Call of Duty Producer Mark Rubin (courtesy twitter.com)

COD-obsessed members of the Twitterverse are all a-Twit about changes to gameplay in the forthcoming Ghosts (out November). That’s thanks to Producer Mark Rubin’s leak about sniper rifles on Twitlonger.com. It seems sniping will involve, you know, sniping. Positioning yourself and taking shots—rather than running around with a sniper rifle and shooting bad guys. Or, as Dora the Explorer would say, snipers start sniping! Here’s the message:

One of the areas that is getting lot of love in Call of Duty: Ghosts is the Sniper Rifle. By creating the Marksman class we were able to focus the Sniper class on really powerful high-caliber weapon systems. We feel, and many of the pro players who have played would agree, that sniping has never been better.  The changes we’ve made, like dual render scopes and increased damage really make snipers a great competitive class to use. We’ve also done a lot with map design (sight lines and cover) to ensure that all classes are viably effective. Both short range and long range classes will be effective on the same maps. However . . .

in re-envisioning sniper rifles some aspects, such as sway timing, have changed the way sniper rifles function and so traditional “quick-scoping” has been affected. Is it gone completely? Maybe. It certainly won’t be viable in the way it previously was. Can’t wait for you snipers out there to get your hands on these new sniper rifles and try them out for yourselves.

See you in game!

-Mark

37 COMMENTS

        • They are the first step to getting a generation interested in shooting. Same as westerns of the 50s, Dirty Harry in the 70s and action movies of the 80s and 90s.

        • Actually, he is not. COD and other shooters are the introduction to firearms of the latest generations. Since gun safety and target shooting have all but been eliminated from schools, this is many new shooters first experience with guns.

          When I go to the local free rifle range with my tacticool toys, I am often approached by younger shooters asking where I bought them. I explain that I bought parts and assembled them myself. I give them a description of their workings, and what I built them for (application of). If they demonstrate maturity and knowledge of the four rules, I allow them a few rounds from my stash to give them a shot. When I ask how they got into firearms, almost all of them site Halo, COD, Battlefield, and other FPSers. Precious few are taught by family or friends, which I find disheartening.

      • Too bad most of the modern FPS games (CoD included) suck balls.

        Now, TF2… that I can get behind. Because games with gunplay should be fun and inventive, not brown-shaded joyless tacticool gloop with retarded children screaming profanities at you.

      • I read that as a very dystopian vision of the future in which the only firearms we own are the virtual ones. Perhaps you’ll have to get a tax stamp soon on a virtual fully-automatic rifle.

    • The majority of new gun owners grew up with FPS games. I personally owned all the PS2 MoH games. We should stand completely behind this genre, for both 1st and 2nd amendment reasons.

      • I stand firmly behind CoD all the way!

        Uh, what’s a CoD? Is that like when you don’t pay for something until it’s delivered?

      • I got introduced to firearms through James Bond Goldeneye, both the game and movies so at least for me video games were a start to guns for me. Now I help teach my friends how to shoot pistols and fight for the 2A. Don’t doubt the power of video games.

    • Realism? Where did that come into play in the franchise, was that before or after you made a 500 yrd jump in order to reach the alternate extraction site in the like 3 minuet time limit before being “left”, which for some reason was across a very steep valley in MW2?

      • I think realism exited ’round about the time you were the only person in your team competent at doing anything.

        “RAMIREZ! TAKE OUT THAT BTR! MELEE IT WITH YOUR KNIFE!!!”

        Okay, slightly exaggerating there, but it does grate a little when you end up being little more than a squad of one.

  1. COD…meh.

    BF4…now that’ll be a game, though they SERIOUSLY need to fix the sniper issues in those games.

    • Sniping was perfect in BFBC2. But they changed that whole model just to introduce the gimmicky bipod into the Recon class. Unforgivable.

    • Meh… After EA did their little “we’re not going to license real guns” B.S., I’m not interested.

    • Gotta figure out an excuse for the wife to get a PS4 and BF4 at the same time.

      As for CoD, that is one of the first shooting games I got into. Even though I’ve always been into firearms, and my dad, uncle, etc all had guns when I was growing up, it wasn’t until I started playing shooting games that I started looking into getting my own arsenal. Now I’ve introduced many of my CoD etc friends into real world shooting. As well as the ups and downs as a firearm owner in Cali.

  2. So accurately firing M203 grenade launchers from the hip mid-jump and instantly killing someone by stabbing them once in the legs all ready counted as realism, but allowing people to attain a clear and perfectly still sight picture at near Terminator speeds is going just a bit too far?

    • Don’t forget: the combat knife is the most modern weapon of them all. Also, rifles are just attachments to your grenade launcher for when you haven’t found a little blue bag in awhile.

      SCAVENGER FOR THE DOUCHE, err, WIN!

    • I have always figured knife/shot to the leg kills as ‘mobility kills’. Are you dead? Not really, but combat ineffective and therefore ‘dead’ for game purposes.

      I despise quick-scopers, because I actually snipe with sniper rifles instead of using them as one-shot death-rays, or in the case of COD:BO2, the KSG with infinite range. I greatly enjoy putting sticky grenades on quick-scopers.

  3. I haven’t played the latest iteration Battlefield, but I always preferred it to COD. If I’m going to play a game like that I want full spectrum warfare with vehicles. I’ll never forget BF1942 and BF2.

    • Or driving around in a Jeep, running over Charlie while blasting “Ohyesthebirdbirdbirdyesthebirdistheword!”

  4. CoD: Ghosts = Same song and dance. Now BF4, that’s a game I look forward to.

    However the m4a1 in MW3 was pretty impressive on Black Friday or whatever the first level was…

  5. 2 things:

    1) About time get got rid of quick scoping

    2) Too little too late, I’m done with COD and their rinse/repeat game developing.

  6. That game is lame and tired I am surprised anyone older than 13 buys it. Its a year map pack that you pay full price for. Call of Duty Modern Warfare (#4) was the last good versions.

    Buy hey if you want Bacon skinned guns….then knock your self out.

  7. Sniping in BF > sniping in CoD. And this is from someone who actually plays CoD more than BF. I’m glad quick scoping is gone, but the CoD formula has been getting stale since the original Modern Warfare 2…

    …anybody else looking forward to TITANFALL? Giant robots FTW! Got to play it at PAX Prime and it was quite enjoyable…

  8. (Part of) The driving force behind my purchase of a 1911 was due to seeing it almost every day while playing video games.

  9. The sad thing is that most people only know about 2 games in the multiplayer shooter genre: Call of Duty and Battlefield. Some don’t even know about Battlefield *gasp*!

    Games I’d recommend to the People of the Gun:

    Arma 2: Combined Operations (you can also play Day Z)
    Red Orchestra 2/Rising Storm
    Fallout: New Vegas (Reloading Benches FTW)

  10. I had been interested in guns from an early age watching Combat! reruns with my dad who would tell me about his dad fighting in WW2 with an M1. What really got me into guns was playing Jagged Alliance 2 where I had like 100 different guns available to my squad of mercs. The game differentiated between 7.62×39 and 7.62×51 and that was a huge deal back then.

    So yeah it might not be the golden age where ones father or uncle takes you out to the range and you learn to appreciate them. However, I’d rather a bunch of CoD kiddies be interested and then learn to own/use them responsibly then have the gun owning population dwindle every generation.

  11. Firearms development in FPS games is of necessity constrained, because reality is constrained. They’re basically just skins on a statistic pack, just like the AR-15, ARX-160, AK-102, Tavor, etc are skins on the 5.56×45 round. There are balancing differences in accuracy and ROF — higher ROF, lower accuracy at distance, or a mobility penalty if you go with a heavier LMG.

    There are really only a few FPS weapons:

    The 5.56mm AR
    The 7.62mm AR
    The 5.56mm LMG
    The 7.62mm LMG
    The 7.62mm sniper
    The .338/.50 cal sniper
    The 9mm SMG
    The PDW
    The pistol
    The pump shotgun
    The semi-auto shotgun

    The rest is skin and animation details. And yes, bacon skin = shark jumped.

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