News - The New Warzone Is Nearly Perfect
The new War Zone is here, and the patch notes that were released by Raven Software were a deeply comprehensive and impressive understanding of all of the shortfalls of War Zone and all of the things that make War Zone very good. After getting hands-on with about a day and a half of gameplay, I've been incredibly impressed with just how good this version of War Zone feels.
This feels like an iterational improvement of Modern Warfare 2019. It feels like we've gone back to the quality and fluidity of gameplay that we had in the Vians era of War Zone, but while doing all of that, we've been given this huge quality of life pass that has greatly improved many frustrations that I have with War Zone generally.
But not everything is perfect, and today I wanted to talk about some of the key flaws that are undermining the new version of War Zone. Now I should State Overall. I've had a fantastic time, and I would rate this war zone somewhere around an 8 to an 8.5 out of 10, with a few more minor tweaks, some of which I'm sure will occur in upcoming updates.
We could genuinely be looking at a version of War Zone that's in the best shape it's ever been in terms of quality of life in terms of frustration, and just how the game works and flows. We're very close to something special. Be sure to drop a like. And subscribe as well, as we're on the road to 200k.
The first thing that struck me about this new version of War Zone was the pacing of the game, and I think it kind of underlies every complaint I have about this current iteration. It's not quite perfect, but it's not quite perfect. You can forget all of the complaints people had about 100 players because this version of War Zone is intense from the second you land to the second you finish, and I have only had a handful of games where there's been any kind of notable downtime or situations where I've had to actively go out and look for squads.
But the unfortunate problem for me with this version of War Zone is that 20 minutes, much like Raven Software alluded to, is in fact too short. They said that they felt the current time of the War Zone game was a little bit too short, and I entirely agree that 20 minutes is just too fast. I think they need to increase this into a more 22, to 24 minute region and the reason for that is quite simple, the current version of this plays more like Resurgence and less like a traditional Battle Royale in a battle royale there are meant to be natural instances of downtime because you need moments to adjust your loot you need moments to think about your strategy, moments to think about where you're going to be rotating to but in this version of War Zone you are being third partied pretty much from the start of the game to the end of the game the current method they have brings about probably the best mid game of any war zone I've ever seen in terms of the number of fights you have and the general engagement.
But the problem with that is that you just don't get a moment to breathe. And while that can be appreciated by some groups of players, especially those of you who enjoy Resurgence, for a big map Battle Royale, I just don't think it fits very well. I would like to see the overall game time finish around 22 to 24 minutes, which will increase the overall length, but it won't naturally mess with the pacing too much, and they may want to consider upping the player count to about 120 players to offset that extended timer to maintain some midgame intensity.
The next thing that I feel needs adjusting is the gas mask system. Now in the patch notes, when they said that the first thing in your inventory would always be the gas mask. Your gas mask can be anywhere in your inventory. Rather than the dedicated slot that it should be in, it should be in the dedicated slot all the time, and they should consider changing it so that it's red when the gas mask is not in use and when you press it, it turns white to make it in use.
It should always be the first thing that your inventory automatically flicks to; it shouldn't be occupying a backpack space. You shouldn't have to have it on permanently; the current system just doesn't work. They were close, but they haven't quite nailed it now, while I haven't been having the audio issues footstep-wise that other people have been encountering.
I do understand where it's coming from now. The problem with Call of Duty's audio is that you basically have to run the game at 100% volume in order to effectively hear footsteps. I do that, but I use software conversion to reduce the overall sound of gunfights, meaning that I can bearably hear gunshots without them breaking my ears and footsteps remaining at 100% volume.
Call of Duty generally needs to completely tweak its audio system. To reduce the amount of ambient noise in the game, I would use the audio of gunshot sounds and leave the footstep audio where it is or slightly increase it to bring it up in the audio mix. You only get good footstep audio in Call of Duty right now if you play the game at max volume, which means if you don't have VSTs, software conversions, or anything like audio emulation or sound equalization, you can't get the benefits of 100% audio without hearing gunshots at an ear-breakingly high level.
The other thing that is a huge problem here is that the enemy dropping in audio seems to be completely broken and doesn't seem to play at some instances, so that needs to be addressed too, but that's likely just a bug. I don't want to go on a really long tangent about time to kill because it's very early on in the life cycle of this new version of War Zone, and a large quantity of weapons have just entered The Fray.
Right now, things are feeling just a little bit too quick—about 20 to 30%. Too fast compared to what we should be at in terms of the war zone. I think the developers intentionally left a certain degree of lethality into the game, assuming that the faster movement of the game was going to offset some of those problems and that people would still be able to escape from those gunfights and get away, and that is a good suggestion and a generally good approach to things, but I just think they've slightly missed the mark in this demeanor.
I think there's just something that's a little bit too rapid about it; it's not a huge percentage off but just a little bit, and there are going to be some weapons as well that will be problematic in terms of being outliers. The dg58, by the looks of things, appears to just kill rapidly quicker than any other gun in the game, and once those are addressed fairly quickly, we should have a better ttk scenario, but I would like to see those balancing changes made before Christmas, not something we have to wait until season 1 is reloaded.
