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Activision says Call of Duty Vanguard underperformed partly due to WW2 setting

Holammer

Member
There's still life in the WW2 setting.
It's time to make another dirty and disgusting take on the war in the Pacific. Have men being men moving down banzai charges with Thompson machine guns, shovling Katana wielding officers till their faces cave in, with dialogue typical for the time, I want to hear racial slurs!
Because the conflict was so brutal, Japan gets a free pass and developers avoid that setting. There's a reason why COD: World at War was and remains fucking awesome.
 
I loved cod2, and especially cod5 world at war, my favorites. Ww2 was also a good game that got panned by idiots who hated it for some reason. I really enjoyed both the campaign and online.

What I can't stand is infinite warfare or "hero" unit cod games. I don't want to play as a character. Also I can't stand the cosmetic and micro transactions bullshit. I don't want to see some pink bear running around with an mp40. It's the csualizationof cod to appeal to fortnite kids.

Those fortnite kids can have it with the forces woke crap, historically inaccuracy and blue haired lesbains with cannabis themed m1s in a ww2 game... Yeah, nah, I'm out. Enjoy, I'll stick to single player and other multiplaywr games.
Let me know when this crap gets curbed and we go back to cod5/mw days of serious real war scenarios and not fortnite and neon looking shit.
 
First of all the call of duty franchise has been wrestled into the ground with World War Two games since it's first release in 2004, there's been 19 games in the series since many of them world war 2.

Call of Duty since has been mashed together in one menu instead of a traditional game bootup for quick and easy game changing. Just wow.

The characters (Arthur Kingsley, Polina Petrova, Wade Jackson and Lucas Riggs) are all developed characters but lean heavily on being the female gender, or the rebellious Australian, or the African American British man I don't know if this was intentional but its typical woke narrative of today.

The mp has been torched by fans in the past for using jet packs, things like changing to future warfare, perks not showing up in new games and honestly Black Ops Cold War has the same score (8/10) in my book.

If cod vanguard knocks on your door you go out and play with it, I’ll take vanguard and it’s 16 maps, zombies etc. over any shooter out there.

Mic Drop GIF
Does cod cold war have the woke crap and pink bears running around? I want a serious cod5/mw style game. Is cold war like that?
 
COD is just the feeling of getting killed by someone in Destiny PVP that has some OP trials of osiris weapon......or getting third partied in Apex legends and shot in the back. The whole time.

Gun fights don't exist in COD. And aiming barely exists. Even when i have a good game in a COD it doesn't feel satisfying
 

HeisenbergFX4

Gold Member
COD is just the feeling of getting killed by someone in Destiny PVP that has some OP trials of osiris weapon......or getting third partied in Apex legends and shot in the back. The whole time.

Gun fights don't exist in COD. And aiming barely exists. Even when i have a good game in a COD it doesn't feel satisfying
Even when I do pull off a good game or two in COD since they reset the lobbies I always get put into a group of ESport wannabes my next couple of matches and get destroyed
 

kraspkibble

Permabanned.
i was so tired of WW2 games in 2008. the last one i enjoyed was CoD: World At War. since then if i see any game with a WW2 (or WW1) setting then that's a huge NOPE to me. well, that's not 100% correct...i did try playing Battlefield V (only because I was bored and it was part of my EA sub) but the game was a fucking mess and kept crashing. I never actually managed to get into the game :messenger_tears_of_joy:

if you want me to buy a fps game it had better be a fictional modern setting (not anything to do with afghanistan/iraq etc) or futuristic. i was excited about Battlefield 2042 but yeah that was shit. as for CoD i think the last one i played was Infinite Warfare but i quit the campaign after a couple hours. Haven't really been interested in any other titles.
 

NickFire

Member
Even when I do pull off a good game or two in COD since they reset the lobbies I always get put into a group of ESport wannabes my next couple of matches and get destroyed
Are you changing up your kits when that happens? There are definitely some pro level teams that wreck me at times. But I can usually adapt enough to end the round somewhat respectfully in defeat.

Biggest issue to me is getting put on a team that thinks objective modes should be played same as TD. I screw with those types by dropping as much smoke in their line of sight as possible.
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
I dont mind SBMM in terms of leveling out difficulty (although I also enjoy destroying noobs), but the biggest drawback is every lobby requires bogging down the lobby reloading new players, and sometimes you want to play a match with the same people all night just to see which side wins with the same people even though teams can get reshuffled.

Their SBMM algorithm is so detailed every match leads to a totally new tier of players to play against? Hard to believe. Activision could probably split their millions of gamers into just 10 tiers and that would be good enough. It would lead to much less player shuffling and it would give gamers a wide enough range within a tier.
 
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I Master l

Banned
IMO the biggest problem with Vanguard is how chaotic and fast it is, seems like the devs have decided that COD need as much action on screen at any given time to satisfy M/KB ADHD players
 
I mean.. Medal of Honor used to be the originator of cinematic war shooters. First there was still some rivalry between CoD and MoH. Then CoD hit it big time with CoD 4 (every sequel is based on this game, no matter the setting). For MoH to go and copy CoD was kinda a punch in the stomach for fans.
Again, you're not wrong, but at least they stopped before it got worse. I can still look back and feel good about a great franchise of games only having a few mediocre ones. It's actually impressive if you consider that most MoH games were yearly releases from 1999 to 2007, just like CoD, but they at least kept up a good level of quality during that run. CoD has felt like a coin flip of quality between entries ever since Modern Warfare 3.
 
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Elysion

Banned
Make a WW2 game where you play on the German side, and watch it smash all records for the novelty alone. They wouldn’t even have to spend any money on marketing, the controversy alone would be all the marketing they need.

Btw, until reading this thread I wasn’t even aware that there is already another CoD with a WW2 setting from a few years ago, lol (CoD: WW2? What an imaginative title!). Since the beginning of last gen these yearly CoD releases have started to blur together in my mind so much that I must have overlooked it. I genuinely thought World at War from 2008 was the last CoD with a WW2 setting until Vanguard. Is it any good (CoD: WW2 I mean)?
 

StreetsofBeige

Gold Member
Make a WW2 game where you play on the German side, and watch it smash all records for the novelty alone. They wouldn’t even have to spend any money on marketing, the controversy alone would be all the marketing they need.

Btw, until reading this thread I wasn’t even aware that there is already another CoD with a WW2 setting from a few years ago, lol (CoD: WW2? What an imaginative title!). Since the beginning of last gen these yearly CoD releases have started to blur together in my mind so much that I must have overlooked it. I genuinely thought World at War from 2008 was the last CoD with a WW2 setting until Vanguard. Is it any good (CoD: WW2 I mean)?
COD WWII was decent. But it didnt have a lot of maps (unless they added a bunch of free ones later that I missed).

The biggest draw was War Mode (not to be confused with Warzone). But it only had 3 maps. War Mode was a special mode where two sides play out like a 20 minute set of objective maps where if the aggressor side does the objective, the match keeps going to objective 2. There are 3 objectives per match. But if the defenders hold them off, they win.

The game was faster paced than World at War and SMGs have better accuracy too than WAW. You get killed fast too. TTK is low.
 

The_hunter

Member
Activision, ww2 is a fun setting.
They make a game in WW2, do everything to make it unappealing to ww2 fans. Then they go "Dang, ww2 why didn't it sell?":messenger_tears_of_joy:
 
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I think Activision might be right about the setting. I think its part of the reason, the biggest selling COD titles are the future ones, that install base gives a shit about a lot of that modern, future stuff.

Warms my fucking heart it does!

COD: Infinite Warfare was peak COD....!
 
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Typically when you release a mediocre game you figure out what made it mediocre in the first place then just blame something else for the failures and double down on the mediocre bits. It's industry standard these days.
 
Sounds like damage control, WW2 is great and needed now if anything since modern warfare is overused. It underperformed since COD has been milked for over a decade with the same stale gameplay.
 

FrozenFlame

Member
Eh, as much I don't care at all about Call of Duty games, I wouldn't mind if they released a World at War Remastered/Remake.
 

MacReady13

Member
How could it have possibly failed? It had a black lead character. A strong, independent women. All the hallmarks of what EVERY gamer looks for 1st and foremost in ANY game we play and especially in a game set in WW2. The game didn't fail- WE DID.
 
Sounds like damage control, WW2 is great and needed now if anything since modern warfare is overused. It underperformed since COD has been milked for over a decade with the same stale gameplay.
There is nothing wrong with the setting, this is just passing blame because they couldn't make a great game.
 
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Bigfroth

Member
Or, maybe trying to nickel & DIming players on a yearly basis is actually harder than it seems. WW2 is a fascinating setting if done right. Medal of honor 1&2 we're great games especially the sound design for the time. The first run of call of duty games we're good. I think it's there having a difficult time trying to sell people a hot pink M1 Garand to players lol. what a joke lol you got 3k people working on this geez just make a good game .
 

Goalus

Member
It underperformed due to a lack of diversity. Gamers want more progressive elements, more diversity, more equity and more inclusion.
The main characters need to announce their pronouns within the first hour of the story progression if they want to keep the franchise successful.
 

ZywyPL

Banned
WWII is a setting you want to revisit once a decade with updated visuals and that's pretty much it, and CoD WWII already did that. But you can milk to death every setting, modern time, future, they already did it before, that's what happens vwhey you hace yearly releases.
 
I disagree.

I just don't see much evidence to suggest this as the best selling WW2 titles happen to not actually be simulations, in fact I'd argue some of the worst selling WW2 titles and FPS titles in general are sims...

So...I question where the fuck are those "people" when those sims are made, its not like we are talking about something that doesn't exist lol Those fucking Steam WW2 sims should be destroying this game in sales lol I can agree that someone might be turned off by those characters, I can agree that even myself don't really play those types of titles and like realistic games.....I don't see a metric to argue THAT ITSELF is why this title did poorly by their standards, it still moved massive numbers and sold circles around those sims for us to really pretend that is the real why here...

I think Activision might be right about the setting. I think its part of the reason, the biggest selling COD titles are the future ones, that install base gives a shit about a lot of that modern, future stuff.
The peak WWW2 game setting was storming the beaches at Normandy. Basically a video game version of Saving Private Ryan. This was because that's what actually happened (storming the beaches not Private Ryan) and people loves the idea of taking part in that historic event.
 

ByWatterson

Member
That's a shame. Hope Microsoft keeps going with it - really liked these characters, especially Polina as a stone-cold Nazi murderer.
 

Reizo Ryuu

Member
I skipped it because the zombies mode was fucking trash while CW zombies is fun as fuck, so there's no reason to play vanguard.
 

EDMIX

Member
I skipped it because the zombies mode was fucking trash while CW zombies is fun as fuck, so there's no reason to play vanguard.

I read a few comments like this and I feel it supports that most might not really care about the settings but the gameplay overall. Zombies in a WWII game? The only issue most have is that it was trash or sucked etc, I don't see anyone saying they didn't buy it cause it wasn't a real depiction of WWI or some odd shit lol. So I think from what I see from the comments, a lot don't like it cause quality, a few bad features etc, not based on it not being a real WWII type thing, some, but I can't really say MOST are upset based on that as we don't even have numbers to suggest a WWII sim normally did better or something, so the zombies mode being bad has been brought up enough times to suppor that its the core elements of the game at faults vs real WW2 or not.

The peak WWW2 game setting was storming the beaches at Normandy. Basically a video game version of Saving Private Ryan. This was because that's what actually happened (storming the beaches not Private Ryan) and people loves the idea of taking part in that historic event.

True.

I think if a team with great tech is able to do that scene over in some new game, it can be a hit, but I'm not sure how much of these new gamers really, really care about those things compared to....well us lol Some of us older gamers like the old WW2 stuff like Call Of Duty 2 or Medal Of Honor or Brother's In Arms (shit needs a reboot like yesterday), but I just don't know if the new age, gen xyz alphabet people really, really care about those things.

As in, I'm sure a shit load of us will praise Band Of Brothers, gen xyz is telling you about the new Fast and Furious 22 in Space. Why should anyone be shocked that the best selling CODs are the future ones? It seems lots of us like that old time frame, but that younger generation likes that future, scifi, semi modern thing I guess. So I feel some truth exist to what Activision is saying and the zombie mode and other elements can be shit too, as in both things hurt the sales or something.
 

Warablo

Member
If people want WW 2 they'd play Hell Let Loose. Surprisingly modern combat is rare genre these days. With CoD and Battlefield shitting the bed and Rainbow Six being so old now.
 
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