In thirty seconds, I wouldn’t be able to get through the Call of Duty: Black Ops 7 presentation section. There’s the six 6v6 signature maps, six global progression systems, build sharing, and, yes, the 16 new weapons. Like…16? That’s insane. There’s so much more than Black Ops 2 had — and that wasn’t lacking in features either.
This definitely seems to be the case. The official tweet is all about getting people hyped, but the rest of the Call of Duty community is showing something completely different. Call of Duty’s developers are promoting one thing, and the players seem to be begging for something completely different. Years of neglect seem to be on display in the wall of demands and complaints in the comment section.
I would wager the majority of players are thinking about trying to get the “carry forward” feature back. For the uninitiated, carry forward is a feature that allows players to bring unlocked content from older games into the new one. A few comments literally just say “Bring carry forward” or some variation along those lines. There seems to be no balance. For instance, this one person CharlesJhallory stated “Thank you for cancelling carry forward. That would have been horrible for this game.” Even the community does not seem to agree on a lot of things for features that should return.
The SBMM debate is no less fuzzy – so to address the familiarity issues with Call of Duty, it is skill-based matchmaking. Multiple comments are requesting doing away with “tune down Sbmm” or “Remove sbmm” as users believe it makes every match way too sweaty and competitive. It is a never-ending discussion between the casual gamers who would like to relax and the competitive gamers who demand balance in the game.
The skins issues are equally concerning. Peter Angelov has a stance on the skins that not one more “stupid skin” should be released, while other players want “war skins we want to feel like we are playing a war game” instead of the anime and animal-themed cosmetics that have been used. However, AcePunisher80 is out looking for a Marvel collaboration with a Punisher skin which shows that the consumer base really doesn’t know what they want from the cosmetic items.
There are also quite a few people complaining about the glitches and bugs. Clinton_G56 is wondering why his WiFi goes out while he is playing COD but works fine with every other game. FlamestheBeast has reported an “armory bug on Black Ops 6 multiplayer.” We also have Matt from APEXiZBEST who says the current game is “unplayable with cheaters,” which to me sounds more like a “buy the new game” statement.
What’s strange is the gathering of people shouting out for older features. There are countless requests to get rid of disbanding lobbies, requests to get DMZ back, and even some requests in the zombie mode for the removal of the rarity and armor systems.
Numerous weapons are sparking some questions. Though extreme, the comment “ONLY 16?!! 4YRS OF DEV TIME…” ghost62690016 made does resemble the feeling of most of the time weapons have come in bundles in the past.
It seems the players and the developers are on completely opposite sides when it comes to focus. While the developers are shining the spotlight on the new features and weapon sharing, the players are still waiting for the simple functionality improvements and anti-cheat measures. For years now, these issues have plagued the franchise.
One would expect that the Black Ops 2 map remakes bring some excitement since that specific game is looked at as one of the franchise’s high points by many of the longtime fans. If the maps are implemented well, it would be a major win to bring those classic maps back.
Similar to the maps, Black Ops 7 comes with sixteen new weapons and new quality-of-life features; these seem to be the same ones Treyarch is finally pushing. The concern that the niche community is signaling runs deeper into the direction of the franchise, as well as the issues that players have that have persisted over the years. Players are not concerned with what the new game will bring, but what will be fixed from the old ones.
Will Treyarch be able to deliver a new Black Ops experience dealing with the old issues? The 90-second summary instills a bit of optimism, but there are concerns that the players will still be ignored. The feedback from their comment sections keeps coming in. While global progression and weapon sharing are nice, Black Ops is a franchise players have lost trust in, and the developers, as always, keep frustrating players with the core of the game.
