Its something I didn't realise until I went and played Modern Warfare 3. I went on MW3 this week because a mate who isn't a fan of ghosts asked me too and I was a couple levels off being 80 and I kinda wanted to be level 80 and get the remaining weapon (RPG). However I soon realized that one thing I think is missing from Ghosts is the motivation to rank up. Because I'm not working for anything other than a prestige, it feels a bit like a grind of getting nowhere fast.
I mean since basically everything is unlocked from the start you don't need to reach level 'blah' to get your favourite weapon and I really miss this, even BO2 which I disliked as a game had this feature of unlocking weapons via rank. .
I therefore don't feel the need to rank up and I feel I'm working towards nothing because I know I don't have the staying power for this game and prestiging yields nothing. For example in MW3 you got prestige tokens which allows you to unlock weapons, get double weapon and game xp and do a variety of other things. In other games it gave you a reason to prestige e.g. extra custom class slots.
Overall I feel ranking up isn't a must and therefore doesn't yield much in terms of day to day playing. Does anyone else feel this way?