Black Ops 2: The game’s ‘perks aren’t absolutes’, says Vonderhaar

Call of Duty: Black Ops 2  will require you to be less dependant on perks, Game Design Director of Treyarch, David Vonderhaar said. He also revealed that he won’t shy away from nerfing them.

Of course we know that Activision can’t afford to lose sales with terrible design decisions, that’s one of the reason’s why the series has been so similar since Cod 4.

“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,” he told CVG.

“We’ve simplified that so perks only ever affect your character, and more importantly, Black Ops II’s perks aren’t absolutes,” he continued, “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.

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.”

You can check out our entire Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 coverage here, including all the leaked multiplayer maps.