Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 to Shed Single-Player Campaign; Doubling Down on Zombies, MP

[Raevenlord]

News reported by Polygon paint the next installment in the metronome-like cadence of annual Call of Duty game releases as a much less interesting package than gamers are used to. Citing industry sources, Polygon is reporting that Call of Duty Black Ops 4 is going to shed its single player campaign entirely, citing a lack of development time to deliver it on launch. This is strange for a number of reasons. First, Treyarch, who's helming the games' development this time around, enjoyed a three-years development period to make the game happen; second, there's no need to do anything else than some incremental changes to the game's engine, as has been the case for COD games for years, so that couldn't have taken up much development time; third, using development resources to "just about" finish the games' campaign and then ultimately deciding to scrape it altogether just seems like a very bad business move.





If anything, this seems like a thought-out move, with Treyarch (likely at its parent company's Activision bidding) decided do double down on development of multiplayer and the COD series' now certain-to-appear zombies mode. The decision likely comes as a testing of the waters for a pure multiplayer experience, saving the $ in development efforts for a high-budget single player campaign, and seeing whether or not there's some commercial success to the idea. I, for one, never set foot on the multiplayer modes of any COD game, and instead enjoyed the linear campaigns and set pieces of the main single player mode. This is also particularly interesting a decision, since a) COD has seen such a release, when Black Ops 3 released to previous-gen (Xbox 360 and PS3) consoles without its single player campaign; and b) with Respawn Entertainment going the full 180º difference, choosing to add a single player campaign (which was great) to its Titanfall 2 game.

Polygon reports that there'll likely be a cooperative game mode to make up for the lack of single-player. As if. And there's a chance that Activision will be releasing a "Remastered" version of its Modern Warfare 2 campaign this year - whether bundled with Black Ops 4 or not, it remains to be seen. If that's the case, I have to say this is a sorry state for the industry: rehash old campaigns, and deliver half a new game, half an old game, likely for the full retail price. It almost makes the lootbox system look good in comparison.

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[dj-electric]

I know that most people here are very anti-CoD, as it might be "too mainstream yuk", but it has a very unique style of gameplay me and many others seek.

MP is what it is all about, and hopefully we could get something that resembled what we had in BO1-2.
Dedicated servers with a normal console to manage them, proper mechanics and weapons, and balanced maps


ps. there's a free game that has (had?) an open beta named Ironsight, i would recommand trying it. It tries to replicate the MW\BO experience.

 

[Prima.Vera]

To be honest I only played COD for SP... good luck with this crappy move.

 

[NdMk2o1o]

To be honest I only played COD for SP... good luck with this crappy move.

Same here, mainly played sp since cod1 and have just recently replayed cod4 sp and started ww2, this is about less development, more profit and probably soon in game transactions etc, guess that's me done with cod for good.

 

[Devon68]

While multiplayer is fun. I always liked playing the single player campaign for the story.

 

[Upgrayedd]

The thing about Black Ops is it got its rep from the campaign. I don't really buy this rumor. Weren't we supposed to be seeing new "Ampere" gpus too? lol @ rumors.

When I first heard about the next CoD being a Black Ops game I thought "yeah, here comes a decent campaign." I wasn't thinking "oh cool, more of the same screaming kiddies on different maps."

 

[FreedomEclipse]

back ops 1 was fairly decent when it came to SP. Though the best CoD SPs ive played were CoD1/UO. and CoD4:MW.

Reason behind the change is probably Activision deciding to fully adopt the 'games as a service' business model. They are going to fill BLops:4 chock full of microtransactions while still charging you over $80 for what is technically half a game now...

As for the MW2 remaster.... I see two potential issues with this. Firstly being it wasnt that great a CoD game to begin with since thats when they took away dedicated servers, cut the player cap to something like 12 or 16players per game to cater for the console market with technically inferior tech that couldnt run the game with 64 players and dedicated servers like the good old days.... vastly smaller maps and no developer SDKs were given to the community to develop their own mods and maps for the game.

gone were the server admins and mods, turning the MP into a cesspit of wallhackers and aimbotters, as far as i remember there was no option to votekick them sort of players. The only choice you have was to leave the game but the stupid P2P game finding system would place you back in the same game 90% of the time 3 times in a row anyway so to quit the game to try join another was a rather pointless endeavour.


the MP session errors when you were trying to get into a game with friends and also freezing gameplay for 2mins while the game searched for a new machine to host the game on cuz the last one quit was just such a backwards approach.

There was nothing good or memorable about MW2 apart from it being made 100% for consoles from the ground up. It was a huge step backwards.

Knowing Activision, they will give it the full CoD4:MW remaster treatment and fill it full of microtransactions and only make it purchasable as part of a bundlewith their next CoD game because thats the only way they are gonna get most people to buy their games these days.

I played MW2 as much as i played Operation Racoon City.... Less than 3hrs total played spread over a few months just to let ACtivision get their patches and bugfixes in but it was terrible from start to finish.


MW2 marked the day when I would never buy another CoD game and this boycott is still in place today.

 

[Vya Domus]

Rest in peace the Call of Duty that it once used to be.

Shame , Black Ops had the best campaigns.

 

[kastriot]

Games are made for quantity not for quality at least 99% of them nowadays.

 

[TheGuruStud]

I know that most people here are very anti-CoD, as it might be "too mainstream yuk", but it has a very unique style of gameplay me and many others seek.

Are you held hostage by the devs? Blink twice for yes. Or lay off the meth.

MP hasn't been good since #2. Yes, CoD 2.

 

[Paganstomp]

Guess they can't come up with anything that can beat GTA 5 ( 3rd best selling game of all time ) or are they thinking that "Battle for Azeroth" is gonna save Blizzard/Activsion's a$$?

 

[dj-electric]

Are you held hostage by the devs? Blink twice for yes. Or lay off the meth.

MP hasn't been good since #2. Yes, CoD 2.

Most cods supply a quake like experience of fast pased action and character control. I get it, its not 1999 anymore and people usually associate cod with consoles and screaming children. fine by me.

Im into this kind of stuff

 

[qubit]

There's a game I conveniently don't have to buy. I might just get a chance to catch up with the loads of other Steam games I've got, lol.

 

[droopyRO]

Rest in peace the Call of Duty that it once used to be.

Shame , Black Ops had the best campaigns.

Yup BO1 and BO2 had the best campaigns after MW 1. Maybe they will release them as a separate game, i always wanted that since i don't enjoy the type of multiplayer CoD games have.

 

[neatfeatguy]

Only BlackOps game I picked up was the third one - I only picked it up because I'm a cheap gamer and take advantage of deals. I found a copy of the game at target maybe a year and a half back for $9.00. The game was and still is selling for $59.99. I have yet to open my game and install it.....shows you how interested I actually am in the game.

As for single player campaigns, I was never a fan of them since CoD2. MW was okay, but it was the very last single player campaign that I had any interest in.

 

[W1zzard]

To be honest I only played COD for SP... good luck with this crappy move.

+1 on that

 

[Deleted member 67555]

Why would it be called Black Ops 4???
Oh well... Every series dies off one way or another.

 

[Th3pwn3r]

Why would it be called Black Ops 4???
Oh well... Every series dies off one way or another.

It's been dead to me for a good decade. And to compare it to Quake...LMAO.

 

[FreedomEclipse]

It's been dead to me for a good decade. And to compare it to Quake...LMAO.

It was built on the quake engine

 

[Manu_PT]

It's been dead to me for a good decade. And to compare it to Quake...LMAO.

Im Quake player and CoD is the only game I accept be compared to quake. Small map(arena), fast paced, reflexes and aim above everything. Only lacks strafe jumping, but is a military shooter while quake story is in another realm.

 

[Deleted member 67555]

I haven't played mp in the last 3 games because its gotten to be really really stupid...
I was looking forward to this game... Now I'm not..
Bye Activision...your officially on my Boycott list.

 

[Durvelle27]

MP is the main reason I play CoD. So losing Campaign is no concern to me.

 

[CrAsHnBuRnXp]

I want COD 1-3 remasters.

 

[InVasMani]

I'm just waiting on Ubisoft's next Tom Clancy game. They can downgrade the graphics and still take my money.

 

[dozenfury]

I also only play the CoD releases for the SP (it sounds blasphemous, but MP is 10x deeper and better imo in other shooters like Battlefield).

That said, I also have only rented the last 4 or 5 CoD releases since it's not worth full price when mostly play CoD SP and don't go back to it once the campaign is done. So from a business standpoint maybe it makes sense to focus on MP. But games without SP campaigns have paid the price lately (SW BF1, Titanfall 1), so it seems like a super-risky move.

And like the article said, considering they've spent 3 years on it, and most of the code was already there from the prior releases, cutting half the game 6 months from launch doesn't give me a warm fuzzy feeling that this will be a strong CoD release.