COD 4 otherwise known as Mw1 is the first game in the “Modern Warfare” series, it’s been commonly referred to as the best thought-out and designed of the Modern Warfare games, so far. I’ll be comparing the three games of the Modern Warfare series against each other to work out why people like Mw1 over Mw2 and what Mw3 should have to satisfy the gaming population’s needs.
Modern Warfare 1 and 2 have many similarities such as killstreaks, maps and the single player story follows on nicely, but there are also massive differences between the two that have affected gamers greatly and has shaken the foundation of the Call of Duty franchise itself.
One of these differences lies in the weapons, in Mw1 the weapons were more or less balanced against each other nicely so one was not more powerful than another. In Mw2 weapons have had a massive overhaul giving insane damage to some and leaving others in the dust. The G18 akimbo is a fairly popular weapon in Mw2 due to the fact that this machine pistol is one of those overpowered weapons. Players are able to kill in 2-4 hits on any player on any part of the body and kill them with the Stopping Power perk. The M9 is a pistol on the same tier as the G18 but does much less damage at 4-6 hits to kill depending on the location again. Versing players with OP guns is extremely frustrating when trying to get killstreaks, as almost always your streak will be ended by a stray tube, UMP, or G18.
This rarely happens in Mw1 as weapons have been tested against one-another for power and win ratio’s, fighting people is much fairer and eliminates one gun dominating every game. Of course you still may be killed by the occasional tube, however players are less likely to use tubes or rockets in Mw1 as there’s no perk that lets you regain ammo for these guns as well as selecting tubes takes up the first tier perk, which stops them having RPG’s This forces players to use actual guns during battle and not stand on top of a building tubing down getting “cheap” kills as in Mw2.
Another difference between the games is the fact that there are many more players in each Mw1 team death-match game, approx 20 vs 20. This gives the feeling of a real war and players must watch their backs constantly for opponents attempting to flank their team. This also gives the player many more targets to kill which allows more action in one game, and not having to run to the other end of the map to get to the fighting, which often happens in Mw2. There are disadvantages to large teams however which makes Mw2 superior in that regard, one being your not as “intimate” with your team. Voice chatting has little effect on the outcome of the game and this flushes strategy and planning down the drain, unless your whole team is part of it. Another disadvantage being there’s almost no teamwork involved, you just run in, get shot, and run back. Players want a strategic game which they feel they’re a part of like in Mw2 in the 6 vs 6 TDM, in these games one player has the ability to turn the tide of the whole game, it’s this feeling and the ability to do it that gives Mw2 a powerful advantage over Mw1.
Modern Warfare 2 would be many, many times better if it had Dedicated Servers for each game. At the moment players host the game from home, and depending on where they live, it will dictate what latency every other player will have. If an American player hosts a game, everyone from other countries will have varying delay of packets to give the hosts and nearby players a massive advantage over those who are further away. I have no idea why Infinity Ward didn’t put Dedicated Servers into Mw2, but i’m sure they lost money from it and they will probably lose most of their player base if Mw3 doesn’t have Dedicated Servers either. This is a major reason why many more players are still into Mw1 over Mw2, there’s almost no lag in it.
Hackers, the name sends a shiver down the spine of normal players who use actual skill to defeat their opponents. If you’ve played Modern Warfare 2, chances are you’ve been shot through a wall or victim of a tube before you come around a corner. Mw1 had a way to deal with these people, you have the ability to vote against people who are hacking to get them kicked from the server permanently. This was a brilliant idea to have in the game, but alas they removed it from Mw2, why? we’ll never know. As well as hacker prevention Mw1 had the ability for players to create Mods and let other players join them, this was another great idea for two reasons. One being that players didn’t need to break the rules to create these Modded servers and Two being it gave hackers something to do other than create aim-bots, they could create Mods.
The maps in Mw2 were alright, however there were quite alot of dodgy maps that are almost instantly skipped when they appear. The most renowned being: Quarry, Karachi, Underpass and Overgrown. There are always going to be terrible maps in games but there seemed to be many more maps in Mw2 that players outright hated. I’ve noticed this over my 1200+ combined hours of playing both of these games, It just seems that the maps in Mw1 have been more thought-out than those in Mw2.
Now that’s the comparison between Mw1 and Mw2, now i’ll be comparing the differences between these two to against what we know from the upcoming Mw3 game.
Now for Modern Warfare 3, many people will buy the game regardless of what content is in it just due to the fact of it’s a new shiny COD game, but it’s main income will be from the dedicated players of the Mw series. Those who enjoy it but wish they fix all those bugs and weapon balancing as well as the added small features to make it better than the last two Mw’s.
The main addition to the game that players are looking for is the addition of dedicated servers, as I discussed above Mw1 has a much larger player base due to the fact that they can actually play each other without lag. I believe without this feature Mw3 will die just as fast as Modern Warfare 2. Even now, only a few years after it’s release there are dwindling numbers playing mw2, it’s getting harder and harder to find games without lag. They said “We’re considering about adding Dedicated Servers to Mw3”. Why do you guys need to consider that? Every player out there wants Dedicated Servers, and there’s no disadvantage to it, except for probably costing you a little more cash in the long run. Dedicated Servers are what makes the game world go around, without them games die in a few years, just look at Mw2.
The second most important feature that Mw3 should have to be successful is balanced weapons, killstreaks, deathstreaks and perks. Firstly i’ll look at weapons. If tubes and RPG’s took the first perk slot many players would simply choose a gun over them and would almost instantly solve tubing crisis that appear on the smaller maps. However they would also need to stop players picking up ammo for them mainly with the scavenger perk. Many other perks would need to be changed or removed as well, including but not limited to: Commando, Danger Close and Steady Aim.
Have you ever played Mw2 and been so annoyed after shooting a clip and a half into someone and then look up to see their still alive, with a tiny pill at the bottom of their screen? And they just turn around and shoot you? Well the Mw2 deathstreaks are insane to say the least, I myself use copycat just because you aren’t allowed to choose no deathstreak perk. However the deathstreaks need balancing as much as the weapons, it takes not 2 but 3 sniper shots to the HEAD to kill a player with painkiller, that’s at LEAST 3x the starting health. Even if painkiller lasted for 5 seconds, not 10 it’s still an insane boost to health. Another deathstreak, Final Stand is another very annoying death streak, when you think you’ve killed a player, they get a second life! Then you turn around to kill another enemy they shoot you in the back. If Mw3 deathstreaks were useful but not deadly to other players it would make the game much fairer for all players.
What if when you died 3 times in a row you got sitrep for a life? Or Marathon? These aren’t deadly to the other players in the game but would help the player to see the enemy grenades, claymores and C4 to avoid death again, which is much more useful than defeating death itself.
“Zombies with guns” in Mw3 looks like a great addition to the game, if they do it right. If the player is able to buy any guns at whatever level they wish it would dampen the need to level up. I always love the challenge to get to a certain level to unlock equipment, guns and perks when the words appearon your screen during a game you feel like you’ve achieved something. If the level up system is like Black-Ops some players will be quick to abandon this game, due to the fact that there’s no challenge.
Now to the Hackers, it’ll most likely be a few weeks before we see any hacks in Mw3. If however they decide to add a “reporting” or “kick” feature to the game it shouldn’t be so bad as you’d be able to vote someone out of the game if 50% or more players vote against them. Mods are another thing we’d all like to see in Mw3, due to Mw2 not having support for mods people were becoming banned for running them (I know my friend did) and having to buy another copy of the game. With mod support there could be many different kinds of game modes that are available to play much like Mw1. It would also give the hackers something else to do rather than make hacks for the game.
Finally, what would make this game brilliant is the customizability of the player, weapons and maybe even perks. People love the feeling of making their player character anyway they wish and this includes their guns, tag, emblem and clothing. A clan emblem would be another brilliant addition to the game, to be able to show everyone what clan they belong to, if any. This is probably the only good feature Black Ops had, and it wouldn’t hurt if Mw3 stole it’s idea.
Wow 1888 words, now this is the longest blog yet, I hope it gave you some insight into the previous Modern Warfare games and an array of plausible future content of Mw3, I just sincerely hope they don’t make another “dead” game, for all our sakes.
