Every Call of Duty game will have a three-year development cycle, with Treyarch, Infinity Ward and now Sledgehammer taking it in turns to release one. Sledgehammer's arrival as a studio for the biggest franchise out there could mean more of the same, or it could mean that we finally get to see a bit more innovation added to the shooter, which is starting to show signs of slowing down.
COD is a franchise. A franchise is not just a name that people chose to like for some arbitrary reason; it is what it is due to some very specific set of characteristics, and it's supposed to retain those defining characteristics, because without them it'd be something else, wouldn't it? When I buy a bottle of coke, I expect it to taste like coke, not lemon juice. Similarly, COD is expected to be a game about "a skilled American soldier [who] takes on large, evil foreign forces almost single-handedly and against all odds he comes back to claim victory". Changing all that and selling it under the same name would be just as idiotic as that NFS:Shift fiasco.
The problem isn't that the game's barely changed over the years; the problem isn't that a company is too lazy to come up with anything new; the problem is that there's so many stupid people willing to pay for the same exact product year after year. Some gamers are tired of it, most don't seem to be. Quite the opposite, in fact, as the franchise seems to be doing just fine. A game that features a modern war of some sort would have to suck real hard not to succeed. Take BF or the latest gamer favorite on Steam, Insurgency, for example.
Why then, considering all this, would the people responsible for developing and very successfully selling pretty much the exact same product every year want to disturb the magical formula or, god forbid, risk developing something new and original under a different name? Do tell.
Whatever they did to make modern warfare 3, do the exact opposite. Then you can be assured it won't fail as much as mw3 did. (Probably the most hyped in terms of story as it was the conclusion of the modern warfare franchise, yet the worst in all of the COD series)
oppisite of Everything in mw3 and ghost and your good.
If you want to make COD good then take out all the cheap items. Things like Thermal, Target Finders, Heart Beat Sensors, Motion Sensors, Shock Charges, Tac Inserts, panic knifing and free fire launchers. They don't make the game better, just ruin it. Get rid of this crappy pick 10 type of perk setup and go back to 3 Perks with Pro perks, unless you use a Specialist Setup which was the best thing about MW3. Have Scorestreaks that are gradually harder to get and better as you progress. No Deathstreaks! Make maps ONLY medium sized and not too big or these popular tiny maps where it's chaotic and there's no thinking involved. Finally REMOVE sniper rifles and shotties or any OP secondary weapons because they are specialty weapons not made for balanced gameplay. Simply let people have a ton of SMG's, AR's and LMG's. Keep some recoil!Instantly better than any previous COD because it keeps the best of what was there and removes the hated nonsense.