I’m the first to admit that I’m not very good at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II or any other first-person shooter, for that matter. I love to play and do play often enough, but I can never seem to close the gap between myself and the better players, which is why I often avoid most PvP modes and favor things like Invasion or Ground War. So, when Activision announced an objective-based component to their free-to-play Warzone 2 add-on, I couldn’t wait to get in and start playing. Then I discovered the phrase “are you friendly?”
For the uninitiated, Warzone DMZ is a way for players to play the giant free map that Activision created so anyone, regardless of their income status, could sign up and play. The previous iterations of the game were largely battle royales and various other forms of player versus player, commonly referred to as PvP. If you’re not very good at the game, you find yourself dead pretty quickly and having to watch the rest of your squad play for who knows how long. But the objective mode was supposed to allow for players who weren’t very good at PvP or just plain didn’t like PvP, to experience much of what the franchise has to offer without the frustration of dying every thirty seconds.
Since most of the Warzone map is littered with AI enemies, you’re commonly shooting and defending your position from rapid onslaughts of enemies that vastly out-number your three-person squad. So, when you actually do come across other player-controlled characters and the game’s proximity chat — a feature that allows you to talk directly to players in your immediate area, regardless of which side they’re on — kicks on and you hear players say “don’t shoot, I am a friendly,” it can be a huge sigh of relief… for about two minutes.
Yesterday I was playing a run with two friends and we came across three other people, we all agreed to be friends to kill the AI enemies, and then we were going to part ways and go on about our respective missions. But because there is only one weapon case and everyone is trying to go for, the players had a massive incentive to lie to us and as soon as I turned around, they shot me in the back of the head, ending my time in DMZ, and then proceeded to kill all my teammates, too. We hadn’t done anything but help them and yet we were brutally punished when the players agreed to be friendly. But I have come up with a simple fix that Activision could put in that would solve all the problems.
When you come across another set of players, Activision should institute a prompt. If the players agree and then turn on you, the end result is them dying because of friendly fire. They already have something somewhat similar, but it only kicks in after a certain amount of time of working together. It should be something that kicks on the moment they agree to it. In real life, doing something like that is a war crime, so it does seem fair to put in some sort of in-game thing that prevents dishonorable and shady players from doing this to those that are just looking to have a fun time. Maybe they could even create a Tier 1 DMZ where all that stuff flies and have a regular DMZ with these features for the casuals.
Call of Duty is huge enough and old enough that people have eons of experience that people like me, who only started playing this past year, are simply not going to be able to catch up to anytime soon. It’s not about preferential treatment or making the game easier, I like the challenge. I just dislike the dishonesty and the feeling of being betrayed and losing all the gear I spent time and effort collecting because someone told me I could trust them and then betrayed me two seconds later. There’s no amount of “getting good” that can prevent someone from shooting you in the back of the head when you least expect it trying to revive them or help them.
It’s too easy to do, especially if they’re running multiple chats. You just pretend to be friendly on the COD chat and then tell your teammates to waste them on the Discord chat. The best way to stop this is by penalizing the offending players and only Activision can solve that problem. It really does suck and it’s not just me that feels that way. I’ve had this happen several times and while I got used to the suck, it wasn’t any more enjoyable hearing other player’s find out they’ve been deceived, either.
It’s an easy fix, let’s hope Activision does it.