News - Is Warzone Making A Comeback
Some of the changes in War Zone Season 2 were surprising. Now we all know that season 2 and season 1 tend to be really quiet for the war zone in terms of the calendar year just getting back from Christmas. Development is slow and not a lot is going on, but this is the first update we've seen in the new cycle of war zones that has made me genuinely hopeful for how war zones are being managed, how they're being run, and what we should expect in the future.
Now, yes, there are still problems with Antiche, but that aside, there is something really enjoyable going on with the trajectory of the war zone. I wanted to talk about it in this article today. My study and Westy are co-hosting a watch party for the Imem Catalyze tournament on February 11, 2024. So let's talk about the season 2 update and I was pleasantly surprised to see a number of changes that I wasn't expecting necessarily right away but represent a shift forward in quality of life for Call of Duty, the first one is a major one seeing a red outline on the screen on your mini map when you are marked by a UAV, is such a huge boost for the game we have the return of UAV call outs and on top of that with portable Radars it's very difficult sometimes to know whether or not you're being spotted by UAV or you haven't been and finally we have a universal language for understanding if you're being seen by an enemy team which I highly respect and I think that's something that it's great to see in war zone, likewise on that front we're also seeing an actual outline marker for air strikes which is something I have been asking for since the original war zone released.
Air strikes in this game are very unpredictable and can be very damaging in or outside of buildings seemingly at complete random, and this is the first time I can finally say the air strikes feel balanced. There's also even a danger zone marker on the tactical map if you can't see an incoming precision air strike, which lets you know that when you're running into an area with a strike present, you might actually get hit, and there are so many more of these quality of life changes that you will auto-equip a durable gas mask over a regular gas mask.
You can now ping a redeploy drone, and it actually appears at the bottom of the Ascender to make it more obvious where things are. Your death location is highlighted on the screen more visibly, and live pings also fade when you aim down at them. The flight path when you drop into a map remains in the sky for a period of time, so you can potentially see where other enemies might have dropped.
And arguably, my favorite improvement is an improvement in health delays across the board. You get more health back more quickly in this variant of War Zone now, and it feels much more action-packed and allows you to be more aggressive than ever before. It was really great to see such an emphasis on quality of life improvements going into season 2, and all of these are big tick boxes for me, but it didn't even end there.
The audio in Fortune Keep, in particular, is noticeably improved. Parachute audio zipline audio players dropping in on ladders or using ladders—all of these things are audibly so much more clear than we've ever had in the game and again represent a big step in the right direction of the game. So across the board, seeing all of these quality of life changes has been absolutely phenomenal, and it's really something that the game needed.
There is still more to be done, though the Antiche definitely still isn't in the best place, and Call of Duty is still using extremely lackluster servers, which I truly feel is the last piece of the puzzle from taking War Zone to a good game with good qualities to a game that gives you an unparalleled.
Experience: This game with decent refresh rate servers and decent ping and hit regge would genuinely have a competitive element to it that would make the game more attractive. The time to kill and time to death experience in this game still feels random because of how low and lackluster the server system is, and if the servers were improved, the experience would be improved, and if that experience is improved.
I feel like the majority of players are going to have a better time in the war zone. I was also really delighted to see that they've messed around with various little LTM ideas for zombies. Now, I don't mean Modern Warfare Zombies, because unfortunately, if you're interested in that, the quality and content for that right now are not looking fantastic.
But they've added zombie-like elements to War Zone as a small little LTM nod, towards Resurgence and towards Fortune's Keep, and these are just a random little bit of fun, and these things are things that I have been asking for in War Zone for a while. We have ranked in War Zone now, and we have a playlist that makes sense, so the LTMs in the game have little events and little things going on that give people more reasons to try something a little bit different and a little bit fresh.
I would love to see more rotating limited-time modes in War Zone compared to what we have now, which doesn't seem like enough. Before I talk about weapon balance, it was really worth talking about the changes to ads for Idol Sway, how your hipfire Crosshair works, and how generally keyboard and mouse are treated in War Zone.
They have drastically improved responsiveness and aiming on the mouse, and you can actually feel this on the controller as well as in the random ads. Idle sway, generally centering your weapon and centering for target engagements, is a much more consistent experience, and this is a more deep-level engine style change that I think is something that we've needed for a long time, and it's been highlighted by people like true game data over and over again.
But what's great about these changes is that they represent an understanding that things that are fundamental and things in terms of how they work at the base level of the game, the core mechanics, are worth overriding and changing, if it means better balance and a better gameplay experience for the major majority of players.
It's been a while since we've spoken about the meta in War Zone, and this was also a positive and refreshing part of season 2. It feels like it's in a much better place right now. I still think there's too much of a gap between the experience of being killed by something and the time to kill when you take somebody out.
The time to death versus the ttk experience still has too large a gap, and most of that is down to the server system within the war zone, but for the most part, the general feel in terms of how long it takes to kill somebody and how much you can slip in and out of gunfights is in a much better place than it has been in the war zone before; it feels fairly well balanced.
