'Call of Duty: Black Ops 3' Introduces Bans/Protects, Specialist Draft At Gamescom

Call it coincidence or excellent timing, but the team at Treyarch introduced some new features for the competitive multiplayer of the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, giving it some similarities to the popular MOBA, Dota 2, which is currently in the middle of its fifth annual championship tournament called "The International."

In a way, it's another part of the match, not only for the viewers to interact with what's happening on the screen, but it also adds a little bit of strategy to the game. These changes come in the form of bans and protects, a Specialist draft, and editing loadouts, all before the game even starts.

With bans and protects, each player from both teams can ban a specific weapon, streak rewards, attachments, or equipment. However, a player can also protect one item in those categories, saving it from a future ban. This gives the team an idea of their opponents' preferences in the game.

In addition, Black Ops 3 includes Specialists, characters that have a unique set of weapons and abilities. With the Specialist draft, each member of your team must have a different unique weapon and ability. This ensures that teammates aren't using the same powers in a one-two punch to easily take out enemies.

After the bans and protects have been issued and the Specialists are picked, players will then finally be able to set up their custom loadouts and killstreaks. This ensures that once the map is loaded and the countdown ends to start the game, everyone starts running instead of sitting around and finishing their setups.

However, teams aren't the only ones getting upgrades. For those who are providing commentary, their screens, which are also seen by the viewers, will now have an easily accessible widget at the bottom of the display that shows each players' name, weapons, abilities and streaks. This gives commentators, or shoutcasters as they are normally called in eSports, a quick heads-up on vital information to give viewers a more detailed description of what's happening on the screen.

Although these might just sound like features only for the professional teams, casual players at home can set up their games in the same way through the lobby settings. You can toggle which new system will be used, and how much time is allotted for the voting process. If anything, it will provide a new twist in your online matches with friends, giving each player a new chance to step out of their comfort zone and try out new combinations for each game.

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  • poochiepiano
    Never liked the black ops series very much, but MW3 is getting a little bit barren and Ghosts and AW were... well, not so good. I hope Blops 3 gets it right. These are some interesting features.
    Reply
  • ern88
    I think the black ops series were the best!!!
    Reply
  • amk-aka-Phantom
    So it's going to become like those lousy BF3 servers that have """rules""" allegedly forbidding to use legit game mechanics ("NO SHOTGUN NO MORTAR NO STEALING VEHICLES") simply because some players are too chicken to deal with them. No wonder it takes my friends at least 15 minutes to set up a DotA 2 lobby with all the arguing about voting and whatnot... >_<
    Reply
  • Gam3r01
    This just seems out of place in a game like COD.
    Low level play, you really shouldnt care what people use, but the ban system is fine.
    At the upper level, players should be able to respond to whatever is being used, and if it is so unbalanced to warrant a ban, it should be looked into game wise.

    This is just a way to satisfy all those people complaining about gun balance. I remember back when I played Blops 1 *shudders* people would complain about the Famas being overpowered, but nobody said a word about the AUG, which had the exact same stats and gameplay, just a different skin essentially.
    Reply
  • eriko
    Never liked the black ops series very much, but MW3 is getting a little bit barren and Ghosts and AW were... well, not so good. I hope Blops 3 gets it right. These are some interesting features.


    MW3 a bit 'barren' you say? MW3 is currently the 67th Most-played PC game. BOPS2 is 43. AW is 94.

    If you had said 'most hacked', I'd have agreed with you 100%.

    Call of Duty devs - I'll pay 150 GBP/game, if you hire people to deal with the cheaters. I really would.
    Reply
  • SirGCal
    Never liked the black ops series very much, but MW3 is getting a little bit barren and Ghosts and AW were... well, not so good. I hope Blops 3 gets it right. These are some interesting features.


    MW3 a bit 'barren' you say? MW3 is currently the 67th Most-played PC game. BOPS2 is 43. AW is 94.

    If you had said 'most hacked', I'd have agreed with you 100%.

    Call of Duty devs - I'll pay 150 GBP/game, if you hire people to deal with the cheaters. I really would.

    Another reason I stopped playing the AAA fps games a while ago. They don't care about cheaters and the hackers know the engines they keep re-using over and over and over and increment the # so they can get more money from the players, forcing developers to plop out another game, etc. I stopped supporting them a long time ago. Activision and EA both for similar reasons.
    Reply
  • alidan
    So it's going to become like those lousy BF3 servers that have """rules""" allegedly forbidding to use legit game mechanics ("NO SHOTGUN NO MORTAR NO STEALING VEHICLES") simply because some players are too chicken to deal with them. No wonder it takes my friends at least 15 minutes to set up a DotA 2 lobby with all the arguing about voting and whatnot... >_<

    lets look at a game like blacklight retribution,
    i played the beta and have my own problems with knowing how good it was to what it is now, but thats a different topic.

    but the one thing i wanted was a no special weapons servers or rulesets.
    that means no hard suit
    no flamethrower
    no multishot rocketlauncher

    none of the special crap.

    i enjoyed the the base game, and the normal weapons, and hated it when anyone used the special weapons, the rocket launcher especially, but also the hard suits. those had absolutely no appeal to me or a sizeable chunk of the community whenever the in between game chat happened.

    having the ability to ban the weapon depo would have been a much welcomed feature, and this is what i see this as, there is going to be one abused weapon, perk, setup that people get sick of playing or playing around and people will ban it just so they don't have to deal with it.
    Reply
  • BulkZerker
    Well maybe we will finally see teams not using the same perk and the same weapon going up against teams with the same perk and the same weapon.

    This is a fps not an excel spreadsheet.
    Reply
  • BulkZerker
    Well maybe we will finally see teams not using the same perk and the same weapon going up against teams with the same perk and the same weapon.

    This is a fps not an excel spreadsheet.
    Reply
  • cats_Paw
    Each to his own.
    Some people love to have control over stuff like this, others hate it.
    Lucky for me I never liked moderns shooters enough to play them online (I stopped at Crysis 1 basically).

    I did however love Tribes Ascend. There was only one rule: Win.
    Reply