The recently released Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 has been an extremely successful entry for the series, with its early playership numbers being up there with some of the best the franchise has ever seen. While a lot of this heightened popularity can be attributed to things like the title’s day-one presence on the Xbox Game Pass service, the release also has an obvious respect for the wider sub-franchise and the history of the IP that shines through some of its most important mechanics.
A clear return to basics is present throughout the core multiplayer and Zombies experiences of Call of Duty: Black Ops 6, with Zombies especially struggling to settle on a core identity with its recent iterations, and fans have been positively receptive to BO6‘s return to tradition, to say the least. A lot of the issues that have stemmed from recent Battlefield releases can also be partially attributed to how they stray from the traditional mechanics of the wider franchise, and the next Battlefield release can look towards reinstating its classic Colonel 100 ranking system in the same way CoD has returned to its older Prestige system.
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A More Traditional Leveling System Could Be a Great Move For the Next Battlefield Title
The annual release schedule of Call of Duty recently gave way to some major shifts in its core multiplayer mechanics, especially in the way of progression, with a new take being introduced to the franchise’s iconic Prestige system. 2019’s Modern Warfare introduced the concept of Officer Ranks to Call of Duty, replacing the traditional Prestige system with ranks tied to each in-game season, with this rank resetting to 55 at the start of each subsequent season.
The franchise’s Prestige system has changed drastically ever since, with Black Ops 6 following in the footsteps of its sub-franchise predecessors by reintroducing the Prestige Mastery system to the series. Prestige Mastery allows players to go through the ranks of a traditional Prestige system, with the final Prestige tier then unlocking 1000 Mastery levels for the most dedicated players.
Prestige Mastery was first introduced to CoD all the way back in 2012 with Black Ops 2, and Black Ops 6 makes Prestige Mastery even more traditional by allowing players to choose from a huge range of Prestige icons taken directly from past Black Ops titles and beyond. This is a clear statement from Treyarch in terms of celebrating the best elements of the franchise’s past, and DICE could emulate this for Battlefield‘s reported 2025 release. Battlefield has gone through a similar identity crisis with its own multiplayer rank progression systems in recent years, and the next entry to the series could take things back to the iconic Colonel system of the past.
The Colonel 100 System in the Next Battlefield Could Be the Anchor That the Franchise Needs
Battlefield 3 took a now iconic approach to its multiplayer progression by introducing the Colonel Service Star system, offering a challenging path for multiplayer leveling beyond the standard Colonel rank of level 45. Once a player reached the Colonel level, 100 Colonel-specific levels were then made available to unlock, with the “Colonel 100” rank being the ultimate achievement for dedicated fans of Battlefield 3.
This system has also been tweaked and outright scrapped with subsequent releases, echoing CoD‘s conflicted approach to the Prestige system, with the most recent Battlefield 2042 having over 1000 potential levels. To escape the divisiveness that 2042 instilled through its bold decisions, the next Battlefield release would do well to borrow from the best elements of past titles, and a return to the more streamlined and memorable Colonel 100 system could be a great way to stabilize the franchise moving forward.
