Nobody likes Death Streaks, but Infinityward tends to defend them by saying that "bad players" need them because without them, it can become frustrating, and without them, those players would end up just leaving and not playing the game. I get this point of view, despite not liking. However, this is where I differ with IW, and where I hope they'll see things from another point of view:
You cannot help a bad player get better, by making the game easier for them. To use an analogy, it's like trying to train for a Marathon run, but only training for half the run (~13 miles). When it comes time to run the Marathon, you simply won't be able to handle it because you undertrained. With me, I see Death Streaks as the problem, not the solution. When you make the game too easy, you remove room for improvement. Afterall, why improve when you don't need to? To illustrate this point, look at where we've come since CoD4:
Low-Recoil Weapons (Weapon Control is now less important)
High Damage Weapons (only need an average of 3 hits to kill)
Radar Reliance (people are so used to it that they complain when people don't show up for them now...)
Death Streaks (now you get rewarded for dying)
Aim Assisted Knife Lunges (just get close, the game does the rest)
Lag Compensation (bad connection? no problem)
This is just a few things off the top of my head. You can clearly see that this game is just becoming easier as the series goes on. This is the complete wrong direction to go if the goal is to help players improve and need less reliance on these things. You simply hinder their ability to improve by removing the need to improve.
I think it's important that you start wheening players off these things now, and stop introducing more and more "training wheels" so to speak. What I'm proposing is a very simple first step, which addresses one of the issues for these "bad players" who tend to struggle a lot with getting kills, and that is, the game constantly matching them with players who are simply better than them. My idea is simple:
Introduce a playlist which is only accessible to those under a 1.0 KDR, and locked for everyone else. Similar to Bootcamp in World at War (not limited by Rank though, but rather, KDR). What this does is gives these players a field to play in against other players of similar skill. Now I know, KDR doesn't = skill. But these players need an environment where they're not playing against parties of 1.5-2 KDR players all the time. They need somewhere that they can go in order to hone their skills and improve.
I think in order to prevent people from exploiting this playlist, parties shouldn't be allowed in unless their "average kdr" is higher than 1. This would allow people who have slightly higher KDs to enter, but only if the other people in their party had a pretty low K/D. Additionally, the Party Leader must have a KD < 1. The other flaw is the 10th prestige stat reset that people can do. They could potentially reset their stats and gain access.. so there should be something that lets the game realize when people have done it, and lock the playlist for them if their KD was higher than say, 1.5 at that point.
This is still just a concept, but I would really like to see it go somewhere with either IW or Treyarch. Give those players a place to essentially "practice" against real human players. Combat Training was a nice start, but those are still just AI at the end of the day, and are incapable of real tactics.
Am I the only one who thinks this would be a good idea (at least in theory)?
