"Multiplayer is the lifeblood of the franchise," says Treyarch's studio head, Mark Lamia. "Call of Duty multiplayer is played 365 days a year, twenty-four seven, all over the world. But we can do better."
"Black Ops did everything we wanted it to do. We had the customisation, the theatre, the emblem editor, great maps, great options - but one of the things that it didn't do is look at the gameplay and say: 'hey, let's significantly innovate upon some of these core systems.' Black Ops II takes the core systems and does something new."
Black Ops II is CoD's biggest multiplayer overhaul since Call of Duty 4. For the first time you'll be able to create a custom class entirely from scratch, play with six teams in one game, livestream games without expensive PC hardware, and even enter games as a commentator with a dedicated e-sports HUD.
But more than that, it's the first CoD where every mode rewards you for playing it properly, and where every weapon and every perk can be rebalanced on a micro level at Treyarch's end. The moment a perk proves too powerful it can be nerfed without removing it because CoD, says multiplayer designer David Vonderhaar, has become a sport and sports have to be fair.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] "I've seen our game on the main stage at MLG with a hundred people in the stands rooting for their team," says Vonderhaar. "I've seen it and I think: 'I've got to a find a way to give this to everybody.' Idon't know what will happen but I'm sure as f*ck going to try because I have funwatching those people play, because it's good for e-sports and because it's good for this business. If we do it right I hope somebody comes along, copies what we did and finds ways to make it even better. I want this to catch on the way perks did. This can be the nextbig thing."
SPORTING CHANCE
For the first time in any console game, a single button click will let you stream your games to the internet. "All you need to livestream is a little bit of upstream bandwidth and a USB camera if you want picture-in-picture," says Vonderhaar. "Right now, people who livestream have to have a computer with very expensive hardware and lots of cables, and weget rid of all that."
"You'll be able to watch streamed games anywhere - your phone, your iPad, your computer..." says Lamia. "We're demoing it on our own webpage internally, but there's nothing magical about the feed itself, and nothing to stop you from broadcasting it when and how you want."
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] The feed runs with a delay - in part a limitation of the time your console needs to compress and send the video, and in part an artificially-enforced delay to prevent cheating. That's especially important for Black Ops II's new Shoutcasting mode - a dedicated commentator's HUD, with full camera controls, the ability to jump to any players' view and a picture-in-picture scoreboard and map for tracking even the fastest games. The Shoutcast HUD is built with tournament play in mind and designed to be readable quickly and easily for audiences at Major League Gaming shows and other professional tournaments, and just like everyone else the Shoutcasting commentator can livestream their ownview and become the host oftheir own Call of Duty show.
But none of that would matter if the old Call of Duty gripes threatened to break the game. Those motion sensors, those overpowered killstreaks, those players who play every objective mode like it were Deathmatch, and those players who spoil your game by being too bad / too good are all problems Treyarch have heard, understood, and fixed.
"Black Ops did everything we wanted it to do. We had the customisation, the theatre, the emblem editor, great maps, great options - but one of the things that it didn't do is look at the gameplay and say: 'hey, let's significantly innovate upon some of these core systems.' Black Ops II takes the core systems and does something new."
Black Ops II is CoD's biggest multiplayer overhaul since Call of Duty 4. For the first time you'll be able to create a custom class entirely from scratch, play with six teams in one game, livestream games without expensive PC hardware, and even enter games as a commentator with a dedicated e-sports HUD.
But more than that, it's the first CoD where every mode rewards you for playing it properly, and where every weapon and every perk can be rebalanced on a micro level at Treyarch's end. The moment a perk proves too powerful it can be nerfed without removing it because CoD, says multiplayer designer David Vonderhaar, has become a sport and sports have to be fair.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] "I've seen our game on the main stage at MLG with a hundred people in the stands rooting for their team," says Vonderhaar. "I've seen it and I think: 'I've got to a find a way to give this to everybody.' Idon't know what will happen but I'm sure as f*ck going to try because I have funwatching those people play, because it's good for e-sports and because it's good for this business. If we do it right I hope somebody comes along, copies what we did and finds ways to make it even better. I want this to catch on the way perks did. This can be the nextbig thing."
SPORTING CHANCE
For the first time in any console game, a single button click will let you stream your games to the internet. "All you need to livestream is a little bit of upstream bandwidth and a USB camera if you want picture-in-picture," says Vonderhaar. "Right now, people who livestream have to have a computer with very expensive hardware and lots of cables, and weget rid of all that."
"You'll be able to watch streamed games anywhere - your phone, your iPad, your computer..." says Lamia. "We're demoing it on our own webpage internally, but there's nothing magical about the feed itself, and nothing to stop you from broadcasting it when and how you want."
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] The feed runs with a delay - in part a limitation of the time your console needs to compress and send the video, and in part an artificially-enforced delay to prevent cheating. That's especially important for Black Ops II's new Shoutcasting mode - a dedicated commentator's HUD, with full camera controls, the ability to jump to any players' view and a picture-in-picture scoreboard and map for tracking even the fastest games. The Shoutcast HUD is built with tournament play in mind and designed to be readable quickly and easily for audiences at Major League Gaming shows and other professional tournaments, and just like everyone else the Shoutcasting commentator can livestream their ownview and become the host oftheir own Call of Duty show.
But none of that would matter if the old Call of Duty gripes threatened to break the game. Those motion sensors, those overpowered killstreaks, those players who play every objective mode like it were Deathmatch, and those players who spoil your game by being too bad / too good are all problems Treyarch have heard, understood, and fixed.
- Spoiler:
- There are a lot of polarising conversations in the Black Ops community," says Vonderhaar. "You can find guys on both ends of any argument, and we have to balance community feedback with our own tests. The AUG is the most popular gun for people to complain about right now, but the data doesn't bear that out. They're telling me this and I'm looking at them saying: 'Iappreciate your feedback young man - however the data says otherwise.' And that's game design; it's part of being a game designer, and it's f*cking hard. So we're addressing the big things by making sure we have the tools to tweak the small things by the smallest increments."
A NEW BALANCE
Scorestreaks are Black Ops II's new Killstreaks. In the new Black Ops, every action is worth points and the value of every action is weighted to the game mode. Kill aplayer in Capture The Flag and you'll earn 100 points, but capture the flag and it's worth 150, while killing a flag carrier is worth 200. Planting the bomb on Search and Destroy earns points andcapturing a hill in Domination will earn youpoints.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] A few hundred points will earn you a UAV, and over a thousand will let you loose the attack dogs. For the first time since Killstreaks were introduced in CoD4, it's not the best killer who gets the best rewards, but the best player. It's a trick Battlefield: Bad Company popularised a few years ago - overwhelmingly rewarding players who played the objectives rather than the fastest shots - and in Call of Duty it changes everything.
"There are definitely people who play, say, Domination because they know guys are going to gather around objectives and they can kill them," says Vonderhaar. "And if the core reward system in the game is rewarding that then we're saying kills are the most important thing, and that's our fault. We need to make sure the reward system goes with the game modes. If we think aflag capture should be worth two kills or three kills or five kills, we can do that now.
"And it's not like I don't give you score for shooting people; it's still ashooter, but I'm going to give you more score when you place a guard turret and protect a path. I'm going to give you points if you have an assault shield and you're blocking damage on your team with it. I'm going to reward you because you're helping your team. Our new core reward system is always based on the things that make you win the game modes."[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] It'll be a steep learning curve for Call of Duty's most murderous madmen, but the new league play will keep competition fair. Lifted straight from Starcraft II, Black Ops' League mode will, over time, ensure you never play anyone significantly above or below your skill level. "Treyarch, Blizzard... we're all part of that same Activision family," says Vonderhaar. "They were very generous with their time, helping us learn what they learned. There's a lot of similarities between this and the Starcraft II system."
- Spoiler:
- In Treyarch's current build, each season is just over thirty days long, and placing, winning or ranking up will give you a chance to be promoted to the next league at the end of the month. Black Ops' Premier League will be home to just two percent of all CoD players - the very best players in the world - but no matter the league you reach, you'll get to feel like a winner. Sure, you won't ever be Manchester City walking home with the Premier League trophy, but you can be Fleetwood Town - undisputed champions of the Conference and bloody pleased about it.
"We haven't had skill-based matchmaking in a Treyarch Call of Duty game since CoD3," says Vonderhaar, "and this time we'veactually built a feature around it. You're always rewarded and you always feel like you can achieve something, no matter yourskill level."
CLASS WARFARE
But the biggest upgrade is one you'll discover the moment you hit Start for the first time. In Black Ops II you'll create your class from a pool of perks and weapon upgrades with total freedom. You can play with a rifle, no sidearm and extra claymores; with two rifles and no non-lethal grenades; or as an mad axeman with six perks, no guns, and a single tomahawk.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] "Internally we call it the Pick Ten system," explains Vonderhaar. "What this means is you can literally pick ten pieces of content - weapons, attachments, grenades, perks - and take them into the fight. But you can forgo taking a weapon or a perk and spend that point somewhere else, like on a Wildcard." Each Wildcard costs one point, and each will 'break the rules' of CoD's usual Create a Class system. With the right Wildcard you can apply two perks in slot one, use three attachments, or double your lethal grenade slots.
"I could spend thirty minutes alone talking about the weapons system improvements," says Vonderhaar, "but what you need to know is that attachments modify weapons and perks modify your character, and there's no crossover."Every new level earns one unlock token and every perk, Scorestreak, attachment, and gadget is unlocked one token at atime. Each new rank - Sergeant, Lieutenant - unlocks the next tier of equipment, so there's still an enforced progression through the ranks, but for the first time there's areason to Prestige once you pass level 55. Fifty-five tokens aren't nearly enough to unlock everything in Black Ops II, so you'll need to do two full laps of the levelling system before you have every tool at your disposal. "The game is no longer about level one to fifty-five," says Vonderhaar. "Now it's about one to fifty-five and the levels of Prestige; they have value now. You'll be able to buy any perk by level 55, but if you want a complete set it'll take longer."
- Spoiler:
- And the perks themselves have evolved too. "Perks were pretty important for us to rethink, because they were getting too complex. You had perks, perk pros, perks that influence you, perks that influence your gun, perks that influence team mates. We've simplified that so perks only ever affect your character, and more importantly, Black Ops II's perks aren't absolutes. In Black Ops our only balancing options were to remove the perk or keep it; now we can tune any perk by increments to nerf it or improve it."
That means those wildly exploitable perk setups from Modern Warfare 3 are a thing of the past. "I can nerf perks and I will, mark my words," says Vonderhaar. "A perk should never be something you need just to compete. A perk is 'I got a parking spot,' or 'the soda machine gave me free soda.' Your life shouldn't depend on it. The community helped me understand that, and that's why our new system has no absolutes. We can try to make it the most balanced CoD ever."
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TAKE ON ME
Hands on, it plays differently. Sure, Black Ops II feels like Call of Duty - that same buttery-smooth framerate, snappy response and that same measured pace - but for the first time, you'll play the game the way it was always intended to be played. We took part in dozens of games against Treyarch's team, but every time the battle played out exactly as Treyarch intended.
The new balance they're talking about works in practice as well as thoery. Very quickly we found creative uses for Black Ops II's more exotic new gadgets, placing the new microwave Guardian turret in places players were likely to fall, and using the shock grenade as a motion sensor of sorts. Scorestreaks never spoiled the battle and objectives were prioritised above wanton murder. It's Battlefield's teamwork neatly slotted into Call of Duty, and it's clear the game was always meant to be played this way.
"The Battlefield series is really well put together," Vonderhaar says. "There's all sorts of great influence to draw from how they use their visual treatments and encourage teamplay. There's a League of Legends influence in Black Ops II, a Quake 1 influence... Halo had a theatre mode and we created CoD's version of it - of course there's influence from other games."
Is there ever a danger of CoD going the way of Guitar Hero or Tony Hawk? "I can't speak for how those other franchises were handled but I can speak for us and how we're handling Black Ops," says studio head Mark Lamia. "I think that if you want to maintain a franchise, that you're going to have to innovate and keep it fresh, but also remain true to your core. It's absolutely the needle we try and thread in every game.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.] "I think you have to keep the game accessible but have that depth. I think it will take players awhile to peel back the layers on this one because there's a lot of stuff going on underneath, there's all kinds of different ways to play now. If you want tosurvive you're going to have toplay the objectives and play with your team.
"I think that's a fundamental change to the way people play Call of Duty. Black Ops II isn't just the next CoD game; it really is a major step in how Call of Duty's gameplay is going to be perceived."
