The Disappointing Aspects of Warzone From A Day-1er: A Manifesto

I’ve been playing Warzone since day one. Literally the first hour we were able to download on [Battle.net](https://Battle.net), my brother and I were downloading. I spent a long portion of lockdown playing this game. I had just sold my business, and essentially had two years “Off” – A lot of it was filled with Warzone. I loved the game. I loved the friends I made in it. I loved that it brought me closer to my brother. I just loved all of Warzone, and it started with the game itself being solid.

Since then, I don’t know what has happened to it. Both the community and the game itself is a mess. If it wasn’t for all the nostalgia surrounding it, and the lack of other games that are like Warzone (A military arcade shooter BR), I’d have abandoned it. It’s a completely different game. I’ve played every game, every season so far. So I’ve seen quite a bit of everything under the sun, over the entire history of Warzone.

So I thought I’d put together the gripes I have, and hope to God somebody sees it, agrees, and hears the community to fix problems. As a side note, I’m a MNK player – Lifelong.

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1. Let’s start with the obvious: Cheaters. The cheating problem has come in waves, with one of the worst ones at the midpoint of WZ1. It seemed that nothing was getting done, and every lobby was filled with cheaters no matter what time of day or mode. We are right back to that worst time right now. Every lobby has cheaters in it, with the largest cheat (I feel like) being Walling. I’ve literally talked to probably a dozen players in my solo queue days who openly admit to walling because it’s borderline impossible to prove. It seems to be the “If you can’t beat em, join em” of cheats, since so many walling players think and say everyone uses them. Though, I feel like it’s very easy to detect. It’s almost become widely accepted through much of the lobbies at this point. It’s most blatantly obvious in Gulags. Cheaters have GOT to get under control for a game to survive the long haul.
2. Why can we not see what we’re shooting at anymore? They ramped everything up to 11. Aim Assist aside (I’ll get to that in a minute) **the visual clutter when shooting is so insanely dramatic that you can’t even see what your shooting at half the time.** In a game that’s so headshot-centric, who signed off on muzzle flash and smoke completely blocking view of your target. It’s especially noticeable at range but even up close, there are times when you literally cant see the target in front of you. I imagine it’s much worse on PC than controller cause Aim Assist kicks in, but when this is paired with non-centered standard reticle sway and placement for PC (Which is also just so stupid), it feels like you can never really see or hit your target. Insanity.
3. I feel like at this point, we need to just admit that hit registry in general is a problem. While I recognize that things like latency etc… Account for some of the issues with hit registry, but it’s increasingly obvious that some players kill way faster than others. The amount of times bot players shooting at feet 2-3 bullet someone who’s getting infinite hit markers is just mind blowing. And I know kill cams aren’t always the most reliable, but just watching clips, bullets just stop doing damage, and players can 2 tap you with an SMG. It’s insane that people are still trying to chalk that up to Aim Assist / Latency. **It’s too consistent for either.**
4. Crossplay really doesn’t need to exist as a mandatory. There are plenty of PC Players so lobby filling isn’t an issue, and console is still the dominant COD platform, so at this point, there really isn’t a reason to keep that going. **I’m tired of losing to ramped-up aim assist up close in a gulag, and controller players are tired of getting snap-sniped at 100 meters. Both are fair criticisms, and neither want each other in their lobbies**. If it boils down to “People want to play with their friends” then make it an option to turn it on. Forcing it at this point makes zero sense to anyone. I recognize the need controller players have with Aim Assist, and I as a PC player think it’s way too strong up close. Regardless, if you’re not going to make changes to it, let’s just all agree to turn off crossplay when we don’t want to deal with it and stop arguing about whether it’s too strong or not.
5. Bring back one shot sniping **for real this time**. Because streamers getting mad at snipers is not a valid reason to remove one shot sniping. This isn’t Apex. It’s an arcade shooter. Activision losing more and more casual players to this kind of stuff. I don’t want to have to use some ridiculous attachment that only works within X-meters with these specific bullets, in this specific gun, that has pitiful bullet velocity, a ridiculous reload time and insane bullet drop. Just bring it back. I don’t think anyone was happy with that decision except streamers getting clipped on content creation. The majority of casuals want it back.
6. Stop with the stupid gimmicky gulag ideas. Lasers on every gun? Really? Yeah, that’s fun. Who decided that would be fun for the entire Warzone community? Did anyone ask for that? I’m game for some of the little Gulag fun like cash on the ground, or a way to escape, but just nonsense for the sake of nonsense is still nonsense. Then when you redeploy you can’t even help your teammates because they see you coming from space. It doesn’t benefit anyone, **it doesn’t make it more competitive** \- It’s annoying for annoying’s sake.
7. Why is every single POI specifically designed for third partying? I get it, they wanted the Big Map to have more engagements, but **why does it feel like you can never just fight one team?** And the team that inevitably wins the 3/4 squad gunfight is the team that just cleans up what’s left. **That’s not rewarding at all. That’s catering to the lowest common denominator.** It encourages people NOT to engage because they’d get third partied until there is no more third parties left. So it’s either a camp-fest or a constant third-party fest at every single POI on the big map. If you’re going to keep with the “Lets keep maps smaller” my suggestion would be to remove some of the verticality in some places, and close up some buildings so there’s less easy ways to third or fourth party without getting caught in the open.
8. The lobbies have way too much skill gap for experienced players. I don’t know if it’s SBMM kicking in or what. But it seems like, if you’re a bot, it places you with bots, but if you’re kinda mid, straight to sweating. **It feels like once you get to a certain point, there is no ceiling in who you’re playing with**. I don’t understand how I’m getting thrown into lobbies with Top 250 on a consistent basis, and I just have a 1.4 KD. I’m not that good and there are plenty of players in that .8 – 2 KD range that I can’t imagine filling a lobby would be hard. Why are we in the same lobbies as these 6 KD guys? This feels like a relatively new thing in the last season of Al Mazrah.

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Initially, these are the 8 things that I feel like would fix the game and make everyone happy (except maybe some streamers). I don’t feel like it’s too much to ask for. There are many times that Warzone was in a really good place, and Warzone 2 was not one of those times. Current Warzone definitely feels better than WZ2, but it’s not there yet and these, to me anyway, feel like the major contributing factors.