Activision is having an incredibly tough time with Call of Duty Warzone right now. The battle royale is rife with cheaters, bugs dominate the experience, and community sentiment is at an all-time low. Players are comparing everything from map design to gunplay with Verdansk’s launch in 2020, saying nothing quite feels the same as it once did. Warzone is a hectic experience right now, but hopefully, it won’t stay that way for long. Activision has just published a brand new community update, and the focus is on improving Black Ops 6 and Warzone at their core. That does mean Season 2 of Warzone is changing, though.
Warzone isn’t the experience it once was. Activision’s battle royale game was a breath of fresh air when it launched, but right now it feels like a different beast. Weapons are imbalanced, cheaters are common, bugs are rampant, and players lament constant server issues. The good news is that Activision has just detailed a huge number of changes on the way. The bad news is that some new content coming in Season 2 has been pushed back to make room for the adjustments.
“Let’s talk about Season 2 for Call of Duty Warzone,” Activision writes. “We’ve made the decision to prioritize focus on gameplay tuning, adding more quality-of-life, and addressing ongoing bugs. This means that in order to deliver meaningful improvements to our players, new content originally planned for Season 2 has been shifted to create bandwidth to address foundational issues.
“These improvements won’t come all at once – rather, they’ll be staggered across the season and with quite a few quality-of-life changes coming mid-season. Our priority is having the most solid foundation that Battle Royale can offer and [we] are excited for players to see it all live.”
This means Activision is aiming at issues like weapons, movement, audio, perks, and killstreaks. There are also going to be plenty of bug fixes and changes to ranked, but first, I’m going to dive into guns.
Reload speeds are going up for all weapons, with increases ranging between 5% and 20% depending on the weapon class. Jumping is also going to have less of a negative impact on using guns, with the sprint-to-fire jumping penalty going from 35% to 10%, and jump aim-down-sight speeds increasing by 25%. Bullet penetration, “for thicker walls in particular,” is also being adjusted to be more consistent, while weapon swap speed is going up 10%. Lastly, burst and semi-auto rifles are leaving ground loot pools, “allowing for more confidence in knowing how your weapon will fire when you pick it up.”
Activision is also overhauling Warzone’s movement with Season 2 and beyond. Both jump speed and height are being increased after one unmodified successive jump, while the parachute cut animation is speeding up and player velocity after landing from a cut parachute is going up too.
As for audio, the general reverb effects are being reduced. This should help improve the directionality of movement audio from other players like footsteps, ascenders, and parachutes. That means you should hear other players better going forward.
That’s not all, either, as we will get some perk changes with Warzone Season 2 and beyond as well. Combat Scout pings will be replaced with an outline that isn’t visible through walls, and Veteran will now “significantly” reduce the damage ticks of gas grenades. We’re also getting new default perks: the Dexterity weapon component is being increased in effectiveness and made the default for all players, while the Quick Grip Gloves and Fast Reload abilities are being folded into the game via the weapon adjustments mentioned above.
Mountaineer will also come back as a slot-one perk, replacing Dexterity. Activision says it has “increased the fall damage reduction substantially from what is currently in live with Dexterity, though [it’s] not quite the powerhouse it was during Modern Warfare 3.”
As for bugs, Activision says it knows “how frustrating it is to see them linger or go unaddressed in patch notes,” but adds that prioritizing what to fix is “fluid and shifts as new issues appear.” That said, there are plenty of Season 2 fixes you can see in the image below.
There are also a handful of killstreak, equipment, and miscellaneous changes coming in Season 2 and beyond, which rounds out the listed changes for Warzone going forward. For example, the munitions satchel will provide one extra item instead of two, and the maximum deployed tacticals are going from three to two as well. The gas grenade’s radius, duration, and movement penalties are also being reduced to bring it in line “with the vision of a zoning tactical and less of a lethal crutch.” The spy camera’s outline effect will also no longer work through walls, and advanced UAVs won’t show elevation arrows either.
Call of Duty Warzone and Black Ops 6 Season 2 is planned for Tuesday January 28, which is when some of these changes will start rolling out.
Activision also shared some Black Ops 6 and anti-cheat changes in the full community update, which you can read here.
If you’re planning on diving back in alongside all the game’s changes, we’ve got the best Warzone loadouts and best Warzone guns you need to check out.
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