As the Call of Duty games have evolved over the years, online players have grown more and more dependent upon their perks. Treyarch hopes to eliminate that in Black Ops 2 by simplifying the system a bit and nerfing some if need be.
Multiplayer head David Vondehaar explained to CVG how they plan to adjust the perk system so players to rely so heavily on them.
Perks were pretty important for us to rethink, because they were getting too complex. You had perks, perk pros, perks that influence you, perks that influence your gun, perks that influence team mates.
We’ve simplified that so perks only ever affect your character, and more importantly, Black Ops II’s perks aren’t absolutes. In Black Ops our only balancing options were to remove the perk or keep it – now we can tune any perk by increments to nerf it or improve it.
And Vondehaar isn’t afraid of nerfing certain perks if they throw off balancing, adding:
I can nerf perks and I will, mark my words. A perk should never be something you need just to compete. A perk is ‘I got a parking spot,’ or ‘the soda machine gave me free soda.’ Your life shouldn’t depend on it. The community helped me understand that, and that’s why our new system has no absolutes. We can try to make it the most balanced CoD ever.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 is set to launch on November 13th for PS3, Xbox 360 and PC.
