Long post incoming - sorry
This is my probably unpopular opinion about the franchise as a whole; I thought I would throw in my piece because of what B@C mentioned concerning the similarity of the games.
I would consider myself somewhat of a COD "apologist,"
though I will really only defend the multiplayer. The single player is an afterthought for me, and I could take it or leave it. I'm glad that you enjoy the story mode though gf78
I personally see no difference between COD multiplayer and watching sports. I don't know anybody watches one season of football and then next year says "Really? They're playing the same game AGAIN? Come on." It's because sports are such an intricate competitive scene, and the ways that teams shuffle around and become better/worse over time is what makes the sport interesting to watch.
It's the same concept concerning COD. Yes, the core FPS is always the same at it's roots. But there are an infinite amounts of intricacies that make each game different than the next. There are always different guns, equipment, maps, perks, kill streaks, game modes, differences in weapon balance/time to kill, movement abilities, and the community that plays the multiplayer is going to be different from one game to the next.
In addition, because of that pvp human aspect, EVERY individual match you play is different, like every match of football is different, and if you move from BO1, to MW3, to BO3, they are NOT the same game, in my opinion.
I enjoy playing COD every now and then, but I certainly don't play it all the time. I think most people hate COD nowadays because:
1. People have played it so much that it has become stale
only from sheer repetition (Think of what would happen if you played/watched 25-30 games of Soccer every night for 2-3 years)
2. The community is seen as very immature and childish, and the series in general is painted in that respect. Also the extreme popularity of COD builds up a lot of expectations too high
3. The single player is seen as weak, unexciting and repetitive, (I mostly agree) and that idea is written onto the game as a whole. It's important to remember that up until recently the devs had 1 year to make a new game, the story mode took a back seat because of time constraints.
aliensstudios brings up a good point too. How are some of the Nintendo classics REALLY different from game to game? I don't know if it's really any different from COD.
TL:DR I think that people who claim that COD is too similar and it's a bad thing realllllly don't understand the whole story
It's competitive enough that it can get away with only having minor differences from title to title - it's just like any sports game in real life.