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How did Call of Duty get to this point? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago by Buttflapper@lemmy.world to c/games@lemmy.world

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Since I'm a WoW addict, naturally I'm a Blizzard fan, of sorts. But my mind is blown every time I see anything from Call of Duty on the launcher. I've been really out of the loop, and recently saw this.... and I'm shocked. You have to BUY the game for "open beta access", like how does that make any sense? Also, the general look of the game and its marketing now looks like a $5 ripoff FPS game on Steam... What the heck happened?

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[-] SomethingBurger@jlai.lu 84 points 1 week ago

People buy this shit so they make more. Simple as that.

[-] cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca 3 points 1 week ago

Blah blah blah, supply and demand.

I swear the less A' a game has in the context of "AAAA", "AAA", etc, the better it is.

In recent years I've found more niche or mid sized studios have my interest at heart. The more A's a game claims to have, the more bullshit predatory crap it has, micro transactions, etc.

[-] warm@kbin.earth 44 points 1 week ago

People buy it. People then buy the skins. I play the free to play one sometimes and nearly every single person I kill has a $30+ skin and weapons. It's saddening.

One of the funniest things with cod too now, is that people always used to say it was the same game every year, but it is actually the same game every year now, with progress and weapons carrying over.

Gone are the days of a one time purchase and a solid game. (Well in the AAA space anyway)

[-] PunchingWood@lemmy.world 17 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

The term "beta" has been abused for so long that it's become meaningless in terms of what it actually is supposed to be. It's just a paid demo and/or early access.

Just look at WoW, they had a "beta" for like 2 or 3 months, and a paid early access package. Adding insult to injury they started patching/nerfing stuff like a day after early access. It's annoying as fuck that they have many months of "testing" and then fail to fix the blatant issues until it hits live servers and even after the early access period. Everything screams like "should've bought the beta and early access, huh?". Paid stuff like betas and early access are just money grabs, and people fall for it. So next expansion will probably be an even longer early access period, or more bonuses.

As for CoD looking like a collection of brainrot operators, weapons and themes, I think they are just trying to figure out ways to keep CoD relevant without releasing actual identical games every time, even if it just means changing the theme. And people are still buying it, so why would they stop.

[-] bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

I've been saying this for years. I remember playing the Planetside 2 beta, it ran for months. It was actually used for bug/stability testing, fixing networking issues, balancing, etc etc etc. It was an incredibly important step in developing a multiplayer game.

These aren't betas, they're demos that at most will help them do a limited network stress test. The amount of data they can get from 2 weeks of feedback is nowhere near enough to do any real bug fixes or balance changes.

What's worse is that now, any game that does have a long alpha or beta period is accused of squatting in early access.

[-] PunchingWood@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Oh man I remember Planetside 2 launch being so insanely laggy and buggy lol

At some point we threw grenades on a giant pile because they just never went off, or sometimes just disappeared as soon as we threw them. I don't think the devs ever tested that huge influx of players anywhere in the pre-launch stage. It's hard to predict some things that will go different from testing to live, but man it seems so obvious with large multiplayer titles.

Even WoW still struggled with this, servers becoming laggy and unresponsive even, it's been better last 2 expansion launches but it's still not great. And they had over 15 years of data to go on too.

[-] bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world 1 points 1 week ago

I also remember it being in a pretty rough state early on, all the more reason 2 weeks of testing is a joke.

Although, one thing CoD has going for it, each game changes so little they really don't need a beta. They're almost like sports games in that regard, they may as well be released as updates instead of new titles.

[-] ObsidianZed@lemmy.world 13 points 1 week ago

The gameplay has changed so little over the years but that's because it's unfortunately pretty solid.

I played a lot when I was younger but stopped because I didn't have the money, hard drive space, or internet bandwidth to keep up with the new games and updates.

With that said, I actually jumped into this beta since it was included in Game Pass and it reminded me of CoD of my youth.

Will I every give them anymore more money? Nah.

Will I play it some more via Game Pass? Maybe.

My biggest complaint is the ecosystem is cancer. They have CoD HQ that acts as a launcher but can only handle a couple games and if you select to play one of the games it can't play, it fully closes and launches the game you want to play.

Can you simply download and launch only the game you want to play? Nope.

This is all to get your eyes on as much of their content as possible to really squeeze out those last few dollars.

The amount of players I saw with the skins that cost them $100 minimum was crazy. These are very likely the same people that buy every game every year and are precisely the target demographic they're marketing towards.

[-] hobovision@lemm.ee 12 points 1 week ago

That has to be a meme post. Black Ops SIX? You're joking. This is a picture from 2018.

[-] accideath@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

Nope. I also totally missed even Black Ops 5 existing. But then again, what I’m looking for in a CoD game (good split screen offline local multiplexer with a decent selection of maps and not too much bullshit) hasn’t really been met since BO3. All newer ones are either online only (in varying degrees of awfulness, ranging from no splitscreen at all to splitscreen with two activision accounts required) and/or have a terrible split screen layout. Haven’t tried WWII though, so far, which might still be good enough (and interesting due to less bullshit than bo3, my current fav that isn’t from the 360/ps3 era)

[-] VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone 12 points 1 week ago

FWIW the open beta will be open, but people who prepurchase get extra skins and early beta access. Activision has been putting anti-consumer features in CoD since Black Ops 3, to my knowledge. That was the first one where you had to roll loot boxes to unlock all the weapons as opposed to just playing MP matches.

[-] rorsche@lemm.ee 7 points 1 week ago

Advanced warfare set the precedent. Black ops 3 made it slightly less of a slot machine, but it was still garbage.

[-] VerilyFemme@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Oh okay! I missed out on Advanced Warfare's online, going straight from Black Ops II to Black Ops III. I remembered people not liking the boost jumping in Advanced Warfare, but I didn't realize that's where all the loot box stuff started. To its credit, I remember playing some splitscreen AW with my brothers, and I believe it had all weapons unlocked offline at least. BO3 didn't have that, which was a disappointment for me in a rural area without internet capable of online MP.

[-] rorsche@lemm.ee 2 points 1 week ago

Yeah they were frustratingly bad systems. I was a huge bo3 fan and it made me really sad that I couldn't use any of the cool new guns because I had bad luck on the slot machines :(

IMO Advanced warfare was worse because it locked some guns behind the crates, and also locked a ton of "variants" behind crates that were objectively better than the base gun

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

How is this only blowing your mind now and not the entire past decade or so where this has become the norm for the giant corpo devs like Blizz, EA, and Ubisoft? This has been common long enough that I've become completely numb to it now.

[-] Buttflapper@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Because I haven't been following AAA for the past decade..?

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 4 points 1 week ago

That's a good policy. I highly recommend sticking with it. 🫠

[-] tacosanonymous@lemm.ee 11 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I haven’t looked into the beta itself. This particular ad seems to say you can use the exclusive items from the pack in the beta.

Edit: I just googled it. There is an early access beta but there is also an open beta.

But really the answer to "why is it like this?" Is "because money."

[-] helenslunch@feddit.nl 11 points 1 week ago

You have to BUY the game for "open beta access", like how does that make any sense?

Whole industry has been that way for a long time. Gives them an excuse to ship broken games so when people complain they can say "its a Beta!".

I've seen games stay in "open Beta" for years (looking at you GTFO).

[-] bigmclargehuge@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Thats not what's going on here. CoD has for the past few releases run an open beta for 2 to 3 weeks, a month or two ahead of release. Buying this package lets you into that 2-3 week beta a week early, letting you get 3-4 weeks of playtime. You can still get into this beta for completely free, just wait a week and don't buy the game.

Not trying to defend Activision here, cause I still think CoD is a shadow of its former self and these "betas" are nothing more than a demo, but people seem to have the wrong idea about how Activision runs them.

[-] turkalino@lemmy.yachts 8 points 1 week ago

The current COD (MW3/Warzone) is my guilty pleasure. It crashes during 50% of my play sessions, the player/weapon skins are cringe, the battle pass is pushed pretty hard, but somehow I’m able to ignore all of that and have a lot of fun with it. Warzone is my personal favorite battle royale implementation and MW3 is a nostalgia trip with all the remade maps from past games.

Admittedly, half of my enjoyment comes from playing with my clan from the Xbox 360 days and feeling like we’re in high school again, so playing alone might not be so fun

[-] RabbitMix@lemmy.blahaj.zone 8 points 1 week ago

Right now it's open to anyone who pre-ordered or anyone who has game pass. it's open to everyone for free next week. maybe they should have called it limited instead of open, but it isn't closed to anyone, anyone can get game pass and play the beta rn so it is technically an open beta.

and why are people playing CoD? because it's really solid gameplay that recieves weekly updates and events to always keep things fresh. the new movement system in this one is really a game changer and makes the game a lot of fun to play.

[-] Dashi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

What's the new movement system in this one?

[-] ObsidianZed@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

I believe they're referring to the slide and dive mechanics. AFAIK considering this is the first game I've played in awhile, you can now sprint, slide, and dive in any direction.

Think like strafe sprinting and diving around a corner as you turn your aim around behind you to shoot at someone you just dove passed.

[-] Dashi@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

Thank you, I wonder how smooth that is going to pay on a controller.

[-] RabbitMix@lemmy.blahaj.zone 2 points 1 week ago

it works surprisingly great on a controller

[-] Paradachshund@lemmy.today 8 points 1 week ago

It's pretty far from a realistic military shooter at this point, huh?

[-] Kolanaki@yiffit.net 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

They've always been more about Hollywood "realism" than actual realism.

[-] JackbyDev@programming.dev 7 points 1 week ago

Feels disingenuous to say "open beta" and require a purchase. Just call it beta early access like every other game.

[-] lepinkainen@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

“Open beta” lets them erase progress if they want.

“Early access” usually implies that you get a head start on the normies

[-] Crashumbc@lemmy.world 2 points 1 week ago

Not sure why you got down voted, that is exactly my understanding.

[-] HollowNaught@lemmy.world 6 points 1 week ago

I have a friend who was really trying to convince me to preorder this garbage

Same guy who refuses to play older games because they "look bad"

[-] Blxter@lemmy.zip 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

Honestly the skins look better than the shit I saw in the last one like Niki Minaj and shit. I still wouldn't buy any of them though.

Edit: as for paying for any kind of beta is dumb

[-] Anticorp@lemmy.world 5 points 1 week ago

The original one was amazing. I played the entire thing through to the end. So many of the scenes are from real history, that it felt like we were experiencing a part of history. When I watched Saving Private Ryan, I saw many of the same scenes that I had experienced in the game. But with each consecutive release it has become more focused on competitive PVP and selling skins and expansions. It has nothing at all to do with the original game anymore, other than the name, and the fact that they're both FPS.

[-] sparky@lemmy.federate.cc 2 points 1 week ago

COD 1 & 2 were excellent games. Man, how far they have fallen.

[-] Jackthelad@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

To be fair, you don't HAVE to buy it to access the beta as it's open to everyone next weekend.

But yes, betas are now "glorified demos" and have been for a fair few years.

[-] Dark_Arc@social.packetloss.gg 3 points 1 week ago

It's not really beta quality. I hopped on with my brother just to see if I was interested in the game (we both played black ops, the original back on the PS3). It was actually extremely stable and pretty fun. He noticed a UI glitch but ... it's not like there was even a feedback or bug report button.

It's just early access with the disclaimer there might be something wrong... Which isn't that different from buying a release day game anymore unfortunately.