Players hoping that Modern Warfare’s January 28 update would fix Shipment’s hectic spawns are finding that in a lot of cases it’s actually made the problem worse than before.
Infinity Ward’s latest patch brought in a new modes like Deathmatch Domination as well as Gunfight Customs, while integrating balances to popular weapons like the MP5 and M4, among others.
But the devs also replaced Shoot the Ship with Shipment 24/7, which sounds like a fun update especially since in the same update they tuned spawns on the map to “reduce the frequency of instant deaths and spawn traps.”
After players downloaded the update, however, it seems like the spawns are producing similar grievances from before in that players can’t seem to move an inch on Shipment without getting spawn killed.
For Domination specifically, the devs said in the January 28 patch notes that they implemented “new spawn logic for Domination,” but some players don’t feel like that’s the case.
“New Shipment spawns are worse,” Reddit user ‘FSUNole727’ said after the patch was released. “I would much rather be spawn killed 100 times Bc my team couldn’t capture B on Domination, than have these new spawns. It’s terrible.”
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Gameplay clips uploaded by other members of the Modern Warfare community show an entire team getting shutdown on Shipment by enemies simple crouching waiting for players to appear again before taking them out.
“Middle should never be a spawn zone,” user ‘mrfroggyman’ said. “And we should never spawn LITERALLY in front of an enemy. Spawns are NOT fixed”
Another clip shows just how a team can contain their opponents in the middle spawn with ease, with some players even spamming into the center of the map knowing their shots would connect with something.
Teams who control these points are finding it much easier to rack up kills for important streaks like the Chopper Gunner and even a Tactical Nuke.
A lot of members in the community realize that fixing this issue on such a small map like Shipment can be difficult, leading some to wonder if the problem should be tackled from another angle.
“Problem with that is if you remove middle as a spawn zone it’s easier for one team to control spawn trapping through an entire match,” user ‘willyjsemail’ said. “I personally think they should take it back to 5v5; it was harder to control a map with 5 players than it is with 6.”
In either case, it seems like Infinity Ward is going to go back to the drawing board to see what improvements can be made to make Shipment’s spawns more balanced.