The Problem with Nade Spam in Call of Duty 4

Posted date: May 14, 2008 In: Misc | comment : 10

Today I was playing Call of Duty on a 30ish player server when Wet Work came up as the next map. I dread maps like Wet Work, Ambush and Shipment because Nade Spam is so prevalent and effective. The majority of the kills come from spamming three Nades right after you spawn and than hoping you don’t killed by nade spam yourself. Most of the other maps don’t have this problem assuming a reasonable number of players because they are large enough or have enclosed building which makes nade spam ineffective. But I found playing that Wet Work game to be one of my the most unbearable Call of Duty 4 experiences ever. Because everyone else was spamming nades I was forced to do the same to have any chance of getting a kill. This compounded the problem and in the end I didn’t get more than a handful of none nade kills. I don’t think this was just an incident of my personal incompetence or anger, other players shared my same opinion albeit with more colorful language.

I think it is an issue of poor game design that makes maps like Wet Work inherently unfun because of nade spam. Individual servers can try to regulate abilities like nade spam that are so overpowered that they make the game unfun but they often fail. One reason is because regulating that sort of thing is incredibly difficult because you have to do it manually on a player by player basis, which on a server that is open 24/7 is nearly impossible. The other reason for failure is that servers regulate too much and ban every single perk and ability that has ever upset them, without any real consideration. This turns into games where the only two weapons allowed are the Scorpion and direct impact from Flash grenades. This is why game developers are basically the sole controllers over whether multiplayer game play is amazing or tiresome. Foruntunatly nade spam is one of the few gameplay issues with multiplayer COD4. Maybe we will even see this issue fixed in the future with a Patch or by the introduction of new perks or weapons.

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Anonymous

When wet work comes up and they are 20 or more players i just do one thing, grab my sniper xDD beacause i really hate get killed by a nade and eat grenades like u do in wet work with the spamming is one of the hadest thing to me in cod4, besides sniping in wet work can be fun as hell.

By the way very nice website, keep the good work up
Jabba

Completely agree that and ambush should just be thrown out for any more then 6 people
Jabba

shipment I meant not ambush**
rmp5s

Never heard it called “grenade spam” until now. I always just called them random ‘nades but I like your term better. It’s a bit more fitting because they aren’t truly “random”. Either way, I HATE this shit. It is THE LAMEST MOVE EVER (actually this is a tie with spawn killing for the number one lamest move…but whatever). There were rumors of an update for the xBox version (the one I play) that was supposed to come out last may, I think but never actually materialized. I was REALLY looking forward to it though. Among the rumored changes: removing juggernaut (which would ROCK), removing martyrdom and putting “ceilings” on the maps to eliminate ‘nade spam, etc. Too bad those never happend. I don’t mind martyrdom but the other 2 run me up the wall hard core…

–Brent
willy

i dont think nade spamming is that bad because its really just stratigicly placeing grenades
Killer Masheen

It is not strategically place grenades when your are on a small map like shipment and they have three grenades perk. Any body can throw grenades randomly on a small map and hit someone especially when you have 18 or more players on the map. Now, this is if you have the time to throw your three grenades when you just respawn from your death.
Glen11

people always complain about being killed by a long range grenade but if i see a group
of the enemy team on radar then im defo going to throw a grenade over the map and wipe
them out. So its not all luck
Anonymous

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Anonymous

i think the g36c with a red dot claymores stopping power and deadsilence is the best class
stikyard

Nade spam is what it is, cheap easy kills.

Thier are some servers that aren’t up 24/7 who monitor very well and have grown into a regular group of players who all agree that nade spam isn’t gonna be accepted. When noobs enter and start spamming, they get warned, then kicked.

Find a server you like and become a regular.