Infinity Ward wanted to give us a heads up on some of the things they are working on. The following is a short list of some of the key improvements being looked at for Call of Duty: Ghosts.

One of the first things we want to make sure everyone is aware of is where are patch notes are located here.

Spawning: Spawning is one of the most talked about subjects in Ghosts, and it’s one of the most talked about subjects here at the studio as well. We’ve been addressing bugs with the current spawning system, but feel we can do more to make the experience better. We are currently working on significant changes to the spawning system based off of the learnings and play data that we have gathered over the last 5 weeks. Work is progressing here and we recently had our first internal playtest of this new system. The designers are working feverishly to get it ready to go live and we will keep you up-to-date on our progress.

Weapon Balance/Sniper Rifles: We constantly evaluate and re-evaluate weapon balance. Any changes we make have a ripple effect throughout the game so we test things heavily before they go live. After much feedback and many hours of internal testing, we recently made adjustments to the MSBS.

Sniper Rifles are something we are also looking into; as we said before, we changed Sniper Rifles from MW3 to Ghosts. Those changes are:

• No aim assist from the hip, which was a huge part of how Quick Scoping worked in previous games. Players now have to aim unassisted until fully scoped in.
• Hip fire reticles for Sniper Rifles were removed and hip spread was increased drastically. This reduces the effectiveness of hip firing with a Sniper Rifle.
• The Quickdraw perk’s Aim Down Sight (ADS) speed scale was reduced significantly for Sniper Rifle.

Moving forward, we are testing adjustments to address the Time to Kill for Sniper Rifles versus other weapons. These Sniper Rifle balances include:

• A reduction in the flinch benefit of the Focus perk.
• An increase in overall ADS time.
• Sniper Rifles with a silencer are being changed to a chest-up kill instead of a waist-up kill.

We will continue to monitor the data and balance these weapons accordingly.

Hacking/Cheating: We have a dedicated Online Security department enforcing our online code of conduct for Call of Duty: Ghosts [here]. This team is actively banning cheaters, cleaning up the leaderboards, and fixing hacked stats. The development team is fixing hacks and exploits as we find them. Please refer to the patch notes for a list of security fixes we’ve already addressed here.

And you can help! When you report someone in-game, it goes directly to our Online Security team and they investigate every issue. You can also report issues to Activision Support, either through twitter (@ATVIAssist) or online here.

Squad Points: We are making a change to the amount of Squad Points your soldiers earn. For ranks 1 – 5, each rank up will now give you 5 squad points (increased from the usual 2 squad points). So each Squad Member that you take to level 5, you’ll get 25 squad points.

Operations: We are looking at large, potential changes for Operations. For instance, we are looking into increasing XP rewards for completing operations. More info to come.

Infected: We are in the process of adding new loadouts to the Infected playlist. This is currently being tested internally, so be sure to look out for more variety in the future!

New game mode: We are in the process of adding a new Heavy Duty playlist that increases player health. We would love to hear your feedback on this new mode, so make sure to try it out.

Remember to send feedback to @InfinityWard or here in this thread.

Get ready for a full season of amazing content with the Call of Duty: Ghosts Season Pass. With the Season Pass you will get 4 epic downloadable content packs: Onslaught, Devastation, Invasion and Nemesis — providing brand new multiplayer maps, bonus weapons, and a unique 4-part episodic Extinction experience.

Check out the latest Call of Duty: Ghosts Live-Action Trailer titled “Epic Night Out” featuring a night out on the strip of Las Vegas.

You’ll also spot Megan Fox helping out the 4 guys towards the end of the trailer too.

The Extinction game mode in Call of Duty: Ghosts is all about fighting against the odds, forcing players to use anything and everything at their disposal to survive and accomplish the mission.

To aid in this task, four character classes with different abilities are available to help maximize the team’s potential. The four classes are as follows:

Weapon Specialist
20% more bullet damage.

The Weapon Specialist focuses on one vital task: destroy as many aliens as possible. The extra bullet damage really comes in handy when dealing with heavily armored threats or when fighting back a swarm of smaller enemies. Weapon handling continues to improve as the Weapon Specialist gains levels.

Tank
25% more health.

The brute of the group, Tanks stand at the front and take hits that would otherwise knock out other, more fragile classes. The extra health lets you play more aggressively, getting into the thick of things and coming out alive. Additional levels further improve the Tank’s health in addition to their lethality.

Engineer
Provide armor for the drill and earn more bonus cash.

Without a functioning drill, your team will have a very difficult time progressing. The Engineer offers much needed protection to the team’s drill, incredibly useful during moments when you get overwhelmed. Drill maintenance and trap efficiency improve as the Engineer gains levels.

Medic
Revive allies more quickly.

When things go wrong – and they will go wrong – the Medic’s there to pick up the pieces and get the team back in fighting condition. Fast revivals can mean the difference between success and failure, and an active Medic can help turn the tide of an intense battle. The Medic gains faster movement speed and powerful healing abilities with additional levels.

The most successful teams will consist of a variety of classes, using different abilities to best compliment each other and adequately defend against the
alien horde.

Infinity Ward just released the Ghosts Extinction Trailer and it is indeed awesome! Check it out.

The Call of Duty: Ghosts Clans Trailer was release and it is just as awesome as you would expect!

One of the biggest new features with Clans is that you will be able to play cross-platform with friends or players in your clan! You will also be able to play other clans as well and much more! So watch the 2 minute video for a preview of what is to come.

Money in the Bank

Given some of the recent technical issues during these first days of GTA Online, and now that things are starting to look much smoother (touch wood!), we are planning to provide a special stimulus package for all who have played or will play Grand Theft Auto Online this month. We will be dropping a cool half a million GTA$ in the GTA Online bank accounts of all players this month, starting as early as next week.

‘Don’t Spend It All in One Place!’

In order to keep the current worldwide in-game economy balanced, we will be providing this GTA$ to players via two deposits of $250,000. We will announce specific dates as soon as possible, but are currently hoping to be able to make the first deposit by the end of next week (after we’ve confirmed that issues causing game progress loss have been fixed) with the second installment to happen by the end of the month. For players who experienced cloud server errors, connection issues, and lost game progress and characters in these first days of GTA Online, we hope this GTA$ helps to facilitate a fresh start or makes your continued life in Los Santos and Blaine County extra sweet.

Below are a few more details on how it will work. Stay tuned for tips on how to make the most of GTA$ cash, info on ways and places to earn more cash fast, as well as updates on all the new GTA Online content additions we’re working on for this fall and beyond.

• You must play or have played Grand Theft Auto Online at any time during the month of October 2013 in order to qualify for the GTA$500,000 deposit in your in-game bank account.
  Players will first have to install a forthcoming GTAV title update which we expect to happen next week. That title update (1.04) is expected to fix the remaining instances of issues that have caused vehicle purchase loss and will also enable the functionality through which we’ll be providing this GTA$ stimulus cash to players.
• We will announce at the Rockstar Newswire when each deposit is made.
• Each of the two GTA$250,000 deposits will be made by Rockstar and should automatically appear in the in-game GTA Online bank accounts of eligible players. Beyond downloading the forthcoming title update mentioned above, there should not be any additional special action required by eligible players to redeem.

If you own an Xbox 360 console but don’t have a paid Xbox Live Gold subscription, you don’t have access to play any games in online multiplayer modes, nor can you check out any of the many streaming video channels available from the dashboard. This weekend, Microsoft is giving many Xbox 360 users a chance to see what they are missing.

The Xbox Wire website reports that from Oct. 4-6, a free Xbox Live Gold weekend will take place for Xbox 360 owners in a number of countries and territories, including the U.S. The full list of regions that will take part in the free weekend is as follows:

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Portugal, South Africa, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States, Vietnam

The countries of Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico will get their own free Xbox Live Gold weekend from Oct. 11-14, and Japan will have to wait until Nov. 7-10 to access Gold features on the Xbox 360 for free. Hopefully by the time the weekend comes around, the multiplayer online issues that are currently hitting “Grand Theft Auto V” owners will be worked out.

The Los Santos map was leaked today thanks to a copy of a GTA V guide on Reddit, found by neoGAF user Pandemic.

According to Rockstar, the GTA V map is bigger than Red Dead Redemption, San Andreas, and Grand Theft Auto IV combined.

If you happen to think the map might be small, another Reddit user made the following GIF:

Check out the new Ghosts Single Player Campaign Trailer released today from Infinity Ward!

Are you excited? I sure am, which console are you going to get it on? Xbox One? PS4? Maybe you are going to purchase it earlier and do a trade-in later?