The first Call of Duty game was released in 2003, providing the foundation for the long-running series we're so familiar with today. The multi-million dollar franchise has attained success the likes of was considered unimaginable when the first game in the series was released. Right now, it seems that there's no way that any other FPS franchise — no matter how good it may be — can even think of unseating Call of Duty from the throne it's been reigning on for more than a decade. The franchise releases new games annually, and each iteration has sold an impressive amount of titles (including Infinite Warfare, a game that received a ton of criticism from fans before release).

However, it would be a lie to state that the franchise has been smoothly sailing since 2003. In fact, the series has attracted its fair share of controversies. The franchise has faced many issues, and received a lot of criticisms about a variety of problems that have plagued the series for a while. If this wasn't enough, Activision's 'alleged' ignorance of these problems as fanned the flames of outrage. Moreover, user-hostile and shady business decisions have turned the series into a corporate utility tool with the sole purpose of generating as much revenue as possible. Here are 15 such problems that are so glaring that fans have deemed it to be completely unacceptable.

15 Prioritizing Individual Stats Over Teamwork

Most of the multiplayer modes in Call of Duty are team-based. It requires mutual cooperation, trust, and selflessness. A single lapse in judgment by any team member can throw the entire team off-balance, making it imperative to communicate at all times. Of course, what is required may not happen, and in Call of Duty, this requirement is pretty much ignored.

The problem stems from the fact that individual stats are promoted way too much in Call of Duty. Now, it has gotten to the point where it becomes more lucrative for a player to work on his/her own character and build his/her own stats in order to attain more bragging rights, rather than work with the team in order to achieve the common goals.

14 Single-Player Always Plays Second Fiddle

The earlier Call of Duty games boasted some pretty amazing and memorable campaigns, with some elements and characters that have become a staple of the series. The surge in popularity of this series had initially been due to the exemplary quality of this single-player content, which is why it's such a damn shame that the latest games have outright ignored the potential of the campaigns in their settings.

Multiplayer is the forefront of Call of Duty now, and the main draw to purchase the game. This is quite sad indeed, considering the rich history of the quality and stories that the series has to offer. With the improvements made to the campaign in Infinite Warfare, one can only hope that single-player will reign supreme once again (eventually).

13 Annual Releases Have Made The Franchise Stale

There are a ton of franchises that lose their appeal over time since they get bogged down from the absolute volume of content that comes out. Assassin's Creed had this exact same problem, and with the inevitable onset of dwindling sales, Ubisoft made the wise decision of taking a break with the series in order to figure out what went wrong.

Activision should take a page out of Ubisoft's book and let the Call of Duty franchise sit out a year in order to brainstorm ideas that will innovate the overall content of the games in the series. Perhaps a bit of digital soul-searching is exactly what this series needs, after the sheer number of watered-down games that have soiled the name of the franchise.

12 Large Portions Of Content Locked Behind Microtransactions And DLC

Call of Duty could certainly be a great franchise if the content in the final game is worth the price paid per year on these games. Unfortunately, that is not the case since Activision needs to rake in as much cash as possible from this series, and locking some content and features behind the much-despised feature of DLCs and Season Passes seems to be the way in which the publisher is willing to generate extra money.

Reports say that Activision has earned over $1.6 billion in microtransactions alone in 2016, which is absolutely ridiculous. Counting in the extra sales made from DLC, one has to admit that this business model will not be dropped anytime soon. The only way to make a company halt this kind of practice is to stop giving them your money. Good luck.

11 Lack Of Innovative Ideas; Just Ripping Off Their Competition

Call of Duty used to be at the forefront of innovation when it came to the FPS genre. There was no other franchise which could replicate the bombastic action and the unique nature of the campaigns that the series was (and still is) known for. The franchise took a huge leap by utilizing the setting of Modern Warfare, and started delving into the realm of futuristic gunplay.

However, it seems that the innovation of these developers has come to an absolute standstill. Activision was stubbornly pushing the concept of futuristic warfare down player's throats, to the point where it was blatantly ripping off ideas from Titanfall when it came to character movement. Even the upcoming Call of Duty: WWII is just following in the footsteps of Battlefield 1's success.

10 'Zombies' Mode Is Quickly Getting Old

Ever since its debut in World at War, Zombies mode has pretty much become a staple of the series. The altered setting, emphasis on teamwork and the terrifying suspense was a welcome change of pace from the traditional multiplayer mode. Unfortunately, such ideas can also become stale if repeated over and over again every year.

Zombies mode is present in pretty much every Call of Duty and features barely any changes from previous iterations. It has turned from an exciting and welcome diversion into one of the many multiplayer modes that has become stale. Activision should push for a new major game mode that can replace this tiring concept. When you're making that much money, you can afford some innovation to perserve your cash cow.

9 An Absolutely Idiotic Playerbase

People have a lot of complaints when it comes to the Call of Duty series, but perhaps the most vocal of them all is just how horrible the majority of the player base is. We've already talked about how people prioritize individual stats over teamwork, but that is just the icing on the crummy cake.

For some reason, a ton of Call of Duty players have barely hit puberty, but know pretty much each and every swear that they'll annoying scream on the mic, making voice chat the first thing most players mute in-game. There's also the people who blast horrible music on their microphones since they think their music choice surpasses everyone else's. The prevalent hackers and cheaters are also a serious issue — something that Activision is doing very little to prevent.

8 Why Is Quick-Scoping A Thing

Call of Duty is one of the few games where running-and-gunning with a sniper is somehow a viable strategy. There's nothing more annoying than a sprinting maniac who will kill you in one shot, while you try and unload as many bullets as you can before realizing that there's no way you can match his/her aiming speed.

The fact that this system is so broken that something of this sort can happen is completely ridiculous. Snipers are meant to be long-range tools of destruction, not a party trick to show friends how you managed to pull off a jumping 360-degree no-scope kill. Now that is absolutely ludicrous to even imagine.

Speaking of ludicrous...

7 Why Is Camping A Thing

It's a sad state of affairs when snipers are running around and killing people left and right, while people who actually have appropriate guns to utilize this strategy just end up lying prone in a location where they know that people will run through without a second clue. These campers are ridiculed extensively by Call of Duty veterans, and for good reason.

It's truly mind-boggling to wonder exactly how people have fun just lying around in one place and waiting for unsuspecting players. The idea of having a good K/D ratio is burned so deeply into the minds of players that some people are almost guided towards utilizing this particular strategy. At this point, one needs to wonder why Activision doesn't take appropriate measures to mitigate this cowardly tactic.

6 Boring, Recycled Multiplayer With Nothing New (That Matters)

For something that's supposed to be the biggest draw of the series, it's quite astonishing just how bland the multiplayer gameplay has become. Every year, a new Call of Duty game is churned out that includes the same type of multiplayer, with only a few minor changes that do nothing to add to the multiplayer experience in any way whatsoever.

Activision always plays it way too safe, but it's imperative to innovate your gameplay in order to keep your fans satisfied, and the publisher has absolutely failed when it comes to this particular aspect. If nothing else, the developers of these games should at least be allowed to innovate when it comes to the addictive multiplayer, which can truly pay dividends if it works out.

5 Unbalanced, Frustrating Gameplay

If the recycled multiplayer wasn't bad enough, there are a ton of issues that plague its gameplay as well that Activision hasn't bothered to fix — in fact, with the recent iterations of the franchise this imbalance has just grown.

Every Call of Duty game has guns that are simply better than others, and most of these guns take a fair number of hours in multiplayer mode to unlock, which can make the early stages of multiplayer an absolute chore to get through. Since the addition of microtransactions, people who play extra money (on a game that they've already paid money for) will enjoy an unfair advantage over other players. All these changes have made the multiplayer gameplay of this franchise extremely unfair and mismatched. Newcomers will inevitably have a hard time getting used to this system, since it's already broken, to begin with.

4 The Monotony Of It All

The average single-player campaign in Call of Duty has just become a continuous rehash, albeit with a few incremental changes here and there in order to make gullible players believe that they're playing a different campaign. However, all the classic repetitiveness is painfully apparent — the bare-bones story, an uninspired military setting, a weak plot twist and a criminally short length.

As for the multiplayer, we've already discussed just how monotonous the entire experience has become over time. Innovation is necessary for the Call of Duty series right now, since it's something that they're lacking. The switch of the setting to World War II is looked at quite favorably, but only time will tell if this game will also just be the same monotonous affair like the rest of the series.

3 A Misleading Representation Of Actual Warfare

War is something to be feared. The fragility and destructive nature of humanity is put at the forefront, and the entire experience is truly horrifying. Soldiers can drop at the drop of a hat, and the ones that do survive are — more often than not — traumatized for the rest of their lives.

But in Call of Duty, there's absolutely no dynamic like this. Enemies are nothing more than bullet sponges, and the character you control is basically a bullet-absorbing demigod who can't be stopped by anyone as he goes on an unstoppable rampage, racking up the highest body count possible as if it's the most normal thing in the world. At least Battlefield 1 captured the essence of war to the best of its ability through its campaign and (to an extent) its multiplayer.

2 Annoying Insistence To Ignore Fan Complaints

If there's one thing that's louder than the constant fan backlash and complaints that the series receives every single year, it's Activision's stubborn insistence to ignore such complaints, labelling it as nothing more than fan entitlement. While it's true that video game fans tend to be highly critical when it comes to this series, there's a point when even legitimate fan complaints are completely ignored.

The boiling point was reached when the trailer for Infinite Warfare was released, which racked up so many dislikes that it's currently the 2nd-most disliked video of all time on YouTube. This monumental PR disaster served as a waking-up call for Activision... which is somewhat worrying since this whole mess could've been avoided had they just listened to the fans, to begin with.

1 It's Just The Same Game Over And Over And Over Again

We've talked about the repetitiveness of the Call of Duty franchise — something that inevitably occurs once a series starts churning out game after game on an annual basis. A quick look at this pattern tells us about the biggest problem that the Call of Duty series is dealing with — it's just the same game with a different coat of paint that's released every single year for the sole purpose of making as much money as it possibly can.

The single-player is laughably bad, the multiplayer has barely seen anything new, and the Zombies mode has become old. At this point, the entire package is just one great big blob of disappointment, that's constantly underwhelming players regardless of the sales numbers it might enjoy. Some serious brainstorming is required in order to make the game fresh again, although that might be easier said than done at this point.