Agreed. I think it’s a terrible idea, mostly because it’s much harder to sell a loss than a gain. People are just used to CoD having a 4-6hr campaign, MP, and some kind of co-op or horde mode. I suppose Activision believes they can soften the blow with the HD revamp of MW2 and Battle Royale.
Yeah, I think dropping single player and going battle royale only with loot boxes sounds like they’re setting themselves up for a Star Wars Battlefield level backlash. But I haven’t played CoD since the Modern Warfare days so what do I know.
Yeah, Star Wars Battlefield (the previous one, not the lootbox one) is another great example. No single-player hobbled that game.
Raven and Activision already have a BR f2p game in China, so I suppose that helped sell the idea to the suits.
The last Black Ops had the crummiest of single player and it’s still selling, but it did have something. I don’t think they should go without anything.
Comes down to two points. First is perceived value; consumers expect $60 titles to include a campaign. Second is the long tail, 6 months after release when the game is selling for $30 you need new players to buy it to keep the multiplayer alive. Without a campaign you lose that steady influx of new players, sales drop faster, and the multiplayer dies and your lootbox/DLC/whatever along with it.
Whoa.
I’m honestly not buying the lack of a single player mode. I think there’s probably still something story based there. BO3 was playable in co-op for the entire campaign so maybe they’ve iterated on that to the point were people are talking about it like it’s not a single player mode anymore.
But historically about 1/3rd of all CoD purchasers only play the campaign. That’s a lot of sales to sacrifice.
CoD single player interest in overrated. If you have completed any of them recently go look at the trophy/achievement for completing the campaign. I did it on PS4 and it was less than 20 percent. I bet more people buy CoD every year and never touch the campaign than do play it. The series has become just a MP game for many anyways.
Single player completion percentage for all games is pretty low. That doesn’t really tell us anything about who buys it for single player. Even still, you’re talking about 5 million people completing single player for a game that sells 25 million.
There will be a huge internet backlash with calls for boycotts and the sales numbers will be right on target regardless.
I doubt it. It’s the multiplayer types that call for boycotts. Solo players might just skip it. If Brad is right and that’s about 5-10 million people, they might gain more than that with people who buy in for another polished Battle Royale mode.
I’d be really surprised if the market for people who just buy CoD for the campaign is that notable anymore. The last truly great campaign for the series was 2007. It’s not something the series has had a good reputation with for over a decade.
Infinite Warfare’s campaign is excellent. People slept on that because Titanfall 2 was a bit better. Both are great.
Agreed. I was pleasantly surprised by IW’s campaign. The space ship combat was actually pretty entertaining.
I’d say the only real sour note was how generically the bad guy was written. Then they had Kit Harrington portray him in the most bland way possible. Weird choice.
Some of the reports coming out on this are amazing. In a couple of them, the story campaign in development doubled down on Blops 3’s bullshit story and involved actual time travel, which was a large part of why Activision stepped in and canned it all.
Hopefully it was far enough in development that they created a lot of detailed assets for the story. One of the things that amazes me about Call of Duty multiplayer is just how detailed the multiplayer maps are. When I first played the CoD4: MW beta, I couldn’t believe me eyes. All this trouble for a multiplayer map? But then I played the single player story and realized that the reason they had those incredibly detailed spaces is that they were created for the single player storyline and then those same assets were used in multplayer.
Summary:
- Confirmed, no campaign.
- 3 modes: Multiplayer, zombies, and Blackout
- Blackout is their version of Battle Royale
- “Black Ops III doesn’t have a traditional campaign,” said Treyarch boss Mark Lamia. “We’re weaving narrative into each of the modes.”
- Multiplayer reveal trailer:
- Zombies trailer:
- More Zombies: