Competitive legend Seth ‘Scump’ Abner believes Warzone has left a permanent mark on traditional Call of Duty, as the OpTic Gaming star recently explained how there’s been a “drastic shift” ever since the battle royale launched.
Warzone released in March 2020, just a few months into the Modern Warfare cycle. With this free-to-play drop, CoD was back in the spotlight as the new battle royale saw profits skyrocket with more players jumping in each day.
As a result of Warzone’s immense popularity, veteran CoD pro Scump believes the entire franchise has pivoted. “Warzone literally changed the way people look [at CoD] and the way CoD plays,” he explained in the latest OpTic Podcast.
From gameplay adjustments that make regular multiplayer “feel different,” to an overall “shift” in focus, he explained how Warzone has fundamentally changed CoD.
The first glaring concern Scump outlined has to do with CoD’s core gameplay. In previous iterations, guns were hitscan, meaning your bullets connected with the target instantly. That’s no longer the case, however.
“CoD’s not hitscan anymore… please give me hitscan back,” he pleaded with the developers. “This bullet travel speed is just not it in multiplayer.”
“All this antiquated bullet velocity stuff, it doesn’t apply to traditional multiplayer,” OpTic CEO Hector ‘H3CZ’ Rodriguez chimed in. “Even from a non-competitive standpoint, they shouldn’t mix and match. It’s not good enough.”
“The amount of money [Warzone] has made, the popularity that it’s given Call of Duty, has now shaped the way we’re playing across the entirety of CoD,” he said.
Agreeing with that point, Scump compared Vanguard’s Gunsmith system to that of previous titles as a key example of how the series has changed.
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“You look back at other CoD games, attachment-wise…you had a Red Dot and FMJ. Now, there are literally 10 attachments per gun,” Scump said while rolling his eyes. “That adds different bullet travel time, then there’s bloom… it makes multiplayer feel so different.”
Up until the Black Ops 4 cycle in 2019, this wasn’t a concern, according to Scump. These changes only started taking hold of the franchise “when Warzone came out,” he explained. “That’s when there was a drastic shift, you can tell.”
“Call of Duty felt like Call of Duty until Warzone, then it took a weird branch.”
Despite even winning one of Warzone’s biggest events just last week, it’s clear Scump wishes things were different between the BR and regular multiplayer.
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With Vanguard’s integration with Warzone fast approaching, there’s no telling if we’ll ever get back to the way things were.
