Call of Duty 4 Discussion (Spoilers)

I thought the game was great too, both multiplayer and single player. Speaking of multiplayer, can anyone post a detailed rankings system for the game? I'm at Colonol right now (lvl 40) but I have read that you can exchange your lvl 50-65 rank for a special insignia and begin again at lvl one. Do you lose your weapons upgrades though? I also read you can do this exchange for inisgnias 6 times meaning a chance to lvl 650 total ranks.

Oc, Re: our conversation on XBL, I looked up the wiki on Javelin and it appears that its min range is 75 meters, making the shots against the tanks on the bridge somewhat possible. However, the wiki also says it achieves a max height of 150m during top-attack mode, and those missiles were going a little higher than that in the game, IMO.

Yeah, I had noticed that the tanks seemed awful close to have those missiles going so far up. Seemed kinda weird.

Behind Enemy Lines is a great movie, actually I was introduced to it from Katie, and she's a big fan of it. She used to watch it over and over with her dad. Zhakarev's son does remind me of the guy in the jumpsuit. I knew it rang a bell.

So far COD4 is great! I actually can't wait to play some more multiplayer when I get a chance and unlock some weapons (the G3 with the low boom sound signature, and G36d I believe) are two that I'm looking forward to. Double tap is also something I can't wait to try out. As far as campaign goes I've already played the AC-130 mission 4 times through because I was so impressed with it the first time.

I suppose it was possible to hit those tanks with the javeline, however, I was surprised then the thing went so high for a target that was so close. I'll have to play it again and see if I'm wrong. I've seen these fired in videos, but the target was always very far away.

Note: if you're ever in the situation where you're shooting a real live Javelin: Don't assume you've got the clearance to fire it over a barn. Your $90,000.00 missile will hit the roof of the barn, the rocket engine will shut down, and it will skim over the top of the barn and to the ground like a dead fish, hopefully not exploding in the process. Hilarity will ensue, however you'll later have to explain what happened to your superiors, and its probably one of those things where you had to be there to see the humor.

I think the realism is what makes CoD4 so fun. It's hard for me to put myself in a WWII setting, but current day weapons and current day situations make it extremely realistic. Realism has the side effect of making the game more difficult in multiplayer, it's definitely a challenge to play.

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"Oculus is just this guy, you know?"

I spent about 6 hours trying to beat the One Shot One Skill mission. Finally I did it.

First off, the .50 cal sniper rifle is awesome. It's amazing that humidity and wind direction affects the round. Thank goodness that you can see the round as it travels, else this part of the mission might not have been as good.

I spent about 3 hours trying to get to the LZ at ferris wheel (after I shoot the sniper rifle). I spent about 2.5 hours trying to move to the LZ. The path of MOST resistance seemed to work best. Taking cover and moving around the middle of the map didn't work. This was a bit of a turn off for me.

Right now, I'm on the HEAT mission.

The AC-130 was so awesome. I'm going to go back and play that mission several times when I'm finished with the campaign. The .50 cal sniping mission was also great.

I'm really liking the campaign so far. I haven't noticed that it is short.

I wonder if we'll see new missions as DLC in the future?

Poor Halo 3. I probably won't be going back until new DLC is released.

I saw an interesting article that suggests that CoD4 will outsell H3. I agree with them. I think it will happen. H3 is XBOX 360 only. CoD4 is available on all next-gen platforms and even a cell phone.

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currently playing: Civilization 4
collecting dust: XBOX 360 Elite console, Halo 3
currently supporting: The guy who's won the most straw polls - r3/\O¯|ution

Midnight, how in the heck did you get the mile high club? I've probably tried for like 2-3 hours and couldn't get it, I only got up the stair case once and I had 4 seconds left so I couldn't have beat it anyway.

I tried for about the same, about 2-3 hours, before I became very discouraged and went looking for help online. I found a youtube video of someone completing the mission in 39.2 seconds. Yes, 39.2 seconds. By watching his video I saw the fundamental disconnect between my strategy and the strategy you must use to complete the mission within 60 seconds. I was trying to clear each area of enemies and then move forward. What you have to do is move forward, killing only those in your way or those that pose a direct threat, and run past everyone else. Flashbangs are a critical part of this strat as they stun enemies, allowing you to move forward, and preventing new enemies from spawning. Oh, and unless you're fighting for your life or reloading, you're sprinting. Here's a rough play by play of how I completed it:

1. Sprint to the guy in the bathroom and melee him. If you do it right you will slash his throat rather than stab him, which is slightly quicker.

2. Take the left path through the conference room. Shoot the enemy at the end of the left path in the head as you enter the conference room. Chunk a flashbang so that it lands in the middle of the seats right as everyone pours out of the far entrance into the next room. Everyone should be stunned. If someone isn't they'll shoot you and you'll have to restart. Pick up the shotgun from the guy in the doorway that you killed 2nd. It may have 3-4 rounds or it may be empty. If it's got less than 3 rounds you're hosed and will have to reload.

3. Run through the room that everyone poured into. Hopefully they're clustered at the far exit to the room and 1-2 shotgun blasts will kill them all. Only kill enough people to get through the opening and not get shot. Your team will clean up the rest.

4. Take the right side entrance to the next room. Sprint behind the wall to the right and take cover there while the hull breach sucks everyone out of the plane. Reload. This is 1 of the 2 times that I pause to reload and take cover.

5. After you finish reloading the breach will have begun. Flashbang the room. Sprint to your 10 o'clock and get prone behind a bench. Your team will now come up to where you are and clear most enemies. You may have to fire once. Reload if you do. You need to have at least 30 seconds on the clock as you leave this cover.

6. Sprint to the stairs. Here you must kill everyone in front of you. Go left at the stairs and flashbang the next room. Cut back and go right up the opposite side you flashbanged. You will have to kill 3-4 people in that room and 1-2 in the next. After killing the remaining 1-2 people in the second room after the stairs take cover behind the large wall and reload. Flashbang the next room.

7. Sprint to the hallway killing only those in your way. At the end of the hallway you'll meet three more baddies (2 clustered together and then 1 after you round the final turn) and you should have three shotgun rounds left. They didn't get flashbanged, so be careful.

8. Round the final bend to the hostage scene. This is the easiest part. You have to make an accurate pistol shot to the terrorist's head, but you actually have plenty of time. Take your time and don't hit the hostage. You're done. Retrieve the hostage and skydive when prompted (nothing special required: just jump out of the plane)

I'd also recommend looking up that video on youtube. You don't have to follow his exact strat, but it will give you some ideas. Good luck.

Mile High Club level completed, on Veteran. The video is longer than one minute, but he did some slow motion action at the end, so it extended the actual gametime.

DJ

hrm, didn't know that the board actually autoembedded, that's pretty cool :).

Last night I was playing on the shipyard map (the small one) I had my worst game ever. I went like 65 and 60. It was gross. I wanted to back out.

However, in an earlier game on that same map I had a neat event happen. I called in an Airstrike. I was shot and killed the instant I called in the strike. I spawned in.

The first bomb got me the Radar. Deployed it. The next bomb got me another Airstrike. The next bomb got me Helicopter support. I've gotten 10 or more kills in one Airstrike on that map several times. However, I've never spawned into new Radar, Airstrike, and Helicopter support abilities. That was pretty neat. I missed out on the second Airstrike because I didn't have enough time to issue it.

I'm really not liking the sniper rifles. Last night I tried my Sniper build for a few games and the rifles seem laggy. Even on the sniper rifles that I pick up in the open, I've never had any noticeable success in firing them.

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Ron Paul cured my apathy: r3/\O¯|ution

Sniping doesn't work well for me either, but that's not really my playing style, so I may just not like it enough to try the sniper rifles extensively. I've spawned after calling an airstrike and got another airstrike (from the airstrike kills), but never a 7-kill streak for a helo. Those guys must have been pissed.

I've finally accepted that I should just crouch and hide in corners on the shipyard map and wait for people to pass me to shoot them. I tried it our last game there and went +18. I usually go slightly negative there. I do have a fear that concern about K/D ratio can make us over-conservative in headquarters games. If we all hang back and kill then we'll never get the headquarters. Having 1-2 people devoted to killing worked well for many games, and we steamrolled with 250-0 wins a few times, but it sure doesn't feel good to be the bullet-sponge that tries to capture the headquarters while you guys are going 27-6.

I've almost altogether stopped trying to use sniper rifles. I found that the other rifles do just fine, the M4 with red dot seems to be the old trusty. G3/reddot on hc games seems to work (1 shot kill)

I'm still eager to see what the M14 can do but I'm not very optimistic considering how hard the G3 is to use against automatic weapons. Getting those 2 shots in the enemy are harder than it would seem.

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"Oculus is just this guy, you know?"

Midnight, your right on about the Headquarters games. We have a problem winning a lot of those games because our opponents are dumb enough to go running in and capture the headquarters. I've pretty much just given up on the whole concept of a good kill ratio in those games. We were getting !PWNED! badly in a few of those games because we'd only have 1 person actually trying to capture the hq.

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"Oculus is just this guy, you know?"

I only snipe on certain maps... and even then not very often. However, I have had success doing so.

I'm glad you guys are saying this about headquarters. I get really annoyed when we are playing headquarters and there will be a few people trying desperately to capture a headquarters, and the others are busy on rooftops improving their k/d ratio. Especially when we are defending, and are all dead except one person who is about four buildings down or across the freaking map, prone or something, on a roof. That really hacks me off.

If people are concerned about K/D ratio, then they really need to step up their game. I don't think anyone is concerned about K/D ratio because if they are putting that much thought into their play, then they should take it one step further and discuss tactics in these maps and gametypes. When we play together, it's basically every-man-for-himself. We play with little to no tactics. If we do have ANY tactics, it usually will involve killing...not necessarily winning.

Last night we played HQ on the Bog and I think Midnight realized that he has been our Hill Bitch. Midnight, you were running into the hill and dieing. This was because we, as a team, were playing without any strategy. Playing that way, the only way we win any games is by brute force (which boils down to Team Slayer and rushing HQ (often blindly)). And that's how we've won every game we've had so far - brute force. It's not because we were better than the other team. It's mostly because we killed them more than they killed us.

When you play in online public matches, it's most often brute force vs. brute force.

There are tactical positions that we could assume on the Bog map and every other map. If we assumed those positions and patrolled certain areas, we would denominate every non-competitive clan/team/enemy we face. We would have strategy. They (like us now) would not. The team with the most information wins.

Conversely, a couple of weeks ago I was playing with some THX'ers. We got manhandled for two straight games. I mean, we got blanked. We were getting absolutely trashed on Headquarters by this certain clan. The reason we got beat wasn't because they had better aim. It was because they had a better strategy. They had the maps locked down such that they had almost every positional advantage.

Last night on the Bog, we were most effective when we had two people on the mound, one to the right of the mound, and one at the buses. The enemy was spawning in the deep corner of the map. There was no way for them to capture the hill. There was no way for them to get behind us (unless they all died at once and got into a new spawn cycle behind us). The best they could do was kill us. To do that, they had to expose themselves to fight us...while we were using cover (the mound, the bulldozer, the crates.) The only way the person in the hill was going to live was if the 4 people on patrol killed the enemy soon after they spawned in...before they got a chance to aim at the hill and kill the enemy.

Trying to capture the hill any other way will lead to a cluster F happening at the hill location at the container. That's what happened until we got map control.

Watch MLG H2 KOTH videos. They don't blinding go rushing into the hills. They establish map control. They then establish spawn location control. They only capture the hill when it's safe and clear.

When we are defending the hill, I think the worst place to be is near the hill. The enemy assumes we'll be there. Playing defensively usually limits your tactical options. I guarantee that the leet strat on HQ will be to capture the hill and then spread out to flank the enemy as they press up to try to gain control of the area around the hill.

In short, why do we gripe about capturing HQ's when we really don't have any defined strats anyway. You think we are supposed to play well because we are good friends?

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Ron Paul cured my apathy: r3/\O¯|ution

I agree with most of what you're saying, except that we currently have no strategy. We don't have a professional level strategy, but the world isn't black and white, and just because we don't memorize spawn locations and study map geometry doesn't mean we don't try to coordinate efforts. We are often successful, such as talking about which doors to mine and which entrances we are covering with weapons.

I think we all pick up bits of unspoken strategy as we play. I know I act differently in different map locations at different events in the game. I also often communicate suggestions to other players, but I can't make anyone actually do anything, as seen on Wetwork when nobody would retreat to the place the headquarters was about to move despite my pleas to do so.

Let it be known, I have a headquarters strategy: get to the headquarters quickly and capture with 2 or 3 players. Mine the entrances and likely avenues of approach. Take cover outside with good visibility of the HQ. Defend.

I think that's a fine place to start, and we all do that to some degree anyway. However, I simply refuse to play on a team where I am the only one trying to achieve the effin goal of the game (capture the headquarters). It punishes me for trying to be a team player, and it's counter to my nature to not be a team player. I don't think we have to be in MLG to play COD4 with strategy.

Midnight, I think we were trying to spread out and get in positions for the next headquarters, but it is more difficult than it looks or sounds. I know, for my part, I have a hard time judging whether I am needed to secure the enemy headquarters or begin heading to the next. A few times I have gone ahead to the next and then we get screwed because those that were securing got killed and nobody else was there to take their places, and vice versa. I just don't think that it is that we aren't trying, it's that we aren't very proficient at it yet.

We do have a strategy... it's just not a "professional" one. We play to win... and to have fun doing it. Last time I checked, I didn't have time to review MLG videos and study professional handbooks, or whatever the heck is out there. But that doesn't mean that I or we don't play competitively or that we have no strategy. We have some good strategies, and I think Midnight is particularly suited for voicing them, given his military background and outgoing personality. The problem is, not everyone complies with these strategies, particularly those who are across the maps or on the buildings on the other side of town! Hey, I admit, I haven't always be a team player... sometimes I am pretty stubborn and want to "John Wayne it" (my hero)... but I try my best even then to have some sort of plan to at least help my team mates. There are some who don't seem to try, or even care, and that is what annoys me. I could be wrong though.

I don't like this idea that with gaming it is all or nothing. You are either pro or not. But the thing that bothers me most is that there seems to be an attitude toward those who aren't, and maybe I am wrong, but there seems to be an attitude that they are some kind of sub-par, wannabe gamers. Like Midnight said, it isn't just "black and white", there is a gray area, and I think we fit somewhere in there, in fact probably in the upper tier of whatever that is. Again, I, and I think we, play to win. But if being a "winner" or "professional" means I have to trade the fun in for some kind of elitist snobbery towards those who aren't, count me out... I'd rather lose.

Slayer, rapture isn't saying we have to review videos to be good, he's just using them as an example for his point, which is a good point. I don't think anyone in particular sets out to john wayne it and overtly screw everyone else. We all (myself included) simply lose focus from time to time because we haven't practiced a defined strategy. Hopefully we can change that.

Slayer, I don't see any solutions in your rant. What good was it? You could have watched some videos at MLG in the time you took to write that post.

Prior planning prevents piss poor performance.

We use ad hoc strategy. THX has always played (any game) the fun way with ad hoc strat. We win by brute force.

There's nothing wrong with that. Games are meant to be fun.

But I'm reading that people are getting worked up over the way some other people are playing the game. Why? I think it's because you want to achieve success. What are you going to do to achieve success?

Else, what do you expect from ad hoc strategy?

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Ron Paul cured my apathy: r3/\O¯|ution

I would love to see us playing more strategically. most online games consist of random people being partied up. since we normally play together and we're all pretty good, we rarely lose teamdeath match games, but if we each use our strengths to make up for a brothers weaknesses then I know we could win those HQ games and still end up with a positive K\d ratio. So tonight I would be willing to get online and discuss strats and other things.
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Did you know you can donate one or all of your vital organs to the Aperture Science Self Esteem Fund for Girls? It’s true!

OMFG, he did it all with a silenced pistol.

Well, I don't agree that our strategy is simply brute force, and I thought I made that clear in my previous post. That's basically the same as saying we have no strategy at all. We do have planned strategies, now granted, they are not always the same, and we change them mid game sometimes... but we are always communicating and trying new things. I mean, even in deathmatches, if we are ahead, we try to take defensive strategies and try to protect our lead. That is not simply brute force.

As far as a solution goes... the only solution we need is for those who aren't cooperating to do so, including me... end of story. We have plans almost every game, lets try working together to implement them, instead of being loner kill whores.

Slayer, please give me some specifics because nothing was made clear. I've played CoD4 for weeks with you guys. I've never heard any plans that would carry over to the next game...let alone the next few minutes. The only strategy I've heard is based on the moment...and it's usually a cry for help...or a cry to rush the hill.

What are the plans, who is annoying you with their gameplay, and why is there discussion about K/D ratio?

1. We play enough to develop strategy.
2. People seem to be concerned about winning and losing.
3. ?????

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Price of oil in 2000: $20/barrel. Price today: $100/barrel.

Well, I was clear, but if you want a play by play... I think Midnight's description of the headquarters game is an excellent example of our strategy. We had decided, or at least Midnight and Oculus (I think) had decided, that the best strategy was to get to the headquarters, have a few people dedicated to laying claymores and capturing, the rest guard the outer perimeter. Once the headquarters was almost destroyed or up on time, we would spread out to different parts of the map to prepare for the next. When we are trying to destroy a headquarters, a few of us run in to destroy and the rest spread to the other parts of the map where the headquarters is most likely to appear. It works well when people cooperate. I think pretty much everyone was on the same page. Is that not a strategy, and a good one at that? It isn't simply running around shooting everyone.

Now, when it comes to deathmatch games, granted, we don't exactly have as much of a set strategy, but as I said before even then we try to play differently based on our current score, and it is a gross understatement to say we simply win by brute force.

I don't know why you want me to tell you exactly who is annoying with their gameplay... I don't know how revealing that to you and everyone else is going to benefit us. I was simply saying that perhaps we all, me included, need to review our gameplay and perhaps alter it from that of a loner style. Furthermore, it isn't simply one person, so...

Why are we discussing k/d ratio? Why are you asking me? Read further up on this thread... I wasn't the one who first brought it up. But I think there was concern by a few people about it effecting out headquarters effectiveness.

Boo, Slayer.

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Ron Paul cured my apathy: r3/\O¯|ution

...okay.