For years I have tracked the progression and regression of the Call of Duty franchise, both from the perspective of a life-long player but also as a critic. Despite the common consensus, each year’s Call of Duty manages to offer a surprising amount of content, both old and new, while introducing potentially game-changing mechanics. When it comes to moving and shooting, Call of Duty has pretty much perfected the formula, with Black Ops 6 introducing the smooth-as-butter omnimovement. For a franchise as big as COD, you would and should expect gameplay to be top-tier, with hundreds of developers across a dozen studios working diligently to make sure the next Call of Duty arrives on time and ‘feature-complete’.
On the flip-side, a franchise as big as COD is also hampered by its own size, with the series having its hands tied left and right so as to not deviate too far from what has made Activision (now Microsoft) Billions on an annual basis. The most recent Black Ops 6 is in some ways the best entry in the franchise, and in other ways, the worst. With Black Ops 7 coming around the corner, the team at Treyarch seem to be saying and doing all the right things in the lead-up to its release. Unfortunately, the duality of Call of Duty ensures that no future entry will ever truly be the best it can.
Ever since the launch of Modern Warfare in 2007, Call of Duty has become a household name, with pretty much every single entry in the annual franchise sitting at the top of their respective years’ best-seller’s list – despite consistently releasing at the tail-end of the year.
With each new game, Call of Duty seems to break a record in some form or another, whether it be the greatest amount of engagement, the highest peak players, or the most revenue ever at a game’s launch. Be it a ‘good’ or a ‘bad’ year, Call of Duty seems to sell like hotcakes while continuing to make BANK.
That said, despite its ubiquity in the market, for better or for worse it felt as though each new entry was developed with far more freedom. During the early-ish years of COD, players could expect a complete package at launch alongside 4 post-release DLC packs.
Beyond this however, it appeared as though the developers were given the opportunity to try new things, while experimenting on older established aspects.
While this led to many positives (such as the invention of the pick-10 system; the switch-up to scorestreaks; as well as the idea of COD having a 3rd main mode like Zombies), the experimental era of Call of Duty also introduced a plethora of lesser-received changes.
One needs to look no further than the godawful supply drop system around the early-mid 8th-generation, where players could obtain objectively better versions of certain weapons exclusively through lootboxes (Advanced Warfare) or worse still would be unable to obtain entire DLC weapons at all without sinking your time/money into its supply crates (Black Ops 3).
You of course also had sweeping changes to movement and traversal, with the series pioneering the ever-fun dolphin-diving with Black Ops 1. Advanced Warfare pushed the series to the future with the highly-underrated exo-suits – allowing for far more varied gunfights and moment-to-moment gameplay while introducing a new layer of verticality.
Black Ops 3 added wall running and an alternate form of jetpacks alongside specialist characters. Infinite warfare took players to space, maintaining much of BO3’s core mechanics while adding a suite of unique, fun and varied weapons – some of which could transform into pretty much entirely different guns at the press of a button.
Seeing as how COD WWII went back to…World War 2, much of the gameplay itself was classic Call of Duty. Even so, the team at Sledgehammer Games experimented in other ways, giving players the Headquarters: A social space which served multiple functions (and one which we would never see again), while also introducing larger-scaled game modes; among other small enhancements/alterations.
Call of Duty in this era was far from perfect, and many would argue that the degree of changes between each entry could lead to alienation with some fans who either enjoyed or disliked a certain mechanic or feature being added/removed from game-to-game.
That said, Call of Duty during this period made a majority of its money at launch, and so developers appeared to mostly be left alone as long as they manage to hit the quota for an annual COD release.
Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2019 however is where everything seemed to change. With the launch of Infinity Ward’s Modern Warfare reboot (and especially in the wake of the free-to-play Warzone’s success), Call of Duty had officially entered the live-service era.
This brought about a number of welcome changes and monetary decisions. Firstly, all gameplay-related content was released for all to enjoy for free. It could require some level of grinding, but ultimately everyone was now on the same level and so could compete fairly. This applied to the post-launch maps, weapons and more – meaning the 4 DLC strategy of the past was out and Seasonal content was in.
With all future guns and maps now being ‘free’ a new form of monetisation needed to be brought into play. This is where we then got the much-controversial cosmetic system.
Inspired by the likes of Fortnite, all future Call of Duty games during the live-service era have offered Seasonal Battle Passes, limited-time events and of course the COD shop. For better or for worse, this new system was a success, and so we have seen it be implemented in every other Call of Duty since with little to no evolution – perhaps aside from store bundles slowly getting more costly.
While the lack of innovation in this particular aspect is already concerning (with a system such as this now clearly being directed by executives at Activision / Microsoft), all of these new ‘premium’ cosmetics are in many ways purposefully designed to be inferior or disappointing.
While we fortunately still have the ability to earn camos for our guns, paid weapon cosmetics in the form of blueprints have taken over Call of Duty.
As much as I dislike just how costly these bundles are, an argument could potentially be made for its inclusion if players were getting their money’s worth…but they’re not.
Weapon blueprints in particular are a trick. Though they can look cool initially, by the time you’ve switched out your weapon’s attachments for ones you actually want to use, the entire design of the gun might be wholly different.
That’s not even mentioning the fact that these blueprints apply to a single weapon in a series which includes dozens of different guns RIGHT AT LAUNCH – let alone after all of its post-launch content has been released.
Over the years we’ve seen different COD titles offer various earnable blueprints throughout its lifecycle. While I would of course prefer to be awarded blueprints for my accomplishments than not, they barely feel worth it to earn – let alone to actually pay for.
Okay, so blueprints are hardly worth it, with the only guns to maintain their look being the rare and more costly mastercrafts. That said, the idea of blueprints as a function mainly rose with the arrival of this new live-service approach and so its inclusion didn’t necessarily take anything away from players.
One piece of personalisation which was definitely gimped however was the notion of weapon stickers and decals. Again, primarily obtained either through a Battle Pass or in a paid bundle, weapon decals and sticker are perhaps even more useless.
Unlike almost any other decal system, Call of Duty’s stickers can only be placed on a couple dedicated regions of a weapon. Okay, sure, they don’t want players to put a bunch of stickers together and make a penis or other genitalia.
Even so, not being able to scale, rotate, or move the decals in any form makes the whole system feel like little more than Battle Pass / bundle filler. It also doesn’t help that a majority of the decals are placed terribly on these weapons with some being barely visible and others frustratingly off-centre.
Other bits of Battle Pass filler include player emblems, calling cards and loading screens – many of which either feel slapped on or in the worst cases appear to be AI generated. Unfortunately all of this is now a core part of Call of Duty’s monetisation and as such will likely remain until Activision discovers an even better way to make infinite money.
This is just scratching the surface of the impact of this new cosmetic system. Again, though not applicable to every older COD entry, the likes of Advanced Warfare offered some degree of character customisation while also letting you earn and unlock various cosmetic parts for your character – from different boots, to different gloves; exo-skeletons; helmets and more.
Being able to personalise your character in this way is clearly far too player friendly which is why we will likely never see such a system again.
Hell, even going the Fortnite route of letting you change parts of your paid-for operator’s outfits with other paid-for cosmetics would allow for too much freedom to make your own visually appealing skin in Activision’s mind. As such, you’ll have to make do with whatever exact designs Activision has chosen for you, until they release a new one which is ever so slightly better…but never perfect.
As mentioned, Call of Duty is in no way the first nor the only-live service game to go this route, with many of its implementations being core to the design of Battle Passes in general (with a few exceptions).
In order to force a sense of FOMO, Battle Passes are of course time-limited to a single season, meaning if you didn’t earn the rewards before it expires, you’ve not only wasted your money, but also your time. This is nothing new. That said, Call of Duty is extra nefarious with it.
Unlike all other forms of progression and unlocks, your Battle Pass XP is always kept hidden. Sure, you have a bar which fills up as you earn battle pass XP, but its numerical figures are obfuscated from players. Not only does this lack of transparency add to the overall FOMO, but it allows Activision to mess with the numbers behind the scenes.
There is no way to learn how to maximise your XP earn rate. In fact, the lack of transparency means that Activision can easily throttle XP progress in any way for whatever reason they want without our knowledge. As a result, the only way to ensure you complete your Seasonal Battle Pass in time is to just keep playing and putting the hours in.
There are no Battle Pass challenges, special achievements or anything which can be used to earn your rewards faster or more efficiently. Call of Duty’s Battle Passes feel more so than any other game like a pure time-sink.
The most frustrating part in all of this is the fact that underneath all of the BS, Call of Duty is a fun shooter with excellent gameplay, designed by developers who clearly care about the series. As mentioned, I’ve tracked the changes, innovations and improvements made with each of the recent annual COD titles – and despite what it may seem each entry does separate itself from the rest in a few different ways.
Unfortunately, some things will never change…or could it?
I’ve been focusing on Call of Duty’s cosmetic and Battle Pass system as this has been one of the core pillars which is now shared between all entries in the series. Up until Black Ops 7 however, there was a whole other side to the live-service debate which had persisted for years.
Skill-based matchmaking and disbanding lobbies go hand-in-hand as the biggest complaints COD fans have had for a long while. Unlike all the different cosmetics, the universally-applied SBMM system which we’ve seen since MW2019 directly impacts gameplay massively.
Designed in a way to maximise engagement, Activision’s skill-based matchmaking system prioritised matching players of similar ability against one another. This has existed to some degree in earlier entries, but MW2019 is where the system fully matured.
Not only could this impact matchmaking times and connection quality, but it made a casual arcadey PvP game feel much more rigid and controlled. In combination with disbanding lobbies after each game, SBMM could be ramped up to 11, ensuring that every match is crafted in a way to try and ensure a roughly 1:1 kill-death-ratio from all participants.
This takes away from the sense of player agency and dynamism, as each match feels purposely designed for a particular uniform experience across the board. According to Activision however, the system was working exactly as is intended, with skill-based matchmaking (or as some call it engagement-optimised matchmaking) leading to fewer mid-game quitting and longer play sessions. Anything to make more money.
But what happens when Call of Duty stops making as much money? This is where we finally arrive at the upcoming Black Ops 7.
After countless entries of the same back-and-forth between Call of Duty and its fans, Black Ops 7 appears to be the first game in years which is having its hand forced in a pro-consumer direction. Thanks to the overwhelming success of Battlefield 6, both during the beta and now upon its official launch, the ‘too big to fail’ Call of Duty was starting to look pretty vulnerable.
When it comes to multi Billion/Trillion dollar corporations, money talks and nothing else. Though we don’t have the complete data to back it up, pre-orders for Black Ops 7 appeared to be falling behind – and so Activision finally woke up.
The aforementioned skill-based matchmaking and disbanding lobbies? Gone in an instant, despite Treyarch themselves stating days prior that such a decision was out of their hands (so this switch up clearly came from the higher-ups). Pre-order incentives were improved; the controversial operator cosmetics were promised to be toned down; and Treyarch have started to finally directly address the community in an open and seemingly honest manner.
All of a sudden it seemed as though Treyarch were given permission to just do their thing, mostly free from the shackles placed upon them by previously-established series staples. Let it be known that I believe the core Treyarch team always wanted to be more receptive to direct fan feedback and rapid responses, but their hands were simply tied by forces far greater than them. However, once the proven formula for success started to wane, changes began to be made – quite a lot of changes in fact.
Beyond those listed above, we’ve seen Treyarch moving swiftly in the time leading up to Black Ops 7’s release, making all of the right moves. Between the beta and launch, based on fan feedback Black Ops 7 is refining its map layouts and door functionality; perks have been readjusted and realigned; movement has been tweaked slightly – all of which has been directly addressed and their decisions explained to the fans (something which we’ve rarely seen with Call of Duty).
All this and more has made me far more excited for Black Ops 7 than just a couple months ago. That being said, while the desperation from Activision has finally allowed Call of Duty to change for the better, the continuous chase for additional profit means that some less-than-popular features will remain.
Despite all of the good it is doing, Black Ops 7 will still suffer from lacklustre character and weapon customisation; the Battle Passes will still feel like a time-sinked treadmill; the COD store will still offer ‘free’ basic double XP tokens as a way to get you to click on their additional monetisation tab. You will continue to be inundated with promotional adverts for the latest skin, or the newest premium Battle Pass. And of course, the $30 a season Blackcell membership will remain.
I have little doubt that Black Ops 7 will be the best Call of Duty entry in years. Everything from the campaign, to the multiplayer and most importantly Zombies have more content than ever while also feeling more inspired than they have been in quite some time.
That said, until the next Fortnite comes out with a brand new and ‘innovative’ way to squeeze the maximum amount of money from audiences, Call of Duty will continue to align closely with the live-service formula which has made it (and others) extreme levels of profit.
The best and most apt way to describe Activision’s golden goose in 2025 is this: Call of Duty is not a polished turd, but a golden nugget smeared in faeces. With Black Ops 7, much of the crap has been wiped off – but some of it will unfortunately always remain.
KitGuru says: Are you excited for Black Ops 7? How would you describe Call of Duty in 2025? Does BO7 represent the start of a changing tide, or simply a slight course correction? Let us know down below.
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KitGuru Games: The Duality of Call of Duty first appeared on
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