March 15th, 2020
I’ve mostly managed to avoid Battle Passes in games up until this point in my life. I had stopped playing Dota 2 frequently enough by the time their Compendium system rolled around, and I’ve never touched Fortnite or any other game that utilizes Battle Passes to sell its players DLC. Until Modern Warfare, that is. I had decided long ago that I’d buy into a Battle Pass when Ghost (the iconic character from the first Modern Warfare 2) was added to the new Modern Warfare as a skin, and the commitment only grew when Activision wisely decided to make the level 100 unlock on said Battle Pass be a skin that looks a hell of a lot better than Ghost’s new default appearance.
What follows is a look back on the ridiculous amount of time that I spent grinding from level 1 to level 100 of the Modern Warfare Season 2 Battle Pass. All in the name of a skin for a character that I will most certainly use from now until I stop playing the game entirely, but also a skin that I also will almost never see myself wearing outside of the main menu and death screens, because this is a first person shooter. Absurdity of this sort of time investment aside, I did have a good time for the first 48 hours and feel like I understand the Call of Duty series much better now than I did when I started, since I had a growing desire for efficiency while playing to improve my grind through the Battle Pass instead of just playing “for fun.”
As a disclaimer these observations may be tainted by the addled mind of a man who has played far too much Call of Duty over the last month. Should any of the following points conflict with your own experience, feel free to let me know.
The first point to get out of the way is that Call of Duty Modern Warfare is still a broken game on many levels. I said in my original review that it was funny how much I enjoyed Modern Warfare despite hating the maps and technical issues, and unfortunately the game still suffers from many of the same problems. Challenges don’t track correctly (I had to get seven quadra kills before the game would acknowledge the three total it wanted me to get), the wording on said challenges continues to be misleading or downright wrong, and the game’s green “you have new unlocks” indicators either don’t show up or won’t go away.
While some of these are quibbles the real frustrations come from the glitches that affect gameplay, which leads me to what I call “the Field Upgrade Glitch.” Field Upgrades are the form of equipment that recharges over time and gives you things like silent movement or a refill on your ammo, and at higher player levels you can equip two of them at once. This can give you a lot of versatility, but about twenty percent of the time this ability breaks and you’re stuck with just the primary choice of your two Field Upgrades. I was confused by this at first but then I noticed that my Blueprint weapon skins weren’t loading either when the Field Upgrade Glitch was happening, which makes me think it’s the game not reading what my profile has unlocked…for some reason. But it’s obviously obnoxious as hell that I might have a particular loadout that I’m running and then I can’t access part of it because the game has decided to glitch itself out.
Speaking of Field Upgrades, the “Weapon Drop” Field Upgrade continues to be an irredeemable meme ability with no actual value. One of the Battle Pass’ challenges (or it could have been a daily challenge, who even remembers things any more) was to distribute over a dozen weapons from the “Weapon Drop” Field Upgrade, and it was just as useless as the last time I tried to test it. Why is it so bad? Well it’s supposed to give you and your allies a box full of high-level weapons when you call it in, specifically random guns covered in attachments. This might be useful for low level players, but you unlock the Weapon Drop as one of the last Field Upgrades and by that point you should have at least two or three weapons that are not only equally tricked out but also customized to YOUR specifications. While any upgraded gun is arguably better than the default, that doesn’t mean that you’ll like the scope, recoil, reload speed, etc that a random gun has, which means that unless you’re using Weapon Drop specifically to replace your secondary weapon (which is still a horrible idea) you’ll never get anything out of the box that’s as good as your primary weapon. Now, the reason that the Weapon Drop ability is a meme and not just useless is because you have a random chance of pulling the Juggernaut’s minigun out of the box. And while the minigun is far less effective when you aren’t as durable as the Juggernaut, it’s still funny to run around with it.
Ammo, range, and fire rate are some of the most important stats in the game. The me from 68 in-game hours ago really liked the Holger’s ability to be modded into the G36C and I also quite liked the MP5, but when I was doing a challenge where I had to pick up an enemy’s weapon I noticed that almost everyone was using 50-60 round magazines. And it felt REALLY GOOD. Thus my journey to level up guns with good control stats and large capacity began, kicking the MP5 and the G36C variants to the curb and picking up the AUG (it has 5.56 ammo as an attachment!) and returning to the old standbys of the M4 and the Kilo 141.
At the same time I also was working on leveling up my pistols on account of the changes to the Overkill perk, and I found myself making similar mistakes. I initially went towards the .50 and revolver as a replacement for my missing shotgun sidearm, but I realized after maybe 20 hours that they just didn’t feel great to use despite their tremendous stopping power. So then I went over to the 1911, which was fine in both the damage department and fire rate, not to mention its iconic nature as well, but then I got a challenge to use the M19 in a Domination match…and it was like the sky opened above me. Suddenly here was a pistol that fired as fast as I could click AND it could carry OVER THIRTY BULLETS. Stopping power be damned, this meshed with my current revelations about primary weapons and also shook me from my absurd notions that any sidearm could replace the shotgun I had lost on account of the nerf to Overkill.
That being said, with Overkill moved to the red perks Quick Fix is probably the best blue perk in the game. Overkill being a blue perk was simply unfair, as you could have two fully tricked out weapons while ALSO being invisible to radar or getting your killstreaks faster, so Infinity Ward switched it to being a red perk. This immediately killed my desire to use it since I love being immune to UAVs too much to ever let that go, so I was in the market for a new blue perk. I briefly returned to Scavenger, which I had been ignoring thanks to the Fully Loaded weapon perk, but as I started using more traditional SMGs and assault rifles again I realized that Scavenger really isn’t that great. Most of your enemies and allies will be using guns with 9mm or 5.56 rounds, so if you’re using one of those too you can easily get ammo from the fallen rather than desperately digging for Scavenger bags.
Instead I decided to try Quick Fix again, which I had tried once to no success but saw some patch notes that said they had “fixed it.” And it seems like they had because now I was healing almost instantly after killing enemies, which does a LOT for you on small maps and during objective-based game modes. Considering the other options available I’d highly recommend Quick Fix to anyone looking for a blue perk, unless you’re one of those players that forgoes your nonlethal grenade for a needle since you’re trying to use Kill Chain on blue.
Speaking of putting together builds, it’s important to remember that gun stats continue to lie to you. If you haven’t realized it yet while playing Modern Warfare I’m just going to point it out to you now: you can’t trust anything on the weapon customization screen. You’ve got your six stats that are supposed to tell you your hipfire accuracy, damage, effective range, fire rate, movement speed/ADS speed, and ADS accuracy…but there’s so many little nuances that the game acts like it’s explaining but for all we know may just be in there for flavor. You’ll see an attachment that increases recoil control but reduces aim stability, yet the stats claim it improves both accuracy and control. Something might say it improves quick target acquisition but actually reduces the mobility stat. And of course the classic FMJ attachment for all guns that claims to increase damage but in reality it only increases damage against perks and vehicles. The only solution to this would be either removing all flavor from the attachments and only showing the raw stats (and having those stats actually mean something) or separate things like damage to vehicles and damage to enemies into different categories.
As I was poring over these weapon stats and attachment options I rediscovered that the 725, M4, and Kilo 141 are still some of the best weapons in the game. The Kilo 141 in particular has a way you can build it where its practically a laser pointer that shoots bullets, while the 725 shotgun can still kill someone from an absurd distance despite its nerfs. On the other side of the coin, I have no idea why anyone would want to use the crossbow, since it’s a shorter range sniper rifle that you have to reload with every shot. Sure it’s quieter, sure it has customization options so your arrows can explode, but at the end of the day being able to fire 5-10 times before having to reload will always be better than only being able to shoot once.
Of course I also picked up on some miscellaneous strategy tips, which we’ll cover in the next three paragraphs. Pressing the “respawn” button immediately isn’t always a great idea on smaller maps, as it’s possible you’ll spawn in the same place again and the guy who just killed you can simply kill you again. This is especially true during airstrikes, as you may find yourself being killed by the same airstrike multiple times. When it comes to funny ways to die, you can be killed by your own killstreak tank not only being airdropped on your head but also when it “settles” on the ground after having already landed for a few seconds. Then there’s no way to kick an ally out of your tank after they steal it while you’re respawning. Another funny way to die is from the Trophy System Field Upgrade, which fires projectiles to destroy enemy grenades and can totally kill you if you’re right next to it at low health (this didn’t just happen to me). You’ll see the Trophy System a lot in Hardpoint, and a good if controversial strategy when you’re ahead in both Hardpoint and Headquarters is to just not try to capture it so that the clock continues to run. This can be tough to pull off and somewhat pointless depending on how far ahead you are and how much time is left, but in certain situations it can win you the game rather than stopping the clock to get a few more meaningless points.
But if you want to talk about meaningless points, there’s a lot of cheeky ways to get experience fast in Modern Warfare. Play the small map playlists like Shoot House, Rust, and Shipment to get through games faster, which includes the big point game modes: Kill Confirmed, Hardpoint, and Domination. On Kill Confirmed you should always try to get back to your own tag after you die (which is really easy on the smaller maps) because it gets you 250 XP, and just picking up multiple tags in a row gets you bonuses as well. Domination gets you a lot of XP when you capture a neutral B flag, and of course you get more XP the more flags you capture, so letting the enemy capture a flag just so you and your friends can take it back a moment later can help your rack up points very quickly.
Nothing compares to Hardpoint though, which is INSANE when it comes to the XP rewards you get once you know how to play it. You get 450 XP for being where a Hardpoint is going to appear just as it spawns, which is easy to do once you’ve played on a map a dozen times since the Hardpoints always spawn in the same order. Even if you fail to get there on the spawn you get 200 XP for also being the first person to touch the Hardpoint, or just 200 XP if you’re the first member of your own team to touch the Hardpoint after an enemy had it. And sure, you do get some XP bonuses for killing enemies while you’re inside the Hardpoint, but it’s actually less than if you kill them from outside the Hardpoint and then take it back from them. I’ve gotten thousands of XP in moments by hopping in and out of the Hardpoints on Shipment as my opponents rushed the objective, and you can too if you’re so inclined. Sure, these strategies may not win you the game but Modern Warfare is so vague about what gives you end game points and what doesn’t that you might as well maximize your XP gain first and worry about winning second.
It’s kind of a crummy way to view playing the game, but at the end of the day it’s important to remember this lesson: Battle Passes are a crappy way to do DLC content. I wasn’t expecting to end this rambling mess of Modern Warfare observations on a life lesson, but on my 68 hour journey I was impeded by the simple fact that life gets in the way of your plans. Halo 1 might be spontaneously re-released on PC, you might get sick, some jackass might total your car, the point is that things WILL happen in your life that pulls you away from your Battle Pass, and while you’re dealing with these speed bumps you shouldn’t have some video game grind floating in the back of your head. “Oh god I’m losing so much time that I need to grind before the Battle Pass goes away!” is a stupid line of thought that gets stuck in there by companies waving a 100 hour grind in front of your eyes and going “oh you’d better finish this in my predetermined time or else it’ll be gone ‘forever’!” It gets especially obnoxious when it’s a Battle Pass like Modern Warfare does where there’s literally nothing of value in it except for the in-game weapons (which you still need to grind for thirty hours to unlock) and the poster boy skins, which any other free-to-play game could have had the decency to just charge you ten dollars for upfront but instead you need to pay ten dollars AND grind for dozens of hours just for the “privilege” to own it.
But hey, we’re being duped into liking Battle Passes because at least they’re better than Loot Boxes, and the skin DOES look pretty cool. All I know is that I’m NEVER doing a Battle Pass marathon grind again, and that I’m going to go play something else for the next month.
