This got way longer than I intended it to be (so long I had to post it offsite), but once I got started, I couldn't stop. Sorry its so verbose...I almost decided not to post it due to this, but I might as well not let it go to waste. If you don't like the length, just don't read it.

Ignoring lag, which we're all having our own struggles with currently, lets look at part of the design of the game. IMO the skill gap in this game is lower than it's ever been. Ignoring lag altogether, the problem is extremely complicated maps combined with the fact that there is no way to locate someone besides physically seeing him yourself. You can only ever be looking in one place a time. The more you press forward towards the enemy, the more places they could attack you from...even from the rooftops, or behind, thanks to the new movement system. Eventually the amount of places you can be shot from overwhelms how much you can view at any one time. So then it becomes just a guessing game, however, if you do choose correctly, that's only half of the battle; you still must actually fight the person and win. If you guess incorrectly, you are instantly slain with no chance at winning. Harder still is the extremely low health. Often times, you will come out a winner in one fight, but will be wounded and almost instantaneously another enemy will easy finish you off. If you had the knowledge that a second enemy was close, you could then employ some sort of strategy...should you wait to see if they separate? Should you give yourself a time limit to finish enemy #1 so as to give yourself enough buffer room to get away and heal for #2? Should you even engage at all? In this game, any sort of strategy is thrown out the window to make way for luck and happenstance. Every single time you choose to fight someone, you are literally putting your life on the roulette table; not just to lag, flinch, the person you are fighting etc, but to whatever may come in the period after where you are wounded/getting your bearings again. There can be no planning for this after period, because the player is not given any information to go on, and the amount of scenarios that could play out is too much to predict. In previous games (except Ghosts...but still even Ghosts to a degree compared to this), the maps only had a small set of paths the players could travel, so prediction was much easier.

Let's give an example with the BO2 Raid map. BO2 is a good example because while it did not have footsteps, the maps were simple enough that deduction/prediction was not impossible. Lets say you are walking toward the statue (this would be the B flag on Dom). The edge of the map is on your left, and the B flag is on your right. You get into the center, and you first check the right path, then the window of the building (I think people refer to it as Laundry..see pic in link), and then the left side. You then approach the building from the left side, watching the left path the whole time. You do this because you know due to the length of the right path, its unlikely anyone could be in range to shoot you in the next 3 seconds, which is about the time it will take you to reach the bottom of the building. And you know you will most likely be safe from window assaults because as you get closer, it gets more difficult for someone in the window to hit you, even if they were to appear. And even though someone could come from the center of the map into the statue area, you see on your minimap that you have a couple of teammates looking in that direction (which will also add more safety from a window/right side attack). So you deduce that you will be safe if you just continue watching for people to pop around the corner of the left side, which is a reasonable and probably best course of action if you want to approach the building.

http://unofficialcallofduty.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/map-callouts-bo2-raid.jpg

Now lets take this same map, same situation, and place it with AW mechanics. While you are looking left, someone appears on the roof of the building and kills you. Or they appear on top of any portion of the divider between the center area of the map and the statue area and kill you. Or lets say you make it to the left side, and begin walking down it. Suddenly someone from the roof top drops behind you and melees you. What should be "safe zones" are now just another place to be killed from. You might say "Well this isn't a fair comparison, AW has maps designed for exo movement." One example I can think of that's exactly like this is the "Solar" map. Go to the center section, and look at the "glass" divider on the side of it. Anyone can hop up it at any point from the other side...very similar to the Raid divider for the center and statue section. Or on that same map, look at the lane that has the buildings, and rooftops of those buildings that you can get on. Sure, from far away you can see both the roof and the windows/door of the each building. But as you get closer, you must choose one to look at. If you choose wrong, you're dead. Even when you're inside the building, you are not safe from rooftop assaults as many of them have glass ceilings that people can drop through (silently I might add...no footsteps in this game) and kill you from behind. Even if you choose to go the roof route, someone may see you through the windows from below, hop up onto the roof behind you, and proceed to kill you.

The more astute among you may be thinking "Well if you know that you can be shot from more places the more you press into enemy territory, then just don't do that. Either move carefully, check your corners, or do not pass a certain point". Weren't the exo suits supposed to provide us with fast, aggressive gameplay? What you're describing is neither. It's slow, methodical, and what I and a lot of other people would call boring and the antithesis to what the exo suits were supposed to bring us, and to CoD's arcade shooter roots in general. I guarantee if you play this game slowly, or even camp in opportune corners/rooftops, your KDR will skyrocket. If you do it with some heavy game knowledge applied, your overall kills per minute would barely even drop. I have even done it in a few games, and its very effective, much more than rushing. But is playing that way fun, or what you want to come out of the exo system? Sure its effective if your goal is to win, but is it what we really want? This was the main complaint of Ghosts, that campers had an overwhelming advantage over rushers, mainly due to quick TTK and overly complex maps. Why has this style been brought back again?

It seems like they were attempting to go for a Quake type of game, where the movement was extremely fast and the action intense. In that game, you didn't have footsteps either, nor even a radar (although you could clearly hear where battles were taking place due to directional gunfire, something this game even lacks). The reason it works in that game (and Halo) is due to a couple of reasons. First, there are weapons/items out in the world that you must go out and obtain if you want to win; this helps to deter camping. Second, the amount of health you have in those games is enormous compared to CoD. If you get shot in the back, you have ample time to dodge, spin, and return fire. Lastly, the maps were simple by comparison. There wasn't 10 paths to get to one area, no 200 cubby holes to hide in, etc. In other words, the amount of places your eyes had to look at one time was not overwhelming. The maps in general were also much smaller, again leading to easier deduction on where your opponent may be.

So where does this game miss the mark, and how can it and future CoD games improve? Again, in my opinion, this is what needs to happen. Firstly, and most importantly, you can not have extremely complicated maps (exo movement is a part of this complication), low HP, no sound cues, and Ghost (the perk) all in the same game. One of these has to give. The player MUST have some way to locate his opponents other than sight, so that strategy in approaching fights can be employed. Barring that, he needs enough HP to live long enough to formulate and apply some strategy when opponents make themselves known...but since low HP is sort of a centerpiece of CoD, I'm assuming this is out of the question. Without location knowledge, the player is left feeling extremely vulnerable, making them unwilling to move around the map, and to instead more cautiously try to keep their flanks guarded...I'm sure this is not what the exo movement system was created to do. The least effective option I think is to remove Ghost; it removes an important recurring feature of the game, and it still leaves players feeling vulnerable and encourages campy play until it comes out, at which point they begin to annihilate the enemy, because they can now see the enemy and formulate strategies to kill them, while the enemy is still left in the dark about them. This is why the VSAT was so overwhelmingly powerful in BO1/2; it turned a more or less equal "location knowledge" playfield into a one sided slaughter. Offtopic, but VSAT is an instance where location knowledge is tipped way too much to the side that has it, and should never ever be in another CoD game.

So barring the above, we have the maps. If the developers insist that sound cues should not be useful in locating the enemy, then the maps must be made to accommodate that decision, so that players can feel that their experience and knowledge will lead them to be able to formulate safe, effective map traversal paths; in other words, the maps must be simple in design. This is how BO1/BO2 got away with having no footsteps, and it worked ok for the most part (personally I feel that some BO2 maps were still a bit too complicated). For this game, would that have been the right strategy? I cant even imagine it even being possible with the exo movement abilities. They just allow too much freedom of movement; the act of designing "simple" maps would have only led to the player feeling extremely restrained in their use of the exo abilities, so much so that exo might as well have been scrapped for the multiplayer. But for a "standard" CoD game, no footsteps and/or low TTK should equal simple maps. If Ghosts maps had been much simpler, we might all be singing its praises right now.

So we are left with sound cues, since its unlikely the maps in this game will be changed after release. I know that this is an extremely touchy issue for most people (mostly footsteps). Some think it only helps campers and it should be left out of the game. They have awful flashbacks of MW2/MW3 corner campers killing them as they rush, so I understand their concerns. My opinion is this: Footsteps, as well as all sound cues (gunfire, exo movement, etc) should be placed into this game and should easily pinpoint someones location, and there should no perks to either lower or increase the volume of these (silencer is fine, mainly talking about dead silence/sitrep). Before you get all angry mob on me, hear me out...I will attempt to back up my position. Please read and at least consider my arguments before you dismiss me.

Lets first look at the common complaint that footsteps will only aid campers in getting kills. Lets run through 2 scenarios, one where footsteps are off, and one where they are on. For simplicity, lets imagine a simple room with an entrance, an exit, and a camper in a corner. I'm talking about a real camper, one that does not move. The camper is facing the door you come through. Footsteps are currently off. You run into the room. Two things can now happen; you will either notice the camper and shoot him on sight, or you will blindly run past him, and he will shoot you in the back. Now lets take the same scenario and add your footsteps. You approach the room, and he hears you coming. He is already facing the door. You walk in, and the same two things can happen: You either see him and fight, or you do not and he kills you. In this instance, you making footstep noise did not lead to any significant change in the outcomes this scenario brings.

Now lets do the scenario I'm sure you're all thinking about. Take the same room, the same non moving camper, and add 5 entrances/exits, and have the camper be facing the incorrect one. In the case where footsteps are on, and you both notice each other, a fair fight occurs (where "fair" is defined as both knowing about the other and being able to trade bullets). If you do not notice him, and he does notice you because of footsteps, then an "unfair" fight occurs, where you are shot in the back. Now lets look at it where footsteps are off. If you do not notice him, then nothing happens and you miss each other, because he wasn't looking in your direction anyway. If you do notice him, you then begin an "unfair" fight, where you shoot him in the back. In both instances where a fight happens, an "unfair" fight can occur...the difference is only upon who it happens to. We all love to think "Yeah, with footsteps off, it happens only to that scum bag camper, and that's how it should be, so footsteps off is the best way to have the game". I'm a huge rush fan, but even I can see that it's a little bit hypocritical to want to try and "force" the playstyle onto someone that does not want to play that way with "dirty" tactics like having them get shot in the back some of the time. The game should allow both styles of play. Besides, this is only rusher vs camper; having footsteps off severely detracts from rusher vs rusher gameplay as well, also removes part of the skill gap, and takes away gameplay options, all of which I will touch on in a bit.

Going somewhat off topic for a brief bit, I wanted to touch on a bit of irony of one of the past games that everyone loves to get their hate for footsteps on, MW2. This game was the one where the term "sound whore" really took off, as people began to get headsets, camp hard, etc. Sure we had dead silence back then, but those that chose not to use it were at the mercy of headset users, particularly those that chose to camp and listen for footsteps. Why do you think this was? We've already discussed the "pure" camper, one who does not move. More deadly however is the one that does. Whenever this camper hears you approaching the room, he can then position himself in the most advantageous spot in the room to kill you before you get there, with you being none the wiser all thanks to the Dead Silence perk that everyone loves to praise. If this player is intelligent, you will never be able to kill him; he will always move around and position himself in the room such that you are always at a huge disadvantage, and there is no way you can possibly know he is doing this thanks to dead silence. So the irony here is that the Dead Silence perk actually intensifies a campers ability to capitalize on others footsteps. Quickly, lets do another hypothetical. If foosteps are off for both players (both use DS), he is not able to know which spot is best to position himself in, nor even which entrance you will come through. Likewise, you will not be able to hear him shuffling around inside the room. This leads to quite the random encounter, as noted previously; it could either be a fair fight, someone could get shot in the back, or nothing at all could happen. No strategy can really be employed by either player other than hoping they are the first one to see their opponent. With both having footsteps on however, the moving camper is at a dilemma. He knows you are coming, and where you are coming from, but he can not position himself how he wants, or he will give himself away to you due to his own footsteps. He is stuck at the place he was when he heard you coming; you may have even have heard him moving briefly before he reacted to your footsteps. To me, this scenario of having footsteps on is an improvement from the old model of dead silence. It causes at least one of the players to react to the other's presence and plan strategy, and possibly two if the rusher is being perceptive. Remember, even if the rusher does not know he is in there, he can still be cautious by checking corners, throwing equipment, etc, which should be standard practice going into a room anyway.

Back to AW, I did previously say that there would be more gameplay options, improved rusher vs rusher, etc if everyone had audio cues to work off of. First off, lets talk about exo mute. Currently, this ability is absolutely useless because everyone is already muted all of the time anyway, and I really don't like that because in the campaign, the idea is well executed and seems very interesting. Going off of its current version, which is just to mute footsteps...the first thing that comes to mind is the camper scenario I've been going over. If you can always hear footsteps, then you can become very dependent on them, so it would be extremely surprising for a camper when a silent person bursts into a room from a way they were not expecting, simply because they did not hear anything at the time. Likewise, you can assault key points like flags in Dom, or Bomb sites in SnD, by activating it and then flanking as fast as possible. Seems simple, but obviously turning on footsteps would give the ability that turns them off a reason to exist. But going further than that, it would be cool if it worked similar to the campaign, where it muted all sound around you. Gunfire, exo boost, callouts, etc. If you were attacking a group of people looking different directions, you could use it to kill one without the other knowing, or to activate it after a fight when you know others are in pursuit to escape them.

So now the main meat of the footsteps/sound cue argument, rusher vs rusher. How exactly does them hearing each other improve the game you ask? Currently, 2 rushers can easily run right past each other, or worse, one will begin an "unfair" fight, often with the other being killed by it. Currently, this is what happens when a "fair" fight occurs. Two people trade bullets, one ducks around a corner. Now its just a guessing game on where exactly he's going. He could stay low, or he may suddenly jump up and kill you. There is often no way to predict, and once again the fight comes down to luck. With sound cues, rushers are now easily aware of each other, and by simply being aware of each other's presence, a fair fight will always occur. Even if they can not physically trade bullets at the time of revealing their existence to one another, they are now both in a struggle to position themselves in such a way that gives them the greatest advantage against their opponent, while not exposing themselves too much to other opponents. If one attempts to rush forward to the other, or flank, the other instantly knows due to hearing the footsteps and exo dashes getting closer, and can respond accordingly, choosing to run, dash out to surprise, or some other maneuver that they think will let them win. If one tries to hop and get a quick shot, the other can hear his jetpacks go off. One of them may even exo mute and try to get the drop on their now unaware opponent. All of these mind games, etc are tough enough, but now imagine you hear some other footsteps coming near you. You must instantly decide what the best course of action is now that you are outnumbered: Should you gamble and try to finish your opponent quickly with an inefficient attack before the next arrives, knowing its risky? Should you run? Can you even run? Maybe your opponent is far away and being somewhat passive, and the next footsteps closer, so should you switch to the second opponent before coming back to the first? All of this is much more interesting and exciting game play than "Run around aimlessly, see someone, shoot, he runs around a corner...what now?".

All of the above "sound processing" is what I meant by skill gap. Its difficult enough to concentrate on aiming, dodging, etc, but all of it is even harder when other information is given to the player to process (like sound cues). It takes time, experience, and practice to know how to best interpret and respond to the sound information the game is giving to you, while doing everything else expected of you in a CoD game. Because of the low HP of CoD games, often times you must process and respond extremely quickly, usually < 1 second. It used to be there to a degree in previous CoD's...only the recent CoD's have decided that sound information is evil and should be banned. I thought this game was going to bring it back, especially when I heard the sound from the Gamescom trailer, but I was pretty disappointed to see that the dev's apparently attended the David Vonderhaar school of sound design. Like I said before, the game could have still been saved if the maps were simpler, but no, its Ghost's style complexity all over again. Complex maps + vision only game play + low hp = random, frustrating, and a low skill ceiling.

I don't know if such a thing can be changed in a patch, but this game desperately needs audio cues. Currently my games (and many others I've watched), go something like this: Spawn, run around, see someone seemingly completely alone and fight with him. I win the fight, about 1 second later I get shot in the back, often by someone very close to me physically. Did the person just happen to come along, or was he always near there and just saw us fighting on the radar? Either way, he was in some location I just happened to not look at, because there are just too many to keep track of. If sound cues were in the game, I could have heard him rushing towards me and then taken appropriate action. Sometimes, I don't even get to fight with anyone. I'll just walking along, pass a path on my right, and 1 second later someone flies around it and shoots me. Which leads me to believe the best course of action in this game is to always have your bases covered, and never be exposed to too many angles of attack at once. However, with the amount of angles present, this cuts you off from a huge portion of the map and is very slow in general. So you have a constant struggle between "bored, but playing well" or "having fun, but always at great risk of instant death". Same exact thing as in Ghosts which caused me to drop it after a week. Understanding that even if the lag is fixed, this huge design flaw is not, and that has led me to not even play the game today yet, even though days before I was as hyped as could be. I really don't care if the flaw is fixed by audio or something else, but it needs to be fixed in some manner or this game will bomb exactly as Ghosts did. If the SnD crowd do not want it, then remove them only for that game mode. If the "pros" do not want it, then turn them off for tournaments. But for the love of god do something for the rest of us that value consistency from experience and skill in our games.