Hello, this post is colossal but it might be worth a read to some
Fireteam was the underrated treasure, and Warzone was the beginning of the end. This post will briefly compare their quality, and the results of their releases on the entire franchise's future
Warzone
Warzone was designed to hook original players and new players – by simply being free to play. As you know, the revenue was earned from the countless overpriced microtransactions
The idea was this – the average player who wasn't smart with money would think "Warzone was free, so why not spend £15 on a bundle?". Then they'd buy another. Then another. And so on. Soon, they'll spend far more than what a new game would've costed. I'm quite sure that Activision hired corrupt psychologists to confirm that this is how a lot of players think
This massive surge in new players was a giant success, and the fact that these new players were new meant that their expectations were incredibly low. They'd never seen how good Call of Duty was in the late 2000s and early 2010s. They'd never seen true quality from the franchise. Warzone is their nostalgia. And because of this, everything will now revolve solely around this heap of shit
So why is Warzone a heap of shit?:
- The settings UI is over-complicated with all the untidy drop-down menus
- The lack of Anti-Aliasing settings making the game blurry to some players
- The terrible color palette
- Tac-Sprint and holding your weapon on cover over-complicating the movement
- The map being absolutely cluttered with all the shit that it was. Contracts? Just a cheap idea. Buy stations? Yeah, no one will ever camp those. Vehicles? I don't need them marked on the map. See what I mean?
- The Killstreaks rendering the stealth and strategic purposes of a BR pointless. It's not exactly fair for a player who had just gone through hell after countless gunfights only to be wiped out by a Strafe Run
These are the things that were copied from Warzone, to all the future games aside from Cold War. Just look at these similarities for a moment:
- The settings UIs are the same
- The graphics and Anti-Aliasing settings are the same
- The color palettes are the same – aside from BO7
- The movement is the same unpolished, cheap shit where the character is shaking the gun around as they move. And they all include Tac-Sprint – again aside from BO7
- In Zombies, you're constantly running around plating yourself with Armor, just like you're back in a game of Warzone
Look at those similarities. Look at Warzone's flaws, and look at how many of them transitioned to those future games. It speaks for itself. Activision hiring psychologists to understand the minds of people who spend money carelessly, making the game free to bait new players, and those new players having their incredibly low standards has brought this franchise from a titan, to a catastrophic failure – not in revenue, but in the quality that once defined it
They don't care about respecting those who got them here in the first place, they only care about respecting those who brought them the most money in the last quarter. And this is before we even discuss SBMM, the beyond-pathetic microtransactions of BO6, and the use of artificial intelligence. This is why I don't respect Warzone not only as a mode, but for it's consequences
Fireteam
When Treyarch was developing Cold War, they were told to scrap their new BR map. To make sure that it wasn't wasted effort, they then decided to use the map as a foundation to create an entirely new mode that had never been seen before in any game – Fireteam: Dirty Bomb
Due to Cold War's notorious launch, Fireteam's reputation was affected unfairly. However after some bug patches, it runs incredibly well. Far better than the latest BO7 ever will. It not only looks better due to higher clarity and less artifacts, but it even runs twice as fast on my mid-range PC
So why is Fireteam so great?:
- The settings UI is simple and elegant
- There's more Anti-Aliasing settings
- The color palette is vibrant
- There's no Tac-Sprint, or any other gimmicks over-complicating the movement
- The map isn't cluttered at all
- It was a brand new mode that played incredibly well
Fireteam's foundation was creativity, not the greed of jumping on the BR hype train. And most importantly, it didn't bait new players for being free, it didn't cater to new players, and it didn't cause any harm to the quality of the franchise moving forward. It was simply the underrated treasure, hidden away by the flaws of Cold War's buggy launch
But it's perfectly playable now, and I'm trying to revive it on the weekends for us all to enjoy once again. If you'd like to play Fireteam again, then please gather some friends and join the Fireteam Group by going to u/Logical-Bear-6263's profile and clicking the link
Thank you