Black Ops 2: Treyarch on Why Not Every Mode Has a Hardcore Equivalent

If you're one fo the few users playing Black Ops 2 on hardcore mode, chances are you might be wondering why not every game mode is available in that mode. For those not familiar with shooters, "hardcore" mode usually means that bullets kill faster, there's no radar, and friendly fire is a thing you need to always keep in mind.

So why isn't there a hardcore mode for Ground War or some of the other modes in Black Ops 2? The explanation's simple enough, it's just that not every game mode playable in hardcore has enough sufficient traffic to warrant its own playlist.

Over in the official Call of Duty forums, Black Ops 2 game director David "Vahn" Vonderhaar posted a rather lengthy response to explain the situation to Black Ops 2 hardcore mode fans.

Here's the post in its entirety. Regardless if you play on hardcore on not, this warrants a read.

Hello,

I know the Hardcore crowd loves Hardcore. I love me some Hardcore Search & Destroy, personally. You are a small enough community where I feel like I know some of you personally.

The problem here is that not every gamemode playable in a hardcore variant has sufficent enough traffic to warrant having it's own playlist.

Hardcore Free-For-All, for example, has a very low traffic count. This makes Matchmaking in that playlist more difficult.

While I'm sure that the 4000 people in it right now are loving it, I'm just being open with with you when I say that something with less than 1% of the total population barely justifies it's own playlist.

What follows next is a discussion point. It's not a committement or a guarantee. I am taking feedback as we think about how to provide more hardcore game modes as Public Playlists without fragmenting the small Hardcore community or matchmaking.

I would appreciate it if you please keep your posts on-topic and civil. Please hardcore community, police your own. I am counting on you to make it worthwhile to have a thread going.

As a snapshot in time, these are the Hardcore modes in order of popularity.

1. Hardcore TDM (by a large margin)

2. Hardcore CTF

3. Hardcore Search

4. Hardcore FFA

Where do you go from here? Sacrifice Hardcore FFA for a Moshpit, Kill Confirmed, or something else entirelly?

Some of you will be tempted to say "Give every game mode it's own Hardcore playlist." Save yourself some trouble. I totally get it. You like Hardcore.

However, Hardcore is not a gamemode. It's a variant on the game rules. One that is popular with a very passionate, but very small crowd of people.

Keeping the 80,000 (or so, across 2 platforms) of you together and able to play together has to be a priority over any specfic variant.

Finally, in case you are just joining us on this game, we go through this every two years with you.

This year is no different. We put out the game. We then figure out what is popular amongst the Hardcore (and other variant, but relatively small communities), and we make adjustments that are in the best intrests of the game and the community. This year is no different. Of course we'll make adjustments. We always do.

Vahn

Well, there you have it. So I gather from Vonderhaar's response, people shouldn't expect a hardcore mode for Hardpoint or any of the other modes anytime soon, no?

To be honest, most Call of Duty fans just want to be a badass "L33T" killer or something and that's why they prefer vanilla Team Deathmatch to the other objective-based modes. 

From the looks of it, if enough people ask for it, perhaps Treyarch might cave? But good luck prying the horde of people playing TDM.

That was a rather nice update from Vahn, no? Let's just hope he and the rest of the team are working on the game's various kinks in multiplayer, too.