Modern Warfare fans are clearly concerned about Activision’s influence on the upcoming title, prompting the community to issue a warning to the publishers about future microtransactions through supply drops.
The Call of Duty franchise, as legendary as it is, has been marred in recent titles by questionable microtransaction structures that go beyond awarding players with cosmetics or the like.
Players feel like the competitive integrity in previous titles like Black Ops 4 was compromised when the game started to lock “stat-boosted weapons or stat-boosting modifiers” behind monetization mechanics. This resulted in a battlefield that felt skewed toward people who paid for better equipment as opposed to having an equal and fair arsenal among all players.
With word that Infinity Ward has changed course from Modern Warfare’s “player-first system” to one that will have weapons available to be earned in Supply Drops, the community are sounding the alarms to let the devs know that isn’t going to help the game long term.
“Activi$ion needs to understand that the community outrage was never about gambling mechanics (loot boxes) or MTXs (microtransactions) as a concept,” Reddit user ‘HellcatJoker’ said. “… The outrage is about locking stat-boosted weapons or stat-boosting modifiers behind the slot machine.”
Clarifying their position, the community are fine with microtransactions in theory, just so long as they don’t provide any player a leg up on their opponents.
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The user explains that “all players want is a guarantee from Activision that the MTX system… restricts ‘rewards’ to COSMETIC ONLY ITEMS.”
Customization in Call of Duty games have exploded in popularity due to sprays, emotes, weapon skins, stickers, and more.
While the community would prefer the devs stick to the realism that Modern Warfare wants to deliver on when considering cosmetics, there are loads of options to explore when supporting the game post-launch.
But they agree that what’s “unacceptable is creating special, exotic, one-hit kill weapons with a .001% drop rate and hiding them in the MTX lottery.”
Monetization practices “ruined” previous Call of Duty entries for a lot of fans, and a bit of compromise from both publishers as well as fans is all it would take to keep Modern Warfare thriving after its October 25 release.