UPDATE: 11/11/13
The latest patch has made a few major changes to the challenge system.
1) Your progress for ALL challenges is saved. You no longer lose progress when picking new operations.
2) If you complete 1 part of a multipart operation, upon completion you will immediately be given the next in the series.
3) If a challenge is NOT active you can NOT see what the requirement are. This one sucks. No more looking for a cool patch and then see what you need to complete it. Only if a operation is live can you see the requirements.
Some people are reporting that they can NOT even get into operations after the patch so be careful. Mine isn’t having any problems but a friend of mine it starts a match instead of going into the operations menu.
ORIGINAL STORY:
So the patches / challenges / operations for Call of Duty Ghosts are more than a little messed up. With ZERO help from the “manual” figuring out what is what and how to do a challenge was a major pain.
First off you can NOT just work towards any patch you want. The only challenges / patches that are active are the ones listed under Operations. There are 5 categories and 10 random challenges per category. These are the only things that are actually being counted.
So how do you work towards something else? You need to pay 1 Squad Point to get a new set of 50 challenges and this RESETS all the progress of non-completed ones that you are currently working on. So you are 215/250 from Red Dot II, all lost. EXCEPT that the 5 challenges on the front page, the ones with the Gold bar on the right side, these stay with you and they keep your progress. You can set which ones you want to keep by going into the individual categories and hitting X to make one active. Make sure to change all of them to things you haven’t finished before resetting or you’ve just hosed yourself with a useless challenge.
There is no way to guarantee any specific challenge will appear and if something is a single track challenge, like Hardcore Team MVP you can get it multiple times. Obviously if you already own the Patch or any other character customization you’ve already acquired you can get the XP and Squad Points again. It appears that anything in stages you will always get the next stage. I.E. you complete Red Dot I, when you get a Red Dot operation again it will be Red Dot II and so on.
This includes outfits like the Ghille Suite. You will need to get Variable Zoom I and complete it, then refresh challenges until you get Variable Zoom II and complete that. Same for any heads or outfits. These are linked to Patches and so you need the Patch to be active.
The one question mark is Clan Wars. It’s only live until the 25th but I think all of those items are going to checked separately.
Sights and weapon camo are separate and those are tracked directly on your loadout screen and are active the second you buy them and start using them.
Hope this info clears up the new challenges system in Call of Duty Ghosts.
Here is a video of me getting the 8-Bit Ghost Classified Patch. Tells you all the steps required: