With Call of Duty: Ghosts a few years ago… well, honestly not much stands out in my mind besides having a dog. But I still have lots of fun hiding behind a riot shield and tossing C4 I can explode mid-air.
..Yes, I still pick it up sometimes.
Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare brought jet packs. And while those were cool for the first few hours, they didn’t hold my attention as long as I’d expected. Although it is still fun to dart around with a shotgun or knife, I don’t really play it much anymore.
The latest game, Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, brought out the specialists. Personally, I think this is the direction that every shooter should move towards. Having different characters with unique abilities improves replayability a lot and brings a nice new flavor to the genre.
It seems the industry agrees, considering how amazingly popular MOBAs are, along with new shooters like Overwatch, Battleborn, and Rainbow 6.
So what will the next installment of Call of Duty, expected out this November, bring to the table?
Word is–it’ll be in space.
Even though I personally would rather it move in a different direction, I’m not in charge, so I’ll take what I can get. Hopefully I get a few things I do want though.
Here’s what I’d like to see:
Troll Weapons
My typical playstyle in Call of Duty isn’t run-and-gun. Even though sometimes I like to pick up an SMG or assault rifle and have at it, I’m one of those guys with weird builds that gets on people’s nerves.
I tend to play with those weapons you don’t see often. Double pistols. The crossbow with explosive bolts. Riot shields. C4 you can explode in mid-air (Black Ops 3 made C4 suck.)
Hopefully in the next CoD I’m able to get some fun toys as well.
One of Each Character Per Match
One of the problems with Black Ops 3 is you can have six of the same specialist running around. How does it make sense that you have six Tempests on your team at once? There’s supposed to be just one of them.
Even though it doesn’t necessarily need to be just one per game (like in MOBA ranked games,) I would like to see each team only have 1 of each character. I understand that may be tougher on matchmaking, but if there are enough character choices it shouldn’t be an issue.
Interactive Environments
Let me start by saying that I understand Call of Duty and Battlefield aren’t the same. As someone who has put hundreds of hours in CoD over the last 6 years, you’re preaching to the choir. But Call of Duty needs environments that are actually impacted by the massive gunfights going on–just like the Battlefield games.
If someone shoots a rocket into a building (or space ship or whatever), it should do more than just leave a black mark. If a door gets blasted by a light machine gun or hit with a grenade, it should get blown to bits.
No more of this indestructible stuff.
Improve the Killstreak System
I like the Call of Duty games with the Support and Specialist killstreak series. They fill a hole that I personally didn’t even know existed until they came about. Which begs the question–are there other ways to change the killstreak system?
For example, maybe each environment has special defenses, weapons or toys that can only be accessed by someone with a certain line of killstreaks. You can call him the Survivalist or Hacker or something. Something similar to what Ghosts implemented, but better and limited to players with that line of killstreaks selected.
Another may be something similar to the Specialist line, but tailored a bit differently as the player rakes in kills. So instead of gaining perks, maybe the player gains abilities like cloaking, a jet pack or a shield that automatically activates at 20% health.
What do You Want to See?
I play a lot of CoD, but as you can see I’m not the typical player. So what I want to see may be very different than what you’re thinking.
What do you want to see in Call of Duty in 2016?