Hello all and welcome once again to Analog Gaming. Now, as I mentioned yesterday, I do intend to cover this week's home content over the course of the weekend and I still plan on doing so tomorrow. But in the meantime, I want to mention something that has truly angered me today whilst playing online.
As I am sure some of you are indeed aware, I do have rather mixed opinions of the Call of Duty series, with varying thoughts on just about all aspects of the games, but while playing online today something struck and shocked me. The issue was that of the multiplayer portions of the games, more specifically for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Call of Duty: World at War. I had previously heard of the current state of the multiplayer of World at War a while ago from various YouTube channels and directors, but it wasn't until today when I actually played the game for myself that I truly began to understand the state of the situation.
Moving to the point I am trying to make, I am simply shocked what has happened to the competitive multiplayer in both games. They now appear to be nothing more that a congregation of hackers, with a number of players now using in game hacks to give themselves various advantages, such as increased weapon fire rates (e.g. a grenade launcher attachment firing at the rate of an M4), increased player movement speeds and even some players flying around the map and others being invincible.
Now, of course, this is not the case with every match I entered and not every player was using such hacks and mods, but it was a number great enough to disrupt the gameplay for myself and others. In my personal opinion it appears that since both games have now become old and only played by a handful of people, that the developers and companies that were previously tasked with up keeping a modest, fair and enjoyable service and experience have now moved on to monitor new games in the series.
I can understand that this should be their priority to an extent, but I honestly do not expect to enter a team deathmatch on Countdown to find that four of the six opposing players are firing grenade launchers like assault rifles, not dying after using all of my ammo from an M249 SAW and a M9 only to find they had taken no damage and have also been able to accumulate a total of 137 kills between them, which is far over the score and kill limit.
After playing that particular match and then two others which were with honest, fair players, I then moved on to World at War only to find the situation was similar, with insane weapon firing, speeding tanks and flying Russian soldiers.
I can understand that this is most likely not the case simply with the Call of Duty series and possibly many other series have fallen under similar circumstances, but I feel that firstly, the players who are using such hacks and mods are little more than a disgrace to the gaming community and that the companies in charge of running such games have failed to deliver their product fully to many customers. I am sure that the older Call of Duty games in particular still generate great amounts of profit and money for Activision and it's developers in terms of first-hand sales, so I was to today have bought a copy of either Modern Warfare or World at War and then gone online to be met with the monstrous mess that is the multiplayer... Well, I would be discussed and conned out of my money.
I can further go on to say that Modern Warfare 2 also met a similar fate earlier into it's life, with 'speed hacks' and 'boosting lobbies' having been around not long after the game's release. It makes me wonder as to what should be done about such problems and as to when a developer should no longer actively support and monitor their game's online status after it has been released. Is a year after release too short a time period? Should online maintenance be later be passed onto another company perhaps?
To use the same analogy as used by YouTube gaming director Gunns4hire, 'console gamers all drink from the same watering hole'. We all use the same servers and services, whereas PC gamers have more freedom as they can host private servers and can actively use mods within such servers. On consoles though, we cannot really do that and if someone or even a group of people were to break rules, or not play the way the game is intended to be played, well, it simply ruins the game for everyone else.
Overall, I am just wondering that can be done about this, or even if something should. I just feel that events like this can ruin a game for new players, potentially effect long term first-hand sales and spoil the enjoyment for returning players.
So, I do believe that I have said everything I wish to on the matter and have put across my thoughts. I guess it is now once again time for me to sign off by saying that I've been randomthings and thank you very much reading.
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