The recent, radical adjustments made to the meta of Call of Duty have been both a blessing and a curse. For many players, seeing the implementation of crossplay and cross-progression between games and platforms has been an amazing feature. Unfortunately, plenty of other players across the Call of Duty sphere are beginning to take issue with how Black Ops Cold War has been implemented into Warzone -- and for understandable reasons.
Being able to play either 2019's Modern Warfare or Black Ops Cold War and synchronizing progression between the both of them while also being able to utilize any of your unlocks from either game in Warzone is a radical change for the series. In the past, as soon as the newest Call of Duty came out, all support was immediately dropped from the previous title.
The fact that legacy Call of Duty games helm a longer shelf life than they used to is great to see, doubly so when you can carry your progress around to the newest entry of the series. However, tons of Call of Duty players are noticing many issues when attempting to meld Black Ops Cold War and Modern Warfare together.
Possibly the largest issue currently plaguing Call of Duty players is the dichotomy between Black Ops Cold War and Warzone. In Warzone, players can utilize Black Ops Cold War's weaponry, which initially sounds awesome. Bolstering the available weapons and playable characters to a larger degree sounds fantastic, but it's difficult to meld the two games together when they play differently from each other.
Cold War-exclusive players will have a rather hard time adjusting to the mechanics of Warzone. The dramatic mechanical changes between Warzone and Cold War's game engines leads to weapons feeling wildly different and traversal mechanics feeling off. This issue is compounded for dedicated Warzone players, who now have to adjust to an entirely different weapons meta than previously established. Cold War introduced over 30 new firearms, and players have been scrambling to try and compete with these new weapons, especially considering they lack the nuanced balance tweaks that Modern Warfare's guns went through within a year.
Right now, weapons are unbalanced on both ends of the spectrum. While Cold War's guns hit significantly harder (at least at first) in Warzone, many attachments present for the weapons in Cold War aren't nearly as good as Modern Warfare's. On the surface, that's understandable considering the 30 year difference in those game's settings and the real-world technological improvements seen in that time.
What isn't excusable, though, is how imbalanced this currently makes gameplay. Several Modern Warfare attachments, such as the litany of thermal scopes, far outclass anything Cold War currently has on offer, meaning that Cold War's weapons are simultaneously over and underpowered, dramatically upsetting Warzone's careful balance.
On top of the confusing weapons meta, many Cold War players are frustrated by certain operator challenges in the game. Like weapon camo challenges, operator challenges ask players to use a specific operator as their playable character, then do specific tasks with them to unlock XP and new cosmetics relating to that character. On the surface, this is a great idea, allowing players to change their visual style how they want and rewarding them with cool skins as they play the game in progressively challenging ways.
Unfortunately, there's a snag with this system: an overwhelming majority of these operator challenges require players to turn on Warzone to complete them. This has upset Cold War players, who don't want to be forced out of their brand new game to go play last year's installment. Many Call of Duty players are largely okay with switching titles around, but with the drastic weapon sandbox issues and gameplay differences based on graphics engines, the transition between Cold War and Warzone isn't as smooth as it should be.
Weapon balancing is a given fix that'll be happening over the lifespan of Black Ops Cold War. However, issues related to the differences between game engines -- as well as dramatic mechanical differences between the combined sandbox of Modern Warfare and Cold War weapons -- will be much harder to iron out. Hopefully, the major balancing issues happening in Warzone can be adjusted as soon as possible.
So far, players have seen some attempts to try and fix the Cold War/Warzone integration issues with the recent nerf of the MAC-10 and DMR-14, which is a step in the right direction. The continued support of Warzone will hopefully bring the game to its full potential, with Black Ops content included. Overall, this situation should serve as a lesson to developers that trying to meld two dramatically different games together under one roof is a far more ambitious task than may be possible.