From The #Finally Department: XclusiveAce Makes a “COD Is In Trouble” Video ▉

Let me preface this by saying I absolutely appreciate what Ace does not just for the community but that he generally takes the scientific approach to either figureing out how something works or just generally, as he even mentions in this video, proving or disproving a conspiracy theory. His “Gun Guide” weapon stat videos and his videos on perks and other things are quite literally the lord’s work. I know I wouldn’t have the patience to sit and do what he does to help make the community better players. It’s just that most of the time lately he comes across more like an shill apologist evangalist for COD rather than a player. I honestly don’t mean to pick on Ace but that’s how his videos on just about any contraversial topic regadring Call of Duty have felt like these last few years. The most recent video that comes to mind was the first Double XP event in Black Ops 6 where he basically admits the way it works is misleading but is still fine with the idea so that people don’t crash Nuketown 24/7. Double XP should always just be as simple as XP for a given thing… doubled. It shouldn’t even be a discussion let alone Ace having to figure out why people are complaining.

All this to say that you know its bad if Ace is willng to talk about it. It’s really bad if Ace thinks there’s a problem.

He mentions a few things in the video that I really want to touch on as well. The first one being the whitepapers and blog posts.

One of the whitepapers they published was on matchmaking and how it’s done. In that whitepaper they proclaim that “ping is king”. But eveyone knows this ins’t true. Anyone with any experieince playing COD sees their ping fluctuate from game to game. I live in New York City on the east coast of the United States. It’s fine for me to be put in matches in Atlanta or Chicago, or anywhere near those areas. My ping will generally be anywhere from 7ms if I get something local (and I own a Netduma R3 so I always get something local) to ~30ms if I’m put in one of those cities. Whithout the Netduma router I can be placed in games in Dallas or even Los Angeles. I mean shit, I’ve been placed in games in Sao Paulo, Brazil even with the R3. I have a symetrical gigabit fiber connection to my home and live in one of, if not the most, populated areas of the world and you can’t find me a match locally during peak hours? Bullshit.

The second thing, and argueably the more important thing, is the conspiracy theories. Conspiracy theories live in the abscence of information. Much like how power abhores a vaccum, information does too. Last year’s conspiracy was boits in the multiplayer. That was mostly debunked. This year’s conspiracy is “skill based damage”. Here’s the problem that I have: Somewhere, I’m sure, Activision has a patent that does adjust damage basked on your skill vs your oppoenent’s and vice versa. Do I think it’s in the game? No. Would I belive that Activision would do something scummy like this to make them more money? Absolutely. The problem here? We don’t know because Activision won’t talk about it. Ace even says he’s tried to test and if he can’t find it, and I believe him. I mean it was a joint venture between him and Drift0r that proved the existance of skill based matachmaking. This is a problem that’s only going to get worse the longer it’s ignored.

But to answer his question at the end of his video, am I happy with the current state of Call Of Duty? Fuck no.