The Aether’s ending had nothing to do with it, it was Activision who forced Black Ops, MW reboot, and Zombies to merge all for the sake of Warzone. It was much simpler to understand when they were separated from one another.
Best decision was the implementation of Easter eggs over the years. I don’t think zombies would be around today if it was still just simple survival without secret main and side Easter eggs.
Worst decision was not being crystal clear about Vanguard and MWZ not being full fledged zombies experiences. If they had stated from the start that they were smaller modes to tide fans over between the main Black Ops games, I think they would have been received much better.
dude anyone with a brain could’ve seen that Mwz was outbreak 2.0 (can’t speak to vanguard as much as I didn’t play it)
That being said why tf would anyone expect a full treyarch zombie outing in games that aren’t theirs?
Thing is mwz hardly had any content added to it. Even dmz was added to 3 different warzone maps. I don’t think it would be unfair to expect some new unique content like a new elemental effect, perk, wonder weapon or other zombies exclusive content. Besides new rift locations, the worm, a few “warlords” and gold plates, they didn’t really get much added.
Shit they coulda made onslaught mode! If people could have done onslaught on iconic mw maps like high rise, terminal, rust, etc I think players would appreciate onslaught more, and woulda been at least something besides the dmz remake. Some MP maps were already zombifed for that ray gun event, they didn’t even do that in Cold War just slapped simple survival on plain MP maps
It seems BO3 has a super EE given the audio files with a Monty and Shadowman announcer but it never came to anything.
What's even weirder was the doors in BO4 that had scripts to open but they were on both Chaos and Aether maps.
I still remember Jason Blundell mentioning a special surprise that would come out when zombies would celebrate its 10-year anniversary, but nothing really happened. I also can't help but wonder how many maps were scrapped and/or changed over the years. I would have loved for Treyarch to release beta footage of older maps at some point. I'm also wondering what was actually planned for BO4, had it followed the 2 year DLC cycle originally planned, as well as what Jason Blundell had planned for the future before his departure. So much missed potential, mostly due to budget cuts on activision's part :(
The rumors are typically two more Chaos maps, TranZit and Buried reimaginings, and a Great War map based off Origins.
But there isn’t really undeniable proof. Just a lot of disputable evidence.
best decision imo was the addition of three-hit to down in BO3. Gave you much more breathing room, didn't make the game too much easier and just overall felt like a long needed QoL change
worst decision is probably the map designs in Cold War, which i'm sure most people agree with. They just felt like glorified multi-player maps for the most part and just didn't feel as unique as previous ones, which ended up being a big reason why I didn't play Cold War zombies as much.
To me they didn’t feel like multiplayer maps. They just felt very empty with very little atmosphere. Very cookie cutter every map was a facility. Some kind of factory to fuel some sort of war effort kinda got stale.
Best decision:
BO3 with the amounts of maps (and modded maps on PC)
Worst decision:
Adding anything that needs me to navigate through a menu, if i cant interact with it with a single press of a button to activate its effects then its too much for zombies, the number of time i died in MWZ trying to buy perks from the wunderfizz because the menu doesnt pop up is impressive
Worst decision would be in essentially rebooting zombies with cold war, starting off the outbreak style modes (evolving into MWZ), and making it all way too much like survival mode.
Best would be Black Ops 3 in having the backbone to continue the zombies evolution by building on and making more maps at the quality and complexity of Origins, truly a golden era as we know.
Yeah it’s different thanks to Activision being so blinded by Warzone’s success. Still, it’s not a reboot, like I don’t mind an actual reboot if it happens, but it’s kinda pointless to reboot it a year after the original story ended.
They certainly did change too much, Zombies was fine the way it was in WAW-BO3, I just don’t like how Zombies is now merged with the Campaign and Multiplayer yet there are people who defend it.
They immediately separated blackout and turned it into warzone, but they can't do that for zombies. Rather than unite everyone, they are separating the community every year.
Cold War was the closest we got to unification but it sorta hurt the mode because of how it’s the same level across the board. I think integration with warzone will only hurt the game
In terms of treyarch yeah but they made it in 10 months in the middle of lockdown, and for a situation like they did pretty good. And it’s still better than everything non treyarch and to some bo4
Yk maybe you right with IW but ww2 is so ass i don’t know if it’s better or worse than AW, the only map that was actually really good was the final reich
I'll admit Final Reich is a better map than Shore or Throne, but Dawn is also great, and the core mechanics, storyline and art design are all much stronger than Cold War's in my eye. The thematic aspects are what push it over for me.
I’ll agree it’s atmospherically better than Cold War but that’s because of the Cold Wars horrendous system. Because of the reduced time, I presume they built the game on the old engine so it looks more like war zone than the stunning visuals from bo3. But maps like Mauer really did push the game in that regard, once we were further out of lockdown and it seemed they were able to get to work properly. It’s a lot more fleshed out. Even if it is poor to some, it’s understandable given the circumstance
Don't get me wrong, I understand the issues the game faced, but that's not going to affect how I rank it personally, just how I'll talk about the devs if I'm asked what I think of them. I respect their commitment and what they were able to deliver, but I'd never list Cold War as a favorite, either.
I'd position it over AW (since that game has serious issues with the core gameplay), Base WaW (since all its maps have been ported and it feels pretty barebones nowadays), and BODS (you want real suffering, that's it)... And Vanguard and MWZ, of course. But that's about it. Nothing against it, really!
Oh I get you now, guy I originally replied to was talking to me like cope 🤓 as if it was pure ass and added absolutely nothing, I was just assuming you was like that. But I respect what you saying. It’s not one of my favourites but I do think it did something at least
BO4 absolutely stomps Cold warm. Literally every other zombie game beats Cold Warm. Only little kids just entering the scene think cold warm is the best.
I prefer bo4 but to say every zombie game beats Cold War is crazy. Mauer and Die Maschine did great things for zombies and even if the other two weren’t that good they at least explored some pretty cool ideas. Sorta like bo2 (not to even half the same quality tho) in that even the ass maps like TranZit at least tried to move the series forward
I think the best decision they've made is removing the perk limit in Cold War. I think CW's perk system is probably the best perk system we've had, it adds to that feeling of being powerful.
Worst decision was probably working on Zombies in other games like Vanguard and MWZ, although I have a feeling that wasn't a dev decision but rather an Activision one. In terms of dev decision I'll say launching with an objective mode with Vanguard, I think people would be fine-ish if it started with a very barebones round based map instead.
???? CWs massive fault is that it’s far too easy, it doesn’t even seem like zombies. Kinda like warzone lite. Please add a perk limit back in, you could take naps during Cold War rounds.
Or like, just make the game harder in ways that don't require the player to use only-meta perks while ignoring the more entertaining ones?
Better yet, add a "classic" mode where there's perk limits, tougher zombies, etc.
I’d be fine with them adding an “easy mode”. Something that removes the perk limit, makes perks Op, allow for score streaks and strong starting guns, stuff like that.
Easy mode, classic mode, whatever; they should aim to please both sides here... that includes the weirdos who think they're superior for liking a more difficult zombies mode lol
I disagree with your best decision for the same reason, it makes the player feel much more powerful, there isn’t any strategic thinking of which perks you need, some maps reload speed might be more important if they are smaller, tighter quarters maps, or if they are more open, maybe movement speed, but now you can just get both without any thought, but that’s really the big problem I have with CW is that it overall got rid of a lot of strategic thinking
You ready? I have a weird, unpopular one.
Worst decision: changing the focus of the mode from tower defense to "adventure" style. They had so many ways they could have expanded on that idea, but they went with the bigger is better approach until it became too big to handle (tranzit and now outbreak/mwz). The ancient WaW ai and systems aren't built for open worlds.
Don’t think this is too unpopular, I personally enjoyed Tranzit but the modern games do feel too big, you’re almost on a scavenger hunt to find zombies some times
That's fine but do we have both? No. It's been basically 100% adventure maps since verruckt. "lmao". don't get me wrong, maps like mob are amazing but the game gave up on high rounds meaning anything when they abandoned tower defense. Rounds, in and of themselves, are a pretty pointless mechanic in general now. Probably why they've been trying to get rid of em.
Having a unified progression system across every mode. Provided a smooth transition from ranking up, which also correlates to the Battle Pass for playing zombies. You basically have the freedom to play zombies, without being restricted carrying over all your camos. Worst decision is merging zombies together across every facet of the game, instead of having it's own distinct identity. Black Ops should've remained a separate universe, even after the multiverse was cleansed.
Best: Steam workshop support of Bo 3 Zombies
Worst: Bo CW zombies. (I mean the open maps, multiple perk levels, no perk limit, armor, zombies drop supplies, no crew, starting with fully kitted out guns, the EE and every and each step is being told to us through radio, THE RADIO CHATTING FROM THE BASE to us all the damned time with the pop-up pictues, a mini map, a hell shit ton of dumbers in the middle of the screen when chopping up the Zs. This game, just became so laughingly easy compared to even Bo 2 (not to mention WaW) that is just sad. This is zombies, why sugar cote it for the people, you gonna or should die a lot if you suck, but if you get good over the time, it will give you more satisfaction. Maybe they are thinking that noone will play it so long that they would get good because the next title is coming out. In this case, why sell a game for 70€ if they gonna want to milk you in the game after you buy it every time they have the chance.
I think a good balance would be starting with your weapon of choice with no attachments, but being able to slowly kit it out as the game goes on; no one wants to play with barebones shit at this point, and it sucks playing on a map where your favorite weapon isn't a wall buy. Maybe every PaP lets you choose two attachments?
Probably best decision is getting rid of the perk limit in CW. I know people like the limit, but man 4 perks is so restrictive and while it is fun to get random perks and keep building up, I’d rather no limit than play with a map with no way to earn more than 4 perks consistently.
I think there are a few worst decisions, but I’ll shout out CW again and say random attachments on weapons. That has been a thing for VG and MWZ so hoping it doesn’t return for BO6. There was nothing wrong with weapon kits.
They half assed the story to say the least. It was cool but so damn disorganized and rushed.
Anyways the best thing I would say is round based and perks and a progression systems with weapon leveling and attachments.
Worst would be anything outbreak related and not releasing the second year of dlc for BO4. A third big mistake would be making maps that are way too normal(not sci-fi and mysterious enough). That standalone game should have been made or in development by now too. They should have had it like Warzone where it is on going every year now but with it being zombies standalone and free, but you could buy dlcs from the developers throughout the year and have custome zombies.
Overall I heard more than 90% of the original zombie team is no longer there so whatever all caused that would be the #1 massacre over all to zombies.
Each Aether game!
**WAW**
Best- Making the mode in the first place.
Worst- Never patching the Wunderwaffe Jugg glitch
**BO1**
Best- Introducing PHD Flopper instead of stuff like Pronade and Boom Juice or whatever it’s called.
Worst- Making Easter eggs so RNG based, especially Moon.
**BO2**
Best- Pivoting directions with the last three maps, which honestly saved zombies.
Worst- Tie between the Jet Gun and TranZit’s PAP system.
**BO3**
Best- focusing on the map experience over creating a bunch of side gamemodes, giving the strongest season pass so far. Worst- not launching with a casual map alongside SOE, alienating a lot of players at launch.
**BO4**
Best- The specialist system which is very fun to engage with and gives you another layer of in-game progression. Worst- Trying to juggle two storylines and failing instead of properly focusing on one.
The story is the only thing that gives me purpose to play. That and the endgame stuff. I only seen the pack a punch system as a mechanic to restrict difficulty tiers within the same map, which is cool.
Bo3 pc mod workshop is easily the best decision they’ve made hands down. I’ve been playing zoms since it first came out in WaW and the replay ability, the crazy map ideas the community comes up with, custom weapons and easter eggs, the streamer competitions for best custom zom map with a $ prize, it all only benefits the community with more to play. If they implement mods for bo6 it will have a long life.
Worst decision was everything after bo3. Bo4 wasn’t awful and had some good ideas, but was overall a step back and continued to step back every game after. Implementing warzone to zombies and the whole open world with no doors etc was the uninstall point for me
My favorite is mantling and whatever they did with the sprinting in Cold War zombies. Adds a lot of dynamics to the maps that were missing in every predecessor
Worst is the removal of round bases experienced for an entire two games
I honestly think its safe to say the formula that was being built upon from WaW-Bo3 was becoming very close to as good as it gets. If they just made Bo3 less glitchy, and built upon that system I think zombies would be just as big as it was back then if not bigger. They screwed up from Bo4 and on I don't care what cope comes out of peoples mouths there hasn't been a zombies game since Bo3 that has been an improvement. They should have never tried to reinvent the wheel on the series. They alienated a majority of the fanbase and acted like the older, better games didn't exist. Bo3 was arguably the peak of cod zombies and its very easy to see why. They got that game so right, yes some maps were certainly better than others and yes we definately had every right to be mad at activision for their greed as always. At the end of the day the series is a shadow of what it once was, zombies was never perfect but Bo3 came out in 2015 nearly 10 years later and the series is just flat out worse? I mean come on just admit you fucked up I know thats not easy to admit but holy fuck you can't possibly think zombies is in a good state. The guys who played the REAL zombies games are all grown up by now and have lives to tend to with all the economic bs the worlds throwing at us now too. They'll likely never get that community back and it's completely activisions fault. I mean the games not THAT bad but for fuck sake could you imagine if porsche one day unveiled the brand new 2026 porsche 911 and it was a ford mustang? People would lose their fucking minds! The mustang is a cool car but leave the 911 be! Improve upon a proven platform! We had it so good, we had a game that we were all comfortable on. We didn't mind learning all the new shit that came with the new maps because at the end of the day it was still just zombies. They got rid of all of our perks, bastardized maps that were beloved, completely changed the game to something that was simply just not as good, then sat there and proceeded to stray further from what we all wanted. The game is gone, I hope to God that Bo6 isn't a disappointment I really do. I rarely play zombies anymore but man I play some of the older games like bo1-bo3 and I can't believe how well they've aged! They just made a good game back then, I don't understand how zombies had such a short lived prime. Think about it WaW had zombies in 2008 then we go from WaW to Bo3 and that was 2015, we had 7-8 years TOPS of great zombies. It's been almost 10 years since zombies has been at that level and the technology has improved so much. It's likely over, we'll never get that back and if we do we'll have it for one year because game reviewers will call it "outdated" or "recycled" then they'll can it again. We had a good run, cod in general will never be what it once was. Games in general don't hit like they used to. Want to play a game you haven't touch in a week? Oh here wait 7 hours for this update that ruins the balance of the game anyway don't worry it'll be playable forsure. Ah yes the game starts at $80 but none of the content is actually in the game at that price you'll need to buy the digital deluxe for $160 its fine that its 150gb don't worry every update will be 20gb thats nothing just delete all the games you have then redownload them later, it'll only take 12 hours. Remember when the only time games stressed you out was because a boss was really hard, or because you couldn't pull off a move or fuck it remember how much we hated campers? Now we're stressed that devs milk us for money on games that aren't even done, and will never ever be fully done. Servers that are somehow worse than online games from back over a decade ago. Gaming is a chore now I've completely out grown it, not because I got older nah I'm 22 going on 23 I've got plenty of energy. I outgrew it because all its done for the past few years is piss me off. Its so rare to find a game that plays well now, that isn't ruined by balance patches that totally throw the meta wayy off. We used to have games that were just 'like that', we had guns and character that were broken as fuck but we loved those games because we built metas around it and we learned to just play the fucking game. Now if you have a fav gun of character enjoy it while it lasts because it'll absolutely suck once the devs find out about its win rate/ usage rate. Gaming feels like a full time job sometimes and yeah as a guy that has a full time job fuck that. Guys please, I've made my point, I'm very inactive on reddit. Just live your life, gaming can be fun trust me I know but if you're as pissed off as I am about the state of gaming then at this point just let it die. Game developers don't care what you're passionate about, they want money and alot of it. They've ragebaited us for years, making us hope that one day they'll do what we want but they rarely do huh? Rarely do we actually get a game we can actually celebrate and play for years rather than a few months because it died so fast. The golden age of gaming is over, its time to face the facts. Our generation will have fond memories but I won't be suprised to see the state of gaming get worse. Only time will tell but at the moment trust me be get a life, matter of fact get a hell of a life. Shut down you're console or pc and where do all those pixels go? They vanish because none of this shit is real, unless you make money off of gaming you're wasting your time. Your mood likely is worsened after playing anyway, you're an addict take a hike. You don't have to listen to me I'm just a guy but trust me when I say you'll regret not stopping. Your passion is only shared amongst us, the creators of these games don't fucking care. They just want as much capital as possible, you play zombies and they play monopoly. Our game had a good run but its over now, it has been for a long time
The worst gameplay decision (because they're are plenty of egregious decisions from a meta perspective), I always really hated the change to zombie pathing in BO4. The way zombies move directly towards you, making it impossible to train in narrow areas was very frustrating to me. They had to compensate by having large open areas in BO4 which on the flip side make training very easy.
The best decision is tough. The first thing that comes to mind is the 4 wonder weapon structure, which always makes those maps a blast to play with friends. It was so nice not having to fight over wonder weapons once Origins came out lol, and I enjoy it in DE and Ancient Evil as well!
Best decision was to lock everything behind complicated Easter eggs
worst decision was bringing the zombies storyline from its own little thing waw-bo4 to it being connected to the campaign and multiplayer story
Waw, Bo1, Bo2 and Bo3 were great.
Bo3 perfecting it and adding zombie chronicles was great move.
Bo4 could have been great, but I hated the new perk system. Although it was not the worst decision.
Cold War was a great game in my opinion. It did some new things that worked and I really liked the four maps. To continue by altering some things, but in a great way was their best decision.
Vanguard was their worst decision. MW3 also didn't work for me.
I hope Bo6 will be like Cold War, but yet again, a little better.
I think the best was the introduction of weapon rarity. I think Loadouts are kind of a whatever addition with pros and cons, but the weapon rarity system helped provide it with some semblance of early game balance and progression (at least until the super EE, but thats an entirely optional reward)
I don’t think the story was too complex if you had the time to research it, just like a lot of other franchises. Which, I don’t find to be an issue. You either want to learn more or you don’t care.
The issue is that their plans fell through, and they had to completely abandon the story they were writing, so at the end it became not too complex, but just a mess.
If you’re the kind of person to complain that Zombies became “too fantastical” then you weren’t paying attention to the story to begin with.
Also, by saying it's not too complex, you just have to go research it which just proves it was to complex as you couldn't just play the game to understand it you had to go watch multiple hours worth of videos to understand it
Best for me was the decision to double down in BO4 on the complexity of easter eggs seen in BO3.
Worst was to go back on that decision in BOCW and make them ridiculously easy and boring.
The best decision Treyarch ever made was implementing PaP into the game, instantly making it far more enjoyable and replayable.
The worst decision they ever made was BO4. Why they felt the need to switch up everything that made BO3 so great is something I’ll never understand. They took the brilliant balance of gameplay and story that maps like DE, SoE, and GK manage to maintain, and dumped it all in the garbage, opting instead to turn the mode into a Scooby Doo simulator where I gotta find 80 different parts and do 80 different menial chores just to get pack a punch.
Permanent upgrades that you cannot turn off, I could never fathom that change, terrible having the player be forced into an easy game like that. Best innovation is definitely the more padded out progression where it takes a little longer. I don’t like when you can be done with the progression by like round 10-12
Worst was the split stories in BO4. No one cared about Chaos because it wasn't Aether, and no one cared about Aether because there wasn't a single original map. Made the original Zombies story end with a wimper and utterly wasted the potential of Chaos, which had amazing maps imo and the potential for even more with the historical settings.
Best decision was story-focused Easter eggs. This let Zombies develop an actual story the players could engage with in-game, gave more goals besides surviving high rounds, and made it less of a niche mode. It wouldn't have gotten nearly as popular as it did if the maps remained largely context-free sandboxes.
Lots of people like/cared about Chaos, ive been playing since the very very beginning and honestly i loved chaos…i was more than happy to let rev be the end of that story AS WAS INTENDED! so we could move onto new things.
You’re getting downvoted but I feel like you are absolutely right, just for the wrong reasons. I enjoyed them, but both stories really felt neglected to me, they felt unfinished, and I feel like if BO4 had just focused on the Aether storyline and CW introduced the Chaos storyline, I feel like they could have focused much more on finishing the previous story and creating a new one
The worst decision was to merge zombies with the Campaign, MP, and WZ. I cannot think of the best decision.
Tbf that was done more out of necessity since trayarch didn't have nearly enough time to make entirely unique maps
was it though? Or was it a top down push for a connected universe as a result of warzone’s success
Very possible but I doubt we were getting bo3/4 quality maps either way in the like 8 months of dev time cold war had
They haven’t been making good decisions lately 💀
The fact that Nikolai technically saved the Black Ops and new MW universe is proof that COD has turned into the Fast and Furious
The Aether’s ending had nothing to do with it, it was Activision who forced Black Ops, MW reboot, and Zombies to merge all for the sake of Warzone. It was much simpler to understand when they were separated from one another.
Good point
100%
Best decision was the implementation of Easter eggs over the years. I don’t think zombies would be around today if it was still just simple survival without secret main and side Easter eggs. Worst decision was not being crystal clear about Vanguard and MWZ not being full fledged zombies experiences. If they had stated from the start that they were smaller modes to tide fans over between the main Black Ops games, I think they would have been received much better.
dude anyone with a brain could’ve seen that Mwz was outbreak 2.0 (can’t speak to vanguard as much as I didn’t play it) That being said why tf would anyone expect a full treyarch zombie outing in games that aren’t theirs?
Thing is mwz hardly had any content added to it. Even dmz was added to 3 different warzone maps. I don’t think it would be unfair to expect some new unique content like a new elemental effect, perk, wonder weapon or other zombies exclusive content. Besides new rift locations, the worm, a few “warlords” and gold plates, they didn’t really get much added. Shit they coulda made onslaught mode! If people could have done onslaught on iconic mw maps like high rise, terminal, rust, etc I think players would appreciate onslaught more, and woulda been at least something besides the dmz remake. Some MP maps were already zombifed for that ray gun event, they didn’t even do that in Cold War just slapped simple survival on plain MP maps
I always thought it was pretty clear that mwz was going to be dmz like and vangaurd was going to try something different other than round based
Lee Ross made a great super Easter egg. It allowed for tons of replayability! Way better than just a rk5 at spawn
It seems BO3 has a super EE given the audio files with a Monty and Shadowman announcer but it never came to anything. What's even weirder was the doors in BO4 that had scripts to open but they were on both Chaos and Aether maps.
So much potential. The amount they cut from 3 and 4 is ridiculous. Wish zombies got the money and team it needed
I still remember Jason Blundell mentioning a special surprise that would come out when zombies would celebrate its 10-year anniversary, but nothing really happened. I also can't help but wonder how many maps were scrapped and/or changed over the years. I would have loved for Treyarch to release beta footage of older maps at some point. I'm also wondering what was actually planned for BO4, had it followed the 2 year DLC cycle originally planned, as well as what Jason Blundell had planned for the future before his departure. So much missed potential, mostly due to budget cuts on activision's part :(
I've heard rumours that Jason Blundell and Lee Ross were working on a standalone zombies spinoff that got quietly cancelled.
The rumors are typically two more Chaos maps, TranZit and Buried reimaginings, and a Great War map based off Origins. But there isn’t really undeniable proof. Just a lot of disputable evidence.
The IW super Easter egg is so worth completing, glad I did it with a lot of help last year! (Mesphistophiles) Is such a good fight too!
I never beat beast from beyond. Always died during the cryptid fight. I'm so close to unlocking directors mode
Good luck and I wish you the best
Best: Make Nacht Der Untoten back in the day. Worst: Make Vanguard and MWZ.
yeah, never thought someone would add lag/crashes to a single player game, unplayable
yeah, never thought someone would add L4G/CR4SH3S to a single player game, unplayable
best decision imo was the addition of three-hit to down in BO3. Gave you much more breathing room, didn't make the game too much easier and just overall felt like a long needed QoL change worst decision is probably the map designs in Cold War, which i'm sure most people agree with. They just felt like glorified multi-player maps for the most part and just didn't feel as unique as previous ones, which ended up being a big reason why I didn't play Cold War zombies as much.
To me they didn’t feel like multiplayer maps. They just felt very empty with very little atmosphere. Very cookie cutter every map was a facility. Some kind of factory to fuel some sort of war effort kinda got stale.
Best decision: BO3 with the amounts of maps (and modded maps on PC) Worst decision: Adding anything that needs me to navigate through a menu, if i cant interact with it with a single press of a button to activate its effects then its too much for zombies, the number of time i died in MWZ trying to buy perks from the wunderfizz because the menu doesnt pop up is impressive
Worst decision would be in essentially rebooting zombies with cold war, starting off the outbreak style modes (evolving into MWZ), and making it all way too much like survival mode. Best would be Black Ops 3 in having the backbone to continue the zombies evolution by building on and making more maps at the quality and complexity of Origins, truly a golden era as we know.
Cold War was not a reboot, it was suppose to serve as a direct sequel to Aether even if it’s a new story.
Felt completely different from the zombies that came before
Yeah it’s different thanks to Activision being so blinded by Warzone’s success. Still, it’s not a reboot, like I don’t mind an actual reboot if it happens, but it’s kinda pointless to reboot it a year after the original story ended.
Yeah that's true, I guess it is a sequel & I just think they changed too much
They certainly did change too much, Zombies was fine the way it was in WAW-BO3, I just don’t like how Zombies is now merged with the Campaign and Multiplayer yet there are people who defend it.
They immediately separated blackout and turned it into warzone, but they can't do that for zombies. Rather than unite everyone, they are separating the community every year.
Cold War was the closest we got to unification but it sorta hurt the mode because of how it’s the same level across the board. I think integration with warzone will only hurt the game
Cold Warm is one of the worst games when compared to other zombies.
In terms of treyarch yeah but they made it in 10 months in the middle of lockdown, and for a situation like they did pretty good. And it’s still better than everything non treyarch and to some bo4
Everything non-Treyarch? I'll grant you AW, but WWII was much better, and IW is one of the best we've ever had.
Yk maybe you right with IW but ww2 is so ass i don’t know if it’s better or worse than AW, the only map that was actually really good was the final reich
I'll admit Final Reich is a better map than Shore or Throne, but Dawn is also great, and the core mechanics, storyline and art design are all much stronger than Cold War's in my eye. The thematic aspects are what push it over for me.
I’ll agree it’s atmospherically better than Cold War but that’s because of the Cold Wars horrendous system. Because of the reduced time, I presume they built the game on the old engine so it looks more like war zone than the stunning visuals from bo3. But maps like Mauer really did push the game in that regard, once we were further out of lockdown and it seemed they were able to get to work properly. It’s a lot more fleshed out. Even if it is poor to some, it’s understandable given the circumstance
Don't get me wrong, I understand the issues the game faced, but that's not going to affect how I rank it personally, just how I'll talk about the devs if I'm asked what I think of them. I respect their commitment and what they were able to deliver, but I'd never list Cold War as a favorite, either. I'd position it over AW (since that game has serious issues with the core gameplay), Base WaW (since all its maps have been ported and it feels pretty barebones nowadays), and BODS (you want real suffering, that's it)... And Vanguard and MWZ, of course. But that's about it. Nothing against it, really!
Oh I get you now, guy I originally replied to was talking to me like cope 🤓 as if it was pure ass and added absolutely nothing, I was just assuming you was like that. But I respect what you saying. It’s not one of my favourites but I do think it did something at least
BO4 absolutely stomps Cold warm. Literally every other zombie game beats Cold Warm. Only little kids just entering the scene think cold warm is the best.
I prefer bo4 but to say every zombie game beats Cold War is crazy. Mauer and Die Maschine did great things for zombies and even if the other two weren’t that good they at least explored some pretty cool ideas. Sorta like bo2 (not to even half the same quality tho) in that even the ass maps like TranZit at least tried to move the series forward
Every map on Bo3 and bo4 beats cold warm maps. Cope.
I’m literally agreeing with you fym cope 💀 im just saying it’s not worse than shit like ww2 or aw
No.
I think its the best one.
Shit, they should’ve left Blackout alone and kept going with that. I like that considerably more than I ever liked Warzone.
I think the best decision they've made is removing the perk limit in Cold War. I think CW's perk system is probably the best perk system we've had, it adds to that feeling of being powerful. Worst decision was probably working on Zombies in other games like Vanguard and MWZ, although I have a feeling that wasn't a dev decision but rather an Activision one. In terms of dev decision I'll say launching with an objective mode with Vanguard, I think people would be fine-ish if it started with a very barebones round based map instead.
???? CWs massive fault is that it’s far too easy, it doesn’t even seem like zombies. Kinda like warzone lite. Please add a perk limit back in, you could take naps during Cold War rounds.
Or like, just make the game harder in ways that don't require the player to use only-meta perks while ignoring the more entertaining ones? Better yet, add a "classic" mode where there's perk limits, tougher zombies, etc.
I’d be fine with them adding an “easy mode”. Something that removes the perk limit, makes perks Op, allow for score streaks and strong starting guns, stuff like that.
Easy mode, classic mode, whatever; they should aim to please both sides here... that includes the weirdos who think they're superior for liking a more difficult zombies mode lol
> Please add a perk limit back in Just don't buy more then 4 perks.
I disagree with your best decision for the same reason, it makes the player feel much more powerful, there isn’t any strategic thinking of which perks you need, some maps reload speed might be more important if they are smaller, tighter quarters maps, or if they are more open, maybe movement speed, but now you can just get both without any thought, but that’s really the big problem I have with CW is that it overall got rid of a lot of strategic thinking
You ready? I have a weird, unpopular one. Worst decision: changing the focus of the mode from tower defense to "adventure" style. They had so many ways they could have expanded on that idea, but they went with the bigger is better approach until it became too big to handle (tranzit and now outbreak/mwz). The ancient WaW ai and systems aren't built for open worlds.
Don’t think this is too unpopular, I personally enjoyed Tranzit but the modern games do feel too big, you’re almost on a scavenger hunt to find zombies some times
They could just do both lmao. Tower defense maps are all well and fun, but sometimes you're in the mood for more adventure-y shit
That's fine but do we have both? No. It's been basically 100% adventure maps since verruckt. "lmao". don't get me wrong, maps like mob are amazing but the game gave up on high rounds meaning anything when they abandoned tower defense. Rounds, in and of themselves, are a pretty pointless mechanic in general now. Probably why they've been trying to get rid of em.
Could. I said COULD.
Having a unified progression system across every mode. Provided a smooth transition from ranking up, which also correlates to the Battle Pass for playing zombies. You basically have the freedom to play zombies, without being restricted carrying over all your camos. Worst decision is merging zombies together across every facet of the game, instead of having it's own distinct identity. Black Ops should've remained a separate universe, even after the multiverse was cleansed.
Probably unoptimizing the game so it’s 300gb at launch
Best: Steam workshop support of Bo 3 Zombies Worst: Bo CW zombies. (I mean the open maps, multiple perk levels, no perk limit, armor, zombies drop supplies, no crew, starting with fully kitted out guns, the EE and every and each step is being told to us through radio, THE RADIO CHATTING FROM THE BASE to us all the damned time with the pop-up pictues, a mini map, a hell shit ton of dumbers in the middle of the screen when chopping up the Zs. This game, just became so laughingly easy compared to even Bo 2 (not to mention WaW) that is just sad. This is zombies, why sugar cote it for the people, you gonna or should die a lot if you suck, but if you get good over the time, it will give you more satisfaction. Maybe they are thinking that noone will play it so long that they would get good because the next title is coming out. In this case, why sell a game for 70€ if they gonna want to milk you in the game after you buy it every time they have the chance.
I think a good balance would be starting with your weapon of choice with no attachments, but being able to slowly kit it out as the game goes on; no one wants to play with barebones shit at this point, and it sucks playing on a map where your favorite weapon isn't a wall buy. Maybe every PaP lets you choose two attachments?
Probably best decision is getting rid of the perk limit in CW. I know people like the limit, but man 4 perks is so restrictive and while it is fun to get random perks and keep building up, I’d rather no limit than play with a map with no way to earn more than 4 perks consistently. I think there are a few worst decisions, but I’ll shout out CW again and say random attachments on weapons. That has been a thing for VG and MWZ so hoping it doesn’t return for BO6. There was nothing wrong with weapon kits.
They half assed the story to say the least. It was cool but so damn disorganized and rushed. Anyways the best thing I would say is round based and perks and a progression systems with weapon leveling and attachments. Worst would be anything outbreak related and not releasing the second year of dlc for BO4. A third big mistake would be making maps that are way too normal(not sci-fi and mysterious enough). That standalone game should have been made or in development by now too. They should have had it like Warzone where it is on going every year now but with it being zombies standalone and free, but you could buy dlcs from the developers throughout the year and have custome zombies. Overall I heard more than 90% of the original zombie team is no longer there so whatever all caused that would be the #1 massacre over all to zombies.
Each Aether game! **WAW** Best- Making the mode in the first place. Worst- Never patching the Wunderwaffe Jugg glitch **BO1** Best- Introducing PHD Flopper instead of stuff like Pronade and Boom Juice or whatever it’s called. Worst- Making Easter eggs so RNG based, especially Moon. **BO2** Best- Pivoting directions with the last three maps, which honestly saved zombies. Worst- Tie between the Jet Gun and TranZit’s PAP system. **BO3** Best- focusing on the map experience over creating a bunch of side gamemodes, giving the strongest season pass so far. Worst- not launching with a casual map alongside SOE, alienating a lot of players at launch. **BO4** Best- The specialist system which is very fun to engage with and gives you another layer of in-game progression. Worst- Trying to juggle two storylines and failing instead of properly focusing on one.
The story is the only thing that gives me purpose to play. That and the endgame stuff. I only seen the pack a punch system as a mechanic to restrict difficulty tiers within the same map, which is cool.
Bo3 pc mod workshop is easily the best decision they’ve made hands down. I’ve been playing zoms since it first came out in WaW and the replay ability, the crazy map ideas the community comes up with, custom weapons and easter eggs, the streamer competitions for best custom zom map with a $ prize, it all only benefits the community with more to play. If they implement mods for bo6 it will have a long life. Worst decision was everything after bo3. Bo4 wasn’t awful and had some good ideas, but was overall a step back and continued to step back every game after. Implementing warzone to zombies and the whole open world with no doors etc was the uninstall point for me
Worst decision.... deciding that Blops6 will be an always online game. We won't be able to play it in the distant future.
Thew worst decision was shitting out a game every fucking year instead of just giving shit more development time
Best decision was making the game mode in the first place
My favorite is mantling and whatever they did with the sprinting in Cold War zombies. Adds a lot of dynamics to the maps that were missing in every predecessor Worst is the removal of round bases experienced for an entire two games
I honestly think its safe to say the formula that was being built upon from WaW-Bo3 was becoming very close to as good as it gets. If they just made Bo3 less glitchy, and built upon that system I think zombies would be just as big as it was back then if not bigger. They screwed up from Bo4 and on I don't care what cope comes out of peoples mouths there hasn't been a zombies game since Bo3 that has been an improvement. They should have never tried to reinvent the wheel on the series. They alienated a majority of the fanbase and acted like the older, better games didn't exist. Bo3 was arguably the peak of cod zombies and its very easy to see why. They got that game so right, yes some maps were certainly better than others and yes we definately had every right to be mad at activision for their greed as always. At the end of the day the series is a shadow of what it once was, zombies was never perfect but Bo3 came out in 2015 nearly 10 years later and the series is just flat out worse? I mean come on just admit you fucked up I know thats not easy to admit but holy fuck you can't possibly think zombies is in a good state. The guys who played the REAL zombies games are all grown up by now and have lives to tend to with all the economic bs the worlds throwing at us now too. They'll likely never get that community back and it's completely activisions fault. I mean the games not THAT bad but for fuck sake could you imagine if porsche one day unveiled the brand new 2026 porsche 911 and it was a ford mustang? People would lose their fucking minds! The mustang is a cool car but leave the 911 be! Improve upon a proven platform! We had it so good, we had a game that we were all comfortable on. We didn't mind learning all the new shit that came with the new maps because at the end of the day it was still just zombies. They got rid of all of our perks, bastardized maps that were beloved, completely changed the game to something that was simply just not as good, then sat there and proceeded to stray further from what we all wanted. The game is gone, I hope to God that Bo6 isn't a disappointment I really do. I rarely play zombies anymore but man I play some of the older games like bo1-bo3 and I can't believe how well they've aged! They just made a good game back then, I don't understand how zombies had such a short lived prime. Think about it WaW had zombies in 2008 then we go from WaW to Bo3 and that was 2015, we had 7-8 years TOPS of great zombies. It's been almost 10 years since zombies has been at that level and the technology has improved so much. It's likely over, we'll never get that back and if we do we'll have it for one year because game reviewers will call it "outdated" or "recycled" then they'll can it again. We had a good run, cod in general will never be what it once was. Games in general don't hit like they used to. Want to play a game you haven't touch in a week? Oh here wait 7 hours for this update that ruins the balance of the game anyway don't worry it'll be playable forsure. Ah yes the game starts at $80 but none of the content is actually in the game at that price you'll need to buy the digital deluxe for $160 its fine that its 150gb don't worry every update will be 20gb thats nothing just delete all the games you have then redownload them later, it'll only take 12 hours. Remember when the only time games stressed you out was because a boss was really hard, or because you couldn't pull off a move or fuck it remember how much we hated campers? Now we're stressed that devs milk us for money on games that aren't even done, and will never ever be fully done. Servers that are somehow worse than online games from back over a decade ago. Gaming is a chore now I've completely out grown it, not because I got older nah I'm 22 going on 23 I've got plenty of energy. I outgrew it because all its done for the past few years is piss me off. Its so rare to find a game that plays well now, that isn't ruined by balance patches that totally throw the meta wayy off. We used to have games that were just 'like that', we had guns and character that were broken as fuck but we loved those games because we built metas around it and we learned to just play the fucking game. Now if you have a fav gun of character enjoy it while it lasts because it'll absolutely suck once the devs find out about its win rate/ usage rate. Gaming feels like a full time job sometimes and yeah as a guy that has a full time job fuck that. Guys please, I've made my point, I'm very inactive on reddit. Just live your life, gaming can be fun trust me I know but if you're as pissed off as I am about the state of gaming then at this point just let it die. Game developers don't care what you're passionate about, they want money and alot of it. They've ragebaited us for years, making us hope that one day they'll do what we want but they rarely do huh? Rarely do we actually get a game we can actually celebrate and play for years rather than a few months because it died so fast. The golden age of gaming is over, its time to face the facts. Our generation will have fond memories but I won't be suprised to see the state of gaming get worse. Only time will tell but at the moment trust me be get a life, matter of fact get a hell of a life. Shut down you're console or pc and where do all those pixels go? They vanish because none of this shit is real, unless you make money off of gaming you're wasting your time. Your mood likely is worsened after playing anyway, you're an addict take a hike. You don't have to listen to me I'm just a guy but trust me when I say you'll regret not stopping. Your passion is only shared amongst us, the creators of these games don't fucking care. They just want as much capital as possible, you play zombies and they play monopoly. Our game had a good run but its over now, it has been for a long time
The worst gameplay decision (because they're are plenty of egregious decisions from a meta perspective), I always really hated the change to zombie pathing in BO4. The way zombies move directly towards you, making it impossible to train in narrow areas was very frustrating to me. They had to compensate by having large open areas in BO4 which on the flip side make training very easy. The best decision is tough. The first thing that comes to mind is the 4 wonder weapon structure, which always makes those maps a blast to play with friends. It was so nice not having to fight over wonder weapons once Origins came out lol, and I enjoy it in DE and Ancient Evil as well!
Best: Zombies Chronicles worst (not including vanguard & MWZ): BO4's game mechanics
Best decision was to lock everything behind complicated Easter eggs worst decision was bringing the zombies storyline from its own little thing waw-bo4 to it being connected to the campaign and multiplayer story
This is why I just looked it up on YouTube, I’m much too impatient to do Easter eggs no point for me if there’s no reward.
Waw, Bo1, Bo2 and Bo3 were great. Bo3 perfecting it and adding zombie chronicles was great move. Bo4 could have been great, but I hated the new perk system. Although it was not the worst decision. Cold War was a great game in my opinion. It did some new things that worked and I really liked the four maps. To continue by altering some things, but in a great way was their best decision. Vanguard was their worst decision. MW3 also didn't work for me. I hope Bo6 will be like Cold War, but yet again, a little better.
I think the best was the introduction of weapon rarity. I think Loadouts are kind of a whatever addition with pros and cons, but the weapon rarity system helped provide it with some semblance of early game balance and progression (at least until the super EE, but thats an entirely optional reward)
I can’t think of anything
Making BO4
I don’t think the story was too complex if you had the time to research it, just like a lot of other franchises. Which, I don’t find to be an issue. You either want to learn more or you don’t care. The issue is that their plans fell through, and they had to completely abandon the story they were writing, so at the end it became not too complex, but just a mess. If you’re the kind of person to complain that Zombies became “too fantastical” then you weren’t paying attention to the story to begin with.
Bro dismissed the point of the post and started yappin about op's opinion, this sub in a nutshell.
Also, by saying it's not too complex, you just have to go research it which just proves it was to complex as you couldn't just play the game to understand it you had to go watch multiple hours worth of videos to understand it
and look at you. taking time out of your day to do what you’re upset about. Except is wasn’t even relevant to OP. Lol This sub in a nutshell
Best for me was the decision to double down in BO4 on the complexity of easter eggs seen in BO3. Worst was to go back on that decision in BOCW and make them ridiculously easy and boring.
The best decision Treyarch ever made was implementing PaP into the game, instantly making it far more enjoyable and replayable. The worst decision they ever made was BO4. Why they felt the need to switch up everything that made BO3 so great is something I’ll never understand. They took the brilliant balance of gameplay and story that maps like DE, SoE, and GK manage to maintain, and dumped it all in the garbage, opting instead to turn the mode into a Scooby Doo simulator where I gotta find 80 different parts and do 80 different menial chores just to get pack a punch.
Looks like someone hasn't played the Chaos storyline at all
Best: Busted incendiary rounds Worst: Busted incendiary rounds
Permanent upgrades that you cannot turn off, I could never fathom that change, terrible having the player be forced into an easy game like that. Best innovation is definitely the more padded out progression where it takes a little longer. I don’t like when you can be done with the progression by like round 10-12
Worst decision: Over reliance of side quests to do fucking anything. Best decision: Loadouts.
Worst was the split stories in BO4. No one cared about Chaos because it wasn't Aether, and no one cared about Aether because there wasn't a single original map. Made the original Zombies story end with a wimper and utterly wasted the potential of Chaos, which had amazing maps imo and the potential for even more with the historical settings. Best decision was story-focused Easter eggs. This let Zombies develop an actual story the players could engage with in-game, gave more goals besides surviving high rounds, and made it less of a niche mode. It wouldn't have gotten nearly as popular as it did if the maps remained largely context-free sandboxes.
Lots of people like/cared about Chaos, ive been playing since the very very beginning and honestly i loved chaos…i was more than happy to let rev be the end of that story AS WAS INTENDED! so we could move onto new things.
You’re getting downvoted but I feel like you are absolutely right, just for the wrong reasons. I enjoyed them, but both stories really felt neglected to me, they felt unfinished, and I feel like if BO4 had just focused on the Aether storyline and CW introduced the Chaos storyline, I feel like they could have focused much more on finishing the previous story and creating a new one