Why is it that every time a game that’s aspiring to appeal to COD’s player base, they don’t completely commit to the idea of taking the stuff that the players liked so much about the best Call of Duty’s?
There’s a huge crowd of people that would love to have something like, for example, Black Ops 2 again, a fast-paced arcade shooter with skill-based matchmaking only for ranked and maybe for game modes like search and destroy. So every time a so-called “COD killer” comes around, it kind of offers something similar but doesn’t really commit to the idea, so when people play them and see that it’s not the same, they end up quitting, hence the 2-3 week lifespan most of the time.
Is there a reason they don’t commit to offering the full package? Bright and colorful, visually appealing maps, strong scorestreaks, a similar class creation system (controversial, but imo they should go for something like Pick 10 instead of mw2019 system), no disbanding lobbies, similar movement (to Bo2 and the likes), plenty of good guns instead of having a meta, etc.
Why is it that they can’t do all of that at the same time? Like, is there a limit to how similar they can become to those cods before it enters lawsuit territory? Because if those aren’t the reasons, then I don’t get it. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t innovate or try their own spin on some stuff too, but if they also took all the other stuff with it, then they’d have a huge crowd waiting to play a game that I’m sure wouldn’t die after 2 weeks this time.
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If they can half ass a game and people still buy it, then they’ll do it.
Money.
The simple answer is Patents. Most of the small things in a game are protected by a company so that people can’t copy it 1 to 1.
Then there is the funding required to create a shooter of same caliber and quality.
Then comes the old audience and brand recognition. Few people would want to try something new that is trying to mimic the old stuff without adding to it at all. They would probably ask, what makes it stand out from COD, and when there is no answer, they would go back to the old stuff once again.
Simple if you think about it. And these are just major points, there are many other small ones.
No studio is crazy enough to try to fight COD for the same market.
If you are indie, you wont have the budget: thus you go for some lower quality, but cheaper priced COD clone, or various little twists and alterations
If you are big cops, you still wont likely to get the same amount of sales as COD, thus you innovate and put a different spin or formula to the gameplay.
Even if there is one, you (not you OP) fucking CoD fans won’t give it a chance of day. The biggest issue with CoD/Madden/2K is the fan bases. They all know the games fucking suck, but instead of grouping together and finding other games they just keep buying the same garbage year in and out. This isn’t an Indie or a gaming issue, there’s plenty of amazing shooters out there with Devs that actually give a shit. Black Squad and Split Gate for example. Both have soooo much going for it and are so much fun but these brain dead gamers are just going to buy the same stuff.
Well if some game did try to copy BO2 as close as possible I’d be there for it. I’d even pay a monthly subscription to play BO2 if they got rid of the cheaters.
CoD has certainly done a lot for FPS but any developer looking to specifically emulate and through doing it better beat CoD will fail just because or market saturation.
Take all the best ideas from them, and then start making a game specifically trying not to be too call of duty, and make something better of it’s own right. The 2 weeks issue is because none of them ever reach anything more than trying to be CoD.
My experience is, the people who really sink time and money into a game want that exact game. Not its mechanics, not its looks — that exact specific game. The people who are deeply into GTA, Smash, COD/Battlefield, Madden are just not prepared to put anything else alongside their baby.
Are they that close to be a clone or are they just FPS?
#May i direct you toward [XDefiant](https://youtu.be/axDcjinoqo4?si=LiAEWjWyI5TG_nf9)
I’m actually blown away at the gibberish responses in this thread. I think you’re right on the money. If someone created a CoD clone without the bullshit gimmicks and monetization that Activision has infested the brand with, then it would sell insanely well. It doesn’t need to be a billion dollar franchise with paid partnerships to celebrity endorsements and skins to be popular. Some of the most successful franchises in video game history came from engine mods and small teams of dedicated developers.
I think the one tough spot is engine mechanics. CoD runs on a custom IW engine, but the Infinity Ward team responsible for TitanFall was able to bring back enough of the movement style to make it feel like a clone. I think that same team is working on a new version of Rainbox Six or some other FPS.
U need multiple games devs and publishers to slowly chip away at cod stranglehold e.g if ea got real and
made battlefield good again or bring back medal of honor or even black
Xbox brought back halo to its glory
Ps could bring killzone
Even then it’s a huge task
There are many smaller games exactly like that. You just expect them to be on the online store frontpage one day.
Might be underestimating how much manpower and money IW spends on these games. To get anything comparable you’d probably have to spend hundreds of millions minimum.
Copycats aren’t generally known for *taste*.
A copycat is starting from a position of aping someone else’s original ideas, and someone aping CoD doesn’t even have the taste to ape some niche idea. They’re the kind of developer that just sees the biggest thing in gaming and thinks: “mE wANt”.
*Why don’t COD Clones commit to it completely?
Because no one can and will kill activision
i like cod as a game but its bizarre how they are basically the shooter sports game. they release a ‘new’ one every year which is basically 99% the same as the previous one but just slightly different and everyone just buys it anyway because its the ‘new’ cod.
it would be so much better if they just had 1 cod game and continually update it, like what they do for cod mobile, but I guess that doesn’t bring in the yearly revenue.
People keep talking about x defiant as a cod killer, yeah the gunplay looks good but as op says it doesn’t try to copy everything cod is so it really isn’t a replacement but an alternative. What a lot of people want is a better alternative, what some of us want that have been playing COD for 10+ years is the exact same thing with a team that cares and listens to the community. I have years of muscle memory playing COD it’s the most accessible game to me any free 10 mins and I can hop on no thoughts just run around and shoot. Never have to relearn controls, maps, flow etc. it’s just burned into my mind. That’s why community projects like SM2 were so exciting, all the best parts of COD brought together in one game to be continually updated.