FORUMS_

Let me start by saying as I have said before that I truly feel that Black Ops 2 is the best Call Of Duty to date with the exception of the original Modern Warfare. This game as by far the best job with regards to weapon balance, prestiging and challenges. As a person who was played all of the Call of Duty games and have the following credentials:

Modern Warfare: 10th Prestige

World At War: 5th Prestige

Modern Warfare 2: 10th Prestige

Black Ops: Only Played 2 Matches

Modern Warfare 3: 1st Prestige

I believe that I can definitely speak to the degrading quality of core gameplay. I have to say that outside of MW2 which had the worst gameplay balance of ALL of the COD's there are 2 core/fundamental problems with ALL of the COD's with the exception of the original Modern Warfare and that's:

1. Horrible Lag
2. Teammate Pairing

These 2 issues alone almost totally eliminate all of the positive things about this game.

I am to the point where it's almost IMPOSSIBLE to play between during peek times which seems to be around 4PM to 10PM. Constant "Host Migrations", "Connection Interrupted" and constant "2 Hitmarkers and I'm Dead" encounters. I have heard all of the suggestions about what I can do to correct "LAG" and while I'm not a networking guy my everyday job is in the technology field so I know enough to correct any issues.  Since Modern Warfare I have had 2 Internet Service Providers and gone through AT LEAST 6 routers, forwarded ports, and whatever else I could do and the result is always the same. I have an 18 Mb Download, and 1.5 Upload connection. I have played with guys who have Fiber Optics and their experience is no different than mine. I almost feel like at some point developers need to realize that using code to determine the best connection is just not going to work. I almost feel like there should be some type of system where you could see a listing of games and then run a ping test against that host so that you yourself could see what type of game experience you might expect.

Secondly after 5 previous games you would think that the matchmaking pairing system would be slightly better. I consider myself to be somewhat of an advanced player and a huge part of the frustration with all of the COD's is that advanced players end up in a games playing against a party of guys and getting annihilated because teammates are getting slaughtered which in turn can cause you to get killed more often than normal because you don't have any help. Or you go 31 & 9 and still lose badly. I would think SOMETHING could be done like at the very least pairing people with a similar kill death ratio or number of captures or bomb plants or something.

For every Call Of Duty there are a hefty number of complaints about these 2 issues and they seem to be getting worse not better. Just an obvious observation.