Modern Warfare 3 Accused of Being A $70 DLC by Fans: "It Feels Like Half a COD Game"

It’s exactly a DLC that Activision realised they could make people pay £70 for instead of half that. Only a few weeks after MW2 came out it was being floated that there was no COD for 2023, and instead a Ghost focused expansion would come out to fill the void.

Don’t like it don’t buy it but FFS stop with faux shock and horror. COD is of the most aggressively monetised franchises in mainstream gaming, from a company with zero scruples. Facts that have been valid for a decade or more and the regular news cycle attached to it all gets tiring.

Ignore the bugger and maybe they’ll be forced to do better next time when this sell’s poorer (you can hope at least). It’s not like this is some long awaited sequel either, just skip this one. There’s so much more to play this year in particular.

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The achievements on Xbox and PS5 even show up as a DLC of MW2. I wonder how late in the development process did they realize that if they could sell almost the same game every year then they probably could literally sell the same game twice.

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- They realized that in 2012 tbh. I haven't purchased an MW game since (old) MW2 because I hated their practice of yearly releases while only adding incremental changes.
  
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I think those of us who spend a little more time on forums and such talking about games really over estimate how knowledgeable the average consumer is about these things. Millions of people never, ever question the quality of games they want. They played call of duty for a decade, so they just kinda have an expectation. Same thing when I go out to buy a loaf of bread. Just more expensive lol

So it’s not a faux-shock. For some people this is the first time they bought a game that they had an expectation for and it fell radically short. Why else would they start complaining? They haven’t had a reason to before and they just aren’t generally aware of all of this. If you ask the average call of duty player what they think of Activision, they probably have little to no opinion on them and haven’t even heard of Blizzard. Just like how I don’t have an opinion on every single director, movie studio, etc.

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- Agreed. To us, it's not surprising because we decided to look into it because we're either big into a series, or we got burned enough in the past. for others? It's either legit the first time they've gotten burned, or the straw that broke the camel's back and made them at least somewhat critical/wary of the media they consume.
  
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- Same thing when I go out to buy a loaf of bread. Just more expensive lol
  
  you mean the bread right? A loaf of bread once a week easily goes beyond one COD game per year
  
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Leading up to mw2 launch, they were repeatedly saying it was the first 2 year release. They said there would only be a paid dlc at the end of the year. A few weeks into launch they back pedeled and released a statement saying that wasn't true. Something they could have done before launch, but didn't, for sales. There are maps in mw3 that have been in the code of mw2 since launch andnwere never released. Fuck them.

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My thoughts exactly, we live in a world where content creators have to make content on new releases to stay afloat. Never pre-order and VOTE WITH YOUR MONEY

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I think this is also what happened with AC: Mirage. Ubi originally had planned it as DLC for Valhalla.

At least they had the decency not to charge $70 for it, but still, it's MBA businessthink in charge of AAA gaming right now. Unless people stop buying them, nothing changes.

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- At least - and I can’t believe i am defending Ubisoft - they released “hey this dlc, let’s make it bigger and better and into its own game”
  
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You don’t have to ignore it just don’t pay for shit. Sail the seas if you have to

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If you're sick of massive AAA developers running cash grabs, my suggestion is stop patronizing their games until they get their sh*t together. An excellent alternative if you're looking for a fun FPS game is Battle-Bit Remastered. I personally love this game, and there is a long running joke that the three guys that made this basically shat on the AAA developer world when they released a full featured FPS for $15 that is enjoyable and has 0 micro transactions.

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I totally respect what they've done, and I admittedly am not a Call of Duty player, but Roblox graphics are an instant turn off for me and I really don't think the general CoD player base is going to be drawn in by it either. If there was a graphics pack that made it look modern and zero percent like Roblox I might be able to get into it, but not as it is.

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- I've played some surprisingly good games with untextured polygons.
  
  Star Fox
  
  Race the Sun
  
  Carrier Command 2
  
  That's not to say that you couldn't take the same games and make a flashier version that I wouldn't like more, but I do kind of think that it forces the developers not to use glitz as a crutch. Like, if you're going to make a game with untextured polygons and sell it, you are going to have to have solid gameplay.
  
  Another benefit is that it's easier to revise a game if you haven't committed a lot of expensive assets into particular game design decisions. I think that a long, iterative development process with gameplay revisions is probably a good thing for gameplay.
  
  I kind of wish that one could more-frequently get commercial "HD" DLC for small-budget games, like indie pixel-art games. I think that low-res pixel art is a good way to reduce asset costs, let the player's brain fill in a lot of the detail, but if a game does turn out to be successful and I like it, I'd like to be able to also get a more-detailed version. That way, I'm only paying for assets on games with good gameplay.
  
  I've seen a small handful of games do that, but it's definitely not the norm.
  
  Maybe AI upscaling will help.
  
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It's funny because it's true.

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wow, just like a certain game that launched twelve years ago, called "Modern Warfare 3"

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I stated playing battlebit and I don’t even consider bothering with mainstream titles anymore. This release is garbage, the last 5 releases have just been progressively worse and worse, like hey even bother?

It feels like I have more fun in 1 game of battlebit than I did over the entirety of my 200+ hours of BO2, which was the last mainstream shooter I played that didn’t feel entirely like a waste of money.

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I bought battlebit but the audio didn't work, so I refunded it :(

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- That’s crazy, I’m playing on linux with no issues hahaha
  
  It is still early access, so if the issue hasn’t been fixed already I’m sure it will be before too long!
  
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It's super hard to find a team deathwatch only server, which is where Call of Duty excels.

If I wanted to plant a bomb or defend an objective, I'd play Valorant.

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Battlebit was one of my faste fastestest refunds. Such a bad game.

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- As someone enjoying it tremendously, why?
  
  The gameplay is smooth, there is a plethora of maps and modes, teamplay is encouraged but not strictly needed. Mapsize ranges from 16v16 to 127v127.
  
  The only arguement i could see is the low poly graphics and that's like, what did you expect?
  
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I have basically been addicted to CoD for the past couple of years, but recently finally cracked and got annoyed enough that I don't play nearly as often, or nearly as long anymore. Expensive and overly monetized, absolutely, but there are so many other issues. This is my way-too-long rant that I always go on about CoD:

Camo that is always intentionally very dark so that people will buy it, and then it will get nerfed once sales die down
Same with OP weapon blueprints-- sell the new OP blueprint, then nerf it eventually, and then take the PR stance of claiming that you listen to fan feedback.
Feeling like I'm playing Pokémon with all the swords and shields... I hate shields. Shields making someone practically invincible on almost half of their body, and them having zero movement penalty when they are on someone's back is absolute horseshit. Swords, where people can run faster because it's a light weapon, and you can have the Double Time perk to move even faster, so that they can just rush you and slap you with an instant kill is also absolute horseshit. I DO love sticking a shield person with Thermite, but so many other things should work against them and they just don't.
The game crashing, and crashing often. Which for MWII was only fixed in the last couple of months, in my experience.
The incredibly annoying "Restart Game" prompt when you load up CoD, it downloads the stupid store bullshit, and then the game needs to be restarted before you can continue
The stupid UI. Let me get to Quick Play, IDK, quickly, maybe? I should not have to click through a million stupid tiles just to get to Quick Play
Oh, and stop fucking changing my playlist filter to include some random game mode every now and then. If I have my filter set to just TDM, don't you damn dare any other mode onto that filter.
Night maps. Fuck night maps. MWII has one night map, and there's zero options in these games to filter out night maps or any other map you may despise (like Border Crossing).

Despite all of this (and so, so much more) I still have 600+ hours into MWII alone, but the more I play it now, the more I find I just get angry at how shitty the entire experience actually is. The parts of it that are fun and addicting are not worth all the other bullshit. I do not intend to purchase MWIII.

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Feeling like I'm playing Pokémon with all the swords and shields... I hate shields. Shields making someone practically invincible on almost half of their body, and them having zero movement penalty when they are on someone's back is absolute horseshit. Swords, where people can run faster because it's a light weapon, and you can have the Double Time perk to move even faster, so that they can just rush you and slap you with an instant kill is also absolute horseshit. I DO love sticking a shield person with Thermite, but so many other things should work against them and they just don't.

Wait, I don't play CoD. Can you clarify what you mean by swords and shields? Shields I can imagine being some sort of body armor, but are people carrying around steel swords like they're medieval knights in a game titled "Modern Warfare"?
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- shields are the police shields which completely block every single shot on it, and yea you can literally run around with a katana
  
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I don't play COD all that much, but I was one of the crowd who made my purchase of MWII in part because it was supposedly going to stick around for 2 years. I feel slighted that they had nearly complete versions of nostalgic maps in Warzone only to never release them in regular multiplayer and instead hold them for MWIII. I refuse to support this bait by spending on COD any further.

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https://www.ign.com/articles/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3-campaign-disc-required-error-asks-for-mw2-ps4-disc-update

Sounds about right.

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"No one will ever find out! We did this"

"Shit...."

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- The devilish act of... Reusing a perfectly workable engine and forgetting a piece of text?
  
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The people who care enough to complain are also largely the ones who keep buying it, so they train companies to realize that complaining is something that can be ignored because it's all bark and no bite.

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The sales figures of this might still be ok, but the next might be poorer, but that won't be blamed on this.

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- They'll probably think we didn't have enough DLCs and microtransactions to make people happy, and out DRM needs to be more intrusive to improve our sales.
  
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I'm done with COD after last year's. If I don't buy battle pass blah blah...I spent 70 fucking dollars already, that's the price of the game not a ticket to continually pay. Fuck off.

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I feel like CoD has been a joke for like the past 5-7 years. They just keep rehashing the same thing year after year and players gobble it up. My friend is addicted to it and plays it online constantly, I stopped playing it when they shifted focus from the offline single player and two player story/missions to the online Battle Royale style games. I don't find getting spawn killed and getting screamed at by 10 year olds fun.

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Cod has been a joke since development was taken from Infinity Ward. Infinity Ward worked on the engine for CoD3 but Treyarch developed the game. The last great CoD was the original Modern Warfare.

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- Do you mean the original MW or the rehashed one? The last one I probably played was MW2. My friend (not the one mentioned above, another friend) loved playing the co-op wave style missions, and the stealth missions.
  
  I remember playing the one that had Christopher Meloni in it and it ran like shit on my PC which was high end. After that, I lost interest. When I moved in with the one that was addicted, I'd play with him just as a "bonding experience", then he wanted me to play online with him , which I did occasionally. I remember trying to do the "secrets" and then having some asshole bitch me out because I moved an inch off of a platform or didn't kill someone in time. Fuck that.
  
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If you bought horse armor back in the day, you directly caused this problem.

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Well, you vote with your wallet. This is what happens when gamers pre-order incomplete games and scream about the state of the game on social media: you get crap products like this.

Money is the only thing that appeals to companies. If people would just vote with their wallets, we wouldn't have this situation.

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Fucking seriously.

You don’t want to support this shit? Don’t pay them for this shit… If you really want to play the shit, sail the seas ffs

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We vote with our wallets. It's the huge majority of the mainstream audience that also voted with their wallet by buying that makes out opinions irrelevant.

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We do...the problem is we're a drop in an ocean compared to the vast majority who do not, or as NightOwl put it, they do too, but they help perpetuate the lazy products AAA companies typically spew out by just buying

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I'm itching for a good single player arcade-y/soldier-y FPS. Anyone have a suggestion? Haven't played CoD (nor BF for that matter) since the one with the No Russian level.

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Insurgency: Sandstorm has a very solid base even if it has been mismanaged of late.

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BattleBit, if you want a BFBC2 multiplayer feeling!

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3 days late but, seconded on battlebit! expecially for that arcade feel. it’s all the best parts of battlefield in a package that can run on basically any modern hardware.

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- Yep this one's in my wishlist, I'll get it next time it's on sale!
  
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Trepang2. It's the spiritual successor to FEAR.

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- Nice, I loved FEAR 1 and 2, thanks!
  
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Okay I'm seeing tons of comments from people about Battle Bit, but is there something good like it that features more realistic graphics? No disrespect to that game but the Roblox style instantly kills it for me.

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Will probably get down voted to heck, but Battle Field 2042 goes on sale pretty regularly and is a good bit of fun since they fixed a lot of the issues from it's atrocious launch.

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- I've had it on my wishlist, but I hesitate to buy anything from BF or CoD only for it to be replaced a year later and no one to play with. I mean, CSGo/CS2 has been going strong for years and in that time there have been like a dozen of each of the other franchises released.
  
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Battlefield 1 is solid and still has decent NA community servers. Semi modern, but not much of a cash grab with good stories and a fun multiplayer experience. Especially the naval battles (imo!)

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- I'll give it a shot. I admittedly have never played a single BF game since BF Vietnam, lol, and I somehow own on PC like 7 BF games including BF1. So I'm going to take your advice and give it a shot!
  
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- I have 1942, Vietnam, 2, 3, 4, 1, and 5 (I Believe that's release order), is BF1 a better choice than 5 to try out?
  
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It's kind of crazy how it's really just CoD, Halo, and battlefield after all these years. There's some more mil-sim type shooters out there that are great, insurgency, hell let loose, squad, for example. It doesn't seem like there's much out there though in terms of the less serious team death match shooters. The only other one I can think of is maybe titan fall.

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As opposed to the original MW3, which was a totally unique experience from CoD MW2 because...well don't worry about that part, it was its own disk!

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Modern Warfare III is not a remake of MW3. It's a remake of the second half of MW2.

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- That's the most confusing thing I've ever heard.
  
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Enshittification everywhere

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I'm old. I miss the WW2 CODs.

5

World at War remains my favorite in the series. The more modern ones and futuristic 3D maneuvering ones were never my cup of tea

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Heh. I was just discussing this with a friend 2 days ago. We surmised that they would half ass it even more than MW2 because this one was already half assed and still sold well, and Battlefield, which is basically their only competitor, is in shambles right now (and was in a an even more sorry state around when they probably started working on MW3).

Sounds like we were mostly correct

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Permanently Deleted

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Do the fans deserve better? If they mindlessly pre-order and buy every yearly release regardless of quality or reviews... they get what they paid for.

Same with most sports games that are just yearly roster updates at full-price, same with Pokemon, other rushed franchise installments, etc. Obviously, this is mainly the fault of greedy publishers, but the point remains: they couldn't get away with this if people didn't jump to buy the newest game installment every year.

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I feel like the whole "fans deserve better" was what people said seven releases ago. They just been failing upwards and seeing how badly they can treat players and get away with it. And apparently, it's a lot!

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I really have no sympathy. These people have been buying the exact same game on repeat for at least a decade. Same with people who buy the exact same sports games every single year even though almost nothing has changed. Stop supporting this bullshit, there are millions of games out there. I'm absolutely tired of every fucking 16-35 year old male asking me if I'm playing the new call of duty.

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I tried the beta a couple weeks ago. Right off the bat, I got windows firewall popups when launching the client which crashed the client. And it's slow to launch too. The menus are terrible. It actually launches a 2nd client from the first one, which prompted another Windows firewall popup which crashed it again, so I had to go through launching both clients again before it actually got around to launching the actual game (I don't think that one actually prompted firewall again).

The gameplay was ok. It was pretty smooth and I saw no obvious bugs or crashes. There were some balance problems, but it is a beta so I wrote those off. At the same time, nothing really stood out to me as new, novel, or innovative. I'm assuming this is what the article means by it feeling like a DLC of the last game. I didn't play the last one but I can see it not being any different. Maybe just new maps. Those kinds of things used to be released for free in games (and many games still do) in order to keep the game alive and retain players so they keep paying those microtransactions.

The biggest problem I had was that I noticed some guns are unlocked just by playing the game. But some guns specifically said they had to be unlocked in the shop. Literally pay to win weapons. I've played CoD games in the past with microtransactions and they always only sold cosmetics so I didn't mind, but weapons now? That's a no from me dawg.

Lastly, I prefer playing games with friends. But due to the nature of randomized respawns in most of the game modes, you don't really experience coordinated gameplay. You could play battle royale but I'm over that now. So I'm back on OW2 instead. While it has stupid expensive skins that used to be free, at least it's not pay to win, and I can enjoy actual team play.

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I had the feeling that every CoD since MW was more like a DLC with some new features rather than a fully fledged new game. Unfortunately Battlefield went a similiar route.

I mean if it would be 30 € or you could either purchase a full price standalone or an expansion at half price of your existing standalone game it would be fine.

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On the issue of weapons only being unlock-able in the shop, I think that may have been some kind of UI bug in the beta. When I played with my friends, they complained when they saw the “Unlocked in Shop” tag on certain guns. When I looked at them on my end, they had regular level requirements. None of us pre-ordered anything or purchased anything. When I reached the required level in the beta, I unlocked the gun that my friends indicated was “Shop Only”

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- Oh that's weird.
  
  1

If you pay that without waiting for reviews then it is a well deserved price.

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Thankfully this is the first COD I've bought in like 4+ years. Still shameful

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Everybody complaining about a business practice that works, same as the mobile games with their micro transactions.

Just don’t pay full price for the DLC, let them come back to you with a discount later. It was so obvious when they said they were copying all the skins and maps to MWIII

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They need to recoup those 70 billions dollars somehow.

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Microsoft just closed the purchase. They had no hand in this. Weird take. This was all Activision

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I remember the days of the OG MW3, some people mockingly calling it Modern Warfare 2.5

I guess it will be a similar situation, or the same, all over again, maybe it already is

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