that were all part of prior games. Yes, some of these didn't affect gameplay in game changing ways....but they were all simple things CoD has easily handled before, that were removed or not ready for launch. What is really sad, is that the leaderboard function may have been deliberately removed, so as to make sure people couldn't see a player count. That's just awful. Deliberately disabling elements of the game, to protect the reputation of CoD. Can it get any more pathetic than that?
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Post by godzilla on May 17, 2017 14:32:05 GMT -5
I thought the leaderboards being held back to hide playercount was a conspiracy theory but when they announced that exact numerical positions would only be revealed for the top 10K, that conspiracy theory was proven true. What's worse is that MWR shows both your percentile-based rank and your exact numerical rank in its leaderboards.
Infinite Warfare was the first game that IW had no excuses for. MW3 was an impossible job, and Ghosts had to be juggled across both last-gen and current-gen. The red flag that this game was incomplete was the beta launching after IW went gold, and it being such a disaster. IW didn't reach feature parity with BO3 until after DLC1, and there was no communication on what was being worked on until after that update where IW copied and pasted emblems and calling cards for new camos. I can't say for sure if another management overhaul at IW is what the studio needs, but I'd be leaning towards that direction if I were Activision.
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wings
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Post by wings on May 18, 2017 2:35:41 GMT -5
What is really sad, is that the leaderboard function may have been deliberately removed, so as to make sure people couldn't see a player count. That's just awful. Deliberately disabling elements of the game, to protect the reputation of CoD. Can it get any more pathetic than that? It's probably designed to protect the share prices. It's the same with having in-game player count for specific game modes being removed from all Activision published games after COD: Ghosts.
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haoz
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Post by haoz on May 18, 2017 13:16:30 GMT -5
why not just spoof the numbers lol But the consequences if they caught? I can't imagine it psychologically either. If I were a programmer at IW and told to make a routine that gives false player numbers, I'm not sure I'd be willing to do that. --- IW was feature incomplete, although one can't complain about theater mode being missing; only 3arch games have that. The leaderboard and combat record effort was pretty embarrassing. One, it gave proof their tracking system was active from day 1, since I was missing kills with various grenades. Two, the leaderboards showed the weak player count. I saw myself in the top 10000 in several modes whereas I was no where close to 10000 in BO3. Part of that is that the late leaderboards only added players as they played that mode after the leaderboards' release, but only partly. On the other hand BO3 was the buggiest CoD I've played. I was very impressed by the reduced loading times in IW, and I prefer the graphical style the game presented over BO3.
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wings
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Post by wings on May 19, 2017 2:34:35 GMT -5
i was kidding Though i will throw out there at wings that as far as game modes are concerned, its probably a lot more innocuous. Shareholders dont give a Foxtrot if something like S&D is less popular than tdm. just if the game is selling and retaining players long enough to get dlc out. A downside to showing playercounts for each game mode is that players are inherantly disuaded from playing the modes with fewer players, even when theres enough to find a game quickly (simply because they think itll take a lot longer). That makes the playercount disparity worse and can cause certain game modes to die a lot quicker as the playerbase starts to dip. Wouldn't shareholders track player counts for the whole instalment over its life cycle and then compare previous iterations with additional figures of game sales and each DLC? That way you can see if players are invested in playing the game beyond release date ready for when DLC is released. You are right with players disuading from joining specific game modes if low player counts are shown. However, with my experience of Destiny, if matchmaking takes as long as a game itself and then the lobby doesn't get filled, then there's a good chance I'll be disuaded by that instead. Perhaps that's a different point, but I wouldn't be surprised to see shareholders using that as a guide. I've never traded in stocks and shares so I'm probably way off the mark.
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haoz
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Post by haoz on May 19, 2017 11:59:08 GMT -5
In BO3, they used player percentages. But the "1% of al players are in this playlist" seemed to dissuade players from playing the less popular modes in BO3, based on some reddit threads where people complain about 1%. Hardpoint was always at 1-2% for me in BO3, but I found games all the time. I think they later changed it so that the minimum value they would show is "<5%" or something.
I don't think it's about share prices or investors. The player counts are obscured because otherwise explicitly showing fewer players will make more gamers have the mindset that "CoD is dead," reducing the inclination to buy the game. Activison also wants to avoid potential problems like the growing cohort of players who only buy Treyarch CoDs.
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Post by iw5000 on May 24, 2017 10:36:05 GMT -5
What Haoz said.
CoD is a 'bro' game. Your friends play it, so you play it, then more friends play, and on and on it goes. It's all about momentum. Word of mouth, that kind of selling. If CoD is deemed to be 'dead', the reverse takes effect and sh^t just dies.
Activision knows this perfectly well. Word of mouth goes bad, the game will continue to free fall. Which is why they hide everything. But again, when you reach the point of hiding things, where a company is removing standard features that have been in the game a long time, that's just to much. It's wrong on every level. At this point, the game needs to die.
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bradman
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Post by bradman on May 24, 2017 12:30:48 GMT -5
They'll just remaster the old ones for another decade if they have to.
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markopolo
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Post by markopolo on May 24, 2017 14:22:05 GMT -5
They'll just remaster the old ones for another decade if they have to. Except Ghosts.... no one needs a remastered Ghosts
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on May 25, 2017 3:36:04 GMT -5
They'll just remaster the old ones for another decade if they have to. Except Ghosts.... no one needs a remastered Ghosts Are you kidding? Ghosts was ahead of its time. So far ahead of its time it needs to go forward in time. Like, really far ahead of time. So far ahead of time to the point where humanity goes extinct from the heat death of the universe and we never hear of Call of Duty: Ghosts once.
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bradman
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Post by bradman on May 25, 2017 7:59:43 GMT -5
They'll just remaster the old ones for another decade if they have to. Except Ghosts.... no one needs a remastered Ghosts I beg to differ, sir. The NOPE on Hot Dog map and the Ice Cave are great tactical loitering spots. Too many great spots on Stonehaven to list.
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markopolo
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Once a LMG Camper, Then a Voidlock, Now a Lexington 25-8-366 Runner
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Post by markopolo on May 25, 2017 8:53:06 GMT -5
Hold on..... Foxtrot....
Not ghosts... what's the other one?
EDIT: IW..... that's the one. No one needs a Remastered Infinite Warfare
The more I remember, I actually liked ghosts... or at least the unlocking system
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Post by TheHawkNY on May 25, 2017 9:16:00 GMT -5
The Prestige system isn't stupid, it's essentially a variation of discriminatory pricing for unlocks. Players that play more take longer to unlock everything than casual players. This has the effect of lengthening the lifespan of the game for hardcore players by forcing variation in loadouts. It also allows them to set the time required to unlock things at the optimal level of investment for casual players, where unlocking things feels both achievable and rewarding. Were they to increase the investment required to unlock items to factor in hardcore players, it would be a deterrent to casual players.
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wings
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Post by wings on May 26, 2017 12:15:39 GMT -5
The more I remember, I actually liked ghosts... or at least the unlocking system I agree. If people want tedious unlocks they can play MW3 and MW2 and unlock The Dictator emblem or play World of Warcraft and have a second job. Stonehaven is also my favourite map in the game. Warhawk was pretty decent too.
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Post by iw5000 on Jun 2, 2017 13:43:05 GMT -5
Ghosts was the last CoD I played a lot. Due to the Clan Wars...spent way to much time playing that one. In the end though, it was definitely a unique experience due to the clan stuff. Always remember it.
Stonehaven was a really awesome map. CoD just doesn't make maps in that style or with sightlines like that anymore.
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bradman
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Post by bradman on Jun 2, 2017 14:28:24 GMT -5
Don't the endless,lookalike corridors of IW do it for you anymore?
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Post by iw5000 on Jun 12, 2017 9:04:16 GMT -5
Don't the endless,lookalike corridors of IW do it for you anymore? I haven't played IW since like early March. Not sure why. There are some things that I don't like about it (pay to play, unfinished, exos, etc..) but it's not like Advanced Warfare level of sucking bad. I guess I just got busy and kind of stopped playing video games the past three months. I need something to inspire me to play again.
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bradman
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Post by bradman on Jun 12, 2017 14:14:27 GMT -5
It's hard to put my finger on just what makes IW so goddamn boring to play. It's competently made,runs pretty well,etc. but it is just dull. AW, which I hated, is now more fun to me to play. Neither hold my interest for long, but if I play one, I boot up AW.
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