With every Call of Duty title comes new things to grind for, something that many multiplayer fans find appealing. Some players focus on account levels, trying to race to the maximum Prestige level as fast as possible. Others prioritize the camo grind, trying to get mastery skins like gold for every weapon. Seasonal challenges give players more cosmetic items to work toward every few months, while weapon leveling itself takes time and effort. However, the stat grind is another option.
For Call of Duty fans more concerned with dominating in their lobbies than collecting flashy cosmetics, building up impressive stats can become a fixation. Likely spurred on by the early days of trash talking in Call of Duty lobbies, as well as some titles where other players’ overall stats were clearly visible, many fans like to improve their Kill/Death and Win-Loss ratios, setting goals like a 2.0 or 3.0 average. However, there are downsides to the existing system, so seeing it expanded to accommodate seasonal stats in Call of Duty 2024 could be for the best.
Why Seasonal Stats Would Work for Call of Duty
For starters, seasonal statistics would fit the new Call of Duty format perfectly, as Activision and the franchise’s developers have all embraced the live service approach. Giving each season an identity and plenty of content is important, with players needing to be able to log in and find plenty of new things to strive for once a season begins. A fresh start for stats could be just another thing to make each season exciting, as it would allow players who care about having good stats to see major shifts from match to match.
As for why seasonal stats would be beneficial, players need only think about the Call of Duty titles they have spent the most time with. As players progress through Call of Duty’s camo grind and work on prestiging, they will play more and more matches, eventually reaching hundreds of games played. Once they reach that point, it becomes almost impossible to make major changes to Win/Loss and especially Kill/Death statistics, as there is far too much data for a single match to sway things.
This is a bit disappointing, as it can mean that a player’s Call of Duty stats do not paint an accurate picture of their current skill level. When first diving into the game and learning all the maps, spawn points, and weapons it has to offer, most players match-to-match stats’ will be lower than they are after they have more experience. Further, grinding for camos requires the completion of challenges like mounted kills, which force players to sit in one spot and avoid the objective - which could see them losing games they would have otherwise won had they been able to play normally. By the time players finish their camo grind and master the game, the damage will be done, with their stats being very hard to increase at the point.
Seasonal stats would be the perfect compromise, as they would show players what their current K/D ratio and W/L really is further into a Call of Duty game’s life cycle. While a player’s stats for season 2 may be reset going into season 3, a section could be added that shows their final number for the previous seasons. This way, players can easily see how much they have improved from season to season, getting a far more accurate view of their performance than one overall stat can provide. If the studio wanted to make this hypothetical feature more exciting with its 2024 game, Treyarch could even reward players for hitting certain K/D and W/L goals during a season, or for showing improvement over the previous season's stats.
This is not to say that the Call of Duty franchise should abandon the concept of overall stats; after all, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 not having this in place on day one led to a lot of controversy. Instead, a deep seasonal stats system should simply be added to provide extra depth for those who care about tracking such things. This way, it would be less demoralizing when players with hundreds of hours of gameplay have a streak of great games but hardly see their K/D stat move up. They could instead look at their seasonal stats, which would be unburdened by the stats recorded when they were leveling weak weapons or learning the ins and outs of the latest Call of Duty game.