9 Ways to Improve Call of Duty's Multiplayer

Posted on April 14, 2009 by ManicApollo
Modern Warfare 2

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (and, by extension, its skinned WWII clone Call of Duty 4.5: World at War) have some of the best multiplayer gaming on any console.

But they're not perfect, by any means. So what can make it even better? We rattle off 9 (because 10 is just too many! ) suggestions that we believe will go a long way to improving the multiplayer experience in upcoming CoD/Modern Warfare titles.
  1. Queue Kill Streak Rewards: There is nothing worse than being ambushed by the opposing team and losing one of your kill streak actions because you went from 3 to 8 kills without passing GO (ie calling in an airstrike). Worse yet is trying to quickly call in air support because you don't want to lose it, only to get killed while in the map screen. There should be a way to queue these actions so that the player can continue fragging without worrying about losing their kill streak rewards.
  2. Super Kill Streak Rewards: It's silly that the player is rewarded for kill streaks only up to 7 kills. If anything, the player is doubly penalized since they are no longer eligible for kill streak rewards - while also having to scavenge weapons and ammo. Why not create some additional rewards when the player hits 10, 15, 20 kills? Staying alive long enough to rack up those sorts of kill streaks requires true skill that should be amply rewarded (unless you're bouncing from tank to tank...).
  3. Vehicle Democracy: If there's one thing that gets a Call of Duty player's panties in a bunch, it's the use of vehicles. Tanks seem to be the scorn of CoD "purists", but add an element to the series that regular run-and-gunning is missing. So why not allow the players to vote on vehicle-enabled maps, whether or not they want vehicles to be accessible? A simple up/down vote in the lobby would suffice (much in the way current players can skip a map) - but at least we would have a say.
  4. Rework Respawn Points: Back in the olden days of gaming, dead players would respawn in the same spot, thus leaving the respawn point vulnerable to campers. To alleviate that, developers added invincible respawns, providing for several seconds of immortal action while you ran for safe cover. Next up came random respawns; followed by random respawns next to teammates - which seems to be the common respawn method CoD uses. This still causes problems, however, particularly when said teammate is in a gunfight and you get gunned down in .2 seconds. Call of Duty needs to more consistently enact random respawn points that are furthest from the action, teammates be damned. 
  5. Refresh Perks: Perks are a fantastic idea that lend in balancing out player skills, but the ones currently being incorporated are a bit tired. New perks would be a welcome addition. For instance, something like a "Disarm" perk, allowing players to disarm and rearm undetonated mines as their own, would be a great way to turn the tide... Or a perk that enables "Super Kill Streak Rewards" mentioned in #2. The possibilities are infinite...
  6. Host Failover Logic and Penalties: It seems like hosts bailing mid-game is more common that it needs to be.  Multiplayer should implement some sort of failover so that when the host leaves, the match can continue on the next best hosting connection without much interruption. Oh, and some way of tracking and/or penalizing consistently bailing hosts would be nice as well, so that players can rate them negatively if their bailing seems to be more frequent than just a random dropped connection...
  7. Give Reasons for Prestige: As far as replayability goes, Prestige Mode goes a long way in giving gamers reasons to keep coming back. But really, who cares if you have a certain badge? Give us something more substantial to Prestige for. A special weapon. Additional perks. Unlockable maps. Something. Anything. And seriously, extra class slots don't count - they stink more of pure laziness than anything.
  8. Skill Modes Based on Stats: We can't speak for everyone, but in our (lengthy) Call of Duty 4/4.5 gaming, we can't help but notice the ridiculous disparity in skill level, resulting in too many 750-400 matches. Why not create "Advanced" game modes, requiring players to attain (and maintain) certain statistical levels in order to join? For instance, a team deathmatch mode that's reserved for players with a minimum 1:1 (or 1.25:1) kill/death ratio? While TruSkill was supposed to resolve this problem for XBL users, if Gears 2's multiplayer is any indication, TruSkill does more damage than good.
  9. Revised Point System: The point system really needs to take into consideration the kill/death spread, especially in deathmatch games. Going 22-27 (220 points, -5) shouldn't land you in the top spot when someone on your (or the opposing) team went 18-5 (180 points, +13). NOT dying is just as important as how many kills you rack up, but that seems to be lost in the current point scheme.
Have suggestions on ways to improve CoD MP?  Have a few perks ideas or other opinions that would help improve the CoD online experience?  Let us know in the comments section.

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Comments

 Hi all, just read Manic

by Norvek - Tue, Apr 14 - 6:15pm
 Hi all,
just read Manic Apollo's comments on 9 ways to improve Call of Duty games. He has some great ideas =D> ,  ref no. 9 the points system. I reckon they should follow the pc's Americas Army game where you get 10 points for a kill but you get 10 deducted if you die. I also think they should employ a punkbuster to foil all those pesky cheats :D .

 Hey Norvek, thanks for

by ManicApollo - Tue, Apr 14 - 7:27pm

 Hey Norvek, thanks for reading and signing up! Great to have you aboard!

I myself have never tried America's Army, but that system sounds promising... Even a +10/-5 ratio would work for me. But a +10/-0 just doesn't make any sense, at least IMO. 

Cheats are the worst... especially those that exploit map glitches (I only play COD on my 360)...   L) ~X( Luckily, Infinity Ward/Treyarch get patches out relatively quickly, so it wasn't necessary to put as #10 on my list.  :)

Thanks for the welcome

by Norvek - Tue, Apr 14 - 8:14pm

Thanks for the welcome ManicApollo :D The point system in Americas Army realy goes a long way to making the game more realistic. I also think that the snipers should get a ghilly suit and that kills receieved from the sniper should not be shown on the lookback function :)  

You're absolutely right

by ManicApollo - Tue, Apr 14 - 9:53pm
You're absolutely right about the snipers, though I think if snipers stay in scope view the killcam only shows the scoped view, which is difficult to discern the sniper's location from.

One of the reasons I actually LIKE the KillCam for all types of kills is because it lets you know if someone is glitching/cheating a map. Especially when a game is first released, it seems like the cheaters are way ahead of the glitch curve than the gamers that play fairly, so it's nice to see if the kills are glitch kills (glitching under or over a map, very popular in the early days of World at War, is a perfect example of this).

One other improvement I'd love to see is actual environment interactions - like if I run into a barrel, it falls over. If a barrel fell over and I run into it, it starts rolling. That sort of thing. Not sure if current gen has the horsepower to handle that physics on top of everything else, but it would go a long way in making the game more realistic. But I really hate that when I run into an object that should actually move, I come to a complete stop as if I ran into a brick wall.

Yeh youre right about the

by Norvek - Wed, Apr 15 - 6:20pm
Yeh youre right about the snipers, thanks for putting me straight. totally agree with all points just mentioned, as for your other point ref interactive enviroments, i think Operation flashpoint 2 will be setting the new benchmark for environment interaction.  so hopefully modern warfare 2 will follow suit. :D