Wednesday, November 21, 2012

Flattening of the KDR curve from MW3 to BO2

10% to 90% in skill level in MW3 had a KDR spread of 0.4 to 3.0  but in BO2 the spread of the same skill levels is 0.6 to 2.0 basically a flattening of the curve.  This picture illustrates it:



People at the low end in skill do better on average, and people at the high end in skill don't do quite as well.
I think this is because streaks are quite a bit more lethal, and I think Treyarch justified making streaks more powerful because they lowered the reward that streaks give.
In previous games getting one kill with a predator missile gets you one kill closer to your next streak. In BO2 though getting 3 kills with a hellstorm only gets you half a kill closer to your next streak.

Sunday, November 18, 2012

My Ideal Call of Duty

Campaign

You have to play through once in regular story mode.  After that one playthrough you unlock the following features:
  • Create-a-class
  • Arcade mode (like in CoD4)
  • Challenges (like in BO2 or any multiplayer)
  • A campaign profile to rank up (like in multiplayer)
  • Special Ops missions
The intel are located throughout the campaign and the Spec Ops missions, and they complement the story (extra videos, text) and/or complete challenges to rank up your single player profile.  Once you find all of the intel you unlock the cheats like in CoD4, but more:
  • Slow motion
  • Infinite ammo
  • Speed
  • Super jump
  • Cluster bombs
  • Bad day (enemies turn into tires)
  • A ragtime-warfare type visual
  • All specialist and/or chaos mode perks
The Special Ops missions complement the campaign story in the same way Milehigh Jack and Hostage Taker complement MW3's story.  They are either from the enemy's POV or an extension of the story.


CT

All of the multiplayer maps playable with bots in an offline profile that can be ranked up and prestiged with challenges, pointstreaks/scorestreaks, create-a-class, just like in multiplayer:
  • All multiplayer modes with bots
  • Survival mode
  • Chaos mode (xp = score/1000)
  • You receive more XP with higher difficulty bots
  • A private match type of mode with everything unlocked, no XP earned, but lots of options for customizing survival and chaos (you choose the wave contents)
  • 4 player survival and chaos
And it's gotta have specialist.

Saturday, November 17, 2012

Head Glitching in Call of Duty: Black Ops 2

Head glitching is possible in Black Ops 2 and every Call of Duty game because the first person animation and the third person animation do not match up.  This video shows how this works:


To see the details you should probably watch in 720p.

Essentially the third person's animation is hunched down compared to the first person's.  This makes the head and gun lower in elevation so that when directly behind an object the gun and head are not looking out over top of the object, but rather are below the surface of the object.