Reading Trophies – Analysing Call of Duty: Ghosts

Reading Trophies – Call of Duty: Ghosts

 By giving trophies a rarity rating and showing us the percentage of people that achieved specific things across the whole of the PlayStation Network, Sony have unleashed a whole new level of statistical analysis on PlayStation 4. It means we can examine  how popular certain features are, how many bother to see things through to the end and, yes, at what point people started to get bored.

Reading Trophies is our new article series, published twice a week, looking at how trophies tell a story within our games. For our first outing we look at Call of Duty: Ghosts.

The Game

Call of Duty is one of the biggest franchises in the gaming world. Published by Activision and developed by several studios including Treyarch and Infinity Ward, detractors knock Call of Duty for its similar yearly releases. That doesn’t stop it being bought in its millions and it’s definitely not going anywhere for the time being.

Popular opinion would lead us to believe that nobody ever plays the single player and that the story is terrible and short anyway. Is any of this backed up by the statistics?

Spatial Awareness

It’s true that there will be few people buying Call of Duty for the single player. This franchise commands a serious amount of power in the online gaming world, so much so that it was rumoured not so long ago that Xbox Live cost went up to pay Activision a slice (they were bringing that many people in).

But what sort of person pays full price for a game and doesn’t even try out any of the features?

39.9% of those who have synced trophies in Call of Duty: Ghosts haven’t even received the first bronze. For the sake of context: Spatial Awareness is given a few minutes into the game, for killing your first enemy. 1.4% of gamers decided to stop playing between earning Spatial Awareness and finishing the first level (for which Ghost Stories, another bronze, is awarded.)

Ordinarily, I suppose, this wouldn’t be too surprising a fact. It’s been happening for years, and everything indicates that it’s getting worse: people aren’t playing their games. Still, Call of Duty is a special case. When you consider 41.3% of gamers didn’t finish the first level of the single player, you’re talking about millions of people. Even the 1.4% that stopped playing between earning the first trophy and finishing the level represent quite a large group, larger than some games even manage to reach.

More surprising is that the level is basically on wheels. There’s next to no fighting… you just follow the directions and are done in a matter of minutes.

I wonder how many of those people then go online and bitch about how nothing ever changes and that the story sucks?

Brave New World

There was quite a big drop between the amount of people that finished the first level and the amount that finished the second. While 58.7% finished Ghost Stories, 51.6% didn’t get through to the end of Brave New World. This is interesting in itself. Were people just not interested after the first level? The second level starts off slow, speeds up and then ends rather abruptly. Was it a pacing issue? Did people even START the second level?

That’s a 7.1% drop. Even if you take into account a natural drop off of people – those that haven’t got around to it, those that borrowed it from a friend, those that just weren’t interested – you’d think there was something pretty huge stopping people from continuing on.

In reality, this isn’t anything unusual for Call of Duty. It always seems like there’s a rather large drop off of people right at the beginning of the game. Black Ops 2 seems to have dropped between 6 and 8 percent as well. The good news is that those stopping playing becomes a little less steep very quickly. (One or two percent per level, for those wondering, a much more natural amount.)

By comparison, for a game that IS bought for its story, there’s currently a 10% leap between those that finished the first major puzzle in Broken Sword 5, and those that completed the second.

Additional Missions

Each level in Call of Duty: Ghosts has at least two trophies; you’ll always get a trophy for finishing a level, and then there’s additional objectives to complete as well. These might be as killing a certain amount of enemies in a certain way, or it can be something harder, like clearing out a room full of people without taking any damage on veteran mode.

Interestingly enough, there aren’t that many people completing the additional missions. Things that will be done almost naturally – destroying two helicopters that are attacking you – are done by almost everybody (38.4% destroyed both helecoptors, a little more than 40% finished the level). 

On the other hand, killing 10 enemies as Riley in the third level, No Man’s Land, is far rarer. Although it’s not a difficult trophy to get – you’re given ample opportunity, and even need to kill about half as part of the story – only 13.8% of players managed to unlock “Blimey O’Riley.”

That’s still around a third of the people that bothered to get that far though. The next mission has you using a remote sniper rifle, and you’ll earn a trophy for not missing a single shot. Only 2.5% of players pulled this one off, an abysmal 5.9% of those that got this far through the game.

Similarly, a later mission tasks you with making it through a jungle undetected. It’s one of the highlights of the game, especially once you know where you’re going, and yet only 2.6% of players earned the trophy for remaining undetected throughout. That’s around 9% of players who managed to get to this level.

Other additional trophies are almost impossible to miss, and yet some people manage it. After an explosion while you’re rappelling, a photocopier is thrown from a window and you must let it hit you for a bronze trophy. In actuality, you’ll probably hit it by accident, given that it heads right for you at high speed.

Still, 6.9% of players managed to miss out on trying to chew that particular piece of office equipment, an achievement that seems wholly more impressive than NOT missing it.

Piece of Cake

The only other additional trophy specifically worth mentioning is Piece of Cake. It’s the veteran challenge, Call of Duty: Ghosts’ equivalent of the Mile High Club achievement from Call of Duty 4.

It’s significantly easier than earlier veteran trophies. As mentioned earlier, it tasks you with clearing quite a tight packed room without taking any damage. Being on the highest difficulty, this is supposed to make you shiver in your army boots. By standing outside the room and allowing your AI partners to take most the flak, it becomes far easier.

Despite that, it has the Ultra Rare rating of 1.4%. That’s less surprising when you learn how few people actually play on veteran…

The Ghost Killer

20.6% of people that own Call of Duty: Ghosts have managed to get through to the end. A fifth of total players reaching the end cutscene is, I suppose, not too bad. The old adage from the nineties says you should expect no more than 10% of gamers to get through to the final screen (although it’s tough to compare Mario to Call of Duty).

2.1% of total players managed to “earn the mask,” finishing it on the hardest difficulty. That’s some 10% of people who managed to see Ghosts through to completion.

Audiophile

If nothing else, Ghosts proves that Call of Duty fans aren’t interested in collecting stuff. More people finished the game on veteran than bothered to collect all 18 Rorke files. These files are placed (usually quite obviously) in each level. Collecting them all earns you a bronze.

Only 1.3% of people collected all 18. That’s a little more than 6% of players who played throughout the whole game.

Extinction

Extinction doesn’t seem to have had the popularity that Zombies has enjoyed. The new mode, which has you fighting aliens, moves you to a new location after about ten or fifteen minutes of play, and only 23% of players managed to get to that point.

That either means there’s a lot of people that really stink at playing video games and literally can’t shoot some aliens for a short period of time without dying, or it’s not all that popular despite a double XP weekend finishing shortly before Christmas.

Other trophies for the mode – some which require quite a bit of work and some willing co-op partners – are naturally less easy to attain.

More surprising than that though is that very few people have earned the “Safeguard” trophy. This is awarded for reaching round 20 in Safeguard, a mode that simply has you fighting off waves of enemies. Only 4.2% of players managed to get that far. Considering that Safeguard is available from the beginning of the game, that’s implies a tiny use rate.

Conclusion

Call of Duty: Ghosts was incredibly successful, even up against the might of Grand Theft Auto, and it’s a fun game to play. The trophies are easy enough for somebody who wants them, and in some cases you’ll feel pretty badass for being in the top percentile of all players.

It’s untrue that nobody plays the single player, although it is true that a decent amount drop off within the first hour. After that though, it remains pretty consistent (a two or three percent drop each level). However, statistically, those that are complaining about it being too short are probably not playing it on its hardest difficulty.

What might the developers learn from these statistics? Try and go easy on the additional modes, especially if you’re going to link a decent amount of trophies to them. One “special” level is probably enough and, even then, don’t put trophies in place that rely on having a perfect run with people you might not know.

If it wasn’t for it being a fairly standard thing, it would also seem that the first two levels need to be more instantly surprising, to have a bigger hook. With that said, Activision could put out a game with the best story of all time and, looking at previous titles, there’s no reason to think people would give it more than five minutes of their time before scuttling back to the internet to complain.