Call of Duty: Ghosts’ Clan Wars is basically an evolution from the previously deeply rooted clan systems that had been integrated with the franchise. This year, however, the developers decided to take this Clan Wars game experience up a notch by allowing cross platform integration where players can now join a certain clan with their friends, regardless of whether they play on Xbox, PlayStation or Windows PC, and level-up their clan to earn exclusive unlocks and multiplayer XP bonuses.
In Call of Duty Clan Wars, the idea of which is surely derived from Call of Duty Elite’s Clan Operations, the player’s Clan is pitted against seven other evenly matched Clans to battle for possession of key locations on the Call of Duty App’s Clan Wars map over a period of time.
Moreover, the locations on the Call of Duty App’s Clan Wars map are linked to specific multiplayer modes in Call of Duty: Ghosts. For example, the company states, “when you’re playing in a clan war, the Aqueduct location on the Call of Duty App’s Clan Wars map is tied to the Team Deathmatch (TDM) mode in Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer, and your Clan will battle against seven other Clans to secure and hold the Aqueduct location while the other Clans try and take it away from you.”
So each time the player’s Clan wins a Call of Duty: Ghosts multiplayer match in Team Deathmatch, the player’s Clan will get a Capture Point for the Aqueduct location.
Apart from that, there will be multiple locations on the Call of Duty App’s Clan Wars map, “tied to other multiplayer game modes in Call of Duty: Ghosts, and your Clan gets more Capture Points for securing either the Aqueduct or other locations and holding them down over time. The Clan with the most Capture Points at the end of the period wins the Clan War.”
Beachhead Studios head John Linden was recently in an interview about the same with Digital Trends, where he explained: “Elite had a feature called Clan Operations which a lot of people used, but we didn’t feel it was quite as mainstream as we wanted it to be.”
“We felt there were some lacking parts to it. It got super, super hardcore clans but it didn’t really get to a bigger audience. We didn’t feel it was as game-like [as it could have been]. It was more just a weekly or a three-day competition type of thing.”
Speaking about the motivation that drives players to keep playing the game and jump from one match to another, Linden stated that people who play the game “focus on different areas of Call of Duty for different reasons.”
“We like the idea of people focusing on winning matches, and that’s where we’ve really stepped up a lot of the mechanics. Every time you win a match in multiplayer, it counts toward your clan. That was the base concept, and then we wanted to figure out ways to reward people for playing short-term and playing long-term, and adding this element of strategy that we kept hearing from the players that they wanted to add.”
Apparently, one area where players can expect to see noticeable improvements, as far as Clan Wars is concerned, is the Clan Wars matchmaking.
The system is designed to group up clans having similar numbers of players at similar skill levels. And although that didn’t work out as effectively as it could have with the first Clan War since the mode required some getting used to, Beachhead says improvements are the order of the day as the team moves on.
“A 100-person clan is going to beat out a 3-person clan every time. That was something we did have some issues with [during the first Clan War],” Linden added.
“Clans were growing so fast. The Xbox One had been out for three days, so we had some problems where people would start off with a 10-person clan, and then suddenly they’re a 40-person clan. We’ve gotten through that now, so we’ve got some better matchmaking in here. We’ve got a lot more data now. That will start balancing out.”
And as far as hardcore CoD players are concerned, Linden also confirmed that more fundamental changes are on the way that will look to address certain parts of the Clan Wars mode.
“We [want you to be able to] play casually, but if you’re really hardcore and you want to be the best in the world, we’re going to have some opportunities for you to do that as well. You’re going to keep seeing new things happening,” Linden concluded.
“We’re going to keep changing maps, we’re going to keep changing modes, we’re going to keep changing rewards and prizes and all that. But we’re really watching. Everybody that wants to play Clan Wars can play, but if you also want to see where you rank in the world … and play that out, we want to give you that opportunity as well.”
Call of Duty: Ghosts’ Clan Wars, the meta game that exists within the Call of Duty app, kicked off back on November 25.