[url=http://www.pcgamer.com/2013/03/13/call-of-duty-red-orchestra-2-interview/] John Gibson, the President of Tripwire Active (creators of Red Orchestra 2) discuss how Call of Duty has almost ruined an entire generation of multiplayer shooter players. [/url] [quote] Gibson: It’s the gameplay mechanics that they become used to. The way that players instantly accelerate when they move, they don’t build up speed. “The weapons really don’t have a lot of power” [in RO2]. They’re all very weak. The way they handle… They’re like: “I hate Red Orchestra, I can’t play it.” Well, why? “Because the guy doesn’t move like he does in Call of Duty. Call of Duty has great movement.” Why is it great? “Because it just is, I just like the way it works.” So you don’t like the momentum system in Red Orchestra? “Yeah, it sucks, it’s clunky, it’s terrible.” Well, why? “It’s just because I’m used to this.” "I make it sound like there was a combative conversation, probably because I get a little emotional when I think about it. But it was really a calm discussion of, “What don’t you like?” and “It doesn’t feel like Call of Duty.” Almost every element boiled down to “it doesn’t feel like Call of Duty.”" " And really, watching some of these guys play… one of the things that Call of Duty does, and it’s smart business, to a degree, is they compress the skill gap. And the way you compress the skill gap as a designer is you add a whole bunch of randomness." "These guys, when I actually watch them play, they’re actually very poor FPS players. And I don’t think it’s because they’re incapable of getting good, I think it’s because they never had to get good. They get enough kills in Call of Duty to feel like they’re awesome, but they never really had to develop their FPS skills beyond that." "And it’s a shame because when you do that, when you create a shooter like that, you’re very limited on the amount of depth that you can give the game. It’s all gotta be very surface level, like I’m sitting there eating cotton candy and I never get any meat and potatoes. And it’s frustrating for me as a designer to see players come in and they’re literally like “In Call of Duty it takes 0.15 seconds to go into ironsights. In RO2 it takes 0.17 seconds to go into ironsights. I hate this.”" "It’s this weird dichotomy between, you know, single-player is getting much more depth, and players are just eating it up. They’re loving that. They’re buying these FPS-RPG single-player games like crazy. But multiplayer, “Ooh, don’t take my training wheels off.” I hate that. So we’re trying … we’re giving a little bit of training wheels, but we’re going to take them off occasionally in the shooters that we’re making, and hopefully we’ll get some of those people to branch out. I think for me though, I wouldn’t say I’ve completely given up on all of those players, but I’m not gonna try to make a game that tries to be Call of Duty at the expense of having fun gameplay that actually has depth." [/quote] What do you guys think about this? I myself agree with what Gibson is saying; Call of Duty has really made it difficult for developers to make successful multiplayer shooters without resorting to inserting elements from Call of Duty 4 and its sequels. They feel that if they don't do something similar to this game series that constantly breaks sales records, they'll lag behind and will not have as many players because said players are so used to the way that CoD rewards them constantly even if they suck. Far Cry 3 could have had some awesome multiplayer if they decided to get more creative. But instead, they decided to go the CoD route, even straight-up copying killstreaks. Halo 4 has XP for kills, flag captures, assassinations, etc. pop up in the middle of the screen to remind you that you're progressing towards the next level with new unlocks. Even if you are losing the match spectacularly, you'll still get a "game complete" bonus as a consolation prize for sucking so hard. And while the game still plays very much like Halo when you get into it, with the actual depth expected from a Halo game, it's highly disconcerting that 343i thinks that they have to include these elements to compete with Call of Duty, and am worried about what will happen with Halo 5.