Warzone devs have teased that they would “love” to see the total player count on Caldera rise from 150 to 200 after CoD pro FaZe Swagg quizzed the Raven employees on their future plans for the battle royale.
One of the common criticisms leveled at Warzone’s Caldera is that it contains too many wide-open spaces – particularly in the center. Players were far from in love with Verdansk by the end of its tenure, but the new Pacific map has even been labeled “boring” by some members of the community.
Warzone already features eye-watering lobby sizes that cater up to 150 players, but upping the player count further could make those long stretches of empty space feel less drab.
During Swagg’s March 31 stream, Raven Software devs joined the creator for a Q&A in which he asked if going from 150 to 200 players is on the cards, either as a permanent feature or as an LTM.
While trying to avoid “PR jail,” Senior Warzone Creative Lead Josh Bridge hinted that he would like to it happen later down the line, that the concept has been “internally tested” by the team.
“It is something that we’re always looking at for sure because we love the idea,” he explained.”Go crazy, how many people can we get in here? That’d be so dope.”
However, “technical challenges” appear to be holding the team back from making the jump, mainly due to concerns on how it would impact performance on last-gen consoles. At the moment, it would require an audience split.
Raven’s Senior Creative Director, Ted Timmins, also mentioned that the team is currently prioritizing new gameplay features, as they feel that this is the best way to keeps players continuously engaged.
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“It’s not always about the number of people either, it’s what’s happening in the maps,” he noted. “The success of Season 2 has really been about the toys we’ve put in, [like] Portable Decontamination Stations.”
“We’re really moving away from tons of new LTMs and game modes, and really focusing on what core new stuff we can put into the game,” Timmins continued. “If feature A meets feature B then get this amazing clip that now goes across Twitter [and] Reddit, so that’s where really putting out energy.”
All hope isn’t lost though, as the devs didn’t rule out the possibility of the change coming in the future. “We want a lot of this stuff that you’re talking about,” Timmins told Swagg. “When we look at the whole chapter ahead, we are definitely having these types of conversations about what we can do.”
Only time will tell if the developers can figure out a way to open up Warzone matches to more players without hurting the performance on lest-gen consoles. For the time being, at least, the main focus is seemingly to make matches more varied by adding new and exciting features.
Hopefully, the release of Warzone 2 will give the team a fresh start without as many technical limitations, and we’ll finally see lobbies crammed with 200 players.
