a gimmick is defined as a trick or device intended to attract attention publicity or business
now in video games this is usually displayed with things like pointless gameplay changes or tonal
shifts that make a new game seem different and unique now gimmicks can occasionally breathe new
life into a cod game but most of them they've been rather ineffective and today we're going to look
at 10 of the dumbest and most pointless gimmicks throughout call of duty history these are those
things that were changed from game to game given a ton of attention from the developers only to be
ignored or hated by the community at large before being removed from subsequent cod games so let
me know which of these you thought was the most pointless and do me a favor guys if you're into
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subscribe now let's start off with operators in modern warfare 2019. i'm going to start off with
a bit of a hot take but am i the only one who thinks the operators were just one big gimmick
no yeah maybe okay i know people like having their own favorite opera let me ask you an
important question would you rather have operators or just a custom character maker
if cod went back to having the fully customizable characters we could have so much more variance
than what the operator system offers and we could still have full character skins and voices
if people still want to play as the terminator or whatever i think the operators themselves are cool
but having this system instead of a custom character like in ghost and advanced warfare
one big gimmick to me i think it's about time we go back to something it gives the players a
little more control over how they look let's stay in the same vein operator mods in black ops 4.
now black ops 4 changed a lot of things with the cod formula introduced longer time to kill got rid
of regenerating health gave the operators more of a spotlight in the moment to moment gameplay
now those changes received mixed reviews from the community the operator mod system was largely
ignored it went pretty unused throughout the game's lifespan operator mods were a new kind
of attachment introduced in bl4 required two slots in your create a class as well as a special wild
card meaning it took three spots of your pick 10 to use them now not every gun at an operator
mod and whether or not the mod was decent seemed to be a complete coin toss some of the operator
mods like the skull splitter and the dragon's breath rounds were completely busted while
others were forgotten i mean operator mods never returned after black ops 4 so yeah i think it was
a gimmick at number eight weather variants in bo4 i know we are just trashing bo4 right now
but it is what it is the weather variants were weird a little while after launch treyarch started
introducing new versions of bo4 maps but with weather now some of these maps took place during
the sunset some of them were in the middle of the night some during a rainstorm and you already
know a sandstorm now it was an interesting idea and certain implementations were actually good
firing range night but others like hacienda twilight and the infamous arsenal sandstorm
no so i have to ask with games like rainbow six siege showing it's totally possible to
have different weather for the same map why did b04 have to make different weather
variants entirely different map selections why not just have a dynamic weather system
on your base multiplayer maps weather variants were an interesting experiment
but they either went too far or they didn't go far enough and they have yet to return
ammo types and vanguard now vanguard isn't the first cod game to have a few different ammo types
for your gun but it was the first to really expand upon it making a new entire attachment section in
the gunsmith however most players probably agree it wasn't necessary the different ammo types
in vanguard have a bunch of different secondary effects and it can make the game feel inconsistent
some of them are obviously much better than others now i can understand having things like fmj rounds
or subsonic rounds in a cod game but all the other crazy ones like incendiary infrangible rounds
they complicate things there's no reason to have incendiary rounds available on almost every gun
in the game and having bullets that increase your enemy's view kick that feels cheap feels like a
gimmick i think vanguard went a little too far with ammo types and that's why it's on today's
list the cold war score streak system why is it so hard to get a fair streak system i mean
black ops 2 did it all the way back in 2012 so why do we keep trying do we reinvent the wheel
cold war score streak system was a bizarre mix of bo2 score streaks and modern warfare 3 support
your points didn't reset upon death but everything was really expensive and there was a bunch of
score multipliers that would theoretically speed the process up however there was also cooldowns
on everything meaning you couldn't run cheap streaks and earn them over and over again like
you could in other cod games it also meant there was a decent chance you were only going to get
to call in your streaks one time because if you were running mid-tier high-tier streaks the game
duration and cooldown system essentially meant there wasn't going to be enough game time to
call them in more than once the cold star the cold war streak system was hyped up by treyarch as some
awesome evolution of the concept but i think it was pretty much unanimously disliked by the
community personal radars in modern warfare 2019. infinity ward made the puzzling decision back in
2019 to completely change the way the mini-map worked instead of giving you constant intel on
enemies firing unsuppressed weapons you now only had your teammate's locations on your hud and if
you want to get those little fancy red dots from any fire you had to have a personal radar in the
air now the personal was a kill streak that cost three points so if you were decent at the game
you could pretty much have them up in the air 24 7 but if that's the case
why rename the game plus it was pretty frustrating to play modern warfare's multiplayer
and know that you pretty much always had to you had to either have a personal radar or uav
as one of your three streaks because otherwise you would be at a huge disadvantage due to your crappy
mini map on top of all that personals seriously screwed with the flow of the game because enemy
players were constantly stopping in their tracks to shoot them down so the thing was supposed
to encourage more aggressive gameplay actually made the game pace slower personal radars were
totally pointless if you ask me and i'm hoping the concept doesn't come back in modern warfare 2. it
returned in vanguard but at least in that game you had a perk that enabled the classic mini map
combat pacing in vanguard now we're picking on vanguard is it just me i'm the only one who was
expecting more from combat pacing multiplayer filter was hyped up by sledgehammer to be this
awesome new way to experience cod but i've barely even thought about it since vanguard came out now
when deciding on a multiplayer playlist you could choose between three different
combat pacing settings tactical assault blitz all this filter did was change how many people were in
your lobby but a lot of the maps it barely made a difference a lot of people thought
tactical and assault felt exactly the same and eventually sledge caved and realized they had over
complicated it in may of 2022 the combat pacing system was overhauled and assault pacing was
removed entirely meaning it was kind of a gimmick it was kind of pointless blind fire and vanguard
i have no idea why this was added to call of duty blind fire is a mechanic exclusive to
vanguard where you can crouch behind a piece of cover blindly hold your gun up and fire
at the other side it's similar to how the blind fire works in gears of war except that that's a
game with a much longer time to kill and a huge reliance on players using cover during combat
cod no it's a different beast the blind fire vanguard is also wildly inaccurate
and its success relies on the user being in combat with some of the not best people in the world to
play a first person shooter it was such a dud with the community that hardly anybody talked
about it when the game came out i honestly forgot it existed still we until we started researching
the video vanguard is less than a year old and uh i forgot one of the biggest gameplay changes
divisions in cod world war ii i've done my fair share of complaining about cod world war ii as it
launched i still think adding divisions to the mix was one of the worst decisions ever made instead
of giving you three perks like every other cod game made after 2007 this one gave you a singular
perk called the basic training then you had to choose between one of five divisions at least
five at launch and then you would level up your division by getting xp and finishing challenges
more you leveled up the more special abilities you got you for your character but there was any good
reason divisions replacing the traditional perks system just meant you had far less customization
than the normal cod and it also meant people who started the game were at a statistical
disadvantage over those who already put time into grinding their divisions it's one thing to unlock
perks as you go up right or on unlock perks as you level up but divisions would literally
give you two to three times as many special character traits as a new player would have
and that just made the game feel cheap at times now i can respect sledge for trying something new
and it was clear they wanted divisions to be some kind of hybrid between classic perk and
old school class based it just didn't work and at number one today the biggest gimmick of all time
the sat calming ghosts has to be right still a point of ridicule in the community
iw really wanted to turn the page with cod goes create something entirely new for the modern
warfare sub series now one way they wanted to shake it up was we put uavs on the ground
satcom little box you had to play somewhere on the map and would give you a partial uav then if
you stacked it with other satcoms from teammates you would eventually have a traditional uav effect
may have sounded decent on paper to infinity war but in practice it was complicated a complicated
one of the most simple aspects of call of duty i get three to four kills i get a uav end of
story but now i have to get this little box and hope my teammates also get little boxes
and they're good enough to keep earning these boxes over and over so maybe we'll get a full
uav for about 10 seconds seriously ah yeah it was a huge mistake i have no doubt my mind i'm gonna
call it the dumbest gimmick in god history there you have it my friends i hope you have a good day
you