In the latest Call of Duty installment, Activision has just announced the first Battle Pass of this new season and is bringing back a classic character to take his revenge. This time around, General Dorne is in charge, and the Battle Pass is loaded with heavy-duty weapons like the Maddox RFB assault rifle from Black Ops 4 and Kogot-7, a short-range designed shotgun. The pass also promises high-powered rewards for the most persistent players. Still, if you thought that the whole thing would generate unanimous or at least general excitement, you were wrong. To say the least, the community’s reaction has been very negative, and this has almost nothing to do with the Battle Pass itself.
To clarify, the official Call of Duty tweet was quickly filled with complaints, a considerable amount of which were not related to the new season at all. Gamers have their mind set on only one thing: Black Ops 6. The overall atmosphere is quite clear, illustrated by one user Snappe, who was literally pouring down the replies with a straight but hopeless SOS: ‘BLACK OPS 6 _ FIX IT !!!’ There was no way out of it, for it was neither an isolated case nor a one-off comment. Quite a number of users voiced their dissatisfaction in the same way, with Don.. putting it straightforwardly, ‘You should fix Black Ops 6 servers instead of this BS.’ Apparently, a considerable portion of the gaming community believes that the new content is just a cover-up for the older game’s continuing tech problems.
Moreover, the problems that players are reporting are very serious. We are talking about closed situations of very serious gameplay and system crashes. After a mind-blowing 62GB update, TonyOfHyrule reported ‘120hz Stuttering on Xbox Series X!!!!’ Another player, superjoh12342, detailed a potential game-breaking issue: ‘My motherboard is an old model and doesn’t support the TPM 2.0 function, so I can’t enable it. After your update, I am no longer able to play the game. Do I really have to buy a new motherboard??’ That is quite an expensive and technical barrier that has suddenly come up for gamers.
Another aspect is that of a graphic upgrade that seems to have gone wrong. The feedback on the new look for Warzone is totally harsh. Rog ritch simply said, ‘New warzone look is really bad.’ Others, like s7trimm, went further into the issue and replied to another user about it, ‘Bro it’s bad 🤦♂️ Is it even possible to spot something or zoom with the gun looks all blurry. I just about got through one game after that update.’ So, what was meant to be an upgrade has actually made it harder for some players to see the enemies, which is a very serious issue in a shooter game.
A similar trend of negative feedback is also directed toward the Battle Pass design choices. Jamie, one of the gamers, was very straightforward: ‘Worst battle pass ever. Stop using AI and create a female character that can actually pass off as a woman. Your calling cards are a result of primitive AI and, thus, are cartoony and lack creativity.’ As such, there are a few players who think the visual aspect of the game has declined. Though Philip Overgaard argued that the game had become ‘much more down to earth and realistic’ before this update, he was not the only one to say that. However, devin_bash quickly responded with, ‘Cod hasn’t been realistic in over a decade where where have you been.’ A typical gamer debate right there.
The traditional complaints of the players are still there even with the new game. Skill-based matchmaking (SBMM) is considered one of the main enemies by many. Jack Stonez did not beat around the bush saying, ‘Sbmm is ruining the game treyarch,’ while mcw210f voiced a similar concern, ‘Still no sbmm lie im playing against top 250s and getting shit on.’ There are also bugs, such as xREAPERx🇵🇷💯 who mentioned that they did not receive their BlackCell awards after buying the Vault Edition, and drmuffinzz who claimed that the menu would automatically select ‘invite players’ when looking for a new lobby.
It is indeed a pretty chaotic scenario. On the flip side, Activision is constantly pumping out new seasonal content with the classic antagonist and kicking wrought iron weapons, in an effort to sustain the cycle of player engagement. Meanwhile, a loud segment of the community is using this announcement as a megaphone to air their grievances over technical failures, unpopular visual changes, and long-lasting system issues that seem to be in Black Ops 6. The divide is quite astonishing. It appears that two absolutely different discourses are going on simultaneously. The company is like ‘look at this cool new stuff’ and a part of the players is screaming about glitches and problems on other platforms like PlayStation.
