A handful of professional Call of Duty players have locked horns with Modern Warfare multiplayer designer David Mickner, as tensions rise over bug fixes and issues with the game.
Since launch on October 25, Modern Warfare has had mixed responses from both the casual and competitive communities.
Professional players, such as Jordan ‘JKap’ Kaplan and Chris ‘Parasite’ Duarte, have been vocal about their grievances with the game and perceived lack of attention to competitive issues.
On November 20, players and a developer engaged in a public debate on the issue of bug fixes, and lack of communication between the pro community and Infinity Ward.
Mickner, who was also one of the lead multiplayer designers for 2016’s Infinite Warfare, directly called out pro players for not notifying him of a bug through the “official channels”.
He stated: “[Dead Silence] had this bug, that no one told us about (Pros have OFFICIAL channels to us and we were never informed). I fixed this in less than 5 minutes once I was aware.”
This quickly drew a response from the pro community, as LA Guerrillas captain Patrick ‘ACHES’ Price claimed that this supposed ‘official’ channel was not at all effective.
https://twitter.com/ACHES/status/1197448480525914112
Parasite appeared to agree, responding that this is the reason he simply posts the issues publicly on Twitter and mentions developers and the community manager, in the hopes of getting their attention.
JKap also responded to Mickner’s claim that pro players had failed to inform the dev team of the issue, explaining that not only had he never seen the bug, but that other issues reported had gone ignored.
He also accused Mickner of being “misleading” by blaming pro players for a lack of communication, explaining that issues raised before the game was even released have still not been addressed.
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Mickner responded, explaining that general feedback is not the same as highlighting bugs.
Feedback and bugs are entirely different. One is a suggestion, another is observing unintended behavior. In all aspects of our game, we want to know both, but especially bugs, so we can smooth out the experience to make way for feedback.
— David Mickner (@DavidMickner) November 21, 2019
JKap continued, however, arguing that there was no need to call out pro players in regards to the dead silence bug, as they have more pressing concerns, such as spawn logic.
When Mickner suggested that they attempt to resolve the dispute and ‘move forward without yelling at each other’, Kaplan said that the “cheap shot” at the pros was “lame.”
First, your other tweet said “entirely different.” I can work on improvements, but you taking a cheap shot at pros while citing a bug like that is just lame. And something fixed on the back end is way different than already fixed. We have no clue if/how/when spawns are changing
— Jordan Kaplan (@JKap415) November 21, 2019
Following the exchange, the developer Tweeted that the team “wants what’s best for our game and this community”, even if they don’t always see “eye to eye.”
Our team wants whats best for our game and this community. Sometimes we won't see eye to eye, but we're working hard, and we care about our players ( even if you're the person that victory crouched on me in Shoot House 24/7 earlier ) Goodnight twitter.
— David Mickner (@DavidMickner) November 21, 2019
Most concerning for professional players though will be the start of the Call of Duty League, which is creeping closer to its first event weekend on January 24.
With various issues still unresolved, including some potentially game-breaking bugs in Search and Destroy, there are concerns competition could be affected.
