Written by Alex Maidment (nSanity Beach) [TL:DR at bottom]
I’ve been thoroughly enjoying the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game, so much so that since it’s launched, I’ve been playing it probably a bit too much. There are some pretty great games out there and being released right now but it’s CoD that has kept my attention so far.
There are certainly some issues with the game itself and a quick visit to reddit.com/r/modernwarfare will show you all the many things that people are currently complaining about and begging Infinity Ward to fix. But I have something else to complain about, naturally!
Be warned, this is a bit of a rant post but it’s something that’s really damaging the game for me, far beyond some of the bugs and weapon issues. I should also start by stating that people can play the game however they feel is most enjoyable but for me, some of those players are killing certain modes.
One gamemode that I often play is Team Deathmatch (TDM). It’s easy going, there’s no strategic objective and people can genuinely play however they want, which unfortunately includes camping. Oddly enough, this is not what I’m here to complain about. Camping in TDM is annoying but it doesn’t bother me on the whole. Once I know where someone is camping, I just don’t go back. It’s also a shitty, but legitimate gameplay style, and as much as many complain about it, we’re occasionally all guilty of doing it!
No, the issue I have is actually on objective game modes, and specifically, Ground War. I love the idea of Ground War, it’s reminiscent of the days I used to play Conquest on Battlefield 4. It’s great fun when people play it properly with the objective in mind. The issue is, people just ignore the objective and it also seems to become a free-for-all sniping war.
I am a player who plays the game for the objective, even if it means a poor kill/death ratio, I would far rather have the decent win/loss ratio. Ground War is a really great objective based game as there are genuinely so many ways of playing the gametype and capturing points.
So, here’s my question: Why don’t people play the objective?
When I first jumped on the game, on day one and for a few days after, this didn’t seem to be that big an issue but I literally can’t jump into a game of Ground War right now without being sniped multiple times at spawn by people who are ending the game with 40-5 kill/death scores but no captures or defends. I’ve even started equipping a sniper as a secondary, just to stop them before they get me, especially when I’m capping points. Even worse, I’m coming across people on my own team with a ridiculous kill/death ratio but we lost the game and they have NO captures or defends. Not even the first point. They’re only goal in the game is to find a vantage point and snipe.
It sucks. Big time. Not to toot my own horn but I often finish the game with one of, if not the highest capture number on our team and yet I’m still halfway down the leaderboard because I only got 10-20 kills and not 40.
In many ways, it’s not the games fault, but the players who feel the need to completely ignore the actual objective of the game. Unfortunately for Infinity Ward, despite it being a player issue, I think the fix is down to development and scoring updates.
My idea for a fix…
I’m not a game dev so I don’t really have a say but it occurs to me that a potential fix to the issue I’ve talked about here, i.e. people not playing objective and using Ground War just to snipe for high KDs (which mean nothing btw), is to change the scoring system.
The game is, in theory, set up to reward you for capturing and defending points with 300 points for a capture. Great. But, it’s pretty hard work to capture a point and even if you capture 10 (which is A LOT), you will only get 3000 points (plus kills etc.). On the hand, sniping people in Ground War is pretty easy and at 100-200 points per kill (taking into account 100 for the kill plus long shot bonus, headshot bonus and any others), getting 30 kills+ gives you a higher score than capturing points… which is the objective of the game.
One option, would simply be to nerf how many points you get for a kill in this game mode, halve it, or even make it a third. What this would do is put people with more captures and defends at the top of the leaderboard and penalise those who only want to snipe as they don’t get much XP.
Now this idea still only works on some levels as it doesn’t address the K/D issue, but does make a sniping game less valuable in terms of levelling up as you get less points.
So there you have it, that’s my idea for fixing the Ground War issue in which people choose to completely ignore the objective. The other option is even simpler, just ignore K/D on the leaderboard and only show Captures and Defends…
TL:DR – I’m sick of people ignore the objective on Ground War to just sit and snipe and one fix might be to change the scoring system so kills get you a lot less points and Captures and Defends mean you finish higher up the leaderboard.
Casual Heroes Gaming 