The scorestreak vs killstreak debate has been raging since scorestreaks were first introduced. Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War has continued the debate by deciding on scorestreaks for all players. The game furthers the idea, by allowing players to retain gained points through death without the need for an additional perk. Today we are going to go over the history of scorestreaks in the Call of Duty franchise and go over the pros and cons for both scorestreaks and killstreaks.
The History of Scorestreaks in Call of Duty
According to the Call of Duty Wiki, scorestreaks were first introduced in Modern Warfare 3. The “point streaks” rewarded players who completed objectives and by destroying enemy streak rewards. In later games, scorestreaks were reworked to include score from kills, objective play, shooting down enemy streaks, and assists. Like killstreaks, your scorestreak was reset upon death, except for Infinite Warfare with the Persistence trait, and now Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War by default.
The Arguments for Killstreaks
Killstreaks are seen by quite a number of people in the community as an incentive for players to “git gud” at the game. Rewarding better play using kills as a metric seems like a great idea, and for some it is. The game is primarily based around eliminating enemies, even in objective-based game modes to be fair. A lot of the arguments for killstreaks in Call of Duty are more against the idea of scorestreaks. Many believe scorestreaks cater to bad players, allowing them to earn streaks even if their performance is subpar. Likewise, many of the arguments against killstreaks are that they cater to higher tier players, locking many out of consistently earning even low-level streaks. Let’s take a look at some of the arguments for scorestreaks.
Scorestreaks and How Call Of Duty: Black Ops Cold War Changed Them
Scorestreaks are definitely back in the latest installment of the Call of Duty franchise. However, they have changed dramatically from other CODs of the past. The revamped system is all an effort to appease as many as possible within the community. The first major change is persistence. Your score will persist through death by default, making death less punishing to those looking for high-level streaks. Note that death isn’t without its consequences, as racking up a killstreak will also increase your score much faster. The second change is related to the first. In order to keep things balanced, the score needed to earn streaks is much higher than it has been in previous titles. This is all an effort to prevent rewarding intentionally poor performance and giving away streaks for free.
It seems like through some communication with Treyarch’s Tony Flame, that the end goal of the scorestreak system is to ultimately reward the middle-tier player that put a large amount of the total playtime into the game. Some may see this as pandering to the many at the expense of the few, but I don’t see it that way. If you are a high-tier player that can rack up huge amounts of kills, it will be much easier to get the higher level streaks like the chopper gunner, VTOL, or a gunship. Whereas a middle-tier player still would have great difficulty securing that streak in the course of a regular game.
Final Thoughts
Whichever side you’re on in the debate between scorestreaks and killstreaks, I think we can all agree that Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War is shaping up to be a great Call of Duty Title. It will be interesting to see the game’s progression from here.
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