While I’m catching up on things, this dropped about two weeks ago. I like it. Using the new Modern Warfare 2019 font with the old Modern Warfare 3 colors is a nice blending of old and new.
I guess the marketing has officially begun.
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From the Activision Blizzard Q1 Earnings report:
- Call of Duty® net bookings on console and PC declined year-over-year in the first quarter, reflecting lower premium sales for Call of Duty: Vanguard versus the year ago title and lower engagement in Call of Duty: Warzone™. Call of Duty Mobile net bookings were little changed year-over-year.
The Call of Duty teams delivered substantial gameplay improvements for Vanguard and Warzone in the first quarter. Development on this year’s premium and Warzone experiences, led by Infinity Ward, is proceeding very well. This year’s Call of Duty is a sequel to 2019’s Modern Warfare®, the most successful Call of Duty title to date, and will be the most advanced experience in franchise history. The new free-to-play Warzone experience, which is built from the ground-up alongside the premium game, features groundbreaking innovations to be revealed later this year.
Activision continued to rapidly expand its Call of Duty development resources in the first quarter. Its growing teams are focused on delivering even more compelling content to the community on PC and console, as well as expanding Warzone to the mobile platform.
No surprise that sales are down regarding Vanguard. While it’s not a bad game in and of itself it’s sort of the game nobody wanted. Nobody wanted a World War 2 game at this point though I do get where the creatives are trying to go in terms of world building. It makes sense in that regard. Part of the problem with sales, in my opinion, is that this “shadow” skill based matchmaking that-we-all-know-exists-but-the-developers-can’t-even-acknowledge is creating a poor experience for players. Perhaps the WW2 thing would have been better received if matchmaking was normal and made things fun instead of needlessly competitive. I shouldn’t be punished for playing the game well. I think the other thing to blame here is that Cold War’s matchmaking was even more strict than I remember Modern Warfare’s to be. I know for a fact that sent most of my group back to Halo. It also doesn’t help that the general multiplayer experience is just meh. We’ll talk more about that later but it just feels like Sledgehammer just couldn’t make design decisions and dumped them on the player in the name of “customization”. We also won’t discuss the incredible amount of bugs this game shipped with. Games ship with bugs but I feel like both Cold War and Modern Warfare were in much better places by this time in their cycles.I won’t call bullshit on those substantial improvements for Vanguard1 but they aren’t even close to fixing a lot of the issues with this game. Let’s not talk about map rotation and how people are playing the same maps over and over again. I havent seen Berlin, Gavutu, or most of the launch maps since…. well, launch actually. Still haven’t played Gondola. At this point Vanguard just feels abandoned with the seasons filling the void for when Modern Warfare II launches in October. And then there’s the cheating problem. No wonder Monthly Active Users were down 7 million for the quarter and 50 million year over year. > ▋
When it was announced that we would get a show directly centered around Boba Fett most of Star Wars fandom, especially the boomer crowd, was excited. Finally we could find out what was behind that warning from Vader about disintegrations or maybe just get some history that would finally be canon on a major player that we still know little to nothing about. Finally we would get to see Boba Fett do what Boba Fett does best and lots of it. One of the things that was expected was that the show would fill in the gap between where we left him in Return of the Jedi and where we found him in season 2 of the Mandalorian. While that was how it started that is not necessarily where we ended up.
What better character than to use for a crime drama-rise to power in the criminal-underworld type of story. There might be lots of bounty hunters in the galaxy, but there really is only one we all want to know about. While we did get some of the criminal underworld stuff, most of it, confusingly, was pushed to the periphery. Mostly it just moved the story along and didn’t really serve any real purpose. That said, mafia crime gangs often use the term family because it symbolizes the closeness of its members. Much like the term “family” is a metaphor for Italian crime gangs, it’s here that we find the metaphor for The Book of Boba Fett. Much like Boba Fett was able to create his crime “family” to run and begin to clean up Tatooine, Tatooine’s story is one of digging itself out from the pits of hell. Like Boba and the Sarlacc, if we take things from a certain point of view. It’s the only way this show makes sense.
After we see Boba’s escape from the Sarlacc we get our first take into how the stories start to fit together. Both had been through a sort of hell and stuck in a place of despair. Pain and suffering are what happens to those in Pit of Carkoon and for generations under Jabba that was what the residents of Tatooine have gone through as well. So when we see Boba claw his way out and then collapse from exhaustion and malnutrition, it’s almost as if the same thing were happening across Tatooine. Free from the Hutts and the Empire at last. It’s fitting that along come the Jawas to strip him of his armor. It’s the thing that gives him an edge on everyone else making him, well, normal. Between losing his toys and his weariness, he is at the bottom and starting over. As we came to learn throughout the course of this series, Tatooine used to be a place full of life but is now the barren and harsh desert that it is with little to offer. Much like Boba without his armor.
Whatever it is that caused Tatooine to become the barren wasteland that it is we may never know. But Tatooine now, post Hutt and Empire, is in a new place. A place where it can be whatever it wants and that is where Boba is now. After being rescued by The Sand People he is essentially offered a fresh start, which much like Tatooine is a little chaotic at first. Both resist in their own way. Tatooine by forming gangs and suffering through lawlessness while Fett resists his Tuskan captives. But the Tuskans and Boba are both harsh and tough. They’re the type where respect is earned, not given. Boba earns the respect of his captors by saving one of their younglings while forcefully out digging for black melons and eventually becomes one of their tribe. He in return has learned to respect the harsh desert. As our story progresses we see the changes occurring in each. As Boba becomes part of his tribe and the people of Tatooine begin to come together in their communities. We see a glimpse of this in The Mandalorian where Mos Pelgo fights for its freedom against the Mining Collective. When we catch back up to them here they’ve chosen a new name: Freetown.
Its in these next few episodes that we begin to see the real theme emerge: finding your tribe. Suddenly we’re cut away to Din Djarin and it’s jarring. So jarring that I had to make sure I was watching the right show but if we stick with it though it begins to make sense. During the fight with Paz Vizsla it becomes clear that Din has removed his helmet, breaking Mandalorian code. Din Djarin is now excommunicated from his faith and the things that bind him. We see him travel back to Tatooine and to meet up with Peli Motto. We then catch up with Luke and Grogu. And it’s a similar story: all this time we assumed Grogu was meant to be a Jedi. What if he isn’t? Like Mando he thinks he belongs to a tribe because that’s what he’s been told. Given the opportunity to choose his own path he chooses Mando.
This theme of tribes has been slowly collecting throughout the series. When it was clear the Boba would be rejected as Daimyo by not just the crime lords but by some of the people as well. The Gamorreans who were loyal to Jabba and Bib Fortuna are now alone and would probably have been killed under normal circumstances simply to send a message. The Mod gang is given reprieve even though they stole and the merchant is told to lower his prices to a fair price. Krrsantan is initially sent to kill Boba by the Hutt twins but after his failed attempt and the rejection of returning him to his employer Fett eventually offers him a job. Fennec recruits Din Djarin. Boba not only found his tribe but these characters found their’s as well. Even Fennec when she agrees to stay with Boba after repaying the debit she owes him for saving her life.
The metaphor of Boba Fett and Tatooine falls into place as we continue through the final episode and see it all come together. Everyone eventually meets up at the bombed out club. Mando stands with Boba. The Freetowners arrive. Boba’s group returns even after all looks lost for them. Even Grogu and Peli show up and Grogu adds a small but effective effort at the end. As Boba and his tribe not only fight off the local crime lords, they fight off the Pyke Syndicate as well. This is the fight that Tatooine, as a planet, is engaged in as well. The people of Tatooine are fighting for their freedom just as Boba has been fighting for his through Mos Espa. The statement before the battle breaks out sets this up:
You will leave this planet and your spice trade. If you refuse these terms the arid sands of Tatooine will once again flourish with flowered fields fertilized with the bodies of your dead.
This is a statement from both Boba and the people of Tatooine. We will fight for our world.
What’s upsetting is that as the series went on it never really settled into the crime drama it wanted itself to be. We see Boba begin to cut deals with the local cartels. There are hints of drug running. We see what it wants to be but we never get there. The only time we come close is in the final episode at the Pyke office in Mos Eisly where the whole betrayal is revealed. The setup was there the entire time and yet it’s never used. We flirted with it. We played coy with it. We took it to dinner. And then we dumped it. And that’s probably the most disappointing thing about the whole affair. We never really get to see Boba Fett actually be Boba Fett with the exception of about five minutes during the final battle before he takes off to get get King Kong the rancor. We get nothing more than some taunting from Cad Bane who clearly has a relationship with Boba. Why did we not explore this relationship further? Or for that matter with Krrsantan? They clearly know each other and have some kind of past. We even could have explored the Hutt’s relationship to Tatooine.
This show should have been dark, gritty, for adults, and we all would have loved it. Even if Disney didn’t want to go whole hog into crime rings and drug smuggling they still could have done it in such a way that it at least would have been family friendly and still made sense while expanding on a much beloved character. Instead they took the safe route. The quote above is a beautiful bit of prose but is so out of place since the show itself is so soft. I just kept waiting for it to get to the point and it never really seemed to. It wasn’t until my second watch through because I was so utterly confused that I was able to pull these themes out and find enjoyment in this series. Which is a shame because I really did enjoy the production. The acting, I thought, was great.
If we remember way back to shortly after Disney bought the Star Wars franchise we were going to get a Boba Fett movie. My gut says they couldn’t make it work so they went and did this instead. It just feels like Disney trying to repeat the formula they used for Marvel on Star Wars. Except that’s not how this works. That’s now how any of this works.
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I really feel like some of the best stories that Star Wars can tell are the ones that sit between Order 66 and A New Hope. I would include the Clone Wars in there but we already have so many stories from that era. It’s not that I wouldn’t mind more, I just don’t want it to get over done. The difference with this era is there’s so much space between the end of the Clone Wars and A New Hope with so much going on around the galaxy that some of these stories, like Kenobi, beg to be told while stories like the Bad Batch get to fill in the gaps. These are the stories my generation have been wanting. Here’s hoping more of our questions get answered.
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Ryan Sutton, Eater New York:
The line to get into Veselka in the East Village is long these days. It sometimes stretches down East Ninth Street and wraps around Second Avenue. This is not unexpected, as the pierogi-slinging diner now functions as a rallying point for solidarity with Ukraine amid an unprovoked Russian war against the Eastern European country. On Saturday, at least one party displayed “Free Ukraine” signs as they waited; others brandished mini blue-and-white flags.
What’s a bit more unexpected, however, are the yellow flyers on each table, displaying two QR codes. They are not, as is the case so often during the pandemic, links to online menus. The flyers instead direct patrons to sites where they can support the Ukrainian army, helping supply them with lethal aid to repel the superpower bombing their residential neighborhoods, killing their civilians, and forcing the displacement of over half a million people to nearby countries.
New Yorkers have patronized Veselka for nearly 70 years, occasionally for trendy reasons — to relive moments from Gossip Girl or Ocean’s 8 — but normally for the purpose of enjoying affordable Ukrainian and American fare. Think: Hot bowls of crimson borscht; steaming pierogies filled with potato, sauerkraut, and short rib; and what I’m told is a pretty good burger. As Vladimir Putin’s war of aggression continues, however, the restaurant has transformed into a cultural hub of a different sort, nourishing folks seeking reminders of their besieged homeland, and letting those not of Eastern European descent find a space to channel their empathy and support as well.
This is one fo the thing I love about New York. Whether we know you or not, we got you. Veselka is one of my favorite spots to grab something when I’m nearby and sometimes I’ll make the trip for no good reason. It’s great food and I love that people have come together in support of Ukraine and the atrocities going on there.
Veselka’s call to raise funds, by contrast, is a bit more blunt than some of its peers. The moment you see a menu, you’re also greeted with a call to aid the army of a country under attack. One of the QR codes, for the non-profit Razom, leads to a link that lets folks transfer money to help Ukrainians procure ammunition. Other links are for helping citizens buy military-grade vests, helmets, and tactical medical backpacks.
Purchasing deadly weapons of war are likely not what some folks expect to read before tucking into a giant mound of holubtsi, a classic Ukrainian dish of meat stuffed cabbage slathered in mushroom gravy. Then again, eating a meal in complete mental peace sometimes comes second to, well, literally everything else. “We gotta get the word out,” owner Jason Birchard told me during a phone interview on Friday. “It’s not just a war against Ukraine; it’s a war against the free world.”
It’s a great idea and gets people involved. Slipping you one of these cards is not at all subtle and that’s not a bad thing as sometimes people need things put in their faces to be reminded of the reality of things. Don’t just come in for some food because Ukraine is the news right now but put your money where your mouth is. It does seem hyperbolic to make the statement that this is a war against the free world but in reality it’s not. Without getting into International Relations, the international order is often described as “anarchic” at best and this is a perfect example of that. What matters is how countries and alliances handle that anarchy.
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Ten years after we founded it, The Verge continues to be the best place to discover the import and impact of technology’s place in our culture — but after today, the team will be doing that without me. After 20 years in media, I’ve decided it’s time to do something new. If you’ve been a Vergecast listener, you know that disclosure is our brand, so here’s mine: I’m headed to Google to work on the Platforms & Ecosystems team. I am excited to help shape the future of software platforms like Android and Chrome — and continue to work at the nexus of technology and culture, just in a different way.
Congrats to Dieter. Best of luck on the new position. Here’s hoping Google actually values what it is you have to say, making these products better.
Technology itself is culture, and a phone or a laptop or an algorithmic feed is in itself a cultural object just as worthy of analysis, critique, and serious attention as any piece of artwork or fashion trend. This is why I prefer the term “instrument” over “tool” as a metaphor for most technology. Both are useful metaphors, but “instrument” has connotations about creation and precision that “tool” lacks. And most importantly, it suggests that we have a relationship to the objects we use to create personal expression – to create culture.
This idea is so deeply embedded in the philosophy of reviews at The Verge that it’s difficult to see — and to a casual reader perhaps indistinguishable from a bare speeds-and-feeds kind of review. A simpler way to think of it is that we always take the things themselves seriously, living in the strange space between “just another phone” and “vital instrument our readers will never be more than a few feet away from and use hundreds of times a day to live their lives.” If that kind of object isn’t worth taking seriously, what is?
I feel like this is appropriate for his entire career and was exemplified at The Verge. I’ve often pointed both tech and non-tech friends to his product reviews because they often strike a balance of just nerdy enough to talk about the specs and why they matter with this is the real world implication and why it may or may not matter to you, the user.
His short documentary on the Treo was fantastic as well. Really brought back some memories and added a lot of background as to what was going on behind the scenes. He’ll be missed for sure.
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Every day, people come together on Twitch to build communities that celebrate a variety of interests, passions, and talents. We’re proud that Twitch can bring people together – but we do not believe that individuals who use online services to spread false, harmful information, have a place in our community. While these individuals are not prevalent on Twitch, they could cause significant harm if allowed on our service. That’s why today we’re updating our Spam, Scams and Malicious Conduct Policy to prohibit Harmful Misinformation Actors from using our service.
Before we continue, we need to make one thing clear: this update will likely not impact you or the streamers you love on Twitch. Our goal is to prohibit individuals whose online presence is dedicated to spreading harmful, false information from using Twitch. We will not enforce against one-off statements containing misinformation.
So far this policy change seems pretty forgiving. We get it, accidents happen and people misspeak. Besides Twitch already has policies for dealing with the other stuff.
There’s some notable specifics though. Emphasis mine:
We’ve partnered with over a dozen researchers and experts to understand how harmful misinformation spreads online and ensure our approach to mitigating its risks in our community is effective for Twitch. We’ve learned that Harmful Misinformation Actors account for a disproportionate amount of damaging, widely debunked misinformation online. Together, we’ve identified three characteristics that all of these actors share: their online presence – whether on or off Twitch – is dedicated to (1) persistently sharing (2) widely disproven and broadly shared (3) harmful misinformation topics, such as conspiracies that promote violence. We’ve selected these criteria because taken together they create the highest risk of harm including inciting real world harm. We will only enforce against actors who meet all three of these criteria, and our Off-Service investigations team will be conducting thorough reviews into each case. You can report these actors by sending an email to OSIT@twitch.tv with the account name and any available supporting evidence.
I think Twitch is taking the right approach here: Be gentle until you can’t. Behave if you want to stay on our platform. But don’t just behave because we tell you to on our own platform, behave everywhere else as well. It does no good to kick someone off one platform for them to go onto another and continue spreading this stuff. And nobody has the traffic Twitch does. It would be like getting kicked from YouTube and going to Vimeo. I can’t imagine any prominent streamer would want to risk losing their revenue stream over dumb stuff. Especially if it’s my main source of income or a solid secondary income.
Your move Spotify.
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Sara Morrison writing for Recode:
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers ruled in Apple’s favor on almost every count. Epic Games had hoped to prove that the tech giant’s App Store was a monopoly, causing higher prices for consumers and forcing developers to follow all of its rules in order to be allowed on Apple’s mobile devices. Gonzalez Rogers ruled that the App Store is not a monopoly and that Apple should not be punished for its success. And while the court is forcing Apple to allow developers to tell app users about alternative ways they can pay for subscriptions and in-app purchases — which may seem like (and in some cases, was initially reported as) a win for Epic — Apple will be allowed to continue most of the App Store practices Epic was fighting to get it to stop. “The Court finds in favor of Apple on all counts except with respect to violation of California’s Unfair Competition law (Count Ten) and only partially with respect to its claim for Declaratory Relief,” the judge wrote.
The simple truth here is that Epic just got greedy. Fortnight is in a slow decline even if it is still raking in literal tons of cash. There are way more battle Royale titles out now than there were a few years ago and most of them are arguably better.
Apple’s App Store practices aren’t monopolistic in anyway. The problem in this sense isn’t Apple’s practices, it’s that there are only two phone platforms and users who use iOS tend to spend more than users of Android. That’s just a fact. So if you can’t sell on iOS and you aren’t making money on Android where else do you go? Nowhere. It’s that simple. And that, perhaps is the problem. Apple isn’t a monopoly it just owns the market. There’s competition, just not good competition.
A big factor in the decision was the definition of the “market” Apple allegedly had a monopoly over. This was a sticking point in the trial: Apple argued that the market was all gaming platforms; Epic said the market was just Apple’s App Store. Gonzalez Rogers said during the trial that she thought the market might be all mobile gaming, which would include other mobile platforms and stores like Google Play. And that’s the definition she went with in her ruling. It’s hard to prove that Apple is a monopoly when the judge’s definition of the market also includes its competitors.
This is how it should be. This, in my limited legal knowledge, is how I would feine the market. As a whole with more than one platform. Epic’s narrow definition doesn’t make sense in this case. Now, had they defined the market as a market for strictly iOS apps then that may different. You’re defining the market that you want to compete in specifically as a market is not always just the one device but across multiple devices. To say hat Apple has a monopoly because of the Apps Store on iOS would be to say that Microsoft or Sony have a monopoly because of the stores on Xbox or Playstation. It’s Apple’s platform. They can do what they want to. I can’t go on my Xbox and buy Playstation games.
The one victory Epic Games did achieve was a limited one: Though Gonzalez Rogers ruled that Apple had to allow developers to show app users links where they can make purchases outside of the App Store (purchases Apple won’t get a cut of), Epic is still not allowed to insert its own payment method in the app itself, nor can it place its own app store on Apple devices.
Which is really always how it should have been. It should always have been an option to pay through Apple/The App Store/iTunes or to the vendor themselves. But not both. You cant facilitate a payment through Apple and then not expect Apple to take their cut. That’s not how this works. Either you use Apple’s system and let them take their cut or you have users go outside your app to your system. Which is way more cumbersome than doing it in app.
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Now that Vanguard’s Multiplayer Reveal is over and done with there were a bunch of things I wanted to comment on. Keep in mind all of this simply from observing the event itself and some of the game play afterwards. Whether for good or for bad it’s simply easier to compare Vanguard to Modern Warfare 2019. It just seems like they took the base game, modified it to fit their needs, and skinned it for World War 2. This isn’t a bad thing. After all you could make the same case for World at War and the a lot of the original Black Ops. Those games are often ranked at the top of player favorites along side their original run Modern Warfare counterparts and is arguable what put Treyarch on the map.
This is fantastic. I don’t think we’ve had this many maps at launch since The Old Days.
It seems like “Tactical” is what they’re using for the traditional 6v6 experience and “Blitz” just makes everything the equivalent of Shipment. I’m definitely willing to give some of the4se new pacing a try and I think it brings something fresh and new to traditional multiplayer. What’s nice is that those who just want all Shipment all the time can simply play Blitz but that Tactical will be misread as an invitation to Camp COD. Hopefully that isn’t the case with the middle setting being something akin to 10v10 in MW2019. My fear is that it will ultimately split the community but with crossplay that doesn’t seem to be an issue as the player poole that was spaced out between all three major platforms is one giant player pool for the most part.
Hooray for a daily hour of double xp.
So not every surface is destructible, which is fine. Looking at video it seems that it can be used strategically and not just to create holes in windows and knock down walls to create sight lines. One of the things mentioned, and this has me interested even more, is that conceptually it can used to force out opponents (or used to force you out of a spot). This is, at least for me, why I use Thermite in MW2019. Throw it up in a window or wherever it’s needed to either pin or push out an enemy to be shot. If it’s done right they have the choice to either burn or let me kill them. It’ll be interesting to see this potentially play out with windows, walls, doors, and crates being shot away. This is one of the features I’m most looking forward and for this exact reason. Oh, you wanna hide behind that create? Let me chip away at it and make you come out.
While we’re talking about doors it seems you can tac sprint through the walls that are destructible but doing so in the alpha felt… soft. It felt nothing like busting through a door in MW2019. Maybe this was because of the sound in the alpha but the walls felt like they lacked the heft of the doors in MW2019. Busting through a big door in MW2019 at times feels heavy and even the regular wood ones feels like its got a little heft to it like a door should. Even if the wooden doors didn’t feel as heavy, the sound they made felt violent. Like busting through a door should.
I’ll say this up front: I was a huge fan of weapon mounting in MW2019. It almost immediately became a part of my play style. Being able to check a corner before crossing or round it became invaluable. Using it correctly allowed you to move from cover to cover so much faster. So I’m really interested to try out this new “Blindfire” mechanic. From what it sounds like it will enable you to peek over or around cover and essentially hip fire. I’m thinking of Gears of War, or a game like it, where you’re in cover and fire over it without aiming. Just in first person. Being in cover will allow you to peek over and given this is a first person shooter that kind of is a necessity. The thing that makes this even more interesting is that you can go from Blindfire to mount and back. The thing that bothers me though is that it seems like you can slide along the edge of whatever your mounted on. That might just be a little too much. At least in Modern Warfare if you were mounted you may have been a smaller target but you were stationary so long as you were mounted. Enabling mobility while mounted might be a little too much. Then again, it’s not like you’re stationary when you head glitched in the older games.
SO there will be ten, yes 10, attachments per weapon. I’m going to assume this includes some kind of weapon perk or perhaps multiple weapon perks. My biggest concern of course is balance. The talk of there being weapon class specific perks that adapt the weapons to do particular things like the mentioned LMG with an SMG’s rate of fire. This starts to feel like the way they handled create a class at the launch of WW2 where only certain regiments (and regiments we mean class types) had certain abilities. For example Airborne was the only one really able to use a sniper or really SMGs. That was… Not Good. It was needlessly complex and restrictive. You know something is bad when it gets completely overhauled mid cycle and I’m really hoping Sledge learned from that whole mess.
I was going to make perks a whole separate spot but they really only talked about the one: Piercing Vision. This perk in and of itself scared the hell out of me. My biggest concern around this one is balance. Not even counter right now, just balance. From what we saw it looks like a snapshot grenade from Modern Warfare. I have a few questions about this though:
But most importantly
With the snapshot grenade it was balanced in two ways:
It was equipment. Therefore it was only allowed to be used once per spawn. Use it early and survive for a time and you couldn’t use it again until respawn.
The Battle Hardened perk hid you from being seen but not detected. If a player was using Battle Hardened you would simply get hit markers with the perk icon but no yellow glow.
This makes the snapshot grenade balanced in that you have think before using it. Do I really need to use this here? If you used it and you need it you’re shit out of luck and too bad. If you did use it, and the player was running Battle Hardened, you know they’re there but… where? You still had to guess. As a perk it’s one of those things that’s always on. This just looks like a legal wall hack and that is not ok and this gives me a ton of concern.
Given where we’ve been before with Sledgehammer and the Divisions system from WW2, I am very skeptical. My trust with them is shaky at best. If there is anything that can ruin a Call of Duty title it’s a bad class system and Divisions was it. My fear is that we’re going to end up with something similar to Divisions built on top of Gunsmith. The problem with Divisions was that it was overly and needlessly complicated. I get that they wanted to not only shake things up a little and have their own system, like Treyarch with Pick Ten, but even after the revamp it didn’t quite work. One thing about Call of Duty is that it should be easy to pick up and hard to master. Create a Class from COD4 through BO2 had this in spades. Pick Ten was the same way but added a little extra flexibility by using a point allotment instead of forcing you into certain things. Ghosts one upped this by removing wildcards and giving a point value to each perk instead of limiting you to the classic three or six with the Perk Greed wildcard.
Ok, let’s talk about graphics for a second. The lighting in the alpha looked pretty good for what it was and I wont complain given that it was a build probably from June or July. Seeing how they’re taking lighting into account with foliage, as with the example with the leaf, this game is going to at least look spectacular. One of the best things to come out of Modern Warfare 2019 was it’s lighting system and generally how well optimized it was for using heavy RTX. My hope is that MW2019 was the floor and Vanguard just gets better and makes more use of things that maybe Infinity Ward either didn’t have time to get into MW2019 or simply didn’t have the understanding to at the time. I’m really looking forward to seeing what they were able to do.
I do have a question on the atmosphere stuff: is that random or are those different versions of maps? I’m gonna be really bummed if it isn’t random. The hype of 20 launch maps will vanish fast.
Oh boy. This I dont get. I’m not even going to get into the whole “historically accurate” thing. I’ll just say these few things:
At first I was ok with the no factions thing but then I realized how dumb Team A vs Team B is. I mean… c’mon. This is just lazy. Maybe I’m wrong and it’ll feel better when I can actually give it a try. I’m open but but….
Did we not learn our fucking lesson from the Cold War beta? We’re really only going to have one st of operators to cover both sides in multiplayer?
Am I understanding this right? One set of operators to cover both teams? No equivalent to Coalition vs Allegiance? NATO vs Warsaw? How about just Allies vs Axis? I’m pretty sure we can find a proper way to make that work. I really don’t want to question friend or foe because the opposing operator looks exactly the same as mine. Oh you poor hardcore players. My heart goes out to you if this sticks.
The Operator Progression just seems like a way to get you to use the very limited number of Operators but hopefully it’ll replace the concept of operator challenges that we have now. I don’t mind doing them but the Warzone specific ones have got to go. Specifically the ones that rely on other people.
It’ll be nice to get out of Verdansk. I was under the impression that this was to replace Verdansk but now I’m curious how the integration is going to work and if Verdansk will still hang around under the Modern Warfare and Cold War or if this will be a complete shift. I have a feeling it’s going to be tied to Vanguard like Verdansk is tied to MW2019. Tons of asset sharing and no way to remove it on PC. While it’s annoying to have it take up all that extra space it’ll be for the better. Tighter integration with Warzone will be better for weapon integration and balance. It won’t end up being the disaster that the Cold War weapons always seem to end up being while Raven has to essentially fix them for Warzone constantly. It should be just as simple and smooth as it was for Modern Warfare.
Over all there is a lot that I’m looking forward to. It’ll be nice to finally move away from Verdansk after two years. It’s really nice to be back on IW 8. But there are some design decisions that make me wonder what Sledgehammer is thinking. I know this is just thoughts after a 30 minute reveal and I have yet to get my hands on a beta1 but some of these just sound insane. I’m legitimately concerned that they learned nothing from the WW2 Divisions debacle and are going to repeat it. And even with Beta access there are only a limited amount of options we’ll have. Unfortunately we won’t know the full details and may not truly know if this system works until launch.
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As much as I’d like to get my hands on it this weekend, I’m not pre-ordering on Playstation just for beta access. I’ll be playing on PC so I’ll wait for the round where all pre-orders have access. ↩
Vanguard had it’s alpha over the weekend and while I didn’t get to spend a whole lot of time with it, I did have some thoughts and impressions on it. There’s a handful of things that I wanted to go through and some are, well, intersting. I’m trying not to be too harsh because it is an alpha build of the game and most likely things will change based on feedback and data derived from the event. I’m not going to say much for weapons as those will most likely be rebalanced and adjusted not just before launch but also for the upcoming beta weekends. Keep in mind I played on a PS4 Pro with a mouse and keyboard.
So let’s start with the settings screen. A few things of interest to note:
This is fantastic to see. One of Cold War’s biggest flaws and most glaring issues is that it’s running on the previous Treyarch version of the engine. That engine carries about as much technical debt as Windows. Sure the game does look nice but so much extra stuff has been bolted on (raytracing in this case) and removed coughjetpackscough that the optimization of that engine has kind of gone to shit. The lighting in IW8 is much better and while the alpha was a little dark, this most likely will be tweaked. It is also possible that’s just the way the map for Champion Hill looks and the multiplayer maps will be better lit.
This is a great start but I’d like for Activision to take it one step further and require it. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve seen people on reddit post in both the Cold War and Modern Warfare 2019 subreddits that they’ve suddenly been asked to log in to their Activision/Call of Duty account only to realize they’ve been hacked and lost their purchases. Maybe for me it didn’t require it because mine has been set up for a while now. Would love some clarification on this.
I know some people weren’t a fan of how much screen shake there was in MW2019 so adding this shows Sledgehammer Games is listening. It’s a nice to have and a quality of life addition for sure.
The only killstreak I used during the alpha was the UAV or whatever they called it and it had no music. Curious to see how this setting behaves outside of something like a Juggernaut.
This was in the settings but I wonder if this is for markings as in Cold War’s multiplayer where they replaced mounting with this or if this is a Warzone specific setting that has to be baked into the base game. It didn’t even occur to me to try it in the alpha as the maps were so tiny they were’t needed. There were settings that could have been for Warzone specific things in the options menu. The multiplayer markings are one of Cold war’s better features and I wouldn’t mind them returning. It makes things way easier to point out.
It felt much better than Cold War but it still had some stiffness to it. It didn’t feel anywhere near as fast and smooth as MW2019. Movement was one of MW2019’s best features and I feel like I can run and slide around the map quickly and smoothly and transition in and out of tac sprint and slides into regular movement with ease. That wasn’t the feeling I got here and that was one of the biggest disappointments for me. Sliding felt similar. It just felt slow and heavy and not quite as polished.
I know there was mention of draw distance issues over the weekend but I didn’t really experience them. For me it was more of clutter issue. Visibility on the map was generally fine except that I felt like there was just so much random stuff in the way it made it hard to find the enemy on what was supposed to be a small map. I would love to see Sledge maybe dial that back a little like Treyarch eventually dialed the bushes on Cartel back in Cold War. I feel like they were tying way too hard to show off the new map destruction and just over did it. That said, if I spotted a player in the open I had no issue seeing them at all.
Speaking of, that was probably the most interting thing in the alpha overall. It’s no where near the full blown “take the annoying sniper in the building out by bringing the building down on him” that Battlefield has but I can definitely see the impact this will have on traditional 6v6 multiplayer and Warzone. In one of the arenas it gave a nice bit of cover to get into a potentially better position at the match start and then let it get wrecked behind you, taking away cover from the opposing team. Holes in the wall gave me opportunities to spot opposing players before they even thought to look for me.
I only really used a handful of weapons and didn’t use them upgraded too much but the MP-40 and the STG-44 felt good while the BAR felt more like an LMG, which isn’t to my taste. This is one of those things that I’m sure will change.
Otherwise it seems like Vanguard is off to a promising start and it seems like Sledgehammer is already adjusting things from the feedback over the weekend. I feel like they’re definitely trying to strike some kind of balance between Infinity Ward and Treyarch. Time to kill was fast but didn’t feel as fast as MW2019 yet no where near the bullet sponges of Cold War. Looking forward to the beta and seeing what traditional multiplayer is going to feel like in addition to their take on the Gunsmith and the rest of the new features IW 8 brings with it. I also can’t wait to try it out on a PC with native keyboard and mouse support. For some reason, even though it’s supported in game on the console, it always feels a little off on these alphas.
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