Chaos Ranks the 17 Most Hated Things in Black Ops 7

Black Ops 7 did a lot of things wrong. I mean, why else do you think it was one of the lowest selling Call of Duty games in over a decade? I narrowed it down to 17 really big, unforgivable, fatal flaws that kept it from ever really having a chance.

17. The Black Ops 7 Campaign Just Didn't Work

I'm not convinced Treyarch ever actually wanted to make a campaign for this game because it is very clear that it was just a bunch of random co-op missions strung together by a plot that made absolutely no sense. Everything about this story was a flimsy justification for the missions to exist in the same place, and the missions themselves weren't fun.

The Black Ops series was known for going to some far out places, but the Black Ops 7 campaign went too far. As I put it, "It didn't boldly go. It went way too far." It wasn't nearly fun enough to justify the nonsense you were asked to swallow along the way.

16. An Always Online Campaign For No Reason

As if it weren't bad enough for the campaign to be what it was, there's also the always online requirement for literally no reason. Why is it so hard for Call of Duty to be playable offline? Why do these COD developers keep insisting on making things always online when they don't have to be? All it does is introduce potential problems like random lag and disconnections that literally didn't exist before.

Making the campaign always online doesn't benefit the player and doesn't bring anything helpful to the table. It literally just brings potential problems. To add insult to injury, you can actually get kicked for inactivity in the campaign in Black Ops 7, because it's always online. Those are the requirements.

15. Advanced Movement Stuck At A Half Step

Treyarch should have gone all out with the advanced movement. The movement in Black Ops 7 felt like a half step, like Treyarch wanted to do another BO3 style game but was a little afraid of scaring people away from the series. What we ended up with is a weird movement system where there were some advanced movement options, but not enough to make it a true advanced movement kind of game.

I didn't like it, and I know a lot of people do like the omni movement. Either have advanced movement or don't, that's my opinion. The half stepping with the movement system turned me off.

14. AI Generated Cosmetics Got The Game In Trouble

Black Ops 7 got in some hot water for the amount of AI generated content in the game. If I grind for a calling card or an emblem, I should at least be treated to something made by an actual artist, an actual person. I paid $70 for the game, so why would I be paying for stuff made by typing a prompt into an AI engine? Black Ops 7 had a lot of AI generated cosmetics, and it was obvious.

I'm hoping Activision learned that lesson here, because generally speaking people don't want to pay real money for AI generated content that wasn't actually made by a talented artist being paid a salary. If I'm giving money to a game company, I want that money to go straight to the developers, not to people typing things into a chat AI.

13. Fake Names Slapped On Throwback Guns

This one really irks me. Why did the throwback guns have fake names? What's the point of giving a new madeup name to something like the Cat 40, when Cat 40 was already a madeup name? What's the point of renaming the MSMC to the MPC25 when MSMC was already a madeup name too? Nostalgia baiting classic guns only to change their names for no reason doesn't make sense to me.

Certain throwback weapons like the 1911, the FG-42 and the MA1 got to keep their original nostalgic name, so I don't understand why others were changed.

12. Tiny, Fast Paced Maps Killed Variety

Why is this game so fast paced? What happened to a good, larger map, a well designed, slower paced map? Those were all over the place in the Call of Duty golden age, but now it seems like every map is designed to play like Shipment or Nuke Town. When every map plays ultra quick, that destroys the variety of the game and makes everything feel the same.

Modern Call of Duty is designed for people with, let's be real, TikTok brains, so it doesn't surprise me that almost all the Black Ops 7 maps are designed for maximum engagement per minute instead of forcing you to establish battle lines. I noted the same complaint is coming up again with the Modern Warfare beta, where one of the main complaints is that the maps are too small.

11. A Seventh Nuke Town, Two Years In A Row

Do we really need another version? This is the seventh version of Nuke Town to show up in a mainline game, I think, though I may be wrong and there may be eight. It's also the first time in Call of Duty history we got Nuke Town two years in a row. I think we all would have been okay skipping Nuke Town this time and using that development time on another good new map.

That's not to say there weren't new maps in Black Ops 7, because there obviously were. My point is that having the seventh version of Nuke Town didn't do the game any favors. A lot of people thought this game was just a bunch of recycled ideas from day one, and that sentiment wasn't helped by Nuke Town showing up again.

10. No Competent Anti-Cheat Despite Ricochet

Remember when Activision was making a whole deal about their anti-cheat? A lot of people say it didn't work, that it never worked, and cheating was absolutely rampant in Black Ops 7, to the point that I question why Activision even put the anti-cheat in the game. The ranked playlist in BO7 had so many cheaters, and it didn't seem like Activision was able to ban the obvious cheaters at the top of the leaderboards.

I really want to know how much money and development time actually went into Ricochet, because I don't know what the return on that investment was supposed to be.

9. Bizarre PC Requirements Locked Players Out

Why did PC players have to jump through so many hoops to boot this game up? What was the point of forcing them into their BIOS to enable secure boot? A lot of players on PC didn't want to give Activision that kind of access to their machine, and it's not like this added security actually made the game more secure since, as noted above, cheating was rampant in the game anyway.

Activision even had to put a lengthy guide on their website explaining how to boot the game on PC. Making PC players jump through so many hoops just to launch a game they already paid for is going to push them to refund it and play something else instead.

8. Open Matchmaking That Wasn't Actually Open

This wasn't actually open, and we all know it, since we're discussing the same issue again with Modern Warfare 4. There wasn't much point in having open matchmaking when it wasn't even open, and it ended up hurting the overall experience because it split the player base.

Either have skill based matchmaking or don't. Splitting the player base in half with a reduced SBMM playlist just screws everything up, especially when the open matchmaking wasn't even open like they said it was.

7. A Cluttered, Hideous UI

I cannot be the only one who thinks the UI in Black Ops 7 is hideous. The ammo count icon, the gun icon, the kill feed, the medals, I don't like any of it. I don't know if Treyarch was going for an ultra cool, ultra stylish approach, but I think it's distracting.

You could say I can just turn that stuff off, but that doesn't fix the problem. Call of Duty is enhanced by a good UI, so turning a bad one off just means I'm losing an aspect of the game that used to be a positive feature. There's a reason the best UIs in COD history are the most simplistic ones. There's no reason the screen should be so cluttered.

6. Assets Blatantly Recycled From Black Ops 6

A lot of this game is blatantly recycled from other games, and yeah, that's going to be somewhat inevitable when it's released just one year after the previous Black Ops game, but that doesn't make it okay. Frankly, that makes it worse. People paid $70 for Black Ops 6 and then were expected to pay another $70 for Black Ops 7 despite a massive chunk of it being made of assets recycled from Black Ops 6.

People don't like feeling like they're paying for something that wasn't actually that expensive to make, and that's the same reason they hate paying for AI generated content. Given how much of Black Ops 7 is copy pasted or slightly altered from Black Ops 6, that was a bad idea from Activision and Treyarch.

5. A Time To Kill That Fought Its Own Design

Time to kill in a Call of Duty game is always a hot topic, and people are always going to disagree over how fast or slow it should be, but the community generally agreed in Black Ops 7 that the TTK was way too fast for the kind of game it was trying to be. Treyarch wanted this to be a super high octane, fast paced, skill based game with crazy movement, but the ultra fast TTK contradicted that design because it really felt like whoever shot first won.

A shoot first and win design goes against the more dynamic, skill based experience the rest of the game was going for, which made the quick TTK far more frustrating than it needed to be. I don't mind a fast TTK in a Call of Duty. I love COD 4 and Modern Warfare 2, and those games had quick TTK too, but the quick TTK of Black Ops 7 just made the game feel overly punishing.

4. Explosive Spam Made The Identity Crisis Worse

Why were explosives so strong in this game, and why could you carry so many of them in one life? Between the random advanced movement options, the fast TTK, and the powerful explosives, this game was suffering an identity crisis. It felt like it was trying to be every Call of Duty game at once, and it didn't work.

3. No Real Personality Of Its Own

The game was a giant mosh pit of other games' ideas. There was nothing about it that stood out to me as unique, nothing that gave it a distinct personality. Even if you hated COD Ghosts back in the day, you can still talk about its distinct personality. I hated Modern Warfare 2022, but I can't deny that it's a game with a lot of unique personality.

What did Black Ops 7 bring to the table that was unique? What was it doing that set it apart from the rest of the series? I can't think of anything, aside from the nostalgia bait, which I think was a problem in its own right. People are saying the same thing about the next Modern Warfare, that it's a hodgepodge of all the other games with no unique personality.

2. Nostalgia Bait Replaced Real Content

There comes a point where throwback guns and maps just get frustrating because it feels like the game is relying on them for content. When you have a game like Black Ops 7 that's made up of recycled assets, weak original maps and forgettable original weapons, it gets annoying when Treyarch spams throwback guns and maps at us instead of actually making something fresh and unique.

A bit of nostalgia bait and throwback content is fine, but there has to be a balance. Black Ops 7 completely messed up that balance in my opinion, with way too many throwback maps and guns and not nearly enough good original content.

1. Franchise Fatigue Has Set In

The game was called Black Ops 7. That is ridiculous. People used to joke about numbering getting out of hand, and now it's real. What next, Black Ops 8, Modern Warfare 20? I don't understand the point of making Black Ops 7 when we've strayed so far from what Black Ops originally was. Boot up Black Ops one or two and you'll see what I mean, Black Ops 7 is nothing like those classic games, yet it still uses the Black Ops subtitle.

We need new ideas and new sub franchises. Black Ops 7 is a meme title at this point. If Treyarch actually tries to give us Black Ops 8 in a couple of years, this sub series might actually sink the entire franchise. I don't think the Black Ops sub series can survive another year of franchise fatigue. Let the series rest, and let Modern Warfare rest too. Let's do something new. Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer, Treyarch, Call of Duty, Activision, we are begging.

Which of these 17 problems do you think hurt Black Ops 7 the most?