I knew there were a lot of us out there, but just how many? Well, I received the reports this week and it looks like our COD4 online community stands at over 10 million strong (Xbox 360 / PS3)! That’s all unique players too, so 10 million different people have logged on for online multiplayer since buying the game in November. Those stats don’t include people who have never logged into MP, only those apart of the Online Community.

That’s insane. With a little over a million players logging in everyday for multiplayer, I can’t say I’m too surprised. It’s awesome to think that we’re all part of building something so massive, and when I say we, I mean me, you, all of us. Everyone who logs on to play with their friends, reads the blog, contributes on the forums, took part in the beta. You guys shaped this game and what it is today. We have one massive, powerful, community and all of you should be proud because there is honestly no other game community I’d rather be a part of. So when I say this, know that I mean it… THANK YOU!!!

We have some new multiplayer playlists in the works to breath even more life into multiplayer, in addition to that I’m working on a few other things behind the scenes that I can’t talk about just yet (in case they don’t come to fruition).

This really makes me want to have another Community Party (anyone remember the COD2 all night?). If any Los Angeles locals are interested in having a COD4 Community Meet-up / Community Party, let me know and let’s put one together!!

]]> http://www.fourzerotwo.com/2008/08/22/cod4-online-community-is-10-million-strong/feed/ http://www.fourzerotwo.com/2008/07/11/new-playlist-testing-this-weekend/ http://www.fourzerotwo.com/2008/07/11/new-playlist-testing-this-weekend/#comments Fri, 11 Jul 2008 23:44:25 +0000 fourzerotwo http://fourzerotwo.wordpress.com/?p=338

Thanks to everyone who commented, sent in emails, or contacted me via other means; including the epic presentation I received via the mail this morning containing an entire breakdown of a new game mode complete with a full-size fold out poster (thanks Ian!!).

I received a lot of great suggestions and feedback regarding new playlists you guys would like to see, and this weekend I’m going to be hosting a series of private matches in Call of Duty 4 to test them out. So if you haven’t already, be sure to drop me a message on Xbox Live / PSN as I’ll be cleaning off room on my friends list and inviting anyone interested to help out this weekend.

Some of the gametypes we’re going to test out this weekend are:

Bare-bones Team Deathmatch

No more excuses. No more blaming Martyrdom or Juggernaut for your lack of skills and kills. Bare Bones Team Deathmatch eliminates the excuses and takes it back to basics with standard Team Deathmatch with no perks, no kill streak rewards. Just you, your skill, and your weapons.

Hardcore HQ

Hardcore HQ requires a lot more than just spamming the HQ position with nades and running in guns blazing. Hardcore HQ encourages more tactical gameplay and communication to win with increased damage, no HUD elements, and friendly fire on.

Multi-bomb Search and Destroy

Multi-bomb Search and Destroy starts every member of the attacking team with a bomb. So everyone has the opportunity to plant if they’re good enough.

Hardcore FFA

Even faster paced Free For Alls, where every bullet counts and playing smart is key for a solid k/d ratio. Standard Free for All rules, with Hardcore mode enabled for extra damage, no HUD, and no health re-gen.

—–

That’s the plan for this weekend. I’ll be setting up private rooms all weekend long and inviting everyone online and interested into the lobby to test them out. If we all like them, then come Monday when I get back to the studio, we’re going to work on adding them as new playlists.

If all goes well, I’d like to make this a weekly weekend event with you guys, where we log on every Saturday to try out new stuff you guys come up with, what we like stays, what we don’t goes! So log on this weekend to Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, send me a friend request or a message letting me know you want to play, and let’s get some games going testing these out. See you online this weekend!

I spent most of my time, this past extended weekend, playing Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare multiplayer with a lot of you from the community. The cool thing is, like most games that have been out for a while, the community starts creating their “own versions” of gametypes or completely making up new ones that they play in Private Match. So I spent a good deal of my time online this weekend in private matches with several readers of this blog, playing some community made gametypes. Such as one of our games of “Michael Myers” that one of the players in the game apparently recorded last night that can be found above.

If you’re not familiar with the Mike Myer’s gametype, it essentially boils down to hide and seek. Hit the jump for a full description of how to play it, but that’s not the point of this post.

The point is. Talk of new playlists has sprung up again here at the studio, and I’m pushing to get another playlist update for the game, hopefully adding some gametypes or revamped playlists. This weekend really got me thinking about what we can do. Essentially anything you can make up in Private Match (by tweaking settings / rules) can be used as a new playlists / gametype. Something as making more hardcore gametypes hardcore, or something more complex like a completely new mode.

That said, I’m looking for a group of people who’d be interested in getting together for some private matches and trying out some community made gametypes, or throwing in ideas for rule sets / settings that could make for some interesting gameplay. We obviously have some ideas already of what we’ve like to do, but I’m interested in playing all the community Gametypes that you guys have already come up with and seeing how fun they are. I’ve played Zombie (that’s a given), and quite a few other, but if you have any cool gametype you and your friends have come up with in COD4, let me know. Let’s play it.

Drop me a message online and I’ll make some room on my friends list, and we’ll get games going this week / weekend to try some of them out, or leave your gametype ideas / suggestions / rules in the comments!

For how to play “Mike Myers” or “Manhunt” as well as a summary of how our games went this weekend, hit the jump.

There is 1 “Mike Myers” which can only use a Shotgun, Pistol, and Knife. Nothing else, he goes on the bottom team.

Everyone else in the room goes on the top team. The goal is to hide around the map (sniper class helps), in the goal to be the last man alive. Mike Myers will go around finding / killing everyone until there is one person left. Once you’re the last man standing, you’re allowed to attempt to kill Mike Myers, but only using a knife, pistol, and stun grenades.

While the video above isn’t the best respresentation of it, it can actually be a lot of fun. Especially when you’re laying in a really great hiding spot and watch the “Mike Myers” walk right past you without ever realizing it.

The best games we played of it last night were on Overgrown and Crossfire. Overgrown is really good as there’s plenty of places to hide in the ghilie. At one point I was spotted on the rooftop by grandma’s house, so I had to make a run for it. I ended up being chased all the way by the barn, across the woodbridge, into the house, and out the door towards the Library.

I decided to lose him by going prone right outside the door leading towards the Library in the tall grass. It was one hell of a rush when he came running out, and right past me. Even after stopping and checking the grass for a bit, he missed me in the ghillie suit. I ended up winning that match, after finding a new hiding spot by the stone bridge on the other side of the sandbags. Waiting till I was the last person, and then popping up and killing him with my pistol. Great game.

The new Variety Map Pack for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, which is scheduled to be released on Xbox Live in the first week of April (3rd or 4th), was sent off to certification at Microsoft today. The map pack is going to be bringing four new maps to the game with the addition of Creek (seen above), Broadcast, Killhouse, and Chinatown (seen below) which is a modern-revision of the classic Carentan from past Call of Duty games.

Along with the new maps next week, we took this opportunity to slip in a change to the Clan Tags in the game along with a few other minor fixes. We heard your cries and will be tweaking the Clan Tags with this DLC patch (which adds support for the new maps). The new Clan Tag update will re-allow you to use special characters in your clan tags, but still prevents the exploit which allowed images (like Left Thumbstick and button images). Thanks to everyone who sent us feedback related to Clan Tags since the feature patch!

While the maps will be hitting Xbox Live the first week of April, PS3 users will STILL be getting the map packs, however it’ll be a little later (21 days later approximately) before they’ll be available on PSN for the same price. Right now plans for the PC version are unannounced but we are working to bring PC users the same content in the future, however logistics are being worked out on how to make that happen.

We also have a cool DLC Hands-on event going on in California, New York, and London I’ll be posting more about today.  Sorry for the slow blog posting week, I’ve been slammed preparing for the release of the DLC, press, and upcoming events for it so I apologize if it’s taken longer than normal to post, or get back to your comments / emails!

The weekly battle for the “Most Played Game on Xbox Live” continues this week with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare still holding the #1 spot for 4 weeks straight and managing to keep Halo 3 from retaking the throne. I had a chance to talk with quite a few of the Bungie guys at GDC this past week, mostly at the Microsoft party, and I could tell that neither one of us were going to slip off the top of the charts without a fight.

With the release of our Feature patch and DLC coming closer and closer every day, and plenty of new playlist ideas being thrown around for Call of Duty 4 multiplayer I know we can keep the fight going for a long long time. I love these weekly number checks because it provides a great opportunity to give you guys a weekly update on how things are going here at the studio with those updates, so with that said…

I got word that the Xbox 360 Feature patch could be ‘very very close’, I can’t tell you exactly when because they haven’t passed on that information but apparently certification went fantastic and I was given the Green light to take care of some things that I have to do before it goes live to you guys, which means good things. I’m not going to get any hopes up, but I hope to be seeing some new Kill Cams by the weekend if we’re lucky. Don’t hold me to that though, but I have a good feeling about it.

The Ps3 Feature Patch has officially made it’s way off to Sony and has been going through the certification process, this one should be a rather quick turnaround hopefully so I’m not expecting too much delay on this at all. I will keep you updated as much as I can on it’s progress.

Hit the jump for DLC talk…

As for DLC, their coming along great. We have a DLC Play test at 5:30 today which is essentially where we all jump in and play games on the new maps. QA plays with us so they test for bugs and glitches, while we play more for the design aspect. For example one of our guys found this killer sniping spot on one of the new maps which is really open where you could basically see around the entire map if on a certain rooftop, so we’re going to jump in there and see if we feel it’s too overpowered or just a really sweet sniper spot. To be fair, the map he found it on is a huge map ripe for snipers anyway, so it may not be that big a deal as there’s plenty of ground coverage and alternate ‘covered’ paths to take.

During this DLC test we’re going to be recording some video of one of the maps for SpikeTV / GameTrailers that I did an interview with last week talking about this specific map. It’s a bit further along with the rests and is a special treat to some of our “loyal” Call of Duty players that I know a lot of you are going to love, especially you Sgt. Payback.
I also have to take three screenshots of the new maps for later on when we start doing promotion, so I have to start scouting out some good angles in the maps to take shots of. We typically like to get a key map landmark in each screenshot on loading screens as you could probably tell that really identifies it as THAT MAP. Which is what I mean by good angle, for example, when you see Bloc, you know it’s bloc because of the statue in the middle and ferris wheel, or Crash because of the Helicopter, and so on and so forth.

Other than that we’re looking at new playlists ideas, possible new gametypes, rulesets, things we can do separate from new DLC that we’re already working on that will keep the game fresh and new for players. Those will probably start showing up a little after the feature patch hits. So if you have ideas for cool playlists keep sending them in for consideration as that’s something we can constantly change, add, take away, etc at any time. I think I already have my favorite that we’ll try out first…

Bowling revealed that there were once vehicle mission in the game and even Humvees in multiplayer. He went on to explain what was coming in the next patch and explained the process for creating multiplayer maps.

Check out the full 4-page interview at IGN here: IGN: Call of Duty 4 Post-Mortem

This battle for the #1 spot has been causing a surge of “Call of Duty 4 vs Halo 3″ articles and forum debates, and I don’t think the question is necessarily as easy as “which game is better”, because that’s all just opinions. Both amazing games, the question I have is who will stay on top, and do I think we can stay on top?

So can we stay on top? Yes.

Why do I think that? Well…

I fully expect to be battling for the #1 spot back and forth with Halo at the moment, it’s a great game with a huge following, but I also know we have a hardcore community of players not to mention have quite a few things up our sleeves for the game (some announced / some unannounced).

Reason #1 — Upcoming Feature Patch:

 New Kill Cams

We’re currently finishing up testing a feature patch thats going to bring a lot of enhancements and new features to the multiplayer overall that a lot of the community’s going to love. From Host Migration so when the host leaves you don’t have to research and re-invite everyone, you’ll all stick together and just assign a new host, to new Kill Cams for everything. So now those “WTF!” grenades that seemingly come from no where, you can see that a guy threw it over the house, it hit a tree branch, bounced off a rock, into a tiny window, where you happened to be pointing out of, and say…… whoa. Follow behind RPGs and M203’s kill cams, claymores, Airstrikes where you can follow the bomb from the plane until it hits you.

Host Migration:

Now you won’t have to be dropped back by yoursef when a host leaves. Instead, everyone will stay together, a new host will be assigned, and the game will auto-start back up. Keeping everyone together, no more re-inviting, re-joining games because some host leaves. This has been a tall order and something that we’ve put a lot of work into which has allowed us to really optimize online play all around not just specifically with Host migration.

Improved Sniper / ACOG Accuracy:

Sniper and ACOG scopes have been tweaked and are really improved. I use to not snipe at all (mainly because I’m a horrible sniper), but now it’s so much more fluid and natural, while still having the same difficulty to use, it has no more “WTF I know I hit that guy!” moments.

Upgraded Spectator Cam:

Now when you’re in spectator mode you can follow them in 3rd person, switch to their first person view, or rotate the camera in a full 360 degrees around whoever you’re watching.

[PATCH STATUS: Still in test, we're currently heavily testing the Host Migration before we submit it for certification at Microsoft. So heavily, we currently have the most highly paid test team ever as everyone here at IW is currently help test it, not just the QA department, we have the programmers in there right now actively working to push this thing out as quickly as possible as well as we've all been doing daily take home tests to get time on it even after the day has ended. Great progress happening on it.]

 Reason # 2 — Working on new DLC Maps:

The patch isn’t the only thing heading to multiplayer that we’re working on behind the scenes here at Infinity Ward. I announced at the beginning of this week that we’re also working on some brand new maps for Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and trust me, based on the feedback were getting regarding what type of new maps you guys what, you’re not going to be disappointed. We’re putting a lot of community involvement, ideas, and feedback into these maps and I can tell you right now that some of the ones we’re working on are exactly what some of you have asked for. Can’t wait to share more details with you when we get a bit further done and start showing them off a bit. Thanks to everyone who has been commenting on the New Maps post.

Reason # 3 - Possibility of new Playlists

We’ve been throwing around new playlist ideas here at the office on ways we can constantly be updating the multiplayer experience for you guys (the community). Try out a few different ideas, see how you guys like them, if it’s gold, we keep it. This sounds like a perfect question for anyone who reads this blog, you guys had great feedback on what you think would make a good map, so what do you think would make a good playlists?

Hardcore Headquarters? I know a few of you have IM’d me that.

Maybe some Team Survival? Essentially just Team Deathmatch with no respawns, last man standing wins.

I would love to get some Hardcore Team Survival going, now that would be some serious shit. No Health Re-gen, no Respawns, just you, your weapon and your 1 life. What do you think? If you could fully customize a gametype (which you can in private match) what would be the rules? What would you call it? Hell, maybe we’ll try it out. I’m being 100% serious too, I’m interested in hearing what you think makes a good game type cause I’d really love to see what we can do to test some out.

Conclusion

Those, among other things, makes me confident we can stay at #1 for quite a while with the support of the community keeping the game fun and fresh.  So let’s do it, I’m gonna be gathering up a group of the IW guys and start playing at a dedicated time / day each week, maybe we’ll kick it off tomorrow night? Who’s down for some Hardcore Search and Destroy tomorrow night around 8 pm PST? Regretfully my friends list is full, so I can’t add every friend request I receive but I figured if we have a dedicated gaming night where we know a lot of you and a lot of us (IW) are all going to be on, pick a specific playlist for the night, we’ll all have a much better chance of running into each other online. See you online and be sure to comment with your Playlist ideas.

Over the past two weeks, some international magazines have come out with their CoD4:MW cover stories, and in them, unveiled some hard facts about the game’s Single Player plot, game play, and even little tid-bits regarding multiplayer.

In fact, so much information is starting to hit that we’re planning a little FAQ to put all the rumors aside. The report will put all confirmed information regarding CoD4:MW in one place. With the help of your feedback, we should be posting it up in the next few weeks.

In addition to international covers, the official press release for CoD4:MW came out last week out from Activision, giving even more insight into some of the game play you can except. As Jason West put it, “…one moment you are fast-roping from your Blackhawk helicopter, after storming into the war zone with an armada of choppers, the next you are a sniper, under concealment, in a Ghillie suit miles behind enemy lines, the next you are engaging hostiles from an AC-130 gunship thousands of feet above the battlefield…”

For those of you who know what an AC-130 is, I know you’re stoked about that statement—for those of you who don’t, drop by Youtube and do a quick search for AC-130 to get a taste of what we’re talking about.

Testing some COD4:MW Multiplayer @ Home:

I’m addicted…. And hear me out, because it’s not my fault nor am I alone. Starting last week we’ve implemented something I think a lot of developers should do, if they don’t already, and that’s Take Home Multiplayer Testing.

Everyday after work, we’ve all been copying the latest Multiplayer builds of the game to our boxes, heading home for the night, and jumping on Multiplayer at home for MP scrims that last until 3am sometimes 4am. I can’t get enough of it, and I think the same goes for everyone else in the studio.

The reason it’s so great, besides the obvious of being able to play multiplayer well into the morning every night, is Take Home Testing allows us to do a type of ‘testing’ that is far more ‘gamer-fied’ (I made that up) than the testing for bugs and balancing that the QA team does everyday of the week. It allows us to play the game in the same mindset as if we were playing any other game—half naked on our couch, surrounded by pretzels from a jumbo tub from Costco, 23 half-drank Dr. Peppers……. Basically, it lets us play it like we would normally play it.

Doing this lets us run into situations and scenarios that randomly play out everyday in MP matches online. So we’re developing from a fan’s perspective—balancing, tweaking, and re-examining how Multiplayer is done. The amount of feedback we’ve been gathering thanks to these casual take home MP scrims is amazing. Its been resulting in constant weapon balancing, Multiplayer map tweaking, and general overall tweaking of all things MP.

In closing

It’s been a busy two weeks here recently, as more and more info, confirmed and unconfirmed, is coming out about the game. We’ve been working on a lot of behind the scenes videos we’ll be posting up here as they’re completed and will be archived in the new Video section that will be hitting CharlieOscarDelta.com with the over-hauling that’s coming in the near future.