Modern Warfare Finally Goes Live after a Series of Controversies
- Admin
- Oct 28, 2019
- 3 min read
10/25
After stirring up much heat among the player community, the Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has finally been launched with innovative cross-play feature on October 25.
Previously, there hasn’t been any word of a loot box system being included in Modern Warfare. However, a leak on reddit showed evidence that the loot box system is clearly going to make its way into the game. After much heated backlash from players, the game’s publisher Activision has come out and stated that there will be no loot boxes in Modern Warfare, and instead will be replaced by a battle pass system within its in-game economy system.
The major difference between a loot box and a battle pass is the element of chance. Loot boxes are essentially small lotteries in the game which you receive several random rewards upon opening one. The better an item is, the lesser its chances of it dropping from a loot box is. Given this nature, the loot box system has been criticized frequently for bearing too much resemblance to gambling. Furthermore, in games like Call of Duty, where intense player-vs-player competitions take place, it is very unfair and uncomfortable for having items which would influence the outcome of battles being locked behind a paywall.
The battle pass system, however, removes the above issues completely since its nature is about players making their own progress to their rewards by simply playing the game, instead of the element of chance and having a pay-to-win situation.
As stated on Activition’s own blog site, the game also features one new technology in the game of its kind, namely Cross-play between all major platforms (PC, Xbox one, and Playstation 4). Cross-play will allow players on different platforms to play with each other, further uniting the player base and bringing in more momentum to the game’s development in general. Many have doubted that using mouse and keyboard will bring a significant advantage over using controllers; nevertheless, Infinity Ward (the game’s developer) has done a fantastic job at making aim-assist for players using controllers, eliminating all the potential conflicts and backlash which would undoubtedly come had they not balanced the gameplay between PC and console.
The significance of cross-play in Modern Warfare is that, there hasn’t been any major triple A multiplayer FPS games which was daring enough to implement such a feature, mainly because of the balancing issues between mouse/keyboards and controllers. However, Infinity Ward took the first step by making a battle-proven, reliable aim-assist system for players using controllers. Furthermore, if a player (whether on PC or console) is truly uncomfortable with cross-play he can even choose to disable this feature in the menu, leaving no room for doubts and speculation for whether the system is going to be detrimental to the game’s development.
On the other hand, skill-based matchmaking allows players of similar skill levels to be put into similar matches in order to decrease the frustration of encountering enemies which are too strong or too weak.
To sum it up, the game has gotten a lot of positive feedback during its alpha and beta tests, however after going through a serious controversy, there is no guarantee that the well-rounded publicity would stay long (not to mention the fact that loot box system might still make its way into the game after launch).
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