Having often defended Treyarch for being the only Call of Duty developer that "listens to the community" and seemed to have a vested interest and honest sincerity toward providing us with the best possible gaming experience, it is with a note of sorrow that I write this. It is a sorrow, however, that is quickly and loudly trumped by a cacophony of anger that swiftly emanates from my soul upon playing Black Ops 2 for any length of time.Granted, I understand the immense pressure and time constraints that you must work under in order to churn out a "new" Call of Duty title every (or least every other) year. Most gamers in the Call of Duty community also understand this and therefore expect that new COD titles will be released upon the public with certain flaws. The games are rushed, yes. Beta tested? No. We can forgive a broken spawn system, over-powered weapons, game-changing perks, glitches, etc. when a developer acknowledges the shortcoming and moves quickly to initiate a fix.
The most recent patch for Black Ops 2 (yeah, the game has been out for a month and has been patched how many times already!?) nerfed all submachine guns, several of the assault rifles and score streaks, including a buff to the score streak requirements for a simple UAV, because, as Treyarch's Game Design Developer, David Vonderhaar, tweeted, "nobody likes UAV SPAMMING". Really!? You're buffing the score streak requirement for, of all things, a UAV!?!? Let's forget the fact that the spawn system and lag compensation in BO2 are hands-down the worst in franchise history. The lag compensation is a particular and painful detriment to the game that makes it more often than not utterly unplayable. But Treyarch decides to buff the score requirements for a UAV....
Lag and, more recently, lag compensation is something that Call of Duty gamers have had to deal with for some time. Despite the fact that the Call of Duty series makes Activision billions of dollars each year, they seem bent on taking the low rent approach to multiplayer gaming and continue to force gamers to play on borrowed connections. Without spending too much time trying to explain the peer to peer hosting system, I liken it to a torrent downloading site, or, for those of my generation, Napster. When you download a music or video file from a torrent site, you're downloading it from a user or a group of users who have previously downloaded the file to their hard drive. When you're playing Call of Duty on the peer to peer hosting system, you are connected to one player who is selected as host. This is a player with whom you and every other player in that particular lobby share a connection to the game. If this player has a bad connection, then you have a bad connection. If this player is in a different part of the country or a different country entirely, then you have a bad connection. If this player is on the other team, then you are at a distinct disadvantage. Here is where lag compensation supposedly comes into the play. Lag compensation was designed to keep the playing field level. In other words, no more host advantage. Instead of just sharing a connection, you would share LAG! YAY! It's online gaming's version of a sexually transmitted disease. Well, maybe not that extreme, but lag on Black Ops 2 has reached epidemic status nevertheless. I first heard the term "lag compensation" while playing Modern Warfare 3, but can't say I really experienced it. If so, I certainly didn't notice much of a change in the gameplay experience. One becomes accustomed to a certain level of lag after having played peer to peer hosted titles like Modern Warfare 2 as religiously as I did. In Black Ops 2, the lag compensation is so intense, so epic at times that it's actually caused my connection to drop out entirely in the midst of a one-on-one confrontation with an enemy player. Now that's serious lag compensation! The one thing Treyarch did right with the original Black Ops (at least for PC) was to implement dedicated servers. Yeah, there were a lot of other issues that resigned that game to irrelevancy about two months into its run, but at least we had dedicated servers providing a level playing field and as little to no lag as possible.
If it were just me, I would chalk it up to poor connection quality on my end. But seeing and hearing so many gamers complaining about the lag, it's no anomaly. The problem is wide-spread and effecting the entire community. It's far more frustrating when considering how good a game Black Ops 2 has the potential of being. That one rare game out of four or five with a half way decent connection is what keeps me coming back to it. This game can be fun! The operative word there is "can". But all I hear on Twitter from Treyarch is patches and fixes for weapon and score streak balancing. The fact that Treyarch spent the time and effort to buff the UAV just shows that you have seriously lost the plot. Your priorities are, simply put, out of whack. If there's nothing that can be done to remedy or at least soften the blow lag compensation inflicts on the gaming community, then just say it. Apologize. Plan for the next installment of the series to have dedicated servers or an improved (LOL!) peer to peer hosting and matchmaking system. Call of Duty may be the best shooter on the market, but it's not the only one. Remember what happened with Guitar Hero, Activison? You need us more than we need you. You can get away with releasing one high-priced but inferior item, but two? We already have a sour taste in our mouths and a chip on our shoulder. We're tired of your status quo approach to the Call of Duty series. You've taken for granted that we buy your latest COD titles in droves and line your pockets and the pockets of your share holders with billions of dollars every year. Sooner or later someone will get it right. A combination of great gameplay that is presented on a truly equal playing field. Whether that's a Call of Duty title or not is up to you. Whether or not the Call of Duty series survives is up to us, and your current batting average ain't that great.
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