DukeOfLuke

Well all be damn, your right as usually. So yeah its good but still without some ee then we get confused. So some parts of the ee are good while sometimes it's not. bro the confusion and speculation of not having the story thrown in our faces blatantly is what made shi no numa, five, der reise, kino, and ascension such good maps. they all had so many little details that we could speculate and come up with our own theories that treyarch would read and incorporate into their maps. plus the little easter eggs add more atmosphere than the large ones you know?

if you mess with the ionosphere you are messing with the magnetic field of the earth. do that, and yes, you can move tectonic plates. as for weather control, if you drop plenty of metal oxides into the atmosphere, then excite them with some kind of waves, possibly from HAARP, you can change condensation and evaporation patterns, creating droughts in one area and intense storms in another. look up chemtrails, particularly the documentary "what in the world are they spraying" sounds and is ridiculous, but if anything it deserves consideration rather than to be laughed at for being too stereotypical of a conspiracy theory.

Okay i dont know who else has felt like this lately, but since black ops was released, zombies has taken a direction that i can only describe as lackluster and gimmicky. First of all, i am not saying i dont like Moon or Shangri-La or COTD, but i can say firmly that i do not like them nearly as much as the W@W maps. Why is this? the Easter Eggs are more over-the-top, the guns are insane, there have been new perks and creative bosses, challenging map mechanics, and so on. This is what i have been thinking. Maybe i have lost interest? but that doesnt explain why Der Riese is so fun after three years. This thread is dedicated to answer these questions, and Treyarch i sincerely hope you are reading this. First and most important factor that is sticking out to me, is the overall lack of aesthetic creepiness and mysteriousness. How is this? The easter eggs are bigger, the bosses are more fearsome, there are different zombie types, etc. But i am sure we all feel less shaken by the new maps than the W@W maps. Honestly the last map to remotely drew me into the setting was Ascension, and this one was a bit weak. So what happened? i think personally that the problem originates of the easter egg being reduced to a single gigantic fetch-quest, along with a few radios and a song. other than that there is about nothing in these maps. In DR, the easter eggs were everywhere, in the sounds, textures, surfaces, walls, characters, etc. Also they were there not for the sake of the story and just the story, but to make the map feel more deep and enriched and creepy. I personally spent months looking for cool little tidbits in the W@W maps, and found plenty. and also the W@W easter eggs allowed room for speculation, and now we are just told what is happening directly by the fetch quest, and then we stop guessing and lose interest. Conclusion: Treyarch, the fetch-quests are cool, but let us come up with crazy ideas, dont just tell us. Fan-fiction is often cooler than that which is made by you guys, sorry. Give us hints, not a full-on event. I loved feeling like a detective in DR. I will continue by analyzing the probably the most integral yet forsaken part of the map, the starting area. Let us first analyze the change in how it feels to go through early rounds from NDT to Moon. In NDT, you are given time to prepare, the zombies creep in, and you only have to leave after you begin to become overrun. It is like the fun moment of target practice before it descends into chaos. How about Moon? quite the contrary. It first throws the zombies at you at an alarming rate, with a high risk of death before round one. Then on top of that after you make it to the moon for round one, you have to rush to the air mask, and then you have to refrain from grenade use and avoid the freaking boss from round one in a pretty small room, oh and you can easily lose control of your movement. NDT starting rounds are for preparing for the oncoming shitstorm, while in Moon they are frustrating if anything. Same goes for Shangri-La, with its complete lack of space and visibility due to overdone plant growth everywhere. Also in Call of the Dead, Gorge begins pestering you and there is no way to keep the zombies out. obviously we can see things have gotten out of hand here. So i am going to tell you what aspects i think make a good starting area. Firstly, there should be no kinds of gimmicks, especially ones that pose a challenge until round 4 at the earliest, or until the character goes to a certain area and does a certain thing (like turn on the power). Next, there should be two weapons, but not like in Blops. In blops we get two unequally shitty weapons at the same price to chose from. In W@W, you could get a bolt-action at round one and probably get enough points for a decent M1A1 by the end of round 1. The M14 sucks, btw, because it takes too long to reload at the rate your clip will be depleted. Also you should be able to keep the zombies out, by watching windows, and 4 of them should be there. The area should lack in choke points and places you can get caught on. Lastly, the area needs to be open but make you feel trapped. In call of the dead, you feel free, but there are choke points everywhere and the zombies are popping out of the ground. In NDU, you feel trapped but you can keep the zombies at a distance easily. this makes makes gameplay bearable and the aesthetics super creepy and disparate, highly important in keeping a map rewarding. Next i am going to talk about weapons. This one is going to be short. The wall guns in Blops all suck past round 15, and suck upgraded past round 22. Black ops maps pretty much make you rely on the box, which was avoidable in past maps like DR up to round 28 pretty much, especially if you were kiting. we should be able to rely on wall guns for a reasonable amount of time, and there should be more than just a few great weapons from the box. How about a kick-ass smg like the PPSH-41? also why is it that pretty much everything but wonderweapons becomes useless after round 30? even the freaking hk21 upgraded???? this is some BS. i like being able to have more strategies, and that means having more than just the raygun to rely on. next i will talk about enemies. i prefer that bosses shouldnt come at the same time as zombies unless all they do is hit you a bit, like dogs, and should be only for one round every now and then. No more astronauts or georges. Also, zombies should never be able to sprint like they do in COTD and verruckt. lastly i will talk about map layout/gimmicks. Firstly i think that the zombies should be hard, not the map. A hard to navigate map feel like you are being cheated when you die cheaply. that out of the way, A map should have open areas with important perks/weapons located in choke points. Locations should be consistent in my opinion as well, except the mystery box after it gets the first teddy bear. Still the box should be in a fairly controllable location, and always start in that same location, but move to tighter places later. DR is really the best when it comes to just layout in my opinion, but Ascension, NDT, Verruckt, and SNN all do this well. The two paths should offer either a good mg or a pump-action. and the blops variants are sub-par and need replacement much too soon. Again, the zombies, not the map, should be tough. The new maps should be vehicles for more new ways to survive, and these should be convenient. next, the maps shouldnt be so large that they have an unbearable ammount of doors to open, causing a drop in funds. COTD is most guilty of this. lastly here is the issue of accessing PaP, which should be a challenge, but not freaking impossible. On should feel secure to do it with plenty of points and a crawler. Kino is too easy though, and the landers are too slow, and S-L is overly complicated, five is requres you to go to seriously unsafe parts of the map every time, and Moon is easy to access, if you can survive NML. COTD is a decent approach, but really the whole 'activate these three things' system is cool with me. I think that the PaP should require all parts of the map open and after it is opened be easily accessible. In conclusion: Treyarch, i know you have been pandering to what we say we want, be please dont lose sight of the your focus on gameplay and making us feel like we were in a creepy and mysterious land of the undead.

welp i honestly am sick of the whole format for easter eggs since ascension. i think the gold standards for map easter eggs are the classic maps (except NDU), kino, and five. this is because instead of making an obvious multi-step thing that is solved once and leaves almost no speculation, these maps are full of little visual and audio easter eggs that can mean scores of things. Hanging men, documents scattered on the ground (at least ascension had this...) chalk/blood writing, cork boards, more cryptic radios, number sequences, creepy shadows and sounds, all sorts of things!! now the story has in stead begun to focus more on character development, when the story elements were originally used to enrich the map by making everything more creepy. now the maps are in stead used to enrich the story, which is if anything boring now because everything is just right in our faces, plot holes and bland writing and all. i remember before ascension we had all these crazy theories and we paid attention to every little sound and pixel in the maps. now we just solve the easter egg overnight and there is so little else left to find other than radios and a song. it is getting too predictable, and because of all this focus on the shitty easter eggs that are no fun, almost no innovation other than perks and a new kind of teleporter and a new wonder weapon are added, and i go back to playing battlefield 3 after 2 days. i am not saying that following a formula is bad. i am saying that there was a perfect formula and it was ditched in favor of what feels like an over-the-top yet boring homage to that same formula they ditched. anyone else agree or at least see where i am coming from?

the only problem the new maps have is a lack or ambient creepiness. there have been no little easter eggs since ascension, and those were nothing new really. so that is why i am slowly losing interest. they just need to make the maps creepier with more small easter eggs i suppose.

They need to kick the pace up a bit from Black Ops, not slow it down... let me rephrase that. there needs to be a balance of fast-pace and large-scale.

i dont like how sniping was handled in black ops, i think it should be just like cod4/w@w, and no extra effect from sleight of hand pro. and as much as i loved scopeless snipers in W@W, i must admit they were a bit overpowered, especially with the bayonet. just bring back the ACOG and keep sniping at long range. and the damage for snipers in black ops was almost perfect, but the recoil for semi-auto snipers should be cut in half, because the dragunov was almost useless if you got a hitmarker. with regards to panic knifing, i see no real problem with it. i use it as a good defensive tool all the time when i am going for a killstreak. i dont care about the unrealistic aspects of killing someone by stabbing their toe, i just like it as a part of the game. the fact that i cant do it in BF3 often gets me killed when i am too close and the enemy has a more powerful weapon. but in general i want this game to have the killstreak system of black ops, they perk system of MW3, the map size and vehicle use of W@W, the pace of CoD4, and the gun balance of Black ops after the OP guns were nerfed.

what is wrong with hit markers? i mean if you didnt get the upper-body shot with a sniper you dont deserve the kill. and no shit we want gun balance. every call of duty needs balance.

i have not played modern warfare 3, so my opinion is not entirely valid, but honestly i do not like the idea of strike packages. i want to be able to set up my killstreaks however i like. with both support and assault killstreaks. i thought black ops had the best killstreak system call of duty has ever had, even if some were overpowered they were lijit hard to get unlike MW2 killstreaks, but offered the same freedom MW2 did. with regard to vehicles: YES YES YES YES YES DO WANT!!!!!!! machine pistols: no no no no no just put them in SMG category shotguns: they are good enough to be primary weapons, but need more attachments and a greater range at which they do little damage like in BF3. believe it or not, shotguns are actually effective in real life! big maps, bring back war, and slow the pace a bit.

it is actually supposed to be a cold war with china over rare earth elements, not against terrorists. terrorists are a boring enemy.

in full honesty i am completely excited and have no worries for this. here is why: like in Black Ops 1, they can go back in time for some missions in the late cold war if it is needed. here is a possibility: you notice the middle eastern rebels at one point, well maybe this could have to do with the PLO stealing the control of the robots. this could send us on a flashback mission to some counter-terrorist OP of the 70s in Israel with Mossad. and on top of that, people were VERY pessimistic about CoD4, and that was the biggest game-changer in shooters, throwing halo off the throne as the biggest online game on the 360. so why complain? Zombies has already gone to the present day and beyond!! this time frame fits perfectly and i cant wait to see the XM8 in a call of duty. plus i am just sayin not much happened after Vietnam as far as the cold war goes.

that is a good point, i guess they decided there was no reason to have a facility in england, so they changed to siberia. but the point is that we saw a lighthouse/shipwreck and got it. we also saw a nazi theater and got it. so when we see the eiffel tower and parisian skyline, along with allegations toward HAARP and tesla tech (which the eiffel tower could be a conductor for), we should expect a zombie map in paris.

yeah the new stuff they added just makes it all seem.... silly.... its not creepy enough.

i want all of them, but there is too much emphasis on large easter eggs. one thing about W@W is that the maps were full of questionable details, like notes in some encrypted language, moving bricks, hangmen, odd sounds, writings on walls, and small interactive devices. This was all over Der Riese and SNN, and some in Verruckt. I especially like ones outside of the map, like the meteor in SNN or the Fly trap. KDT did this well, and so did five, and ascension barely did it. and many people might ask why i prefer these to major easter eggs, and that's because the major easter eggs just tell us almost directly what is happening, rather than implying details relating to wacky conspiracy theories. Der Riese led us to extrapolate wildly about the next map, and we came to crazy conclusions. in the new maps, either they give us no warning about the next map or outright tell us. This is highly unsatisfying and is partially why i have barely touched zombies since i got bf3, while i was still addicted to W@W zombies two years after they came out, because i was obsessing over little map details to find what the next map would be. I became the zombies fan i am not for the survival horror, although that is fun, but because the old small detailed easter eggs made me feel like e detective. This feeling is either completely missing or severely lacking detail in new maps and i feel underwhelmed. The large easter eggs are great, and i have no problem with them, but they are too gratifying, obvious, and i feel like they are used to compensate for lack of small details which give us info. also, the new maps are missing a lot of atmospheric creepiness, which was ever so present in the maps NDT, SNN, Verruckt, DR, and as an exception, Ascension.

my mind is now splattered on the surrounding surfaces in my room. i believe i shall collect this brain matter and transfer it to you. (tl;dr, mind=blown. brainz 4 u!!)