Call of Duty Warzone has been out for just over a year and has been a huge success for publisher Activision and original developers Infinity Ward. Its release took the battle royale world by storm and has seen tens of millions of players attempt to score an elusive victory by battling opponents throughout Verdansk.
Having been in a relatively stable state prior to the start of Season 1 and the integration of Black Ops Cold War, players expected the high standards of developer support to continue but as Infinity Ward handed the reigns over to Treyarch and Raven Software, the road became increasingly bumpy, with numerous bugs, exploits and a huge weapon imbalance drastically impacting how the game played.
With Season 2 in full swing and the majority of the issues ironed out, and Black Ops Cold War integration in full effect as Zombies begin to pave the way for a brand-new map, should the battle royale consider changing engines when the new map releases?
TTK Is Too Fast
The timing couldn’t be better for a complete overhaul of Warzone’s engine. While many people feel that the current engine is far superior to the engine used for Black Ops Cold War, the game has felt strange for many since the addition of the entire Black Ops Cold War arsenal.
Although Call of Duty is synonymous for its fast-paced, action-packed gameplay, the time-to-kill (TTK) has dropped massively since the addition of over 30 new weapons at the start of Season 1. With a lack of weapon balancing, the Cold War weaponry available is much more popular than the Modern Warfare weapons that once dominated the ever-evolving metagame.
One Warzone player has even gone as far as saying that the game is currently unplayable “as a BR” and has even compared it to the Hardcore mode that features in multiplayer. Even with three pieces of armour equipped to prolong your life for as long as possible, the FFAR 1 assault rifle can shred through it and send you to the gulag in just a matter of seconds, and with minimal time to react how are players expected to contest a fight?
I think that a complete overhaul of the engine in order to provide some kind of balance to the weapon pool may seem a bit drastic but with the lack of weapon balancing updates being released, it could well rectify one of Warzone’s biggest issues.
Read More: Are Warzone’s Blueprints Bad For The Game?
New Map, New Engine, New Settings
Could a new engine take Warzone to new heights?
Since the end of Season 6 and the rather anti-climactic end to the battle between Captain Price and Zakhaev, speculation on when the nuclear missiles would make way for a brand-new battlefield has been ongoing for several months.
With the undead seemingly taking control of Verdansk, it finally looks like the release of a brand-new Warzone map is right around the corner. The release of the new map would be the ideal time to switch from the Modern Warfare engine to Black Ops Cold War’s engine.
Alongside bringing in some form of balance to the weapon arsenal, transitioning to a new engine could also bring in a variety of new mechanics including swimming. It is believed some areas of the map will feature large bodies of water and if the current engine remains, it’s unlikely that any new mechanics will be able to be added into the battle royale.
Swimming has already featured in a Call of Duty battle royale. Blackout enabled players to swim across rivers and utilise water to their advantage whether it was to evade an opponent or to find a crafty corner in the final circle in a bid to secure the victory.
A feature that has been heavily requested is a Field of View (FOV) slider for console Warzone. Having been a part of the battle royale since its release on PC, console players were left out in the cold until the release of Black Ops Cold War implemented in a slider to provide players with a further layer of customisation in order to suit their own personal preferences. Changing the FOV in Warzone has a significant effect on what can be seen in the surrounding area and while console players are unable to modify it, they’re playing at a disadvantage which is why nearly every single professional player or streamer plays on PC.
The launch of a new engine could easily implement a FOV slider for console and as one of the most-requested additions to Warzone, it makes perfect sense to do so.
Moving Warzone to a new engine could solve several problems that a few hotfixes or updates may struggle to address. As the battle royale embeds further into the Black Ops storyline, I think that it could open the doors for multiple changes which could transform the game for the better.
Although I think changing the engine has its benefits, such a drastic change to the game could easily split the opinion of the player base. It’s not easy to simply revert the change to how it was before but after players managed to adapt to a new engine, the initial uproar would quickly be forgotten and Warzone would be able to reach new heights that few games have managed to achieve