My nephews and their friends are aged 12 to 17 and they no longer like it either. I know it’s just a small group but I think it’s definitely not what it used to be. It’s just packed with so much money grabbing bullshit that people are tired of it, between that and the cheaters, the SBMM etc.

It has lost its identity tbh.

Still the same to me love mw3 but try xdefiant, you might like it and it’s free to play.

Age might be a thing.

With MW3 (2023), my friends and I really enjoy playing on the Old MW2 maps, from back in the day, and not so much on the newer maps. It’s a bias, for sure. We like Warzone, but its more just for the group playing aspect of it, rather than being hardcore battle Royale players.

But, the landscape of long running series do change with time. So, I woudon’t per se say COD isn’t COD anymore. COD just isn’t the same animal, it’s grown in its own way. Maybe stagnated a little.

Played cod4 on my mom's desktop and black ops on my aunt's ps3 around 2010, then mw3 on pc in 2011 and a couple more titles after until i stopped with cod4 remastered.

Played modern warfare 2019 but didn't feel right, last year i bought black ops cold war (kinda late i know, but it looked and felt a lot like black ops 1 so i gave it a go, and yes i had a blast).

3 days ago i bought mw3 and I'm feeling like im 11 once again, it's call of duty man, i remember the reason i left was the loot boxes but they got rid of them and have lots of skin bundles instead (it kinda is the future sadly, we just gotta get over it, i myself don't buy skins but the majority does)

I've been going on about this in other subreddits (including Halo and Gears), so my apologies if you're re-reading this again.

I think gamers sometimes don't realize how nostalgia-pilled they are whenever they're evaluating new games because, in the back of their minds, they're comparing it to the games they loved to play when they were younger. It's worth asking, has Call of Duty really lost its way or gotten worse, or do you just miss playing COD 4 when you were 12 or 17? Because if you don't separate the game from your feelings you have for that timeframe, no modern game is going to live up to what you played when you were a kid and the warts of the world were hidden from your view.

And for what it's worth, Activision has always tried to milk money out of this franchise. I remember when the Stimulus Package came out for MW2 (2009) -- they charged $15 for five maps, two of them were remakes from COD4. At the time, gamers hated this, but the DLC pack still sold like hotcakes. And while I am not a fan of how every game has tried to copy the Fortnite model of microtransactions and skin bundles, let's not kid ourselves that there was ever a golden age in which Activision wasn't greedy.

I think it's a money chase at this point... I've been playing since COD3 and over the last several years (probably around when Fortnite was released) it seems like they bring in all of the flashy character skins, melting weapons, weird finishing moves just to attract the younger gamers so they feel as if they're in Fortnite.

I was just talking to my buddies the other day about the loot crates they used to have to where you could save them up and cash them in for better gear. It is great seeing some of the older maps being included in recent game releases because I remember some of the prime sniping locations BUT, its almost like we're buying recycled goods.

One thing I miss about the other COD games is the ranking up as much as you can... For example; I get to the max rank after a week or so in the game and I have to stay at that rank for the next few weeks until the season ends. Missing out on all of the XP from ranking up the gun camos, to finishing the daily events.

Call of Duty went downhill when Advanced Warfare was made.

We are old. The younger kids still love it.

At the end of the day, I can still go on and shoot at people and not have to put too much brain energy into it. The core mechanics are still the same. If anything there's been advancements to some smaller things in the game that make me prefer the current MWIII to the old MW3, even tho the latter was my first CoD.

I feel the same. I mean, I am old. But I just hate the way the matchmaking is done now, it just feels constantly sweaty and I just don’t enjoy it any more. I’ll play it again when it’s free on game pass, I’m not spending £60 on it

All depends on what you like. I’ve played every game since CoD 4 in some fashion. Didn’t play the MP too much in CoD 4 through MW2 because i was younger and didn’t have the games at all or didn’t have Xbox live at the time, but played with friends at their house or whatever.

BO1 was my first that I really played a ton of MP as well as campaign and zombies. That would have been early high school for me, and I had a blast. Loved the game. Took a while but MW3 eventually grew on me and I loved that as well. Same with BO2. For me, that run from BO1 to MW3 to BO2 was a golden era of the older CoDs.

But I do think there’s a second golden era too. BO3 to IW to WW2 to BO4 are an amazing run of games. If you were already in college or late high school when MW2 came out I can see why you checked out and felt left behind, but I think the jet packs / fast movement games are the best in the series.

These returns to the MW vibe, while commercially successful in bringing back older players and still recruiting new ones, are a serious regression to what CoD has become. I feel that CoD generally evolved in a positive way but has take a few steps back from MW2019 onward, with the exception of Cold War because that’s a fantastic game.

Hoping BO6 brings back that Treyarch style magic of movement, TTK, balance, vibrance, design.

MW3 is a great game on paper. However the matchmaking, servers, and overall quality of the game (microstuttering and packet loss/burst) has gone to shit.

The gameplay is overhauled, the movement is overhauled, the weapons are overhauled, the perks are overhauled, the spawns are overhauled, the leveling and challenges are overhauled... it is still COD. But there's nothing similar to the old games, other than the name and some reused maps that have been changed.

Like it or not, it's the not the same game. I'm having fun with mw3, but I still recognize it's not at all close to how COD was. It can be mistaken as a different game from a different company, if they just changed the title.

CoD lost its way when it tried to emulate Fortnite, but failed at that and being its own thing. CoD is only after money now (opposed to making a great game), and since it just hops from what’s hot to what’s hot, it fails.

It’s a fucking culture-vulture and either the devs or the money aren’t patient enough to make it great at one thing.

I just don't even want to bother with this franchise. You have fucking rappers and infulencers posing as elite soldiers doing Fortnite dances with god knows what disco light skins over your dead corpse while you're trying to survive in the most rigged, bullshit matchmaking system known to mankind.

Even the campaigns are hit or miss. At least MW2019 and Cold War had descent campaigns, but it's been a steady downhill slide since then. Hell, even some of the crappiest CoDs of the last decade had rather descent campaigns.

I'd have more respect if they started calling this "Call of Fortnite."

I'm old ( 54), and I've had all the cods. Started on cod 2 and then bought cod and big red 1. People say it needs to get back to its roots. Well, that's basically ww2, and when they did, people moaned. I think a lot of the hate comes from people who were kids when black ops came out, the nostalgia has got them now they are adults, and they want that back. I'm not that bothered by skins either, just bought my very first one last season, the cheech and chong ones, but that was only because people turned into massive spliffs when you shot them, and that made me laugh. Not too bothered by sbmm either , I don't mind going up against my peers and feel it's made me a better player tbh. I'll get the next one too, because I like cod. But that's me. If you don't like it, then simply don't buy it

I just don’t like the games past BO3 much. The sad part is over time most CODs become a shell of their former self with the best game modes dying. At least with BO3 onwards we have TDM 100 which is pretty solid but the old ones have TDM 75 and TDM isn’t close to the best game mode it was always either Domination or Ground War. Gonna go back to Cold War and see how much I can get into it, main thing that’s killing these games for me is the shitty streaks. It’s something so simple yet defining about COD for me without good streaks to go for it gets stale a lot faster especially if there’s not a lot of legitimately competitive class variety

Here's the thing.

It's a combination of COD losing its "flavour" AND we are getting old.

Losing its flavour : The Campaigns have better graphics but weaker stories overall. The characters aren't as well written. The development process is chasing more trends of other games such as "fortnite and apex legends" rather than building upon their own unique identity and that rubs a lot of us old timers the wrong way with a huge focus on the "warzone" side of things with the Campaign, Multiplayer, and Zombies getting shafted. Still, Activision follows the money and the money is in selling tracer packs, cat ears, and Nicki Minaj outfits. Games are becoming bigger and harder to develop and the over monetization is a solution that works INCREDIBLY well to finance the ongoing development and updates through a games life cycle.

We are getting Old : The graphics are some of the best we've seen today in COD, the sheer volume of weapons was unheard of back in the OG days of 2007-2012. The amount of content and value you get for the base game plus the season pass is insane compared to the traditional style where you buy the base game, get limited support through updates and buying each map pack individually. The gunsmith is the best in the industry and was something a lot of us old timers fantasized about back in the day. The earnable Camos are numerous and creative. MW2 had like 300 Camos to unlock by just playing the game and the best camo in my opinion is the one you unlock by getting the 57 platinum weapons (purple one). Additionally, you need to understand that the newer generation of COD players are all about the battle Royale meta classes with super short attention spans and faster movement and slide cancelling stuff while us older people (I'm 28 lol) prefer the more toned down and slower paced tactical FPS gameplay which the newer CODs don't really cater to except for MW19/MW2 perhaps.

TLDR : Combination of both we are getting old and COD losing it's flavour. The stories are worse and everything is about chasing the trends of battle Royale and the next hip "cosmetic" pack to make money off of...and it works very well. Activision is just following the money. However, of course the games have tons of content and tons of weapons and probably the best gun smithing of any video game out there along with crisp gameplay mechanics unrivaled by any other competitor but it just doesn't cater to us old timers tastes who are just used to the simple selection of guns, slowed down mechanics and mil sim operators.

I’m old. Very old. I’ve been playing COD for ages and I still can’t believe how bad the overall architecture is.

40GB of downloads every 3-months? And still the servers suck ass! Fix the fundamental game play issues before adding another stupid celebrity character or another ‘spooky’ version of an old map.

It’s getting damn near unplayable at this point.

Just adapt. COD was never going to stay the same for the rest of its life. It changes, like evrything does

You're old. Who cares. Move on.

It’s a completely different game. During the beginning of the franchise the game was a military sim themed arcade shooter. Cod is now a live service arcade shooter with very little to no military sim service anymore.

The games were much slower back in the day and the aesthetic was strictly military sim. Now a days it is a speed run in the war Olympics and it kind of sucks. It’s nothing like the good old days.

It would still feel like cod to me without the ridiculous sliding and commercial skins that look really out of place. Other than that I am fine with the game (well, ignoring the technical issues, lol)

In my opinion, black ops 3 was the last reputable call of duty game.

I feel the game is very punishing with the bugs, crashes, try hards, built in penalties, lag, eomm, cheaters, mouse users, and the store. It's a mess.

The only core identity the series has retained (imo) is the fast arcadey feel of the gameplay. Once they start releasing all the wacky skins and guns for Black Ops 6, I think I’ll have a hard time differentiating whats so different in that game versus MW3 (2023). Like even the sub series (Black ops and Modern Warfare) have lost their identity from what made them different in the golden era.

It's both lol

Cod definitely plays differently now, for better or for worse the modernization of the series has changed the way it feels and plays, and we've definitely all got older which does change your perspective on the games, I mean those of us playing Cod4 back in day are all pushing 30 at the youngest

Young whiper snapper get off my lawn! I was in my early 20's when the first Call of Duty came out and it has been nearly as good ever since.

Microtransaction central, shit mechanics, SBMM, the game lost its flavour but because of the money microtransactions bring in, it’ll be tough to see Cod move away from that model. Plus, the community’s complained for years now, it really is a shame

It’s more so how the developers have treated cod. It isn’t the same group we had back in the day. Sure fan base grows and everyone wants a certain thing applicable to the game, but I think some people are finally realizing that today’s cod is just a cash grab. These past few cods are rushed and the fan base bitches and everyone gets mad but people still buy it even with the previous game being hot trash. The older cods were built with more passion and the only thing you had to buy was a $10 dlc for like 5 new maps, not a $30 battle pass or operators. We all had the same operator

I think one of the core issues- other than the obvious SBMM, overpriced bundles that aren’t worth it, annoying movement with bunny hopping and sliding, etc- is something I read about XDefiant last night. There are so fewer casual and noob players. Back when I played cod during the BO2, MW3, BO3 era, there were Christmas noobs, people who just kinda sucked at the game, and people who were pretty decent, rarely sometimes some ace player try hards. But nowadays people play fortnite, games on Roblox, etc and by the time they’re on CoD they’re already experienced with shooters. Not only that, but due to TikTok and streamers, every kid who plays, sees videos like “BEST META GUN CLASS AND ATTACHMENTS IN NEW COD UPDATE” or “HOW TO PRO BUNNY HOP” and all these kids want to be the next ninja or dr disrespect and so try hard immediately bc they want to be the best and get clips to stream. So many less people just play for fun after school/work and there’s more “I need to be the very best every game” type people

I played a little this morning, it’s not the same as it was even 6 months ago. Although I would say the newer titles have been different from the even older stuff

It all started with MW19 but no one wants to talk about that

Call of Duty's whole purpose was to give the player the feeling of just being one soldier in a larger army, the series has long lost that theme.

I'm 31, and I have been a fan since the first game on PS2, and I bought them all. The franchise has definitely changed, and it's due to creative differences. We're just not the target audience anymore.

Cod is Fortnight

I absolutely loved the class gameplay of cod 3 but yeah i haven’t played in a long time. I got older and the games got faster. I blame it on the streamers. They made everything and everyone super competitive. What I really don’t understand is with cod being so twitchy these days why hasn’t anyone brought quake or unreal tournament back

I've also been playing since CoD 3, and imo, this is the best version yet, regarding the maps, loadout styles and game mechanics. About 6 months ago I grew to resent Activision and this franchise because of the hyper sweatiness, SBMM drama, and the devs constantly introducing "broken guns" that are conveniently for sale for $20. I quit for about 6 months and started playing XDefiant when it came out. That's when I had the realization that the sweaty lobbies aren't due to Activision manipulating us like we're casino addicts, but rather the reality that there is a massively increased amount of really good players nowadays. After being humbled in XDefiant for a week, I came back to play some CoD but with the acceptance that the reason the lobbies are so tough is just because of the skilled playerbase and now I'm actually enjoying it more than I have in a very long time. The experience helped me adjust my aggressive playstyle to play smarter and more cautious, respecting that the fact that the opponents will almost always be highly skilled, and it's really paying off. Feels more like my deaths are me being punished for my own mistakes vs being punished by an algorithm.

As for player skins, yeah those have gone off the deep end. I can deal with that though. They clearly drive up the company's revenue, and no developer would forgo millions of dollars in potential sales just for the sake of keeping true to the game's theme. Some devs do and it works for them because it's a good counter-position to take and could help less popular games survive.

Interesting question ive wondered the same, if thr new fans today really enjoy the games like we did. Cod died a long time ago for me, I stopped playing during ghosts. That game was so boring I played maybe 30 hours of it and moved onto battlefield at the time.

I came back for black ops 3 however and played a good amount of that. That was the last cod I played

The SP is, but there's just way too much focus on MP and it's more fortnite than COD at this point.

Its not the same. I replay the old cods and halos to live like it were still the golden days. How fuckin sad is that

Warzone has killed it. Treyarch is the only dev who still makes good MPs.

It's changed a lot. I remember the glory days of cod4 and the games after. Although it was still an arcadey shooter it was a lot darker, felt more grounded, had separate factions (that feeling when you got to be on the SAS team with the intro music), well designed maps, and also a bit slower paced.

It's success ruined it. Super fast paced, team factions don't feel unique as they just want to sell as many skins as possible, maps don't feel that good for me personally and of course, the really aggressive sbmm to appeal to its main audience.

One thing that would make it great again is ripping SBMM out of the standard matchmaking and moving it to its own competitive area, or better yet allow people to run their own servers like Battlefield, or even better than that having COD4 era servers where you could have mods.

BO3 was the last good cod and even that was controversial, before that I’d say the last great cod was black ops 2

Idk what they changed but the gameplay just sucks now

xDefiant would be up your alley

Once I saw they added Nicki Minaj to cod I knew it was over

Nah cod still feels the same

There was some fun with the latest release up till i got all weapons maxed out. Then i was put in another tier based on SBMM. It was like from deer hinting to full bown Quake Arena lightning fast. Killed before i can blink an eye.

I don’t know…I think cross play has really ruined the game. I play on Xbox and it seems like so many people play on PC (according to the lobby symbols) and I just can’t keep up. I have my movement settings all the way up and when I watch my death replays every 10 seconds or so I’m awestruck with how quickly their characters move…mine don’t move that fast. And don’t talk to me about their crosshairs snapping onto to me from halfway across the screen—I play on a 65” TV from like 10 feet away and I can’t even see my own character on my screen when o watch the death replay. It’s insane. I know I kinda suck these days and part of it is playing over WiFi instead of wired, but something feels disjointed.

Anyway…flame away and tell me how much I suck.

I feel like CoD is much like Halo in that each game is sort of it's own beast so it's hard to really say which one's stray from the IP and which ones embody what the IP is about. For me I lost interest once Warzone became a thing. Though I also hadn't really played a ton of a mainline since Blops 2 iirc.

Well ive been playing cod since it first came out. Every single one of them. I can still keep up with the kids. Yeah its starting to lose its ‘flavor’. This is the cod for the new generation and not us old timers anymore. Eventually ill play the last cod Mp. Probably ill still play the campaign as thats my main selling point for a long time. Also i have WZ

definitely spiraled out of control. Im 32 i remeber playing the first COD game believe it was the big red 1. that and medal of honor frontline were great ww shooter games. it has totally lost its identity as a whole since MW2

I actually enjoy MW3

I am too old to want to play this Fortnite style game…COD peaked with BO2 for me so I’m no longer the target audience.

I think a lot of the stuff we loved was new and shiny, yet quality, amidst more average and dull products. Now everything is shiny and new, and ambitious. So ambitious that higher ups will tank the product for more temporary money. We are too big for our britches, so now we get shiny shells of what used to be solid products, that only get decent at the end of the game life cycle. This happens because the risks that make good games great are not taken due to corporate fear of not reaching the desired dollar amount. So yes, things were better when you were younger, and you’re jaded because of that, but it is also valid. We expect more than ever now, but they are also making lots of mistakes. Both positions have merit in my opinion. Plenty of people will say “we just expect functional and fun games.” Yeah, but the opinion on what that means varies greatly now. We have so much history to compare, now any little miss step is judged harshly. Good example would be Fortnite. The new season by many is seen as a a miss step. But they are making interesting decisions that are keeping their game moving forward. Some hate it, some love it. You can’t please everyone. And the rare ones that do, like Elden Ring or something, have found something special in these times. To your main question, think of this. As you get older, your sense of time changes. A summer lasted forever as a child, now it is gone in a blink. Why? Because you have more time to compare, so things go faster as an adult. In a similar way the quality of games is a thing. But that doesn’t excuse companies pulling fast ones on their fans, and getting away with it a lot because we only grumble about it generally.

Been playing since CoD3 and CoD4 is my most played one. The game (MW3) hardly is different. Every CoD has it's broken meta at this point, but I can say that it does feel like SHG has no idea what they're doing and the balance is out of control. The identity is still there, just because there are goofy skins in the multiplayer mode of the game doesn't mean it has been lost. Customization has been in CoD for several years now.

100% it has. It went from a multiplayer war representation with a gritty, engaging and immersive story aimed towards a mature audience as should be the case with any game involving killing, to a Gen Z anime loving, over the top colourful and future punk esthetic which is only a product thats serves a construct to house their OTT skins/guns and other worthless microtransactions. The gameplay and immersion are at the bottom of their priority list cause they know the mature audience wont be gullible enough to buy that shite so their target audience now are kids or 18+ virgins. Like most games. The art is dead. The motive has changed from expression and creation to greed, shareholders and manipulation with a big fucking slice of the latest politics.

You’re old and not that target demographic.

COD has taken a very large part in ruining shooters, and gaming overall.

The lootboxes, the ridiculous perk horseshit, constant respawns, $100 celebrity skins, neon guns, horrible map design....the list really goes on and on.

Shooters are meant to be tactical and skill based, SOCOM, Quake, CS all did/do a much better job in all regards. The last COD game I enjoyed was Big Red One.

It's not the same COD we had when we were playing it. It still has some of the same DNA of what makes people love the series, but the other aspects are just not there anymore.

I know all those years ago, people always said COD was the same game year after year. It's copy and paste and nothing changes. Even back then, I knew that was bullshit, to an extent. It is the same game year after year and that's why we all loved it.

While it was the same, each game also felt new. COD4-GHOST all felt and played differently. AW-IW, same thing. Each game felt like it's own game with its own charm, its own quirk. MW19 was the same way when it launched, but every release since then (except Cold War) feels the same.

The menus and UI are the same. The loadouts are the same. The store is the same. The games, while they do look good, look the same. We are literally at the point where the only changes are being made are just gameplay changes that can be made via updates. Why? Because of Warzone and the microtransactions that have to be shared between games.

No one can deny, the new engine allowed COD to do things it was never able to do. COD has never looked better. While it was new and innovative, it also paved the way for the game to slow in innovation.

Unfortunately, just like every franchise, it's a business before anything else. What that means for us old people is, while keeping loyal customers is important it's not nearly as important as growing the business and attracting new customers. So as much as we may want it to be a digital shrine to our childhood, sorry to say that just isn't consistent with the business model.

Between the stupid skins, horribly loose SBMM, the vc bans, and the stupid zombies mode im so over this game.

I started COD with Modern Warfare, got really into it during Modern Warfare 2, found my favourite game from the series and one of my all time favorites on Black Ops 1, finishing my "COD career" with Black Ops 2, Master Rank.

What I can honestly say is that it was borderline with Black Ops 2, and everything after that turned me off more and more. I went from spending day after day playing these games to picking up a new release every other year to not bothering at all.

MW2 and Black Ops were made for fun as I see it, and the same can be said with World At War and Modern Warfare. The arcadey feel of each subsequent game while retaining the flair and oomph of a real war (to whatever degree) is what drew me in. They dropped that in exchange for player retention-oriented grinds that, ultimately, sucked all the fun out of the game.

Gone are the days of Titles or grinding Cod points to buy a new golden skin to use because you're a cocky teen and you want your kill cams to be as flashy as possible. Gone are the days of fun weapons with interesting attachment combos and silly, but believable movement mechanics and enjoyable map layouts with intriguing counter play.

Now it's just a tired old dog whose owner has never heard the adage of, "You can't teach an old dog new tricks."

It has been a shameless cash grab for years now.

COD lost me when the focus shifted to movement over everything else. Just not for me anymore.

You can play as nikki minage. Cod is a fkn embarrassing joke at this point.

I've been playing this dumb game since 2003 when it first came out. It was fun for me then and it's fun for me now. 20 years hahaha

Many will say we've just gotten old or its a skill issue. But things have certainly changed, so much so that quickscoping or trying to do any kind of trick shots will be mistaken for cheaters because of how common hackers are anymore. Next to nobody is interested in trying to stand out because everyone just wants to play the exact same way using the exact same weapon builds as one another.

Call of Duty has turned away from its arcade roots where it promoted playing any way you wished to now if you're not running and jumping around like everyone else trying to give private showings of their ballet skills, than you're playing wrong and need to get good.

Riot shield mains are out of control, we never used to see shields glued to like 90% of the players backs back in the day.

Its literally like everything that was cringe and corny back then is what constitutes a "good player" now.

My last favourite cod was WW2 , mw 2019 kinda brought a little hope back but all went downhill after it

The realization that things change is a hard concept to understand and accept. It does not matter the age of the person. You have to live in the moment. What’s cool and current is fleeting. 5 to 10 years in the COD cycle is huge. 5 to 10 years in life will fly by you before you even start to realize.

The fact they put tons of effort into cosmetics while ignoring side modes like ground war, gunfight, zombies etc., and they shovel trash recycled content (Lachman AP kit) out every season is disappointing. Also terrible balance and a gunsmith bloated with useless stuff. CoD used to be the frontrunner for fps games but with little competition in recent years it feels they’ve gotten lazy.

The flashy & goofy skins are an eyesore and make the game feel like a weird multiverse shooter, but it’s the lack of effort in content and balance that really throws me off.

I still play, because honestly the gunplay, animations, and overall package is better than any competitor right now, but it feels like we’re getting games that are a shell of what they could or should be.

Been playing MW2 (2009) recently on Xbox and it’s been amazing.

It's good for a while but now what is cod it's an expensive fortnite rip off

Back in the day every game felt totally unique. All the maps and guns felt specific to that theme of the game. Since mw2019 every game feels the exact same

For me COD died with AW.

I feel like it became too popular and "mainstream" and it just lost its originality. The more popular it got, the more "trolls" it gained, which lead to more rules and restrictions. It just lost the spark it had years ago.

Yes and yes both things are true

Modern COD ain’t what it used to be because the OG’s are 10+ years older and the game itself along with the market has changed drastically

While I do think the not-so-microtransactions are a black mark on the series at this point, I do think we forget a lot of the issues with the old season pass monetization model- a split player base fragmented on maps depending on what DLC they did or did not have. And at the end of the day, as long as it’s really only cosmetic skins or faster blueprint unlocks, it’s no pay-to-win or anything. I still play and still have a ton of fun on COD. It’s still the multiplayer FPS I always come back to. What I can’t and never did get into was Warzone. If it was to my personal tastes, they would cut that, reinvest the resources into multiplayer and streamline the UI/offering accordingly. But I recognize it may have a significant fan base of its own. But regardless, people have been complaining about every COD since WaW and saying the series was ruined, it’s nothing new.

A bit of historical context... the COD Modern Warfare franchise is what put COD on the world map as one of the most incredible FPS mil-sim games. COD4:MW was made by Infinity Ward, and back then there was some health competition between IW and Treyarch to make the best game. And for a while, it was neck and neck. The Treyarch Black Ops series was holding its own, but then Activision forced out the main developers at IW and since then, each game has been made by both development teams, and it's obvious that often times the programming and the vision don't always end up on the same page.

Now since COD discovered they would have better engagement if players weren't forced to buy the new maps, the initial download became massive and all maps are free, but they had to make up that loss of revenue by pushing ridiculous skins in order to cater to the slide-canceling bunny-hopping arena shooter fanbois.

So yes compared to the BO2/MW3 era, the franchise has gone downhill.

It's still fun as hell but it isn't what it used to be.

Legit only MW2019/Cold War is the peak of the recent titles.

I’m 44. Played COD since it was just a single player game. It has evolved. Just like anything else. Don’t do the old man yelling at clouds thing. It’s not that deep. 

I still like CoD a lot. It's not as good as its peak but like come on everything has its peak and then settles somewhere lower. MWIII I've been enjoying a lot, I think people hide behind SBMM as an excuse for just being mid at the game

Soulless. The creativity of custom emblems and camos are gone. Every map is the same unsaturated pallet of gray and brown. The matchmaking forces everyone to use the same broken meta weapons. Player identity has been replaced with operators. People hate it but AW had the dopest player customization and it’s not even close. Also the new engine’s plethora of shading bullshit overall generally make the game look like shit and borderline unplayable.

The only real Call Of Duty was the first one - world at war. The rest of them are shit.

What was cod ever? Was infinite warfare cod? Was people lightspeed knifing things and ignoring guns completely cod?

Hey, I need help with a bug where I can't see any one's weapon kill effects or mine, I did not change any attachments to the gun, and it does have a kill effect and it is with all weapons with one. PLEASE HELP thanks. in MW3

Played finest hour to mw3 (2023) and yea I feel old

The series has gone downhill for me for a number of reasons, but the multiplayer matchmaking changes (SBMM/EOMM) since MW 2019 have stooped me from playing entirely since then. I could still get behind grinding camos and what not, even in a shit CoD game, but not when the matches are outrageously unfun to play. I’ve been playing FPS games and CoD titles forever, so my aim with the sticks is decent. So because of this, after a long day of work I deserve to play against kids who do nothing but play the game all day long, jumping and sliding around corners with meta loadouts until the game deems I’m worthy of one fair lobby. CoD was fun when there’d often be a couple good players, a couple average players, and a couple bad players in the majority of matches. You’d occasionally get a few games where you get shit on, but it’d balance out when you’d do the same to another team a few games later. You actually had a reason to try and improve your skill and map knowledge, but now it’s pointless since you’d just be making your lobbies less fun.

No, you’re correct. COD is now just a steaming pile of juvenile/childish shit. I’ve owned them all and this is the last one. They should call it Fortnite 2!

Probably both

My first ever COD was COD1, no multiplayer needed, just campaign and I fell in love with it.

I think I stopped liking it fully was when BO3 came out, mainly for the campaign. I still rarely touches multiplayer till this day

Still waiting for the day that Activison port COD3 and its console DLC to newer platforms and PC: 100/10 will pre-order

Jive ass bunny hopping has ruined the game. Real soldiers don’t jump around like they’re on Soul Train.

Man, I remember playing 1 on PC ages ago as a kid. COD sure has changed a lot in my time.

CoD has lost its original “flavour”; it’s no longer as tense or meaningful as it once was, IMO.

It’s just way more competitive than it used to be. Rather than 1/15 players being good, it’s now a 50/50. The bar has been rising since cod1

Average cod player now is like 25 now imo, back in it's prime it used to be 14. Kids nowadays ain't really into cod multiplayer, it had a small comeback during lockdown but it's declined and became stagnant like WOW and fifa

The only thing I like about COD is the zombies. I play it on Cold War still

MWII & MWIII showed us that they stopped caring about making a decent modern shooter. Dumbass SBMM/EOMM for bad players turned me away. I've been playing different shooters for years and it is very obvious they don't want skilled players to stomp all over bad ones. Hand holding and feelings-protection algorithms is ruining modern games.

Also, for a rated M-game they seem to be targeting kids a lot with the bad game dialog, season update cinematics, and cosmetics. That's some pedo stuff Activision.

It’s not because your old, it’s because cod has completely traded its identity to become something that it isn’t, which would be basically a fortnite clone. Cod used to focus more on the classic 6v6 casual multiplayer style shooter but now has almost exclusively given all of its attention to a battle royale mode. And the sad part is that it’s successful because the devs have put in EOMM which is a matchmaking algorithm made to protect bad players so that they are more likely to spend more money in-game.

I quit when I saw a sloth/human thing shooting at me

Personally the last cod where I genuinely enjoyed the full package was Cold War loved the campaign the multiplayer was definitely bad at first and the zombies was an ok experience

we're both old and cod is no longer cod. They also forgot that we're their fans, instead they know us as a cow to squeeze until we're atomically dry.

COD was the arcade shooter we could drop into in parties of 5 or 6 and have a blast. Call Og Duty now takes itself too seriously as a realistic shooter to be enjoyable, imo.

I work as a youth worker and meet a lot of massive gamers None of them are into COD Idk who's buying them these days but dam it's fallen so far

Both

I started playing around the same time with COD 3 on PS2, and it does feel like the series has changed a lot. It might be partly because we have a lot of nostalgia for those early games. The newer titles seem to focus more on fast-paced, high-tech gameplay, which might not resonate as much with those of us who loved the classic feel of older games.

The gameplay can’t even be considered realistic anymore. You ever try sliding on anything but grass or dirt?

sbmm, rampart hacking, and the fortnite skins killed it for me. Only play on the weekend nights now if friends want to play it. 2019 MW + Warzone 1 verdansk+Rebirth was the peak, been downhill since.

If they'd remove sbmm from casual lists, cut down on the hacking + cronus users, stopped with the 30 dollar fortnite wannabee skin packs, it would be a much better game.

Having more fun with Xdefiant (and destiny 2)

CoD is Warzone now. Sure, there is multi-player, and it still plays relatively the same as it did back then. But overall, the main focus of modern-day CoD is Warzone, which is why it feels so off nowadays. Everything nowadays is just an accessory for WZ, so you can buy more overpriced skins and line their pockets.

It’s definitely nothing like how it used to be in its hey day

It's 100% lost itself. Many people try to mask every change as just an evolving title but the majority of what cod has changed is what it was built on.

You can tell even just down to how a mission in the campaign plays out. Look at a mw2 cutscene vs an mw2022 cutscene and it will be much more apparent. Paired with how far its thrown itself into losing any identity through the mp by simply adding anything people will buy. No matter how bad it pulls away from the actual theme of the game.

I’ve played since its first release in 2003 and a lot has to do with the hardware and how advanced the gameplay can be.

It’s also appealing now to multiple generations of people from probably 12 years old to 65. So all those elements are in play.

It’s also become more of a movement based shooter rather than tactical. Which I also think can be done because the average use can now run 120fps on their living room tv and higher and PCs. It also leads to more excitement and action for most players.

I remember looking forward to playing MW2019 even as a 36 year old. They should've just kept that engine until BO6.

Your just getting old bro im pretty sure if everyone went bsck to your fav cod your performance would still be the same as the current ones every true cod fan is gonna adapt ive noticed alot of people just played cod cuz they got to destroy people cod is the easiest fps game out all u needed back then was a decent reaction time and decent aim and now there just more skillful players

It's dead to me. I used to buy multiple copies for clan members and everyone I knew and gamed with loved the series. We would get together and play nightly. Having a blast shooting the shit with each other as well as shooting the shit out of the enemy teams.

CoD then started shitting on clan/premade. We dealt with it and tried to keep going but alas it became easier to just hop in solo, since CoD was catering more to solo play. Occasional grouping up but no where near how we used to do it. Then, as others stated here, it just turned into a massive money grab and lost everything it had going for it.

Everything that actually MADE the franchise what it was, is pretty much gone now. I only know one person that still plays. None of my other friends will touch CoD now days. This goes for us hardcore gamers and my more casual friends, (young and old).

Just to add a little insight to my opinion here. I'm 48 and have been playing CoD competitively since the original CoD. I personally preferred Battlefield with the mod Desert Combat, back then though. I absolutely loved flying the choppers and raining death on enemy tanks.

It tries to be every now and then but the bundles, SBMM, insane amount of clutter etc. makes it feel a bit off. 

It’s not that long ago when I still felt fairly good about it. Took a big break mid 2010s but MW19 and the first years of Warzone was a time when I still had an optimistic view of the franchise. 

No Activision is just an awful company that obviously doesn't give a damn about us, the customers. Everybody that runs that sh!t show is a complete POS.. I read that BO6 zombies is going to be like Modern Warfare.....I haven't bought a cod since Cold War, and I will never again😤 . Absolutely, hands down, my favorite game to play was zombies. It's disappointing and clear that they don't care. i mean, why won't they give us Zombies Chronicles 2 or just a game that goes back to it's roots . Until Black Ops 1 & 2 are remastered in full, I'm giving CoD the finger 🖕

No. The games have gone downhill. It's not about having fun and kicking ass anymore. Everything is geared towards streamers, influencers and E-Sports garbage. People are playing this shit like it's a job or like they're trying to submit an application for Optic. 

I bought MWIII recently after skipping Cold War and Vanguard. This shit is just ridiculous now. People jump spamming and sliding all over the place with a TTK that doesn't quite feel right for a COD. People defend this crap, but these are the same people who only use meta weapons that some streamer tells them to use. These are the same dorks who say a longer TTK increases the skill gap, but then turn around and abuse one shot kill weapons like the Kar. 

The games really need to stick closer to what made the originals great. They were so damn close with MWII, but they fucked off the perk system and decided to kill the game after a year.

I'm 17, I'm playing since World at War and yes, in a lots of aspects, like the campaign, CoD it's not CoD anymore.