by theygamesIt’s almost time for Black Ops 6 and Warzone Season 2 Reloaded to arrive, and ahead of the update some extensive patch notes have landed to show players exactly what’s in store. While we already knew about a lot of the new content, including Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles-themed events and weapons, Raven Software has now got into the nitty gritty. Alongside the usual array of weapon balancing changes, you’ll find the addition of 16 helpful quality of life features and a controversial loadout change that is part of Raven’s fight against “cheese” mechanics in Warzone.
Warzone feels like it’s in something of a lull at the moment – the initial injection of interest and excitement from Black Ops 6’s integration has worn off, and many players (both past and present) are eagerly awaiting the return of Verdansk, which should arrive in a few weeks’ time. While I can’t imagine Season2 Reloaded will move the needle too much, it does at least aim to improve the battle royale experience before the inevitable influx of players that Verdansk will bring.
The big change that’s already got people talking is the closing of what Raven perceives to be a loadout loophole. The developer says it’s been on a mission recently to tackle “long-standing ‘cheese’ mechanics to create a more balanced experience for all players,” and this is the latest target in its crosshairs. For a while now, respawning players have been able to re-use a Loadout Drop crate they had already interacted with, allowing them to quickly and easily reacquire their custom loadout after dying. Raven clearly believes this to be a problematic feature, and even describes it as an “exploit,” so it’s implementing a change that stops players from doing this. From Season 2 Reloaded onwards, you must either locate the guns you dropped when you died, find an unused Loadout Drop, or buy your loadout from a buy station.
This has been met largely with confusion, because it’s not exactly been widely talked about as a problematic or exploitative strategy among the community. “Go ahead and take this [change] out tomorrow lol like don’t even let it through,” says Kris ‘Swagg’ Lamberson, one of the biggest Call of Duty content creators around. He’s certainly not the only one with that opinion.
I can see how the free use of the same Loadout Drop after respawning could become an issue in some cases – especially in Resurgence mode where respawns happen frequently. But this change appears to affect all game modes, and that’ll make reacquiring your custom classes much more difficult in standard battle royale modes.
While this well-intentioned change is causing some controversy, there are at least 16 new quality of life features to offset this. These include automatically picking up tactical or lethal or tactical equipment if you have empty slots, a killfeed icon that will indicate when an elimination has been made specifically in the Gulag, and a loadout priority feature that will always display a player’s favorite loadout at the top of a selection menu.
Elsewhere, a gas grenade bug that was slowing affected players down twice as much as it should have has been addressed.
There are also plenty of weapon balancing changes for Black Ops 6 weapons and for old MW2 and MW3 guns too. Check out the full patch notes for a comprehensive list of changes.
The Season 2 Reloaded update for Call of Duty Warzone goes live on Thursday, February 20.
If you want to uncover some new experiences like Warzone, check out our list of the best FPS games. Our guide to the best free PC games is also on hand to suggest some excellent free-to-play alternatives too.
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