How would you improve CoD4?

[Rob]

I've been thinking about this a lot. I want to hear your ideas:

Here are mine:

1. Rework Martyrdom and Last Stand. Is is dependent on you dying; inherently there is no skill in using either Perk, as they're only used if you're a coward or terrible player who actually needs the cheap and underhanded ways to get a free kill.

2. Rework airstrikes and helicopter support. These get really annoying after not too long. Either the helicopter is spawn killing you, or either hits you through walls and ceilings. I'm well-aware that modern airstrikes couldn't give two shits about walls, but it's a video game. If there's no point to having cover in the game, there's no point to playing a FPS. I might as well go play Unreal Tournament.

Maybe the airstrike should be one bomb, and not carpet bombing (we don't really carpet bomb anymore--our weapons are very precise). The helicopter should just fly over the map once, and not hang around.

3. Add more statistics tracking. All CoD4 has is your kills, deaths, experience, headshots, kill streak, and a couple of other things. Instead, I propose that everything be tracked. This isn't a problem if stats are stored client-side. (EA had problems with their stats tracking system with BF2 initially; the bandwidth was slowing the server down.) I think more should be tracked, as it was with BF2. In BF2, you could see your global stats (a basic overview of your stats), class-specific stats (time played, kills earned, etc.) map-specific stats (round won, etc.).

Discuss.

[Meteora]

We already got number 4 covered, at least for the consoles I think. PC players got lucked out.

All I need the game to improve on is nerfing the M16 and make the connections much more stable and lag-free. There's a lot of perks that went unused, so they might want to make better perks for future CoD games. Overall I can't think of much at the moment, there's probably more.

[Rob]

As much as I complain about CoD4, the game is actually really damn good.

Many of the things I dislike about the "game" I realized were really just problems with certain game modes on certain maps with too many players.

Go play Crossfire with more than 24 players. It's constant airstrikes on your spawn, constant helicopters roaming around shooting you through walls and shit, and frankly it just sucks.

However, I was wrong to assume that that's the game's fault--whoever owned the server wanted it that way. It's my choice to play there or not. So, I went and found some 20 player HC servers that didn't suck.

There are some bad lag issues lately I've noticed.

The one thing I still want is better stats tracking.

In BF2, I could see my total kills/deaths/KDR, shots fired/hit/missed/accuracy rating, and then I could see the same by class (but not by individual weapon for some reason). Then you could see your time played, favorite class, favorite map, and how well you did on any given map for any given game mode.

Sometimes it got excessive, but this is how I look at it: Take any sport, and any player. For that player, you can find relevant statistics to how good or bad that player is. The same should go for games like CoD4.

Primarily, I think the KDR and accuracy ratings should be kept, and broken down by weapon and weapon type.

So, for example, I could look up my overall accuracy, my accuracy with assault rifles, or my accuracy with the M4. I could also see my time played with the weapon or weapon type, or what maps I do well on.

I just think it's the most honest way to look at yourself as a player.

[Meteora]

As much as I complain about CoD4, the game is actually really damn good.

Many of the things I dislike about the "game" I realized were really just problems with certain game modes on certain maps with too many players.

Go play Crossfire with more than 24 players. It's constant airstrikes on your spawn, constant helicopters roaming around shooting you through walls and shit, and frankly it just sucks.

However, I was wrong to assume that that's the game's fault--whoever owned the server wanted it that way. It's my choice to play there or not. So, I went and found some 20 player HC servers that didn't suck.

There are some bad lag issues lately I've noticed.

The one thing I still want is better stats tracking.

In BF2, I could see my total kills/deaths/KDR, shots fired/hit/missed/accuracy rating, and then I could see the same by class (but not by individual weapon for some reason). Then you could see your time played, favorite class, favorite map, and how well you did on any given map for any given game mode.

Sometimes it got excessive, but this is how I look at it: Take any sport, and any player. For that player, you can find relevant statistics to how good or bad that player is. The same should go for games like CoD4.

Primarily, I think the KDR and accuracy ratings should be kept, and broken down by weapon and weapon type.

So, for example, I could look up my overall accuracy, my accuracy with assault rifles, or my accuracy with the M4. I could also see my time played with the weapon or weapon type, or what maps I do well on.

I just think it's the most honest way to look at yourself as a player.

Your proposal is definitely indepth and I would support it, just cause I like to look at numbers and laugh at my pathetic stats and share it with others. :D But yeah it would be nice to have that statistic system, cause I was wondering if my machine gun was the cause for lowering my accuracy recently.

[Rob]

See? Stuff like that is definitely relevant to the game.

The only concern I can see with in-depth stats tracking is that if it's stored server-side, you can run into server issues (and lose stats) or have the stats update on a dleay, like EA did. If that server goes down, though, oh shit the fucking sucks ass.

IW had the profile kept client-side with CoD4. I say, leave it that way, but have the game copy your profile to another folder so that it doesn't get deleted/corrupted by a patch like mine did (grrrrrr).

Stats tracking is the only honest way to look at a player, and frankly, it's better to go "Hah, my KDR is better than yours" than "hah my m4 is red lulz."

[Bullet2head]

A player once said something on the Cod4 forums I go to that fit in perfectly.

I have thought long and hard about this question, and I have com up with this.

1. Lower the M16 damage.

2. Half grenade throwing distance

This.