Even though my interest in COD is flat as a pancake now; I am thinking of ways that could entice and rejuvenate interest in the franchise. I've abandoned Ghosts and I am gutted that it didn't grab me like past games but I feel it's just got a bit stale and uninspiring.
Firstly; drop the Prestige ranking and have one top level haul like we see in Battlefield which is 110. Make it a slog and something that is satisfying to reach the next level. In COD it's been too easy to go from level 1 to 20 and continue to the prestige. I think a better format would be to reintroduce challenge unlocks as opposed to squad points and level unlocks. Make the player work for every attachment and gun instead of giving it to them on a plate. Squad points were too easy to come by and items were too easy to achieve. It's all seems really dumbed down from the MW2 days where you had to use a bad attachment to unlock the things you wanted. The overall challenge of Ghosts was dead and it just opened the door to players who wanted anything and everything served up for combat. If you want something, you should earn it regardless of the costs to your K/D when you're using an ACOG to unlock something good for example. It adds so much more satisfaction rather than just ranking and unlocking with infinite squad points.
Next; drop this stupid camo roll-out as content. Give us proper and sensible weapon camo through the challenge unlock system like MW2. It's all gone a bit comical and dumbed-down and in some ways has degraded what was once a serious shooter where unlocking all camo felt really good.
I also think they should rework their DLC map packs. Not everyone wants Zombies or Extinction content at a price with four maps every few months. Perhaps give us two new maps a month starting from Christmas and an optional extra of novelty Zombies/Extinction separate. Having regular meaningful content could maintain interest for many players rather than crappy cash-in personalisation packs for easy money. I hate that this game has gone so commercial now and it's becoming very tiresome and tedious for me seeing pointless money-grabbing content being banded at players so regularly. People need to stop feeding the cash cows for crap. I often keep having to remind myself this game is an 18 as sometimes it feels really immature and it doesn't seem they are catering to the manly masses. Duck Camo - what the fuck is that about?
I think they need to maintain the scoresteak system. It worked very well in Black Ops 2 as an infrastructure. Why IW removed it, I'll never know. It just opened the gates to the bad old days of players not playing the objective and using the killstreak ladder as the tool for their own ends and not bother trying to support the team or win the game. KC and DOM were just unbearable sometimes on Ghosts I found all because they removed such a necessary feature.
I've thrown out a few brief ideas and would be interested to hear anyone else's thoughts on what could be done to get Call of Duty back on its feet.