How do Call of Duty and Overwatch retain players?

Series Call of Duty helped popularize many online features of the progression system more than 10 years ago by Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. Since then, later versions have gradually refined the system.

The game gives you many objectives to complete, not including your own tasks in the match. If you do well on those challenges, you will gain experience, to level up and unlock new skills/weapons. You are unlocking new options to equip the character.

This is a proven and effective system, to make gameplay more attractive, to help players stick with the game longer.

But another version of the competitive multiplayer shooter, typically Overwatch, also makes a big impact. These games use progression systems but offer different values.

Similarities AND DIFFERENCE

In Call of Dutythe player earns points while playing until reaching the highest level – 55 in Black Ops 4 – unlocking guns, attachments, killstreaks and other options that can be used in the Create-a-Class system.

The player is given the option to “prestige” (reset) once the maximum level is reached. This takes you back to level one, locks all guns, and has to repeat the journey. However, the motivation for prestige: you’ll receive a special prestige rank and new calling card for your avatar in Black Ops 4, as well as a new slot for Create-a-Class gear, and unlock tokens to you choose an item that is always unlocked when prestige.

Overwatch Do not use the unlocking system. Each character has skill sets that cannot be changed. However, the game still has experience and a leveling system.

Above level 22, you will level up every time you reach 20,000 experience points. You go back to level 1 when you reach level 100, and that way your character avatar gets an extra star. There is a maximum of 5 stars on the profile picture.

You also get a silver border on your avatar instead of bronze after 600 levels, or repeat the vicious cycle over 6 times. The gold bezel will unlock after 1,200 levels and the platinum bezel after 1,800 levels. It sounds complicated, but you don’t need to do anything to manage it, or even think about it if you want to.

More importantly, you get a free loot box containing the decorations for each level.

These two systems are both designed to let you play for hundreds to thousands of hours for continuous rewards. But the difference lies in how you get the experience.

In Call of Duty, you get experience points through what you do in the match, like steal flags, get kills and assists, use your equipment successfully. This means that you gain more experience than other players if you earn more lives and medals during the match.

According to the support article from Activision, the matchmaking of Call of Duty queue players for the lowest possible latency (low ping), and make sure everyone in the lobby has access to the same DLC maps. But matchmaking in Call of Duty Regardless of skill, rank or experience, neither Activision nor Treyarch have announced major changes for Black Ops 4. This means that veterans can play with newbies (new players), creating wide skill gap between players.

Good players will often have more lives than their low-scoring teammates, and gain more experience in the same match. Prestige requires a lot of experience, and due to the experience gained from the skill, there is a high chance that the player with a lot of prestige will be better; Weaker players often don’t get enough experience to catch up.

However, in Overwatchthe experience is gained largely through the amount of time played in the game: you get 211 points per minute in the game.

As for the skill bonus, it’s pretty limited: you get 500 points for winning a match, and you get a few extra points for owning medals.

You can only get experience points for a single medal if there are more than one medal in a round. If you play 12 minutes, win and get a gold medal, you will get a total of 2,500 points for playtime, 500 points for wins and 150 points for medals. It’s a system designed to reward the time you’ve played in the game rather than individual skill.

Overwatch Not an entertaining game. It is considered more difficult and competitive Call of Duty. The skill level is very high, the rank mode ranks teams based on skill, and the highest tiers in the ranking system of Overwatch very limited in number and difficult to obtain. The game is very competitive and includes professional tournaments, Overwatch League. Games Call of Duty Recently there is a rank system, and the game has also started to professionalize, but the unranked mode is where the vast majority of gamers spend the most time.

SHOULD PLAYTIME BONUS MORE THAN PLAYING SKILLS?

‘s leveling system Call of Duty It’s great when you ‘issue’ to the opponent, but it’s counterproductive when you get hit yourself: you can’t get much experience in 20 minutes of ‘onion’.

System Overwatch It’s more player-friendly, but it doesn’t make you feel as good as carrying the whole team: members get roughly the same experience even though they contribute less than you. Rank of Call of Duty reflects skill level better than ‘s rank Overwatchsince skill plays an important part in ‘s experience points Call of Duty. Although there is a golden bordered avatar in Overwatch, but you may not be good, just passionate about playing. Black Ops 4 players who have prestiged many times certainly possess high skill.

Therefore, the skill-based experience bonus system is for good players, thereby creating meaning for players. The only disadvantage is that this system belongs to Call of Duty.

Why Overwatch using a time bonus system instead of a skill leveling system?

Less than 3 years, Overwatch has greatly influenced the way multiplayer games are designed. Blizzard no longer emphasizes kill/death ratio. These stats, and always publicly available, have long plagued players; It’s a shame to play badly and everyone knows about it.

Overwatch shows you stats about yourself, but not yours to other players. The game also mixes assist and kills into the same stat, so the kill/death ratio isn’t as obvious in poor players. That is the art of game design.

Other multiplayer shooters, including Call of Dutyapplied the changes of Overwatch: Black Ops includes assist in kill/death ratio. While players still see details of their individual scores, the team’s scorecards aren’t as detailed and don’t tell you how many times your teammates have died.

This is a good direction. It encourages players to focus on themselves instead of looking at their teammates’ weaknesses. And by rewarding players based on how much time they spend in the game, whether they’re good or bad, it avoids a culture of ‘avoiding’ new or poor players.

But Overwatch there’s another thing in my experience system: Overwatch sell loot boxes, and the game wants you to buy loot boxes.

Loot boxes are a psychological tool, encouraging you to spend more money on the game, and anything related to loot boxes should be taken with caution. Some systems are fairer than others, but the goal is still to keep you playing and making money.

Therefore, it is possible that the progression system of Overwatch give each player a free loot box to encourage good and bad players to buy more loot boxes. It does not allow you to earn faster by playing well, because that will reduce the incentive to buy loot boxes. But they also don’t want players to hang up early, because Blizzard wants to constantly remind players about loot boxes, and the game doesn’t want anyone to play the game continuously without visiting its loot box page. Overwatch.

Why do we spend money to open the chest? The art of sucking money from NPH

When viewed through this lens, the experience system isn’t about fairness or wanting competitive games to be more player-friendly – ​​it’s the publisher’s art of sucking money.

Way of seeing Overwatch How depends on you. But the prestige system of Call of Duty does not make you suspicious because it has nothing to do with making money.

Call of Duty have tried loot boxes in the past, but ditched it this year in favor of the Black Market system – similar to Fortnite’s Season Pass, which allows players to unlock decorations.

Black Ops 4 recently added microtransactions for players to skip the tiers in the Black Market without having to work day and night, and buying all season skins will cost more than $150. As a result, Black Ops 4 has become the game that players with a lot of money can throw at the game. However, the prestige leveling system is completely independent of the Black Market progress system, which does not revolve around microtransactions. Treyarch and Activision don’t seem to know much about game economics, and are trying to test some ideas.

System of progress in Overwatch and Call of Duty both make players addicted and push them to pursue the next goal. But both of these games avoid creating a feeling of defeat in each game. In Overwatchyou will always gain experience by the time you play, and in Call of Dutyyou can get a lot of exp when you play well.

As a result, losing became less frustrating in both games than in the leveling up games that required a win to level up.

WHAT DOES PLAYING BAD make you feel?

The competitive environment, where matches are ranked by skill, to create intense, close matches is probably the most ideal experience. However, sometimes you still participate in unranked modes to relieve your mind, knowing that you won’t lose anything. Of course, you will become more comfortable when defeating others, but when the ball is ‘eaten’, the game should not discourage players.

Skills in competitive multiplayer games depend on other gamers. A successful game needs to ensure a sufficient number of popular players. If all the players who are worse than you are gone, then the worst player will be you, and the game will be less attractive. Surely you won’t last long.

Both of these games have their own charms, and they’ve done that by tweaking their own progression systems, in different ways so that players of all skills can participate.

Source: polygon