YouTuber JackFrags has expressed his issues with the current state of Call of Duty Warzone across multiple categories.
Call of Duty Warzone is no stranger to controversy among its players, with the most recent DMR and Diamatti meta sweeping the game. Engagement times have decreased to nearly instant kills at both long and short ranges, resulting in frustrating gameplay experiences for players who have not leveled up the weapons to max.
As a result of the current state of Warzone, YouTuber JackFrags has taken his opinions to his channel, calling out several issues with the game in terms of gameplay and proper communication, stating that the game has to do better than it currently is.
Communication
In his video, JackFrags pointed out that for a live service game like Warzone, there is a severe lack of communication, dating back to the initial release of the game.
Patch notes are often inaccurate or incomplete, leaving players confused about the actual game changes. In addition, it’s currently unclear who is even developing Warzone. Is it Treyarch and Raven? Communication has come from both studios regarding Warzone, which leads to further confusion.
JackFrags proposes as a possible solution to hire a dedicated Warzone community manager or have a separate social media account/blog for Warzone specifically. At least with this system, we will have a consistent communication channel to watch for updates.
Balance Issues and Game Breaking Bugs
The weapons of Black Ops: Cold War were added to Warzone on December 15. Since then, out of the 30 weapons added, only two have risen as the champions of Warzone as absurdly broken weapons. The DMR and Diamatti overshadow every weapon in the game, making it very difficult to play without them in a loadout.
As for game-breaking bugs and balancing, JackFrags noted that stats for Black Ops Cold War weapons in Warzone are inaccurate and do not line up with the Modern Warfare design. For example, snipers in Modern Warfare have glints on scopes, while Black Ops Cold War snipers do not. In addition to this, anti-flinch attachments actually do the opposite, adding more flinch to the weapon.
Cheating and Competitive Integrity
Cheating has historically been an issue in Warzone, and as popularity increased the amount of them has as well. In response, Infinity Ward has banned upwards of 70,000 cheaters.
However, the new focus of “cheating” is in the form of competitive integrity. JackFrags points out that the main issues are now players attempting to cheat the skill-based matchmaking system (SBMM), by using certain router settings to connect to regions of lower player skills, like Oceania.
Players have also been reverse boosting into easier games by purposely performing poorly in games to be placed against lower-skilled opponents.
Additionally, players are using a new app created by Overwolf to monitor the stats of all players in a game live, giving players the ability to surf for easier games to play in.
Possible Solutions
For solutions, JackFrags wishes for more transparency from the Call of Duty studios. He hopes that we get straightforward communication regarding the future of Warzone and updates regarding the current game meta and purposed changes.
In combination with this, he also purposed the possibility of a test server for Warzone, where players could test the upcoming game patches before they are released to find game-breaking bugs and glitches. In theory, this would result in more polished patches releasing.
Overall, it appears that more communication may be the first step towards players feeling more in-tune with the major changes made every few months to Warzone. Hopefully, we see this become a reality in the future.
