Seven things Activision should do to make Modern Warfare 3 better

I’m a casual Modern Warfare 3 player, so this isn’t going to be a list of stuff about how the 7.62mm round from a Dragunov spins clockwise so it should pull more to the right over greater distances. In military parlance, that’s called a slice. Besides, everyone knows the Dragunov doesn’t fire a 7.62mm round. Duh.

Instead, this is just a layman who really likes Modern Warfare 3 grousing about a couple of things that would make him like it even better.

After the jump, I tell Activision how to run their business

7) Easier co-op matchmaking
When I want to play the survival ops mode — which happens a lot, because boy do I like this mode! — or even the canned missions, I have to pick the specific map or mission I want to join. Why can’t I instead set wider parameters? For instance, any tier 3 map in survival ops that isn’t being hosted by some dipwad who doesn’t know any better than to run all over the map between waves? Or, barring that, any tier 3 map in survival ops? Why do I have to pick a specific map and search for players within that narrow parameter? Just hook a fella up already, Activision.

6) Make the game modes in Private Match more flexible
Remember how close Activision came to making bot matches great in Black Ops? They included the feature, but then let it kind of sit there and gather dust. The basic subtext was, “Here, this is all you’re gonna get”. I’m a bit worried Activision is doing this with the wonderful Private Match feature, which is so close to utter greatness. As anyone who’s played a Perfect Dark, Goldeneye, Timesplitters, or Halo game knows, you can’t have to too many game settings for this sort of feature. Activision hasn’t quite figured that out. Modern Warfare 3 has plenty of great settings, but I’m greedy for more. Why can’t I adjust things like the requirements for killstreaks? I’d love a mode where a single C-130 spawns every five minutes and players race to grab it. Or where each player randomly gets a killstreak bonus at the start. Or where every kill gives a player a predator missile strike. Or where one team gets helicopter strafing runs and the other team gets one of those tank drones. Or where the infected gets more health than the non-infected. Or where juggernauts don’t appear on the main map. I love the Private Match feature for its openness and flexibility, but it’s not quite as open and flexible as it could be.

5) For Pete’s sake, that’s how you’re going to do split-screen?
Speaking of close to greatness, what on earth happened to the splitscreen mode on console systems? Why do I have to level up separate accounts in each corner of the screen just to unlock weapons, perks, and killstreak rewards, but I don’t have to do this for Private Matches, where everything is already unlocked? Splitscreen, played locally, is the epitome of a private match. Yet it plays by the same rules as the Ranked Matches. What an absurd requirement that almost single-handedly kills the splitscreen support.

4) Let me browse Private Matches online
I’m fortunate enough that I have a weekly gathering where I can play Modern Warfare 3 with friends on a LAN. This affords us the option to really flex Private Matches. Not everyone is so lucky. Private Matches, at this point, only work online with your friends list. Why can’t I browse a list of servers running private matches? Actually, I suspect I know the answer. See the next complaint.

3) Make it easier to sort and label game modes
There are a couple of places where you can save intricately customized game modes for Private Matches, but at no time can you describe in any detail what the a does. Why am I going to download a shared game mode from someone’s vault when I don’t even know what it is? Why can’t I write a short description of my game mode? This is a crucial ingredient to propagating these among friends and strangers. See how Halo does this.

2) Put the vault stuff online
In Modern Warfare 3, I can’t get my Xbox 360 screenshots online. What gives?

1) Get that Elite stuff up already
Speaking of stuff online, it’s been a week since the release of Modern Warfare 3. Elite, which is the fancy name for their community front end, is still a royal mess. Groups, clans, stats, replays, and even the documentation of the stuff in the game are either broken or flat-out missing. What a massive goat rope. If there’s one area where Battlefield 3 is so obviously better than Modern Warfare 3 instead of just different, it’s the front end community stuff.