With the release of new official trailer for Modern Warfare 3, the wish lists begin.
Modern Warfare 2 fell down on its stacked kill streaks, noob-tubes, and claymores. Black Ops fixed the big targets from Modern Warfare 2, but it’s far from perfect. Now, gamers are complaining about sluggish movement and the overpowering Ghost perk. It will be impossible for Infinity Ward and Sledgehammer Games to craft the game that addresses every complaint, but here are my best recommendations on how these developers can still try.
Black Ops introduced customizable players and deeper weapon augmentation. Face paints, custom emblems, and different character models were a good start, but they ended up feeling useless and limiting because there were only so many things to do with these options. I never felt uniquely rewarded by utilizing any of these parts of the game. Expanding on these ideas with a face paint creator, more emblem options, and an equipment store could deepen this aspect of the game and allow players to truly create a character they visually and functionally identify with. These contributions, though purely aesthetic, would provide players with an additional creative and individualistic outlet in the game. Players love the ability to create, mix, and customize everything that they can get their hands on, so I say give it to them.
There are a couple of re-occurring problem in the Call of Duty series that frequently receive less attention than they need, like bad spawns, cramped environments, and the endlessly debated weapon balancing. Everyone has been stuck in a spawn that’s surrounded by an entire team in some shooter or another, and Black Ops is no exception. To fix this problem, the simplest solution seems to be expanding the map size. By having more space to move and to spawn, players won’t be able to have the opening-game noob-tube, tomahawk, or semtex kill that always seems to happen. By having a larger map, it would make it harder for players to group together and gang up on certain areas where spawns can be predicted. Choke points would be more limited and harder to control.
As for the level designs themselves, there has always been a good variety of locations, but where is the environmental interaction? In Black Ops, players could utilize an elevator or a zip line or, if they’re lucky, a bright red barrel. Even though EA and DICE have pioneered destructible environments in the Battlefield series, Call of Duty doesn’t have to stand by and let them run with it. Maybe destruction isn’t the only avenue for adding intrigue to the levels; perhaps some basic interactivity could be implemented, as well. Black Ops gives us a map that is based around a hockey stadium and yet, for some reason, the ice rink is blocked out. If you are going to make a map based around an ice rink, I’d better be able to jump into the rink and run, dive, and slide on the ice to pick up a couple of quick kills. Instead, I am left standing next to ropes, looking out at the ice that I can’t play on. Every map should have a unique environmental effect that can be played with and taken advantage of, given that the effect can work smoothly within the FPS framework.
Now, I hate sniping and quick-scoping as much as the next guy, so I propose that players be able to blow off walls of buildings, shoot some bricks from the top of a wall, or even knock down a wooden water tower (reducing the number of impenetrable camping spots). It seems Infinity Ward is under the impression that Apache helicopter missiles aren’t strong enough to go through the roof of a wooden house or take down a frail wooden tower. In MW3, I’d better be as unstoppable with a kill streak reward as I feel, and destruction can play a big role in getting me there.
Speaking of being unstoppable, anyone who carried around a shotgun or, in Black Ops, a FAMAS, was indeed unstoppable. This has to be fixed in MW3. The addition of recoil into Black Ops was a major step toward balancing guns, but there is still no way that a shotgun has as much range and damage as a rifle. Shotguns should be put back into the secondary weapon slot but should have their range, accuracy, and recoil drastically downgraded so they can’t be abused. Rifles feel balanced enough, even though some tend to be better than others. As for snipers, the auto-aim function should be automatically turned off. The point of being a sniper is to reward those who have the best aim. By having the auto-aim function for snipers, players are allowed to “quick-scope,” effectively allowing them to run around, shoot without any sort of accuracy, and kill players with one or two shots. I suggest that Infinity Ward makes it so that if you have a sniper rifle equipped as a primary, the auto-aim function will be automatically turned off for that weapon. By doing this, there would be no abuse of sniper rifles, and the people using them would truly feel rewarded and skilled when getting a real headshot in a game.
Because Black Ops has these quick-scopers and unbalanced guns, it’s only natural that players will rage-quit in the middle of game, causing slow host migrations or cancelled matches. Kill streaks can be lost from these migrations, effectively ending the momentum of a streaky player or team. There should be a penalty for ruining the flow and fun of a game. Penalties shouldn’t be too serious for quitting, but they should still be implemented. Whether it’s being able to choose an option at the matchmaking screen to avoid players who frequently quit early or ridding them of a small amount of experience or in-game currency, there has to be some way of penalizing the sore losers.
As for some smaller changes that I would like to see in the game, I would include taking off attachments from picked-up guns, not forcing players to use the weapon strategies of others simply because they run out of ammo. Another thing: add a map creator. It doesn’t need to be a giant world like Forge in Halo: Reach, but the ability to create your own map where you can put down buildings, cars, barrels, flags, etc., or even remove sniping as an option would be a blast! You could even create just-for-fun maps that would be used for knifing- or pistols-only.
If Infinity Ward adds any of these suggestions, big or small, to MW3, then I know how I will be spending all winter.
