Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, The game for some held hope. There were whispers of “eSports” involvement, whispers of ESL being around to advise and it once again stirred up hope. The Call of Duty 4 community began to take notice and waiting with baited breath for more information.
We got the information, something everyone dreaded... Once again walking in the shoes of the previous titles harboring that same bitter disappointing feeling…
“Can I rent a server?
No. We are providing a huge number of servers around the world at no extra charge – plenty for everyone to enjoy. And we will administer the servers.”
“Will Black Ops have Matchmaking or Dedicated Servers?
Both! Call of Duty®: Black Ops II PC combines matchmaking with secure ranked dedicated servers. This means that you get into Public Matches or League Play via matchmaking lobbies. It is easy to party up and play with your friends. You can adjust your classes or scorestreaks between matches. It also means that every Public or League match is hosted on a dedicated server running in one of our high bandwidth datacenters around the globe.”
Well that small but hopeful previous glimmer we had has now been smeared by excrement with the additional pinch of a kick to the nuts…
“Will there be mod tools?
No. As we continually improve and advance our in-house tools for our own content teams we are unable to provide consumer tools due to increased technical requirements, licensing restrictions, and technology dependencies.”
And there you have it, one swift way to soil any hope CoD:Bo2 had to be anything other than another lifeless FPS title.
I then started thinking, why don’t we adapt to what we are being presented with, are we now becoming the irrelevant part of FPS gaming, the archaic cavemen clinging onto long gone titles?
To try and further my thoughts and opinions to this I went to the Eurogamer Expo this weekend held within London at Earls Court, with Black Ops 2 being there on a plate for all the Xbox kids to lap up I had to see what all the fuss was about.
There it is, it looked impressive, and there was a 2 hour queue to play just 20minuits of the game. There were staff everywhere, they had a shout caster on site for it…sitting on what is pictured above the “war room”.
The people adored this title, with the kill streaks sounding like another language to me I stood and spoke with afew of the “famous” youtube CoD:BO players…
http://www.youtube.com/user/xSinRG
They had hope, they were noticing the subtle yet pivotal changes within CoD:Bo2, the changes within the class system, the new shout caster overlay that provided just about every bit of information you would ever need.
It looked good too, the casting was great and exciting and the gameplay looked fun, The thing was it wasn’t S&D It was just abit of FFA and another point came to mind is search and destroy the right game mode for spectators, looking at the viewership towards Xbox CoD, the answer is no. They vary game types and it’s more exciting. The depth from S&D may be vastly superior but no one wants to watch the likes of Germaine sit and watch a pixel for 2mins. It’s not exciting, it’s not fun and its not impressive. Long gone are the days of d1ablo and duffer running rampage throughout a map. The game style of Search and Destroy is now long out dated.
Then I draw back to the bitter taste of the “No mod tools” left with me, but what if we don’t need it… I know it’s a long shot but the involvement of the right people within the eSports scene has to of done something right? What if the game was made with a competitive mode already integrated?
Who knows maybe I am putting faith in something that will never happen and we will all go back to our usual games but the question I pose to you, the reader… Should we be willing to adapt to these new FPS titles in whatever form we are fed them? Should we EVER have faith in these new titles to deliver anything truly with eSports in mind?
Bonus pic of the after hours from the Expo!
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A4EgWV_CAAABGyA.jpg:large
another ridicilously expensive cod coming up for the casual 12 years old kids who make noscope clips thrice per week and put them on youtube
Essentially ranked servers are exactly what a FPS needs but only if the ranking system functions properly.
Those servers should enable the player to face a constant challenge, something what we're actually looking for.
But like with all things in life, you sometimes want to go outside the boundaries or get something the easy way instead of the hard struggle.
Stop thinking about problems, start thinking about solutions. Don't box your view to your own needs, try and think of solutions that will help both player and publisher/developer.
As for BO2... I'm firmly stuck in a 'wait and see' position at the moment.
Over the last few weeks I've felt optimism towards the title after hearing the rumours you mentioned.
That was followed a couple of days ago with a massive downer after Treyarch released the info re: no mod tools or server files.
Yesterday though, after seeing the game at EuroGamer, my opinion was raised slightly. I wouldn't say I'm optimistic. Activision have burned us too many times now to look forward to BO2 too much. The rumours that Treyarch want to make BO2 more accessible for eSport is definitely evident in the game we saw on the war table this weekend. That is a step in the right direction. However, will they have had enough forethought with the PC version to include the ability to turn off everything that we'll want to turn off if we were to make our own ProMod?
Will there be any maps suited for competitive play? Will no offline mode ruin LAN?
Guess we'll have to wait and see but I'm no longer optimistic. It's very cold up here on the fence :D
DAMN YOU TREYARCH SNEEEEAKY
p.s. u r best photomans.
No (rentable) dedicated servers and no mod tools = no competitive game.
as for your question: are we forced to adapt to what big puglishers serve us?
no, not at all. let the large publishers sell their flagship titles to casuals and console fags but we will have to "stay strong". we have to speak up for what we want so that one day someone (smaller and not focused on outselling last years title) will come along and make a game for us,
id rather quit FPS all together than try and make recent titles work competitively, which they clearly dont.
i mean there has been a mw2, bo and mw3 competitive scene. but that was just blinded idiots.
While I have nothing against that, what would in that case be reason to swap game rather than stick to an old game you already like?
And on that same note, what improvements would any of those old games need for you to maintain a similar level of interest?
You cant stick to the same game forever, Id say a good competitive game has a life span of around 5 years, which ET far exceeded so "why aint you sticking to ET" isnt rly relevant for me cause I havnt been playing the game actively in 3 years now.
And I am not certain that you are correct about the "smaller publisher = worse gfx" thing. Id argue quite the opposite. All the flagship titles are designed to work on consoles and as a result of that all the CoD titles look like shit, like they were made 4 years ago.
CDProject RED with their second title, the witcher 2, made a game that still (over 1 year after release) is better looking than pretty much anything out there, even Crysis 2 which suffered from the same problems. You can mod the cryengine to kingdom come but the shelfed product wasnt that amazing.
As expected, the same crap IW used to feed us. Seems like FPS gaming has transformed and will probably never be what we want it to be.