News - Warzone 2's Camo Grind Is Awesome - Should Warzone 2 Have More Challenge Grinds
I hope you guys are doing well. I have to praise Sledgehammer Games and even Infinity Ward here for creating something special for the Call of Duty community in regards to the camel grinds for the last two games. Now, it's not something that I personally invest time in necessarily, but I will say that as I peruse through Twitter and through Reddit.
I see the number of people who actually take these camel grinds seriously and work tirelessly to earn them, and I credit them 100% for you putting in all that time and effort to achieve this feat. It's an accomplishment that you deserve because it's a time investment, and it's awesome. And when we talk about player retention numbers in Call of Duty, it's interesting that player retention doesn't directly correlate to new battle pass content; instead, what retains players is rewarding challenges like these.
The camel grind in both Modern Warfare 2 and Modern Warfare 3 did more for player retention than any battle pass called Call of Duty has ever had. That might be an egregious statement; it might even be incorrect, but that is my personal belief because I look at the incentive that it gives players to grind the game to achieve something that they want that is attainable.
And they do it, and this community has done it for decades. If they see something that is attainable, they will go after it and get it, and there's no shortcut to the camel grind; there's no easy way to do it unless, of course, you want to pay for a modded lobby. But for the majority of this community, they're willing to do it legitimately; they're willing to go through the excruciating process of leveling up every single gun, earning every single camo for every single gun, and just playing this game like good for you is a massive time investment.
Why isn't there more of this? I get that there's paid content, and I'm fine with it. I can live with it, but there needs to be more of this. There needs to be more incentive for the player to play. I know I've touched on this before, but it just became so evidently clear with the way players were pouncing on the interstellar grind that there needs to be more of this in Call of Duty.
If you want to retain players, you want to keep players playing for longer, and you believe that keeping players playing for longer will correlate to more revenue down the road, then guess what creates more incentive to make players play longer, and that's not just through battle pass grinding; that's through specific challenges similar to interstellar.
Why isn't there an interstellar? Operator camo, where you complete certain operator challenges for each default operator in the game, and then that'll earn you this specific skin for this specific operator on this specific team, and then you do it for the other operator on the other side, and that's what you do.
Maybe there's individual grinds you can go on to earn specific calling cards and emblems, something that you can show off that showcases. I appreciate the amount of dedication you have shown me and the hard work you put into the game whenever I see somebody using the interstellar camo in Call of Duty.
If anything, it makes me want to grind for it because the camo itself is pretty awesome. I'll admit that, but it's also like the point of Pride: never once have I been killed by any operator in this game, whether it's a rapper, an animal, or a superhero, and I think to myself. I'm going to go spend $20 on that bundle.
No, that's just not something that occurs to me, but something that is actually earnable and attainable. Guess what I'm going to put the time and effort into, and if all Call of Duty cares about is the metrics behind the game—how long people are playing for and how long each play session is—are people engaging with our game positively?
This should be their focus, because I can guarantee you that, yeah, guess what if players play for longer? It will correlate to higher revenues for your microtransactions. If I had more incentive to play this game for longer than 45 minutes to an hour, I might consider buying some of these microtransactions.
But I'm not going to when the game can't retain me because there's not enough effort put into the game, one thing that kept me coming back to Call of Duty even months after a game's release was to continue to work on leveling up my guns leveling up my character and leveling up towards the final Prestige and unfortunately seasonal prestiges have ripped away this original grind to the final Prestige that Call of Duty used to have and yes some people grind way too hard right out the gate and it makes the game feel a little stale, because they have nothing else to work for but it's the same argument as people who complete the interstellar grind day one what else do they have to work for I don't understand the concept behind the seasonal.
Prestige, is it? It just doesn't really make sense to me because it tears away some of that incentive. Players have to grind those levels to ensure that they can reach maximum prestige. It used to be a point of pride, and yes, anybody could do it, but that wasn't the point; it was the point of putting in that effort and that time to get there.
It was something that I did care about at one point in time because it meant that I was committed to the game, and that's what this should all be about: generating more commitment from your player base to engage with your game for longer, to keep people coming back for more. And while I understand that the seasonal content release structure is intended to do this, I just don't think it does enough to bring as many players back as possible.
I don't think it appeals to everybody because not everybody is going to get jazzed up about having to spend money again, or, let's say, that they've earned enough Cod points to just buy the battle pass again. I don't know if that drums up enough excitement to get people reinvested into the game again every two months to just dive back into Call of Duty.
It might work, but honestly, I think a combination of the old system and the new system would work best. Make it so that there is an option to do traditional Prestige but also go through a seasonal Prestige of sorts where you're leveling up through challenges and through unique rewards that way, and I think that would give players that incentive and drive to come back to the game to see what's new that they can earn what's the grind for this season per say.
Something to give players a reason to come back because, as it stands right now, we know Call of Duty can do it. We know Call of Duty has the ability to get the investment from their player base to grind in their game. We've seen it, and the weapon camo grind is evidence of that. Because, to be honest, the games where I've had the most fun or games where I have committed to the weapon grind, whether that be Black Ops 2 Modern Warfare 2 or even Black Ops Cold War.
