Just consider this his brand-new rendition of a Treyarch developer opening his mouth and sending the whole Call of Duty community into pandemonium. I’m talking about a Tweet-storm kind of chaos. And all because of one of the most fiercely debated features in COD history-Pick 10.
For those unaware or long-forgotten, Pick 10 was a class customization system that received light in Black Ops 2. In other words, you had 10 points to put on a class however you felt: want to run six perks and no grenades? Go ahead. Want to max out gun attachments at the cost of no secondary? Roll with it. It was all about option: build your class according to your playstyle.
But according to an interview ComicBook shared recently, a Treyarch developer said bluntly that they simply didn’t bring Pick 10 back because… wait for it… “I’m not convinced it’s better.”
Right. Literally the quote. “We haven’t went back to it yet because I’m not convinced it’s better.”
Now, the player-reaction to that has been… well, mixed, for lack of a better term. Some are outright furious, and the others say, “You know, actually, that makes sense to me.” So, it’s creating this slightly unusual divide in the community, which in itself is something interesting to watch unfold.
One player going by the name GMDKeepnclassy raged: “It literally is the optimal system. It puts the player in COMPLETE control of THEIR play style. Some people want more tacticals, some people prefer perks, some want a gun with more attachments. Let the players decide how THEY WANT TO PLAY THE GAME. Stop forcing play styles on us.”
Then you have players like IvHoLLyWooDvIG2 saying, “It’s not. People are living in the past.” Now, to be fair, that is a legitimate point-Nostalgia sometimes makes us remember things as better than they were.
The replies are filled with arguments for and against the usefulness of tactical equipment; nobody’s being polite to one another. Some players are calling bots those who think tacticals aren’t useful, while others argue that run-and-gun types don’t even need it in the first place: it’s pretty intense.
However, interestingly, this conversation goes hand-in-hand with the gunsmith system in more recent COD titles. Like, now you’ve got a gun customization system nimble enough to accommodate eight attachments on one gun. Some players argue that everybody uses the same meta builds anyway. So, what is the point?
NostalGian777 nailed it: “Who cares about gunsmith when everyone runs 1 optimized meta build, might as well have no attachments at all.” Now… that is worth thinking about.
Then, you have the current Warzone integration that plays into these decisions. Just another dude said Pick 10 would probably break with Warzone integration and cause problems with weapons from previous years. That is probably a bigger factor than anyone wants to admit.
There is that incandescence-sort-of-feeling coming out frothy backing passion for this madness. Attention: we’re talking about those mechanics that, in the eyes of a casual player, wouldn’t even merit thinking two-times. But for the hardcore COD clan, that’s serious business.
Funny how this atmosphere fills up with some admitting they had no clue that Pick 10 was even a thing people liked until the whole thing blew up. “I didn’t know Pick 10 was something people liked until now,” said Zer0_Mirai, and that itself is testament to how different sections of the community at large have very deliberately varied experiences and preferences.
Far from it, it reminds one of how games development has always been about making choices that will please some players but ultimately displease others. It will never be a perfect system that makes everyone happy, especially in as large a franchise as Call of Duty, with its vast player base.
What one can say for sure is that it goes as though Treyarch deliberately makes choices about what systems they think work well for the contemporary COD experience. Whether that really is the right call or not… well, that is what everyone is arguing about right now.
At the end of the day, it’s really about the compromise between player freedom and game balance. If you give the players too much freedom, there are broken builds that ruin the experience for everyone; give them too little, and the game is boring to play.
New Black Ops would become one of these matters: some iteration of Pick 10 or an evolution of gunsmith, or simply some entirely new system. Whatever it might be, players are bound to have opinions of their own.
To continue down the path, the debate rages on through Twitter and Reddit and wherever else there might be a COD forum. One of the classic gaming controversies that will probably rear its head every time a new COD is announced.
What else? Bring up that ageless fight again: who’s better, killstreaks or scorestreaks? Actually, no, just don’t get people started on that.
