What’s With the Streaks in Call of Duty?

Killstreaks in recent Call of Duty games have generated a heated debate among gamers and fans alike. Older fans of the series point out the relatively minimal difficulty of achieving killstreaks and their overall lack of lethality. These fans credit older games in the Black Ops and Modern Warfare Series for their innovation and success. On the other hand, younger gamers seem to revere the franchise for making killstreaks more accessible to the average gamer. So, what’s with the streaks?

SCORESTREAKS

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The word killstreak has been completely transformed. Nowadays, they are referred to as scorestreaks. Here, players can capture objectives depending on the game mode that add to a player’s overall score which resets after each death. Hypothetically, a player could generate a high enough score to obtain a deadly streak without eliminating one enemy. This completely differs from older games, where players could only earn streaks by racking up consecutive kills.

ASSISTS

Another influential variation came with the deletion of assists. In older games, players who dealt damage to an enemy opponent but did not complete the kill would earn an assist that would not count toward their killstreak. Now that there are no longer assists, players can deal a minimal amount of damage to their opponent and still receive full points for the kill. Essentially, this makes it easier for players to increase their scores and in turn earn streaks.

DAMAGE

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The decrease in damaging effects these streaks have in modern games cannot go unnoticed. Streaks that are harder to obtain should in theory have a higher reward for the player that earned it. Gamers revere old streaks such as the AC-130, Chopper Gunner, Attack Dogs and R.A.P.S. These streaks would have damaging affects that could change the landscape of an entire game. Keeping the trend of high streaks that are hard to obtain, the franchise’s new scorestreaks unfortunately do not live up to the expectation of the damage they are supposed to deal. Newer streaks such as the Attack Chopper, Strike Team and Sniper’s Nest in Call of Duty: Black Ops 4 are just as hard to earn as older streaks; but they seem to be much more susceptible to being shot down, and much less lethal, leaving the player unsatisfied with their reward.

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The series has moved away from an “ultimate” killstreak. These streaks would be the hardest to earn and would either eliminate every opponent in the lobby or in some games even end the match itself. These types of streaks were first introduced in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 with the Tactical Nuke. This streak required the player to rack up 25 consecutive kills without dying, and in return would eliminate all enemy players and end the match in favor of the nuke user’s team, regardless of the current match score or time left. These kind of streaks were furthered in subsequent games with the M.O.A.B., K.E.M. Strike, DNA Bomb and V2 Rocket. Yet, Black Ops 4 decided to forgo including these types of streaks, and instead rewards the player with a Nuclear medal for achieving 30 consecutive kills. These medals have no in-game effect.

MOVING FORWARD

With the announcement of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare coming this October, it will certainly be interesting to see how Activision reconciles the debate on streaks. Will they decide to revert back to damaging killstreaks that defined the Modern Warfare series, or continue with the scorestreak method that has been met with much contention. Whatever they do decide, it will surely be exciting to see how it plays out.

Featured photo courtesy of Aspyr

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