Treyarch has announced that the focus on the latest Call of Duty’s multiplayer will be somewhat different to recent titles, eschewing the infamous kill streak mechanic, and instead focusing on serious E-Sports with a couple of new features.
At a special event as part of Gamecom this year, Activision and the developer showed off the game, which revealed that kill streaks are now score streaks – kill enemies and perform other ‘score based’ events and your score meter will fill; once full, you can use one of 22 score streak abilities.
Examples include collecting the flag, and killing those that are carrying the flag. It’s possible to obtain multiple score streaks, which apparently rewards inventive and “desirable” gameplay behaviour.
Other multiplayer details include the news that there’ll be 55 levels of progression and 10 levels of prestige and that unlock tokens will be granted each time you level up for weapons and perks.
There’s a new “Pick 10” system too, which does away with primary and secondary weapons in the new Create A Class system and lets players pick 10 items, weapons and so on from a big collection for their class if they so desire.
The addition of League Play will also reinforce the idea that E-Sports are all important to the series, sorting players into divisions, and live streaming of matches will ensure there’re always spectators.
Of course, most of this was already leaked, but it’s nice to see it confirmed.
Sources: various.
revilo13
Like the idea of a score streak, better than kill streak.
Rewards players more who do things like capture flags etc rather than just kills. =] looking forward to it
wolf-OF-chaos
I said last year that mw3 would be the last cod game i will get,but this game seems to be shaping up nicely.
SpikeyMikey23
just had a good read of oneofswords’ blog, some pretty interesting stuff. Looking forward to it.
SpikeyMikey23
one thing i’ve noticed which I do not like, the enemy (yourself included) appear with a red diamond targeting shape around you whenever you are in or just out of view, making it easier for people to see where you are. Great for getting rid of campers but shit for any sort or stealthy gameplay. There is a perk to remove it though
Jim Hargreaves
Score streaks have always seemed like a natural step forward.
Kill-streaks encourage a lot of players to hang back in objective modes and essentially prescribe the ways in which players approach CoD games.
Mickey2010
Im not 100% sold on this i like the killstreak system but i guess a revamp in the multiplayer is needed so the scoring system might work! but will the masses agree? It’s risky changing the multiplayer considering how well recieved it is.
Bilbo_bobbins
sounds like some good changes for this one. What is E-sports though?
Forrest_01
I was thinking that – At first i thought they just forgot the ‘A’, but now i’m not so sure.
Plus, that would mean an EA/Activision collaboration, which isn’t too likely!! :D
Megamoppy
I’m fairly sure it means Electronic Sports, kinda like the whole idea of watching other people play games (Like counter strike or street fighter live streams), basically taking competitive multiplayer alot more seriously.
AG2297
What Megamoppy said basically. It’s nothing new, but it’s becoming increasingly popular. League of Legends for example gave away $5 million for their championship this year, with first place grabbing a prize of $2million and there’s separate championships almost every couple of weeks with good viewing figures. I can see why a game like CoD will be interested in that market!
goodgoa
It is competitive call of duty; for both PC & Console. Console esports is in its infancy & growing every year, the fact that some of the top names in competitive CoD have had input in some of the features in bops2 is a great sign for esports.
If you want to know more check out Decerto for Xbox competitive gaming or EUeSports for PS3. The biggest tournament at the moment for competitive CoD is called EGL (European Gaming League) which has had as many as 100+ teams with even some of the biggest North American teams coming over to compete. But if this game is focused on esports, then the biggest console esports provider, MLG (Major League Gaming) will pick it up for North America to provide events for it.
LTG Davey
Smart. This might be the first COD game I play online since COD4!
fs
This won’t be popular with a lot of CoD players. Its ok for people that want a different style and a different feel to CoD multiplayer, but I think this will feel very awkward with diehard fans. I know a lot of people that loved the killstreak system.
To be honest, I hope they keep MW the same as its always been. With Killstreaks such and such, but have Black Ops go the opposite way. Then we have a nice variation, the CoD games are too similar and this would go some way to changing that. All in all, i’m happy with the new changes and excited to see how they develop. Just not sure many like me will.
Nauraph
When playing team deathmatch it’ll probably just come down to killstreaks anyway. =P
But yeah, good idea for the objective modes.
SpikeyMikey23
I’ve watched a few videos so far today and not one sign of a choppa or overkill kill streak
Nauraph
I can imagine that streak points will be awarded for killing in team deathmatch. As that actually is the objective in that particular game mode.
But interesting that you haven’t seen a chopper or overkill killstreak. Any other streaks?
Although I have to admit Black Ops ruined it for me..
SpikeyMikey23
i’ve been asking questions to some people who have played it to try and find out. I would love it it there were no choppers, ac’s, opspreys. i dont mind predators, sentries etc. There is one that seems like an overkill killstreak which is a group of predator drones, that could be annoying
perhaps I haven’t seen any annoying streaks as the people playing were not good enough to get them maybe haha
colmshan1990
They’re making a lot of changes- the single player is less linear, the scoring system has changed…
I’m interested. Didn’t think I’d say that, I really didn’t like Black Ops 1 and didn’t buy MW3.
I’ll get CoD on Vita before this game though.