Player Health:

Battlefield gives the player a lot of health. Due to the size of the maps, players will often find themselves sprinting across massive landscapes, often with little to no cover. This also reduces the dominance of snipers and vehicles, and reinforces the uniqueness of each class. How?

Imagine a Battlefield game with Call of Duty’s health system. Would the classes be as distinct as they are now? I don’t think so! Currently, the Medic’s LMG is much less effective against infantry than the Assault’s rifle. Without all the health, the offensive capabilities of each class matter less and less.

By minimizing the offensive and defensive capabilities of some classes, it moves them into a supportive role, providing suppressive fire, rather than being a lone wolf. It also gives Medics’ the ability to heal a wide array of damage, instead of just reviving.

Granted, this hasn’t always been true. As a matter of fact, the most likely reason why Battlefield 3 moved the medkit to the Assault class is because Battlefield 2’s Medic was almost identical to the Assault (and not the Support class). Battlefield 2’s classes did, however, have varying levels of health, used to the same effect. In this case, the Medic had less health than the Assault.

Call of Duty, on the other hand, does not rely on high health. On the contrary, players are usually given very little health to keep gameplay quick, and reward players who react quickly.

There’s a trade-off here as well, though. In a game like Modern Warfare 2, the lack of health made it far more advantageous to be a camper, just because getting the first few shots off in a firefight became that much more important, and gave runners and gunners less time to seek out cover, or even aim down the sights (which is why an MP5 fanatic, like myself, uses steady-aim).

Player Damage:

Call of Duty is free to balance weapons independently of classes, focusing more on the role of the weapon itself. Assault rifles excel at medium-range, but typically lose to SMGs at close-range, and Snipers at long-range. Likewise, a LMG will have a high ammo capacity, but severely limit player movement speed and reload time. This applies to attachments as well. A silencer will keep you off radar, but reduce your range. Rapid-fire will increase your DPS, but waste ammunition and reduce accuracy.

Once again we see that Battlefield’s approach is there to reinforce class roles (and ultimately: teamwork), whereas Call of Duty’s is to give players more freedom to customize their experience, with balance only there to make sure no one style is superior to another.

Both approaches have their downsides. When the balance breaks down in Call of Duty, it hinders player choice. Players feel like they must use one weapon (such as the AK-74u), or one perk (Stopping Power) to succeed. At its worst, players can even abuse perks like One Man Army to conjure infinite noob-tubes. And in Battlefield, weapons shared between classes rarely work as well as those specifically chosen for that class. You’d rarely see a Battlefield: Bad Company 2 Assault using the G3, or the WWII M1 Garand. It can also be frustrating when skill alone can’t keep you alive.

Player Movement:

Most people would agree that Battlefield has more realistic player movement. Turning, changing stances, and recovering from jumps all take time, and you can only sprint in the direction your looking. The only deviation is the lack of prone, which while unrealistic, was put in to balance camping and sniping. The problem with this is that it also hinders the performance of attackers, who may be forced to push through an open field. Defenders may have the same disability, but they’re much more likely to be able to seek cover ahead of time. However, that’s where destructible cover comes in (and in pre-Frostbite games, a lot of cover left players more exposed than you’d see in a CoD game). It’s a fascinating example of how many different aspects of a single game (controls, level design, and engine) work together.

It’s worth noting, however, that a few of these attributes will actually be removed in Battlefield 3. Players will be able to go prone again, like in Battlefield 1942 and BF2, and even be able to sprint while strafing, something you couldn’t even do in BF2!

Call of Duty, on the other hand, barely limits players at all. The controls are tight and responsive, so that characters can move in unrealistically perfect ways. This goes back to Call of Duty’s approach of rewarding players with the skill and determination to be able to do things like sprint from left to right, dive to prone, and toss a tomahawk into the foot of the sniper 32 yards away.

Realism is a good end in itself, but in Call of Duty’s case, it isn’t trying to be a battle of realistic tactics, but a battle of the two players themselves: which ones have mastered the mechanics of an FPS: aiming, maneuvering, etc.

Tactics vs. Skill:

All of these ideas can be summed up with one philosophy: Battlefield rewards tactics, and Call of Duty rewards skill.

It’s easy to argue semantics WHEN YOU’RE PISSED, so I thought I’d define my terms:

Tactics: Gameplay strategy, situational awareness, teamwork, etc.
Skill: Reaction time, accuracy, weapon and player control, etc.

Ultimately, Battlefield is a battle between players who assume the role of a soldier: their duties, their abilities, and their quirks.

Call of Duty is a Battle between the players themselves. All of the choices the Call of Duty developers make are there to minimize the barrier between player and character. Little to no restrictions on class load-out and player movement means that when you engage another player, both of you perform at your absolute best. This isn’t a battle between two soldiers, it’s a battle between two people who are trying to one-up each other in their ability to move around a mouse, move around their analog sticks, or (god forbid) motion control (as if I haven’t started enough flame wars already!)

What this ultimately means is that the contest between two CoD players can reach a much deeper level of player involvement and skill, but at the cost of abandoning realism, and creating a much less forgiving environment for people who have the tactical knowledge of a pro, but the reflexes of a noob. I’m a PC gamer, and when I play the Xbox 360 version of Black Ops, my KDR hovers at around 1/3… depressing, I know. Darn you, analog sticks!