The second official Clan Wars event for Call of Duty: Ghosts kicked off today, a five-day metagame affair that challenges groups of eight matched clans to compete for control of nodes, each focused on a specific game mode. Every registered member of a clan automatically contributes points toward their clan totals simply by winning a corresponding match during normal multiplayer play. Take control of a node and you receive a temporary XP boost that is active for every member of your clan until the node is lost. Earn more “Capture Points” than anyone else by holding various locations over the five-day period, and your whole clan scores some exclusive cosmetic unlocks for the game’s custom-created multiplayer soldiers.
It’s a relatively simple concept to grasp, though the war for control isn’t always easy. Each Clan War node is worth a certain number of wins. The first team to reach that win count in matches for the designated game type takes control. Everyone else must then score the same number of wins in that game type, except wins from all members of the other clans stack with each other. The controlling team can slow down the process by continuing to win matches for that game type, but having seven clans gang up on the one in control helps to ensure that capture nodes keep changing hands.
Players are still figuring out their strategies for Clan Wars, but Beachhead Studios boss John Linden is here to help. He’s been reviewing the data gathered from the first Clan War, and he’s gotten a good sense of what’s working best at the moment. The mode’s rules continue to change and evolve, but for now, Linden’s got some helpful tips that may give you an edge. For more on Clan Wars and how it came to be, check out our full interview with the Beachhead bossman right here.
- If you want to win the war, focus on all the territories. We definitely saw some great strategies [in the first Clan War]. We haven’t really revealed what every location is worth, but it’s pretty easy to [figure that out from how many wins are needed to take control]. We had a lot of people who started analyzing that and saying, ‘Okay, this one’s worth this many points.’
- One of the reasons we don’t reveal [the point totals for each node] globally is, obviously depending on the division and the size of the clan you’re in, some of those numbers will change. If you’re in a three-person clan we’re not going to have the same amount of wins it takes [to capture a node] as a 100-person clan. It’s all fairly dynamic per war. We are going to do some updates in the future here … that will start showing you what those values are worth.
- Look for the ones that have the highest values. We’ve tried to make some visual indicators when somebody is about to lose a territory. You’ll start to see their emblem on the [Clan Wars] will start pulsing a bit. There’ll be a red pulse around it. Those are obviously great ones to watch since it means those are pretty to take away from that clan, they’re pretty vulnerable right now.
- The biggest strategy is to mix it up. We’ve seen [more success from] people that are focusing on,’What can I take over?’ versus ‘I just want to play [a specific mode]?’ [That is] probably the best strategy we’ve seen so far.
